Apron Strings (13 page)

Gordy said, “I’ll share my candy with you if you don’t tell.”

“You just better shut up or I’ll throw you over the balcony,” I fumed.

Helen looked at me solemnly. “You’d get in big trouble,” she said.

“I don’t care. You’d be dead. So shut up.” Helen must have believed me. She didn’t say a word to Ethel about the spitting. I noticed Gordy gave her a lot of his candy. After the movie, my mother was waiting in her car at the colored entrance.

On sunny mornings light streamed through the big windows in the dining room, helping to start the day. Ethel really shined at breakfast, too. What we had to eat was up to her. She took it personally when my mother bought boxed cereal. In Ethel’s mind breakfast, including cereal, was meant to be eaten hot. Pouring something out of a box offended her. “Don’ know why ya wants dat,” she’d say. “Tastes like cardboard ta me.”

Daddy liked to talk with Ethel at breakfast. He’d ask her opinion about things in the news; about the weather, food. They talked to each other as she waited on the table, fixed his breakfast, and oversaw ours. Rarely did she stop to stand and talk, but rather as she served, they conversed. Their conversations weaved back and forth between her trips to the kitchen—the thread would get dropped every time she exited the dining room only to be picked up again when she reentered. Neither of them ever missed a nuance or puzzled over which topic they’d left off on.

“Mornin’, Mista Joe,” she’d say as she placed his black coffee on the table next to him. “How ya doin’ this fine mornin’?”

“I hadn’t realized what a fine day it was until I smelled sausage cooking.” He flashed her a grin. “I hope it’s yours.”

“Yes, sir, sure is,” she said as she left the room. “Made it last Sat’day evenin’,” she said, reentering with a china pot of coffee on a silver tray.

“How many did you slaughter this time?”

“Jest three,” she answered over her shoulder. When she came back she stopped. “I ain’t gots time to do much more en’ that. It takes a right smart while ta gits ‘em all cut up and the hams ready fer curin’. We been cutting back. Jest takes too long. Ain’t is young as we once was.”

“Who are you calling old? I’m older than you, or are you angling for a day off?” He laughed to her back.

“No, sir, I ain’t askin’ for no time oft. I’m plenty happy doin’ for you jest as I is.” She chuckled as she reentered the room. “I put more sage in da mix this time. I hope ya likes it,” she said, placing a plate of sausage and fried apples down in front of him.

He cut off a small piece of sausage, put it in his mouth, and chewed carefully. “Good, really makes a difference. I like it,” he said, stuffing the rest into his mouth. “What do you think?”

“I was waitin’ to hear what you had’ta say, but I think it need a speck mo’.”

“You know I’m never going to question you when it comes to cooking. If you think it needs more it undoubtedly does, but it’s the best damn sausage I ever ate.”

“Thank ya,” she glowed. “Glad ya likes it.”

“Stuart,” Daddy said. “Did you try any of this?”

Stuart stopped reading the paper and wrinkled her nose. “I just want toast, Daddy, that’s all.” He shrugged. Then she turned the page of the paper toward him. “Did you see where the army is trying to draft Elvis Presley?”

Daddy didn’t like his music and was always asking Stuart to turn the volume down whenever it came on the radio.

“Why, Stuart,” he said, “do you think Elvis should be treated any differently than anybody else? What makes him so special? Because he can hoop, holler, and gyrate?”

Daddy got up from the table and started his imitation of “Elvis the Pelvis,” as he called him. It wasn’t pretty. Helen and Gordy shrieked with laughter. I had tears running down my cheeks. Ethel came in from the kitchen, a spatula in her hand.

“You go, Mista Joe,” she hollered. “Shake it!” Even Stuart was laughing in spite of herself.

“What on earth?” my mother said. Her voice was like ice water. She stood at the foot of the stairs in her riding habit.

Ethel scurried back into the kitchen. Daddy eased back onto his chair at the table as we children fell mute.

Desegregation—a buzzword at the time, a word that had so much power that it rendered my mother speechless around Ethel—came up often in Ethel’s conversations with Daddy at the breakfast table. Ethel’s opinion had value to him. Often when they discussed the growing firestorm he would say, “That’s a good point. I never thought about it that way.” And he meant it. On one such occasion my mother was present at the table, her eyes following Daddy’s exchange with Ethel over the rim of her coffee cup. As soon as Ethel left the room, she shushed my father. “Joe, what are you trying to do? Don’t talk to her about these things,” my mother said. “Ethel doesn’t know what’s going on. Lord knows you don’t need to upset her.”

