Swan Place (4 page)

“Can’t do that, sugar,” he said in a mournful way. “My mama’d be sure to find out, and she’d get all over me for shaming her like that.”

“And there’s Bett, as well,” Mama agreed.

“Well, between my mama and your sister, we got no choice but to behave ourselves.”

“Yeah, honey,” Mama said.

But Roy-Ellis did stay on for supper with us, and afterward, he sat on the porch and played his guitar and sang songs for us. Some of them were songs I could sing along to, but most were what Mama called love songs. They were soft and slow, and while Roy-Ellis sang, I watched Mama smiling and with the tips of her ears turning bright pink. Those love songs made me happy because they made Mama happy, and I figured she deserved that, after what all my own daddy had done to her. That last night before their wedding, Roy-Ellis stayed on the porch with Mama for a long time after Molly and I went to bed, and when I fell asleep, it was to a soft, sweet song with lots of “darlings” in it.

The next day, their wedding day, Mama and Roy-Ellis drove up around Dahlonega so a Justice of the Peace could marry them. I didn’t get to go see them get married because they were just going to have the ceremony and then have a one-day honeymoon in a fishing cabin that belonged to someone Roy-Ellis worked with at the poultry plant. So Molly and I stayed with Aunt Bett that day and night, and the next day, Roy-Ellis’s truck drove up in front of Aunt Bett’s house and Mama and Roy-Ellis got out and came across the yard, holding hands. Mama had wildflowers in her hair, and after they came into the kitchen where Aunt Bett was making potato salad, Roy-Ellis hugged Aunt Bett and spun around with her until she squealed. And he did the same with me. And he held baby Molly in his arms and smiled down into her face. She was only three months old.

Even after Mama and Roy-Ellis were married, whenever he got to looking at Mama, seemed to me his eyes went all soft and so melteddown looking, they almost slid right down his cheeks. He looked at her most of the time—like he just couldn’t get enough of her, because Mama sure was nice to look at. Maybe not so much after she got so sick or when she was tired or worried or just waking up from drinking too much beer at Across the Line.

But there was one Saturday night only about a month after they were married when Mama was all dressed up and waiting for Roy-Ellis to get his hat on just right. But she suddenly got a strange, surprised look on her face and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Roy-Ellis came out of the bedroom and asked where Mama was, but just about that time, we could all hear her being sick. After a few minutes, we heard the toilet flush and later, Mama came out of the bathroom, wiping her face with a damp rag.

“Honey, what’s the matter?” Roy-Ellis asked. “You sick or something?”

“No, honey,” Mama said. “I’m not sick. I’m just gonna have a baby, is all.”

Well, I never saw anything like Roy-Ellis that night. He whooped and hollered and threw his cowboy hat up in the air, and then he picked Mama up in his arms, like she was a little girl, and he danced all around the living room with her. They didn’t get to do much honkytonking until after Little Ellis was born, but Roy-Ellis said he didn’t mind one bit. He was going to be an honesttogoodness papa, and that’s all that mattered.

Little Ellis was born exactly nine months later, and Roy-Ellis passed out cigars with boybabyblue bands on them at the poultryprocessing plant. But after that, he took to paying no more attention to Little Ellis than he did to me and Molly. But he didn’t mean it to be that way—just that I guess he loved Mama so much, he didn’t have anything else left over for anybody else. And that was okay with me, because Mama was so happy.

And that’s what all I was remembering while I stood in Mama and Roy-Ellis’s closet. But then I heard a noise behind me and looked to see Molly standing in the doorway, sucking her thumb. “Lil’ Ellis wet,” she announced, forming the words around her thumb.

After I got Little Ellis all cleaned up, I fixed cereal for us all. Raisin Bran was all we had left, and I had to help Molly pick all the raisins out of hers before I poured in the milk. We ate silently, and how strange that kitchen did feel! The same kitchen as yesterday, but not the same, in some strange way that I couldn’t figure out but that I felt lying so heavy on my heart. I heard the softest little moan, and I didn’t even know it was me, until Molly looked up from her cereal and asked, “Dovey? Your tooths hurt?”

“My tummy hurts a little bit,” I said. “But it will be better tomorrow.”

“You promise?” Molly’s eyes were suddenly darker.

“I promise.” And what I didn’t say out loud was this:
I promise, Mama. I promise to take good care of Molly and Little Ellis for you. You don’t have to worry about them.

After breakfast, I sent Molly and Little Ellis into the bedroom, and I washed Roy-Ellis’s coffee cup and the cereal bowls and wiped off the table. We just have to carry on the best we can. Soon, we were all dressed in the clothes Aunt Bett had brought to us and sitting in the porch swing, waiting for her. When I thought about how I had been sitting in that very swing so early in the morning, it seemed to me as if that was something that had happened a hundred years ago. We heard Aunt Bett’s car rattling and coughing down the road before we could even see it, and my heart gladdened. Maybe Aunt Bett was right about keeping things as normal as possible. Maybe even I could pretend this was just another Easter Sunday morning. But when we got into the car, our cousins were quieter than usual and looking at us in a funny way. So I guess Aunt Bett had told them about Mama. And I could almost hear for myself what she must have said to them: “Not a word! Do you all hear? Anybody says a single thing, you’ll be in the woodshed with me and my switch before you can even blink!”

