The Woods at Barlow Bend (5 page)

Chapter 7

September 1934

The Monday after the policemen questioned Daddy, he had gone back to work as he did nearly every day since Momma died. Along with owning a small hotel and café in Grove Hill, Daddy worked as the Raleigh Man for Monroe County. The usual stock of ointments, salves, and kitchen sundries seemed to move in and out of our house as they normally did in February and March, but in April of that year, sales slowed down to a standstill. Boxes bearing the trusted Raleigh name started accumulating first in the pantry, then the parlor, and finally, stacked to the ceiling near the back door. All through April and most of May, Daddy went door-to-door without much luck. Most of the good people of Frisco City tried to conjure up decent excuses for not buying Daddy’s stock, blaming their lack of money or bad timing.

“Oh, bless
your heart, I’m plum full up from my last order,” Mrs. Williams told him one morning as I was leaving for school. Unfortunately for Daddy’s pride, that bellowing voice could be heard two counties over. She might as well have yelled, “Lock your doors! The boogeyman is comin’!” Three months earlier, Daddy couldn’t keep the products in stock. Now, most of his former customers wouldn’t even answer his knock at their doors.

For weeks on end,
Daddy left the house at first light and was gone until late evening as he peddled his wares to nearly every small town in Monroe County. Finally, after several weeks of trying with very few sales to show for his efforts, he decided to get out of the Raleigh Products business.

Daddy blamed the low
sales on the economy, saying, “Nobody has money to spend on this stuff right now,” but I knew the truth: No one wanted to give his or her hard-earned money to a man who may or may not be a murderer. The rumors and speculation spread like wildfire through the county. Most chose to avoid Daddy altogether to appear that they weren’t taking either side. His reputation in Monroe County was damaged beyond repair. Not even the upstanding Andrews name could bump sales.

By June, the overt chatter had evolved to hush
ed tones. The sympathetic sighs and tilted heads had turned into suspicious and curious stares. Daddy stopped attending church on Sunday mornings with us, claiming that he had too much work to do. I knew that was a lie. Daddy just couldn’t take the stares anymore. I, on the other hand, must have had more of Momma’s spitfire running through my veins than I first thought. I gladly met the challenge of walking into the Frisco City First Methodist Church every Sunday morning with my eyes fixed on the pulpit in front of me. I may not have had Momma’s pretty singing voice, but I sang every bit as loudly as she would, louder still if the choir was singing one of her favorite hymns.

At the end of June, Daddy threw in the towel.

“Dinner will be ready just as soon as the grits are done, Daddy,” I told him over my shoulder as I stirred a few potential lumps out of the grits.

Henry and the boys had caught a b
unch of catfish, and after the fish were cleaned, fileted and deboned, I fried the nuggets to a golden brown. Paired with grits, fried catfish was one of Daddy’s favorites.

“Sweetie, I sold the house,” Daddy said as he sat down at the kitchen table.
He speared a big piece of fried catfish with his fork.

“You wha
t?” I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“Frisc
o City just ain’t workin’ anymore,” he said through a mouthful of fish and breading. “I think we need a fresh start.”

“O
kay?” I said and then, “Um, where are we gonna live?”

“I was thinking we go on to Grove Hill.
To the hotel.”

“But this is Momma’s home.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her, leaving the house that seemed to keep her. “I don’t want to go, Daddy. Please.”

The
walls of the little kitchen began to close in on me. All of the sudden, the hot June air, combined with the heat from the stove was too much. I turned from the grits to open the back door, hoping for a breeze to slow the spinning in my head.

“I know, Sweetie, but it’s done and it’s t
he best thing for us,” Daddy said, but his words offered little comfort.

“Maybe you could buy it back
,” I begged. Why would Daddy sell our house without asking me if I wanted to leave?

“N
o. We’re going.” Daddy dismissed my pleas without hesitation.

I stood in the doorway
stunned for a few minutes, and then turned back to the grits. Unfortunately, the lumps had formed despite my early attempts at stirring, and I could feel the bottom of the pot sticking. I turned the flame off, but the damage was done.

