1008 PART 3 of 3 AINT PELL re: DUCKS

Please see Parts I and II below, for the beginnings of this story. 

 

 

 

 What the ceremony SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

What it WAS:

When they DID get Aint Pell out of the car and into the Peabody, she bludged right onto that red carpet, just like it had been laid out special for her square-set, fat-heeled little pumps, and stomped off toward the elevator, marching right up to the uniformed young man and standing imperiously in the door for him to let her on.  Never mind the crowds gathered around, never mind all the people sitting on the floor along the sides of that carpet like hedges on a path, and with her STEW button set so loud that she didn’t even hear the announcer’s voice OR the rousing Sousa march.   No matter that nobody back behind her could SEE the show they’d come to see---she marched right down that red carpet between all the waiting crowd.  

 

 

 

 

Unca Dorse, trying to follow her juggernaut through the room, finally took one careful lunge of his long legs and stepped over two little girls in pink fairy-wings sitting sweetly by the carpet, and stood scanning the crowd for Aint Pell, who hadn't budged out of the way of the elevator door. 

 

“She jes wadden lissenin’.  She gets a thing in her head and she don’t hear nobody fer nuthin’.   Folks were just a’callin’ at her, and tellin’ her to move, and she just stood there like a stump. An’ ‘nen she just stepped right in there amongst those ducks like wadin’ inta the chicken-yard with a bucket a layin’ mash.

 

 

 

 

“Th’ whole crowd parted ways when they came outa that elevator, with all the ducks a-squawkin’ and a-flappin’ and headin’ for that water-fountain, and her windmillin’ and steppin’ high and swingin’ her purse to get clear of ‘em.  She near-bout swatted that big ole drake right in his tailfeathers as he took off over the folks sittin’ on the floor.”

 

“When they saw there wadden no harm done, everbody commence’ta laughin’ and takin’ on, and clappin’ and cheerin’ up a storm when those ducks hit the water like skimmin’ a lake.    MAN!  That was a sight to see.  An’ Pell, she just turned right around in that elevator, straightened up her hat a little bit, and put her hands on her hips and waited on the rest of us to get on.   I swear and swannee---I wutten take nothin’ for that show, not if I live to be a hundred.  It even got a write-up in the Commercial Appeal.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

And they lived more happily ever after---those siblings and in-laws and nieces and nephews who'd been criticized and bullied and shamed at holidays all their lives.   At any family gathering, there’d be a roomful of talk, and it would start from somewhere in the next room or outside an open window---a gentle little “Quaaaanckk, Quaaaanck, Quanck,” soon joined by several others in a kind of duckish, jabbery harmony, growing in sound and number for just a few moments like a nasal, growly choir in the distance gaining ground and fading away.  And then all was quiet, except for the stifled snickers in the room and the muffled hee-haws from the culprits, who were nowhere to be seen as they stashed duck-calls in pockets and purses til next time.

 

 And if they ever find out which one it was that snuck out there during dinner that next Thanksgiving and velcroed a little rubber ducky on the dashboard of her big ole gold-colored Sedan de Ville, well, that one won’t ever have to help with cleanup and dishes after the Family Reunion, ever again.

 

1007 Part 2 of 3 AINT PELL, REDUX

 Please see Part I below, for the beginning of the story.
 

One time when Aint Pell’s great-nephew on his Mama’s side got married up in Memphis, they had such a big to-do up there, it lasted for three days, with all the shower-saved-til-last and the Rehearsal Dinner on Friday night and then the bridesmaids luncheon on the day of the wedding (to which only the Groom’s Mother and Grandmother were invited from his side---and there began an Aint-Pell simmer which had had its first tee-ninecy blup in the pan when the invitations arrived).  Her mad percolated all the way up Highway 55, growing into a definite head of steam when her and Unca Dorse’s place cards at the Rehearsal Dinner were at a table with a single Uncle, the organist-and-his-wife, and two couples they didn’t even KNOW, as well as a bare place-setting which sat there unused all night.

 

 

 

In the church vestibule before the wedding, she stood looking at her bosom as one of the florists pinned on her diddly-squat little old corsage, and her down-turned pout grew grimmer with each second that ticked by.   And  she was ticked as all get out, when the usher stopped and steered her into the fourth row---she plopped down immediately in the aisle seat and sat there like a rock, resolutely refusing to go on down to the far end like they rehearsed, so as to make way for the people coming in behind her.  She sat so tight that she might near pulled the long chain off her pretty purse, trying to yank it out from under her behind without actually lifting up an inch.

