Raney (7 page)

"He's black, if that's what you mean."

A picture flashed in my mind of Mama and Daddy and Mary Faye and Norris and Uncle Nate and Aunt Naomi and Aunt Flossie and maybe a child of ours in the living room with Charles and his best friend, a nigger.

"Did you say something to him about coming here?" I asked.

"No, not tonight. Why?"

"I just wondered."

"Would that be a problem?"

"I don't guess so."

"You don't guess so?"

"Well, Charles, I know you were in the war together and everything but this ain't exactly the war."

"What does that mean?"

"It means
—
"

"What does that have to do with our friendship?'

"Nothing, but
—
"

"Then why are we talking about this?"

"Charles. The army has been segregated since 1948, you said, but Listre still has the black laundromat and the white laundromat and nobody complaining
—
neither side. Johnny might get embarrassed downtown, that's all I'm worried about."

"You mean the army has been
integrated since
1948."

"That's what I said."

"You said
segregated"

"Whatever."

"Raney, don't worry about how Johnny might feel. He's sensitive to racial issues. You don't need to talk to a race horse about the race. He's been there."

"What are you talking about?"

"What I'm saying is that Johnny knows about towns like Listre."

"What does that have to do with a race horse?"

"Never mind. Don't worry about it. He's not coming anytime soon as far as I know. He's busy with law school."

What happened with all this conversation about Johnny Dobbs was: I forgot to mention the vent.

VI

Charles's mother called on the Monday after we got back from the beach and said she was going to Connecticut the first week in September to see her sister, Charles's Aunt Sue, and would like to drop by to see us
—
on the way up (Monday, Monday night, and Tuesday), and on the way back down to Atlanta (Saturday night and Sunday). She asked if it would be all
right,
if three months had given us enough time to settle in. I told her it had. She said not to do any extra preparing. Lord, Lord. Last week was the big week. And it was not smooth, like I'd hoped it would be. Charles had that meeting at our house
—
wouldn't cancel it
—
on Monday night, then the Sneeds business was all over the newspaper on the following Saturday which we got in a argument about at Sunday dinner at Mama's with Charles's mother sitting right there in the middle of it, taking up for Sneeds. Sneeds runs Daddy's store. Not to speak of the fact that Charles and Millie went to an Episcopal Church Sunday morning
—
and dragged me along.

I figured from the start we'd put Millie in the guest room. (She told me on the phone, again, to call her Millie.) Charles suggested
we
stay in the guest room and his mama stay in our room. I said a guest is a guest and that his mother was the guest and that's what the room is: a guest room.

Charles said his mother was not used to sleeping on a narrow bed. So I asked him what did he think I was used to sleeping on, and why didn't he just give his mother the whole house and we'd move on down to the Landmark Motel for the duration.

It was a matter of principle for me and I won out.

Friday, before she came on Monday, I vacuumed the whole place, cleaned the window panes in front, shined up the bathroom, and made the guest room a little nicer by putting in the radio alarm clock, our antique brass lamp, a wall mirror, a little table with some fruit in a bowl, and our biggest wedding picture. Then I realized the fruit bowl might draw gnats, so I took that out.

Friday night Charles tells me about this meeting he's planning to have at our house Monday night
—
whether his mama is there or not. He's joined this thing called a TEA club; he's been to several meetings and it was his turn to have the meeting at our house. The TEA stands for Thrifty Energy Alternatives. I suddenly realized that with people coming to the meeting, and with Charles's mother being there, I'd have to paint, or Charles would have to paint, the living room.

"Charles, if you'll paint that living room some color I can understand then I'll be happy for you to have your meeting here."

"What's wrong with it as it is?"

"Why do you think I've carried back those six sets of drapes?" See, Charles is just like a man. Has no more sense for color schemes than Bill Grogan's goat. "They didn't
go.
Nothing goes with that scum green tint. And Mama said none of them went. And for sure your mother and somebody at the meeting will notice."

"You're telling me you don't want the meeting over here unless I paint the living room?"

"Most certainly. And your mother can't come unless you do."

