Her Own Place (13 page)

Mae Lee drew a deep breath. Whew!

Taylor leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “I wonder, when things come out in the newspaper about your volunteer work at the hospital, if they'll mention your pies? It's kind of nice when you read in the paper about the fine jobs the ladies are doing—people helping people, PHP.”

His mama showed interest. “I guess it is nice to be able to read about yourself in the newspaper when you haven't killed somebody or else died. I'm right certain I'll be on some page in the newspaper even if the death notice page is full. Elisha Frazier always makes sure everybody he handles gets a notice run in the paper.” She sighed. “I guess they'll get me. My body that is. I've been keeping up a burial policy with the Frazier Funeral Home for mighty near forty years.”

In many ways Mae Lee could agree with Taylor about the hospital, but her favorite place was really at home. It was a good feeling to get up and not be forced to go to work on a job. Some of her friends still had to do that. She would never
forget the rotating shifts at the munitions plant. The memory of having to get up in the middle of the night and go to work still tore into her sleep.

She liked being home, liked having company. That's why she still had an insurance man come to collect on her burial premium. At least the young man was someone she could safely invite inside. She knew him. Mostly she loved getting out her checkbook, writing, with no embarrassment, sixty-five-cent checks. “My children,” she would say, soothing the back of her hand, “always see to it that I keep a little something in my checking account.”

Taylor's little speech stuck in her craw, however. It nibbled on her conscience. So many people couldn't help themselves; so many needed help. Suppose, just suppose, that was why she had been given her health and strength. If she didn't use it rightly, maybe it might be taken away. It was a troubling thought.

Taylor had watched his mama's eyes narrow into that searing “I know what you got on your tongue and you'd better not let it slide off” look, and had changed his course in his little prepared speech. Once when he had chided his nonworking wife and her mama about never volunteering for anything unless there was food there, he had gotten into trouble. His mother-in-law had hotly retorted that the reason that she and a lot of others were not down at the Red Cross and places like that was because most of them were already doing volunteer work—taking care of their grandchildren.

Mae Lee watched her son leave, his body straight and tall. There was not the slightest trace of a limp. She said aloud,
“Someone, probably some mother, perhaps with a more busy life than mine, still made the time to reach out and help him when he was in the hospital. Someone helped my Taylor.”

When Taylor got to his car, he turned, “Oh, by the way, I forgot to ask if you'll keep the kids for us next Saturday and Sunday, Mama?”

She scratched her head, “I'm not sure I'll be free that weekend, honey—but I guess I could always cancel.” She waved him on. “And you didn't forget, either. It just took you that long to get up enough nerve to ask.”

Mae Lee laughed aloud when her son Taylor drove away. Among her friends, she believed she was the only grandmother over sixty-two years old who wasn't a taken-for-granted, built-in baby-sitter.

When Taylor came to pick up his children Sunday afternoon he didn't ask if she'd gone down to the hospital. Instead he invited his mama to watch the Atlanta Braves play on television with him. “If I don't watch it here,” he'd said, “I'll miss it by the time I get home.”

“Oh, damn, damn,” Taylor yelled when a runner trying to steal a base was tagged out.

“Don't cuss, Taylor,” his mama said.

“The Braves make me cuss,” Taylor said. “If there's a new way to lose, they'll always come up with it. They're two runs back, and they got Simmons at the plate with Murphy following, and nobody out, so they send the runner and he gets thrown out. Makes no sense.”

Mae Lee watched as the next batter, a big, heavy-shouldered
man, hit the ball out of the park, and the crowd roared. “See what I mean?” Taylor said. “If they hadn't sent that runner, the game would be all even now!”

The next batter, a tall, thin man, also hit a home run, which sent Taylor leaping to his feet. “They're tied up! Hot damn!”

“Taylor! What did I tell you about cussing?” But Mae Lee was interested now. She settled in to watch the game, which the Braves ended up winning. The next afternoon she turned on the television and watched the game on her own.

