Songbird (3 page)
But that night, Mama seemed so excited. “Myrtle, things might just change for us. I feel like good luck is in the air.” She shook as though a little engine puttered inside of her.
Despite Mama's warning, I watched her slip into the man's car and was thankful she didn't look up at the window, because a nosebleed gushed. When it stopped, I walked down to First Baptist for the Christmas pageant rehearsal.
Mrs. Evans sat in the sanctuary with the rest of the kids and she waved real big and motioned me over, as if her arm said, “Now, just you get on over here, you sweet thing.”
And I ran down the aisle, no thoughts of nosebleeds or Mama's dates. Mrs. Evans basted everybody together as though an invisible thread passed through each body and then stitched me in right between her left side and the end of the pew. She curled her arm around me and squeezed a little. “We're singing ‘Away in the Manger,’ the one with that pretty tune you don't hear too often.”
I shook my head. “I don't know which one you mean.”
So she hummed it in my ear. “You got that?”
I nodded.
“Sing it back, with the words.”
And so I did, and Mrs. Evans's eyes grew. “You're a peach, Myrtle Whitehead. How about singing a solo?”
“I’ve never sung a solo.”
“It'll be fine.”
Since Mrs. Evans said it, I believed it.
“That settles it, then.” She squeezed again. “You'll sing the song, and James'll be Joseph, Ida will be Mary and have you seen the Stuarts’ brand-new baby?”
I nodded.
“He'll be the Baby Jesus.”
And you know, Mama sat right there the night we put on the pageant, right on the fourth row, on the center aisle, and when I began to sing, she cried. She just cried and cried and I felt so bad.
“Why were you crying, Mama?” I asked afterward. “Were you sad?”
“Not really, Myrtle.” She held my mittened hand in hers and we walked slowly down Rivermont Avenue toward home. Mama seemed so normal that night.
“Then why were you crying?”
“Don't even ask.”
It was the last important question I’d ask her for the next fifteen years or so.
T
hat December brought a change in her that I still don't understand. Perhaps it was designed to give me more cause for regret upon her desertion, or perhaps it served as something to cling to in those subsequent years when all I really had was memories.
That Christmas morning, we decided to attend Rivermont Presbyterian, closer to home, and the prettiest church you've ever seen. My how those ladies decorated that year. Candles flickered in hurricane lamps on each windowsill, their tiny spark of glow a twin of the picture of the little oil lamps pieced together in the stained glass of the windows above. The lacy screen up front supported feathery fir garlands and velvet bows and fresh fruit.
I sniffed the lush, yuletide perfume of the hushed, candle-softened sanctuary as we tiptoed in that morning. Mama did, too, and she took my hand and whispered, “There's nothing like the smell of fresh pine, is there, Myrtle?”
And I shook my head. “I do believe they should bottle it, Mama.”
Isla Whitehead awarded me one of her few chuckles. “They do, Myrtle Charmaine. It's called Pine-Sol.”
And we had ourselves a laugh as I fingered the soft wool of my new scarf, noticing, for the first time, a tiny little bluebird embroidered in the corner of one end. Mrs. Evans knitted scarves while she watched TV at night. And that Christmas, she gave one to me. Even Mama thought it pretty though she didn't have much of a heart for “homemade things” in general. But now, years later, whenever I take the winter things out of storage, there it sits in the box, shimmering baby blue and silver and cream. I do believe I’ll have it dry-cleaned one day and wear it for the season.
None of the nearby restaurants turned on their lights that Christmas Day, and all of the college girls had traveled far and wide, and were now snug at home in Connecticut with fire-places, or Atlanta or Richmond with their spacious warm kitchens decorated with hanging brass pots and the finest in cutlery, or even Los Angeles with clear swimming pools, sparkling plastic beverage holders in a wide variety of colors, and palm trees cha-chaing with ocean zephyrs. The girl with the room next to ours hailed from California and her parents named her La Fontaine, a name much preferable to Myrtle, I can say with utter conviction. Nobody knew how she kept that tan all year round, but me and Mama suspected the two battered Chinese screens and three disposable pot roast pans we found one day up on the flat roof of the house had something to do with it.