 The rest of the row-full of aunts and uncles in their nice clothes and unaccustomed new shoes had to clamber over her stout little pumps and bump against her unyielding knees as they tried to get to their seats.   Unca Dorse stood there wavering in the aisle, unsure whether to stand there like a flagpole in front of everybody while the ushers ferried the whole row of folks down the aisle, or sit down beside her and bob up and down til the row was filled.

So, by the time the Day-After Brunch came around, she was so het up that she didn’t even want to go. A bunch of the out-of-town family had stayed at hotels near the church, and planned to stop for brunch together.  She had set her mind on just leaving a little before checkout, her and Unca Dorse stopping off at the Piccadilly Cafeteria for a good Sunday Dinner, where she could speak her piece about the shortcomings of the whole thing, and then head home.   Besides, she’d done wore all three of her good outfits in front of people.

 

 

 

 

But Unca Dorse had got with Carlisle ‘n’‘em and made it up that they’d all surprise her and go to the Peabody for Brunch together anyway---it would be special. She didn’t realize where they were going until they were WAY on out toward the river, instead of heading home, and he got more than an earful on the way, plus it took him and two of their nieces to talk her out of the car and into the hotel.

 

And when they DID get in, there just was NO pleasin’ her.  The trip through the lobby was quite an event in itself,  and she just would NOT stop mumbling and grumping as they got up to the big Sunday Brunch and had to be pleaded with by one and all to even go up to that gorgeous buffet.

She frowned and stomped all the way up to the salad station, poking around in the melon balls with big hard digs, just to show how mad she was.   She completely ignored the huge displays of papayas and pineapples and other melons, all cut into peacocks and little wagons, and all the cold salads and colourful pastas and beautifully arranged vegetables and cheeses.  

The giant cornucopia made of bread, spilling out all sorts of rolls and croissants, was totally lost on her, and she hardly saw any of the food through her frown. 

 

She toddled back to the table with a plate holding several melon balls and a little chunk of pineapple, before anybody else could even get up to the Omelette Station.  She practically  hurled her plate onto the table, causing one little green orb to go skittering off the side and  escape onto the cloth, where it took refuge behind the sugar bowl.

 

Scowling even harder, muttering shitshitshit under her breath (had there been any UNDER, for the deep rumble of her voice made it quite audible in all directions.   She had the makings of a creditable bass fiddle in there).   And all the laughing and talking coming from the relatives up at all the buffet stations---what WAS so funny, anyhow---none of it was funny to Aunt Pell.

 

She was still sitting there fuming when the rest of them returned with plates loaded with slices of that juicy pink ham and wedges of spinach quiche and salads and fruit and pastas and asparagus, and candied sweet potatoes dripping sugary syrup---she wouldn’t even answer when Unca Dorse looked at her three bites of fruit and asked, “Is that all you GOT, Hon?”

 

She just poked peevishly at a melon ball, which leaped from the slick little plate, cleared the table-edge, and rolled in a perfect goal between the heel-arch of a stilettoed young woman leaning cozily toward her dining companion at the next table.

 

Tired from such a busy weekend, and from long custom and daily acquaintance with her constant mood, no one took much notice of her sulk, as long as she left THEM alone.   They were all chattering brightly, which seemed to darken her mood even more.  

 

“We like to never got her to get out of the car,” Unca Dorse would recount for years after, “if it hadna been so hot in that garodge.”

 

“And there she sat,” he would say, “like a swolt up ole toad-frog, just a-rurnin’ everybody’s dinner.  And us at the Peabody HO-tel!  That woman just ain’t got no pride a-TALL.”  

 

 

And Moire non:  The Middle of the Story,  ‘Twixt Arrival and Brunch 

Or, How Aint Pell got her feathers ruffled.

LIVING AT MRS WOODS' IV --SATURDAYS

 

A couple of years ago, when Beverly of PINK SATURDAY and I were having our “decade” birthdays, she suggested that I wear pink pedal pushers to my party, for old times’ sake.   I thought then of some ladies who wore those exact pants, when they were in fashion and I was in my teens.   They were a wonderful bunch of teachers, who lived "at Mrs. Woods'" when I was growing up.   I thought many thoughts over the years of how it might have been in that house of seven women, day after day---their gentle voices and small chores and comfortable friendship.  They're a continuing set of chapters in PAXTON PEOPLE, and are composites of many folks I've known, even if only in my imagination.

