Winter Birds (11 page)

“He won't remember it,” Mama said. The sound of his heavy tread made her nervous. When he came into the living room, his large, dark body cast a sudden gloom on her, and she was almost afraid to look up at him. But his hello was warm and happy. When she did look up, already feeling silly, she met his face descending with a light kiss. Delia giggled and said, “You two are like lovebirds! But look at this dress, Bobjay. Ain't it pretty? Do you remember when you saw it before?”

Papa reached for the dress. He carried it carefully to the window and studied it. He turned the pleats over and over in the light. “Ellen was wearing this when we got married,” he said quietly. “Weren't you, Ellen?”

“I didn't think you'd remember,” Mama said softly. “You never had a mind for things like that.”

“How was I going to forget it when you looked so pretty?” Papa asked. “Did Corrine finally give it to you? Seemed like she was going to keep it till she busted out of it.”

Delia said brightly, “She give it to me, Bobjay. It looks so pretty on me I bet I can catch me a husband in it, like Ellen did.”

Papa gave Mama a questioning look. Mama explained, “Corrine wants to spite me because I don't come to visit enough. That's what she told Delia.”

Papa laughed till he almost spat. “If they were any family fit to visit we'd go see them any time you wanted. But the Tote family is nothing but trash as far as I can see.”

“Bobjay!” Delia said.

Mama hung her head. “He don't like my family all that much, Delia.”

“Ain't nothing to like,” Papa said. “Except for you and Delia they ain't nothing but a bunch of drunks and whores.”

“Are you going to sit there and let him talk about your kin like that?” Delia asked.

“I don't mean you, I already told you that.” Papa laid the dress on the ironing board, and came away from the window. When he sat in his chair the springs gave a groan. “You and Ellen are about the only decent ones in the bunch. I ain't faulting you.”

Delia held the dress limp at her side. “Well I reckon your family must be the tip-top of society, the way you talk.”

“At least my sisters all waited till they were married before they started having babies. And none of them ever screwed a nigger, that I know of.”

“Hush Bobjay,” Mama said. “It's nothing to start a fight about.”

“I don't like you telling me to hush,” Papa said.

“You can think what you want to, but they're not your people and you don't know everything about them. It don't feel good to hear somebody talk about your family like they're common.”

“But they are common.”

Delia made an outraged little roar and turned her back on Papa, snapping the dress like a whip. “Both of
you hush now.” Mama's quiet voice filled the room. “Grove has finally got to sleep and I don't want him to get waked up.” She stood, looking neither at Delia nor Papa, only hugging her sweater close against her in that room that was always cold. At the window she brushed aside the plastic curtains and leaned close to the glass. “I guess I better call Amy and the boys inside. It's too cold to let them stay out so long.” The look on Delia's face disturbed her. She went to the door and watched you and Allen and Amy and Duck play freeze-tag in the front yard, the dry grass like springs under your feet. Mama shivered in the open doorway. “All right you little heathens, get in the house and thaw out before you get so stiff you can't eat the supper I'm cooking.”

“What are we going to eat?” Allen hollered.

“Fried chicken.”

You shouted, “I get the white meat!” and everyone started to argue, laughing and chasing you, but you spun away, feeling lifted and bright in the cold. “I can have any piece of chicken I want, because I been
It
all afternoon.”

“That's because you're the slowest runner,” Amy said.

“Danny couldn't catch a fly that was stuck in the mud,” Duck taunted. They laughed and you laughed, and Mama, still shivering, said, “I'm not going to come to this door one more time. Come in the house where it's warm.”

She was happy to fill the house with you children, and smiled over your heads at Papa, who watched you all and said, “Don't make a whole lot of noise, younguns. I got a headache.”

Only when Mama turned around did she see Delia had left the room without even unplugging the iron. She wondered if Delia had got mad and expected Mama to clean up after her; but no, even before Mama could order you all to march right back to the bedroom to hang up your coats, Delia appeared in the bedroom doorway wearing the orange dress. Mama closed the front door quietly.

“How do I look?” asked Delia, twirling in the skirt till it billowed out.

