A Place Called Wiregrass (28 page)

“You’re right, of course, but others are very comfortable with our worship service. This revival kind of thinking…well, it’s just old-fashioned,” Dr. Winters said on his hands and knees under the table.

“Revival? I’m talking about a Christian attitude, don’t you know,” Miss Claudia said. She lifted the lace tablecloth and looked down at him.

I noticed his pager by the china cabinet and scooped it up. “Here it is.”

“Awh,” Dr. Winters yelled when he crawled from under the table and bumped his head on the section piece.

The pastor fumbled to place the pager back on his belt loop. “And I pray that you’ll have boldness to preach the truth and not be so bashful,” Miss Claudia continued.

“Thank you, Emily,” he whispered. Dr. Winters waved to Miss Claudia, and before I could run ahead to open the door for him, he was backing the Lexus out of the driveway.

I bit my lip. But when I walked into the dining room and saw Miss Claudia chuckling, I tilted my head back and liked to died laughing.

“Bless his heart. The man’s got the backbone of a jellyfish,” Miss Claudia said, wiping tears from her eyes. “And don’t you
know, if I didn’t have a cent to my name, he would’ve never stepped foot in my place.” She flung her hands to the side. “I’ll pray for them. But I tell you one thing,” she pointed directly at me, “the Lord spoke to me that night at church. God may be everywhere, but not everywhere is God.”

I had no idea that Miss Claudia would really take me up on my offer and go to my nondenominational church. But when I came to get her, there she was on the steps of her white-columned porch, dressed in a red suit, matching hat, and white gloves.

“Look who I got with me,” I said to Gerald. Miss Claudia giggled behind me.

Gerald stood and let us enter the pew. His smile was not very broad. By the way he cast his eyes to the side, I sensed he was not happy with Miss Claudia’s appearance. But if he wasn’t, Marcie certainly was.

“So good to see you again,” Marcie said, hugging Miss Claudia’s neck.

“Let’s see…I recall the last time we were together, you had a big trip someplace,” Miss Claudia said.

Marcie slung her hair over her shoulder and stuck her chin up. “Yes, ma’am. Charleston. Oh, it’s just so pretty down there. I had a grand time.” She hammered down on the word
grand
. “And how are you, Erma Lee?”

When Marcie walked away, Miss Claudia held the church bulletin to the side of her mouth and pinched my arm. “I mean to tell you, she’s just a regular rounder.”

That afternoon Gerald called to check on Cher and me.

The echoes of Cher’s radio played in the background. “She seems to be doing good. She likes that counselor, Andra. Just like Sandra but drop off the S.”

“And what about you?”

“Busy helping Miss Claudia get ready for that big city council meeting. They’re finalizing the budget for the house and everything.”

“Hmm. Well you reckon you want to slip off and get some barbecue this evening?”

The thought of leaving Cher alone still terrified me. “Well, I sorta promised Miss Claudia I’d help send out some letters about that meeting. And Cher’s got a video she wants to watch on Miss Claudia’s VCR.”

“Well, you know, I got a VCR over here too.”

“Oh, I know. What about tomorrow night?”

“Got a horse meeting up at the clubhouse. You wanna come?”

I closed my eyes and imagined what he would say if I asked if Cher could come along too. He probably thought like Kasi. That I was mothering Cher too much. “Well, why don’t you call me tomorrow at Miss Claudia’s.”

Cher walked into the kitchen, and I moved to let her get to the refrigerator. I watched her pour Coke into a glass and stroked her hair. I really didn’t hear Gerald’s tone of voice change. I just remember the sudden dial tone.

“Yeah. I’ll see you, hear?” he said and hung up.

“She’s opening up more,” Andra said in the lobby of the mental-health clinic. Audience screams from
The Price Is Right
echoed throughout the lobby.

I wanted to ask if Cher blamed me in any way. “So she’s getting better?”

“Hon, the kid’s been through a lot. It’s not a Band-Aid fix.” Andra reached over and patted my shoulder. “She wanted things to be one way very badly, and reality forced her to see they were not.”

“You talking about LaRue and Suzette?”

Andra tucked strands of blonde-streaked hair behind her ears. “I really think she needs to hear the entire story. How you and your ex-husband came to adopt her. Quite frankly, there’s only so much I can do to help her. We need all the pieces to build the puzzle.”

