Ferris Beach (20 page)

It was a relief for Christmas to come and go. Misty spent most of the days comparing that year to the one before, remembering the night Buddy was born, what her mother had baked and bought and said and sung. “Don’t you remember that night Buddy was born?” she said so many times. “The way we danced around in the street? in the middle of the night? You remember how Mama said, ‘Maybe Baby Well Allright That’ll Be the Day’?” And then nine times out often, she would start to cry, shoulders shaking as she leaned towards me. It was warmer than usual that Christmas and rained so much that the families who usually went all out with lights and decorations confined their efforts to the insides of their houses. “Thank God, they’re not stringing their lights this year,” Mama said, and pointed to the neighborhood behind us, Merle Hucks’s house dark. “There would be an electrical fire for sure.” And though Angela had said that she
might
make it for the holidays, she never did.

Not long after we returned to school, I got my chance to talk to Perry. I had gotten permission to leave gym class to go to the bathroom, and there she was, sitting up on the old radiator with her hands cupping her chin as she rested against the large window sill. The light-blue carcoat was draped over her legs. She turned when she heard me come in and then quickly looked back to the schoolyard where a group of guys were shooting marbles under one of the tall elms.

“Hi,” I said, pausing in front of the mirror to brush my hair. I saw her then turn and study my reflection, her lips in a full pout. She nodded. I hesitated, trying to think of something,
anything
to say. “You’re not sick, are you?” She shook her head, dabbed one eye with the sleeve of her coat, and then turned back to the window.

“I used to have a coat like that,” I offered, hoping for a bit more conversation. I turned from the mirror and waited to see if she would respond.

“You mean you used to have this one.” She shook the sleeve all bunched up in her tiny hand. Somehow I was not prepared for the twang of her voice, the rusty flatness that went against every smooth line of her face. The sound was coarse and grainy. “I don’t care,” she persisted, her eyes as hard and cold as creek pebbles. “You can have it back if you want it. It’s got a rip in the lining. The pockets hadn’t even been cleaned out; I found all kinds of little notes.” She paused and then laughed a forced laugh. “Take it if you want it.” She hopped down and stepped closer to me, the coat held out in front of her. I felt like I was in the bottom of a well, like when I used to wear my earplugs. The image of myself in the white fake fur was ugly and garish; I was ugly and garish, and I was prepared to hear her say it.

“I don’t want it,” I whispered. If Misty had been there, she would have been forcing my head up. “I’m sorry, really.” I wanted to tell her that I didn’t know, didn’t think, but I knew if I said another word I’d start crying. I looked back at her, tried to show in my expression that I hadn’t meant to hurt her. She returned my stare, her eyes lingering just a second longer on my left cheek, and I waited for what was bound to come, waited for the lengthy, flattened insult.

“Who needs a stupid new coat?” she said and turned away. “All of y’all come in here like a fashion show.” She flipped one hand out to the side and twisted her small body in mocked exaggeration of a model pose. “And I’ve heard the things that fat friend of yours has said about me. I ain’t deaf, you know, but it seems I can’t do nothing about it.” I froze, waiting for more, still stunned that she had concocted her
y’all
to include me. I was one of
them;
I was one of the enemy and she had not even taken her best shot at me. She sighed and went back to the radiator, hopped up and pulled her short corduroy skirt down as far as she could.

“I’m sorry” I said. She shrugged without looking from the window, and I backed out of the bathroom as quietly as I could. I was back in the gym, feeling the vibrations of the basketballs bouncing up and down the old scuffed-up floor, when I realized that I had not even used the bathroom. And when the bell rang, I lingered, looking out the gymnasium door to where Perry stood on the curb in front of the school until she climbed into an old beat-up van and rode away. The van, blue with all kinds of spray-painted graffiti, was easily recognized; I had seen it parked at the Huckses’ house from time to time. The gym was almost empty when I heard Misty’s loud, boisterous voice calling for me to come on, we were going to be late for English.
I
ain’t deaf you know.
We were doing the first act of
The Miracle Worker
, and I had Misty’s old granny glasses safely tucked away in my locker.

