Mississippi Sissy (25 page)

I got out a piece of notebook paper and started writing my grandfather a note. “Dear Pop,” I wrote. “I cannot believe you would stoop so low as to steal my letters. These are my most personal property. You want me to say it, I'll say it: They are love letters. I will not confront you about this. I don't want Mom to have to get upset. She's never been herself after her stroke and she cries too much already. Our fighting makes her cry even more. I hate you for stealing these letters, but I love you because you're my grandfather. I forgive you.” I put the note in a envelope and addressed it TO: POP FROM: ARLENE then crossed out ARLENE and wrote KEVIN then crossed out KEVIN and wrote ARLENE once more. I put it under the blankets where he had hidden the letters. I walked back into my room and retrieved the stash and walked out to the backyard where the old oil drum was, in which we burned pine straw and garbage and in which my father had so long ago burned the little dress my mother had convinced my grandmother to make for me. Pop looked up from his tomato vines
and watched what I was doing. I unwrapped the rubber band from around the wad of correspondence. I put a match to one letter, then another, then another, dropping them all, one by one, into the drum where the flames grew and they turned to ash. I strode back into the house. I clawed around inside my own closet and found
Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
I needed a little Miranda. I needed a lot of my mama. I was determined not to cry. I concentrated on Katherine Anne Porter's syntax, her heightened common sense, the music to be found in those letters of a different sort, aligned along Porter's oft-read pages, letters that did not have to be stolen, that did not have to be burned. I am certain my grandfather that same day found the note I had left him under his blankets, but neither of us ever spoke of it. Not even all those years later, when I returned home from New York for an early springtime visit after my grandmother had died and we sat saying nothing as we took turns petting Jingles.

“Want to drive out to the cemetery?” I finally asked him, the question that could fill so many conversations around that old house when there was nothing left to say. Even Jingles seemed to have figured out the meaning of such words, jumping down from Pop's lap and heading toward the backdoor for a trip out to Harperville. We all climbed into my grandfather's old Plymouth and silently headed toward my parents' graves, toward Mom's now. The cemetery was across the way from Harperville's Methodist church. A dirt drive circled through it and my parents' grave site abutted it. We parked and got out of the car. “Jingles, don't,” Pop said as the Chihuahua headed straight for my parents' double-sided gravestone and cocked his leg to relieve himself upon it. Pop took out an already soiled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the dog's urine from the gravestone's granite, then folded it and walked to the double-sided gravestone next to my parents', which now contained Mom's name and dates of birth and death. He wiped dried bits of bird shit off of it and stood back to stare at his name already carved on the other side awaiting the date
of his death. The plastic poinsettias he'd placed at both graves at Christmas were still there, their color not as sturdy as their petals, the months of sun fading their red dye to a color now closer to pink. I looked around the cemetery and recalled the many weekend afternoons Kim and Karole and I had frolicked through the place playing tag and reading all the names and long-ago dates of births and deaths, many as far back as the early 1800s. I turned back to my parents' gravestone and, after I ritualistically did the math in my head, subtracting their dates of birth from the dates of their deaths, once again felt the familiar shock at how young they were when they died. “These poinsettias are lookin' mighty poor,” said Pop as he bent down to wipe them with his handkerchief. We watched Jingles running about the many neighboring graves. “That little thang almost likes it as much out here as you young'uns did when you'd whoop and holler and play when Mom and me'd make ya'll come with us to tend to your mama and daddy.”

“Are Matty May and June still alive?” I asked, surprising us both with the question.

“I ain't heard tell of ‘em dyin',” Pop said. “Far as I know they're still around. Why you askin'?”

“I was just thinking about Matty on the flight down and wondered if we might swing by and see her,” I said. “It's been a long time.”

“Lord, I don't even know if they still live out yonder past Benny's old farm. But we could, yeah, swing by and see. Ain't got nothin' else to do,” Pop said. He cranked up his Plymouth and we headed out that way. Sure enough, when we drove up to their old shanty June was sitting out on the porch. Two mangy feist dogs ran up barking at the car as we came to a stop and I thought of Matty's long-ago admonition about the devil being just such an animal with a taste for me, my bones, my very body. June was sitting in a rocker but the only movement from him were his eyes taking us in as we got out of the car. Pop
held Jingles who shook and barked back at the dogs that circled around us.

