Georgia Bottoms (11 page)

“That’s not why I’m here.” Georgia set down the ice chest. “I’ve got my car stuffed full of food for the luncheon. If you can get somebody to help me unload it, we can feed all your people a really nice lunch.”

“Oh. Oh… oh my goodness, Georgia, that is
so sweet
of you. Really. So thoughtful.” Sharon looked embarrassed. “And I would love to take you up on it, but… actually we’re not allowed to serve food that hasn’t been inspected—well, you know, we have all this legal red tape.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Georgia. “The food is perfectly fine. I made it myself.”

“Oh I’m sure it’s absolutely wonderful, it always is,” Sharon said. “I’ve been looking forward to it so, so much.”

So much you didn’t bother to RSVP?
Georgia shook it off. “Can’t you just bend the rules for today? I mean, if ever there was a day to bend the rules.”

“Oh, Georgia, I can’t believe you are so kind as to think of our residents at a time like this. But we have state regulations, the county health department’s breathing down my neck… I’m not allowed to serve food unless we prepare it ourselves. We could lose our operating license.”

“You wouldn’t be serving it,” Georgia said. “I can go up and down the halls and give it away. Like a gift. People bring gifts of food out here all the time, don’t they? Would that be okay?”

Sharon beamed, exactly as if she were about to say yes, and said, “No, I’m sorry.”

Georgia knew full well that Sharon ran the place, she could break any rule she chose. So much for trying to do a good deed. Georgia said, “You think somebody would tell on you? Is that it?”

“You’d be surprised. A resident says something to a family member, next thing you know I’ve been reported to the state. It has happened before.”

“I just thought, it being a national emergency and all,” Georgia said.

Sharon assumed an odd, goofy smile, the kind of smile you put on for a baby to make it grin. She made a move to lift one end of the ice chest. “Let me help you carry this back to your car.”

“No—
no,
” Georgia said, pulling the chest away by its handle to deny her any share of it. “I’ve got it! You’re busy. You’ve got a million things to do. Don’t think about it another minute.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Sharon said. “I wish I could accept. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

Georgia smiled and said, “Absolutely!” and got out the door fast. She was irked by the Sharon Overbys, mindless rule followers of the world. She felt silly for trying to give her food away. She let herself stew in that feeling all the way to the courthouse.

This time, before lugging that heavy ice chest up three flights of stairs, she went up to the jail desk to ask. The deputy said no ma’am, Sheriff Allred is out on patrol, no ma’am we can’t accept food for the prisoners, blah blah blah state regulations.

Georgia didn’t argue. She thanked him and went back to her car.

Nobody wanted her charity. She was driving around with five hundred dollars’ worth of food getting ready to spoil in her car. And no one would even let her give it away.

She switched on the radio, hoping for music to soothe her. In came the urgent voices of newscasters, panicky eyewitnesses, sirens whooping, unconfirmed reports, this just in! She lunged to turn it off. She couldn’t bear the flood of anxiety pouring out of the speakers.

Georgia didn’t know any poor people, but she knew Six Points had its share. Mostly they were black and lived across the bridge in East Over. She tried to think where they might congregate. They didn’t have a community center or anything. That was part of why Krystal was fighting to annex them.

When Georgia pictured herself driving into that run-down neighborhood, she pictured a gang of large black youths approaching her car in a threatening manner. There might be a scuffle or stampede when they realized the white lady was giving away free lobster and other fancy food.

Anyway, wouldn’t it be a little condescending to drive into somebody’s neighborhood and start handing out canapés, like some honky-woman Santa Claus? Sharon Overby had made Georgia feel like an idiot. She had no desire to feel that way again.

She drove three times around the square trying to decide. Finally it occurred to her that poor people have to eat just like everyone else. In Six Points there was only one place to buy groceries: Hull’s Market. The logical place to find whoever might be hungry.

It felt so essential, so urgent to give this food to somebody. Maybe it was the idea of being so scared of burning that you
would rather jump to your death from high in the air. On a day when that is happening, Georgia thought, I have this irrational need to be kind to somebody I don’t know. To help somebody.

