Ghost on Black Mountain (28 page)

M
y mama told me the same bedtime story each night all through my childhood. She told it with such detail I was sure Hobbs and Nellie Pritchard were real people. I wished they were part of my boring family’s history. But they were just characters in a tale spun to keep me in line, to show me the correct path to take in life. They were my moral compass.

Like all mamas, mine had her ways that drove me nearly crazy. And like all daughters, I fought every suggestion she gave me. I wanted to stand on my own two feet without her as a crutch. I was afraid if I stayed too close and became too comfortable, I would evaporate. This made for a testy relationship, to say the least. It would take me years before I came to understand that every thought that came out of my head had rolled downhill from something she tried to instill in me. For better or worse.

Daddy was the pastor of the First Episcopal Church of Darien just like Grandpa was before him. How boring was that? We were a regular happy family without any secrets to
speak of. We lived in a big house by the marshes, and beyond that was the ocean. Growing up I never thought much about having the smell of salt in my hair all the time or much less a gator scooting across our backyard, waving his tail side to side. Darien, Georgia, was home.

Mama was everything a pastor’s wife was supposed to be. She even wrote little articles for the newspaper. People liked reading her work because it was like a big soft feather pillow.

I can’t say how many women would ask, “Don’t you want to be just like your mama when you grow up?”

God help me, but that was the last thing I wanted.

We lived in the house that Daddy grew up in. Maw Maw lived with us and had been there since before I was born. I loved Maw Maw the best. I had to be careful not to let Grandma Harbor know this. She would have been heartbroken. Of course everything made her heartbroken since Grandpa died of a heart attack the year I was thirteen. I loved Maw Maw because she was the best ghost-story teller in the world, and she could even read tea leaves. She read them for me all the time.
Iona, you’ll go through a rough patch but you’ll be a fine young woman.
This was a lot more fun than Daddy’s God with His stern face, reminding me of all the trespasses I made. If Daddy had known I questioned God’s existence, he would have thrown a fit, and this man never threw fits. I couldn’t see where Mama believed any better than I did. Something deep inside told me my mama didn’t hold a candle to the Annie Harbor from the past. Every once in a while she’d slip up and start telling me a story from her life, catch herself—at the best part—and stop in midsentence, laughing it off as if she were giving me some important tip before I was ready. I hungered after those things she didn’t want me to learn. Maybe it was part of being a teenager and wishing for a more mysterious life that kept me hounding Mama for the truth. Maybe there were
no secrets in our family, but I had a feeling the truths were ten times better than anything I could cook up myself.

I loved music from an early age. Where this love came from was beyond me. Mama didn’t listen to the radio. Daddy never sang anything but gospel. He was a straitlaced pastor, never breaking the rules. The only time I saw him angry was the day my two-week-old baby brother died. I was four. Grandma Harbor told me she thought he would lose his calling. He was so wild-eyed with grief she worried he might walk a straight line out of Darien and never look back. Instead, he took up the harmonica and played the most mournful songs. By the time Mama came out of the attic where she closed herself off for a week, he had thrown it away and was carrying his Bible again. That was the extent of the musical inclination in our house.

So I, Iona Harbor, became a treasure floating between Mama and Daddy. My parents loved me way more than they should—too much love smothers the daylights out of a girl—and the older I got the more they held on. Mama was worse than Daddy. She watched my every move.

Each girl has defining moments in her life. Mine was a little more defined than most teenagers’. The summer of 1955 started off like any other school break. All the days ran together. It was a Monday morning in late June and already it was hotter than a late August afternoon. I ran my fingers across an imaginary keyboard, eyes closed; music played in my mind, beautiful and sweet, taking me to a place where people applauded my effort. I hummed into the air, keying the magic notes on the old wooden table where my family ate each meal.

“Iona! Are you daydreaming again?”

My musical notes banged to a sudden stop, sour. “I’m thinking, Mama.” True to some degree.

“You think way too much. All those silly daydreams eating
away at time you could be using for better things.” Mama cracked eggs into a cast-iron frying pan.

“I learned so much from Miss Stewart. I know if I had my own piano, I could prove to you how good I am.” I faced Mama eye to eye. At the age of fifteen years, three months, and twenty days, I was as tall as many of the boys my age. Tall like Uncle Charles, Daddy’s brother that died in World War II. Because Daddy had flat feet, he never went. So Uncle Charles became the hero of his family, or so Grandma Harbor believed. That must have been tough for Daddy.

“The only thing in your head is fluff, cotton candy fluff. It will bring you to no good, Iona. You have to trust me on this. I know.” Mama was so pretty and delicate it almost fooled me into listening to her. I would have given anything to have her looks, but I had her father’s height and bone structure. Jees, I hated that she couldn’t just love me without improving my every move. She handed me a basket. “Go gather some apples for a pie tonight while I cook breakfast. That’ll be nice. Don’t you think?” Mama had this little apple tree Daddy planted out back when they first met. It was a June apple tree with apples smaller and sweeter than the fall fruit. Mama said it made her think of home. Somewhere in the mountains. But neither Mama or Maw Maw gave an exact location.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I screamed at the blue sky when I was well out of hearing range. Some girls my age were already pinned and planning their weddings after graduation. The apple tree reminded me of an old twisted woman. The fruit was pinkish red. People were a lot like apples, each shaped similar, but different at the same time, marked with distinguishing traits. One day I would prove to Mama how talented I was. She thought she could plan my whole life. I was leaving Darien for college, where I would study music. She wouldn’t stop me.