“Mr. Lyle, that you?” June, still not moving, called out over all the barking. “Is my eyes deceivin' me? Mr. Lyle? Lawd, you dogs hush. That ain't no squirrel Mr. Lyle be holdin'. Sorry ‘bout this. They actin' like they treein' a squirrel. Them's good squirrel dogs but they anxious critters. Ifen they didn't put such good eatin' on the table I'd haul off and shoot ‘em, sho'nuff. Hush!”

Pop chuckled at all the canine fuss going on. “Yep, June. It's me, Lyle Britt,” he said.

June finally moved: He reached down and took off one of his shoes and threw it at the dogs. They yelped and ran under the shanty's front porch. “That'll keep ‘em for a spell. Onliest thang that'll hush ‘em up sometime,” he said and hobbled down the steps to greet us.

Pop chuckled some more. He handed June his shoe. The old men hugged each other and Jingles licked June on his gray whiskered face. “This thang ain't never hunted no squirrels,” June said, allowing the licking to continue. “Onliest thang this thang ever sniffed for was somethin' to eat outta yo' pocket, I bet that's so, ain't it, Mr. Lyle?”

“You right about that,” Pop said as June began to look me up and down. “You recognize this boy?” Pop asked him.

“Can't rightly say I do,” said June.

“This here is Kevin. You remember Nan and Howard's oldest, don't you? He's a Yankee now. Hightailed it to New York City a few years ago. He wanted to come by and give a hello to you and Matty. She around?”

June rubbed his hands together and stared down at the ground. He slipped his foot back inside his laceless shoe. “Yassir. Her body be around, but she don't. She don't know she's in this world, Mr. Lyle. She ain't been in her right mind for a while now. Been some kinda burden but I guess d'Lawd know what he doin'. I heard tell up at Paul Chambers ‘bout Miz Jake takin' ill with d'cancer and takin' her leave.
Cancer got a end to it. But this business with Matty don't look like it got one. I just hope I don't take my leave before she do.”

“Sounds like hardenin' of the arteries,” said Pop. “Is that what it is?”

“That's what some say. Good a name as any, I guess,” said June. “Some days she's sharp as a tack, Mr. Lyle. Other days she ain't. This is one of her tackless days, this'un. Sometimes I think she's just a'playin' with me. Matty could always pout. ‘Bout trip on her bottom lip, she could pout so much. Sometimes when I'm sittin' up there figurin' on it, I figure this is just some serious poutin' on her part. Lord knows, us colored folks got reason enough to pout, that's fo'sho.”

“Is she inside?” I asked.

“She be where she always be, sitting in there at the kitchen table. Onliest place that don't seem to upset her. For a while there she'd only sit in front of the TV set and ifen I went to touch it she'd have a hissy. Matty always loved her TV shows. She even got to saying there for a while that that's where she come from—outta d'TV—instead of out there around Ringold where she was bornt. Can you ‘magine that? Thinkin' a soul was bornt in the TV? But now she just sit there in d'kitchen all day. When d'TV broke last year d'rest of her spirit broke right along with it. Didn't have ‘nuff money t'fix it. Sho' not have ‘nuff money to fix her. So she just sit in d'kitchen till I spoon some Campbell's in her and tuck her in. Sometimes she'll take to the Jell-O, but mostly it's just d'Campbell's,” he said, still eyeing me. “So you growd right up, boy. Matty used to talk ‘bout you all d'time. She'd come home and tell me all kinda stories ‘bout you and what a mess you was. You took up a might big place in her heart. She always say you'd turn into a Yankee someday.”

“Would it be okay if I went in to say hello?” I asked him.

June considered the request. “Don't see why not. Sho'nuff. Go on ahead inside. But don't go ‘spectin' her to know who you is. She don't even know who she is no mo'. Mr. Lyle, you want to go in with him?”

“No. That's okay. Me and Jingles'll stay out and visit with you a spell, June.”