 

 

 

 

Each of the residents was accorded her place, her time to wake and contemplate and move into the day, as they came down in their dusters and hairnets, into the quiet calm of Saturday morning.   A few were already up and out, dressed in casual weekend pedal pushers and blouse or a culotte and cardigan, descending the stairs in a muted burst of energy and waft of Emeraude or Wind Song.   Reaching for a cup and slipping a quick piece of Wonder bread into the toaster, or choosing a piece of fruit from the ever-supplied wooden bowl in the pass-through, they made a hasty breakfast, and were off to the library, to Keene’s for nylons, to Breedlove’s for some engraved note-cards, or on any other errands proscribed by the clock during the school week.

 

 

 

 

 

Others took the morning as they found it, surrounding the breakfast table in the sunroom like colorful birds as they gathered in their kimonos and robes and caftans, gently rustling the paper and sharing bits of news over coffee and the teapot, and letting time move without them.   Miss Jones boiled an egg, Miss Omar made a ham-and-mustard sandwich, little Miss Hester ate her cornflakes with bananas on top. Arithmetic and verbs had no place here, and the demands of the classroom days slipped from them like shrugged-away coats.

 

Mornings were mostly for errands; afternoons, for little chores.   A neatly-typed schedule hung on the wall beside the washing machine, with a good leeway for two loads; everyone knew exactly when it was rightfully WHOSE, and there was scrupulous adherence to the buzzer, getting that load of clothes into the dryer or out so the next person could have her turn.  But the laundry and the hair shampooing times were flexible, with those who opted for a lazy morning at home getting a head start on one or the other, out of turn and who cared.

 

 

One of the two conveniently-ample water heaters served kitchen, laundry and Mrs. Woods’ downstairs bath, with the other three bathrooms supplied by the second.   And so several processes could be in progress at once, with everyone comfortably supplied as the day went on.   Such a scent of Halo and Conti and Luster-Crème filled the house on Saturdays, along with Duz and Tide and Faultless Starch, and rollers and pins and head-scarves were the dress of the day.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then there was all the hair-rolling, usually done each-in-her-own-room, with each one emerging in scarves or hairnets covering a skullcap of tiny white rosettes of cigarette paper secured by bobby pins, or a mosaic of small silver clips, and others resembling cloth helmets---the size depending on the diameter of the rollers-of-choice.

 

 

 

 

 

Miss Omar “did” her short bob daily---a quick shampoo and a finger-wave with several of the crocodile-clips to hold it while it dried.

 

 

 

 

  Shoe-polishing was done at any time, singly or in groups, at a  long, linoleum-covered table in the sunroom---a sort of gathering place for the little task, with everyone still in comfortable Saturday clothes, from slacks to Miss Hester’s little gardening coverall to the lazy comfort of a duster-worn-to-breakfast.

 

 

 

And in the hot days of Summer, Miss Wanamaker took advantage of the secluded, hedged back yard to wash her own long hair with the hose, wearing halter top and Bermudas, which not one of the ladies would have EVER worn out in public.   She’d sit in the sun, gently brushing the length of her shining mane, until it was just dry enough to roll the ends on curlers, for she quite often had a date on Saturday evenings for dinner or a movie or a party.  And the time young Mr. Harmon took Miss Wanamaker all the way to Memphis to the Peabody to go dancing at the Skyway---why, every lady in the house was as happy and a-flutter as if they were each being called for by a prince, with a line of carriages stretching out the gate.

 

 

There was a comfort in that house, a neatly kept, cushiony sort of feminine languor which napped the rooms like rich veloute, giving even the brightest and most energetic of the ladies an extra grace of movement and a restful air, with the slow confident ease of home and place and belonging.

PAXTON PEOPLE---BOBBIE HELEN SHUMAKE

Bobbie Helen Shumake has never been one of the “pretty” girls.   She was always rather plain, except for her amber eyes, which  shine like honey-held-up-to-the-sun, and her palest-of-pink/blonde hair with a natural sort of glimmer to it, tamed into a big curly pile on the back of her head. 

 

         She’s always been lanky and wiry, with long slim boy’s legs and arms corded as those workout-women who count out edamame one by one.    She was the best athlete in all the school, climbing that rope in the gym faster than any boy, and never touching it with feet or legs.   Once, when the Lady Globetrotters came for a charity game in Expedia, her coach-who-knew-their-coach got them to let her play in the game, and she was wonderful---scoring several times, and clowning a bit, just as the pros did. 