Cher was smiling when I saw her walking down the long clinic hallway. She was carrying a clump of bright-colored material in her arms.

“Look,” Cher said and held up two shirts. “Andra gave these to me. Do you know how much I’d have to pay for these?”

“Not a bit of telling,” I said, thinking of my own charitable clothing donated from Patricia. The designer labels were probably molded from the car-trunk humidity by now.

“See ya, kiddo,” Andra said with a wink.

During the car ride back to Miss Claudia’s, I wanted to give Cher the missing pieces Andra talked about. In my mind, I carefully selected the words so it would sound like I was talking about somebody else. But my limited vocabulary could not change the picture of her real mama and daddy dumping her on the floor like the empty beer cans I found gathered around her thirteen years ago.

Three times I took my eyes off the road to look at her. She was still smiling and examining the two shirts Andra gave her. And each time I looked over at her, I convinced myself she could not handle the truth.
She’s just not ready,
I repeated to myself and grew frustrated at Andra for putting me on the spot. I could tell Cher was not ready by the fragile look in her brown eyes. Never once did I look into the rearview mirror and look at my own eyes.

That evening I made a leap that I felt Andra would be pleased with. I lifted my mattress, pulled out the letter Suzette sent, and drafted a reply on a piece of Cher’s notebook paper.

The words flowed out of me as if I was writing a newspa
per article on the last days of LaRue’s life. I purposely left out words like
your husband
or
Cher’s father
and kept it strictly business.
He is dead now,
I wrote at the bottom of the letter.
I hope we can all live in peace.

Ending the letter was the hardest part. I didn’t know whether or not to sign off with the words
Love, Mama
. The day she entered the prison gates, I tried hard to let Suzette die in my mind. This would be my first communication with her since that day. And most likely my last. I finally signed the letter
Mom
. Mom always sounded cold and detached. Something Yankees the likes of Andra labeled the women who bore them.

The next day I watched from Richard’s garage apartment while the postman collected my letter from Miss Claudia’s mailbox. I tried to picture the stops the letter would make along the way and the surprised expression upon Suzette’s face when she opened the envelope.

After so many years, would Suzette’s surprised expression look the same? The same bitten lip, wide eyes rolled slightly upwards. Dumping cigarette butts out of the gold-colored ashtray, I felt sorry for her and the added turmoil my letter would probably cause.
Maybe I shouldn’t have sent it,
I thought. The sudden crackle of Richard’s scanner jabbering about codes that only the police and Richard could decipher made me jump.

I never entered Richard’s apartment unless he was away. This morning he was at the eye doctor getting a new prescription for his glasses. “Just hit the middle in his room,” Miss Claudia told me about Richard’s garage apartment. “He’s got so many papers all over the place to where he’s the only one who can make heads or tails of it. It’s part of his research, don’t you know.”

The tip of my black work shoe was just about to press the vacuum-cleaner start button when I heard the whiny voice
shoot out from the scanner. I looked at the black box with the red light on channel 23 and studied the silver antenna. Marcie was not speaking the same codes I heard earlier. Codes of speeding violations and emergency assistance. Her high-pitched voice was so vivid I could picture her facial expressions with each transmitted word.

“I hate that things aren’t working out between you and her. But like you always told me…”

“What’s that?”

Hearing Gerald’s voice, I turned the volume up.

“Well, I’m just going to say this,” Marcie continued.

“You’ve always said when you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. And ever since you almost got arrested in Shreveport,” she whispered the word
arrested,
“I’ve had a bad feeling about you hanging around her.”

Gerald’s sigh sounded like something scratching against the phone receiver. His truck phone was clear enough for me to hear a Garth Brooks song playing in the background.

“I’m sorry. I should just keep my mouth shut,” Marcie said.

“I heard that,” I said and put my hand on my hip.

“It don’t matter. She’s so busy worrying over that old lady all the time, I already decided to leave her alone.”

I leaned on the edge of Richard’s leather couch and a stack of old
U.S. News and World Report
magazines, piled on top of the armrest, tumbled to the floor.

“I think it’s best,” Marcie said. “You raised two kids. You don’t need another one to take on with that granddaughter. And anyway, Annie, that woman I told you about in the judge’s office, she keeps asking about you. Her divorce is final now. Kids all grown. She’s real classy and just as cute as she can be.”

