Friendship Cake (3 page)

I
don't understand why everybody's so mad at me. I was only trying to help. I figured a cookbook would help us raise some money, get us involved in a task together, create more love among the women at Hope Springs. But I just got off the phone with Louise, and she talked to me like I suggested we donate our kidneys, for goodness' sake. My mother always told me I was too good for that church, those women. I'm forever having to be the one to smooth things over, get people to talk to each other. And I just hope they realize that if I hadn't come in with this idea about the cookbook, our Women's Guild would not last another year.

The Good Lord knows that I have tried to breathe new life into that church by bringing in some younger women. But these girls today…they have aerobics classes and their careers in management. They have their children in everything there is imaginable. Why I even heard Rev. Stewart was planning to have some Chinese karate man using our fellowship hall to teach karate or kung fu or some Asian exercise that probably isn't Christian.

Things are just so complicated these days. Everybody's trying to do everything and getting nothing done. Nobody wants to pitch in and help at the church. I feel like it's all I can do to keep that little church up and running. Nobody has any sense of loyalty or responsibility anymore. And I don't see it any more clearly than I do in my own family. Robin has an important job at some bank in Charlotte. She'll probably never marry. Teddy keeps going to school for one thing and then another. And Jenny, bless her heart,
the twins and that lazy husband of hers are all that she can handle.

In the beginning I tried to busy myself in their lives, be a real mother to them, but I was told in a hurry to mind my own business. And after Paul died I just assumed I could live with them throughout the year, especially during the winter, since the homeplace gets so cold. It's a daughter's duty, after all, to care for an aging mother. But that idea went nowhere.

Oh, I admit it hurt my feelings for a while, but I realized that they've got their own lives to lead. So I moved back home. And even though it took a while to adjust to living alone, I managed. I stayed busy with visiting the sick, taking cassette tapes of the Bible to the shut-ins, teaching crafts at the nursing home. I was home for about a year when Dick Witherspoon asked me if I would like to help over at the funeral home. Well, I never thought I would be one to do such a job, but it turns out to suit me very well.

I always did know how to put clothes together, and I've fixed hair since I was a little girl twirling strands of cotton. The makeup wasn't hard to learn. Pinks and rose mostly. Mr. Witherspoon says I'm the best funeral beautician he's ever seen. He says you would hardly know that those corpses are dead the way I fix them up. I like to think of it as my little ministry for the community and for those who suffer.

I know most of the dead. It's a small community after all. So I can usually remember how they flip their hair and how much lipstick they wear. I've got a good memory for how people look. And I am also very clear about what they could have done to look better. On occasion, it's this desire to better someone's appearance that has gotten me into trouble.

I almost got in a fight with Delores Wade over her mama.
Delores claimed her mother had never had color in her hair and that I should leave the gray showing in the front. I knew perfectly well that Elsie Wade needed Clairol Number 83, natural black shade.

I had tried to tell Elsie while she was living in a loving, gentle way, like the Scriptures tell us to do, but you'd have thought I was telling her she needed a feminine hygiene spray. We were in the Wal-Mart at Burlington, standing at the shampoo aisle, just chatting, and I said, “Why, Elsie, I believe that if you tried this Clairol Number Eighty-three, you'd be very pleased with the results.” She turned a funny shade of red, made a huffing kind of sound, and wheeled her buggy around so fast she knocked over the toothpaste display.

You know, thinking about that now, I remember that happened only a few weeks before she died. So that when they brought her into Witherspoon's, I figured here was my chance to lend Elsie some of the dignity she would never claim while she lived here on earth. But once again my good deed got punished.

Delores, the meddlesome daughter who moved up north after school, claimed her mama looked too young. The black hair wasn't natural. I said to her just as tenderly as I could, “Now, Delores, isn't that the point for women in life and in death?” I was only speaking the truth, but after I said it I was afraid the woman was going to hit me!

Dick, Mr. Witherspoon, said that even though he could see that I had done an excellent job with Elsie, the bereaved family needed to be pleased. Delores had apparently made things difficult for him. So I gave Elsie back that white chunk in the front and even streaked the back.

After that Mr. Witherspoon preferred that I let the family choose how to fix up their loved one. He agreed that I had a real eye for that sort of thing, but that in the funeral business, just like at Kmart, the customer is always right. So now I fix them up the way I remember they looked or the way they could have looked with a little help, take a picture, and then let the family tell me what they want to change. There's always something they want different, since I've learned there's nothing worse than a person in mourning having to make wardrobe decisions. I keep the picture as a sort of legacy to my work. Mr. Witherspoon said he used to do the same thing, but now he doesn't care to remember how many people he's buried.

I shouldn't complain about the families, since I know all about what grief can do to your memories. For the longest time after Paul died, I pretended we never had an argument. I'd have long conversations with the other women about how Paul never raised his voice and how we never let the sun go down on our anger. They would all smile and nod, pat me on my arm like I was so fortunate.

