Her Own Place (10 page)

The day Taylor came home from the war, Mae Lee and Ellabelle waited at the tiny Greyhound bus depot in town for almost an hour in advance of the scheduled arrival time. Mae Lee had worried that the bus might come in early, or that Ella-belle would have a flat tire on her car on the way in. It was a fair day with a cloudless sky, yet she also worried that it might rain and the small wooden bridge they had to cross would be flooded over. She'd gotten out of bed in the wee morning hours and started cooking, so they could get an early start.

Although the women well knew the direction the bus would come from, as they stood waiting they constantly turned their heads, like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. When the bus finally arrived and braked to a swooshing stop, Mae Lee and Ellabelle stood on tiptoes to try and catch sight of Taylor. At first it looked like he wasn't on the bus. But when Taylor finally came down the step, all dressed in uniform, he looked so much like his daddy, Mae Lee couldn't believe it wasn't Jeff come back to life.

It seemed Mae Lee had waited forever for her son to come back. To have him home for such a short time! Before she had time to listen to all his war experiences, her only son was married, then off to college, and then teaching school.

When Taylor graduated from college and received his diploma, Mae Lee stood and applauded. He's a fine young man, and he's going to be a good teacher and father, she thought as she settled back into her seat.

In the months and years that followed Annie Ruth's wedding and Taylor's return from the war, Mae Lee all but stopped working in the fields. If she wasn't planning weddings or helping with newborn grandchildren, she was being called upon for some other thing. It seemed that Annie Ruth's marriage opened up the floodgate for weddings. Dallace was the next. Her wedding set the stage for Nellie Grace. As soon as she got back to New York from attending Dallace's wedding, Nell called home. “I'm in love, Mama, and I want to get married. Please say it's all right,” she said. Mae Lee gave her permission and she was married the next day. It all reminded Mae Lee of the time she'd asked her mama's permission to get married. Nellie Grace was a computer specialist, and off on her own, yet she'd asked, though what she might have done if Mae Lee had objected was another matter. In a way, it was all kind of nice for Mae Lee. She enjoyed the fuss her new sons-in-law made over her.

Finally there came a year when Mae Lee and Ellabelle had nothing to make plans and get ready for. And though they openly expressed their relief, inwardly they felt a little deprived. And then, as always, there was the bitter surfacing along with the sweet. The happiness over one event was dampened by the sadness of another. Mae Lee hadn't been spared. After a very short marriage, Nellie Grace was getting a divorce.

Lost in thought, Mae Lee leaned back in her rocking chair. Ellabelle sat quietly nearby; her grown children had always lived away from Rising Ridge. The two widows had come a long way. Both lives had often been a long hard row to hoe. Mae Lee's children were all grown and away. Dallace and Nellie Grace were still in New York, Amberlee just across some river in New Jersey. Mae Lee didn't think she'd have to worry about a wedding for Amberlee anytime soon. They all had good jobs, Mae Lee thought, and for the time being, two of them had good husbands. Annie Ruth, bless her heart, quit her job to stay home with her children. Taylor had decided to accept a teaching job in his wife's hometown, Overrun, just outside Concord, North Carolina, a little more than an hour away. With Annie Ruth in Greensboro, North Carolina, at least she had two children reasonably close by.

The women were quiet for a long time. Finally, Ellabelle spoke. “For right now my children are all doing well, really well. I think we should be very content and happy, but I'm not. Wonder why?”

Mae Lee swallowed hard. “Maybe, because like me, you're
lonely.” Mae Lee quickly brightened, though. “I won't be lonely long,” she said. “My little grandson Tread is coming this summer.” Her thoughts shifted to the farming season just ahead, and she asked her friend if she'd be available to carry her a few places to take care of some business the first of the week.

On Monday morning, Mae Lee woke early and called Ella-belle on the telephone. “You didn't forget me, did you? I know it's early but you know how long it takes to get waited on down at the Farmers Center this time of year.”

“I'm still in my bed, but I guess I'll be there by the time you're ready,” Ellabelle said.