“Well, these are ruined!” I snapped and tossed the pot into the sink.

Daddy retrieved the pot, gave them a quick stir, and said. “The grits are fine. Now, go on and get your brothers and sister and let’s eat.”

I did what Daddy told me to do.
As always, Billy and Albert were far too slow coming to the table, but eventually, we gathered around the table for cold fried catfish and lumpy, slightly burnt grits. After washing the dishes, I spent the rest of that evening wiping tears and consoling broken hearts. Frisco City was our home, and none of us was ready to leave.

Soon after Daddy
sold our little house on Bowden Street, we prepared to move to his hotel in Grove Hill, Alabama. Daddy tried to make living on the top floor of a hotel and running a small café on the first floor sound exciting, but my mind painted a more realistic picture. I knew as soon as he told me that he sold the house, my life was about to change again, and probably in ways I would not like. Aunt Matt wouldn’t be in Grove Hill to help me with Albert and Billy, the laundry, or cleaning our new home. The rearing of my two young brothers was now entirely up to me. I feared that my days would be filled with washing linens, dusting windowsills and baseboards, mopping floors, and cleaning up after customers in the café. And we would be miles and miles away from Momma. Without even starting my new life and tedious daily chores, I yearned for one of Momma’s road trips.

I worried about Aunt Matt and Henry.
Wouldn’t they be lonely back in their little two-room shack without the four of us around? I couldn’t stand the thought of spending Saturday mornings without Aunt Matt humming in our kitchen as she fixed biscuits and gravy for us.

On my final
day as her student, I tried to focus on her lesson. “Should I add more lard or is the sausage grease enough?” “How much flour?” “How brown should the roux be?” I hoped that if I asked enough questions, we would stay in that kitchen forever, Aunt Matt and me.

“Baby,
” Aunt Matt said, “them hungry men at that hotel is gonna pay a pretty penny for this gravy. You just teach that cook Aunt Matt’s secrets.” She chuckled with delight as she tasted my first successful batch before we left our home and the kitchen that I loved.

On our last morning in Frisco City,
Meg and I brought fresh flowers to Momma’s grave. We had gone into the woods behind our house, just the two of us, and picked a big bouquet of wildflowers. Momma always told me that wildflowers were the best flowers because no one could tell them where to grow or how to bloom. The wildflowers followed their own plan. We placed the big bouquet on the ground next to the small marker with only an etching of her name. My heart sank knowing that we were leaving Frisco City, leaving her there without a proper stone on her grave that declared how special she was and how desperately we loved her. Aunt Matt promised me that she would tend Momma’s grave and make sure that she placed fresh wildflowers near the marker as long as they bloomed.

As we pulled away from our white house with three bedrooms, a big parlor, an indoor bathroom
, and the little kitchen that I loved, I tried to memorize every detail, from the big oak tree in front, to the painted cedar trunks that Daddy had used as columns on the front porch. Daddy had leaned against those columns when he told me he didn’t hurt Momma. Those columns meant that he loved everyone inside the house.

Those
columns also showed our corner of the world how unique my mother was. Momma said that when Daddy built this house, she made him leave the knots on the trunks rather than smoothing out the odd shapes and bumps so that the whole town would know that inside the house were very special, unique people, free from the boring expectations and limitations of our town.

I stared at our home until we
turned left turn off Bowden Street, onto County Road 38, and our little house disappeared from view. I turned back around in my seat, closed my eyes, and sucked down the cry that was welling up in my throat.

Somewhere
along County Road 38, between Frisco City and Grove Hill, Daddy laid out my new life. He quickly confirmed my fears. He needed and required my full attention in the café, which meant going to school was a thing of my past. I had dreamt of going to teacher’s college, but that dream was quickly replaced with an apron and kitchen utensils. He wanted Meg and the boys to finish grammar school, but I was in the ninth grade. I had all the education Daddy required. Paying customers ranked over a high school diploma.

