Apron Strings (35 page)

“You’re dressed already? Where are you going?” Gordy demanded as he changed channels on the TV.

“Nowhere, I just felt like getting dressed, Mr. Have-to-know-everything. For your information there is no law against being dressed on a Saturday morning,” I snapped at him.

“Well, excuse me for living. I just wondered since you are usually the last one dressed. Do you want to watch
The Lone Ranger
or
Looney Tunes
?”

Helen piped up, “Wooney Thunes,” with a mouth full of thumb. “What’s for breakfast?” she asked after taking her thumb out of her mouth.

“What, do you think I’m going to fix it?” I shot back. “Go get your own cereal. You might as well start learning how to take care of yourself. You’re not exactly a baby, you know.” I hated myself for being so mean. I just couldn’t help it.

Helen looked at Gordy and then back at me. Then she shrugged. She was wearing a vacant look as she hunkered down with her blanket and thumb. Casually I went into the kitchen as I had done a hundred times before and banged open a few cupboards, poured myself some Cocoa Puffs into a bag, and then slipped the bag into my jacket pocket. I searched in the icebox for some bologna. As I drank some milk, I shuddered to think what kind of trouble I would be in if I got caught drinking the milk out of the bottle, and then sort of laughed at myself. Finally, I found the bologna, put it in my pocket, and slipped out the kitchen door. I had just gotten my backpack from under the steps when the door opened above me. Gordy whispered, “What are you doing? Where are you going?” His volume rose with each question. “Can I go? You’re not running away, are you?” Finally he yelled, “I’m going to tell.”

“Tell what?” I demanded. “That I’m outside on a Saturday morning? Go ahead, tell.” I half hoped he would.

“I’m going to...” I couldn’t think, “…um, go play,” I finished lamely.

Helen was at the door by then. She glanced suspiciously at my face and then my backpack then drew her thumb out of her mouth. “What ya doin’?”

Just then we heard the heavy slam of a truck door, tires on gravel, and Ethel’s tuneless whistle coming up the drive as Early’s truck chugged and belched its way up the street.

“Ethel!” we all cried together. “You’re back!” We ran down the drive to meet her.

Her eyes widened when she saw Helen and Gordy in their pajamas and barefoot. “What are ya doin’ out in dis cold with yo’ night clothes and no shoes? You betta get in that house afore I tan ya’ll good,” she said, breaking out in a grin. “You’ll catch yo’ death a cold out chere. Get on in tha house,” she chuckled as she shooed the two of them along. She turned to me. “You dressed mighty early this morning, miss? Where ya off ta?”

Gordon and Helen were happy that Ethel had been restored to her old self, and had begun racing back to the house. But Gordy took it upon himself to answer Ethel’s question. “She’s trying to run away, Ethel. Don’t let her,” he shouted over his shoulder before disappearing into the house. Ethel gaped at me. She was speechless for what seemed like the first time. I hesitated, shifted the weight of my backpack, and then looked out toward the street. Before I knew it, I had started to cry. Glad as I was to see Ethel, I couldn’t keep the anger from welling up and overcoming me.

“What’s the matter, honey chile?” she asked, as innocent as a lamb.

Before I could push it back down again, it swelled up and rolled out of me like a wave. “Don’t you know? Don’t you know what you do? Do you think it’s OK to keep getting drunk and then leave us for weeks with nobody to take care of us, nobody to love us, and then come back here like nothing ever happened? Do you care that Mama beats on us and calls us names? What are we supposed to be doing while you’re out getting drunk?”

Ethel just stared at me a moment. Then before I knew it, she had grabbed me up into her arms and held me to her warm chest while I sputtered and coughed into her. Then she let me loose. “You gettin’ to be a big girl, an’ ol’ Ethel can’t hol’ ya like I used ta.” She took me by the hand and we walked back down the drive.

Realizing that I had spoken the unspeakable, I started to blubber an apology. Ethel stopped me. “I’s the one tha’s sorry, honey. I never been
so sick as I been since Dennis died. Big Early, he tol’ me that I gotta pull myself together. He say you chil’ren is my responsibility and I’m lettin’ ya’ll down. And no, honey, I don’ think it’s OK to get drunk an’ leave ya’ll.”

We had gotten to the end of the drive. She steered us over to the sidewalk, never letting go of my hand. “C’mon, we’s goin’ for a walk.” We walked past the Dabneys’ house, down to the end of the street, and then turned to go around the block past the woods Gordy liked playing in past Mr. Gentry’s house. Finally she brought us to a stop under a maple tree whose leaves were past yellow and eased her self down onto the grass. She patted her lap for me to sit down too, and then she put her arms around me and began to talk slowly and deliberately. As she talked, it was as if a door, which had always remained just cracked, was flung open wide before me. She had always given me her love. That much I knew because that’s what she did: she gave her love—to heal possibly; probably she didn’t know how else to be. Now she was offering me her life, too; that was different and I knew it was important. I curled into her, my legs dangling, and listened.

“I was fourteen years old when I come to work for yo’ granddaddy’s family, Miss Sallee. It was just a few days a week when I didn’ have nothin’ to do at the boardin’house; helpin’ my mother in the kitchen, mostly. Turned out to be one of them little decisions that don’t seem like much at the time, but ends up changing yo’ life…”

E
PILOGUE

Ethel

S
ho’ do wish I could say that I held to that promise I done made to Sallee and myself that day. Lord knows I tried, but I fell off the wagon a time or two, what with my feelin’ like I done Mista Joe and the chil’ren a bad turn. Then when I gets to thinkin’ ‘bout lil’ Denny and Miss Ginny, and what I could’da done different—the nights they gets mighty long and lonely. The devil, he commences to whisperin’ in my ear, “Just a little will make ya feel better. Go on now, won’t hurt none.” I listened, called in sick too. The hangover weren’t nothin’ compared to how I felt when I saw the sufferin’ in my babies’ eyes. I told ol’ Slewfoot to get behind me right then and there. I still have to tell him pretty regular.

Miss Ginny kept up her drinkin’. Try as I might there wasn’t nothin’ I could do ‘bout it. I knew how it felt to lose a baby, though mines never got born, and Denny might as well be mine, for as much as I loved him. Mama say “Feelin’ sorry for her or yo’ own self ain’t gon’na make a lick of difference.” Then with that steel in her voice and love in her eyes she say, “It sho ain’t gonna help the other chil’ren, so yo’ best be gettin’ hold’da yo’self.”

So when the nights is long, and I start feelin’ like I didn’t help nobody no way, especially my own self, and ol’ Slewfoot starts a whisperin’, I reminds myself that my chil’ren needs me more than I needs a drink. Change comes slow, but it do come.