Maude (36 page)

Gene left a ten-thousand-dollar insurance policy
naming me as beneficiary. The funeral home took the
promise of part of it to pay for the funeral that cost five
thousand dollars.

Gene took after me in that he had a lifetime habit
of saving money. When Donna and I went to the bank
where he’d always had his account, they told us the
money had already been taken out and the account
closed. Donna and I talked late into the night the way
we used to, and I told her about Gene’s last days. One
of the last things he said to me was that I should give
half the money to her. I promised I would send it when
I got the check.

Loretta didn’t come to the funeral, and when we
went to her apartment, it was empty. We never found
out what happened to Gene’s car. I never heard from
Loretta again. I was right not to trust her.

Mr. Crider was no longer able to drive, but his
son came each Sunday, picked me up, and took me to
church. I lived for those few hours each week when I
could feel part of a church family again.

I was broke, my savings gone. I waited for the
money to come from the insurance company. It would
have to last me as long as I lived. All I had coming in
now was my Social Security.

I prayed the check would come soon. I had to pay
rent, the electric, gas, and water. I had to buy groceries
for myself and Paul. I made corn meal mush and
oatmeal for breakfast, we ate bologna sandwiches for
lunch, and mostly collard greens or beans for dinner. I
bought just enough meat for seasoning the beans.
Paul wouldn’t even look for work.
Two months passed since Gene died, and the

check from the insurance company hadn’t come yet. I
put in for welfare, but was told it took time to qualify.
I gave up the telephone, and it hurt me when I had to
tell the paperboy I couldn’t take the
Free Press
anymore. I’d read the paper every day since before I
voted that first time, but I had to cut back wherever I
could.

I’d been looking for the mailman every day, and
the check finally arrived. He handed me the envelope
that morning and I got my purse, walked the quarter
mile to the bank, and deposited it right away.

When I got home, I was worn out and only
wanted to rest. I walked in the house and Paul met me
at the door. “I need some money for cigarettes,” he
said.

I hate to tell you that it’s possible for a mother to
hate her own child, but sometimes, even if just for a
second, it is.

I shook my head. “You haven’t smoked since
your father moved out. You’re going to have to do
without or get some sort of a job if you want cigarettes.
I can’t afford to buy them for you.”

He jerked my purse out of my hand and rifled
through it. I had about three singles in paper money
and some change. He took one of the bills, threw my
purse on the table, and strode out of the house.

Paul came back from the store, pulled his chair
up to the front window, and sat, staring out and
smoking.

I thought about calling the police and having
them put him out of the house, but didn’t know if they
would even come. If they did, would they simply laugh
at me? I wanted to force him to get out, to make him
leave, but I wasn’t a young woman any more. What if
something happened to me and I was all alone? How
long would I lie there before someone found me? It
was something I feared, so if he needed me, maybe in
a way, I needed him.

There was no love from Paul toward me either-not that I could see, not ever. Maybe that was my own
fault.

Paul treated me as if I hadn’t lost anything, hadn’t
lost James, and Lulu, and Betty Sue, and now Gene.
I’d carried and birthed and nursed five children, and
this was the only one I had left in my old age. The best
thing I could say about him was that it was better to
have him in the house than to face dying alone.

I looked back over my life, all the way back to
the day my parents died. If I hadn’t been at my sister’s
house, maybe I could have warned them, but I might
also have died in the fire with them.

If I had refused to marry James until after I
finished school, would he have waited for me? What
would Helen and Tommy have done if I’d said no?
They couldn’t have thrown me out of the house.

If I’d somehow kept James from playing baseball
that day, would he still be alive, or would he have
hated me for robbing him of his big chance?

If I’d refused to marry George to keep people
from gossiping about me, would I have ever found
someone else, or would I have lived out my life as a
widow and never had Betty Sue and Gene in my life?

If I hadn’t nursed Clara and Mom Foley through
the flu, would Lulu have been spared the infection? I
often wondered if I were the one who brought the thing
that killed her into the house.

If I’d been firmer with Bud and Paul and not let
George coddle them, would their lives have turned out
better?

My head pounded with knife-sharp pains. I went
to my room and pulled the window shade all the way
down. I lay on the bed in the dark afternoon and closed
my eyes.

I’ve heard people say they had no regrets in their
lives. I wish I could have said that, but there were so
many regrets, so many mistakes.

The morning after the funeral, someone (one of
my maternal aunts, I think) drove me back to my
grandmother’s house on the way to the airport. There
were three things I wanted from her personal
belongings. Holding Melanie, my aunt waited in the
car while I went in the house. My uncle Paul was
waiting at the door, his face torn up. “They came
yesterday and took all her things,” he told me.

“Who?” I asked.
“Ellis and his wife.”
Betty Sue’s husband had more nerve than I

I looked around the living room. The furniture
was there, but all the knick-knacks, the doilies,
everything that could be carried away in a car, were
missing.

I went to my grandmother’s bedroom. The big
family Bible, the thing I wanted most, was gone from
the dresser. Except for a few wire hangers, the closet
was empty. The navy blue, mirrored tray that sat on the
dresser and held her
Evening in Paris
cologne was
gone. I opened the dresser drawers one at a time, from
top to bottom. They were all empty.

I almost asked Paul why he didn’t stop them, call
the police, do something, but I remembered the power
Ellis had always had over him. He would have been as
helpless as a child.

