Flavors (8 page)

Bursting at the seams to get the bride's attention, I clasped my hands behind me and bit my lip, twisting impatiently, bare feet shuffling. Finally, our gazes connected and she winked. Her eyes twinkled at seeing me and I knew that, finally, my world was turning right side up again.

Grandma's face didn't reveal what she thought of this sudden turn of events. We all knew Grandma took her time in taking to people. And we knew, too, that her tendency was to mother-hen her boys. Too, Maveen was a mill-hill girl, of the trashy variety in Grandma's opinion. So Maveen's destiny was in peril.

Poker-face set, Grandma constructed a wire, wall-to-opposite-wall, across one bedroom, on which she hung a sheet to provide a bit of privacy for the newlyweds. Of course, since most all of us slept on pallets in the main sitting room for summer's duration, Gene and Maveen had more seclusion than I'd ever imagined possible within the Melton ramparts.

The next morning, Gene whispered to Grandma that Maveen needed a wash pan of warm water, soap and a wash cloth. Wordlessly, face emptied, Grandma carried the paraphernalia to a blushing Maveen, leaving her to care to her personal needs. Nellie Jane later pulled me aside to fill me in on the
details of Maveen's bleeding episode, common to new brides on their first night of marriage. Yet another lesson in life's mysteries, cinnamon-y and pungent flavored.

I didn't care about that. All I cared about was getting alone with Maveen and feeling her hugs and soaking up her words of warmth and celebration. My neediness seemed to swell as the strange edginess inside me prevailed.

“How's my Sadie,” she breathed into my hair when I bearhugged her the first chance I got to slip into her bedroom. She actually stuck pretty close to those cramped, stuffy quarters during the first days of her marriage, coming out only to take meals with the family, unless it was to scoot out the door and disappear for long walks. Those times, if Gene wasn't with her, I tagged along. Sometimes, even when he did accompany her, she called to me to join them. Maveen even went into the kitchen when meals were being prepared, but after being ignored by Grandma, she quietly gave up on helping.

She and Grandma avoided each other's eyes. I sensed it was a case of instant, full-blown hate.

“I miss home,” I said sadly a couple of days after Maveen came to live there. We lounged on her bed, the only semiprivate place in the household.

Maveen's kind silvery eyes responded by misting over. “I know you do, honey.” Then she pulled me to her and hugged me, fiercely. Only when my face fit into her neck's hollow and I smelled her clean, lilac scent did I realize that at least some of the dull ache inside me was from loneliness for those who tethered me to my sense of place.

“Guess what?” she whispered. I was astonished to see a tear spill over and trail down her pale cheek. She quickly swiped it away and sniffled.

“What?” I whispered back, knowing that many ears strained to hear anything she had to say. Grandma had not spoken to
Maveen unless necessity forced her to. Maveen, naturally affectionate, was shriveling before my very eyes in the apathetic environment.

“I miss home, too,” she rasped as another, then another tear spilled over. I watched them trickle slowly down, over lightly freckle-spattered cheeks, then drip off her chin.

“Oh, Maveen.” My mouth wobbled and I began to silently weep with her. We hugged for a long time, together in our gloom.

I felt it – the affinity. Somehow, I knew our hearts beat the same tempo just then. And I knew – though I could not articulate exactly
what –
that we were together.

In our quest for ourselves.

For our place.

Gene switched shifts with a friend for a week in the cotton mill. He worked the third shift and that left Maveen sleeping alone. “He's doing a favor for Earl. A couple of the guys are switching around and filling in all week. Gene drew the straw for third shift.” She grimaced. “Earl's family wanted to go to Myrtle Beach for a vacation. Wouldn't that be fun?” she asked me, scrooching up her shoulders in excitement.

Unlike Nellie Jane, Maveen was not above celebrating life with me, simply for the sake of making merry. Our chat times had grown to be as precious to her as they were to me. She took to going with Nellie Jane and me to slop Frances.

“Go-olay,” I muttered, transfixed, watching the feeding frenzy one day in August. “Frances is gettin' fatter and fatter.”

Nellie Jane cut me a sharp glance. “She's supposed to. That's why we feed her so much.”

I sighed. “Wish I wasn't so skinny.”

Maveen put her arm over my shoulder. “You ain't skinny, honey. You're just – thin.”

“Same difference,” I groused.

“You're not so skinny anymore,” Nellie Jane said. “Not like you was when you first came.”

I looked down at my tummy, which did actually pooch out a little bit.

Maveen sniffed. “Anybody eatin' all this gravy and bread all the time's gonna fatten up.” I heard echoes of grief in her seemingly innocent comment because she'd already declared Grandma a great cook.

“You think?” I asked, trying to shut out the sadness.

“Mm hm.”

When Maveen and I were alone, during meadow or forest excursions, Maveen was her childlike self again. However, now sadness limned the frivolity. Still, I desperately took from it what I could to sustain me in those days.

Maveen could whistle like a sailor. And her whippoorwill call was eerily authentic-sounding. It sounded so wistful at times I nearly cried. I tried to mimic but could never get it right. Nellie Jane did a fair imitation, winning Maveen's and my ebullient approval.

“I'm so glad you're here, Sadie,” Maveen told me more than once. Laughing together was like getting a jug of sweet iced tea in the middle of the Mojave Desert. At first, she'd kept to her room, but being Maveen, she couldn't keep that up indefinitely.

