Sullivans Island-Lowcountry 1 (52 page)

In five minutes he would be at the back door, next heard lectur-

ing my father on what was a man worth who couldn’t fix a

sink? My father’s voice would bounce all over the house, calling

Uncle Louis a big old know-it-all smart-ass. Fifteen minutes

later all the insults would be forgotten and they’d be drinking a

beer together on the front porch, laughing and cutting up the

fool.

Once our washing machine went crazy from being over-

loaded and danced across the kitchen floor. Daddy had to call

Uncle Louis to help him move it back into place. Uncle Louis

and Daddy laughed like crazy over that. In fact, it was Uncle

Louis who actually did most of the building on the new bath-

room for Livvie. If you needed supervision you called Daddy. If

you needed something fixed or built, you called Uncle Louis.

Maggie, Timmy and I were washing supper dishes with

Livvie when Uncle Louis showed up at the back door. Momma

was sitting at the table sighing. He informed my mother that he

was going to remodel the second and third floors of our house

to rent the rooms since she was too lazy to get off her fat behind

and go to work. Momma’s face turned beet red.

“The house has no mortgage,” he was saying, whatever that

was,“so whatever you earn from rent can cover the cost of feed-

ing your children and the maintenance on the house.”

He would begin by building two bedrooms and one small

bathroom on the back of our house. The boys would sleep in

one and Maggie and I in the other. The twins would sleep in

Sophie and Tipa’s old room and Momma could stay where she

was. He had talked to Marvin Struthers, he said, and Marvin

had agreed to change the zoning for our house to allow four

power meters, so our tenants would pay their own electric bills.

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

Momma would have to calculate the cost of water into their

rent, he said.

“I can’t think about this,” Momma finally said.“I’m going to

put my
fat behind
in the bed. I need to rest.”

Uncle Louis blew out a sigh, exasperated.

“I can help you,”Timmy said.

“Good, son, I’ll need your help.”

“Sure! We can all help!” Maggie said.

“I ain’t washing no more clothes and cleaning no more

bathrooms! That’s that!” Livvie said.“Probably gone lose my job

anyhow, ain’t that right, Mr. Louis?”

That horrible possibility hung in the air for a moment, scar-

ing the breath out of me.

“You don’t have to, Livvie. Don’t worry about it,” I said

quickly,“I’ll do that.”

Uncle Louis looked at us and said, “I don’t know how my

sister gave birth to all of y’all. She’s so lucky and she doesn’t even

know it, ’eah?” He came across the room and put his hand on my

shoulder. “Susan, you ain’t gone be washing no laundry for

nobody but your own family. You need to study. And Maggie?

Don’t worry about helping me with the building. It’s man work.

You just help your momma and sister take care of the little ones

with Livvie. And Livvie, don’t you worry. I’m paying your salary

for now, ’eah? This family needs you now worse than ever!”

Saturday brought the sounds of hammers and power saws as

Uncle Louis had arrived to put our butts back into gear. I

climbed up to the cupola to observe. Five men, all friends of my

father’s from his construction business, showed up from nowhere

to help. Uncle Louis shook their hands and slapped their backs

as each one arrived. Mr. Struthers arrived with his toolbox.The

hammering got so loud it made me want to scream. Then two

black men rolled up in a broken-down pickup truck and the

group became quiet.

“Did y’all know Hank?” I heard my Uncle Louis calling to

them.

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

355

“Sure did. He tried to help our children with getting a new

school! Miss Harriet told me what y’all was up to. Figured iffin

he could build for us, we could build for him.”

Oh, shit, I thought, here it comes. The papers were full of

race trouble and the Island men weren’t too keen on working

alongside colored men.

“All right,” Uncle Louis said,“thank you. Come join us. I’m

Louis.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Louis, call me Sam.This is my friend Albert.”

They all shook hands.The other men all shook their hands

and I almost fell out of my perch. They might be rioting in

Alabama, but on Sullivan’s Island, things were okay. And I

guessed my daddy had something to do with that.

Maggie found an after-school job on King Street in

Charleston, Henry had a paper route and, by that afternoon,

Timmy had blisters from the hammer. I resigned myself to run-

ning the family baby-sitting service, first for my baby sisters and

then for other families on the Island. In one week, Uncle Louis

and the men had framed the addition to our house.
Hammer!

Hammer! Hammer!
The next thing you knew, it had a roof that

matched the rest of the house.
Hammer! Hammer! Hammer!
The

wiring went in and the walls were closed.

By the nineteenth of December, the Island Gamble had

grown another appendage. She was looking downright mytho-

logical, like one of those eastern religion figures with all the

arms. The two new bedrooms were far from finished, and they

sure weren’t decorated, but they were good enough to sleep in,

according to Uncle Louis. And the bathroom? Well, the plumb-

ing worked, but it wasn’t exactly the bridal suite at the Waldorf

Astoria, whatever the hell that was except a place we were

always invited to move to when we complained.

Livvie’s cousin Harriet had been there all day Sunday with

her, moving us from our old rooms upstairs to the new addition on

the back of our house.They moved up and down the steps, heads

wrapped in kerchiefs, carrying on laughing like we weren’t even

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

there. But that’s how Livvie always was when Harriet was there.

It was a good thing that somebody thought this move to

the hinterlands of our house was funny. As far as I was con-

cerned, it was a one-way, third-class trip to Siberia.There went

my privacy and solitude. Maggie wasn’t any happier about it

than I was, but it would’ve been useless to complain. We

would’ve looked bad, spoiled and self-centered.We would have

had to endure an endless harangue on how it was worse in

India, where children lived in the streets. But Maggie and I

knew that somehow this new living space was different from

our pipe dream to become roommates in college.This was like

being cell mates. Change the diapers. Warm the bottles. Rock

the babies. Gimme a break. I felt like a pack mule whose bur-

den would never end. Just fourteen years old, with only a mar-

ginally celebrated birthday anyway, and who cared about me?