Mama nodded and smiled but couldn't find words. Papa said something she didn't hear—she was too busy noticing that Papa stared at Delia in the dress not exactly as if he were remembering it was what his wife had worn at their wedding. Delia had a larger, higher bosom than Mama, and the neckline cut to the shadow of cleavage. Delia's legs were smooth and brown, where Mama's skin was paler, and lightly freckled. “Do I look as pretty as Ellen did in it?” Delia asked.

“It's a good thing I didn't see you wearing it first, is all I got to say.” Papa laughed and turned to Mama, but she wouldn't meet his eye.

“Aunt Delia is pretty but she ain't nowhere near as pretty as Mama,” Amy declared hotly. “She's fatter, that's all.”

At that everyone laughed and the awkwardness passed. But Mama had not failed to notice the exchange of looks between Papa and Delia. Papa watched the dress a little too long. Delia, for her part, watched Papa even longer, through eyes slightly narrowed.

IF DELIA
was angry she didn't show much of it for the next two days. In the morning she and Papa sat at the kitchen table joking with each other while Mama fixed breakfast for them both. Mama kept their cups full of coffee. She said Delia and Papa chattered away like they were the best friends in the world. Delia could make anybody laugh when she wanted to. She talked as if she were in a fever, telling story after story about the Totes, till Papa's face turned positively ugly with laughter. Mama sat next to him, her hand on his large knee, sipping coffee quietly.

After Papa left, Mama washed the dishes while Delia dried them and put them away. Delia smoked cigarettes, tapping ashes into the double grocery bags that collected trash beside the refrigerator. Mama felt better with Papa at work, partly because she didn't have to worry about his mood, and partly because Delia behaved more like the sister Mama remembered when she and Mama were alone. Delia helped get you and Amy ready for school. Mama watched the careful way Delia arranged Amy's dress and the precise combing she gave your hair, understanding from both that Delia cared for you children. Afterwards Delia would offer to serve Mama breakfast, which Mama refused because Mama never ate breakfast, or she would offer to get Mama a cup of coffee, which Mama would let her do. During the course of the day she made Mama sit down and rest while she did a little of the housework.

Once she asked, “Mae Ellen, can you ever trust a man to treat you right?”

This came during a serious conversation in the afternoon, when the two of them stood at the clothesline hanging up a load of towels Mama had washed. Mama took the clothespins out of her mouth. “Nobody ever does treat you right all the time,” she answered.

“But with men, it seems like the more they're supposed to be good to you, the worse they treat you. Like the way Carl acts.”

“I think all men do things like that.”

“Even Bobjay? Has he ever two-timed you?”

“Not that I know of.” Mama pushed back hair, studying the sky, clean as her kitchen table and blue as a baby's eyes. “But I wouldn't be surprised if I found out he had.”

Delia sneered. “But him and his family are so good. He'd never admit that his people would do anything trashy like run around on their wives or their husbands.”

“Bobjay don't like my family. He never has and he never will.”

“He don't have to talk about us like we're some kind of poison.”

“I don't know why he does. But when I ask him not to say the things he says, it doesn't do any good. I've got so I don't ever mention Mama or Corrine or any of the rest. It sets him off and I can't stop him, and I can't stand what he says.”

Delia absently pinned towels to the line. “Have you ever cheated on Bobjay?”

“No,” Mama said, “I would never do anything like
that.”

“Never?”

“How could I look my younguns in the face and try to raise them to do right?”

“Sometimes Bobjay acts like he thinks you have.”

When Mama asked what made her think that, she became silent, watching the line of trees across the fields, a low wind lifting her hair. After a while she said it was a feeling she got from watching him sometimes.

