Sullivans Island-Lowcountry 1 (16 page)

wiches and everything.”

“Y’all are entirely welcome.” She smiled at me as she dried

the last plate.“And thanks for all y’all’s help.”

“I call the hammock!” Timmy yelled as he ran for the

porch.“Thanks, Livvie!”

“Come back ’eah!” Livvie ordered him.

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

97

Timmy turned around and ran back to the kitchen, where

Maggie and I still stood with Livvie.

“What now?” Timmy whined.

“Listen to me good, all you children. Now, I know you been

used to one thing and another before Livvie come ’eah. But

now I’s ’eah and y’all needs to understand a few things.” She

looked at the three of us, our belligerence shining, as we waited

for her to continue. She held out her hand and began to count

on her fingers.

“Number one, ain’t gone be no more slamming doors.You

got old people around this house and they nearly jump outta

they skin from all the noise. I ain’t gone have nobody dropping

dead on my time. Number two, ain’t gonna be no more holler-

ing and carrying on at the top of y’all’s lungs. Iffin y’all want to

holler y’all’s heads off, go outside. Got a baby coming soon, and

we don’t need no nonsense either. Now, I gots to ask y’all a

question.”

“Sure, Livvie,” Maggie said.

“What?” I asked.

Timmy remained silent.

“Is there some reason I ain’t understanding why your

momma has to make up y’all’s beds? Ain’t you children well

enough to do this to help her?”

Timmy looked at me, who turned to Maggie for an answer.

“It’s just that Momma has always done it, Livvie. It’s not like

we’re trying to take advantage of her,” Maggie explained in

complete stupidity, as guilt dawned.

“I see.Well, I gone tell y’all something.When I get off that

bus this morning I see a woman come to greet me. She about to

drop a baby any second, with circles under her eyes and swollen

ankles that could make me cry. She’s plumb wore out, I say to

myself. That woman was your momma. I want you children

make your beds in the morning from now on. And pick up

y’all’s mess too. Can you do that for her?”

98

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

“Sure. No big deal,” Timmy replied, with some embarrass-

ment.

“God, Livvie, where is Momma? We didn’t even see her

since we’ve been home,” I asked.

“I reckon she’s still resting, and don’t use the Lawd’ s name

like that. Who wants to help me fold towels and sheets? I got

crabs to watch and chickens to fry. Your granddaddy ask me to

fry him some chicken and I said I glad to do it.”

“Glad to help,” Maggie said quietly, her eyes glancing to me

and then to Timmy.

We looked at each other and sighed. In the span of time it

took the sun to travel from one side of the Island to the other,

our Geechee singsong world had been transformed to one of

order and expectation.

Without ceremony, Livvie presented Maggie and me with a

dust cloth, a can of spray wax and a psychic message that to put

clean laundry on a filthy table made
no
sense whatsoever. She

never uttered a sound. She merely looked at us.

In a short time, the towers of towels covered the fresh glossy

patina of the dining room table like a growing business district

of skyscrapers. Maggie and I folded, folded and folded.

“God, this Livvie is gonna wear us out!” I whispered to my

sister.“Got us working like dogs.”

“No kidding, but I never realized how dirty this house was

until Livvie cleaned it, did you? Here, bring me the corners.”

Maggie gathered up the contoured sheet, folded it three times

and added it to the stack.“Who used all these towels?”

“Well, it ain’t Henry. He’s a little pig. Momma has to yank

him into the shower by the hair once a week whether he needs

it or not.”

“Too true. And we know for certain Grandmomma doesn’t

use many towels,” Maggie whispered, sucking her teeth in disgust.

“Please.” I made my renowned gagging sound. “She smells

like a locker room.”

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

99

“Susan! Shush!” Maggie gave a Hollywood sigh and me one

of her famous exasperated looks.

“Sorry, your majesty,” I hissed,“but I’m entitled to an opin-

ion, you know, and she
does
smell just like eau de Dumpster.

Hey, do you think it’s possible Livvie is gonna get old Sophie

straightened out?”

“If she does, that will be the miracle of the century.”

“If she gets Sophie’s ducks in a row this joint will become a

religious shrine and we’ll be flooded with pilgrims coming to

take the waters. I want the candle concession.” Quickly, I calcu-

lated how many candles I needed to sell at fifty cents apiece.“If

I sell fifty candles a day for four hundred days, that’ll give me ten

thousand. If I invest it at five percent for three years, I can take a

Corvette to college, pay my tuition and take us all to Florida for

a vacation!”

Maggie stopped and stared at me like I came from Mars.

“How does your mind work? I mean, how do you come up

with these wild images and ideas?”

“I dunno. Sometimes I think I’ve got a brain virus or some-

thing. A genetic victim of my ancestors.” I widened my eyes at

Maggie and snickered.

“What?” Her face was as flat as a board.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Maggie, I just try to keep myself enter-

tained. Otherwise life is too dreary to deal with.” I felt my neck get-

ting hot. Nobody around here ever understood my sense of humor.

“Oh.” Maggie returned to the laundry.“Anyway, somebody

around here is using way too many towels!”

“Yeah. We’ve already folded twenty-two bath towels, four-

teen hand towels, eighteen facecloths and a ton of kitchen tow-

els! It’s probably Daddy.”

“Yeah, and who’s gonna tell him what to do?”

We looked at each other at the thought of our father being

put in his place. Arms filled, I followed Maggie to the linen

closet.

100

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

“I like Livvie,” Maggie said as she shoved the laundry into

the crowded shelf.

“Me too, a lot, but Timmy says we’re in boot camp with her.

Hey, where did that little bum Timmy run off to? He should’ve

been helping us!”

“Livvie made him take out all the garbage and return the

bottles at the Red and White for deposit money. The last I saw

of him, he was loading the wagon.”