Happiness? It was a dream from the movies. We had rooms to

rent and we had to get them ready.

Aunt Carol and Uncle Louis came by that afternoon with a

truckload of old furniture, old bed frames, chests of drawers, end

tables and chairs.Their castoffs would furnish the rooms upstairs.

Maggie and I were to repaint them.We got busy spreading news-

paper on the floor of the boys’ room, which—and this goes to

show you that it’s a man’s world—was the largest.We chose a bed

to paint that almost matched another chest and end table. Uncle

Louis was down on one knee and, with a Spackle knife, he

opened the cans of white paint for us, carefully laying their lids on

the paper.

“Okay, now, y’all girls be careful,” he said. “This is primer.

Goes on first, nice and thin. When it dries, and I mean really

dries, then you can put on the enamel. If it gets on the floor,

wash it up right away with this stuff. Don’t eat it, throw it or get

it in your eyes. ’Eah me?”

“Yes, sir,” I said and saluted him. He looked just like Sergeant

Bilko from
The Phil Silvers Show
.“He thinks we’re total morons,”

I whispered to Maggie when he left the room.

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

357

“Shhh! Just get busy. He’s got a lot on his mind.”

“Right.” I picked up a paintbrush, dipped it in the can of

primer and wiped it across the top of the table.“Where’s Momma?

Think she’s still pissed off at Uncle Louis?”

“I don’t know.Who cares?”

“Well, if my brother barged into my house and started ham-

mering,” I said, “even if it was a good idea, I’d kick his ass to

Kalamazoo!”

“Yeah, big talk, gutter-mouth. Uncle Louis is right! She

doesn’t know how to
do
anything. At least I’m learning how to

do
something
.”

“That’s true. But she could be helping us, you know.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Hey! Who brought you home last night? I saw you get out

of a car up the street.”

“Swear to God not to tell?” Maggie’s eyes got all gooey.

“I swear on the cross! On the wounds of Christ! On the

tears of the Mother Virgin! On the—”

“All right! Enough!” Maggie said. She lowered her voice

until I could hardly hear her.“Lucius. Lucius Pettigrew brought

me home.”

“Holy shit! Have you been, you know, going out with him?”

Lucius Pettigrew was the most gorgeous man in the sopho-

more class at Bishop England. Even I knew who he was. All the

girls called him Luscious Lucius. He was from an old blue-blood

family and had a reputation as a big-time make-out artist.

“Sort of. I mean, he has a car and picks me up from work.

The most we’ve done is stop at the Piggy Park for a barbecue

sandwich on the way home.”

“What are you telling me,
the most we’ve done?
Are you hid-

ing something?”

“Susan! Good grief! What do you think? That I sit around the

corner and make out with him or something?” She was smiling

from ear to ear and not the least bit embarrassed or ashamed. Mrs.

Simpson had successfully spread her lewd influence like a virus.

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Or maybe it was in the genes, although the only slut in our fam-

ily married in.

“Yeah, do you?” I was curious. Not interested for myself,

you understand, just curious.

“Yeah, well, sometimes we
do
. So how do you like that?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“What’s it like?” I asked.“Does he try to make you do it?”

“Susan! Where do you get these gross ideas? No! I mean,

God, Susan, he tells me things and sometimes we just kiss or

hug.
Do
it? You’re cracked in the head, you know that?”

“Do you French-kiss?”

“Well, maybe. God, Susan, why are you asking me all these

questions? It’s pretty private, you know.”

“Well, if I were you and I had a guy who looked like him,

I’d at least want to see what it looks like.”

“See what
what
looks like?”

“You know, his
you know
. . . I mean, his is probably gonna

look as good as one could—”

“You are a total disgusting pig! That’s about the last thing I

want to see! Good God!”

“Sure. I’d say the same thing if I were you. Ha!”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about seeing one. You look

like such a slob, you’ll never even get a date!”

“Well, you’re so damn skinny, nothing but a bag of bones, I

can’t believe he wants to kiss you! And wait till his family finds

out! They’ll have a fit!”

“Shut up, Susan. Just shut up.”

I shut up. We painted in silence. Ever since Maggie went to

work in the city, things between us had started to change. She wore

makeup all the time now and tweezed her eyebrows. She washed

her hair every single morning. She even brushed her teeth about a

thousand times a day.

Uncle Louis posted a sign for the rented rooms at the end

of our driveway on the same day he stapled Christmas lights

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

359

around our back door. I don’t know what we did before staple

guns. In our house they held up shades, lights, wires, you name it.

Don’t forget black electric tape! Whatever you couldn’t staple,

you could tape. But when Uncle Louis hammered that sign into

the ground, I got a funny feeling. Maybe something exciting

would happen. rooms to rent! day, week, or month! inquire

within! call 744-0812.

Maybe a movie star or somebody famous would take a

room to rent in our house and discover us. Who knew? I was

standing there with Maggie, looking at it, reading it over and

over.

“I hope Lucius doesn’t see it,” Maggie said.

“Why?”

“Because then he’ll feel sorry for us and think we’re poor.”

“We
are
poor.”

“No, we’re not.We have enough and I have a job.”

“Right.”You have a job and live in dreamland, I thought. I

have four children, a chain around my neck and I’m hoping

movie stars are moving in.“Well,” I said,“things could be worse.”

Saturday, the twentieth of December, brought a knock at the

back door.We were at the supper table, everybody except Mag-