Slowly the leaves returned, green buds that soon opened like fans to camouflage the stone man so well that only those familiar with him would be able to trace his figure there against the sky. With spring, we received news that E. A. Poe High was close enough to completion that we would definitely go there in the fall; as a result, Samuel T. Saxon would finally be torn down. They would begin as soon as school got out, slowly dismantling the ancient mortar and brick, the thick wavy windows and stone sidewalks. They would bulldoze the yard, turning up lost erasers and marbles and pennies and burying them beneath the yellow dust.

Late that spring I went to a tea at Mrs. Poole’s house. Misty and I were still members of Children of the Confederacy, and so several times a year we had to go sit and eat cookies with seven other girls who also had at least one ancestor who had fought for the Confederacy. My mother didn’t see much merit to this club, favoring of course the Revolutionary War, but still she liked the
idea
of me participating. Several years before, Mo Rhodes who thought the
idea
of it all was stupid, had asked Misty, “Are you
sure
you want to be in this kind of club?” I had wished that just once my mother would give me the option. But now there was no one to question our membership, and Misty’s countdown was nearing its end;
in only two months it will be a year since Mama left home.
Sally Jean was trying her best to mark everything by the Liberace sighting or by her wedding day,
but until that first year ended, there was no other way for Misty to mark time.

Mrs. Poole had volunteered to have a joint meeting of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, of which she was the long-running president, and the Children of the Confederacy. At her insistence, each
child
was supposed to present a project which in some way or another reflected respect and honor of the Confederacy. Certainly none of us took this club as seriously as Mrs. Poole did. I knew when she clinked a long scerling spoon on her iced tea goblet that we were in for an afternoon which could only be equaled by a church retreat or a tour of the local funeral home.

Sterling against crystal and the room went silent. All the women, my mother included, were used to this; you could tell by the way they stared into the swirled pattern of Mrs. Poole’s hospital green wall-to-wall carpet. “She was the first in town to have wall-to-wall,” I had heard my mother say several times. Now the green nubs were worn down by herd after herd of tea-takers.

“Let’s begin,” she said, and smiled a thin tight-lipped smile, “by introducing ourselves and giving the name or names of our ancestors who so bravely served.” She looked around the room, smiling, just as she did when she taught Sunday school; she searched the crowd of us like a hungry eagle poring from the cliff top. Swoop, snag, claw. “Now, I’ll go first. I am Mrs. Theresa Poole,” she said, and laughed as if there
could
be someone in the town of Fulton who did
not
know her. “The men in my family served in the the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, World War I and World War II.”

“They must have been real old by then,” I whispered to Misty, and she stifled a giggle, then whispered that old joke to me, “Her people couldn’t get along with
anybody”

“My Mr. Robert Manchester Poole”—she pointed to his portrait hanging above the mantel and then to the famous machete
she always made reference to, which was propped against the fireplace—“was in the Pacific during WWII.” Mrs. Poole said double-u double-u, and Misty’s elbow dug into my ribs. I knew that when she could without laughing she would whisper
dubya dubya.

“We’ll socialize a little later.” She was staring right at us—we felt like bunnies in her fierce talons—and my mother was giving me the eye that said she’d just as soon put me on restriction as breathe.

“Now, I could go on and on with the names of my relatives, but perhaps I’ll focus on the two names you’ll recognize, General Robert E. Lee and Mr. Stonewall Jackson.” She grinned again and even the other women began twitching on their chairs. How could you follow that? “We’ll go around the room now.” I prayed that she would begin the circle so that my mother went first and I could once again hear the
public version
of her relative who was considered the black sheep of his New England family. Randolph H. Anders was a physician in the Civil War, a convert to the Confederacy who died of pneumonia. My mother had told Mrs. Poole that the man was considered a black sheep for leaving the North and that he was a physician, but had failed to say that he died of pneumonia nowhere near a battle site and was a black sheep because he had become involved with his brother’s wife. It irked Mrs. Poole that she did not have first-hand knowledge of my mother’s family as she did everyone else’s in Fulton. If my mother
really
wanted to get under Mrs. Poole’s skin, she casually mentioned the
Underground Railroad
as if it had just been built and she herself had tunneled her way beneath the streets of Boston. Mrs. Poole could not stand to be left out.

