(2005) Wrapped in Rain (2 page)

Hands folded, she wore a white nylon working dressthe kind worn by most house help-knee-highs, a pair of white nurse's shoes with the laces tied in double knots, and her hair tied up in a bun and held together with six or eight bobby pins. She wore no makeup, but if you looked closely, you could see freckles scattered across her light brown cheeks. She extended her references and said, "Good morning, sir. I'm Mrs. Ella Rain." Rex eyed the tattered documents through his glasses, periodically studying her over the tops. She tried to speak again, but he held out his hand like a stop sign and shook his head, so she folded her hands again and waited silently.

After three or four minutes of reading, he said, "Wait here." He shut the door in her face and returned with me a minute later. Inviting her into the house, he extended me at arm's length like a lion cub and said, "Here. Clean this house and don't let him out of your sight."

"Yes sir, Mr. Rex."

Miss Ella cradled me, stepped inside the foyer, and looked around the house. That act alone explains the fact that I have no memory of ever not knowing Miss Ella Rain. Not the mother who bore me, but the mother God gave me.

I'll never understand why she took the job.

Miss Ella had finished high school at the top of her class, but rather than attend college, she opted out, put on an apron, and made enough money to send her younger brother, Moses, through college. When I got old enough to understand just exactly what she had done, she said flatly, "One day, he'd have to provide for a family. Not me." Before the end of her first month, she had moved her things into the servant's cottage, but soon spent most nights sleeping in a chair in the hall outside my secondstory bedroom.

Having provided for my needs-food, clothing, and a retaining wall-Rex returned to Atlanta and resumed his vicious and nonstop attack on the dollar. A pattern soon developed. By the age of three, I saw Rex from Thursday to Sunday. He flew in just long enough to make sure the staff was still afraid of him, to see that I had color in my cheeks, to saddle one of his thoroughbreds, and then to disappear upstairs with an assistant after his ride. About once a month, he would court his latest business partner, and then they too would disappear into the bar until he had satisfied himself. Rex believed people and partners were like train cars-"Ride it until you get tired and then hop off. Another will be along in five minutes."

If Rex was home, and he was talking, two words were certain to fill his mouth. The first was "God" and the second was something I promised Miss Ella I would never repeat. At the age of five, I didn't know what it meant, but the way he said it, the flush in his face, and the amount of spit that bubbled in the corner of his mouth whenever he said it, told me it wasn't good.

"Miss Ella," I said scratching my head, "what does that mean?" She wiped her hands on her apron, scooped me off the stool, and sat me on the countertop. Pressing her forehead against mine, she placed her index finger sideways across my lips and said, "Shhhhh."

"But, Miss Ella, what does it mean?"

She tilted her head and whispered, "Tuck, that's the third commandment word. It's a bad, bad word. The worst word. Your father shouldn't say it."

"But why does he say it?"

"Sometimes grown-ups say it when they're angry about something."

"How come I've never heard you say it?"

"Tuck," she said, lifting the cornmeal bowl into my lap and helping me stir the thickening batter, "promise me you won't ever say that word. You promise?"

"But what if you get angry and you say it?"

"I won't. Now"-her eyes locked onto mine-"you promise?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Say it."

"I promise, Mama Ella."

"And don't let him hear you say that either."

"What?"

"`Mama Ella.' He'll fire me for sure."

I looked in Rex's general direction. "Yes ma'am."

"Good. Now keep stirring." She pointed in the direction of the shouting. 'We better hurry. He sounds hungry." Like a dog that had been beaten too much, we learned early the meaning of Rex's voice.

I'm pretty sure Miss Ella never knew a day in her life that did not include hard work. Many nights, I watched her put her hand on her hip, push her shoulders forward, arch her back, and look to Moses. "Little brother, I need to soak my teeth, doctor my hemorrhoids, get some Cornhuskers, and lay my head on the pillow." But that was just the beginning. She'd get her cap on, get greased up, and then kneel down. That's when her day really started, because once she got going, she might be there all night.

