After the Flag Has Been Folded (13 page)

That moment was totally unlike the moment two years earlier when I'd stood on my tiptoes peering into Daddy's casket. Daddy had looked so gawd-awful, not at all like himself, that I couldn't help but cry. But Cil looked exactly like herself, only better. Happier, more at peace than ever before. I was convinced she was in heaven because she looked so angelic lying there. It got me to wondering if the way a person dies determines her disposition in the ever after. If a person dies angry, or violently, maybe he wakes up in a bad mood for all eternity. And if a person dies in his sleep, while in the midst of a really good dream, maybe he wakes up in eternity singing songs about bluebirds and sunny days.

Grandpa Harve came back to Georgia to live with us after Aunt Cil died. Lon moved in with some of Doc's family, and I never saw him again.

 

T
HROUGHOUT THE SUMMER
of 1968, Floyd begged Mama to marry him, but she kept turning him down. It probably didn't help matters that she had had one marriage end in annulment earlier that year. Mama knew she simply couldn't afford to wind up divorced with children. She wasn't about to take another risk at losing her Social Security benefits and widow's pension on a marriage gone sour.

Floyd tried to convince Mama that he loved her, that they wouldn't end up divorced, that he would always care for us, always. But Floyd was learning, as Daddy had, what a mule-headed woman Shelby Jean could be. “Your mama was a strong woman,” Floyd told me later. “The most determined woman I've ever met.”

Mama had a multitude of reasons for not wanting to marry Floyd. He was only twenty-four. She knew he'd want kids of his own someday and she wouldn't be able to give them to him. Daddy and Mama had tried to conceive another baby when we lived in Hawaii, but cysts had hardened Mama's ovaries. The doctors told her she'd probably never get pregnant again. Mama explained all that to Floyd, but he said he didn't care. He couldn't imagine loving any kids as much as he loved us or any woman as much as he loved her. “Please, Shelby, please,” he begged.

But Mama stood firm. She had learned her lesson. She would never again let herself be vulnerable—emotionally, mentally, or most important, financially. She would not be dependent on a man, even a man who loved her dearly, like Floyd. She would take other lovers, but Mama would never again take another husband.

That summer Mama accepted a job at the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center in Dublin, Georgia. She knew Floyd would be leaving the Army in August. Fearful that he would be leaving her soon thereafter, Mama never gave him that chance. She left him first.

C
ARL
V
INSON
VA M
EDICAL
C
ENTER WAS, AND REMAINS, ONE OF
D
UBLIN'S LARGEST EMPLOYERS.
W
E MOVED IN
July, undoubtedly the worst time of the year to make a move to central Georgia. Mama sent Grandpa off to Uncle Carl's and then paid a fellow to put our home on wheels and take it east to Dublin. I always thought that Dublin should've been named Halfway. It was halfway between Columbus and Savannah, halfway between Savannah and Atlanta, always halfway to somewhere else. For our family, Dublin was a halfway stop on the road to further turmoil.

The trailer park we moved into was nondescript and situated in a gulleylike clearing near a muddy tributary of the Oconee River. The roadways that led through the park were sparsely graveled, mostly dirt. There were fewer than twenty trailers in the entire park. The only trees were all along the creek bed at the back of the park; these provided the park's only shade.

The air never moved. It just hung in the sky like a damp sheet on wash day. Mary Sue and Melissa made the move with us. Mama worked the day shift, and Mary Sue watched over us.

During the day I'd hang out with Frank and Linda. After a breakfast of cold cereal and cartoons, we'd ride bikes, build forts, or explore the creek bed. But by noon we were back inside, standing in
front of the window air conditioner, pushing back sweaty bangs from our foreheads. Afternoons were spent reading or watching more television. It was just too unbearably hot to be outside until dusk. After only a few weeks in that heat, Mary Sue took Melissa and went back to Joe. She couldn't bear Dublin no more.

Hoping to provide us kids some distraction, Mama allowed me to adopt three kittens. I named them Faith, Hope, and Charity and kept them in a cardboard box stuffed up next to the rear wheel of the trailer, the one under Mama's bedroom window. In the mornings I would carry a saucer of milk to them. They were too little to reach over the rim of a bowl. If they got messy with the milk, it was hard to tell, because they all had white markings on their black faces.