When I scrambled to turn the volume down, my shoe slid on a slick copy of
U.S. News and World Report
. I twisted the
knob in the wrong direction, and Marcie’s voice blared across the room, “I’m fixing you a casserole for supper tonight.” My heart was racing when I finally managed to make the voices go away. Leaning against Richard’s leather couch, I looked down at the scattered magazines. Red letters against a white background shined from one of the covers:
Divorce in the Millennium
.

“O
h, I just know that good report is a sign,” Miss Claudia said in the passenger seat of her car. She clutched her fists and raised her arms in victory. Her monthly visit to the oncologist showed that her white blood cells were holding their own.

“I declare, I feel stronger already.” She gripped my arm, and I guided her up the brick steps. A white wooden sign with the words
Cut Ups
dangled above us. “Now, while I’m getting my hair done, don’t forget to run by Benson’s and pick up that dress they’re holding. I plan on wearing it tonight when I give my talk.”

The talk was her final pitch to the city council. Miss Claudia stood before the group in a bright blue dress with a multicolored scarf tied loosely at her neck. Her freshly painted fingernails rested on the podium. She cleared her voice and nodded to each of the nine council members.

“I’m tickled to stand before y’all this evening and present a request for funding of a project that has pulled all of Wiregrass together.” She looked up from her notes and smiled.

She leaned against the podium and tilted her head dramatically to the left. “We got a petition here showing more than eleven hundred folks in Wiregrass want their tax dollars to make a difference.” Miss Claudia slightly turned and nodded at Missoura and the pastor. The big man with gold glasses and
a shiny brown head eased up and handed the cardboard box of petitions to the city manager.

“The people are saying that a rescue home for battered women is needed in Wiregrass. I believe I’m not out of turn when I say we’ve all been blessed. We all have a safe home, I pray. And now it’s time for us to stand up and help those who are living in pure you-know-what. To help these women and little children find the same security that we are blessed with.

“Now through churches, the United Way, and private donations, sixty percent of the cost to start the home is covered. I ask that you do the right thing and stand by your preliminary budget to fund the remaining forty percent.”

Several board members nodded and smiled at Miss Claudia like I’d expect they’d do for a six-year-old singing a solo for the first time. A woman, her brown hair in a tight permanent wave, sat at the end of the council chamber sipping her coffee and flipping through white papers. The silver-haired man next to her leaned back in his swivel chair so far I thought he’d tip over. The creaking of his steady rock echoed during Miss Claudia’s remarks.

When she finished, Miss Claudia sat next to me and listened as the next speaker, a young bearded man with a protruding belly, placed his thumbs in his blue-jean pockets and complained about the lack of funding for the baseball program. Following him, several other people voiced concerns that Wiregrass, once the Little League capital of Alabama, was falling behind with a washed-out field and shabby uniforms.

Before I knew what was going on, the council member with the tight permanent moved to increase funding of the baseball program by seventy percent. “Second,” said the man tilting backwards in the swivel chair.

The city manager raked his hand over a few remaining blonde hairs on his shiny head. He looked at Miss Claudia
from his table next to the council members and shrugged his shoulders. She craned her neck and bit the bottom part of her lip.

“What’s up?” Cher whispered to me.

Not meaning to copy the city manager, all I knew to do was shrug my shoulders and look at Miss Claudia. Her eyes widened, and she inched forward on the black padded chair. Squirming in the seat was a last-ditch lobbying effort.

“Bless it,” Patricia said the next morning. She patted Miss Claudia’s arm with one hand and scooped the remaining cheese grits out of the saucer with the other.

Richard chewed his bacon and nodded at each attack Miss Claudia offered the city council. “That city manager sat right there in his office and promised Richard and me it was a done deal.”

I poured Patricia another cup of coffee, and Miss Claudia shook her finger faster.

“And what about that? Tying up good taxpayers’ dollars on some baseball mess.” Miss Claudia leaned over her china coffee cup. “When I could drive around this county and find forty women by sundown who look like they got hit with a baseball bat.”

“Mama, parents go plumb nuts over sports. I know. I see it at school all the time.” Patricia dabbed her glossy red lips with the white napkin.

“Well, I’m ashamed to live in a place where the needy take second place to new Little League uniforms.” Miss Claudia shut her eyes and tightly folded her arms.

