Her Own Place (17 page)

Her son assured her she looked fine. “Now that you've started spending time with money people, it's caused you to put your body in a different gear,” he said.

For the third time Taylor had to reassure his mama there was no need for her to have fixed a lunch to eat on the plane, even if she didn't like what they served. “It's a short flight, Mama,” he said.

“It's my first plane trip,” she reminded Taylor yet again. Finally she made her son leave. The waiting was hard for Mae Lee. She watched the passengers and held on to her bags. An elderly man wearing a gold chain and a shirt opened up almost down to his waist moved into a seat across from her. A woman with puffy ankles held tightly to the man's arm, her face reflecting the pain of feet squeezed into brightly colored high-heeled shoes.

When the plane was airborne it leaned to the side and curved to the south. Mae Lee leaned into the window, “Whoa, driver,” she said to herself, “straighten this baby up, it's going to flip over.”

Soon they were above the clouds. She gazed down on the thick white blanket. It was like a bed of cotton, soft, ginned, seedless cotton. The very thought seemed to relax her. There was an empty seat between Mae Lee and a woman seated next to the aisle. After a little while two stewardesses came along the aisle pushing a cart loaded with drink bottles and cans. “What will you have to drink?” one of the stewardesses asked the woman. “Diet Pepsi,” the woman replied. Then she repeated the question to Mae Lee.

“How much does it cost?” Mae Lee asked.

“There's no charge,” the stewardess explained.

“I'll have a Diet Pepsi, too,” she said.

She watched the woman across from her pull down a little shelf from the back of the facing seat, and she did the same. The stewardess handed her a drink in a plastic cup, and two packages of shelled peanuts.

“This is my first plane trip,” Mae Lee explained to the
woman. “My children are sending me to Atlanta to see the Braves.”

“That's nice,” the woman said.

“If it rains tomorrow I don't know what I'll do,” Mae Lee said.

“In that case you could watch them over television, couldn't you?” the woman asked.

“Not if it's raining. If it's raining they won't be on television either.”

“Really?” the woman said. “What a shame!” How dumb can you be? Mae Lee thought to herself.

When the plane touched down in Atlanta after less than an hour in the air, the peanuts Mae Lee had eaten had turned her stomach into a full-service gas pump. Once inside the airport, she made a dash for the rest rooms. She'd barely gotten her girdle down and was preparing to sit down when the toilet flushed. She jumped with a start.

She timidly turned around—and again the toilet flushed— swoosh.

Mae Lee pointed a shaking finger at the toilet. “There you up and go again with your little fast self.”

Afterward when she attempted to wash her hands she couldn't find a way to turn the water faucet on. “This is crazy,” she groaned aloud.

“Did you say something, hon?” It was the woman who sat on the same row with her on the plane. She was leaning toward the mirror, spreading on layers of bright red lipstick.

“Oh, it's you again,” Mae Lee brightened. “I'm trying to get water. How do you turn this thing on?”

“Just hold your hands under the faucet.”

The water gushed out. “Well, I'll be,” Mae Lee said. Now she's probably wondering how dumb can I be, she thought.

Mae Lee couldn't believe the prices on the dinner menu at the hotel. The chicken must have gold in it to cost so much, she thought.

She looked up at the young black waiter pouring her iced tea. “Who are your people? Is your mama living?” she asked.

Taken by surprise, the young man grinned and said only, “Yes, ma'am.”

Later Mae Lee accepted another serving of tea from the waiter and slowly nibbled on her dinner. The serving was so small she could have finished it in a few bites. By eating slowly she hoped to feel at least a little bit full. At least the iced tea would help. She would drink them dry; it was the only way she could handle having paid so much for it.

She examined a thinly sliced strawberry fanned out beside her slice of cheesecake, trying to envision the edge of a knife sharp enough to cut slices so thin and even. She didn't want to leave it on her plate, but she had done so because she'd glanced at the ladies at the table next to her, and even though they'd finished eating, half of all that high-priced food was still left on their plates. So she'd cut her strawberry into even smaller pieces and scattered it around her empty plate. Leaving that piece of good fruit to be thrown away, however, had fretted her.

