Apron Strings (31 page)

“You’re funny,” she said. “It wasn’t that long. I think it went faster because I had you to play with.”

She must be used to Aunt Lizbeth’s complaining
, I thought.

“Wasn’t it fun when we stumped Daddy at I Spy?”

The way I remembered it, we didn’t have anything to do with stumping him. We had been commanded to stop playing because Aunt Lizbeth had a headache. She’d said, “If you don’t shut up right now I am going to put you out of the car and leave all of you right here.”

I had immediately glanced out the window to get some idea of where we were and how we got there.

Uncle James patted his wife’s leg playfully. She pushed his hand away and it didn’t look much like she was playing. “Now, honey, you wouldn’t want to go and do that. Who would take care of you like I do? Sugarlips, you know you couldn’t get along without me and old Jilly Dill.”

What about me?
I wanted to shout as I pictured myself on the side of the road watching as the car and trailer disappeared into the distance,
and kicking myself for not having paid attention to which roads we took to get right here.

Then he added, “And would you want to call my big sister and tell her that you had misplaced her little Sallee? I don’t reckon so.” I breathed a sigh of relief, though I wasn’t completely taken with the idea that Aunt Lizbeth had even thought of leaving us on the side of the road. You never can tell with grown-ups.

“Aunt Lizbeth wouldn’t have left us would she?” I ventured.

“No, she was just fooling. She does that sometimes for fun. Let’s go see Ben and Carrie,” Jilly scampered up the dune.

Some fun
, I thought as I followed.

Carrie and Ben worked for, I guess, the house. Before our grandmother died they had worked for her, and after she died they just kept on working at her house. The house belonged to my mother and her three brothers now. Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth were the only ones who used it, though. They came down every year, sometimes staying all summer. We used to come down and stay with them, but Uncle James and Daddy got mad at each other, so we hadn’t been down for a couple of years. Aunt Lizbeth would call Daddy the “arrogant ass” when she thought I couldn’t hear her. Even when I was around she wouldn’t say his name. She’d just say things like, “What is the AA doing now?”

Ethel told me that, once when Aunt Lizbeth was at our house, she and Daddy got into a fight about the shopping center. He told her to leave. She said, “You can stuff it where the sun don’t shine.” With that he picked her up, chair and all, put her on the front porch, said, “Go home,” and shut the door. She hadn’t been back until he left.

When Ben and Carrie weren’t working at the beach, they worked at a colored school, I think. Ben was tall and dark-skinned. He had a jolly, easy way about him. He liked teasing and laughing; he was always ready with a chuckle. As Jilly and I rounded the corner of the cottage, we caught sight of him: a huge trunk was hoisted on his shoulders and a big suitcase was in his other hand as he headed for the main part of the cottage. He broke out in a wide grin, leaned over to free himself of the load, and crouched down. Jilly ran into his open arms.

“Well now, Carrie, look at how ol’ Jilly Billy has grown. Lord a mercy, girl, you had better stop or you are gonna be as big as me.” He wrapped her up in his long arms. “It’s so good to see you child. We did miss you so.” Ben smiled in my direction over Jilly’s shoulder. “I hear we’re having a guest, too. Hey there, Sallee, nice to see ya. I don’t think I’ve seen you since you were knee high to a pickle.” He and Jilly laughed.

“To a pickle?” she giggled as she hung on to his hand. “Pickles don’t have knees.”

I smiled back shyly. “Hi,” I said.

Carrie came up to me and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. “Hello there, honey,” she said to me, and then to Jilly, “Hi sweetie, Ben is right, you sure have grown. Come on over here and let me give you a hug.” She put down the suitcase she was carrying and gave Jilly one of those stiff little hugs that grown-ups give—the kind where they stick their butts out in the air like they don’t want to get something on them. Then she picked up my suitcase and said, “Let’s put your stuff away. I’ve got lots of work to do. Ben, take that trunk into Miz Stuart’s room and then go back and get the frozen food and put it down in the freezer; the one out in the storeroom. Better hurry up too—you got to unpack the trailer and there’s dinner to fix. “She started barking orders like a spoiled terrier on the wrong side of the door. Ben picked up the heavy trunk as if it were filled with nothing but air and yes’umed his way into the cottage.

Jilly, jabbering like a crow, fell in line behind Carrie, and I followed them into our room. As she opened the door, a blast of cool cedar-scented air hit us in the face. “Don’t you just love that smell?” she asked then turned to Carrie. “Did you get here this morning?”