"Raney. Do you have some color in mind? My God."

"Some off-white without that green in it. And I've told you about cussing in this house."

"You get the paint and I'll paint it."

So I did. Saturday morning. And Charles painted the living room. Saturday afternoon, before he finished, I got these real nice gold and brown drapes that go. Then after that I got my hair done.

Sunday afternoon Charles goes to the Winn Dixie for groceries and comes back with a bottle of
wine.
He didn't even ask me
—
just brought it in as bright as day with the groceries, and I found it while I was unpacking.

"Charles, what's this for?"

"The TEA meeting."

"I'd rather not have wine in this house."

"Raney, some of the people coming to the meeting will be bringing wine. I'd like also to have some available
—
for my own mother, anyway."

"Charles. Why do you need wine at a meeting?"

"To drink."

I didn't say anything else, partly because it involved Charles and his own mother and partly because it won't champagne, which evidently does something to Charles's brain, and partly, I suppose, because I thought of Madora. She drinks wine at meals, like the French, and she poured me some one afternoon a couple of weeks ago
—
by mistake: she knows I don't drink. I took a sip, though, to see what all the fuss was about.

Madora's as fine a Christian as you'll find
—
judging from what all she does for people, and how good she is to her mama and daddy.
I drunk
only one sip. I told her it was better than champagne. She said champagne
was
wine, which surprised me because they don't taste the same at all.

We picked up Millie at the airport at about one o'clock Monday afternoon. She was wearing dark green slacks and a blouse she seemed too old for, and she brought me a present
—
some of those little knitted soap holders I never use.

We waited for her bags forever. She had two great big brown leather suitcases and one little one. Lord knows what all she had in there
—
for just one week.

To get from the airport to Listre you have to go through Bethel, so on the way home we stopped in at Mama's for a few minutes. Mama had insisted, and I thought it was a good idea.

Mama and Aunt Naomi were there, sitting in the living room, talking. They had been to a sale at Belks.

Everybody said hello to everybody and we all sat down and Mama said something about the sale. She got a navy blue bedspread for forty percent off and Aunt Naomi got a throw rug and two lamp shades for half price. Then they mentioned that on the way back from the sale they'd stopped by the funeral home to see Hattie Rigsbee who had died of a stroke the day before.

"She looked so good," Mama said. "Her skin was clear, good color, no swelling."

"I've seen them awful swelled," says Aunt Naomi. "They say it happens worse when they have a heart attack and nobody gets there right away. I remember Wingate Bryant looked awful. They figured he died right after he went to bed, laid there all night and when Rose got up to go to work she figured he was still asleep, until she brought him a plate of spaghetti at lunch and there he was: still in bed. She worked at the school cafeteria," she said to Millie, "across the street, and would bring him a plate of whatever they had. He was retired. From the telephone company."

"I remember that," says Mama. "You know, I do believe Hattie Rigsbee, today, was about the best looking corpse I've ever seen." She looked straight at Millie, then at Charles, to get them in the conversation.

Charles stands up and walks to the kitchen. I could tell he was mad about something; but Lord knows, I didn't know what, and I hoped Mama and Aunt Naomi and Millie hadn't noticed.

"Let me put on some coffee," I said, "and see if I can rustle up some cookies." I followed Charles on back to the kitchen and whispered, "Charles, what in the world is the matter with you?"

"What's the matter?" he whispers, staring. "What's the matter? Did you hear what she said?"

"Who?" I whispered.

"Who? Who? Your mother."

"About what?"

"About what?" he whispers louder. "About the corpse looking good and all that."

"Well, I guess I did. I was sitting there, won't I? What in the world was wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with it? It's uncivilized
—
that's what's wrong with it. Raney, the body in the funeral home is not the person. It's the person's body. Why can't your mother talk about the person, for God's sake?"

"Don't you use profanity in this
kitchen.
And don't get uppity because your mother's here. What do you expect? They were being respectful of Hattie Rigsbee. That's all. I'll bet you didn't even know she died."

