Flavors (15 page)

“We'll miss Doodle-Bug,” Maveen sighed. “He's the fourth to die in a car wreck, ain't he?”

I nodded. “Uncle Bill and his wife Lillian – that was a real shock. Still miss them after all these years.”

Nellie Jane rolled her eyes and declared, “Well, I won't ever accept that it's a Melton curse, the car wrecks. More likely just bad driving.”

“We don't have to accept it either way. Some things just happen,” I said. “Let's lighten up, girls. Life's hard enough as it is without making it worse with such notions.”

So Maveen signed up for night school that very next semester. Her enthusiasm stirred up Nellie Jane's interest in some of the English coursebooks and the two of them would share and collaborate on Maveen's theme papers. Nellie Jane found that she had a natural grasp of literature and English. Unlike me, she was pretty good with numbers, too.

Next semester, Nellie Jane began night classes, too. Both she and Maveen finished high school with flying colors. And much pride. Needless to say, the three of us had many more interesting topics to explore afterward.

Yet, the essence of
us
remained unchanged.

History and blood and unconditional love forever link and identify us.

After that, time, life and experience seasoned and mellowed us into an even better
us.

The Melton family tree and its branches now sport teachers, pastors, doctors, dentists, medical professionals, musicians,
artists and authors. Other respectful professions knit these together in an impressive collage of honor and dignity.

More and more, I learned to appreciate Grandma Melton's strengths and stoicism as I later faced my own battles in this arena called life. I learned that – considering her near pauper existence, temperament, cultural and educational limitations – Grandma actually did quite well.

In the late sixties, Grandma's chest-fluttering was diagnosed as heart failure. Medication kept her going, even six months beyond Grandpa's sudden demise. When her “honey” passed, Grandma was never the same, and I realized anew the intimacy of their union. The love there, punctuated through the years by soft-spoken “honeys” and “darlins,” and the impeccable respect that through the poverty and bedlam, at times, had seamlessly glued it all together.

Now, her loss was almost unbearable. No amount of coaxing drew her out of her grief. When Daddy pleaded with her to please not torture herself, she looked at him sadly, heart in eyes and murmured, “I can't help it, Joe.”

Maveen insisted upon moving my invalid Grandma into Maveen's comfortable home, prepared with her very own private suite and cable television, and took care of her mother-in-law, loving and nurturing her in her last days. Grandma, in turn, unleashed her love upon Maveen. The peace was complete. It was totally beautiful.

In the months following my home-going that year, I found myself looking back on who I was before that transforming summer. It was difficult because so much that happened that season flavored my world differently from anything I'd ever tasted or whiffed.

But the lemony flavor came back to me, as fresh and tangy as ever and I could still remember that girl, the one who could not bear anyone being sad. So she often took upon her small
shoulders the responsibility of keeping family and friends happy. Her friends were – well, heck,
everybody.

I knew this girl intimately because she lived inside me, weaving dreams and quickening the me who believed with all my heart in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. In childhood, we sang the same melody and finished each other's sentences and thoughts.

Our sighs, induced by a kind word, rode out in unison.

The lemony-vanilla contentment of those years remains, even now, indelible.

Mmm. I can still smell the vanilla fragrance of Alma Rock's kitchen when she made vanilla custard pie every Wednesday. Alma, Maveen's mama, was my neighbor. And friend. And at that time in my life, she became more than a friend.

Maveen, now happily living in her own mill-village house with Gene, across the river bridge from us, didn't mind sharing her mama with me. Recuperated from her summer ailments, Alma seemed stronger than ever. Two adolescent sons still resided with her, and I knew she didn't have much money for groceries since her husband was the only working member of her household. They were still paying hospital bills and times were tough.

Mama admiringly said that Alma was one of those rare creatures who could take a dollar and stretch it to kingdom come and back. She even foraged ingredients to make a dessert for each day of the week. Sometimes it was a simple rice pudding. Sometimes shortbread.

“C'mon in, Sadie. Pull up a chair and I'll get your custard pie,” she'd say as she swung wide her front door in greeting.

Despite the fact that Mama and Daddy had hired another live-in housekeeper/cook, Alma's house became my refuge while they worked the mill's second shift. Millie, our new babysitter was nice and we got along fine, but she wasn't Alma. Alma
filled some emotional vacuum inside me, and right then, that's what I needed.

Daddy's vigilance of his offspring lightened up that year. I think Mama played a part in opening him up to the changes in me, the needs. Everything about him softened. He loved me as intensely and was still protective. Only difference was that now he seemed to venture into my world, discerning my need to move about and have different experiences and influences in my life.