A few days later Mae Lee made up her mind to check into volunteering at the hospital. She decided to make a phone call instead of going there. She could be much braver on the phone. She held on until she was transferred to the proper office. Secretly she hoped they wouldn't need anyone. Then she could tell her son that she had tried.

The woman she spoke with sounded pleased that she wanted to help. “We always need volunteers,” she said. When she learned who Mae Lee was, she sounded genuinely pleased that she would come. “I remember your mama so well. She was a fine woman. When can you start, Mrs. Barnes? I am so anxious to meet you.”

The next morning Mae Lee walked into the lobby and slowly approached the information desk. It became clear she had been expected. Within a few minutes, women in pink jackets surrounded her. She could see why they were sometimes called “Pink Ladies.” They seem friendly enough, she thought, but then, as Taylor had said, “They are people helping people.”

Mae Lee studied the group, trim and alert women who
no doubt had grapefruit, toast, and coffee for breakfast, and nibbled on thin lettuce sandwiches for lunch. The blond and auburn-haired women were very much like her—badly in need of a dye touch-up job. Most of the women were about her age, she guessed, but then, with white women it was hard to tell. At least it was for her.

Hearing them talk, Mae Lee decided that most of them had someone working in their homes. Women with rings like they had on their fingers don't clean houses. Bethel Petty, a tall, striking woman with a face and body that seemed too young for her soft white hair, showed Mae Lee around and explained some of the things the volunteers did. They delivered flowers, mail, and newspapers to the patients' rooms, filled bedside water pitchers, and assisted in delivering meals.

Mae Lee couldn't help thinking how strange it was that so many women living so near her in the same little town could be such total strangers to her. Despite the fact that the town was now fully “integrated,” blacks and whites still lived in different circles socially. And religiously; during the weekdays there was mixing and blending, but come Sunday morning the green light changed to a red light that held its steady signal until the worship hours ended. It was all a matter of custom, a holdover from a time when there wasn't even a thought on the part of either race, white or black, of invading the territory of the other. Today, except for an occasional rare visit, blacks still attended black churches, and whites, white churches. The old saying “Birds of a feather flock together” was still true.

Taylor had been so right. Volunteers were very much needed at the hospital. One day when they were short of volunteers, there was a school bus accident in which a number of children
were injured. That day Mae Lee and Bethel Petty took turns escorting patients to and from X ray and answering the ringing phones. They didn't even get a coffee break. It was almost time for dinner before some patients received their midafternoon juice.

After a few weeks, it surprised Mae Lee that in spite of the long hours she sometimes spent at the hospital she still had so much free time on hand. She'd signed up to work two days a week, but soon put in to be called for additional days if they were short of help.

She was starting to enjoy working with the rotating group there. They may not have had any thoughts about her side of town, but Mae Lee certainly thought about theirs, and the weddings, garden parties, and cucumber sandwiches that made the Rising Ridge Chronicle's society page.

She was intensely curious about the breakup of the marriage of a man, Stroud Collier. So was everyone else. Everyone wondered why the son of the wealthiest family in town had married the pretty daughter of the second wealthiest, and then got their marriage annulled. Honeymoon one night, marriage ended the next. It did seem strange that someone could love a person enough to marry, and then fall out of love so quickly. There were women in Mae Lee's little section of town who worked in the homes of both families, and who had quickly enough come up with an answer. “Stroud Collier,” they said, “had bought a pig in a poke. It was as simple as that.” Mary-love Redding may have been as pretty as any movie star, but in bed looks don't mean nothing to a man.

The women at the hospital were also talking about Stroud
Collier. Mae Lee didn't turn from untying newspapers, but she listened with open ears. One of the women said, “I heard from a very reliable source that it was the groom, not the bride, who ended the marriage. And, no one, except the two of them, knows the reason, not even their parents.” The women from “down where the dirt road begins” probably hadn't been too far off, Mae Lee decided. Money sure can't fix everything, she thought.

“He probably found out something he didn't know,” someone else said. “Men don't like some surprises.”