“Lord, child, no. We’ve been here for two days getting this place ready for you.”

“Lucky you,” she said as she flounced down on the already made bed.

It didn’t seem to me that Carrie agreed with Jilly’s assessment. Carrie was light-skinned like Ethel and had freckles, but that was where the similarities ended. Her dark brown hair was short and fell in pretty curls around her head. Shorts and a sleeveless blouse were as close as
she came to a uniform. She kept her feelings to herself, though she had enough sour opinions to make up for it. Never once did I hear her giggle or chuckle. When she did laugh it had a hard, raw edge to it—and I was never quite sure if we were laughing at the same thing. I guess you could say that Carrie was the housekeeper. She did the laundry and cleaning. She also made sure we went to bed on time, brushed our teeth, and picked up after ourselves mostly by telling us to do it. After dinner, Carrie was on her own time.

“Guess what we’re havin’ for dinner tonight?” Ben asked as he headed toward the kitchen with Jilly and me skipping behind him.

“Beanies and weanies,” Jilly said.

“Nope, you guess, Sallee.”

“Fried chicken,” I said hopefully, “like Ethel makes.”

“Last time I saw Ethel she was the only thing fried.” Ben said to Carrie with a chuckle and she laughed. “We’re gonna have fried fish and hush puppies. Carrie caught these fish just this morning.”

Jilly and I jumped up and down hugging each other, and then Jilly hugged Ben. “We love hush puppies,” she said. We ate in the kitchen with Carrie and Ben. I nursed the little dig he took at Ethel. I don’t even know why. It just hurt.

Carrie asked, “How’s Ethel? She was having a hard time the last time she was here.”

Ben twisted up his lips and turned his head to Carrie. “Hard liquor, that’s for sure,” he said in a low voice. Carrie laughed quietly and slapped Ben’s arm lightly while they kept on giggling like it was the best joke in the world.

“She’s OK. I don’t think she likes the beach much,” I said. “She can’t swim, and I think she misses Big Early when she’s here.” I didn’t understand why Carrie and Ben didn’t like Ethel. It didn’t make any sense to me.

“Things haven’t been too easy from what I hear.”

“Not so good I guess.” I started pushing my food around on my plate, wishing we could move on to another topic. My family life had become anything but my favorite topic of conversation.

Jilly piped up. “Are the bikes here yet? Did you bring them over?”

“Ben spent all morning cleaning up your bikes and getting them ready for you. They’re out in the carport,” Carrie said as she started clearing the table and resetting it for Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth’s dinner. While Ben cooked their meal, we finished clearing the table.

“Aren’t they coming?” I asked. “Do you want me to tell them dinner is ready?”

“Who?” Ben asked.

“Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth.”

“No, I just leave it here and they eat when they get ready. I’ll come back before I go to bed and clean up.”

Ben and Carrie had a room with their own bathroom at the end of the wing. It was a pretty big room with windows on two sides that had views into the carport and the cars on the cement drive. They spent all of their spare time in their room, which made no sense to me because it was hot and a fan pushing around hot air was pretty useless in my book. After dinner we would ride our bikes around the circle while Ben and Carrie played pinochle on the table between their beds. Every time Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth went out the breeze that had been blocked by the car would waft into their room—the only one without an air conditioner.

That first evening around seven o’clock, the ocean breeze died down and the mosquitos came out in full force. Jilly continued riding her bike, undisturbed by the swarms of invisible, angry insects. But I found myself slapping and scratching my skin like a crazy person. I stowed my bike in the carport and went inside for a warm bath.

Half an hour later I emerged from the bathroom with a towel around my head and a smattering of red welts on my arms. Ben was turning down our beds. “Look,” I said, extending one arm to him for inspection.

He shook his head as he took my arm, “Mmm mmm. You must be mighty sweet. Look at them, and they are hot too.” He placed his enormous hand on one of the bites. I noticed how pink the inside of his hands were. “Make sure you put some medicine on ‘em.” I nodded my head in agreement and wondered how on earth I was going to know what kind of medicine to put on them. I wished Ethel was here.

“Well, go on in there and get yourself ready for bed,” Ben ordered on his way out the door. “Carrie will be up in a minute.”

I got in bed, towel and all. Jilly peeled her clothes off leaving them on the floor in a bunch where they fell. “Aren’t you going to brush your teeth?”