To our surprise, however, when we returned from church a wide basket perched right in front of our doorway. Now Mama had been planning on us having squirt cheese on Ritz crackers, Vienna sausages, Slim Jims, and a variety pack of Frito-Lay products for our Christmas dinner. She'd even placed four Yoo-Hoos and a pint of High's eggnog outside on our window ledge.
“Look!” Mama cried, and she bent down and read the pretty card.
“Who's it from, Mama?”
“Don't even ask, Myrtle.”
So much for a nice Christmas.
I figured that snazzy man from Washington, D.C. figured into the whole mysterious equation.
“Can I see what's inside of it?”
“Of course, Myrtle, don't be a fool! Let's quick get inside before anybody sees.”
Well, what a basket, is all I can say! Fancy stuff in there. Crackers, caviar, cream cheese, a half bottle of champagne made up our first course. Next came cheese straws, a cute little Danish canned ham, pâté, and some grapes. And by then we were so stuffed we couldn't eat the dessert.
I fell asleep on the bed. Mama stayed there with me that evening and her happy mood increased. We'd eaten fancy food and nobody was taking her off on a date that night. Mama just sat at the window drinking champagne. Before I drifted off she said, “Myrtle, what would you think of us having a house someday?”
I said I’d like that just fine. And after I woke up from my nap, we ate pecan tartlets, fine chocolates, and drank up the eggnog. For the first time I realized why people said, “Merry Christmas.” In fact, until that day, I never really thought much about the salutation at all, what people really said, or why they even said it.
“Merry Christmas, Mama.”
And Mama only smiled and sipped some more.
D
own at Mrs. Evans's house she draped those new little twinkly kind of lights on almost every bush. At least they shone new back then and so different from those big, pasty, colored lights people clipped onto the branches of their firs, yews, and azaleas. The first Christmas she used them, Mrs. Evans's lights blazoned intense colors, the filament of the bulbs standing staunch behind a thick coating of sheer pigment. The second year, they shone a bit paler, and by the end of that season, with all the rain that fell, the color had cracked some, flaked off some. White light beamed through the fissures.
I loved those lights.
I loved them more when the white shone through because her yard glowed brighter, happier. But I remember most the day after the big-basket Christmas when Mama took me for a walk after dark to look at the decorations. It was the first year for Mrs. Evans's twinkly little lights and I thought, “How beautiful!” In fact, I said just that.
“I think so, too, Myrtle,” Mama said above my head. “Maybe one day we'll have lights like that on a house of our own.”
Now, Mama never talked like this even three months before. She'd never muttered hopeful sentiments, someday wishes, or even regretful what-ifs. Many times Mama said to me, “Myrtle, life is what it is. You've either got to deal your own cards, or take what comes. But if you choose the latter, then don't bellyache.”
Well, we stood there in rapt pleasure at Mrs. Evans's lights when her green door opened, splaying light across the brown grass like a searchlight on a field of desert troops in close formation. “Is that you, Myrtle?” she hollered.
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Come on, Myrtle, let's go,” Mother whispered.
But I broke free and ran up to the porch. Silent treatment or no silent treatment, nosebleeds or no nosebleeds, I wasn't going to hurt Mrs. Evans's feelings to save myself from Mama. I experienced a panic, as though an unseen hand drew battle lines and I’d better get myself on the winning side quickly.
Mama's explosions came and went, but Mrs. Evans's love never waned.
Of course, Mrs. Evans hugged me tight and acted like seeing me was akin to the news that World War II ended. And I hugged her back.
“Is that your Mama out there, Myrtle?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Well, come on up!” Mrs. Evans hollered. “I just put the kettle on.” And she waved her arm like usual, the plump length of it encased in a tan woolen, hand-knit sweater, the kind with a metal zipper running up the front.
I eyed Mama, praying my heart out that the good mood would continue somehow. I knew better than to open my mouth and cloud her mood.
Mama walked up the drive with a strained smile, obviously controlled by something deeply ingrained. The woman who waited tables at the Texas Inn became, I suspect, the young woman from Suffolk with a mother named Minerva. “Thank you. But we only have a minute.”
I didn't say
a word.
One thing we always had was time.