You know how you women are, Mae Lee wanted to say. You feel so pressed upon to tell the man you love everything, and when you get a ring on your finger you bare your pitiful little souls. Even if he's your husband, all a man needs to know is what he already knows. And sometimes that's too much.

The one named Melanie Findley glanced at her watch. “I've got to run. I have to deliver supplies to the emergency room,” she said.

The other white ladies talked on. “Well, at any rate, Stroud Collier didn't like what he found. Maybe he didn't find her to be a real person. I believe he always liked things pure and real.”

Mae Lee couldn't hold her thoughts any longer. She broke the silence. “So real,” she said, “that he never thought about himself. From all I hear, Stroud Collier was no saint. And if I knew it, so did everyone else. If his new bride hadn't opened up her little foolish heart on their wedding night they'd probably still be married, with a baby on the way.” She heaved a sigh. “Why can't women learn that when it comes to marriage
and sex, men are blind? Poor things, they only know to eat what they are fed.”

The ladies were silent for a moment. Have I shocked them? Mae Lee wondered. Well, it was true, even so—not that she had any real right to tell other women how to keep a man. Her own marriage didn't even last ten years.

“My husband knew everything about me, because I told him,” a small blond volunteer put in. And Mae Lee thought to herself, yes, and that's why, like me, you're a grass widow today. At least my husband didn't carry with him the knowledge of my entire life.

“Maybe Mae Lee is right about not telling everything,” Fran Bratton giggled. “I have a friend whose husband worships the ground she walks on. She tells him nothing about anything. But from the moment she met him, whenever she is in his presence she locks her big, wide-set, crystal-clear, china-blue eyes into a ‘you-are-so-wonderful' gaze. I'm not commenting on the look she gives when he is out of sight. Her poor dear husband is so wonderfully gullible.”

“I guess we could learn a thing or two from her,” Bethel Petty said. The ladies broke into laughter.

Mae Lee could see that the ladies made no attempt to conceal their delight over the breakup of Stroud Collier's marriage. She couldn't help but think it was because it put Stroud Collier's card back into the deck again, giving their own daughters yet another chance.

She came to decide that her work down at the hospital pleased Ellabelle even more than it did her children. On the
days she worked, Ellabelle would be waiting for her return, often with a covered dish of something she'd baked or cooked.

On one of the days when Mae Lee was especially tired, Ellabelle said, “I want to know about everything that went on down there today, every single word they said.”

“If you want to know what goes on down at the hospital so badly, then you ought to volunteer, Ellabelle. It would do you good,” she'd snapped.

Ellabelle looked hurt at her friend's cutting words. “I know they need help down there,” she said quietly, “but I've got to get my smile fixed first. It costs something to sit in a dentist's chair these days.” For a few days, Ellabelle didn't visit her. Mae Lee was concerned and called. Ellabelle didn't offer any reason for not visiting. She simply said, “I'll see you sometime.” Mae Lee forced herself not to question her friend. When Ellabelle did show up again, she claimed she couldn't stay, just needed to borrow a little money. “Twenty-five dollars if you have it,” she'd said.

Mae Lee searched in her purse. “Twenty is all I have on me.”

Ellabelle grinned. “Just checking to see if you're still my friend. I don't need any money. I just got my check yesterday.” She settled in a comfortable chair. “So tell me what's new.” Things were back to normal, and the gossip pot set to boil again.

“The news is, I'm going to stop telling them anything. I'm going to seal my lips. Especially when Bethel Petty is around. The one I call ‘the Professor.' You know who I mean?”

Ellabelle nodded.

“She bothers me. Remember the time a group of us went
down to Myrtle Beach in your son's van? Well, I was telling them how I loved listening to the waves come in and splash up on the sandy beach. I told them how I made your son stay on into the night, just so I could listen to the roar of the waves one after another, like they were timing themselves. And of course the Professor had to up and say—‘Oh these waves are nothing. You should hear them in California, where they're much bigger. You see, the wind blows from west to east, and the waves out there have traveled all the way across the Pacific Ocean.'”