Georgia Bottoms (13 page)

Georgia was always scanning
Cosmopolitan
for 99 ways to be more attractive and 40 ways to satisfy your man. For a while she took to jogging around the track at the high school, ten circuits every morning, until it got so boring she had to quit. No denying that certain areas were beginning to jiggle.

Thank God the men in her life were aging even faster. She
looked better than all of them put together. As long as she maintained that gap, all would be well.

As the year rolled toward September, Georgia thought hard about canceling the luncheon. Who would miss it? she thought. After last year’s disaster it might just be best to let it go.

But then—wouldn’t that be letting the terrorists win?

Damn right. She couldn’t do that. Perhaps her congealed salads did not matter much in the grand scheme of world events, but the least she could do was throw a luncheon to help raise morale in the homeland.

In the weeks immediately after the attacks, that was all anybody could talk about. By the time of the first anniversary, it was considered bad taste to bring it up.

Besides: the luncheon was the high point of the Six Points social calendar. It wasn’t even summer yet when people began asking Georgia for the date, saying how much they were looking forward to it.

The television in September was full of solemn memorials. Nobody at the luncheon even mentioned it. Krystal re-created the foresty tabletop scenes no one had gotten to see. Everyone said the food and decorations were better than ever.

Everything was quiet on the Roy Moore front until the
Montgomery Advertiser
reported a rumor that Moore was planning to run for governor of Alabama. Brother’s obsession bobbed back to the surface. He painted a sign that said “Ask Me about the 11th Commandment” and got Sims Bailey to drive him up to Montgomery. He showed up on the Channel 12 news that night, standing on the steps of the supreme court with his sign. The red-haired girl reporter said she’d asked him about the eleventh commandment but his answer was “meandering.”

Sims Bailey called Georgia shortly after the broadcast to report that he was driving back to Six Points alone. “You know your brother as well as I do,” he said. “He wouldn’t get back in the car. I begged him, I swear to God, Miss Georgia, I did. There was all these reporters there. He told ’em he was going on a hunger strike.”

“You have got to be kidding,” said Georgia.

“No ma’am,” said Sims.

“He won’t last ten minutes!”

“I thought so too. I hung around a couple hours, but he won’t budge. Said he’s gonna set right there until they take them commandments out of that place. You know he feels real strong about that.”

When Georgia reported this news, Little Mama said, “Oh honey, go up there and get him. He’s lost his mind.”

“It’s always my job, isn’t it,” Georgia said.

“Who else do you suggest?”

“How about that no-count girlfriend of his?”

“I wouldn’t trust her to find Montgomery in the broad daylight,” Mama said. “Much less at night.”

Georgia got in the car and drove straight up there. She arrived at the supreme court building a little after nine p.m. to find Brother at the top of a wide flight of marble steps, resting his face against his “11th Commandment” placard. A lone Alabama state trooper sat watching him from a car at the curb.

Georgia had stopped at the Krystal drive-thru on the Southern Bypass to buy a sack of the square steamed burgers she knew would put an end to Brother’s hunger strike. He dove into the sack. “Did you get me a shake?”

“We can stop on the way out of town,” she said. “Come on, Brother, get in the car.”

“No way,” he said around a mouthful of burger. “I ain’t breaking no law sitting here.”

“That’s not the point. Mama sent me up here to bring you home.”

“Whoopee for Mama. I am finally doing something for the good of the universe, and she’s not gonna stop me.” He wasn’t drunk, not even drinking. Just sitting there, crazy as a moth attacking a lightbulb.

Georgia said, “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

“We gotta get rid of these commandments, Georgie. For the sake of all of us. It’s imperative. Don’t you understand?”

“I really don’t. Why don’t you come get in the car and explain it to me.”

“Tonight I started the process of getting the message out through the media,” said Brother. “That’s the key to starting a movement, working through the mass media.”

“I did see you on Channel 12,” said Georgia. “Did anybody come out to support you?”

He shrugged. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“Come on, Brother. Look at that poor state trooper. I bet he has to sit in his car as long as you’re here. He’s been there all day, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Be a sport, Brother. Let him go home to his wife and his supper. Let him go sit in his recliner, and pet his little dog.”

Brother stared at her for a long minute. “Nobody’s stopping him,” he said. “I’m on a mission from God.”

“Yeah, you were on a hunger strike too.” She rattled the bag of Krystal boxes. “Don’t make me waste a whole trip up here.”

“That’s your call.” Brother blew out a sigh. “I promise I’ll
respect you, whatever you decide. I wish you would stay and support me in this thing.”

“Oh for God’s sake! Don’t you know how busy I am? Now get in that car and let’s go!”

She took that sharp tone with him—Mama’s tone—to get him up on his feet and moving. She was astounded when it actually worked: meekly he followed her down the steps. She sweet-talked him the rest of the way to the car. “I want to hear all about this movement of yours.” She got him in the car, got behind the wheel, and started driving. She did not slow down until the bypass, where she stopped to get him a milk shake.

“What the hell is the eleventh commandment, anyway?” she said.

“Be sweet,” he said.

“You’re kidding,” she said. “That’s it?”

