Quiet-Crazy (15 page)

Lemon cheese. That means Mama has been in the kitchen about all afternoon, making me a lemon cheese cake. The only time she makes lemon cheese cake is on my birthday because she knows I love it so. My throat started swelling tight like rubber bands when I first saw Daddy, but now the rubber bands are so tight, it's hard to talk. But after swallowing a few times, I can say a little something.

“Hey, Mama,” I say, glad she has her arms all busy with mixing and stirring and her eyes upon the frosting. That way I don't have to decide whether to go and hug her or not. She doesn't hardly look up, anyway, just keeps on smearing the frosting around on the cake, that and pushing back her hair
out of her face, until finally she says, “Good to see you, Sarah Elizabeth.”

I feel bad that Elizabeth isn't doing too well. Angela is acting about like always, quiet and shy and saying nothing to show how she is feeling about being home and about seeing her mama and daddy after almost two months away. But maybe Elizabeth isn't talking because she just plain out doesn't know how she is feeling, or what she's supposed to say, nor how to say it. She's confused and glad to be home and missing Nathan and worried about how she's going to act all at the same time, and when you're feeling so many different ways at once, you can't say any of them.

“The cake smells good, Mama,” I say, and go on to my room. Even my room looks like a strange land to me, a land where I've never been before and don't want to go to ever again. Daddy had put the Snow White mum with the red flecks on it in a mason jar, and it just screams out its loveliness. I pick it up and press my whole face into it, letting its sweet perfume fill me up. Mama laughs when he puts flowers in a mason jar, saying there's fifty vases around the house for putting flowers in, but I think the mason jar is just right, 'cause it doesn't take a thing away from the flower. It's so simple, and plain and unadorned, you see, that you don't look at the container, you look at what's in it. That's how Elizabeth is, simple and plain and unadorned, and oh, but what she needs awfully is something pretty to fill her up so
that you see what's in her and not her container. And there's no use trying to fill up Elizabeth with Angela, because you can't see Angela. Elizabeth has to be filled up with Elizabeth. And wouldn't it be nice if whatever Elizabeth turns out to be, wouldn't it be nice if that something could be pretty. Pretty as Daddy's Snow White flowers. Pretty as the late afternoon sun rays streaming in across my bed and lighting up one little slice of the bedspread, its patchwork designs glowing in the spotlight of the sun.

The first thing I was planning to do when I got home was go and sit down at the piano and play Elvis songs and hymns in rock 'n' roll style for about an hour, so Mama could see how much I had changed. That way I wouldn't have to go explaining. But seeing Daddy's flower of loveliness and Mama's lemon cheese cake she's spent so much time working on, that wouldn't be very nice. And it isn't like I am trying to be sweet Angela. Not that kind of nice. It's just that playing Elvis songs so suddenly might shock Mama to pieces, and that wouldn't be filling up my container in a pretty way. I decide I'll have to ease into playing Elvis songs.

So, I go back into the kitchen and I say, “Can I help you, Mama?” And that isn't Angela niceness either, that's just plain anyone niceness. The reason I'm having to ask about everything I do—if it's Angela or if it's Elizabeth—is because that's what Dr. Adams said to do. That way, he said, I could start finding out what's the real and true Elizabeth and
what's just acting like Angela. And this weekend, he said, would be a supreme test. Well, it's a supreme test all right. Especially when Mama says, “It's been two weeks since we heard from you, Elizabeth.”

At first I don't say anything. She hasn't asked me a question has she? She just made a comment. But then when she says, “Why, Sarah Elizabeth, couldn't you have written? You knew, didn't you, that we'd be worried about you, wondering what was going on down there?”

Wasn't it just you, Mama, worrying? You worrying about what they might find out? I, Elizabeth, could've said that, couldn't I? But that would've been too mean. So here is my first question to answer in the way a polite Elizabeth would answer and not a spiteful Elizabeth; but at the same time I don't want to answer it like a sweet Angela. First off, Angela would have written, probably nearly every day, just so Mama wouldn't be worried. But since it was Elizabeth down there the past two weeks and not Angela, why didn't Elizabeth write?

