Don't Call Me Mother (6 page)

“Duchess,” Gram whispers, settling herself with cigarettes and ashtray at the dining room table. I can see that she loves that name. I have never heard her called that, so I ask what it means.

Uncle Maj leans back against the chair and tamps down his pipe. “The Duchess—oh yes, oh yes. She was the Duchess from the first time we met her. At the hotel in San Antone she breezed in looking like a million dollars, dressed to the nines with ostrich boa, silk dresses, velvet shoes.”

“Like a movie star. You shoulda seen her,” Aunt Helen huffs admiringly.

“No one could hold a candle to Frances,” says Maj, puffing his pipe.

“Frances? Who’s Frances?” I ask.

Gram grins, gray smoke swirling above her head. “Frances is my middle name. Lulu Frances Hurlbut is my whole name. My second husband’s name was Hurlbut, but he died.”

So much happened before I was born. “What was your name when you were young like me?”

“I was born Lulu Frances Garrett. I married your grandfather Blaine, your mother’s father, and became Lulu Hawkins. When I moved to Chicago in the twenties, I preferred the name Frances. Lulu sounds so… well, so old-fashioned.”

Aunt Helen arches an eyebrow and says, “That’s what your mama calls you—Lulu.”

“Don’t call me that!” Gram says. She seems upset all of a sudden. “I’m Frances to you. To everyone.” Gram sashays to the window, carrying her cigarette aloft as if she’s posing for a picture.

Helen continues the story. “She glided like a movie star through the dining room at the hotel. It was wartime. Maj was stationed there, a major. Soldiers were everywhere and, oh, a handsome lot they were. Always lookin’ at Frances. She was a looker, no doubt about it. What with her silks and satins, that cigarette holder, she looked like Greta Garbo.”

Gram comes back to the table. We eat the hot bread, and they sip coffee with cream. Gram spoons coffee into my milk, so I can taste it. I keep looking at her, seeing her in a new way. It never occurred to me before that my grandmother had lived a long time before I was born, that she had her own history. I can’t wait to know more about her, and about my mother.

Aunt Helen’s house is sunny and open to the air. The sound of children playing and the who-whoing of doves filters through the rooms. I wander off from the adults to explore the layout of the house. Uncle Maj’s bedroom is simple, plain, and neat. Aunt Helen’s has lace curtains swaying over her bed, which is covered with a white chenille bedspread. I perch at her dressing table, looking at myself in its oval mirror, trying out the various perfumes and powders. Earrings, necklaces, and bracelets spill from her jewelry box. I put some on and spray Evening in Paris on my wrists, enjoying how much I look like a fancy grown-up lady in the mirror. Aunt Helen comes in and puts her hands on her hips. I put down the bottle, afraid she’ll be mad.

“Oh darlin’, go ahead. You can have anything you want at Aunt Helen’s, you sweet thing.” She enfolds me in her arms again, and again I’m smothered against her. In her arms I feel safe and happy. For a time, all previous bad things melt away.

Gram and I now spend most weekends at Aunt Helen’s house, where she feeds us her tasty Southern food—fried chicken and gravy, beef stew, hamburgers, and “glop” made of hamburger, canned tomatoes, and frozen mixed vegetables. On Fridays she makes homemade bread. Another weekly ritual is the bridge game with their neighbors Bob and Willie Jean. The grown-ups spend long evenings playing cards and talking about the war. Aunt Helen always serves coffee and homemade dessert. Uncle Maj doesn’t play cards, so he just sits in his chair and reads, wearing his specs, lamplight falling on his silver hair. At night, I fall asleep in Aunt Helen’s wonderful bed that smells of sun. In the mornings, warm summer breezes come in the window and caress my skin.

Gram is always in a good mood at Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj’s house, and I learn so much about the life they lived before I was born—all about the war, the soldiers who went off to fight, some never coming back. I learn they are all in their fifties, and they say often, “Life begins at forty.” That seems so very old to me, a long time away for life to begin, and I wonder what they could mean.

During the week, Uncle Maj walks ten blocks to his office. We see him walking down Broadway on our way to Aunt Helen’s on Friday afternoons, looking regal and determined, trustworthy and solid. In the spring, Uncle Maj introduces me to his roses and shows me how to take care of them: clipping, pruning, watering. He shows me all his flowers. “Look at lovely Miss Clematis. See, her flowers are like skirts fluttering in the breeze.” He cradles the flowers, with their delicate leaves and petals. Bees buzz and hummingbirds hover like helicopters. He introduces me to his mimosa with her frilly pink flowers. “They’re like ballerinas, leaves opening and closing.” All summer, I look forward to these weekly evenings with Uncle Maj, where I learn about the living world of plants and the particular delights of roses.

Through Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj, I find a different world than the one my family inhabits. Unlike Gram, Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj are church goers, the First Christian every Sunday morning and evening. She’s a regular at the Wednesday night prayer meetings, and each week she takes care of sick old ladies, spreading her warmth with food and her big Texas smile. She tells me that she loves these old, lonely ladies. She has all kinds of sayings—“land sakes,” “well, I’ll be danged,” and “tickle me pink.” Aunt Helen is the sun, and the rest of us are planets that spin around her. She makes our world happy with food, her belly laugh, and her jolly Southern sayings.

Gram leaves her English accent at home when we are with Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj. With them, I am Gram’s Sugar Pie, and we are all happy.

Night

Dark night has fallen in the house on Park Street. There is no light, no sound. I am crouched low in the dining room, so the monsters outside won’t see me and I won’t whet their appetites. Gram is silent over on the couch behind a long table that separates the dining room and living room. I can’t see her, and I’m worried. She always closes the blinds and turns on the lights sooner than this, long before it’s so dark. She’s never fallen asleep—I hope she’s just asleep—like this before, slumbering through the afternoon and into the night.