One morning I found the cardboard box overturned. I knew the kittens weren't big enough to tip it over. I immediately suspected Frank of some no-good deed.

“What did you do with my kittens?” I yelled into the open doorway of the trailer.

“I didn't touch your ugly kittens!” he yelled back.

“But they're gone!” I cried.

Frank and Linda both rushed outside. Then all three of us began searching underneath the trailer wheels, in clumps of grass, under the cinder block steps. We called out their names, and then listened. But we never heard any meows in return.

Frank hopped on his bike, the one with the banana seat and revved-up handlebars, and began a full-blown search-and-rescue mission. Linda pressed Thumbelina against her hip and declared, “He'll find them, Karen. Everything's going to be okay.”

Frank did find the kittens, floating paws-down in the creek. Seemed some neighbor boys, kids whose names we didn't even know, had decided to take Faith, Hope, and Charity for a swim. Picking them up by the scruff of their necks, they'd tossed my babies, one by one, into the muddy creek. Frank rushed back to the house and
grabbed me. Together we clamored down the slimy slope of the riverbank and watched in despair as Faith, Hope, and Charity floated downstream. “I'm sorry, Karen,” Frank said.

“Stupid boys,” I said, wiping away the angry tears streaming down my face. “I hate those stupid boys. I'd like to drown them.”

“I know,” he replied.

The boys, all about Frank's age, fourteen, stood on a knoll above the river, near an oak tree, laughing at the dead kittens and us. If we had one more kid to help us, I think Frank and I would've taken those boys down to the river and held their heads underwater. For a long, long time.

“Dumbasses,” Frank said as we headed back to the trailer.

“Jackasses,” I chimed in.

Mama never again allowed me to have another kitten. I don't think she could stand to have anything so defenseless around the house. She didn't get me another pet for a very long time, and when she did it was a German shepherd so fierce and so strong he could easily maneuver his way through the muddy Chattahoochee River and play tag with the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. We named him Bruiser. He'd have seriously maimed anybody who might've tried to throw him in a creek. Mama has always had a great heap of humor mixed in with her sense of justice.

Seeing my kittens murdered in cold water was a horrible enough experience to sour me on Dublin. But the traumas didn't end there. Less than a week later, I broke out in a case of hives that totally disfigured my face. My blue eyes melted away behind puffy scarlet welts. Blotchy, inflamed clumps covered my previously freckled cheeks. Oh, the itch! I would lie in bed furiously rubbing my face back and forth against the ribbed-cotton bedspread. Scratching and scratching.

Mama knew it wasn't a case of poison oak. I didn't have hives anywhere except on my face. She took me to a doctor.

“Gracious, girl!” the doctor said. “You look awful.”

It was obvious he wasn't the chairman of the town's Welcome Wagon. I didn't smile or respond in any fashion to his remarks. I just answered his questions with a nod or shake of my head.

“Does this itch?” he said, pressing a forefinger against my swollen cheek.

I vigorously nodded.

“Any other rashes?” he asked.

I motioned “no” with a side-to-side shake.

“Looks like your daughter has had an allergic reaction to poison sumac,” he said to Mama as he shined a pen-point light into my eyes.

“I don't know where she would've come across that,” Mama replied.

“Oh, she wouldn't have to rub up against it,” he said. “Somebody could've just been burning some brush and the smoke could've caused this.”

He wrote out a prescription and sent us on our way.

“I've never heard of this kind of thing,” Mama said, taking me by the hand and leading me out the door. I hadn't either. But I was worried about more pressing things. If the doctor thought I looked gawd-awful, what were my seventh-grade classmates likely to think? I couldn't start at a new school looking like a circus reject. I hoped the medicine would work.

In early August Mama took one last trip to Columbus to see Floyd. She took me with her, maybe because she felt sorry for me with all my recent travails. Or maybe because she wanted some excuse to flee in case things didn't go well with Floyd.

We stopped by Lake Forest, and Mama let me visit with Leslie and James for the afternoon. James had fallen off the back of a moving car and was suffering a concussion. But despite his injury and my unfortunate disfigurement, he still recognized me. “What are you doing here?” he asked as he raised his head from the sofa pillow.

