After the Flag Has Been Folded (27 page)

“Some of the boys said they're going to wear shorts underneath their gowns,” I said.

“Don't you even think about it.”

“I wouldn't, Mama.”

The doorbell rang. “I'll get it,” I said. I walked out of the kitchen and through the dining room. I didn't really need to rush. Frank and Linda were still sleeping. They weren't about to race me to the door.

It was the neighbors from across the street dropping off a gift-wrapped box and wishing me well on my graduation day. For weeks now people from all over town had been leaving presents on my doorstep or sending money in the mail. This graduation business was more lucrative than any Christmas or birthday that I could remember. Certainly much better than my last birthday. Boxes were piled three and four deep around my bed. Embroidered pillowcases, four pair of panties, size six; a silver-plated hairbrush and matching mirror; a couple of gold-plated pen sets from V. V. Vick Jewelers, charms for my fourteen-karat-gold bracelet, including the tiniest Volkswagen Bug you ever saw from Beth McCombs; photo frames of every sort; half a dozen plump towels; and four sets of sheets—pink, white, blue gingham, and one with tiny yellow daisies.

I think every elderly person at Rose Hill Baptist must've mailed me a check. I had nearly three hundred dollars in the bank from all
the folks who'd sent me ten and twenty dollars in the mail. I was beginning to see how those television evangelists could rake in the dough. If one hundred people sent in five dollars, a fellow could make five hundred dollars pretty swiftly. I reminded myself to do those calculations for Granny Leona. She'd send in five or ten bucks to the television preachers every time she cashed her Social Security check. Then by the end of the month she didn't have enough money left to buy a dozen of those Little Debbie oatmeal cakes she loved so much.

I took a quick shower, towel-dried my hair, and rushed off to practice. There were about four hundred of us graduating, and it took an hour to line us up, two by two. I had a deeper appreciation for Noah after watching our class advisors herd us around.

When I got back home, Mama was sitting on the front stoop drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. I eased Old Blue up next to the curb and walked across the lawn. I noticed the milky film from the morning had burnt off. Parched pinesap scented the air. Mama was dressed in shorts and a white, sleeveless top. Her arms and legs were lightly bronzed, like the skin of a rightly roasted marshmallow. “How was practice?” she asked.

“Boring,” I said. I sat down next to her on the brick steps.

“Mary Sue will be here in a bit,” Mama said.

“Is she bringing the kids?”

“I think she got a sitter for them.”

Mary Sue had finally tired of Uncle Joe. She left him shortly after Baby Joe was born. I kept Melissa and Joe quite a bit while Mary Sue studied to be a licensed practical nurse, like Mama had years before. She had lived in the projects at Peabody while she finished up her schooling. But once she got done, she bought a ranch-style house out past Edgewood Elementary. Melissa and Joe were attending the same elementary school where I'd started my education—back before we went to Hawaii, back before anybody we knew had heard of Vietnam.

I was trying hard not to think of Daddy right now. I had missed him something fierce during the sixth-grade graduation ceremony at
Tillinghurst Elementary. Mama didn't really care for school activities after Daddy died. I think she felt out of place among all those other mothers who had their husbands still. But she'd picked a folded chair right down front in the school cafeteria so I could see her from the stage while we sang the songs we'd memorized. And she smiled real big when I got a reading award. I knew in my heart then that Mama was missing Daddy, too. Just like now.

I picked up a handful of pine straw and started building a house between my feet, like the ones my girlfriends and I used to construct during our elementary recesses. Mama watched. Then she stood up, brushed off her butt, and said, “Wait right here, I've got something for you.”

I kept my head down. I didn't want Mama to see the puddle of tears in my eyes. I'd learned that the best way to stop myself from crying was to stop thinking about whatever was making me sad. But it's hard not to think of your dead daddy on special days like birthdays, Christmas, Easter, and Father's Day. On those really big occasions like high school or college graduations, weddings or when your own babies are born, it's best just to pull out the towel. There's no possible way to get through those days without a big old crying jag.

Mama sat back down and handed me a tiny box. It was wrapped in gold paper and sealed with a big gold bow. “Your graduation gift,” she said, smiling. Mama loves to give presents better than anything in the world. Well, almost. She may like getting them even more.

I unwrapped it, taking care not to rip the paper or the bow. I lifted the lid off the white box, and resting there on a bed of cotton was a watch, an exquisite timepiece crafted from diamonds and gold.

“Oh, Mama!” I exclaimed. “It's so beautiful!” I put my arms around her neck and gave her a big smooch on the cheek.

“I'm glad you like it,” she said, patting my arm, which was still firmly planted around her neck. “I wanted to get you something special.”

“Here, help me put it on,” I said, sticking out my wrist. Mama
unclasped the watch and slipped it over my left hand, taking care to cinch the clasp up tight. The early-afternoon sun bounced off the diamonds and made tiny rainbows of light. I sat still, mesmerized by my new treasure.

Mama studied me for a minute or two, then she lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. “Karen, there's a couple of things I want to tell you.”

I went back to building my pine-straw house. Mama doesn't like to make eye contact when she's talking all serious like.

“Yes, ma'am?” I said.

“Your daddy, he'd be so proud of you today. He was always so proud of you. I don't know if you remember or not, but when you were really little, he'd have me dress you up so he could take you out to the base to show all his buddies his little girl. Your daddy loved your blond hair. I could never get it to do anything. It was always sticking out every which way. But he thought you were such a pretty thing with that white blond hair.”

Tears, salty and hot, streamed down my cheeks. I didn't dare look at her or say anything. I didn't know what had caused Mama to lift the veil of silence that had shrouded her since the day Daddy died, but I didn't want to give her any reason to stop talking now. I had waited umpteen thousand days to hear Mama speak Daddy's name again. She could've told me a zillion stories of “Dave this” and “Dave that,” and I would never have tired of them.

