The Reading Lessons (28 page)

Mother admitted that she was not the mothering sort. “I do not cuddle,” she liked to say. “But I plan a damned fine birthday party.” And this was true. When it came to Nina’s mother, one had to be content with ponies and clowns and inordinately large cakes covered with icing-roses the size of your head. She was not the parent you went to with a splinter or a torn teddy bear arm, but, if you reminded her that you were soon to turn twelve, she would pull out all the stops. Nina, however, was far too smart a girl to be wooed by fancy birthday parties. She had her own ax to grind with the woman.

It might just as well been called the
Miss Bell Incident
for it was much like
The Kix Cereal Incident
only Nina’s incident involved a dance recital instead of a contest. Despite the fact that Nina was the one who danced the cha cha so terrifically, Mother managed to have the whole auditorium crowded around her immediately after the performance. Mother had presented a plaque to the dancing director, Miss Bell, on behalf of the
Beattie’s Bluff Sisters for Wholesome Art
, and everyone thought this was so dear of her. Nina remained calm by picturing her mother with the Kamasutra glued to her hand. Mother would not have been in a position to discuss wholesome art, had her hand been weighted with her dirty little secret. 

Likewise, when Nina was buying her Turkey Hop dress at
LuLu’s Bewitching Glamour Gowns
, the salesgirls would have been too ashamed to go on about how pretty Mother’s new hairdo was if one of the window seat books had been conspicuously stuck to her person. And if the men of the
Happy Hunting Club
had any clue how phony she was, they would never have used up important bulletin board space by covering over the photograph of Nina holding twenty-five quail, with the newspaper picture from the
Kix Cereal Incident
. 

Never did Nina wish to use the secret more, though, than the night her mother made eyes at Del Wiggins, her slick-haired Turkey Hop date. 

“Holy bangtails, Nina! Your mom’s a real looker,” Del was dumb enough to say after they left for the dance. Delbert was a big reader of detective stories and always spoke hard-boiled. “I just hope I don’t dust the old man’s bucket, I’m so lit just smelling her,” which, in detective-speak, meant that Del was worried he would crash his daddy’s car because Mother was a big hussy.

It was the night before her sixteenth birthday, and Nina was in no mood to come in second place to her mother again. “Aw, close your head,” she told Del Wiggins, which in Spade-speak meant shut-up. 

In reality, she couldn’t really blame poor hapless Del. Mother had wiggled up so close for the
Mother/Turkey Hop-Date
picture, she might be pregnant with his child. Anyhow, Nina was used to it, or she tried to be. Disgusting as it was, her mother seemed to have that effect on men. Later, after a long gloomy night of listening to Del bump gums on the subject of her mother’s gams, Nina expressed her fury the second she got home.

When she came in at ten o’clock and asked if they could talk, Mother was brushing her hair in her bedroom.

“Of course, dear!” Mother said, taking Nina by the hands and hugging her against her great big silk-entombed busts. “I want to hear all about the dance. Did Delbert kiss you goodnight?”

Nina untangled herself from the busts. “Nope. I’m sure he would have been happy to kiss you though.”

“What?” Mother laughed, clearly tickled by the thought. “Don’t be a silly-nilly.”

“What do you expect, Mother, rubbing up against him the way that you did? The boy was in utter agony all night long.”

Mother clapped her hand to her throat. “Now wait a minute, Nina,” she said. “Delbert Wiggins is a child. I would never . . . ”

“I shouldn’t have even went to that stupid old dance,” Nina snapped. “It was a total calamity, thanks to you.” “Calamity” was Nina’s word of the week. 

“Well that’s a fine way to say thank you,” Mother said. “After all the trouble I went to with Viv Wiggins, too. I swear to God, Nina, you are the most ungrateful creature God ever created.”

Nina dropped down on the bed. “Do you mean to tell me you arranged for Del to invite me to the dance?”

Mother resumed her brushing. “Damned straight I did. No boy in his right mind would have the gumption to ask out a snotty tomboy like you. They’d be afraid you’d shoot them dead.” Mother found it despicable that Nina liked to hunt, probably because it was the one thing Nina did with Father that Mother didn’t know how to do. 