She parked in front of the ice machine at Hull’s Market. Yesterday’s
Light-Pilot
showed on the newspaper rack:

HAWKS DEFEAT ELBA, 27–3

Everything’s changed. Krystal said it. Seeing that innocent headline from yesterday, when the biggest news in town was the Six Points High football score—Georgia felt a pang of longing. That world was gone, vanished. Maybe forever. It hadn’t seemed all that sweet and innocent a place until the devil stuck out his tongue and laughed at us.

Georgia got out of her car. How incredibly blue the sky was today, one of those unearthly Polaroid blues you get on the clearest autumn days. A beautiful day for a terrible thing. This would spoil all beautiful days for a while: guilt by association. Georgia wondered if the people who flew the planes into the buildings were thinking about that, if the glorious weather made their victory even sweeter as they smashed themselves to smithereens.

Here came Madeline Roudy, pediatrician at the free county clinic, the most pleasant-faced of women, even today. In her crisp white blouse and tennis skirt, she had the unstudied glamour of a young Diahann Carroll or Leslie Uggams. Beautiful brown skin with a touch of cream.

Georgia brightened. “Oh, Madeline,” she said, “just the person I’m looking for.”

“Hello,” Madeline said.

For a moment Georgia thought Madeline didn’t recognize her.
Technically that was impossible; everybody in Six Points knew Georgia. “It’s Georgia,” she said, to be sure. “Georgia Bottoms?”

“Oh yes, Georgia, of course, forgive me,” said Madeline Roudy. “I’m kind of distracted today.”

There was no particular reason Madeline should recognize Georgia, though they had gone to high school together and had been friendly ever since, hadn’t they? Maybe the friendliness was only in Georgia’s head. She forged on.

“Anyway, Madeline—nobody showed at my party, I’ve got all this food in my car and I wish you would take some of it. I can’t seem to give it away.” She made a comical face, an
I Love Lucy
bewilderment face to show what a ridiculous dilemma she had landed in, and to enlist Madeline’s help.

Tugging down her oversized Jackie O sunglasses, Madeline stared at Georgia as if she was a crazy lady with too many cats. “I’m sorry?” she said in a voice so loud it actually rang the wire of the grocery buggies.

“Imagine if you gave a luncheon and nobody came,” Georgia said. “I’ve got all this really nice food in my car, lobster, fancy salads and finger sandwiches, ready to go. If you wouldn’t mind taking some of it home. It would make me feel good, just to know it’s not all going to waste.”

“Just keep it, and eat it yourself,” said Madeline Roudy.

“Lord, I could never eat that much food in a year,” Georgia said.

Dr. Roudy gave an impatient sigh. “Thank you, I can buy my own food,” she said. Her eyes flicked ahead to the door as if she was eager to go through it.

Suddenly Georgia understood where she had gone wrong. “Oh Madeline, I get it. Of course I should have invited you to
the luncheon, and I would have, too, but you don’t know my mother, the way she is about… politics.” Georgia was determined to straighten this out. She had always liked Madeline Roudy. She had always thought of Madeline as a friend, at least a possible friend.

Madeline drew her body up in a straight line. “You think I wanted to come to your white-lady luncheon? Is that what you think?”

“Oh my goodness. No! Madeline, you’re reading it all wrong, that’s not what I meant.” Good God, was she really that touchy? Georgia couldn’t offer a simple gift of food without her reading something racial into it? No wonder some people just give up trying to deal with these people—look where it gets you!

“So I’m not good enough to be invited to your party,” Dr. Roudy was saying, “but you want to give me the food out the trunk of your car because nobody showed up? How pathetic do you think I am? God.”

Georgia said, “Now wait a minute, you don’t have to get all huffy. The food is good, I made it myself. If you don’t want it, you could just say so.”

“It’s a hell of a day for you to sit out here playing the great lady,” said Madeline Roudy. “Why don’t you take your damn lobster and go home?”

Georgia was not used to being attacked in broad daylight. She groped for a proper response. “It’s a free country,” she said at last. “I don’t need your advice.”

“And I sure as hell don’t need your
lobster,
” said Roudy in that bullhorn voice.

“Okay, then, tell the whole world about it, then,” Georgia said, haughty as a fourth grader.

Roudy put up her nose and marched on. The electric eye swept the door open. A gust of cool air flowed out as she went in.