Later that morning she stopped Hooker Jones from his plowing to tell him that the fertilizer and soybeans were ready for him to pick up from the Farmers Service Center. “It's all paid for,” she said.

Mae Lee's days were filled with happiness during the summer her grandson spent with her.

“I want to be a doctor, grandmama, a medical doctor,” he announced one day, clear out of the blue. She was getting ready to shell peas and he was playing in the sand.

It had pleased her, so she put off her peas, summoned Ella-belle, and they drove into town in search of a toy medical bag. As they drove along in the late afternoon, the outline of the sun's rays streamed down through the clouds, fanning out like an oversized pleated lampshade. “The sun's rays are drawing up water from the earth, collecting moisture,” Mae Lee
pointed out to her grandson. “It's going to rain in a few days.”

The little boy let go of her hand and gazed out the window at the sun. The clouds that had seemingly anchored around the edges of the sun had slowly worked loose and were drifting away.

“Don't look too long at the sun, Tread. Not even when it's cloudy. It'll cause you to go blind.” She told him the things her mama had told her.

Her grandson reached for her hand again.

“Ouch,” she screamed out in mock pain. “That finger is going to need a Band-Aid, doctor.”

He loved her world. She loved his.

After they had gone looking in every store on Main Street, they returned empty-handed to the car where Ellabelle was waiting. Mae Lee glanced at her watch. “We've got to hurry and find that bag. The stores will be closed before we know it. That little variety store that opened up across town might have a little doctor's kit, but I don't know if we can make it before they close,” Mae Lee fussed. “With your slow driving, Ellabelle, we walk wherever we go, even when we are riding in your car.”

Ellabelle handed her the car keys. “Why don't you drive, since you think you can wheel it so fast?”

All they were able to find was a little plastic nurse's kit. Mae Lee bought it anyway. She cut a picture of a little boy from a catalog and pasted it over the little girl's face on the kit. If only they had gotten an earlier start that day, they could have driven to North Carolina where they had the big stores and would have found her grandson a male doctor's kit.

In time her little Tread's medical practice went a little too far. One day she found him instructing his playmates to take off their clothes. So she took his nursing kit away.

Mae Lee looked across the fields of smooth ground. During the winter she had worked with Hooker and Warren to clear and burn off the strips of brush and undergrowth that crisscrossed her farmland. Now the seventy-some acres, including the portion leased from Warren, stretched out before her. She inhaled the clean smell of freshly plowed soil and listened to the din of tractors plowing or disk-harrowing throughout the countryside. Warren and Hooker had been right that she should buy a tractor. It could do more work in an hour than a mule could in half a day.

Mae Lee liked the way the land spread out before her. If her cousin Warren ever decided to sell, she sure wanted his land. She thought of asking him about it, then changed her mind. Warren had retired and might want to sell, but she didn't want to put the idea in his head. What money she had hidden away was doubtless enough to cover his asking price.

She turned to look at the land near the house where her children were born, where Hooker and his wife lived now. That was the farmland where the sweet potatoes should be grown for the current farm season. She would be sure to remind Hooker of that—once he had planted the ground crop in the same spot as the year before and all the sweet potatoes developed rotten spots.

Farmers need to stay close to their land, not only because they love it, but because they have to be there. She thought of how she'd almost lost her entire crowder pea crop to worms the summer before. She'd been called to New York to take care of her little sick granddaughter, Sheila, while her daughter Dallace was away for some work conference. Poor old Hooker had been anxious to get ahead with his planting and had planted the crowder peas before June. And unless one uses a powerful amount of pesticide sprays, worms will eat up peas planted so early in the season.

Mae Lee slowly made her way back up to her house. The old dirt road was paved now. There was a stack of letters in her mailbox, one from each of her children. She knew before opening them that they were to remind her about the trip to Greensboro, North Carolina. The letters were brief.

Mother,

If you need anything before Annie Ruth's kid's graduation, let me know. I'll call you on Sunday. Hugs and kisses from Tread and Sheila. See you in North Carolina.