“Just came up for the weekend,” I replied, heartened by his obvious affection for me. James was the first boy besides my cousin Roger
that I was remotely attracted to. Both of them pretty much ignored me. “I'm sorry about your accident,” I said.

“Me, too,” he replied, sinking his head back into the pillow.

Leslie and I spent the afternoon swimming. I told her all about my kittens and how awful Dublin was and how I wished Mama had never moved us away. Leslie told me all about the modeling classes she was taking with her sister at Mable Bailey's. She told me she had a crush on Joe K. and she thought he liked her, too. I told her I was sure he did.

Mama took me out to Floyd's place to spend the night. He had moved into a tiny trailer in a park off Victory Drive. I watched a black-and-white television while Mama and Floyd sat at the table drinking black coffee and chain-smoking. Eventually, they disappeared into the only bedroom in the trailer. I fell asleep praying Mama would move us back to Columbus and marry Floyd.

God granted me one of those prayers. Less than four weeks later, just shortly after school started, Mama moved us back to Columbus. Right back out to Lake Forest. We got a corner lot near the lake this time—prime real estate in a trailer park.

Mama enrolled me at Eddy Junior High and Frank at Columbus High School. Mary Sue, pregnant again, and Melissa moved back in with us. Mama hadn't bothered to tell Floyd she'd made a mistake, or that she'd be coming back to Columbus. By the time we got back, he'd already moved home to Arkansas.

T
HE OLD GANG WAS GLAD TO HAVE
F
RANK AND ME BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
J
AMES LET ME KNOW HOW
happy he was by extending a special invitation to me one afternoon.

“Hey, Karen,” he said. “You want to go down to the cabin at the lake with me and Joe?” He gave an elbow nudge to Joe K., who was standing beside him smirking.

“What for?” I asked. I kicked at a clump of dirt in the middle of the road that ran between James's luxurious double-wide home and my more modest single-wide.

“For sex,” he replied. There were no snickers, no chuckles. Just dead-on honesty.

“What?” I asked.

“There's no one around. It's just a little shed. No one has to know. No one will see us.”

I looked over at Joe K., who was one of Frank's closest friends. I didn't think he would let anything bad happen to me.

“Yeah, we've taken lots of girls there,” Joe K. said.

“Like who?” I asked. Skepticism was a trait I cultivated early in life.

“Mary Jane,” Joe K. said.

“Mary Jane had sex with you?” I asked. Mary Jane was one of my best friends. Certainly if she was doing the big nasty, she would've told me all about it. Mary Jane and I talked about everything.

“Yeah,” Joe K. replied.

“What about Leslie?” I asked. I hoped the question would unnerve her brother.

“Her, too,” Joe K. answered. James didn't even blink.

The pressure was on now. They both stared at me. If my girlfriends in the park were having sex, then certainly I couldn't turn down their earnest request. “I can't have sex,” I replied.

“Why not?” James asked.

“I haven't even had a period yet,” I replied. “I'm not old enough to have sex.”

“All the better,” James quipped.

“Why's that?” I asked.

“If you haven't had a period yet, then you can't get pregnant.”

I brushed by them and marched on home. Horny boys, how dumb do I look?

I was shocked that Leslie might have been having sex, but I wasn't that surprised about Mary Jane. Mary Jane's mom, a big-breasted, big-hipped, thick-lipped, boozy blonde, was considered the trailer park slut. My memories of her primarily consist of the times she would order us teens into her car and head out to the Victory Drive-in burger joint, a favorite soldier hangout. Her husband, who wasn't Mary Jane or Joe's father, was fighting for his country in Vietnam. And she was doing her part by entertaining the troops at home.

One night, after we'd made the customary pickup at Victory Drive, she decided to take all us kids and her two new soldier pals to visit a haunted house across the river in Phenix City, Alabama. It was already late, past eleven. The idea of traipsing through a haunted house didn't appeal much to me. I had a tough-enough time dealing with ghosts in broad daylight. Mary Jane didn't want to go either, but what choice did we have? Her mother was a madwoman. She didn't possess a lick of common sense. So I cowered in the corner of the Buick, rolled down the window, welcoming the slap of weighty night
air against my cheeks, and prayed that God would protect us from the demons that Mary Jane's mother sought out.

