The Red Rose Box (17 page)

“Mrs. Martinez, who lives next door, serves them with almost every meal, including breakfast. They call them refried beans,” Olivia said.

“Mrs. Martinez gave me some meatball soup and tamales one day after school when it was raining but she didn't give me any beans,” I added as I bit into a taco.

“Leah is in love with Gilbert Martinez,” Ruth said. “He's a Mexican but he speaks English. Sometimes his mother speaks Spanish and his father likes to sing when he's working in their garden.”

Olivia and Gramma shared a smile.

We bought four white lace mantillas and drove home happy, humming to music on the radio.

Having Gramma's heart near mine felt good and I hoped that she would stay and love me for a while, love almost like Mama's. I stayed near her all day, showing her my photographs, modeling my emerald green dress.

That night Gramma put her head on the pillow next to mine and I told her, “In
The Wizard of Oz
there was a place called the Emerald City.”

“It seems to me Los Angeles is like a emerald city, palm trees standin up everywhere, green jewels in the sky,” she said. She embraced me and we fell asleep.

When we awoke, it was early morning and she said to me, “A kind, quiet man, patient, soft-spoken, quick to smile, hands with tenderness runnin through em; that's the man for you, Leah. You too soft for anything else. B'fore you marry, send him to me. I'll know if he's the one. If he don't wanna come see me, let him go his way and don't look after him. You remember what I'm sayin to you. Promise me that.” We fell asleep again.

The morning of graduation I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and Gramma helped me slip into my dress. The zipper purred as she pulled it up. She turned me toward her and said, “Bless me, Jesus, but if you don't look like your mama. My Rita, how I miss her, cookin beside her in the kitchen. What she would give to see this day.”

I asked Gramma if she missed our mama as much as I did. She replied, “Course I do, but I know one thing bout my daughter Rita. She wouldn't be gone if she hadn't been ready to have her meetin with the Lord. And Leah. You be at peace now bout it or you gonna feel a slice missin from your heart till you gotta head covered with gray. Got a spirit of sadness round and bout you, follows you round like a tail on a donkey. I'd like to see it lift b‘fore I find m'self on the train, headin home.”

I wanted to tell her that I missed Louisiana and living in Sulphur, where almost everyone knew my name. I wanted to let her know that sometimes I walked around barefoot just for the feel of the grass and dirt beneath my feet. But I could feel sadness coming and so I said nothing as I held Gramma's hand.

Gramma brushed my hair and put a little red lipstick on her finger. She dabbed the lipstick on my lips. “Just a little. You got natural beauty.”

“My friend Michelle Jordan wears lipstick to school every day,” I informed her.

“Y'all too young for every day.”

“When I grow up, I'm gonna be a teacher, Gramma. Like Mrs. Redcotton and Mrs. Larson,” I said.

“That would sure make your mama 'n daddy proud,” she said.

I sat down on the side of the bathtub and watched her paint her mouth. She took a piece of tissue and pressed it to her lips, leaving a red print, and tossed it into the wastebasket. She had wrinkles around her eyes and her hair was gray. Her cheekbones were high. She patted her face and mine with powder, to take off the shine, she said, and stepped into a blue dress that had buttons in the back instead of a zipper. I buttoned them for her, bottom to top, and we looked at each other in the mirror, delighted.

Ruth opened the bathroom door without knocking and came in. She was wearing a pink dress, pink socks, white patent leather shoes, and Shirley Temple curls. “Everybody's waitin. Uncle Bill said we bout to be late if you don't hurry. Said he can't understand why women take so much time in the bathroom.”

Gramma took one last look in the mirror, put her lipstick and powder into her purse, and we hurried to the car.

Mrs. Pittman was waiting for us outside the school auditorium, wearing a smile, a black-and-white polka-dot dress, and a black pillbox hat.

They went into the auditorium to find seats and I went to my classroom. The boys were wearing ties and suits, gray, brown, navy blue, and black. The girls' dresses were white, green, red, blue, pink, lavender, some made from lace, others from satin.

Donna Peterson touched me on the shoulder and we smiled at each other. “Your dress is pretty,” she said.

She was wearing yellow. It almost matched the color of her hair. “So is yours,” I said.

I found my place in line, in front of Michelle. She leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “I have on eye shadow, can you tell?”

I turned and looked at her. The faint color of pale blue was on the lids of her eyes. “I can tell. It looks pretty. I like your dress.”

“I like yours too,” she said.

All of the sixth-graders walked into the auditorium and took their seats. The principal talked about the future and how the world was changing.

I thought about the way my life had changed, the schoolhouse in Sulphur, the boys and girls I had sat with while Mrs. Redcotton tried to fill our minds. I looked at my hands and remembered telling Elijah that I wasn't going to be a cotton picker.

I turned and looked at Ruth, Gramma, Uncle, Aunt, and Mrs. Pittman as I rose from my seat. I wished Mama and Daddy were there as I walked up the steps in front of Michelle Jordan. Mrs. Larson handed me my diploma and said, “Leah Jean Hopper.”

The next day was my birthday. I was twelve. I was a young lady. I sat on my bed and looked out the window and I could hear Ruth whistling like a bird across the hall. Low clouds filled the sky.

Gramma and Mrs. Pittman spent the afternoon in the kitchen together, cooking, talking, and laughing. They filled the house with joy. Mrs. Pittman played Nat King Cole records on the record player and sang along. Gramma made a coconut cake and when Uncle Bill and Aunt Olivia got home from work we ate barbecued chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, and baked beans in the backyard by candlelight. I was feeling like I had a family again, like Ruth and I had a place where we belonged. Hot sat at my feet and I slipped him a piece of chicken. He was devoted.

The weeks flew by too quickly and Gramma was boarding her train. Olivia had asked her to stay. Uncle Bill had chimed in. Ruth had pleaded with her. I had whispered prayers to God. Gramma had simply said that California was not where she belonged. That it was too big a dose of people for her to handle all the time, that she longed for the quiet of the country, even if it meant she would never vote, that Sulphur was where she'd been born and it was where she'd be buried, that she needed to get home to tend her little garden of turnips and tomatoes, to give Elijah a peck on the lips. And so she went.

I knew that I would miss her every time a train blew its whistle twice.

That night, I closed my bedroom door and took down my red rose box. I sat on the bed and unlocked it. I took out the pearls and put them around my neck. I tied the white scarf with black flowers around my head and clipped the earrings with purple stones to my ears.

I held the photograph of Mama and Daddy in front of me and remembered.

Ruth turned the glass doorknob and walked in without knocking. She sat on the bed beside me, looked at the picture, and put her head on my shoulder. No tears came.