“I really don't know, Mama,” I say, swiping at the frosting that has spilled down on the rim of the cake plate. “Maybe because I knew and you and Daddy knew I'd be coming home before long. Maybe that's why.”

“Well, that didn't keep us from worrying. And your Daddy, poor man, going to the mailbox every day, coming back, saying, ‘No letter today.'”

“Well, I was real busy, Mama, you know they keep you busy all the time down there.”

“Busy?” she says. “What in the world do crazy folks have to do all day?”

First, I have to press in on my stomach real hard, to keep the Angela from spewing forth. Then I have to get up enough nerve to act Elizabeth. For once, I am terribly glad that Dr. Adams drilled me on the fact I'm not crazy.

“I am not
crazy, Mama,” I finally say, “and I do believe it's about time you're seeing that. Just because I don't happen to think like you do anymore, that doesn't mean I'm crazy.” Now, Elizabeth is opening up real good, so I just let her go. “You've got to see, Mama, that everybody in this world, in this family even, don't necessarily think like you do about everything. And I know it's easier to just say somebody's crazy than to try to see that they have a right to think different than you do. That's real easy, ain't it, just say ‘they're crazy' and be done with it. Keeps you from having to think about whether what you believe is right or not. As for me, Mama, I haven't met one crazy person on that floor I'm on. I've met some people who are confused about who they are and what life's all about and what they're supposed to be doing, and I've met some people who are awfully mixed up about exactly what is true and what is phony in this world, and if you want to call that crazy, well, then, Mama, I guess, they're crazy. But I don't call them crazy. I call them honest
because they don't know what everything is all about and they're honest enough to admit it.”

Mama finishes smearing the creamy white frosting around on the cake, then pours the tangy lemon cheese on the top, whirling it around, that and saying nothing. When she finishes, she swipes her hands across her apron, picks the cake up and hands it to me.

“Welcome home, Elizabeth,” she says. “I hope you enjoy it.” And the way she says it, I wish she'd never made the cake. She says it like, “Here I've spent all this time making your favorite cake and you come in and talk this way to me.” That's how she says it. But then I have to remember that what she says and what I am hearing aren't one and the same.

What would Angela have done about now? Angela would have run to her room and gotten all mad and thrown herself on the bed and probably cried her eyes out. But Elizabeth would say, “Thank you, Mama. It was very nice of you to make the cake. I'm sure I'll enjoy it.” So that's what I say. And it feels so very delicious sounding like Elizabeth, I am overcome with joy. Dr. Adams practiced with me for several days the kind of things Mama might say and how I might react to them, just like I was an actress or something, and I see I was learning to be the real me and not pretend anymore, nor be nobody's actress.

Turn this way, a little bit, hon. Now, look up real sweet. That's right. Snap. Now, put your arms around your daddy,
now, yeah, like that. Snap. And put your hand on your hip, see like this? Snap.

I stand frozen just staring at the cake. Mama's pretty cold, too. “Just to think you missed Caldwell's funeral,” she says, like she doesn't know how to act to the real Elizabeth. Poor Mama. She's having to act, too, or rather having to learn how to act. I want so to reach over and put my arms around her, to hold on to her for dear life. But I just can't bring myself to it.

Instead I just say, “I felt so bad, Mama, I did, when I got your letter, and you must know I wanted to be here. I hope they had a nice service for him. If anyone ever deserved it, he did.”

“They buried him in his overalls, what about that,” Mama says, rather indignant. (That's one of the new words I learned at Nathan—“indignant.” If I remember, it means she was a bit miffed at something she thought was not right or fair, something like that. Anyway, in the library at Nathan, where I stay what spare time I have, I'm learning lots of stuff, and it makes me want to go on learning forever, more and more, whatever there is to learn about people and how they behave and different kinds of religion and how society is formed and about different people around the world and different ways of doing, what makes people act the way they do. I want to know it all.)