“Oh, now, Mama, you mean no such a thing,” Patricia said, handing me the empty grit bowl.

Miss Claudia never opened her eyes. “I most certainly do.”

“Now, Mama. This town’s been good to us,” Patricia said. I
was sure, by the way she lifted her voice, she would break out into song any minute.

“I guarantee you, Daddy would’ve gone down there…” Richard began before Patricia rolled her eyes towards him.

“Remember now, most the people on that city council and their parents before them were good customers at the store,” Patricia said. “They helped secure a mighty nice lifestyle for us.”

I was putting the pitcher of milk back into the refrigerator, when Miss Claudia looked up at me. Her sunken, hazel eyes locked on me, and she shook her head.

With me in the room, I could only imagine how hard the situation was for her. I figured she looked at me and thought of the world she survived and looked at Patricia and thought of the world she had carved out for herself. I tensed and waited to hear once again the words of evil acts. To hear the words that would remove her children from the life of privilege in Wiregrass and transport them to the black-and-blue times she faced at the hands of Luther Ranker.

“I’m just plain sorry is all,” Miss Claudia finally said and looked down at the untouched plate of bacon and grits. “I let them down.”

“Bless it,” Patricia said once more and placed her hands on top of Miss Claudia’s bony fingers. “Now, Mama, you fought a good fight. Nobody expected you to do this but you. I know how much that little home meant to you. But there’s other stuff you can work on.”

As Patricia offered a list of projects sponsored by the Cotillion Society, Miss Claudia once again looked up at me. Before her eyes could latch on me, I turned and faced the sink full of grease-spattered pots.

With the piano strands of “Victory in Jesus” echoing in my ear, I led Miss Claudia and Cher out of Sunday morning
services. If it hadn’t been that church was the only place Cher seemed remotely interested in going to, I would have stayed home. Sitting in the back pew and hearing Marcie impart her words of wisdom during children’s moments was nauseating. I had to open my white Bible to the passage about Jesus drawing the line in the sand and telling the crowd who wanted to stone the prostitute that he who was without sin should cast the first stone. I read Jesus’ statement six times before Marcie disappeared and Lee began his sermon.

Only once when leaving church did I glance back and see Gerald talking to a new church member. Standing next to his regular pew, Gerald smiled and shook hands with the redheaded lady.
A fresh catch,
I told myself. When Brownie saw me and waved her black Bible, I stopped in the aisle and spoke to her.

“I’ll just wait for you in the car,” Miss Claudia whispered. Cher followed closely behind her.

I had gotten used to Cher wanting to run off and not speak to anybody. But this was a first for Miss Claudia.

When I liked to knock old Mrs. Greer down, I turned around, begged forgiveness, and walked towards the light of the open church doors.

Lee was still talking to Miss Claudia when I stepped outside the door.

“It’s not over yet. We just need to keep praying and that home will make it here yet,” he said, holding Miss Claudia’s hands.

She looked down at the green outdoor carpet and her shiny beige pumps. “We’ll see.”

Walking to the big Lincoln parked under one of the oak tree limbs, I tried to think of an encouraging word or something funny to say. But the cloud of disappointment hung as low as the moss from the trees.

Pictures of castles and islands with white block homes replaced the letters, petitions, and file folders that had populated Miss Claudia’s dining-room table.

“And look here, Mama,” Patricia said, pointing to the castle. “Some places we’ll see date back to the 1500s.” She lightly tapped Miss Claudia’s shoulder.

“And this one here’s where y’all are staying, right?” I asked, trying to show enough interest for myself and Miss Claudia.

“Yes, on the last portion of our trip,” Patricia said and then hid the brochures to the side of her hips. “Now, I just hate to run off and leave you all upset, Mama.”

“Nonsense,” Miss Claudia said. “Your twenty-five-year anniversary only comes once.”

“Well, that’s what Doctor Tom said. But I just can’t imagine a whole month on a cruise.” She fanned her face with the brochures. “Mercy.”

The day before her journey, Patricia reviewed the steps to take in case of an emergency. Miss Claudia was still standing by the window when she left. She had a spot where Patricia had tattooed a red lipstick print on her cheek. She was holding the heavy gold curtain apart and watching Patricia drive away in the silver Mercedes. “I’ve been studying about Patricia. Maybe we need to follow her lead. Just get away for a spell.” She turned and smiled at me.