Left along with the strawberries was a small, bite-size piece of cheesecake. A waiter reached for her plate. “Hold on there,
young man,” she bellowed out. “There is still something to eat on my plate.” The waiter apologized and backed away.

Mae Lee's children had given her extra money so that she could enjoy the luxury of having breakfast delivered to her room. She checked the items off for her first breakfast on her menu, then changed her mind. She didn't want the cleaning maid to come into her room before she had a chance to tidy it up a bit, much less some stranger knocking on her door with a breakfast tray. So she dressed and went down to the dining room.

“You are such a pretty little thing,” she said to the young woman at the front desk. “You look like my daughters. They put me up here to go see the Braves play. How do I find a taxi to get over there?”

The woman pointed to a man at a desk. “The concierge will help you. God bless,” she smiled.

The man at the desk, who wore a perfectly pressed dark suit and white shirt, moved and spoke with the airs of a funeral director. His skin was so pale it seemed the sun held something against it and had refused to shine upon it. He pulled his lips into a fake smile, taut lips stretched and tacked into the corners of his mouth.

Mae Lee was too anxious to get to the Braves game to sit down and wait. She didn't need the doorman to tell her taxis were there. She could see them, all lined up right outside the lobby door.

Outside a well-dressed, gray-haired woman waited for somebody.

“I like your beads,” Mae Lee said.

The woman smiled. “My granddaughter made them. She's only twelve, but can you believe she's already set up her own little mail order company. My husband is her business manager.” She grinned mischievously. “He's a retired architect and it's great getting him out of the house a few days a week. If you give me your address I'll mail you a string of those beads.”

Mae Lee drew in a deep breath and eyed the pretty beads. “How much is all this going to cost me?” she asked.

The woman threw her head back and laughed. A lot of metal showed. “Oh, it'll be a little gift from me. Anything to give them an order to fill.” A handsome, white-haired man headed toward them. The woman dropped her voice. “Believe me, they don't cost that much to make.”

Mae Lee wrote her name and address on a small piece of paper. She looked at the woman. “Do you have daughters?”

“No, four sons.”

Mae Lee thanked the woman and got into one of the waiting cabs. She waved good-bye as the cab pulled away from the hotel. Mae Lee peered through the taxicab window. In a run-down section of town, a stalled car brought traffic to a standstill on the narrow one-way street. Even with houses, the people seemed to live on the streets. On a front porch in plain view of passersby a hungry child with scads of pink bows on its head pulled away on the uncovered breast of a sleeping woman. A group of small children huddled close by, some possibly waiting their turn. The woman, seated on a worn velvet sofa, wore a jeans skirt and a soiled pink slip, but her hair was fashionably cut and curled. Her brown skin,
perfect nose, and cheekbones were flawless. Her beautiful face offered, even in sleep, a portrait of hopelessness and despair. Mae Lee studied the old tattered sofa. It made her think about her overstuffed chair that was getting pretty frayed. She needed to have it reupholstered, or get a new one someday.

“The homeless are everywhere,” Mae Lee said to the driver. “I don't know why I always seemed to think it was only in the North.”

The driver turned his radio down. “It's a problem in all big cities.”

On a doorstep a young girl perched, raking long bright red nails that looked like falcon claws through her long hair. It pulled up a mental image of what Mae Lee had always imagined was the way the mad, dethroned King Nebuchadnezzar might have clawed through his seven-year growth of uncut, snarled, and matted hair.

A young man with beady, racing eyes knocked on the cab window. “Can you let me have fifty cents?” he begged.

The cab driver looked at Mae Lee through his rearview mirror and shook his head, no. Mae Lee handed the young beggar a dollar bill.

In a parked car, a man openly exposed himself. She didn't think people did that anymore. It made her sick to her stomach, but she looked anyway.

Finally the traffic started to move. As they drove on, Mae Lee's eyes searched the streets and park benches. She shook her head, not in disgust, but out of pity. They moved onto the throughway, and Mae Lee read the road signs that pointed to the airport. The cab driver rounded a curve and there on
the left was the Braves' stadium. Mae Lee tilted her head for a better view.

