Good Heavens (4 page)

That parlor was downright posh with couches, chairs, tables, and lamps—even had a baby grand piano in there. The hardwood floors and solid wood paneling made the room look like a picture out of one of them home decorating magazines.

In back of the parlor was a small sitting room with a fireplace dividing the parlor from the dining room. I couldn't get over all that wood in those rooms—the floors and walls with those wide windowsills—you just don't see real wood with its natural grain nowadays. On the far side of the dining room, the front door opened onto the porch, the porch I saw coming down the driveway, and another door on the right led into the kitchen.

Ursula found me and led me through the kitchen back into the little hallway. I spoke to the two cooks, and they
nodded back at me. In the office Ursula proceeded to tell me, “Your room and bath has one door that opens onto the hall and another that opens into the office. We keep the office secured because the medicine cabinet is in here, and the phone. The ladies are only allowed to use the phone on weekends.”

As we entered my quarters, I poked my head in the bathroom and saw it looked okay—lots of cabinet space. It was a corner room with windows on two sides overlooking the backyard. Except for the one box outside the door, the girls had placed my things in neat stacks, leaving me walking space in between. The room was furnished with a bed, lamps, an easy chair, and a television on a table. Living in one room would take some getting used to, but having the run of the whole house would help me make do.

“The ladies have the third floor,” Ursula was saying. “Each room has twin beds, a desk, and a closet. There are a couple of community bathrooms. After dinner you may go up there if you like.”

“When's supper? I'm starved.”

She hesitated, and her glasses slipped down on her nose. With her finger on the bridge, she righted them and spoke in a tight kind of voice. “As soon as it's prepared. You'll want to freshen up, so I'll leave you for now. They'll ring a bell for dinner.”

After I had been to the bathroom, I unpacked a few things and was groping around in the closet for hangers when I heard the bell. I ran a comb through my hair, threw on some face powder, and took a look-see in the mirror. I figured I would pass.

Ursula seated me at a round table with herself and four of the women. After the blessing, everyone filed into the kitchen to be served. I tell you, everybody was morgue quiet. The cooks standing on the other side of the counter before that large pot dished out boiled corn, two roasting ears onto each plate. That was all! No butter, no bread, no tea—nothing! I must have looked shocked, because Ursula explained, “Corn is the only thing we have left in the freezer.”

When we had all received our two ears of corn, we sat down. I introduced myself, but it was like pulling eye teeth to get the women to tell me their names and where they came from. The woman next to me was middle-aged or older and so thin a puff of wind could blow her away. The rings on her fingers were so loose I didn't see how she kept them from falling off. Said her name was Lenora Barrineau. Said she came from Manhattan. That's in New York City. For a woman her age, her graying hair was too long, and it did nothing to help that vacant look in her eyes. The hair dragged her face down, if you know what I mean. Handling the corn with those long, thin fingers and mincing each bite made me guess she had been raised fancy.

Across from me sat a woman wearing an old hunting jacket that seemed to be as much a part of her as her skin. Hers was a face you don't see anywhere but in the backwoods, because it was a face left over from the Great Depression. She could've been forty years old or a hundred—age don't count living a hardscrabble life. She gave her name as Dora something or other, from
Tennessee, and she seemed to be all by herself—apart from the others.

Ursula introduced the other two women, Linda and Portia, who were roommates. She didn't name their hometowns; the way they'd been living they probably didn't have hometowns anymore. They were young—too young to be in a place like this, but I guessed years didn't count when you had got a tattoo like Portia's crawling up your neck telling the world to imagine where you'd been and what you'd been up to. Them two could teach me things I didn't want to know. Linda wore a baseball cap turned backwards on her head, which was something I wouldn't put up with if I was in charge, not at the table. She was stocky, had a gold bead through her nose, and five or six earrings in each ear.

Why everyone was so quiet was hard to understand. I tried to get a conversation going by telling them about my trip up the mountain. When that didn't work, I tried telling the story about Mrs. Purdy's cat being lost for five days—how I finally found Flossie Ann in a dresser drawer. That story usually made people laugh and ask questions, but not this bunch. The small girl—the one with the tattoos—looked like she shivered, and Linda, the girl beside her, said, “Portia hates cats. Don't you, Portia?” She got no answer.

Frankly, I was glad when that meal, if you can call it that, was over. We carried our plates back to the kitchen, and I asked Ursula, “What's the schedule for this evening?”

“This evening? I am multitasking.”

I guess that meant she was busy. “And the women?”

“They can take care of themselves.”

Already they had filed out onto the porch and were lighting up again. I went back to my room to unpack some more. I was beginning to think that things were not as they should be at Priscilla Home.
First thing tomorrow morning
, I told myself,
I'm going into Rockville to see what I can do about this food business
.

After I finished unpacking, I slipped in the kitchen and checked out what foodstuffs they had and made a list of things they needed, which was just about everything.

Early the next morning I was driving into town on the Old Turnpike, which was so foggy I had to run my wipers and creep along. All the way into Rockville I prayed the Lord would show me how he was going to provide for us, because I was sure he was going to do just that. In my wallet I had the money Pastor Osborne had paid me for his first month's rent, so I had that to spend. Before I left Live Oaks I had intended to save every penny he sent me until I had enough to buy him a decent car, but it looked like the Lord had something else in mind, at least for this first month's rent.