“I hate you,” Nina said, and it was the god-awful truth. With her big blonde hair and her big blue eyes and her big old bosoms hanging out for all to see, the woman was just about unbearable. “I wish I’d never been born.”

Mother threw her brush down on the vanity. “Sometimes, Nina darling, I wish the same.”

###

Nina had kept mum about the window seat books for five long years, but the time had come to use her leverage. She wanted revenge on her mother and couldn’t think of a better way to achieve this than by exposing the woman as a Bible-reading fraud. Wouldn’t the ladies of her charity groups die of shock when they learned what secrets Mother hid in her lovely little Reading Room? 

Nina planned to hide in the window seat and, when her mother came to sneak out a book, jump up and scream her head off for all the town to hear. Maybe she would even see to it that some of Mother’s dirty books went flying out the window. Nina had noticed that the books in the seat were almost always moved around on Tuesdays. She had also noticed that Mrs. Pearlie Cooper-Carter’s temperance group met every second Tuesday of the month on the lawn next door to make angry signs and eat lunch. Mrs. Pearlie Cooper-Carter was one of the gossipiest women on the street. Thus it came to pass that, on the Tuesday after the Turkey Hop, Nina ditched school, pushed opened the Reading Room windows, and hid in the window seat, praying her mother would think herself alone and feel in a reading-mood. 

It was hot and the seat and felt like a casket. Nina couldn’t quite stretch out her legs.
Hurry up, Mother
, she silently pleaded, shifting miserably in the coffin-like gloom. Already, she regretted hiding in the seat. It had been at least an hour, and Mother hadn’t come in for a single book. The temperance ladies sounded like they were putting up their hammers and getting ready for lunch.

Finally, the Reading Room door squeaked open, and Nina almost jumped out then and there, she was so happy and relieved. But no. That would ruin everything. “Shh . . . ” she heard her mother whisper. “The Stinkberry is downstairs.”

Nina wasn’t sure what surprised her more, discovering that her mother was not alone, or hearing her refer to Miss Dinkleberry by the same name the kids used for their governess. In any case, whoever she was with said nothing in response, but Nina heard other noises. Lip-smacking noises. Breathing noises. Grunts.

Ewww,
Nina thought,
she’s with Father!

Nina got so alarmed, she almost upset the stack of books wedged under her ribs. It occurred to her that if she were caught now, she would be the one with egg on her face. She covered her ears and prayed with all her heart that whatever they were doing, it would be over quick. 

“Slow down,” Mother said--Nina wanted to bawl. “Little Rock is hundreds of miles away. There’s no need to rush.”

Little Rock? It was then that Nina remembered that her father had left for Little Rock the evening before to attend
The
Amazing Buck Stanton Red, White & Blue Auto Rally
. But if Mother wasn’t kissing Father, who was she kissing? Neville Pillwater? Del Wiggins? Sucking in her breath, she raised the lid and peeked out in the room. 

Holy Spumoni!
Nina said to herself, “spumoni”
being the new word of the week.
Mother is kissing the gardener!

This was even better than the dirty books. 

He was old, of course. Twenty or thirty or maybe even sixty. He opened doors for them and pulled weeds and drove them around. What else did she know about him? He had a Negro mother who worked for Grandpa Browning. After Rich Rich discovered that Mrs. Crump was actually the mother of
their
Crump, they had taken to calling him Sambo behind his back. 

Why is Mother kissing Sambo
? she thought.

She was vaguely aware that he was nicer than some, but since when did Mother appreciate folks that were nice? Nina felt entirely sure that her mother got giggly around the draper because he had a dirty smirk and pinched her bottom under the barkcloth. Neville Pillwater was not nice. He was not polite. He was a letch! Then again, listening to Mother finishing up with Crump, he sounded pretty lecherous himself. They were knocking books off the shelves, and it was downright icky the way Mother kept saying, “Yes . . . oh . . . yes . . . oh . . . yes oh!” Nina didn’t relax until she heard the sound of books being slid back into place. 

“I’m going to need the Mercedes waxed and ready for the
Founder’s Day Picnic
, Hadley,” Mother said.

Hadley? Was that his last name? His first name? A pet name like Annie Oakley’s
Little Sure Shot
? Nina lifted the lid to watch how they said goodbye. Her crafty mind reasoned that this might tell her whether this shocking thing with Crump had ever happened before.