Georgia’s face stung as if she’d been slapped.

Here came two more colored people the other way—two more
black
people, she corrected herself, two more
African-American persons
who might be poor or might just be wearing slovenly clothes because it’s their style, God forbid I should try to do something neighborly for anyone!

Something charitable!

Georgia let these black people walk right by her and her car full of wonderful food. There was enough to feed them and all their friends for a week. She let them walk on by.

She climbed back in her car, cranked the A/C to MAX, and drove away from Hull’s Market.

What she needed was a friend. What she needed right now, more than anything, was the comforting voice of a friend who would tell her she was right, or at least not that wrong.

She drove once around the square. Krystal’s parking space at city hall was empty. Georgia parked and went in anyway.

The radio hummed with news. Rhonda barely glanced up from the phone, “mm-hmm, mm-hmm,” making notes on a legal pad. At last she hung up. “Can I help you?”

“Where’s Krystal?”

“She was trying to call you before, but your mother said you’d gone off somewhere.”

The whole world has turned against me, Georgia thought. Without Krystal in the room, Rhonda didn’t even bother to conceal her hostility.

Georgia tried a smile. “She said y’all might need help answering the phone. Here I am. Just put me to work.”

“I didn’t want your help, it was her,” Rhonda said. “She’s over at the water tower now, standing guard.”

“Standing guard?”

“The sheriff and his men are up at the dam. They didn’t have anybody to guard the water tower. So Krystal took a gun and went over there.”

“Krystal has a gun?”

Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Georgia, we’re really busy today.”

Georgia stiffened. “Sorry to bother you. I’ll find her.”

She marched out vowing to tell Krystal how Rhonda acted when she wasn’t around. Georgia had protected Rhonda long enough. One word from her and Krystal would fire her in an instant.

God what a day! That sky so blue it made your eyes hurt!

Rhonda was all emotional because of the news. She was taking it out on Georgia. Maybe it was a little extreme to think of getting her fired for acting snippy.

Georgia just needed to talk to Krystal.

The interior of her Civic was filled with the delicious humidity rising up from the food hampers. When she thought of the hours of chopping, mincing, and stirring, it made her want to weep. She put the car in gear, drove past the Kwik-M Mart, up Forrest Street to the little city park on the hill.

Krystal’s forest-green Subaru wagon sat at the curb, sporting a faded Gore/Lieberman sticker and her GRRL MYR vanity plate.

The slam of Georgia’s car door seemed loud enough to carry all the way to Montgomery. It was so quiet even the birds seemed to be waiting for someone to speak.

Georgia set off silently walking up the grassy slope, then realized
that might not be the best idea, with Krystal armed and dangerous at the top.

“Hey Krystal!” she cried. “It’s me, don’t shoot, I’m coming up there!” She whooped and hollered, raising such a racket that Krystal finally yelled at her to keep it down.

Bathed in perspiration, snagging her panty hose on a blackberry bush, Georgia thrashed through the last stretch of steep woods. She popped through a wall of bushes to find Krystal in a webbed lawn chair, one foot propped against a concrete culvert at the foremost leg of the great silver water tower. She had come wearing one of her woolen mayoral suits, a maroon number that must have been unbearable in the heat. She’d hung the jacket on the stub of a pine branch and was airing out the sweat circles on her blouse. In the crook of her arm she cradled a double-barreled shotgun that looked taller than she was. “Damn, George, you trying to wake up all the babies from their naps?”

“I didn’t want you to shoot me,” said Georgia. “I didn’t even know you could shoot a gun.”

“I can if I have to,” said Krystal. “You didn’t bring a chair with you? Where you gonna sit?”

“Nobody told me to bring any chair.” The word “Rhonda” was right there on Georgia’s tongue. It was hard not to say it.

“Well I ain’t giving you my chair.”

“I’ll stand,” Georgia said. “How long you planning to stay up here?”

As long as necessary, Krystal said. Until Sheriff Allred sent somebody to relieve her. The portable radio at her feet emitted a low mutter of news, accompanied by the squawk of a police-band walkie-talkie.

Georgia said, “Are you hungry at all?”

“Only starving,” Krystal said. “I didn’t even get a cup of coffee this morning… it happened so fast. And then it just kept on happening.”