Her Own Place (14 page)

It wasn't really what Bethel Petty had said about the waves that bothered Mae Lee, however. It was what she'd said about Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. Years ago Mae Lee's daddy had told her to try and make her way to the Atlantic Ocean if she could, and when she did to pick up anything she could that might have washed ashore, because just by chance she might pick up some trace of heritage—her roots.

Her daddy had said it was his guess that no one could accurately measure the length of time it might take something to travel thousands of miles across the ocean from Africa, swishing and churning around in the bowels of the mighty Atlantic Ocean, before it reached South Carolina, or how many journeys it would have to make before it was washed ashore.

Mae Lee knew by heart the story of how her great-greatgrandfather, standing on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Africa, had held onto his father's leg. His father had grabbed hold of his son's hand and had refused to let it go. So they sailed and survived the Atlantic together, and landed on South Carolina's shores.

And so Mae Lee had stood there down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, less than one hundred and fifty miles from where she was born and raised, gazing at the ocean. Her eyes searched the sandy shores, for what she did not know. She felt if she saw what she was looking for, then she would know. She saw hundreds of seashells, but she didn't collect a single one. One day, she vowed, she would return to continue her search. She would never abandon it.

And then the Professor riddled her hopes with tiny holes. “Are you sure of the likelihood of something leaving the shores of Africa ending up on the shores of South Carolina?” she'd asked. “In my thinking it would probably end up somewhere else, because of the flow of the ocean current.”

Mae Lee looked long and hard at Bethel Petty before she said anything. I'll just use a little guilt salve here, she thought to herself. She felt put down. She had just assumed that anything leaving Africa would somehow be washed ashore in South Carolina. She could feel the anger within her rise. This is why I tried to tell my son I didn't want to be down here, she thought.

Finally, she said, “All I know and do understand is that there was something the undercurrent did carry and cause to surface here, and that was the slave ship that brought my forefathers. It sailed the Atlantic and reached the shores of South Carolina.”

She couldn't believe afterward that she had then turned right around and blurted out that her Indian heritage was also difficult to trace. “What tribe?” Bethel Petty asked. Come to think of it, she couldn't remember ever hearing anyone say.
All her life it had simply been said there was Indian blood in the family. Most people had accepted that. But she truly didn't know what tribe.

When she was pushed against a wall, Mae Lee always thought of water. She thought of the largest body of water she'd seen before viewing the Atlantic Ocean. “Catawba,” she said. The Catawba River was part of her. She remembered how, so often, when the warm nights heated the water, steam vapors would rise like smoke in the early morning. Then the river looked like it was on fire.

Before she could finish, the Professor had seized upon it and finished her sentence. “Oh, yes,” she chimed in, “the Catawba. I read recently that those native Americans still get clay from the banks of the Catawba River to make their pottery.”

Mae Lee started to fan. Sidestepping the truth was hot work. Really hot. In the future, she told herself, she would make her words few. If you said one single word to them, they'd turn it into a thousand. A group of white women was very much like a country well. A bucket goes down empty, comes up full. Privately, Mae Lee made the decision that she would still look to the mighty Atlantic to wash up some clues to help her trace her heritage.

It pleased her that later in the day, when the ladies gathered for cake someone sent in for them, Bethel Petty pulled out her pictures she'd shown the day before and made the ladies crow over them all over again. Bethel Petty had actually forgotten having done something!

Ellabelle bristled. “I don't think I could stand her. I believe I'd have to lay something on that white woman.”

Mae Lee drew a long breath. “At first I thought I couldn't stand her, either. But I work side by side with Bethel Petty down at the hospital, and it's kind of hard not to like an honest person. I've accepted an invitation for a dinner party next month and Bethel Petty will be there.”

Ellabelle looked at Mae Lee. “Now you are going to have to make up some excuse why you are not going to that dinner party or whatever it is. If I were you, I wouldn't set foot in any one of their houses.”

Mae Lee studied the scars on her fingers. She remembered how every single one got there. A couple of scars were from the sharp, pointed edges of open cotton bolls that had ripped her skin open, the others were from welding burns when she worked at the munitions plant.