Mother was tugging her dress into place, and Crump was buttoning things. “He’s in Jackson again on Thursday,” Mother said, like she was telling him which bushes to trim.

Crump kissed her cheek. He was younger than Mother. Or maybe just shorter. “Okay,” he said. Like he’d just agreed to get those bushes for her. 

All told, Nina spent more than two hours in the window seat before she could make her escape, but it was worth it. Afterward, she had the giddy feeling that her life might never be the same again.

That afternoon, she watched Crump tend a flowerbed from behind the curtains of her bedroom window. There was something strangely violent about the way he went after weeds, beating them silly as though they were dirty thoughts come to ruin his flowery world. But he was gentle, too. At one point, he came across a broken bloom, smelled it, and tucked it in his pocket. After what she’d witnessed earlier, she wondered if perhaps those weeds weren’t really more like his conscience, and the dirty thoughts the treasures he carefully saved up in his pocket. 

When Rich Rich and Guido came bounding home from school, Crump stood up from his work and said hello. He was nice like that, Nina realized. Rich Rich threw a football right through the petunias he’d been working so hard on, yet Crump laughed and tossed the ball back. After the boys bounded inside for Fig Newtons, Crump grabbed hold of his shirttails and stripped off his shirt.

It was a hot day, and Nina was pretty sure she’d seen him do this a million times before, but it had never struck her as interesting until now. He was a skinny man with slick sweaty skin, and even though he was part Negro, his skin was suntanned to match his missing shirt, coloring him browner in some parts than others. He had the hard arms of a laborer, and she could count his ribs from two stories above.
So that’s what Mother likes about him
, Nina thought, suddenly liking it herself. Father was a soft man with a flabby gut who liked martinis too much. Crump would be a reed beside him. And he was filthy, too. Just like Mother’s books.

She saw something else of interest as well. There were three distinct marks across his shoulder blades - the same marks she’d seen on another man of theirs called George Vinegar. George Vinegar was old. He’d been working for the Worther-Holmes since he was a slave boy of five. Nina glimpsed his back one time after he got bit on the bellybutton by the Hibbles’ bloodhound. Just like old George Vinegar, Crump had whip marks across his back. 

The next day was a Tuesday and Tuesdays were piano lesson day at Miss Maple’s. The children had been taking lessons for two years, although Rich Rich swore he would quit by June or kill himself. “Hell if I’ll spend another summer day cooped up in that hot parlor.”

Nina didn’t much care either way, but on this particular Tuesday, she was looking forward to her lesson. Crump was the one to drive them every week, and she was anticipating getting a closer look at the man. Her curiosity had multiplied by a thousand during the course of the night as she revisited every memory she had of the gardener.

She dimly recalled that he taught her and the boys how to play a card game called pinochle once. None of them had the patience for it, but Nina had liked all the little terms that went with the game,
like royal marriage
and
bare run
and
make it walk
. She had especially liked the word
pinochle
and had made it one of her words of the week. He taught them some marble games too, and when Rich Rich was eight or nine years old Crump built him a tree house. Mostly though, Nina hadn’t paid him much mind over the years.

On Tuesday, he stood by the door of Father’s new Phantom 111 limo, a single shock of dark curly hair hanging over one eye, and she wondered that she had ever ignored him before. 

“How are you today, Miss Nina?” he asked.

“I’m fine I guess. How are you, Crump?”

It seemed to Nina that there was a dance going on in his eyes, for she had never asked how he was doing before no matter how many times he asked the same question of her. 

“I’m quite good, thank you,” he replied.

I’ll bet you are,
Nina thought.
Mother pays you so well . . . 

When he touched her elbow to help her aboard, a flaming arrow of anger shot through her blood. “I can do it myself,” she said. 

That put him in his place. Wasn’t Mother worried that her
servant
would start feeling too important? Someone had to remind him that he was just Sambo the Weed-Picker.

“And how are you today, Mr. Rich?” Crump asked, and then moved his attention to Rich Rich. At fifteen, Rich Rich was desperate to drop a
Rich
and automatically appreciated anyone who left off the second
Rich
.