Maveen adopted an almost defiant bearing around Grandma. Just in body language. Her face remained as sweetly innocent as ever. She began to move with a peculiar boneless elegance that spoke silently that she didn't give a rat's-ass what her mother-in-law thought of her. She began to wear her loosefitting shorts and you could practically hear gasps all about as eyes swiveled to catch Grandma's reaction.

Of course, Grandma didn't give her the pleasure of rising to the bait. The way Maveen glided about left Grandma sheathed in her icy displeasure.

We took to escaping to the meadow and forest more often. Maveen was too much a sociable being to hibernate. When around those she trusted, she became more extroverted. So now, she was openly companionable to me.

Today, the privacy was soothing and intimate as we sat pretzel-legged on Maveen's bed.

“It would be fun to get a beach tan, like Esther Williams,” she said. Then she grinned like a pixie. “'Course, I wouldn't look like her cause I mostly freckle. But playing in the ocean would be fun.”

I nodded vigorously. “Maybe someday you and Gene will get a chance to go to Myrtle Beach.”

Her smile faded and her eyes grew troubled. “I don't know, honey. Don't – ” She seemed to change her mind, closed her mouth, then smiled again. “But, shoot, who knows what's gon' happen?”

“Yep,” I said. “Who knows?”

Maveen's eyes lit up. “Hey!” She took me by the shoulders. “Why don't you sleep with me while Gene's working the third shift?”

I looked at her to see if she was serious. She lifted her brow dramatically, as in
how-about-it
?

This was too good to be true. “Reckon Grandma will – ”

She waved a dismissive hand. “I don't care what she thinks. You're my buddy and I want you to sleep with me. Okay? And as long as I live here with Gene, this is my little corner.”

I smiled then as reality sank in. I could do something for me; Maveen said so.

“Okay.”

Grandma didn't exactly dance a jig that I'd gone over to Maveen's camp. It was there in Grandma's subtle body language. Loud. But not clear.

Me? I took Maveen's advice and let Grandma's cool disapproval roll off me like water off a vinyl tablecloth. Strangely, when I did, I saw a flicker of respect in Nellie Jane's hazel gazes.

I began doing my sponge bath when Maveen did hers. I wasn't at all embarrassed to undress in front of her and bathe in the confines of her secluded bedroom corner, nor was she. It all seemed so natural, like when I was with Mama. And like Mama, Maveen shared her Tussy deodorant and Taboo body powder. Smelling gloriously clean, we slipped outside to the bushes with cups of water to brush our teeth, gargle and spit. Being with Maveen even made a mundane bath time warm and adventuresome.

It was wonderful sleeping next to my friend. We whispered long into the night, after the lights clicked off. I shared lots of hopes and ambitions with her. We discussed everything from boys to religion.

“Do you believe there's really a God?” Maveen whispered one night.

“Yeah, I do,” I replied. “For one thing, when Mama and Daddy took me and Little Joe to the beach, y'know, down in Charleston last year? Well, when I looked at them big ol' ocean waves a'comin' up on that beach so strong, slapping at my feet and then – just stopping.” I still felt the awe, the goosebumps rising all over me. “And y'know what, Maveen? That water all at once turned around and went in the opposite direction. It went right back into the sea.”

“Huh,” Maveen grunted.

I turned toward her and saw her eyes glistening in the dark. “Maveen, I just knew, then and there, only God could make that sea water do that. Think about it.”

I saw tears glistening in her eyes. “You're right, Sadie.”

It was a real special time, that night, one of many.

“You're smart, Sadie,” she whispered near the end of the week. I hated for it to end. I didn't mind going back to sleeping on the hard floor so much. I just hated to leave Maveen.

“Why do you say that?” I whispered back, astounded that she found me so.

“‘Cause,” she paused. “You see things lots of girls your age don't see. Like the good in people.” After a long pause, she snickered softly, clapped her hand over her mouth, then whispered. “Like Doddle-Bug.”

“Say
what?”
I hissed.

We giggled silently, manically for long moments before harnessing ourselves in.

“Another thing,” she whispered. “You know words I don't know.”

“Like what?”

“Like…what's that word you used when you was talking ‘bout that movie star? Uh – Bergun?”

“Ingrid Bergman?”

“Yeah. Her. You said she was so-phis-cated. I don't even know what that means.”

“Sophisticated.” I enunciated it. “It means classy.”

“What's classy?”

“It's like – Daddy. You know how well he carries himself?” I said softly. Then I added, so as not to insult Gene, her husband, “So does Gene. Anyway, beside the other Melton guys, Gene and Daddy are classy.”

“Does it mean ‘uppity'?”

I really had to clamp my hand over my mouth then to stifle the laugh and not hurt Maveen's feelings. I was just discovering how delicate she was.

“Not exactly. But close enough to compare, I guess. Classy means something you're born with. Sometimes, like with Daddy and Gene, you can acquire – er, learn it. Uppity is when you think you're better'n other people. Classy means you know you're not better, but you're just as good as anybody else. Understand?”

She sighed. “I reckon. Anyway, you're really smart. So don't let it bother you when them blamed Meltons fuss at you for asking questions. They're just mad ‘cause they're too stupid to know enough to ask questions.”