“Timmy did all that? Jesus! What next?”

“Who knows? I’m going to paint my toenails in the

seclusion of my room before she finds something else for us

to do.”

Just then Livvie passed us with the basin, a bar of soap and

towels.

“Gone give y’all’s grandmomma a sponge bath,” she said.

“Y’all got any talcum powder in this house? Took me two hours

to scrub her room today, but now it smells so good!”

“Under the sink in Momma’s bathroom,” I said.

Maggie and I looked at each other in complete amazement

for at least the third time in a few hours.Then, Maggie climbed

the steps to her room. I raced up the fourteen steps behind her to

the second floor. I started thinking and grew no moss getting to

Maggie’s room at the end of the hall. I kicked open the door and

found Maggie lying across her bed flipping through the latest

edition of
Hollywood Truth
.

Maggie looked up in annoyance. “Didn’t you ever hear of

knocking?”

“Oh, eat it, Maggie, there we were saying how wonderful

Livvie is and the truth is, this is a potential disaster! This

woman’s gonna turn us into her personal slaves! And, dearie, if

you get caught with that piece of crap newspaper, Big Hank’s

gonna cut your ass.”

“Daddy’s never touched me.”

“Lucky you.” My face became serious.

“So, what do you want, garbage mouth?”

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

101

“It’s her. Shoot, you’d think we’d never folded towels before.

Did you hear the way she told me to fold them in thirds and then

thirds again? I get enough algebra in school. I’m telling you, I’ve

been thinking about it.Timmy was right.This is Parris Island.”

“Get over it, maybe
she’s
right. Every time you open the

linen closet everything falls on the floor.That fold fits the shelf.

And we are a bunch of slobs.As long as I don’t have to clean the

toilet, I don’t mind pitching in a little.”

“Momma needs a maid and we get the Albert Einstein of

towel folding. I’m going to hide in my room. I liked the crab

funeral better. Felt like calling FTD.”

“You’re twisted, you know that? At least she can cook.”

“Yeah, well, maybe, but I still say we’re in big trouble.”

“She’s giving old Sophie a bath. I think it’s wonderful.”

“We’ll see.Though I don’t hear any screaming.”

I closed Maggie’s door and slipped into my own room across

the hall, breathing a sigh of surrender to the upper hand of

Livvie. I had to admit that what she had accomplished in a few

hours was rather miraculous. It was funny to me that even

Grandpa Tipa had been nice to her. All he’d done over the past

three weeks was grunt while we built the bathroom. He was usu-

ally the one that caused these women to quit by calling them

one of his stupid names he had for colored people. But she’d won

him over too by agreeing to fry some chicken for him.

My eyes scanned my room, as I leaned back against my door.

There wasn’t much about my room that was remarkable, except

the privacy I had when I closed the door. Next to my bed stood

an old end table of forgotten origin, its white paint chipped.

There was a goosenecked lamp that I would bend to shed light

on my lap as I did my homework, read books or wrote in my

journals. My mahogany single bed nearly filled the room. It had

four posters, each with carved shafts of wheat tied in bundles, and

had provided rest to some long dead relative.Tattered stuffed ani-

mals, my old best friends, sat on the only treasure I had ever had,

a handmade quilt that had belonged to my father’s mother.

102

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

I kept a diary, not just one diary, but a whole collection of

black-and-white speckled composition notebooks.Writing took

me away.When I wrote I could say what I thought. If I said what

I thought out loud, Daddy would’ve killed me a thousand times.

Lying on my stomach across the quilt, I reached under the

bed for the wicker hamper that held them all together. I exam-

ined the security knots in the bows to make sure the prying eyes

of my siblings hadn’t invaded my privacy. They had not and I

sighed, thinking that if they ever did read them, they’d be candi-

dates for dentures, if I let them live at all.

The ribbons that held them together had been a gift and I

had saved them all these years.They reminded me of a time when

I was truly a little girl, just barely seven. MC’s baby girl.The only

memory I had of feeling like anyone’s baby. My favorite memory

of motherly attention and love.

I had been playing paper dolls on the front porch when

Momma opened the screen door and found me there. I guess she

thought I was looking lonely. She didn’t look too happy either.

“Susan? Do you want to walk down the street with me?”

“Sure! Where’re you going?”

“Miss Fanny’s. Maybe we’ll go get us a Coke. Put your

shoes on.”

Miss Fanny, one of the Island’s spinsters, kept a small variety

store for the convenience of her friends. Her tiny inventory

included milk, bread, cold drinks, penny candy, comic books,

thread, ribbon and some inexpensive bolted fabrics sold by the

yard.

Fanny McGuire was the nine-to-five source of the latest

news. She had the biggest ears and the longest tongue on the

Island. But to her credit, she was truly as good as gold. When

anyone got sick, she brought them canned chicken soup and

saltines. She loved children, and their progress never missed her

recognition. I loved to go there, as did most of the Island chil-

dren, when our pockets allowed us a sugar splurge.

Momma and I held hands as we meandered down Middle

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

103

Street toward our destination. I wanted to seem grown up and

decided to ask her a few questions.

“So, Momma, how are you doing?”

“Oh, all right, I suppose.Why?”

“Well, I heard you and Daddy fighting last night. Did he hit

you?”

“What are you talking about, Susan? Daddy and I don’t

fight! And he’d never hit me!”

“Oh. Maybe I was dreaming.”

“Yes, you must’ve been.”

I knew she was lying to me and so did she.We walked qui-

etly for a few minutes and then we stopped.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me about it, Momma.

I understand.”

Momma knelt down and put my face in her hands.

“My word, honey, I never realized you knew anything about

this. Don’t you worry yourself about it. Everything’s all right.

Sometimes grown-ups argue, but that doesn’t mean they don’t