“Harder to do than it sounds,” he said.

By the time they reached Six Points and turned onto Magnolia Street, she had him laughing about the whole thing. “His damn
recliner,
” Brother said. “That was the thing that got me, when you started talking about his recliner, and his little dog.”

“I had to get you in the car somehow, didn’t I?”

This episode seemed to get the Ten Commandments out of his system. Things evened out. Brother slowed up on the drinking, even convinced AA to let him come back to meetings. The parole officer said he seemed a little more serious this time. Georgia tried to be optimistic.

L
ittle Mama’s mind was slipping so gradually you could almost talk yourself out of noticing. The first luncheon after the disaster, she was well enough to participate. The next year she stayed up in her room.

Georgia got better at ignoring birthdays… thirty-five, thirty-six… but then suddenly it was 2005 and that big round number was barreling down the road toward her. Don’t say the number don’t say it
don’t!

It didn’t really bother her, really. She chose not to think about it. If you have spent thirty-eight years toiling on the anthill, you earn the right not to think about anything you want. Once you get over your youthful self and stop all that blue-sky dreaming, you are freer to settle down and enjoy life. Stop striving so damn hard. You have time, a few dollars in your purse. You don’t have to eat hamburger unless that’s what you want.

Personally, Georgia preferred a rib eye and champagne. Tonight she would be having a ham sandwich and the last piece of chess pie. It was Friday night, Bill Allred’s night, but he had canceled because of sheriff business. Georgia was feeling generous and moved him to Saturday, just this once.

She liked to look after Bill’s sweet tooth so she drove out to Hull’s for the ingredients to make his favorite Lemon Freeze.

Pulling back into the driveway she saw Hazel Vickrey’s mail truck approaching. She parked and walked to the mailbox, said hey to Hazel, handed her the stack of bills she was mailing, and took from her one piece of mail.

A small white envelope.

The mail truck puttered away.

Georgia did not recognize the shaky hand that had written her name, “Miss Ga. Bottoms,” and her address, “15 Magnolia St., Six Points, Ala.” No return address. The stamp was crooked. Someone at the post office had written the zip code in blue ink.

For some reason the envelope filled Georgia with dread. A handwritten letter from a stranger. Was that ever good news?

At any rate she did not want to open it with Mrs. Pinson watching from amidst her petunias.

She waved hi and carried the envelope up the steps, inside. She slit the envelope with her thumbnail.

By the time she finished reading, Georgia’s hands were shaking. Her arrangement with Ree called for one-way communication only. That’s what she paid for, month after month, all these years—to be left out of it. The fourth Saturday of every month, she went to Western Union and wired as much as she could afford. In return, no contact. That was the deal.

This letter came from a new direction. To Georgia, it felt like a threat.

The boy could not come to Six Points. His daddy was in prison, now his great-aunt Ree too. This would be the boy’s great-grandmother, Eugenia, who must be at least eighty by now—bless her heart having to handle a big hungry boy…

But the “boy” was almost twenty, wasn’t he? Plenty old enough to help bring some “$” into the house. If not, why not? If he’d been in Georgia’s house, she’d have him out looking for a job in five minutes. But he wasn’t coming here. He was going to stay right where he belonged, with Eugenia Jordan in New Orleans.

Nathan.

She didn’t let his name enter her mind very often.

She wanted only to send money and forget it. She’d been thinking now that he was growing up, he should be able to take care of himself and she could ease up on the amount—of course she would send birthdays, and Christmas, but there comes a time when everyone has to pull his own weight… then this letter.

There are some debts you never finish paying.

Georgia read the letter three times. Gradually it came to seem less a threat than a plea. She copied Eugenia’s phone number, tucked it in her pocket, and carried the letter up to her room.

From the back of her bra drawer, she brought out the green felted box.

Her high-school diary was the usual brown square thing with a loop of leather and a tiny brass lock, long since sprung. Tucked in front was a letter she wrote to herself at eighteen—wrote it on separate notepaper because it was too dangerous to commit to the diary. A trace of Giorgio perfume still rose from the pages, all these years later.

She always signed her entries that way—“G.”—trying so hard to be cool. Like addressing the diary as “Dairy,” an eighteen-year-old’s idea of hilarious.

She hadn’t been able to bring herself to state in writing the nature of the BIG PROBLEM: Skiff was black.

Now she tucked that letter with Eugenia’s letter into the front of the diary. She flipped through the pages, breathing in the shallow girl she used to be. She thought there might have been other coded entries about Skiff, but she couldn’t find even one hint that he existed. She had set down in detail every party, every gossipy phone call, 4-H club meeting, and book report. Not a word about Skiff. Except in that secret letter to herself the day they met, Georgia hid what was happening, even from herself.

She remembered how horny they got for each other—meeting under the bleachers at dusk to play with their kitten (“Rags”) and make out. Not just kissing—some pretty heavy petting, her hand rubbing on him although she had not opened his pants yet, his hand rubbing hard against her underwear, making her
feel sexy and overheated. But if he tried to touch her nipple, or tugged at the edge of her underwear, she batted him away. That’s exactly how much virginity she had left.