My father shot her an exasperated look. “Ginny, Ethel might be uneducated, but she’s nobody’s fool. Besides, she’s right. They are just monkeying around up there in Washington, using this whole race thing to keep people from focusing on the lack of jobs and the stalled economy. It’s wrong for Negroes to be treated the way they’re treated. It’s about time people start changing. Ethel certainly has a right to voice her opinion. Don’t you care what she thinks?”

My mother, who had been listening patiently, suddenly bristled. “Ethel and I don’t discuss current events.”

“Current events? For Christ’s sake, it’s her life!”

Chapter 9

I
f by some miracle my parents managed not to fight the night before, Daddy would drive us to school. The mood was always lighthearted. Stuart wouldn’t be so argumentative, for one thing. We’d sing and laugh and look for purple cows. Those mornings even Stuart would join in to finish the rhyme, “We’d rather see one than be one.” She’d sit next to Daddy and talk about boys and what she was going to do after school.

“Look over there,” Stuart would say when we pulled up at her building. “There.” She’d point and we’d crane our necks as we strained to see.

“What?” Helen demanded.

“Oh never mind,” Stuart would giggle as she climbed from the car. Gordy and I dove into her vacated spot, jockeying with each other to sit next to Daddy. Then Stuart would stick her head back in the window.

“A purple cow!” she’d shout. We’d all laugh as she waved goodbye, as if she’d never played the joke on us before. We’d start singing silly songs and Daddy would whoop and holler as he drove to make us laugh more. We couldn’t get through reciting, “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear…,” without cracking up, as if it were the funniest poem ever written. Then we’d drive by the graveyard on the way to our school from Stuart’s. Every single time Daddy would say, “People are dyin’ to get in there.” We’d all laugh out loud.

But one morning was different. Daddy quietly hustled us out of the house earlier than usual. My mother didn’t seem to notice, and Ethel, never a clock watcher, made no comment. As we clambered into the car, there was a sense of excitement, like on a holiday. Daddy hadn’t said anything, yet the air buzzed with electricity.

As we left the driveway, Stuart broke the loaded silence. She peered around to look Daddy in the face and asked, “What are you up to?” Her eyes crinkled as she smiled.

“Ohhh,” he said, drawing out the word until the three of us were hanging on the back of his seat. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He chuckled.

“What, what, what?” we all shouted, giggling and wriggling with anticipation. He drove along our usual school route, and then turned down a road. Stuart started to laugh.

“Oh, I know where we’re going,” she crowed. “We’re going to…” She mouthed something to Daddy that the rest of us couldn’t make out. His face broke into a wide grin.

“What? Where?” Helen and I shrieked.

“Where are we going?” Gordy demanded.

“You’ll see,” Stuart smirked.

Gordy sat back in his seat with his arms across his chest and started to pout. But he couldn’t keep it up for long; the anticipation was just too thrilling. Then, there we were, in the middle of the most dirt I had ever seen in my life. Enormous yellow-and-rust-colored machines were creaking and squeaking, billowing black smoke and red dust everywhere. It looked like our sandbox at home, only a thousand times bigger. In the distance, Erector set-like buildings lined a steep, scarred bank of combed clay.

Daddy shut off the car. Gordy was clawing at the door handle, trying to get out into the fray. His eyes were as big as dinner plates. “Wow o’ wow! Golly gee! Oh man!” He piled exclamations on top of whistles and whoops.

“Son, you can’t get out now. You still have to go to school. I’ll bring you back again, soon. I just wanted all of you to see.” Daddy looked out of the windshield. He was every bit as excited and mesmerized as Gordy.

“What is it?” Helen’s lip turned up in a sneer. She moved away from the door just in case Gordy opened it; she didn’t want to get sucked into the chaos looming outside the car.

Stuart laughed. “The shopping center, silly,” she said.

“Oh,” Helen and I said simultaneously. We looked at each other as if everyone else in the car had just arrived from Mars. Although I didn’t
get what all the excitement was about, I was thrilled to see Daddy so happy; happier than I could ever remember seeing him.

Daddy pointed to a huge steel skeleton and gushed. “That’s going to be the biggest A&P grocery store in the South. You’ll be able to buy everything from fresh baked bread to ice coolers, from socks to seafood in there. And over there, that will be a gift shop and a movie theater.” As he gestured from one structure to another, he sounded like a kid reciting a Christmas list.