He gave me Ellis’s address. It was just around
the corner. I rang the bell, and Ellis’s new wife
answered with Betty Sue’s little girl perched on her
hip. Tommy and Terry clung to her skirt. The boys
shied away when I went to hug them. They didn’t
remember me.

“There are only three things of my
grandmother’s I want,” I told her.
“What are you talking about? I don’t have
anything of your grandmother’s.”
“Paul told me you came last night and took her
clothes and all her other things. I don’t care about most
of that, but I want the Bible, the photo albums, and the
nightgown that was wrapped in tissue in the bottom
drawer.”
“I don’t have any of that.”
“Where are they, then?”
“I don’t know, ask Ellis.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s gone drinking. Maybe you can find him in
one of the bars on Jefferson.”
I knew it was useless to ask her to let me come
in and look for what I wanted. I didn’t have time to go
from bar to bar, looking for Ellis the way my Aunt
Betty Sue had done so many times.
“I can’t. I have to catch a plane. Tell him I’ll pay
him for them if he’ll send them to me.”
I took a piece of paper from my purse, scribbled
my address and telephone number on it, and handed it
to her. I returned to the car, knowing I would probably
never hear from Ellis again, and I didn’t.
Melanie sat on my lap and sang and watched the
trees and buildings as we rode to the airport. I didn’t
want to upset her, so I held back my tears.
The money my grandmother deposited into her
account became part of her estate. It was divided four
ways. Paul received one thousand dollars, Ellis’
children split another thousand, and I was given one
thousand. I don’t know what happened to the rest of it.
Paul called me about a month later. His money
was gone, and he wanted to come live with my family
in Kansas. I told him that wasn’t possible. I heard a
few years later that he’d been murdered on the streets
of Detroit.
I could have asked my Aunt Fredia who my real
father was, and she would have told me the truth. I
didn’t care. I already had the best daddy in the world.
Although my father kept a Kodak Brownie
handy and loved snapping pictures, I don’t have many
of my childhood or my father’s family. There are no
mementoes, nothing that would be considered a
keepsake.
I didn’t realize until I started writing this story
that my grandmother, Nola Maude Clayborn Connor
Foley, had already given me the most important thing
of all. Those long ago nights we shared her bed, she
gave me her incredible life.

The Detroit News, August 6, 1962
A young Detroit motorist struck a woman
pedestrian whose body was catapulted into the rear
seat of his top-down convertible, then carried the
woman around for 20 minutes before surrendering,
police charged today.
Held in Police Headquarters jail is Gary D.

Paves, 21, of 2170 Lakewood. He is charged with
leaving the scene of the fatal accident late last night.
DEAD ON ARRIVAL
Mrs. Betty Sue Marshall, 39, of 2651 Lycaste, the
mother of four, was dead on arrival at Receiving
Hospital at midnight.
Ordered to report to Accident Prevention Bureau
officers today for further questioning was a passenger
in Paves’ car, Wilbur D. Moughler, 22, of 1101
Lakeview, who told police the accident was
unavoidable, and that he persuaded Paves to return to
the scene and surrender.
The accident occurred at 11:30 P.M. at the
northwest corner of Jefferson east and St. Jean, across
the street from the Jefferson police precinct station.
GIVES CHASE
A witness, Joseph Booker, 1545 Defer, told
officers he heard the impact of the car striking Mrs.
Marshall and saw the car speed away. “I jumped into
my own car and gave chase,” he said, “but I lost them
in traffic.”
Police said no officers saw the accident because
the precinct station was changing shifts at the time.
They said Moughler told them that Paves drove
for three or four miles, changing direction frequently,
before he returned to the scene and surrendered at
Jefferson Station. “As soon as we hit her I screamed at
Paves to stop,” Moughler told police, “but he kept on,
and it took me some time to argue him into going
back.”
Jefferson Station officers rushed Mrs. Marshall to
Receiving Hospital in an ambulance to no avail. An
autopsy was scheduled today.
Police said other witnesses told them Mrs.
Marshall was staggering in the middle of the street and
waving her arms and was narrowly missed by several
other automobiles before Paves’ car struck her.
Police said that Paves, a gas station mechanic
who is unmarried, was incoherent when first
questioned. All he would say, according to detectives,
was that he did not see Mrs. Marshall and did not know
he hit her or that her body was in his car until he was
a mile or two from the police station.
Later, police said, Paves insisted that he only
drove around the corner, where his car stalled, and that
he did not know Mrs. Marshall’s body was in his car
until it stalled. Then, officers said Paves told them, he
returned to the scene.
Paves also told police that he and Moughler had
dropped off two girlfriends just prior to the accident
after drinking a beer apiece in a tavern.
Mrs. Marshall’s husband, Ellis T., 37, said earlier
yesterday she had visited her father, George Foley, 79,
who is seriously ill in Receiving Hospital.
Afterward, her husband said, she visited a tavern
near the accident scene to chat with a friend who works
as a waitress there.
“It is a terrible tragedy,” said Marshall, who
works at the Fleetwood plant of General Motors’
Fisher Body Division.
“I haven’t told our children yet. I know I will
have to tell them sometime today, but I just can’t think
how to do it.”
The children are Thomas, 7; Terry, 5; Patricia, 4,
and Linda, 1.