“It's really big,” Mae Lee said, peering out the window at the stadium. “How much is my fare?”

The cab driver pointed to the meter. “Nine dollars and eighty-five cents,” he said.

Mae Lee paid the exact amount, counting out the change to the nickel. She leaned forward to the front seat and handed the driver the money. He took it, hesitated, and cleared his throat. Mae Lee realized she'd forgotten his tip. Taylor had told her to be generous with cab drivers, because their tips were their wages. She gave him two dollars.

She moved with the surging noisy crowd to the inside of the stadium and stood gaping at the size of it. Except on television, she'd never seen anything like it. She stopped dead in her tracks with a tight hold on her ticket stub. She shook her head. “How in the Lord's name will I ever find where I'm supposed to park my body?”

A passerby brushed against her. “Mind your manners, young fellow,” she called out. She reached to hold on to her hat. From what she could see, she was the only person there wearing a hat.

When she finally found her seat, she was exhausted. But her tiredness left when the game started.

“Come on, come on,” she called out to the leadoff batter for the Braves. “You can do it, you can do it. Put a little more power to it!”

“Aw, damn,” she screamed later when a Braves outfielder let a fly ball get right through his glove. Heads turned, and
she felt uncomfortable. She had been around her son, Taylor, too long. But she stiffened her back and bristled, “Well, the dummy dropped it, didn't he?”

The Braves scored, and were back in her favor. “Go on, go on,” she shouted. “All the way to the World Series, on to the World Series, boys!” she shouted.

The Braves won the baseball game and Mae Lee felt sure that she'd helped them win it.

On the plane trip home she was more relaxed. When she boarded the U.S. Air flight there was a pretty woman standing in the cockpit doorway. She smiled at Mae Lee.

Mae Lee paused. “Are you going to help fly this big thing?”

The woman nodded, “Yes, I've been doing it for fifteen years.”

“I'm proud of you honey, real proud!”

She leaned back in her seat. The takeoff was smooth. She was glad to be heading home. There had been too many days that all seemed like Sunday.

Taylor, Bettina, and their children and Ellabelle were waiting for her when she got off the plane. The girls held a big cardboard sign, “WELCOME HOME MAE LEE.” She smothered her two granddaughters, Tina and Lena, with hugs, kisses, and gifts. “When did you start to call your grandma by her first name?” she teased. She kissed them good-bye and left to go home with Ellabelle.

Mae Lee had offered no explanation for the grease stains on the presents and postcards she'd brought back. She could not bring herself to tell what being so cheap had wrought.
Jelly and butter had oozed from the breakfast croissants and muffins she'd wrapped in Kleenex and stashed in the bag to eat for her lunch. If they didn't want them, they could give them back.

Ellabelle didn't wait until they reached home to tell Mae Lee the sad news that Church Granger had died. “He was on a fishing trip and had a heart attack.” Ellabelle snapped her fingers. “Just like that he was gone. Dead, at the age of sixty-three. I saved the death notice from the newspaper for you.”

Mae Lee remembered the day she bought the land from Church Granger, but most importantly, the time Taylor was sick. She would never forget his kindness. “I'm so sorry,” she said. “Church Granger was a fine man.” She wondered whether Liddie came back for the funeral.

She closed her eyes and grew silent. She was shaken and saddened by the news.

Several weeks later Mae Lee was in bed at 9:00 p.m. when her phone rang. It was Ellabelle.

“I don't know whether you've got your TV on, but there's a tornado warning for Tally County—up until 10:00 p.m.”

Mae Lee hadn't heard. She turned her bedside lamp on. “I wasn't feeling too well this evening, so I went to bed early. I'm glad you were watching,” she said.

“I wasn't,” Ellabelle answered. “I was so tired this evening I had put my weary bones in bed when Clairene called with the news about the tornado. She said she'd already taken her nightgown off and put on an old pair of her husband's pants to sleep in, just in case she'd have to rush out in the storm. You never know what will happen. You get up and slip on a pair of panties, Mae Lee. That's what I'm fixing to do. I've laid out a brand spanking new pair. In case that tornado strikes, I'm not gonna be stuck up in some tree hanging out with my bare bottom showing.”