I figured the place to begin was a supermarket, and I found one without any trouble. It didn't take long to load two shopping carts full of staples—flour, meal, sugar, cooking oil, rice, grits, oatmeal, coffee, tea, dry milk, dried beans, peanut butter, and some seasonings. I paid for that, stashed it in the car, and went back in the store for some cheese, milk, and eggs. Then I headed for the produce department.

In the back of the store, I found the produce manager ripping green leaves from the outside of cabbages. They do that to make the produce look fresher than it really is when they put it on the counter and sprinkle water on it. Well, I couldn't let the manager get away with that.

You'd think I was the Queen of Sheba the way I talked to that man. “Mister, don't you know you are throwing away the best part of them cabbages? All the vitamins and minerals are in those outer leaves that have soaked up the sun.”

“Hey, if you think so much of those leaves, you can have 'em. Here's a sack; help yourself.”

As fast as he peeled off the leaves I stuffed them in that bag, and before you knew it, I needed more bags. It made the fellow curious that I was taking so much. “You got a big family? Having company?” he asked.

“No,” I told him. “It's for Priscilla Home.”

Right away he lightened up, said he'd heard of that place. “That Old Turnpike is a washboard of a road, ain't it?” he said, and I agreed.

Seeing he had several shelves of vegetables he was going to have to offer at discount, I asked him, “What's the best price you can give me on the whole lot?”

“Hey, I just work here,” he said. “I'll have to ask the boss.” He stopped what he was doing and disappeared behind swinging doors.

In about five minutes he reappeared with the store manager in tow. By then I had made up my mind the limit I would pay.

“She wants a price on all o' this stuff,” the produce man explained.

Both men surveyed the shelves, and then the store manager said, “Lady, if you can use this stuff, you're welcome to it. You'll be doing us a favor to take it off our hands—save us having to rewrap and reprice it.”

He turned to go back through the swinging doors, so I called after him, “How much?” But he was gone.

“There's no charge,” the produce man told me. “Here, I'll help you bag it.”

I can't tell you how happy I was as I left that store. I still had money left and was beginning to feel like that woman in the Bible with the pot of oil that didn't give out.

There was a meat market up a ways from the store, so after I'd stashed the vegetables in the backseat, I drove up there. In the worse way I wanted some red meat for those sad-looking women.

A round-faced man in a white apron and cap was leaning on the meat case and spoke to me as I came in the door. Before I buy, I always check a meat counter to see if it's clean, and his was. There were hams, roasts, steaks, sausages, pork chops, chickens, and hamburger meat all neatly displayed in trays. I decided my best bargain would be the hamburger. It being Monday, I knew the meat he had was probably left over from Saturday, and he'd favor a quick sale of hamburger. So I pointed at the price posted and told him, “I can use all you got of that ground beef if the price is right.”

He rolled open the sliding door of the cabinet, pulled out the pan of hamburger, threw a paper on the scales,
and dumped the meat on. “I'll weigh it,” he said and leaned his head back to read the numbers bobbing on that little glass tube. He was taking so long I figured he was trying to decide on what he would charge me. Finally he announced, “Eight pounds, four ounces.”

“So, what's your best price?” I asked.

He didn't answer; he just asked me if I was going to put it in my freezer.

“No,” I said. “It's for Priscilla Home, and after a meal or two there'll be nothing left.”

“Priscilla Home?” He turned to look at me. “How many wimmin you got up there now?”

“About a dozen, I guess. I just came yesterday.”

“You a patient up there?”

“No, I'm the new housemother.”

He started wrapping the meat. “Hold on,” I said. “You didn't give me the price.”

“Two dollars,” he said, wrapping twine around the package.

“Did I hear you right? Two dollars?”

“That's right.”

“That's giving it away!” I didn't want to take advantage of the man.

He placed the meat on the counter. “I ain't a-losin' a penny, because as my granny used to say, ‘Give and it'll be give back.' She was one good woman, and she'd roll over in her grave if I didn't do what I'm a-doin' for them pore wimmin.”

“Well, since you put it that way, I reckon we don't want your granny rolling over in her grave, now do we?”

As I was rummaging through my bottomless pit for my
wallet, the butcher leaned his arms on the counter and looked out the window. “You know,” he said, “there's somebody you ought to meet. Name's Mary—runs the donut shop.”

I found my wallet and paid him two dollar bills. He rang it up and handed me the meat. “Can you manage it?”

“I got it,” I said, then thanked him and asked if they had a day-old bread store in town.

“Sure have. It's right down this street next to the video store. You can't miss it.”

I was almost out the door when he called after me. “Do you know where the donut shop is?”

Of course, I didn't. I shook my head.

“Well, it's on the other side of Main Street.” He came out from behind the counter to point the way. “Go down here to the foot of the hill and hang a left. There's some roadwork a-goin' on down there—street's been flooded, but you can get around it. You'll go 'bout half a mile and see the post office on the right. Mary's shop is on that side street runs alongside the post office. You can't miss it.”