“Naw.”

“Isn’t Carrie gonna get mad?” I asked as I scratched a bite and imagined how much trouble I would be in if I tried to get away with not brushing my teeth when Ethel was on duty.

“No, Carrie doesn’t get mad about stuff like that.”

“Oh,” I said, amazed but feeling like I needed to defend Ethel to my cousin. “I think Ethel gets mad at us because she cares about us.”

“Carrie and Ben care about me, too,” Jilly protested.

I blushed. “Well, sure,” I agreed lamely.

Jilly gave me a funny look. “How come you don’t like them much?”

She stumped me. I wanted to like Ben as much as Jilly did. “I do. But I don’t know them like you do. I haven’t seen ‘em in two or three years and besides…” I rolled over and pretended to have fallen asleep. I had to admit Ben was fun. I liked his easy way. I wanted to like him as much as Jilly did, but I felt so disloyal to Ethel.

Early the next morning Ben announced on his way by our window, “If you girls wanna go fishing you’d better be getting up. Your momma left me with a list as long as my arm of things I’ve gotta get. If I’m gonna get it all done then I’m gonna need your help.” He scratched on the screen. “You up in there?” His voice boomed. Had it been anyone else we wouldn’t have heard him, but Ben’s voice was loud and deep.

“Do you wanna go?” I asked Jilly as I stretched beneath the thin sheet, enjoying the relative cool of the morning. “Don’t you want to go swimming first?”

“We can’t swim ‘til Momma and Daddy get up unless Ben watches us, and he’s got errands to run. So we better go cause Carrie’ll put us to work if we stay around here.” Jilly wisely made her point. “Besides, Ben lets me drive.”

“Aren’t you too young to be driving? Gordy can’t even drive.”

“I don’t really drive, I just shift the gears,” Jilly said as she put on her clothes as fast as she’d taken them off the night before.

As we came into the kitchen, Carrie was fussing with Ben. “What were you thinking, yelling outside like that? You want to wake them folks up? I don’t ‘spect so.”

“Aw they couldn’t hear me.”

“I heard you down in our room.”

“Their air conditioner was on; the windows all shut tight.” His logic seemed to calm her down. “You girls gonna come with me or stay here with Carrie?”

“With you,” we both said as we jumped together.

“Hurry up and eat your breakfast. We’ve got lots to do.” Bowls, cereal, fresh fruit, and milk were already on the table. “Anybody want some coffee?”

“Oh I do,” I said. I was feeling more at home than I had the day before. When my mother wasn’t around Ethel would fix me coffee with so much milk and sugar that it tasted more like coffee ice cream, only hot. Momma said coffee was bad for children. I almost fell over when Ben put a cup of black coffee by my place. What was I supposed to do with that? I sipped and doctored and sipped and doctored until I finally got something approximating Ethel’s concoction. My saucer was filled with the overflow coffee. The cup was impossible to lift without spilling.

“Child, what are you doing?” Carrie scolded. “Leave that coffee and eat your breakfast.” She took the streaming cup and saucer away and grumbled at Ben for giving it to me in the first place.

“Ain’t gonna hurt her none,” he said good-naturedly. “Come on, let’s go. We got miles to go before we sleep.”

As we drove down the beach road, Jilly shifted the gears on the old jeep. She did just fine at first. But then she tried to move it to another gear and the car bumped and the engine roared in protest. Ben laughed. “Don’t move it up all the way. You got to move like this.” He demonstrated the motion in the air. “It’s like an ‘H’.” We stopped in the middle of the road to show her. “The top of the ‘H’ is first. Then you pull straight down and that’s second. Third—and that’s the one you’re tryin’ to get to—is up here on the ‘H’.” He put his pointer fingers together to make
half an ‘H’ then wiggled his thumb to show what he was talking about. “Now, go back to first and let’s start all over.” I missed half of what he was saying because I was looking around to make sure no one was coming. “Don’t worry so much, Sallee. There ain’t no one coming. I’ve been keeping my eye out.”

Our promised fishing trip was fun, though Ben was the only one who caught anything big enough to keep. I caught an eel that writhed like a snake on the line when I finally was able to pull it out of the water. I was so horrified that I let go of the pole. If Ben hadn’t been right there to catch it, that eel would have been swimming around for the rest of its life attached to that pole.