She looked Ellabelle squarely in the eyes. “I'm going,” she said firmly, “and I am going to hold my china teacup with my pinkie finger sticking out.” She rocked her body from side to side. “I would even go if Bethel Petty was giving the party. They're not going to keep me away.”

Ellabelle anchored an elbow on her thigh, cupped her chin on the curved finger of a half-opened fist, and gazed into the distance. “I've said all I have to say about your coworker, Miss Bethel.”

Mae Lee sighed heavily, and rocked some more. “Bethel Petty has some good qualities, in spite of her mouth, but sometimes with her know-it-all self, she's really insensitive. When I eyed her and told her about the Atlantic undercurrent flow not preventing the slaves from Africa ending up in South Carolina, she just looked at me. ‘Mae Lee,' she said, ‘I am sick and
tired of people draping a mantle of guilt around my shoulders for something I didn't do. I had nothing to do with bringing the slaves from Africa to South Carolina.'”

“I couldn't honestly let her get away with it, Ellabelle, I had to say, ‘I know you didn't, Bethel, but I bet your family paid your cook four dollars a week and totes.'”

“What did she say to that?” Ellabelle asked.

“She didn't say anything at first. Then she said, ‘We probably did, Mae Lee. That was the going rate. We just didn't understand. Nobody did. We were being unfair, and we didn't even realize that we were. I hope we've learned better, most of us.'”

Mae Lee was silent. “They are good people,” she said finally. “They do their best. I can say one thing about Bethel, she is plenty smart.”

“Humph,” Ellabelle grunted.

Perhaps the single thing that bothered Mae Lee most about the ladies in the hospital group was their notion that she knew every black person in the county. She didn't. True, she did know who most of the black patients' people were, but usually the patients themselves were not personal acquaintances.

Bethel Petty must have asked her a dozen times if she knew Sally Jean and Tirzah Davis. She did know
them
, all right, and if she didn't, she would have come to know them anyway. At least one of their children wound up in the hospital every single week. There were nine of those children, but neither parent had a job, so it seemed they should have had time to take better care of them than they obviously did.

The last time one of the children entered the hospital, it was said that when the doctor asked the poor little fellow how often he had the stomachache he was complaining about, the little boy said, “Every time I get hungry, and that's a lot of the times.”

When the group invited her to go with them to deliver the food package they had collected, Mae Lee's heart sank. The day the food was to be delivered, Mae Lee paid an early morning visit to the Davis house to help get the place halfway cleaned up. It was midafternoon when she left. She was so weary that every step she made was a painful effort, and even though she was nearly home she still accepted a ride from Ellabelle when she stopped her car.

“You look like something the cat dragged home,” Ellabelle said.

Mae Lee closed the car door. “I am so-oo tired.”

“I didn't know you went down to the hospital on Wednesdays. I could have picked you up, if you weren't too proud to let somebody know your comings and goings,” Ellabelle fussed. She stopped at Mae Lee's house but Mae Lee didn't get out right away.

“I'm just too tired to move for a minute yet. I didn't go to the hospital today. I went over to Sally Jean's early this morning,” she said.

“Oh, is she sick again?”

“No, she's all right now. Remember I told you they brought her into the emergency room a few weeks ago for chest pains?”

Ellabelle laughed. “Yes, I remember, it was the night she ate all those roasted peanuts and cooked cabbage and ended up
with terrible indigestion. But then, if she hadn't been there it would have been one of her kids. I think they take turns getting hurt so the family won't miss a week at the hospital.” Ellabelle frowned. “If no one was sick why did you go?”

“Well, some of the women down at the hospital got together some goodies for the kids and were taking them over today. So I went over early.”

Ellabelle shook her head. “I kind of believe I'd have been ashamed to be there when the women from the hospital visited. You know for yourself Sally Jean's not much of a housekeeper.”

Mae Lee opened the car door and got out. Before she closed the door she told Ellabelle, “Her house was spic-and-span when the hospital volunteers got there.”

“Well, it's the first time it's ever been,” Ellabelle said acidly, and drove off.