So the ride to church was quiet—not the usual giggling and laughing we used to do. At the church, Aunt Bett and I took Molly and Little Ellis and Aunt Bett’s two youngest—Jack and Jessica—to the Sunday School section, and then the rest of us pushed open the heavy swinging doors and went into the big, cool sanctuary. The deep red carpeting, the polished brown pews, and the high, soaring white ceiling were a comfort to me. And the flowers! Why, there must have been a hundred Easter lilies banked around the choir loft and the pulpit. After we sat down, Aunt Bett reached over and patted my hand. I wanted to smile at her, but somehow or other, my mouth just wasn’t working right. Then all the singing started, the Easter hymns I loved so much. Starting out so slow and mournful-like!

“Low
 . . .
in
 . . .
the
 . . .
grave
 . . .
He
 . . .
lay, Jesus
 . . .
my
 . . .
savior!”

So sad! So sad!

“Waiting
 . . .
the
 . . .
Coming
 . . .
day, Jesus
 . . .
my
 . . .
Lord!”

A pause—a long pause, and then the organ and the choir and all the people roaring forth:
“Up from the grave He arrroossee! With a mighty triumph o’er His foes!”

Oh, that music was really something to hear, and I wanted so bad to sing too, but there was some kind of a tight place in my throat that I knew wouldn’t let the singing come. So I just stood there and listened and looked at all the beautiful flowers and the sunshine streaming through the windows, and I tried not to think about Mama.

Bang!
went the swinging doors at the back of the church, and all the hairs on my arms standing straight up! I turned my head and there He was, just as I had imagined.

“He arose! He arose!”
The choir was shrieking.

And I saw Jesus—tall, handsome, and strong—swinging his arms and smiling and taking giant strides down the aisle! And skipping along with Him, holding His hand and wearing one of her prettiest spangle dresses and her dangle earrings was
 . . .

My mama! My very own mama. And not all thin and pale and hurting so bad, but Mama like she was before she got sick—young and oh so beautiful! I knew Aunt Bett’s mouth was going to be hanging open when she saw just how fast Jesus had forgiven Mama’s honky-tonking, but when I looked at Aunt Bett, she was still singing along like nothing had happened. Then I looked around at the other people, and not a single one of them seemed to have noticed that Jesus Himself and my very own mama had come into church! And when I looked back at the aisle, no one was there. Not Jesus. Not Mama. And the doors at the back of the church were closed. I sat down and my breath went out of me in a whoosh. Aunt Bett leaned down and put her hand on my shoulder. “Dove?” she said over the sound of the singing. “You okay, baby?”

“Yes’m,” I managed to breathe.

So she straightened up and went back to singing, but she kept her hand on my shoulder. Me sitting there thinking I must have had a dream! But I was awake, and that didn’t make a bit of sense! The more I thought about it, the more I remembered how beautiful and happy Mama looked. No more pain. No more sadness. And her holding His hand. I stood up, and I could sing, sure enough, because whatever had been so hard and tight in my throat was
gone
, and in that one instant, all my bitter-sad turned right into sweet-sad. Just like that
.

“He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!
”

After services, Aunt Bett
and I went and collected the younger children. As we came back down the long hallway, Aunt Bett stopped a few times to speak to her friends and to whisper in their ears. Her friends looked at me and Molly and Little Ellis, so I knew she’d told them about Mama. Some of the ladies patted my shoulder and some stroked Little Ellis’s head, but no one tried to touch Molly, because she was wearing her storm-cloud face. I guess Molly was a lot like springtime, with beautiful sunshine and singing birds one minute and a terrible, sudden storm the next.

The ride back to Aunt Bett’s was a quiet one, with our unusually solemn cousins watching us and then turning their eyes away if we looked back at them. So I just held Little Ellis on my lap and watched through the window as our little town went by. The big flour mill and dirt roads that went off through tall grass, the grocery store all closed up because of it being Sunday, and at last, the familiar road and Aunt Bett’s little gray shingle house. The minute we came inside, we could smell the wonderful Easter ham she’d left roasting in the oven, and our cousins chirked up a bit.

“All you children get in there and change your clothes,” Aunt Bett ordered, putting her purse and gloves on the hall table and heading for the kitchen.

“Darlene?” she called over her shoulder. “You find some shorts and shirts for Dove and them. You hear? And make sure you come help me get dinner on the table.”

“Yes’m,” Darlene answered, and she smiled at me.

“Don’t you just hate being the oldest?” she asked, as we steered the children toward the bedroom.

“I guess so,” I said, but it wasn’t true. The truth was that I had never even thought of such a thing. So I didn’t really know whether I minded it or not.

“Believe me,” Darlene said, perhaps sensing my lack of real feelings about being the oldest. “One of these days, you’ll know what I mean. You’ll get tired of wiping their noses and their bottoms and having them around all the time. You’ll want nothing more in this world than to have some private time, just for yourself. And you probably won’t get it, just like I don’t get it.”

“I won’t?” It still seemed inconceivable to me that I would feel that way about Molly and Little Ellis. To my mind, there were just things to be done, and I was the one to do them.

“You’ll know what I mean, one of these days,” Darlene assured me, and with that, she led me to Aunt Bett’s famous “Closet,”—more than a closet, because it was lots bigger than any closet I’d ever seen before—big enough to have its own window and with shelves that went almost to the ceiling and that were loaded down with clean, folded clothes of all kinds. And three shiny racks on wheels, all jammed tight with hanging clothes, and a big basket full of matched socks. Aunt Bett had more children’s clothes in that one room than they had down at the department store on Main Street, but I knew for a fact that she hadn’t bought any of them new. The piles of shirts, shorts, and jeans, she had gotten from her friends whose children had outgrown them. And she didn’t pay any money for them either, but traded big jars of her good homemade pickles for them. Most of the hanging clothes—the dresses, at least—were homemade, mostly by Aunt Bett herself, but a few were homemade by those same friends, and she paid lots of jars of pickles for them.