“Well, we'll take what we can get, right Myrtle?” Mrs. Evans said to me.
And I still didn't say a thing, I just nodded and let her usher me into her warm little white rancher at the end of Rowland Drive.
“That's a beautiful magnolia you have out there,” Mama said. “And I so enjoyed the pageant! I never knew Myrtle could sing like that.”
“Isn't she a peach?”
“Well, she sure didn't get the talent from me. I can't carry a tune in a bucket.”
“Must be from Myrtle's father.”
And Mama didn't say
a word.
She just nodded. Because believe me, I asked the father question long before that day and, well, it doesn't take a genius to imagine her response.
“Let me get that tea. How do you like it?”
And we told her. Nothing in it for Mama, a little milk and some sugar for me.
Mrs. Evans produced a plate the size of a truck tire supporting sugar cookies she and her teenage children must have baked. They gathered with us, too, two girls with long brown hair and a nice-looking black-haired boy who towered over the rest of them. Laughter and crumbs mixed together there with the smell of our tea, the Christmas tree, and the fire going on the grate in the living room.
Mama sat like a fence post, and even when one of the girls sat down at a Miles Kimball-type piano and played Christmas carols, the music tinny and bright, she looked as though her thoughts were landed in Alaska or Zimbabwe.
Who are you? I suddenly remembered the woman who used to sing me awake each morning.
When the music started, an old lady inchwormed into the room with an aluminum walker. She wore her white hair piled high like a dollop of Cool Whip and the makeup that overlaid her wrinkles appeared somewhat clownish, the way too much makeup does on old people, but she smiled and bared these big yellow teeth and her eyes sparkled just like her daughter's. The whole family waved her over the way, I know now, all the Evanses do, and she plopped down in a lounger. The cute boy pulled the wooden handle at the side to make good use of the footrest.
“That's my mother,” Mrs. Evans said. “Mama! This here is Myrtle, the little girl I told you about. My Sunday school class's little songbird.”
“Hey,” I said.
“And this is her mother, Isla Whitehead.”
“Nice to meet you,” the older lady said with a bright smile. “My name's Sara Jaffrey.”
Mama greeted her.
So we sat and drank our tea, ate some cookies, sang some songs, and had the first real family moment I could ever remember.
These days, I look back to that night and I try to re-create it at least once during the holidays. I made the mistake one year of going stylish with my lights. White lights everywhere. But it wasn't the same. So I dragged out the old-fashioned colored ones the next year, went to Wal-Mart to make sure I had enough bulbs to replace the burnouts, and baked more cookies than usual. I think people weigh themselves down in the aim of achieving effect. We ride by folks’ houses with blinking lights, flashing spirals of color waltzing in bare branches, and I think to myself those people know a little something extra. They know what they like and well, that's enough.
“Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought,” the New Testament says, and I think that includes things like Christmas decorations. I’ve met the folk that have the perfect garlands and sprays and wreaths, the folk that live in Williamsburg-style houses. And I’ve met the folk that live at the edge of town in two-bedroom ranch houses that have Frosty the Snowman, lights playing tag around the roof, and a Rudolph stuck askew somewhere on the lawn. I’d rather sit in the home of the latter with an errant couch spring poking my derriere because, truthfully, they're glad to have me, and they never look at my shoes and wonder where I’d been before I got there.
T
he day Mama left was the worst day of my life. I’ve had some rough patches since then, but no other day sticks its thorns into my memory like that day.
When I got off of the bus that Friday, I pulled my hood up over my ears and ran right up onto the porch. Now, our boarding house, long and narrow, had porches up at the front. One porch upstairs, one down. Of course, we didn't live in a porch room, but Mrs. Blackburn did, the lady who owned the place and took care of me from time to time. She lived upstairs in an apartment with two bedrooms, a living room, a private bathroom, and a kitchen.
January had hit hard for Lynchburg, the temperatures barely making it above freezing the entire week. Usually Mrs. Blackburn sat outside on her porch watching the kids walk home from school and the college girls arrive back from their day of classes at Randy Mac.
Not today.
After spidering up the steps inside using both arms and legs, I dug for the key that hung on a chain around my neck and rested beneath my blouse against my flat chest.