“Will Ethel be able to see a movie in there?” Helen asked.

“What? Of course, she will, honey. Over there, that’s going to be the Western Auto Hardware store. And all of this,” he boasted, waving his arms grandly, “is going to be for parking. Can you imagine?”

“Wow!” Gordy gasped. Helen looked at me and shrugged.

“Daddy,” Stuart said, “this is great. But you better get us to school or Mom will have a fit.”

Daddy looked wistfully at the big machines grumbling in the dirt. “You’re right, Stuart,” he said and started the engine.

On a weekend just before my ninth birthday, Stuart said to me, “Let me roll your hair up.”

“Ok.” I jumped up and followed her to her room. I was thrilled with the never even imagined turn of events. “What do you want me to do? Should I wash my hair first?”

“No, it’s too long. I’ll just spray it,” she said, her mouth pursed up like she was thinking about something else. “Wait, sit over there.” She indicated her dressing table chair. “I’ll be right back.” Stuart returned with an armful of makeup and dumped it on the table in front of me. “Your hair’s too long to roll up. It would take all day to dry. Let’s make you up instead.”

As I fidgeted, Stuart attempted to apply makeup, powder and rouge. “If you don’t want to look like a clown, you’d better sit still,” she grumbled. “I won’t be able to put eye makeup on unless you do.” I sat as still as I could, only blinking twice. Stuart groaned each time. Every so often she’d stand back to admire her handiwork. Pressing her hand against my head and pulling my eyes wide with her fingers, she tweaked the eye
shadow this way and that, smudging and rubbing until she achieved the desired effect. Then she took a tiny little paintbrush and licked it, rubbing it around in what looked like paint. She painstakingly applied the pigment to my quivering eyelid.

“Can I see?” I begged.

“Hang on,” she mumbled, brushes and Q-tips bristling from her mouth. “I’m not through.” She rubbed a Q-tip as if it were an eraser on my eyelid. I didn’t say a word for fear of breaking the Cinderella spell. Finally her work was done. “There,” she announced; her voice full of pride. “Now, hold on. I’ll be right back. Don’t look in the mirror.”

I sat as motionless as a sphinx trying not to disturb any of Stuart’s handiwork. She returned with a dress, some jewelry, and my mother’s highest heels. She grabbed my hair, brushed it back, and pulled it like it was a pony’s mane. “Ow,” I whimpered, biting my lip hard.

“Sorry,” she said. She pulled and twisted my hair on top of my head, securing it with hairpins. It felt like she was sticking them into my scalp.

“Stop, that hurts!” I pulled away as strands of hair fell in my face.

“Just two more; I’ll be careful,” she promised. “OK, now get up and put this on.” She guided the delicate fabric over my head, holding it away from my face. “Stand there.” She pointed to a spot where I couldn’t see my reflection in the mirror as she pinned up my mother’s dress to fit my size. “Shoes,” she said. I put my foot in one of the high heels. My foot sank into the toe and I struggled for balance. Stuart caught me by the arm and helped me with the other shoe. She arranged the dress so that I could just see the toes of the shoes under the folds of fabric that drifted onto the floor. She fastened a necklace around my neck and clipped earrings on my ears. “Now,” she said.” Close your eyes.” She positioned the mirror so I would be able to see my full reflection. “Now open. Whattya think?” I saw my big sister’s face first. She was looking in the mirror as if she might burst with pride, while I, a creature of exquisite beauty, luxuriated in her rare attention.

“I’m really going to miss you guys when we go,” she said, looking unbearably sad. She tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

“What are you talking about? Where are we going?” I asked.

“Dad and—oh, never mind,” she said. She waved her hand casually in dismissal. “Nowhere. Go show Ethel how pretty you look!”

Big Early picked Ethel up every night just after dinner, around seven-thirty. He’d park his old pickup truck outside the kitchen steps and wait for her to finish up, rarely bothering to turn the engine off. While his truck idled, its fenders shook and the engine rumbled, spewing acrid black smoke from the exhaust pipe that jiggled underneath the rusted bed. In the summer months, Gordy, Helen, and I were allowed to play in the bed of the truck among the farm debris while Big Early waited for Ethel. Lance would circle the truck, sniff all the barnyard scents, and then lie down in the dirt, as usual. Meanwhile, I chatted with Big Early about his cows, pigs, and chickens. His even, white teeth glittered in the sunlight when he chuckled at something I said. Even in the hot summer he wore a brown felt hat; only his gray sideburns showed under the brim.