 

She’d married a really nice Bubba of a guy and their four boys were exactly like their Mama---long and lean and living for every sport, every season.  

And the most faithful fan and loudest-shouting supporter at every game, no matter the sport, was Bobbie Helen.  She and Harold were tailgaters, water-carriers, team-parents, and rode late into the night on more preposterone-filled buses than any other couple in any school.   To the whole town, they seemed to live their lives in a state of elbows-and-pranks and rollicking hilarity--- bemusing most, and providing many a tale of their crazy doings around the county.

 

Long into parenthood, she was still known for her antics and sense of humor, and the time she got tired of wearing that dang brassiere right in the middle of an Elvis concert, right there in the front-row-balcony of the Memphis Coliseum---that grew into a legend that almost, but not quite, eclipsed the TV appearance of Mac MacIntire, who drunkenly wagered his pants at an Ole Miss Game that time, and whose wide flat behind was captured full-screen by ABC, just as he left the stadium in blazer, tie, and boxers.

 

When the Thirty-Fifth Class Reunion was coming up, Bobbie Helen approached it with more trepidation than most---she knew all those pretty women would be there---those Homecoming Queens and those Miss This and Miss That, and even with just her hometown friends, she thought she was starting out behind, to begin with.   All those laugh lines from all that joking around for so many years were evident around her eyes, and since she laughed at most everything in life, mostly at herself and her foolishness, she decided to skip the Avon Lady and all the little bottles of Youth This and Renew That at Paynes’ Drugstore.

 

   She thought this was serious enough to just take a splurge, and go to Memphis for the Big Guns:   Merle Norman.    She didn’t want just a wrinkle-remover---she wanted a Wrinkle-Corrector, one of those clear, instant-apply things that simply smoothed away the years in one swift application. 

 

She bought the best they had, and tried it out for a few days beforehand, and dad-gum if she DIDN’T look younger.   She could tell the difference right off.    And when she put on a little base and powder, well, she looked really nice.    She’d always been confident of her figure and knew she looked good in her smoky-green silk dress with her hair up, so on the evening of the party, she applied the stuff as directed and stepped out, right pleased with her appearance.  

 

And if she’d left it at that, she’d have been a nicely-maturing lady, with glowing skin and beautiful eyes and an infectious smile.   But when both Geneva Grace Crossland-Holloman and Karla Kay Fullilove Morgan walked in at the same time, with their three-hundred-dollar haircuts and their handsome husbands-from-off, Bobbie Helen reached into her purse for the Youth Stuff and rubbed a little bit more around her eyes.   

 

Then another few women chattered their way into the room, and she felt the need to renew the application just a teense more.   She dabbed dots of the stuff on her face and smeared it surreptitiously around every so often.   And then, after sipping a Mai Tai or two, she grew less secretive with her efforts, snapping open the little bottle of viscous glue and squirting a bit on her fingers before swiping it around her eyes and down the small grooved parentheses flanking her lips.

 

As the evening grew later and the chatter more lively, the band even louder, the Mai Tais flowing and the smoke hovering like bayou mist, she grew unheeding of her motions, as she gave a big squeeze of the gel into her palm and massaged all around her face with it, as unconsciously as if she were sitting at her vanity with the Pond's, talking to Hairl over her shoulder.  

 

Her night’s worth of effort had the effect of leaving her countenance at the end of the party quite shiny and rigid, resembling one of those bank robbers in the clear plastic masks, rendered grim slick statues except for the eerie bit of life in their eyes. 

                           

 

At the Swirl-a-Curl the next week, Bobbie Helen told the story on herself, laughing fit to bust.

 

“And when we got home, I was all the way in there hangin’ up my dress when I caught a glimpse in the mirror, and I said, ’My-y LAWERD!  Hairl!!  Why ditten you TELLL me?’

 

“And Hairl says,  ‘But BAY-by,  it come on suh GRADUAL!’”

 

MRS. DUKE AND THE FRUITCAKE

 

 

Perhaps it was the Black Dress which set the tone of foreboding.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Duke lived two-houses-down, in one of the big old mill houses, and immediately upon their moving in, had had their two sons from Memphis to come down with ladders and buckets to cover the house’s grim khaki siding with a lively appley green.