Somehow, he sensed that Alma filled a critical void at just that time.

I grew to anticipate Wednesdays at Alma's house because I knew I'd get a dish of vanilla custard pie. Most of the time, I would go back for seconds.

My thirteenth birthday came and went with a big birthday cake and presents from Mama, Daddy, Maveen and Alma. One Wednesday, I rushed to Alma's house and – anticipation palpable – plopped down at her kitchen table.

But this time, something was different. Off-kilter.

Today, Alma's mind seemed somewhere else entirely. The pie sat in its niche on the counter, but she didn't smile and dish up my dessert as usual. Rather, she went about her chores in a studied way that told me she wasn't going to share with me this time.

After a while, she said absently, “You'd better go on home now, honey. I'm not really feeling well.”

It was so alien, being downright dismissed by Alma, that I shuffled my bare feet and awkwardly hovered in the kitchen doorway like a puppy waiting for a scrap of food. She put her broom away and went silently to her room and shut the door softly behind her.

I went home, dragging my proverbial tail behind me.

A huge lump swelled in my throat and I knew in that moment that I had somehow abused her generosity. After the summer at the farm, I'd been forced to reevaluate many things about myself.

I faced another epiphany.

Truth was, at times I was self-serving. I'd taken Alma's generosity for granted, demanding second helpings when she had three lumbering, hollow-legged males to fill up. Because of medical bills, her lifestyle had plummeted that summer. And wearing adolescent “what-about-me?” blinders, I'd overshot my demands. I cringed now at my expectations of Alma. She loved me, true, but she was poor, with a family to feed, something I had not considered when asking for seconds on the pie.

It grieved me that I had, with a child's simple trust, taken her for granted. I had made her sad.

That epiphany birthed another change in my direction. I didn't know it then, but trust – as I knew it – began to reshape. Integrity took root. The girl inside me, the innocent, impetuous one – still whispered each Wednesday, “Ask Alma for some vanilla custard pie.” But the wiser me said, “No.” I never did again.

Since I'd learned the much-needed lesson, Alma resumed each Wednesday, placing before me a heaping portion of custard pie. Years later, when I asked her about that day, she said, “It had nothing to do with you, Sadie. Something else was goin' on with me. You know, I'd give you the last scrap of food I had.”

But I knew even if Alma's behavior that day had not, indeed, been about me, my reaction and perception served to bring about a self-revelation that would forever alter the course of my life.

In the teen years, that inner-gal annoyed me with her incessant groping for acceptance and recognition. She
humiliated me, dadjimmit.
I struggled to hide and camouflage her presence.
Consistency paid off. In later years, she gradually merged with my perception of
me,
only occasionally popping up like a grotesque Betty Boop with smeared makeup. My horrified reaction drove her back time and time again.

Today, she is almost nonexistent. Strangely, that doesn't please me like I thought it would. In fact – get this – I find myself missing her. Yeah. Especially her spontaneity. Hey, all this melancholy junk spawned by aging gets too, too heavy.

And her ability to see past others' flaws and just – love ‘em, y'know? Oh, and I miss her childlike abandonment to joy.

I wonder – would she come back? At least when I need her?

In recent days, I've beckoned more and more. Talking and reminiscing. Stuff like that. Because I know that like me, she's a sentimental soul. I know that, even though I put her down so brutally in younger days, she won't turn me away.

More than anything, you see, she loves to make people happy.

Yeah. There were times the aforementioned goulash gave me angst. But it was that helplessness seasoning that hoisted me to another level of awareness. I grew to be mindful that asking too many questions made me a pest and being told to “shut up” was the pits. I learned if I couldn't change things, to ride it out, to cope gracefully. So I curtailed my yakking just to be yakking. That was a big hurdle.

Today, I look back on those marvelous strawberry years, with their sweet-tartness, through a double-sided drama mask, seeing them as wonderfully funny one moment and unbearably tragic the next. Thank God, the boot-camp emotions shifted and changed by the moment.

Thank God, it wasn't forever.

Only puberty could shoot me to Mt. Olympian-ecstasy, thrash me to mortified hash, thrill me to goose-bump pleasure and then plunge me into abject misery, in five minutes flat.
Only adolescence could make me into what I am today. It gave me lifelong friends. It gave me confidence and identity. It gave me role models. It gave me buoyancy.

It gave me….

Me
.

If you enjoyed
Flavors
, you can experience more of Emily Sue Harvey's rare storytelling in:

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

 

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Copyright © 2011 by Emily Sue Harvey

 

 

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