The conversation left Mama wondering about Delia more than ever. It crossed her mind that Papa might have told Delia the story of the photographer when they were alone. In the afternoon Delia sat in the living room gazing out the window or at the television, speaking now and then, seriously, about their mother's health, or Raeford's drinking that was getting worse every day, or about their niece Katy who was going to have a baby soon, but most often about Delia's boyfriend Carl Edward and the girl in the shed. Nothing had ever hurt her worse than that, she said. That black bitch squealing like a stuck pig, wrapping her midnight legs halfway up Carl Edward's back, him with his overalls wrapped around his knees. Delia had run to her Mama and cried. Her family was all she had in the world. She wanted to slap Papa when he said those ugly things about the Totes; it had been all she could do to keep from jumping at him from across the room. Mama said it made her angry too, but she knew better than to say too much. She knew her family had done the best they could with what they had, but Papa couldn't understand
that. He had grown up a different way. If she disagreed with him it only started another argument, and God knows there had been arguments enough.

When Papa came home Delia was a different person. Suddenly she hadn't a care in the world, she joked and laughed and told so many funny stories nobody could help but enjoy her. Mama liked it because you children were happy and tried to clown yourselves; it made you all look more like other people's children, she thought. But she didn't trust Delia's good humor. She didn't like the looks Papa gave Delia during the jokes and the stories. She especially didn't like Delia's making such a point of telling Papa what a good-looking man he was.

That night at bedtime Papa said he was glad Delia had come to visit. He hadn't enjoyed himself so much in a long time. Mama answered that she could tell that without his saying so. Papa, who had been unbuttoning his shirt, stopped and watched her. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Mama said softly, “I guess I don't really know. I guess I'm jealous. You make so much fuss about Delia. You said she looked prettier than me in my own wedding dress.”

Papa declared, “I never said that!”

“I heard you with my own ears. You said if you had seen her wearing it first you'd probably have married her.”

He gazed at Mama shaking his head as if she were crazy. “You and your whole family got the filthiest minds in the world.”

“My family doesn't have a thing in the world to do
with it,” she said, and got into bed.

Papa turned out the light but didn't come to bed right away. In the darkness he stood by the window and smoked a cigarette. He ground out the butt in the windowsill and lay beside her. She waited, but he didn't touch her or speak to her. She began to feel silly and was on the point of saying she was sorry, when he cleared his throat and said coldly, “Anyway, it ain't that she looks better in that dress. It's just that I like you so much in your red one.”

He fell asleep not long after. Things like that never bothered him. But Mama lay awake a long time, gazing upward into the darkness.

NEXT DAY
Mama found it hard to talk to Delia at all. She caught herself watching Delia at odd moments, wondering what she was thinking, wondering why she watched Papa with that too-cool gaze. This was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Breakfast went much the same as before, Papa eating his scrambled eggs without a word of thanks, telling Delia a dirty joke he had heard at work the day before, grinning like a fool when Delia exclaimed that he was such a card! Papa asked Delia how long she meant to stay and Delia answered that she hadn't decided but she wouldn't miss Mama's good Thanksgiving dinner for anything, she said. Mama hid her frown behind her coffee cup, feeling ashamed of herself. But still she wished Delia were leaving today.

Amy and you were happy that morning, since this
was the last day of school before Thanksgiving holiday. While eating your bowls of warm oatmeal you chattered about school, about your teachers, about the chance of snow, till Mama told you both you were probably the most ridiculous younguns she had ever heard of. She stood at the door and watched you till the orange bus picked you up. The sad look on her face stayed with you all day long.

She did her housework, Delia helping, talking quietly about this and that. Without being asked, Delia made lunch: cheese sandwiches fried in butter, and hot potato soup. The food reminded Mama of meals her mother made when she was a little girl. They talked quietly with the television buzzing in the next room. The afternoon passed slowly. Delia asked if Mama was cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving. Mama said it would have to be chicken, because turkey was too high. “We got so many bills,” Mama said. “Besides, one kind of bird is as good as another.”

Amy and you came home to find them in the living room, Delia with her hair in rollers, a cigarette dangling from her fingers, sending up a trail of smoke. Mama peeled potatoes, holding the pot between her knees. She watched a game show where people like her made thousands of dollars in nothing flat. Amy and Delia talked about hair rollers. Amy wanted Delia to roll her hair. “Except I won't let you do it if you roll it as tight as you did the last time. It gave me a headache for a week.”