Bethel Petty wasn't intentionally rude or dismissive, but she had a way of saying things that could be annoying, and sometimes even upsetting, as in her remark about the navy blue jacket. Mae Lee wore the jacket on a damp morning when it was a bit too cool to go out without one. It looked quite nice over the pearl gray blouse she'd bought at a yard sale the Saturday before.

Bethel Petty was hard at work on the volunteer schedule when Mae Lee walked in. She spoke but didn't look up. “Thanks for totaling up the hours for the volunteer report, Mae Lee,” she said. “It's sad that the more the workload for the doctors and nurses increases, the more the hours of the volunteer group decrease. I see that Deborah Ross is having out-of-town company next Tuesday. Do you think you could switch your day next week with her?” She looked up, and before Mae Lee could answer, the woman started, got up, moved
forward, and lightly ran her fingers along the jacket sleeve. “Um, nice,” she said, adding, “good Ultrasuede. Where did you get it?”

Mae Lee, obviously pleased, answered, “One of my daughters sent it to me.”

“Which one?”

“Nellie Grace.”

Bethel raised her eyebrows, “Oh, the one who drives the new BMW. My Lord, Mae Lee, what in the world does your daughter
do
to earn that kind of money?”

Mae Lee read doubts in Bethel Petty's eyes, and simply answered, “Nellie Grace was recently divorced, and in her words, won a very generous settlement and she has a very good job.” She thought to herself, “She's a computer specialist, but you will not get me out on a limb trying to go into details, Professor.” Then she began to think about it. She thought of the time she'd visited her daughter in New York, thought of all the nice things in her apartment. She started mentally adding up all the things her daughter had bought that Bethel Petty didn't even know about.

It was troubling to have someone question the conduct of her child. It worked on her nerves.

The workday seemed to stretch on forever, but she doggedly pressed on to the end. That evening she was getting ready to start cooking supper when Ellabelle called to say she was bringing over a freshly baked beef casserole. It was one of Mae Lee's favorite dishes, but this time she only picked at the food.

“Something is bothering you, Mae Lee,” Ellabelle said. “You don't look sick, but when you can't eat, something is bad wrong. What happened today to set you off?”

Mae Lee frowned. “I guess it was the way Bethel Petty talked about Nellie Grace's car and the clothes she sent me. It was kind of like nobody could afford such fine things from just the money they are paid on their jobs. She wanted to know ‘what in the world' my child did for a living.”

Ellabelle pulled both feet upon the chair rung. Mercifully it didn't break. She slapped her thighs hard and clenched her fists. “Damn that woman! I've worked around Them long enough to know how They think. As soon as They see us come up in life and get a little something, if we are not in sports or entertainers the first thing they think is that we are doing something crooked.”

Mae Lee seemed lost in thought. She finally broke the silence. “Times are changing for our children. Slowly, but surely. And we are changing with it. A lot of us are getting our feet on solid ground.”

“The women down at the hospital need to know that,” Ellabelle put in. “That's what I'm thinking. They need to know that.”

Mae Lee turned in her chair to face Ellabelle. “Bethel Petty needs to know that, and yes, I do need to tell her, and I will.”

Ellabelle looked at Mae Lee. “I sure wouldn't go out of my way to do it, though. Like I said before, I'd be hard-pressed to go to an old party that They invited me to.”

It was all very well for Ellabelle to say that Mae Lee shouldn't go to the party. Ellabelle didn't work with the ladies at the
hospital three and four days a week, and didn't sit around with them talking about families and children and people and events in town. These people had become her
friends,
some of them. Certainly they occasionally said things that they didn't realize could be awkward and embarrassing to her. But it wasn't because they meant them that way. They didn't always understand. And as far as she was concerned, the job was to make them understand, help them to understand. If she were to allow little things, unintentional things, like that to keep her from being part of the group, when everybody concerned, including Bethel Petty,
wanted
her to be part of it, then they would never, ever learn to understand. She, Mae Lee Barnes, was tired of other people telling her what she should and should not do. She wanted to go to the party, and they wanted her to come to the party. They really did. So she was going to go to the party.