Trouble was, Mama had quit saying Daddy's name once he died. It simply pained her too much to tell us kids the stories we longed to hear. And because we all loved Mama so, we couldn't bear to ask about the things that would surely stir her to sadness. So I'd never asked Mama how she and Daddy met, or when he proposed, or why he wanted to be a soldier or was there something else he longed to do, if only he'd lived. I didn't know where his favorite fishing hole was or what kind of cake he liked best. I wasn't sure if he read books
or if he had an author he liked most. Or if he took Mama to the picture show. And I didn't know if my soldier daddy was afraid he'd never live to see any of his children graduate from high school—something he never got the chance to do himself. I really wanted to ask Mama, do you think Daddy was afraid to die?

But I didn't ask her any of the million questions running through my head. I just listened respectfully the way I might if Pastor Smitty was trying to instruct me, as Mama told me about the ways Daddy loved me.

She recalled the night I fell off the bed and busted my chin open. “Dave put you in the car and drove you to the hospital by himself,” she said.

“I remember I was hollering for you all the way to Martin Army.”

“I bet you did,” Mama said. A grin crept across her face. She took a sip from her coffee cup. “When your daddy died, I was lost, Karen. It was like somebody had thrown me out in the middle of an ocean without a life jacket or anything. I was grabbing onto anything that came my way.”

Yep, I thought. A lot of bad shit floats around in the sea of despair.

Mama took another drag on her cigarette and continued. “I know I made a lot of mistakes. I did a lot of foolish things. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry for the way I hurt you. I wish I'd been a better mother for you kids.”

I was wiping away the tears as fast as I could, but quick thaws are never easily managed. My emotions were rushing forward, carrying me along. “You're a good mama,” I muttered. But she had tuned me out. She had set a course for herself with this mother-daughter talk, and nothing was going to distract her until she spit out whatever it was she had to say.

“Don't you see, that's why I have got to get out of here? I need a fresh start, someplace new. Someplace where I can make new friends. The only friends I have here are the girls I used to barhop
with. I'm tired of that. But if I don't get out of here, I will never get away from it.”

I didn't have to ask what Mama was talking about. I knew good and well where the conversation was headed now. We'd fought about it all year long.

“Karen, I want you to go ahead and go on to Berry College with Lynn this fall, the way you've planned, but, honey, I can't stay here. I'm taking your sister and moving to Oregon.”

What could I say? I'd asked Mama to let me graduate from the high school where I'd started, and she'd done that. I knew she wanted to get situated in Oregon before Linda started high school in the fall. I would be turning eighteen in November. There was nothing holding Mama to Columbus anymore.

She'd brought us back to this area because it connected us to Daddy in a way that only a military town could. Moving to Columbus was one sure way to keep in touch with the past, one we shared with Daddy. Now Mama needed a place to build a future for herself.

“You do what you have to do, Mama. I'll be okay.”

I was lying about being okay. After Daddy died, losing Mama was always the thing I'd feared most.

 

F
OLLOWING MY GRADUATION CEREMONY,
I went out with Wes and some friends. I drank just enough rum to induce vomiting. Wes took me home before midnight, and we never went on another date.

Mama sold the house lickety-split. On Labor Day weekend she and Frank finished packing up the last of the mattresses into the U-Haul truck. I'd already boxed up most of my things and taken them to Beth McCombs's house on Lynda Lane. Daddy Mac and Rufe had offered to let me stay with them again. They promised Mama they'd make sure I got to Berry College in time for registration in late September.

Linda cried all the way to the Tennessee border and beyond, and Mama never once told her to knock it off. And I cried nearly every night for the next four months. Nobody told me to knock it off,
either. Desolate without my family, I packed my bags after one term at Berry and moved to Oregon in December 1974.

I decided to make the move west after Mama called me on the pay phone in my college dorm to wish me a happy eighteenth birthday. We talked about her new job and the apartment she'd found near Linda's school in Aloha, Oregon. I told her how much I liked my sociology professor and how wretched my English literature professor was. Shortly before we hung up, Mama said, “I love you, Karen.”

I couldn't remember Mama ever saying “I love you” before that night. She didn't even say it that day in September when she pulled the car away from the curb and drove off.

Leaving Georgia proved to be nearly as hard on me as being left behind. Columbus is home to some of the fondest memories I have of Daddy. Even today, as I drive past Edgewood Park and our old home, I think of the afternoons spent playing catch with Daddy. I remember Frankie walking me to school. And the times we kids woke up early on Saturday mornings so we could swing from the lever of the refrigerator door without Mama catching us. I remember standing at the picture window as a little girl and screaming at the thunder and lightning.

I recall with a grin the sheer panic Daddy must've felt when he found me sprawled out on the hardwood floor, my chin busted open as blood spurted on the ceiling. Daddy made me giggle through my tears as he rushed me to Martin Army Hospital. And I remember the way he laughed at me one evening when he found me curled up on the couch with a mirror, combing my eyelashes. To this day, the friends I made in Columbus continue to be some of my most cherished companions.

Karen Mendenhall was only a junior at Columbus High when I decided to leave. We sat on her bed with all the lights out and wept for hours the night I told her I was moving to Oregon. Finally, her mom put an end to our crying jag by yelling at us: “Girls! Too late for chitchat. Go to sleep now!”

We burst into a fit of giggles and eventually fell asleep, still muttering about our mamas and all the grief they'd given us throughout our growing-up years. Daddies might hold the key to a daughter's heart, but it's our mamas who hold the key to the ball and chain trailing a young girl's spirit.