“I am Cleva O’Conner Burns,” my mother finally said. “And my great-great-uncle Randolph Anders, a
well known
New England physician, came to the South and served and died in the Civil War.” She looked around and smiled, then smoothed her hair; she was wearing a long brown tunic, finally swayed to join
the fashion trend set by Bea Arthur. Misty leaned in to me and whispered, “Beware of The Maude Squad,” and I had to hold my little tiny napkin that came with that little tiny glass of grape juice up to my mouth to hide a laugh.

“Anyway,” Mama continued, always confident when in a setting of historical discussion, “Randolph Anders was considered a black sheep by all of his family members. I mean you can imagine. His very own brother, Lucas Anders, worked on the
Underground Railroad,
there beneath the streets of
Beacon Hill,
helping those
poor
people to
freedom
.” Mama’s hands shook a little but she looked confident, her voice ringing with the same force and clarity it had when we had walked the Freedom Trail and she had narrated every little stone path and building along the way. She had shown me the statue erected to commemorate the
Union
dead; she had shown me the apartment building where she was born, a five-floor brick building with bay windows and a view of the Charles River.

My mother was telling of Randolph Anders’s long work hours as a physician even while he was ill with pneumonia. Mrs. Edith Turner was twitching on her seat, heaving her weight from thigh to thigh; Mrs. Poole lit a Salem and blew a stream of smoke through her pursed fuchsia lips. My father referred to Randolph Anders as
that oversexed Southbound New Englander.
“They sent their bad blood to the South,” he had said, pencil in hand as he doodled a picture of the East Coast. “States always think they’re one better than the one just below. New York frowns on New Jersey. Virginia frowns on the Carolinas. Everybody frowns on Miami.” He was now filling in the shapes of the states so closely that at first I thought he was tracing a map. “Used to if you were on the outs with the law, you went to Texas and were never heard from again. Then after Texas, Alaska became the place to go and disappear.” He went to the upper left-hand corner of his paper and drew Alaska. “But way back when that oversexed Southbound relative of your mothers had to leave town.. “

“So you have a lot of different lines, Cleva,” Mrs. Poole said, and stood, then realized she had lit a cigarette and had to sit back down. “Now like me, I have pure, solid Southern lines, but you and your family are more in keeping with what we in America call ‘the melting pot.’” She turned and looked at all of us C of C’s as if we were in her Sunday school class for five-year-olds. “The Melting Pot. You can get the picture from that I guess. I mean, can’t you see what is meant by a melting pot?”

“No,” Misty said, eyebrows furrowed in a confused fashion. “Please explain just what
is
meant by the melting pot.” Sally Jean sat up straight in her chair; it was obvious that she felt totally responsible for anything Misty said.

“Let me,” Sally Jean offered, and smiled at Misty, attempting the
mother/daughter
bond that she had told my mother she was trying to achieve. “We call America the melting pot because”—her face was flushed bright pink—“well, because,
‘It’s a small world after all.’”
She never sang the words, just spoke them, her head nodding in rhythm. “It
’s a small world after all?
” She looked at Mrs. Poole, who stubbed out her Salem and stood, hands pressed on either side of her head.

“Well, we will just have to finish this over our refreshments because we have
got
to keep going. Now, Sally Jean, you just
after all
yourself back to your chair if you please.” Mrs. Poole flipped her hand like she might be shooing a dog while Sally Jean sank back into the big padded wing chair.

Mrs. Poole’s husband, Bo, stared out at us from his portrait above the mantel, his dark beady eyes moving to wherever you stood in the room. “He died of consumption,” I once heard my mother say, and my father laughed until he got red in the face.

“He did!” she insisted. “Anybody will tell you.”

“I don’t doubt that at all,” he said. “I believe he died of consumption.” He paused while she relaxed and then started up again. “I know lots of men who were with him while he was consuming. He consumed a lot. He consumed so much that his nickname was Hooch.”