I curl up as small as I can. Fear frosts over my arms and legs, as if I’m being slowly dipped in ice water. She’s not breathing; I know she’s not, or she’d be awake. I can’t cross the dining room into the living room to find out because the monsters will smell me. They lie in wait tucked under the window ledge outside, holding their breath, just waiting to come in and eat me.

The wind blows against the creaking house. Its walls groan as if they will fly away, leaving me exposed in the bare air. I curl up even tighter on the floor, shivering. I can barely make out the imposing dark shape of the desk beside me, but I catch the smell of its polished wood. Across the room there is the half-moon of the mahogany dining table and beyond that the long table that separates the two rooms. Gram is so still, I am sure she is dead. I can’t hear her breathing.

What will happen to me if she dies? I would cause my parents a lot of trouble by being alive if Gram is dead. An abyss opens in my stomach, a flap in time and space. I tumble into it, at the same time feeling the solidity of the cool hardwood floor. My mind ticks through what would happen: If Gram is dead, and Mother and Daddy don’t take me in, then some other adult somewhere would have to. It could even be Vera again. I know there’s nothing I could do about this, and now I’m really scared. The abyss is total for a few minutes, swirling me in black terror, but then I get my courage up and begin crawling, one hand and then one knee on the cool hard floor, my knee bones crunching, making my way like a prehistoric creature across the desert of that floor, keeping my head down, alert for movement at the window. If she’s dead, I’ll have to figure out what to do. What do you do when a grown-up dies?

At last I turn the corner and see her body lying on the couch in the glow of the streetlight, her hands over her chest, her mouth agape. Is this death? Her face looks pale and empty, and she is so still. I crawl quickly, the only sound now my heart beating against my chest. Trembling with dread, I lay my head on her chest and hold my breath.

Gram’s chest is moving up and down, up and down. I am safe; she is alive. The flap to that dark world closes, but the edges of myself are ragged, torn like a piece of paper. I need to hear her voice. I need her to wake up and talk to me, but I don’t want to make her mad. Gently I stroke her arm and chest. She gasps a little and flutters open her eyelids. “Sugar Pie.”

She smiles and holds out her arms. I climb up and hold on tight, her warm body against my own, her breath against my neck.

Liebestraum

The Great Plains is an inland sea. I am a speck in that sea, brought to the copper dirt of this place by a migration, as were fish now fossilized in the red rocks. The landscape is dotted with derricks whose steel arms pump oil up through layers of time. The whole town smells of oil. I stand outside to listen to the wind blowing the spirit of the past against my pale body. Dirt from some ancient era blowing against me, I bow my head to the power of the land, the wind lifting my hair and tickling my skin with pinpricks of bone too small to see with the naked eye.

I lift my head at the sound of a train whistle from across town, a familiar ache of longing for my mother spreading under my left rib. Today I get to see Mommy for the first time since coming back to Gram’s. I can hardly remember her; even her face is blurry to me. I go back inside to check on Gram’s progress getting ready. She sits at her dressing table, smoking and staring in the mirror, her face drawn into an unhappy scowl. I can’t understand why she isn’t happy. After all, her daughter is arriving today in Perry, a two-hour trip by car. Gram pulls her face taut with her fingers, muttering about getting older. I try to get her to hurry. When she finally takes out her lipstick, I sigh with relief. I ask her why Mommy doesn’t visit very often.

“She’s busy.”

“Don’t you miss her?” I wonder if Gram misses her daughter the way I miss my mother. Gram doesn’t answer. Instead she asks me what dress to wear. I choose the one with the red collar. She plops on the bed and lights another cigarette. Gold dust motes and gray smoke filter through the Venetian blinds in the morning light. “You know, I still have a mother. My mama lives in Iowa. Mothers and daughters—they don’t always get along.”

I have forgotten that Gram has a mother, assuming she is too old to have one. I nod, hoping she’ll go on.

“And things happen that nobody—well, almost nobody—can help. And then one thing leads to another. Hell. I don’t know. Your mama, she ought to marry again, that would make her happy.”

I remember my father and his new wife, but I never think about my mother getting married again. Then she might forget about me entirely. Secretly, I want my mother and father to be together again and have me with them, but I can never tell anyone this. It feels like an unspoken rule not to talk about it. I can’t wait to see Mommy. Still, I worry about her visit. I suppose that she’ll fight with Gram the way they did in Wichita. I yearn for her throaty voice and her fingers on my skin. Most of all, I can’t wait to find out if she’s happy to see me, if she misses me too.

The road is long and straight across the open land. Dry grasses are pressed flat by the strong winds that blow day in and day out. We drive through small towns littered with broken-down cars and dilapidated buildings. Skinny dogs wander alone with haunted eyes.

Perry is whispery quiet, its downtown built around a square with maple trees and a gazebo. A sign announces the Cherokee Strip. Gram tells me the land was stolen from the Indians. In a land run, some settlers stole a claim early, which is why Oklahoma is called the Sooner state. At the station, people wait impatiently for the train—it’s three hours late. Gram sashays to the office to ask about the schedule. The train man’s glasses slip to the end of his nose. “Ma’am, the train will be here in thirty minutes. It was late out of Chicago and had engine trouble in Kansas City.”

Putting on her fake English accent, Gram asks for a light. Her “English woman” routine makes me squirm. The man comes out of his booth and flicks a match against her cigarette. She leans toward him, her eyes meeting his for an electrifying moment. I don’t understand the looks on their faces, but there’s something in Gram’s I don’t see at home. Aunt Helen says Gram is eccentric. I’m not sure what this means, but it can’t be good.