Forty-eight

T
hose long summer days I would walk the town that was set up in little squares like a small version of Savannah, located north of us. The hot wind wrapped me up in my thoughts, and I walked and walked. The sea birds would dip in and out of the Altamaha River. I would stop to watch the shrimp boats work their way to the dock with a day’s catch. This was the part I loved about Darien. There was no doubt the place was in my bones. One afternoon the music in my head turned real, spilling through the wind, mingling with the birdcalls. I followed the tune to Mrs. Walters’s house. It was well known for its ghost, who was a woman who killed herself. The house was painted the brightest blue and sat right in the curve of the river. Maw Maw thought it was the tackiest house in Darien and should be bulldozed down. The house was supposed to be empty. The owner, Mrs. Walters, had moved to Atlanta to live with her brother. Through one of the large windows, I saw a bare-chested man playing a baby grand piano. His dark hornrimmed glasses made him handsome in an intelligent sort of
way. He had to be the new music teacher. Darien High School had prided itself on adding music to the school schedule in the coming fall. I, for one, was beside myself. Looking at this man pouring music across the marsh reminded me how far I had to go. I stood there eavesdropping in plain view. He kept playing in his own world, and I so envied that place. Finally I left and headed home.

Mama worked the dough for biscuits at her wooden chopping-block table Daddy built. Her biscuits had to be the best in Georgia.

I washed the potatoes. “Do you want me to peel all of these?”

“I can do it, honey.” Maw Maw’s hands were gnarled with arthritis.

“I’m okay, but thanks.”

“You sit and relax.” When Mama smiled at Maw Maw it was real, not fake like the smile she pasted on her face for church or Grandma Harbor. The two of them had some special silent language that drew them closer together. I couldn’t remember Mama ever being grouchy with Maw Maw like she was with Daddy and me. Mama wasn’t always trying to boss Maw Maw around like she did us.

“Why are we making so much food?” I had five pounds of potatoes.

“We have company coming.”

“Who?” Probably some boring church officer.

“Your father hasn’t seen fit to inform me who his guest might be.” Mama frowned as she cut out biscuits.

Daddy brought guests for supper like people brought home stray animals.

My stomach fluttered for no reason and the air crackled
with unexplained excitement like heat lightning chasing across the ocean sky at night.

“Your mama fusses, but she was just as bad when she was a young girl. I never knew who she might bring home. She loved helping people. After her daddy died not one chair at our table was empty. She spent three years working in a soup kitchen during the Depression. That was a hard place, wasn’t it, Annie?”

Wouldn’t you know it? Mama the perfect teenager.

“I don’t want to talk about that.” Mama gave Maw Maw the eye.

I tried to keep from making a sound, hoping they’d forgotten me.

“I don’t know why. I’d be proud of that work if it was me.” Maw Maw clicked her tongue.

Mama looked at me.

“Did you wear your white gloves, Mama?” I didn’t dare look back.

“Leave the rest of the potatoes and go upstairs and dress. I don’t want shorts at the dinner table tonight.”

I shrugged and left the pile of potatoes.

When Mama thought I was out of hearing, she puffed loud. “You’ve got to be careful of what you say. Iona doesn’t need those old memories to think about. You could slip.”

“I can’t help things went like they went.” Maw Maw’s voice was quiet but stern.

“I live with it every day of my life. I want better for Iona.”

Now there was a big secret wrapped tight in Mama’s warning. I couldn’t imagine it was anything too bad. She ran our family like a well-oiled machine. Daddy always shot me a smile when Mama wasn’t looking, like she wasn’t our boss at all, but I knew neither of us could stand up to her.

*   *   *

Daddy’s car pulled into the drive forty-five minutes later. I was hanging out my bedroom window, fiddling with my transistor radio—a Christmas present designed to make me forget my longed-for piano and lessons. By holding the radio north, I caught snatches of a melody from a station in Savannah. On a clear night I could pick up WQXI in Atlanta. Static rattled from the single speaker and then a whisper of Elvis came through. Daddy emerged from the car followed by … were my eyes fooling me? The music teacher. I switched off the radio and pulled myself back into my bedroom. Thank goodness he hadn’t seen me.

I pulled on my pink sundress with the full skirt and buckled my white strap sandals—the ones Mama insisted were too old for me. Gosh, I was almost sixteen, a woman, but she didn’t see me that way.

The music teacher sat at the table laughing at something Daddy said; even Mama was smiling. The mantel clock struck six, and everyone looked at me poised on the back stairs. Heavy humid air wafted in the windows; little curls escaped my ponytail.

“Iona, we’ve been waiting on you.” Mama raised her eyebrows at my clothes. “Now, this one here only thinks about music, music, music. I never know what to do with her. She’s had some piano lessons and the talent is there, but I want her to concentrate on something practical.”

Daddy cleared his throat as I pulled out my chair wishing I could die on the spot. “Let’s not plan Iona’s life here at the table, Annie.” He winked at me. “You look nice, pumpkin. This is your new music teacher, in case you haven’t figured that out by now.” He chuckled.

I dearly loved my daddy best of all, but sometimes I could have shoved a shoe in his mouth. Pumpkin? Did I look like a pumpkin?

“This is Mr. Mackey.” Mama’s tone was short, hurt.

The music teacher held out his hand. “Call me JT. My father is called Mr. Mackey. So you love music?” His voice reminded me of the notes running in my head.

“Yes sir.”

He made a little frown. “What kind of music do you like?”

I was expected to say gospel. “I love music that punches me right in the stomach, that makes me want to move. Sometimes the song is rock, sometimes country. I even love some of the old hymns at church.” I added the last part for Daddy.

Mama passed the mashed potatoes to Mr. Mackey. “See, I told you she can’t think straight when it comes to music. Songs don’t punch you in the stomach, Iona.” But I saw the truth in Mama’s expression. She knew exactly what I was describing.

“I know what your daughter is talking about. I love all kinds of music.” Mr. Mackey gave Mama a wide smile. “But some songs are special. The melody takes you away from where you are and what you’re doing.”