The thought of Rex drew my eyes back to the house. If Rex was home and simply had not made it upstairs to his room, chances were good that he could see Miss Ella's front door from any window on the rear of the house, so I ran around the back of the cottage, in the shadows under the eave. I turned the mop bucket upside down, pulled up on the window, and hung my chin on the ledge while my socked feet made a kicking and scratching sound on the cold brick wall.

Inside, Miss Ella was kneeling beside her bed. She was like that a lot. Head bowed and draped in a yellow plastic shower cap, hands folded and resting on top of her Bible, which spread across the bed in front of her. Come what may, she maintained a steady diet of Scripture. She quoted it often and with authority. Miss Ella seldom spoke words or phrases that weren't first written in the Old or New Testament. The more Rex drank and the more Rex cussed, the more Miss Ella read and prayed. I saw her Bible once, and much of the current page was underlined. I couldn't read too well, but looking back on it, it was probably the Psalms. Miss Ella found comfort there. Especially the twenty-fifth.

Miss Ella's lips were moving, her head was nodding just slightly, and her eyes were narrowed, closed, and surrounded in deep wrinkles. Then and now, that's the way I remember her. A lady on her knees.

The fact that her back was turned meant absolutely nothing. Hidden behind that wiry and self-cut black-andgray hair were two beady little brown eyes that saw everything that happened and even some things that didn't. The eyes on the front of her head were kind and gentle, but the ones in the back of her head were always catching me doing something wrong. I used to think if I could catch her asleep, I'd tiptoe over and start picking through the back of her hair to find them. My problem was that even if I got the shower cap off, I knew that as soon as I peeled away the hair and found the eyelids, those beady little things would open and burn a hole in my soul. One second I'd be flesh and blood-breathing, curious, licking my lips, my fingertips touching her scalp, and my whole life before me-and the next second I'd be-poof.a column of smoke rising up out of my shoes.

I let myself back down onto the bucket, lightly tapped the window with the handle of my baseball bat, and whispered, "Miss Ella." Itwas a cold night, and my breath looked like Rex's cigar smoke.

I looked up and waited as the cold crept through the pores in my pajamas. While I danced atop the mop bucket, she wrapped a tattered shawl tight around her shoulders and lifted the window. Seeing me, she reached through and pulled me up-all fifty-two pounds. I know that because one week prior she had taken me for my fiveyear checkup, and when Moses put me on the scale, Miss Ella commented, "Fifty-two pounds? Child, you weigh half as much as me."

She shut the window and knelt down. "Tucker, what are you doing out of your bed? You know what time it is?"

I shook my head. She took off my hat, unbuckled my holster, and hung them both on her bedposts. "You're going to catch your death out here. Come here." We sat down in her rocker in front of the fireplace, which was little more than red embers. She threw on a few pieces of light kindling and then began rocking quietly, warming my arms with her hands. The only sound was the slow rhythm of the rocker and the pounding in my chest. After a few minutes, she pushed the hair out of my eyes and said, "What's wrong, child?"

"My stomach hurts."

She nodded and combed my hair with her fingers, which smelled like Cornhuskers lotion. "You going to throw up or need to go to the bathroom?"

I shook my head.

"Couldn't sleep?"

I nodded.

"You scared?"

I nodded a third time and tried to wipe the tear away with my sleeve, but she beat me to it. She snugged her arms about me tighter and said, "You want to tell me about it?"

I shook my head and sniffled. She pulled me back toward her warm, sagging bosom and hummed in rhythm with the rocker. That was the safest place on earth.

She put her hand on my tummy and listened like a doctor for a heartbeat. After a few seconds, she nodded affirmatively, grabbed a blanket, and wrapped me tight. "Tucker, that hurting spot is your people place."

My eyebrows lifted. "My what?"

"Your people place."

"What's it do?"

"It's like your own built-in treasure box."

I looked at my stomach. "Is there money in it?"

She shook her head and smiled. "No, no money. It holds people. People you love and those that love you. It feels good when it's full and hurts when it's empty. Right now it's getting bigger. Kind of like the growing pains you sometimes feel in your shins and ankles." She put her hand over my belly button and said, "It's sort of packed in there behind your belly button."

"How'd it get there?"

"God put it there."

"Does everybody have one?"