But in the more recent years, I've remembered things a little differently. Like how Paul never raised his voice because he rarely used it around me. And that we never had any arguments because we never talked. I realized that I had grown so accustomed to the silence that I began to invent reasons for it. Like he had too many things on his mind to speak about my new dress. Or he was all talked out from the last auction he called. I pretended over the years that we were comfortable and that the mediocrity that we both settled for was really happiness.

It never occurred to me that we didn't have anything to say
to one another. That the silence was simply reflective of our marriage. Now don't hear me wrong; I'm not saying that Paul Newgarden was a bad husband or even that he was a bad man. He wasn't. He provided for his family. He bought the children toys on holidays, took us to the beach every summer, and even set me up my own savings account. He helped out around the house and did as much driving for the children as I did. He just didn't know how to love me. Not in the way I wanted.

There was always a gift for my birthday. Weekends there would be some little knickknack he would pick up from an auction and bring home after the sale. He never missed taking me out to eat for our anniversary. All things that other women claim not to get from their husbands. But even these women, when they make this claim, make it with a depth of humor, some slapstick comment that makes me realize that there's some balance for what they do get that I'd never understand.

Like, for instance, maybe he doesn't bring her flowers but he can say her name in a way that reminds her of pure sweetness. Or maybe he forgets their anniversary but makes up for it by rubbing her feet and singing her some silly love song that makes her blush. So that even though a woman would complain about what her husband did or forgot to do, there would always be a lift to her voice when she remembered how he made it up to her.

Paul never forgot anything, leaving me with no grounds to complain and no memory of clever romance he used to win back my affections. He was sturdy and dependable, solid as Gibraltar, but the thing is that he never, not in the thirty-seven years that we were married, ever surprised me.

I've learned that some people like predictability, say that
they need it. I know that I thought I did. But I wish Paul would have done at least one thing that I could remember with a smile and a shake of my head. Some story that I could think about and, even with twenty years having passed, still laugh at the thought, and know that it was so intimate that no one could understand.

Oh, I suppose I expected too much. Maybe I read too many romance novels, but there was always something I needed that he could never give. Some part of him that was so closed off to himself that he did not have a clue as to how to open it to someone else, even, maybe especially, his wife.

And as soon as these thoughts came to me and I understood that the conversations that I was having at the graveyard were just as one-sided as they had always been, I quit going. I put the flowers out on significant holidays, but primarily I don't go out there. Jenny said something about it, asked why I didn't go anymore. I just shrugged like I didn't know. But the truth is, I figured I could find better things to do with my time, that I had wasted almost four decades talking to a dead man and I might as well not waste anymore.

I know that people whisper there's something going on between me and Dick at the funeral home. But it's all completely professional. He's never married, so there is certainly possibility for a relationship. But so far he's been a complete gentleman. Too much like Paul, in fact.

More than likely, I can tell you what he eats for lunch every day during the week and what jacket he'll wear to meet with which families. I've never been to his house, but I can pretty much guess that it's a tractor magazine that sits by his toilet and that he uses the same coffee cup every day. And I know enough
to realize I don't need another arrangement of convenience, even if it would mean that the weekends wouldn't be so quiet. I think for now I'll enjoy the solitude and escape the disappointment of marriage.

Besides, I have enough to do, like this cookbook. Obviously, Louise isn't going to be much help, and Jessie has already said she doesn't have many recipes herself, so I told Margaret that I'd be more than happy to help her collect what she needs. I have a whole file of my own. Most people know that my mother was the best cook in Guilford County, and when I got old enough to write, I had her tell me everything she knew how to make. I have notebooks full. Now, of course, there are some recipes that I just won't share. It's silly, I know, since neither Robin nor Jenny will ever use them. But they were my mother's, and they're sacred to me, so that I don't want to throw all my pearls to the swine.

It wouldn't matter anyway. Church isn't what it used to be. That little girl of a preacher tries, but I miss a man's voice in the pulpit. I love to hear the Psalms read by a rich bass voice. Her high-pitched tones put me to sleep. And, besides, she seems unsettled most of the time, like she's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Troubled, distracted in a way, like she's done something wrong. But as far as I know there have been no complaints about her. Even Dreama Isley hasn't said anything bad about her. That in itself is no small feat, since Dreama doesn't like anybody.

You know what I think would help? A hobby. If she had something to do that she really enjoyed, like flower arranging, maybe that would ease the edginess around her eyes. Young people without families need something to occupy their minds
besides work. The young women especially. Surely she doesn't find any men to date, being in her position and all, she needs some leisure activity that can keep her busy and her mind off of her loneliness.

I think I'll hunt up a couple of my flower-arranging books, let her borrow them, and make her a prune cake. I've got all the recipes out anyway. I might as well try a couple, just to make sure they're right. And Lord knows, there's nothing like a good prune cake to smooth out the kinks.

N
ow surely those white women know that black women don't use recipes. We cook by what's in our heads, the tastes we remember in the backs of our mouths. The memories on the tips of our tongues. They're all the time wanting to know how much salt I put in the greens, how many eggs are in my pound cake. And when I tell them I can't remember, they holler, “Well look at the recipe card and call me.”