Mercy Me (2 page)

“I'm way too busy to notice anybody comes in that place.”

Busy, my eye! All her life, Beatrice had been shy. At a party, you might as well have pasted her on the wall and called her “Miss Wallflower.” Beatrice was not at ease in her own skin, and there was no reason for that. Even at her age, she still had eye appeal, and if she would put her mind to it, I knew she could be a knockout. I racked my brain trying to think of something that would improve her appearance.

“Beatrice, why don't you color your hair? Get yourself a bottle of hair dye and get rid of that faded look you got now. You don't need to worry about it being a sin to put the color back the way God made you in the first place.”

“We better hang, Esmeralda, or I won't be able to pay the bill. But wait, now—you were going to tell me the name of that music director.”

“His name? It's Boris Krantz, and that's another thing them women at church can't abide. Nobody around here has got a name like that, and you know if Clara can't climb down your family tree to the bare roots, you don't get no clean bill of health. He's a right nice-looking boy, and if he gets to stay here long enough, chances are he'll marry one of our girls. I say new blood is a good thing. All this inbreeding such as we have got here in Live Oaks is not good for the community. Now you hang up the phone and go cook yourself some red meat.”

She hung up, and I went in the kitchen to fry some potatoes. I thought that for somebody with mile-high medical bills, she sure ought to hold down on long-distance calls. Long distance is many a woman's fast track to the poorhouse.

I told myself I'd try to remember to call her the next time. I wondered if she'd take me up on dyeing her hair.

2

I had a lot to do the following week. Elijah came and grubbed up the garden. I tell you, that old mule of his looked like she wouldn't last long, but, of course, Maude had always looked thataway. Coming down the street, she would lean to one side and the wagon would lean to the other. They creaked along at a snail's pace, and Elijah just sat there letting Maude take the lead. If truth be told, I thought Elijah might not outlast Maude. Sometimes he was so stove up he could hardly climb down from the wagon.

I remember a time when he was working for Clara, when his slow pace provoked her so much she took the hoe out of his hands and showed him how to speed up. Elijah took off his cap, wiped his brow, and politely told her, “Miz Clara, you do's it a minute or two; I do's it from sunup to sundown.”

That put the quietus on her, and she marched right back in the house. I laugh every time I think about that.

Clara is one of those women who wants to run things. The week Elijah grubbed my garden, she got the notion that we needed to put down carpet in the Willing Workers classroom and asked every member to bring fifty cents a week until we got the money to pay for it. I couldn't figure what she had against vinyl. I, for one, thought it was just fine, a lot cleaner than carpet. I thought what money we had ought to go to missions, but when I said that, you won't believe what she said back. With her mouth twisted in a know-it-all knot, she told me, “You sound like Judas.”

I thought I was going to come out of my chair, and I probably would have if Thelma had not grabbed my arm.

With them tight lips, Clara proceeded to explain. “It's told us in the gospel that when Mary poured perfume on Jesus, Judas asked, ‘Why wasn't that ointment sold and the money given to the poor?'”

Nobody in the room got the connection, so Thelma spoke up. “What's that got to do with this carpet?”

To give answer, Clara's voice rose, and she let go the twist-lip mode. “It means that there is a time when we're supposed to lavish our attention on the Lord by spending a little money to make his house beautiful. I am sure Solomon had a carpet on the floor of that temple he built for the Lord. We're not supposed to be so practical when it comes to worshiping God.”

I couldn't help myself; it popped right in my head what Mr. Splurgeon said about temples. “It is easier to build temples than to be one,” I told them.

Clara looked about to pop her cork. “That has nothing to do with this,” she spluttered.

Thelma is just about the only one in the group who has the backbone to stand up to Clara. “Well, Clara,” she said, “all of this you're saying about our floor and Solomon's temple seems far-fetched. I don't think we're ready to plunk out a lot of money for a carpet, are we ladies?”