The two old men began to reminisce. Pop put his Jingles-free hand down into the waistband of his slacks and leaned up against the Plymouth. June pulled out a pocketknife to clean his fingernails. I climbed the steps and walked into the darkened hallway that led back to the kitchen where Matty sat with her back to the door. She hummed a tune I did not recognize. The plaited hair on her head was now completely white and had thinned out to such an extent that it appeared to be one of those bolls I could not free entirely of its cotton, no matter how hard I tried, all those years before. The whole house smelled as if a fire must have been extinguished recently, the aroma pungent, smoky. The kitchen had not been cleaned in a while. Dishes were stacked in the sink. Boxes of Jell-O, all cherry flavored, lined one of the shelves of the doorless cabinets. A sack of sugar sat opened on another shelf next to several cans of Campbell's tomato and chicken noodle and cream of mushoom soup. Ants marched across the counter. On the window sill a dusty unopened bottle of Old Spice with a tattered bow still wrapped around it was propped up against a dirty pane of glass. “Matty M-may,” I softly said, my stutter surfacing at such moments when my childhood intruded on my life. She did not respond. Her hum continued. I walked around the table and stood in front of her. “Matty, it's m-me—Kevin.” She stared at me. She stopped her humming. “It's Kevin,” I said. Her tongue—this much remained true to who she was—still seemed to be trying to free itself inside her mouth. I watched it poking at the inside of her cheeks, then run itself along her gums.

“Ch
iiii
ld!” she suddenly blurted, startling me with the strangely familiar outburst, not her voice but another's, the rather drawn-out Swahili-tinged lilt filling the room. I should have expected the sound of such a voice after June's remarks about her belief in her television
heritage, but it shocked me nonetheless, shocked me to my very core. “Ch
iiii
ld!” she blurted again, slinging the word right at me. Such dialectal expertise—an old woman's taunt, but a taunt nonetheless—hit me in my sternum. I took a step back. This is what had happened to Matty. This is what had happened to Epiphany. This is what had happened to me. None of us said anything for the next few moments until a look of satisfaction—so like Epiphany's when she got the better of me—settled across Matty May's face. Again, she began to hum. I didn't know what else to do, so I turned and washed June's dirty dishes in the sink until I also started to hum my own tune, “Alice Blue Gown.” Matty, who must have at some point heard Mom's rendition of the song, amended her own tune and followed, haltingly, along with me, our memories disjointed but undying. Our humming, for a few notes somewhere there in the middle, approximated a rough-hewn harmony until Matty May's silence imposed itself once more. I again followed her lead. I watched the ants nudge a few crumbs across the countertop, and then, as she so often did to me when I was a sad little boy, I kissed her on the top of her head.

I made my way back outside and Pop and I said our good-byes to June. “Did she know who you was?” he asked.

“She did, June,” I told him. “Yes. She did. For a moment there, I think she really did.”

“Well, I'll be,” he said. “Don't that beat all. She ain't knowd nobody in a long time. She still don't know who she be, I bet. That's what the sad story is. Sometimes she thinks she's somebody else when she thinkin' a'tall. Say she know Tarzan. Ain't that tacky? A colored woman sayin' she know Tarzan like she ain't nothin' but a savage. Say she know somebody named Alice and Trixie, too. That's got me stumped. We oncet had a preacher whose wife went by the name'a Alice but I ain't never met me no colored woman called Trixie. That's not no colored woman's name. White folks can get away with callin' they womens something like Trixie. But not us coloreds.
We'd near ‘bout call some sorta pet that maybe we let come in d'house. Maybe we would—
here, Trixie!
Naw. That don't sit right in d'mouth either. But she knowd you, huh? Guess that part of her heart is still a'workin'. Did y'get a ‘ah-woe!' out of her?” I shook my head. “That's what I been waitin' fer for all this time. I sho' would like to hear my Matty say ‘ah-woe!' just one mo' time befo' I die. That be right pleasant to my old ears. Hear my Matty be Matty just one mo' time.”

The feist dogs emerged from under the porch. They did not bark but bared their teeth at me. Jingles whimpered. Pop cranked the Plymouth. I buckled myself into the passenger side of the car. I looked back over my shoulder as Pop and I pulled away. I saw June climbing back onto the porch. He folded up his pocketknife. He shook his head at all our plights.

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