Love, love,
Dallace

Dear Mama,

Can't wait to see you at Travenia's graduation. Don't buy a dress, I am bringing you one. I think it's just right for you. I luv you, Mama.

Nell,
oops . . . Nellie Grace

Dearest Mama,

Great news! There is talk that I just might be named head librarian here! Of course, it's only a small branch, but it's a step in the right direction. I told you that a master's degree in Library Science would pay off.

Love you,
Amberlee

Dear Mama,

Can you believe the great graduation day is almost here? I'll pick you up at nine in the morning on the Monday before, and we'll be off to Greensboro.

Bye Mama,
Your son Taylor

P.S. I may be a little late.

The last envelope was the fancy graduation invitation from Annie Ruth. Inside was a note and two crisp twenty-dollar bills.

In case you have to go to the beauty shop or need a little something. We await your visit.

Your daughter,
Annie Ruth

The day they were to leave for Greensboro, Taylor arrived at his mama's house an hour early. Mae Lee was still in her robe. “I'm hungry, Mama,” he announced.

“I know,” she said. “I fixed your plate and put it in the oven. I thought you said you were going to be late.”

“I was up early so I just left.”

After Taylor finished his breakfast, he pushed his plate back, dropped his head into his folded arms resting on the table, and went to sleep. Mae Lee woke him up when they were ready to leave. “The baby kept us up most of the night,” Taylor explained. “She's teething again. I really hated to leave Bettina with the baby so fretful.”

Mae Lee patted Taylor on the back. “You are a good husband, but you can rest easy with your mother-in-law there. She knows how to care for babies.” Later, having thought more about the baby, Mae Lee told Taylor, “I really feel I should have kept my grandbaby and let Bettina make this trip.”

“Bettina wouldn't have come, Mama. She's a homebody. I have to beg her to visit you, and even then she always finds some excuse, and you know how much she cares for you.” Taylor sounded unhappy.

“Well, if you want to know how I personally feel about this trip, son, I think it's a waste of time. All this fuss over some little old grade school graduation. You'd think the child was graduating from college. It's a waste of money,” she fussed. “And I'm going to tell Annie Ruth so, ‘deed I am.”

Taylor reached to turn his radio down. “I wouldn't say nothing, Mama, you know how Annie Ruth is. She likes to do things in a big way.”

After they arrived at Annie Ruth's house it wasn't so easy for Mae Lee not to say anything. “My son's daughter is the first black child in this town to graduate from Knowlton Hills Academy,” Lottie Pierce, Annie Ruth's mother-in-law, bragged.

“And she just happens to be my daughter's child as well,” Mae Lee added.

Mae Lee watched Lottie Pierce walk away, her arms held straight out from her body like the arms of a homemade corncob doll, stiffly held in place by bulging pillows of fat. She looked down at her own thickened body. “If I weren't constantly cooking for my children's parties, I wouldn't be in this shape,” she complained to Annie Ruth.

She spooned damson plum custard into fancy pastry shells. “Let me tell you something, Annie Ruth, you better gag my mouth when your mama-in-law comes back to pick up the desserts. If she starts up with this debutante talk, and how a real lady never changes to a different perfume from one day to the next—and how she only wears one fragrance, and how she, unlike a lot of ‘us,' saw to it that her other granddaughter wore braces, I am going to have to ask her while she was doing all that, why didn't she have them work on that child's bowlegs when she was a baby? They had braces for them, too. Right off I made sure my Dallace had them for her son Tread so he wouldn't be bowlegged and pigeon-toed.”

After her daughters finished fussing with her hair, Mae Lee looked in the mirror. Much as she hated to have to say it, she could remember only a couple of times when she'd looked so good. From the moment she laid eyes on the dress Nellie Grace bought for her, she'd loved it. That soft mauve had always been a good color for her complexion.

Long before the graduation exercises were under way, Mae Lee's thoughts of the waste of money had vanished into thin air. She was unquestionably the proudest person there. “My granddaughter is the third from the left on the second row,” she pointed out to the woman seated next to her.

Afterward, at the reception, she hurriedly pulled out pictures to show anyone she met.