"Yes."

"Even you?"

"Even me," she whispered.

I looked at her stomach. "Can I see?"

"Oh, you can't see it. It's invisible."

"Then how do we know it's real?" I asked.

"Well"-she thought for a minute-"it's kind of like this fire here. You can't actually see the heat coming off those coals, but you can feel it. And the closer you get to the heat, the less you doubt the fire."

"Who's in your tummy?" I asked.

She pulled me back to her chest, and the rocker creaked under our weight. "Let's see." She put my hand on her stomach and said, "Well, you. And George." George was her husband who had died about six months before she answered Rex's ad. She didn't talk about him much, but his picture was sitting above its on the mantel. "And Mose." She moved her hand again. "My mom, my dad, all my brothers and sisters. People like that."

"But all those people are dead except me and Mose."

`Just 'cause somebody dies doesn't mean they leave you." She gently turned my chin toward hers and said, "Tucker, love doesn't die like people."

"Who's in my dad's stomach?"

"Well ... " She paused for a minute and then decided to tell me something pretty close to the truth. `Jack Daniels, mostly."

"How come you don't fill yours with Mr. Daniels?"

She laughed. "For starters, I don't like the taste of him. And secondly, I want to fill mine with something I only have to swallow once. If you drink Mr. Daniels, he'll leave you thirsty. You have to drink him all day and then every night, and I don't have time for all that foolishness."

The fire licked the back of the fireplace and painted the wood in white coals.

"Mama Ella, where's my mom?"

Miss Ella looked into the fire and squinted. "I don't know, child. I don't know."

"Mama Ella?"

"Yes," she said, poking the fire with an iron poker, ignoring my use of her forbidden name.

"Is my dad mad at me?"

She squeezed me tight and said, "No, child. Your father's acting up has nothing to do with you."

I sat in the quiet for a minute, watching the end of the iron poker turn bright red. "Well then, is he mad at you?"

"I don't think so."

"Then"-I pointed to her left eye-"why'd he hit you?"

"Tucker, I think the screaming and hitting has a lot to do with your father's friendship with Mr. Daniels." I nodded as if I understood. "To tell you the truth, I don't think he remembers most of it."

"If we drink Mr. Daniels, will he help us forget?"

"Not permanently."

Miss Ella combed my hair with her fingers, and I felt her breath on my forehead. Miss Ella said that sometimes when she prayed, she felt the breath of God come down and cover her like mist in the morning. I didn't know much about the breath of God, but if it was anything like the breath of Miss Ella-sweet, warm, and close-I wanted it.

"Can you stop him from being so mean?"

"Tucker, I'd step in front of a train for you if I thought it would help, but Miss Ella can only do certain things."

The light from the embers bounced off her shiny face and made her skin look lighter. It also showed the scar above her right eye and the little swelling that remained. She sat me up and squared my shoulders to hers. She rubbed my tummy and smiled.

"You know sometimes how I walk into your room with a flashlight or a candle?" I nodded. "Well, love is like that. Light doesn't have to announce its way into a room or ask the darkness to leave. It just is. It walks ahead of you, and the darkness rolls back like a tide." She waved her hand across the room. "It has to, 'cause darkness can't be where light is."

She cradled my hand inside of hers. Hers was wrinkled and callused, and her knuckles were bigger than mine, sort of out of proportion to the rest of her hand. Her silver wedding band fit loosely and had worn thin on the edges. My hand was small and dotted with one or two freckles, and my fingernails were packed with Alabama clay. A cut had scabbed across the middle knuckle of my index finger and cracked every time I made a fist. "Tucker, I want to tell you a secret." She curled my hand into a fist and showed it to me. "Life is a battle, but you can't fight it with your fists." She gently tapped me on the chin with my fist and then put her hand on my chest. "You got to fight it with your heart."

She pulled me back to her chest and sucked through her teeth like she was trying to pick the corn out with her tongue. "If your knuckles are bloodier than your knees, then you're fighting the wrong battle."

"Miss Ella, you don't always make sense."

"In life"-she placed her finger on my knee-"you want the scabs here"-she placed the other on the cracked skin of my knuckle-"not here."