They all agreed, except Mabel Elmwood, who always goes for keeping up appearances.

Well, I give Clara this. She knows when to quit. “All right, then,” she said, “we'll just lay the matter on the table.”

Of course, that meant she wasn't giving up, but for the time being she would change the subject. She cleared her pipes and put on a long face. “We have got to be praying about this situation in the music department,” she informed us, as if prayer were really what she had in mind. “All the teenagers are going hog wild over Boris Krantz, and we have got to put a stop to that. Why, I heard—Well, never mind,” she said, knowing every last one of us wanted to know what she'd heard. She shook her head and put on that gloom-and-doom look, as if it were too grave a matter to reveal in only a few minutes. That's the way she is—likes to hold you in suspense while she makes up as much as she can to add to whatever it is she's going to tell.

“We'll have the lesson now,” she said and turned the class over to Thelma.

Thelma had lived in Chicago and years back went to a Bible institute. Said she started out to be a missionary
but wound up at Live Oaks, where she felt she was most needed. If you ask me, she was still looking for a husband and this was the end of the line. After gleaning through the slim pickings here, she gave up and settled in instead of moving on.

Thelma was a fair to middlin' teacher, but we all studied the quarterly and knew what she was going to say before she said it. I did listen to make sure she didn't slip up and bring in some false doctrine. To her credit, though, she was always there and never late. That goes along with being a Yankee.

The bell rang.

Well, I was glad class was over. It was stuffy in there, and I wanted to get in line for the bathroom. My bladder does not get the good mileage it used to.

Monday I got a letter from Beatrice, which reminded me that I had planned to call her.

(That's the way she starts every letter she has ever written in her entire life.)

(I should've known my mentioning Percy when we talked on the phone would get her ulcers in an uproar.)

I folded the letter and put it in my apron pocket, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew that somehow I had to get Beatrice to wake up and get a life.

As I worked around the house and in the garden that day, possibilities kept running through my mind. Before I sat down, I knew I had better call Beatrice, because once I sit down, it's hard to get up again. I dialed her number, but there was no answer. I figured she wasn't off work yet.

I sat down, and before I knew it, I had fallen asleep. It was eleven o'clock when I came to, too late to call anybody. So I went to bed.

Naturally, a few days went by, and I had not gotten back to Beatrice. At night I would think about calling her, but I would be so tired that I just wasn't up to tackling her main problem, namely Percy Poteat and the dreamworld she was living in. The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that writing a letter would be better than talking on the phone. That way I could make sure I was putting it in the best way possible. If I made a mistake, I could change the way I put it. That's not to mention the fact that I would save big bucks by not talking on the phone and also that Beatrice would get a mailbox treat, something besides supermarket coupons to clip.

My tablet was buried under the
Daily Journal,
but I found it and a ballpoint in the drawer.

I had forgot what was in her letter, and since she always asked my advice about things, I dug it out of the basket by my chair. I again was surprised as all get out that she took my advice about her hair.

The ballpoint run out of ink, and I had a mischief of a time finding anything to write with. The only thing I
could find without getting up was a stub of a pencil in the drawer, so I finished out the letter with that.

I waited to mail the letter until Friday, when I went up to tend to old Mrs. Purdy, because thataway Beatrice would not get it before Monday. If she didn't wait months to answer a letter, she was bad about writing right back. Having shot off my mouth about Percy, I was sure she would answer right away. The more space I could put between mailing that one and getting hers shot right back at me, the better.

3

I guess people think the Willing Workers run the church, and between them and the deacons, in fact, they do. The preacher we've got they take for a wimp. Young and old alike call him Preacher Bob like he has not got a last name nor seminary training to boot. In public I make it my business to call him Reverend Osborne, and in private, Pastor Osborne, and I can tell he appreciates this, though he is not the kind of man to put himself forward. As Splurgeon would say, “He whose worth speaks will not speak his own worth.”