“But what was wrong with his overalls, Mama? I mean, were they dirty, or something?” Dr. Adams says some of my comments are “slightly tinged with sarcasm, but just enough to put an interesting twist on them” that's what he says. But sarcasm? Does Elizabeth want to be sarcastic? Not really, nor fully, but sometimes maybe just a touch. And, you know, that may not win me any friends, nor influence people, but I gotta be how I gotta be, and I'm sure not going to go around looking to win any popularity contests anymore. Not even for Mama. Anyway, isn't Mama how she's gotta be? She certainly hasn't held anything back anytime that I can remember. And all the other people—Preacher Edwards and Mrs. Akley sure didn't hold back either; and Hemp, he's what he is, and Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnstone. Good or bad, most people that I can see now, are what they are, no apologies made.

So, I ask Mama again, “What's so wrong about being buried in overalls? That's what Caldwell always wore. He wouldn't look right in a suit and tie.”

“Nobody buries anybody in overalls, that's what's wrong,” she says. “It was a disgrace, a pure and simple disgrace. But everything else was nice, just like normal, the flowers and all, lots of flowers.”

“Did you carry some, Mama?”

“The Ox-eye daisies out on the roadbank were blooming,
so I made a spray of them and I got some of the baby ferns growing out by the garage, and I put a yellow ribbon on it. It looked a sight, it did.”

“I bet it did,” I say. “Ox-eye daisies probably looked just right with overalls.”

Mama just rolls her eyes at me, before she goes on. “And your daddy, he fixed up ajar of chrysanthemums, all colors, yellow and white and red and orange. A mason jar, mind you. It hacked me nearly to death myself, him carrying that mason jar into the funeral home.”

“I bet Caldwell would have loved it,” I say. “Who was the preacher, I mean, besides Preacher Edwards?”

Mama gets out the cornmeal to make some cornbread sticks for eating with the greens she has on the stove. “Ah, it was that old Doc Manley, you know the one who don't know how nor when to stop hollering once he gets started. They ought nobody never to ask him to do another funeral, he just gets worse and worse, talking about the flames of hell coming up to devour those of us living if we don't get right with God.”

“Well, that's what Preacher Edwards says all the time.”

“On Sundays, yeah, but at a funeral? That's not the time to be talking about such.”

Something about that sets Elizabeth in rocking motion, and so she starts. “If the fiery flames of hell is worth talking about on Sundays, why is it not worth talking about at funerals?
Seems like they're one and the same to me, and what's true at one should be true at the other. But no, on Sundays people just love hearing about eternal hell and damnation, then when it comes to dying, they want something sweet and nice to think about.”

Mama walls her eyes at me quick as a flash. “What they doing to you down there?” she says. “You ain't never talked that way to your mother before. Poison your mind, that's what they're doing. Well, you can just stay here, Elizabeth, and don't you make no plans about going back to Nathan, you hear?”

I can't believe Mama is talking that way. Not after all I've learned about me and her. But, wait. Mama isn't learning all of that, so why should she be acting any different? Like Dr. Adams said, don't expect any miracles. But what will happen to Mama and me, now that I am growing into a separate person, into Elizabeth, leaving Angela way behind, and here Mama is still the same old Mama, prim and old-fogey as ever. And sad. Mama is truly sad. And so I, Elizabeth, have to remember that, and not be too tinged with sarcasm, else I won't have something pretty for Elizabeth to put into her container.

In the library at Nathan, there is a book explaining how the months of the year got their names, and the one I'm thinking about now is January, which comes from Janus, the Roman god who had two heads, one looking one way and
one the other, and that to me seems to about sum up Mama and me. We are of the same mold, yet she is going in one direction and me in the other, even though we are still stuck together.

All I have to do is get myself unstuck, so I can go on off into the new years ahead and let Mama keep on looking back in the past if that's what she wants to do. But I will go back to Nathan for sure, no matter what Mama says. Maybe Nathan is like the knife that will slice us in two and separate us for good. At least I have to keep on believing that, or else I never will get a firm hold on Elizabeth. Just like that song about once you really deep down in your heart decide to follow Jesus, there's no turning back. Well, I've made my choice to follow Elizabeth. No turning back.