“Hattie, I don’t need you i
n school. I need you at the res’trint,” Daddy told me in a tone that left no room for compromise or argument. “Now, you’ll help me out in the café, and next year, when Meg’s done with eighth grade, she’ll start work, too, and then the boys when they’re done. That’s just how it’s gonna be.” Meg and my brothers slept right through Daddy’s plan for the family.

By September of that year, we were
all settled into our new routines and new home in Grove Hill. I celebrated my fourteenth birthday in the hotel cafe with a cake that I made from strawberries bought at the corner market on Main Street in Grove Hill. Before that cake, I don’t know if I’d ever had store bought strawberries. The hotel was right on Main Street, in the heart of Grove Hill, and seemed to be constantly surrounded by the typical, exciting hustle and bustle of a county seat, but we had no place for a garden. The week of my birthday, Daddy gave me a few extra pennies for strawberries for my cake. He also gave me a new dress made of blue cotton gabardine with tiny pink and yellow flowers on it, from the dress shop two blocks over. It was my first store bought dress.

Meg
, Billy, and Albert left for school every morning at eight o’clock. The school was only a few blocks away from the hotel, but Meg complained daily about getting the boys to school as if she had to wrangle cattle on a drive through the open plains of Texas.

Meg
met her new responsibilities with a frequently expressed sense of martyrdom, “Hattie, you will never understand how challenging the boys can be! Running ahead or lingering behind. By the time I sit down, my nerves are so frazzled; I can hardly concentrate on what teacher has to say. At least Miss Springer understands the extraordinary challenges of my life!” Meg had perfected a flair for the dramatic.

I did
n’t share my intense jealousy of my sister getting to go to school. I was fairly certain that Meg would revel in the idea that she had something I wanted, and there was no way I would give her that satisfaction. I loved going to school back in Frisco City. I found nearly every subject fascinating, except arithmetic. Reciting multiplication tables and practicing long division didn’t appeal to me or challenge me in any way. I raced through our arithmetic lessons, checking my work once before turning in my paper long before my classmates. Those of us who quickly finished those monotonous lessons were given the privilege of selecting a book from Miss Hendrix’s personal collection. She had fairy tales and adventure stories, science fiction and mysteries. She would even let me borrow books to take home. Miss Hendrix trusted that I would return the books in pristine condition and quickly, and I kept her trust by doing just that. Momma called me a “voracious reader”, and I liked the idea that I was voracious at something.

I miss
ed Miss Hendrix terribly. She was a lovely, petite woman in her early twenties. Every day, she would pin her blonde hair back just above her ears. Her cotton dresses were always immaculately presented, as if freshly pressed each morning, and she would greet each of us at the door, with her gleaming white teeth and soft, pink cheeks. Once, I asked Miss Hendrix why she had not married. She grew up in Frisco City, the daughter of the general store owners. She returned to Frisco City and her parents’ home on Oak Street right after attending teacher’s college in Birmingham. I couldn’t understand why a woman as delightful as Miss Hendrix was unmarried.

“W
e all must choose our own paths, Hattie,” was her simple yet cryptic reply. Before Miss Hendrix, I had never heard of a woman choosing not to marry.

My current
path at the hotel and café in Grove Hill was certainly not of my choosing. School had been replaced by seemingly endless days of mindless tasks. I woke well before dawn, dressed in the dark so I wouldn’t disturb Meg, and headed down to the café on the street level of our hotel. I started the coffee first. When the hotel was full, we went through several pots each morning, so I had to make sure we had several in reserve when the guests arrived for breakfast and quickly drank their first, second, and sometimes third cups. Next, I helped Henrietta with the biscuits, making them exactly according to Aunt Matt’s recipe. Miss Henrietta had no problem using Aunt Matt’s recipe, especially because it was the same as hers. Country ham was heated on the stovetop in a large cast iron skillet that was so heavy I had to use both hands to lift it. Luckily, Miss Henrietta, a colored woman who only needed one hand to lift the cast iron skillet, was a very good cook and a tireless employee. No matter how early I headed down to the kitchen, Miss Henrietta was already fast at work.