There wasn't any moonlight to illuminate the crumbling concrete path that wound through wrought-iron gates, past an ancient oak, and up to the squeaky front door of the long-forgotten Georgian manor. There, beyond the sloping lawn, hundreds of tombstones protruded from the ground, like elbows and knees only half buried. I shivered and gave Mary Jane a nudge. “Look!” I said as I pointed to the graves.

A shrill laugh startled us both. Mary Jane's mama had a soldier hanging on each side of her. Directly ahead of us, they were all three swaying in a lusty rhythm. The young soldiers were rubbing up against her swollen breasts every chance they got. And she gave them plenty of chances.

Nothing like righteous disgust to overcome one's fears. I grabbed Mary Jane by the hand and marched right past her mama. I wanted to hurry up and get this whole ordeal over with. I about walked right through the front door. “Y'all be careful in there!” Mary Jane's mother shouted out after us.

“Oh, shut up, you ole hag!” I muttered, so she couldn't hear.

Mary Jane giggled.

I wasn't feeling as brave once we were inside the dark caverns of the old home. The wooden floors were covered in dust. The place smelled of dead spiders, live rats, and cat urine. As Mary Jane's mother and her twin escorts bounded up the narrow stairs behind us, Mary Jane and I edged over to the entrance of the living room. We stood there, snuggling up against each other, inspecting formidable furniture draped in cotton sheets and dust balls. We worried about the snakes we feared we might see and the ghosts that we didn't see but could feel were there. Backing out of the house, we stood on the porch and stared out across the neighboring graveyard.

“Do you believe there's really a heaven and a hell?” Mary Jane asked.

“I don't know about heaven, but I believe there's a hell,” I replied.

“Me, too,” she said. “Me, too.”

That night Mary Jane and I shared her bed. I don't know that either of us slept much. Mary Jane's mother and her new pals were carrying on something fierce in the back bedroom. Laughter, the throaty kind that follows a nasty joke, echoed down the hallway. I don't know what Mary Jane was thinking, but I was busy trying to not imagine her mama nekkid. I felt bad for Mary Jane, Joe, and the soldier that wasn't their real father. I wondered if Vietnam was a desolate place and if there was as much confusion over there as there was here at home.

 

A
LL THAT CONFUSION
came to a head one day when Aunt Mary Sue and I got into a shouting match. Neither of us remembers what the fight was about. We were in the kitchen, sitting at the dinette table, when I got mad at her and smarted off about something. Mary Sue grabbed the cup of coffee she'd been drinking and doused me with it. I was soaked from neck to thigh. The coffee was warm enough to create flaming red blotches. Angry, I called Mama at work. “Mary Sue threw coffee at me!” I said, bawling.

“What?” Mama asked.

“She threw hot coffee at me!” I sobbed.

Mama drove straight home. I was in the bathroom, cooling the red blotches with a wet rag. From there, events get blurry, as is often the case with violent rages. Mary Sue swears that Mama took the gun from the bedside drawer and cornered her. Mama adamantly denies it. They will go to their graves disagreeing over that gun, but they agree on what happened next.

“Get the hell outta my house!” Mama yelled.

“Shelby, Karen is lying,” Mary Sue protested. “That coffee wasn't hot!”

Mama wasn't budging. “I said get your damn things and get out!” Mama yelled again.

“Shelby, just calm down. You can look at Karen and see she ain't hurt. If I'd thrown hot coffee at her, she'd be burned.”

Mama was beyond reason. I'd never seen her so mad. What my aunt said was true. The coffee wasn't hot. I didn't have a burn on me. But all Mama saw were the red blotches, and for all she knew, they might blister.

I hadn't intended to put my aunt at such odds with my mother, but I wasn't about to intervene. There's nothing like a mama kicking someone out to prove to a young girl that her mama loves her more than life itself. I was enjoying Mama's overt display of affection for me. I didn't give much thought to my aunt and her situation.

Mary Sue didn't even stop long enough to pack up her things. She just took Melissa and left on foot. Fortunately, she'd just gotten her paycheck. She bought a Greyhound ticket to Tennessee and moved in with Granny and Pap. A couple of years passed before Mama and Mary Sue spoke again.