“Well, sure. I mean you talking about going to Panama City or up to the mountains?” Listing all the places I had experienced through the vacation stories of others.

“
Southern Living
ran a big article on St. George Island last month. Down in Florida, near where I’m from,” she said, gazing out the window. “Back then, there wasn’t even a bridge to the place. Now they got all sorts of fine homes there.”

“I bet this will get Cher excited,” I said, letting her know I refused to leave Cher behind.

“It’s time,” she whispered. Miss Claudia continued to stare at the light that seeped through the window sheers. “I just believe it’ll do us all a world of good.”

Gerald called the day I packed my clothes into our makeshift suitcases, a dozen paper grocery bags. I said nothing of the month-long stay Miss Claudia planned in Florida.
Buddy, why don’t you just go on and try that woman Marcie wants you to sample?

Before Gerald could finish telling me about the new alternator he was installing, I snapped a quick, “Well, let me go, hear?”

Hanging up the receiver, I convinced myself he was better with the woman I heard Marcie describe as classy. A woman with the elegance of Miss Claudia, Patricia, or Andra. A woman Marcie could talk to about clothes and the latest hairdos.
It’s for his own good,
I thought, and tried to follow Miss Claudia’s rule about topics I could not control. “Just dismiss it from your mind,” she’d always say whenever I brought up a useless worry.

“Hon, here’s my home number in case you need me,” Andra said the day before we left. Her frosty white fingernails slid the thick paper across her desk.

“Now, you don’t think me taking Cher down there this long will mess nothing up?”

“Honestly?” She leaned forward and propped her chin on the manicured fingernails. “It’s up to you and Cher now.”

Afraid that Miss Trellis would hold my envelopes over a hot steamer and get all into my business, I gave Kasi responsibility for my mail. Not that I had anything earth-shattering coming from the postal service, but there would be the first installment of Bozo’s child support and a few coupon fliers I might use when we got back.

After Kasi closed her trailer door, I felt a penetration of
guilt for not telling Gerald we were going away. To me a month away from home might as well have been a year. And even if he was through with me, if he happened to call or stop by, his good-natured spirit would cause him to worry about our welfare. I tapped on Kasi’s vinyl door.

“If you see Gerald, just tell him I’ll see him in a month.” The very words made me feel strange, like I was in one of those old late-Saturday-night movies Cher and me watched on TV. A plot suited for a rich woman running off on a European holiday.

“Awright. I’ll sure do it,” Kasi said and blew cigarette smoke into my hair.

When we passed the green sign with the orange sketch of Florida welcoming us to the Sunshine State, Miss Claudia became restless. She pulled at her pants and twisted in the seat every few miles.

“Thirty more miles to Apalachicola, Mama,” Richard said. He filed a mileage report each time we passed a sign noting the number of miles to Miss Claudia’s former home.

By the time we entered the city limits of Miss Claudia’s old hometown, I was lost in the view. “This is just beautiful,” I said, looking down past the gray water and onto the marble courthouse and the square blue inn with white latticework. An old Victorian mansion and two-story brick buildings formed Apalachicola’s main street.

Miss Claudia sat in the passenger seat gripping the blue material at the knees of her slacks. The sun shining through the passenger window made the drops of sweat on her lip glisten like early morning dew.

“In all my years, I’ve never been here,” Richard said from the backseat.

Cher leaned against the front armrest. “Does it look different to you, Miss Claudia?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Miss Claudia replied, never looking at the little fishing village outside her window.

I gripped the steering wheel and cut my eyes towards her. But as soon as we passed over the bridge and the town was behind us, Miss Claudia released the grasp on her pant legs. Rows of navy wrinkles were all that remained.

Cher leaned on the back of the seat while Miss Claudia’s Lincoln coasted down the long bridge to St. George Island. Pine trees and sawgrass dotted the edges of the bay side.

“Forgotten Florida,” Richard called the island.

After we picked up our house key from the real-estate office, Miss Claudia asked me to stop at the corner of the main road. Her eyes grew wider when she ordered a bushel of oysters from a man with a red umbrella in the back of his truck. A white sign spray-painted with the words
Fresh Seafood
propped against the back truck tire.