"Respect is not the word. Morbid is the word. No, I didn't know Hattie Rigsbee died. I didn't even know Hattie Rigsbee. I didn't even know Hattie Rigsbee was
born.'"

"Well, you should have.
You been
living around here long enough." I was looking for cookies as hard as I could.

"Raney, we don't live around here. We live in Listre."

About that time I heard Mama coming down the hall. She came on in the kitchen. "Look, it's no need to mess with coffee," she said. "Mrs. Shepherd says she needs to get on over to ya'll's house and get settled. Next Sunday you're all invited over here after church for dinner. Her
airplane don't
leave until six-thirty so it'll work out just right. And we can all go to church together Sunday morning."

We drove home and got Millie and all her bags settled in the guest room. I'd planned to fix a meatloaf for supper but remembered Sunday about her being a vegetarian. Charles said to fix omelettes but I'd never cooked
a
omelette so I had to call Madora for a recipe. I practiced Sunday night, so the real thing Monday night turned out pretty good. Millie helped.

Charles had cooked
—
of all things
—
one of Aunt Flossie's apple pies. He got her to show him exactly how to cook one
—
he likes them so much. After his mama had a piece she raved about it and asked
me
what the recipe was. That Charles just sat there smiling and did not say one thing until I explained to Millie that Charles
fixed
it, not me. She thought I was kidding until Charles talked through about the ingredients and how you fix it. I didn't dare mention that I hadn't ever taken on any kind of pie. This one was good. It was a little tart, but it was good.

I was just beginning to relax when Millie asks, "Is there an Episcopal church nearby?" I had
forgot
about her changing over to the Episcopals.

"There's one in White Level," says Charles. "Sara
—
at the library
—
goes there."

"You're more than welcome to come to our church," I said. "And since we're going to eat at Mama's, we'll be close by."

"I really like the formality of the Episcopal service," says Millie. "I've gotten used to it. Charles, give them a call this week and if they're celebrating Eucharist Sunday morning at around ten or eleven, I could slip over for that."

I didn't know what a Eucharist was. Likely as not they'd be celebrating something.

"Or," she says, "
if
you two like, you could come along with me."

"I don't think I could go to an Episcopal church," I said.

"Why not?" they both said.

"They're against some of the things we believe in most."

"What do you mean by that?" said Charles.

"Well, they serve real wine at the Lord's supper. And they have priests, don't they?"

"Yes," said Millie.

"Well, I don't especially approve of the way priests drink."

"Jesus drank
—
if that's what you mean
—
as I understand it," she says.

"I don't think so."

"Well, he turned the water into wine at the wedding feast."

"Yes, but that was grape juice."

"Grape juice?"

"If Jesus turned water into wine on the spot," I said, "it had to be grape juice because it didn't have time to ferment."

There was a pause.

"If Jesus could make wine," says
Charles
(you could tell whose side he was on), "he could just as easily make it fermented as not, couldn't he? Why mess around with half a miracle?"

"I've been going to Bethel Free Will Baptist Church for twenty-four years now," I said, "and Mr. Brooks, Mr. Tolley, Mr. Honneycutt, and all these other men have been studying the Bible for all their lives and they say
it's
grape juice. All added together they've probably studied the Bible over a hundred years. I'm not going to sit in my own kitchen and go against that."

"But there are Buddhist monks," says Charles, "who have studied religion for an accumulation of millions of years and they say Jesus was only a holy man and not the son of God. You can find anybody who's studied something for X number of years. I'm not sure what that proves."

"These Buddhist monks were not studying the Bible," I said. "They were studying the
Koran.
We talked about that in Sunday
School
."

"I don't think they were studying the
Koran,"
says Mrs. Shepherd. "You're talking about Islam."

"Well, the point is: I'm not talking about the Bible. If it's not in the Bible I'm not interested in it because if I have to stop believing in the Bible I might as well stop living on earth."

"Here, let's get the dishes washed up," says Mrs. Shepherd. "I appreciate your faith
—
I guess it's a small matter anyway. Sometimes I think we spend too much time on relatively picky religious matters."