 

I think she did most of the rooms herself, over time, for you’d knock, and enter a deep purple space, where the Fullers had had the dimmish white living room.   Or step through the dining-room arch into a rusty-brown cave, with great wrought-iron sconces whose red glass shades cast an inferno-glow onto the dinnerplates and lent the rich lush air of midnight dining in a Spanish castillo.  

 

The kitchen was schoolbus yellow, with the old green linoleum the only dismal note, and the lighter yellow formica table and plump-vinyled chairs sat in the middle of the floor, with counters ranged all round the edges. 

 

 A strange combination of plaster plaques were scattered on all the walls---a whole village of little Asian people at various tasks, and enough bright half-fruit to fill Carmen Miranda’s hatbox. 

 

 

 

  

 

Mrs. Duke seemed to live in a maelstrom of Primary Colors, with interchangeable tablecloths and wardrobe featuring garish fruit or umbrellas or palm trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

The tiers of café curtains featured dancing pots and pans, and her aprons were always wild rick-rack dreams from the Crayola Box of Eight.

 

 

 

 

 

She WAS a good cook, at least to my notion, for she made Spaghetti and MEAT BALLS, with some exotic whiff of unknown, pleasant herb, and set out little green shakers of Parmeesyun cheese.    Hers was quite a contrast to our plain ground beef, crumbled and browned with bell pepper and onion, and anointed with a can of Campbell’s tomato soup and a tiny can of Contadina.  Ours was mixed into the biggest spaghetti Ronco had to offer, cooked way past fork-twirling stage.

 

Aluminum  Wearever percolator on the white Amana range, Golden Wheat cups and saucers on the table---never mugs, for those endless cups of Maxwell House with whoever-dropped-in, and at least five ashtrays distributed around the kitchen, any three of which could be guaranteed to have a Pall Mall or Kool smouldering away, sending up eye-searing little signals of “Don’t forget MEEEE!”

She was a bright little twinkle of a woman, with sparkly jewelry and a bouncing page-boy.  The Dukes belonged to the Civic Club and the Garden Club, and she was always scurrying off to Wednesday AND Thursday Bridge, with a colorful purse on her arm and the smiling snap of Doublemint as she went.

 

So one Christmas when she came into the house preceded by Arpege,  perhaps it was the unaccustomed black dress that startled us to begin with---setting a tone of foreboding in its severity, like the one poor Miss Doris Day wore in MIDNIGHT LACE.   Her smart little black suede sandal-strap heels clicked across the floor as usual, as she set a cellophane-wrapped present down on our kitchen table.

“Y’all, I have a confession,” she said, in the tones of about-to-admit-adultery.  We looked at her, shocked into silence, as she went on.   “Y’all KNOW I make a whole lot of fruitcakes every year, and I ALWAYS bring Y’all one.   Well, this year, I just worked so hard, and bought up all that candied fruit all Fall, and went clear over to Greenville to pick up pecans at Sister’s house.   And it took me several days to pick ‘em out, and then chop the fruit and mix up all those cakes---well, I just hate to tell Y’all, but when I got through all that mixin’ and stirrin’ and gettin’ into the pans and the first batch in the oven---I looked down and saw I had a FINGERNAIL missin’ and I just like to DIED!”

 

All eyes swiveled to her hands, and sure enough, the finger-with-her-rings on her left hand had a little ole stumpy nub-nail where her usual bright red manicure flourished, like a shorter plank in a picket fence.   I think we all probably swallowed hard, and I don’t remember what-all was said or done before she left.  

 

But when she was gone, my Mother picked up the cake and said,  “Anybody feel like eating this cake now?   Why did she have to tell everybody she gave one to?  Only one of us would have been surprised.”

 

It was kinda like the old joke about the raffle where the prize was a mule, and it turned out the mule was dead.   But only the winner complained, and they gave him his dollar back.

 

 

 

 

 

PAXTON PEOPLE---JESSIE PAUL GRAHAM

Jessie Paul Graham sells Avon, raises a big garden to sell vegetables, and has two dozen chickens, all with names.   She also paints little scenes with acrylics on country things like saw-blades, bird houses, old pumps, and boards from torn-down barns and tenant houses.   She’ll stand right out there in your driveway and paint your mailbox, and bring you some home-grown tomatoes, while she’s at it.

Every year, she gets up all the art and craft projects for Vacation Bible School and the two week Day Camp that the Boy Scouts run up at the park for all the boys in the area.

She once got into a bidding war with another crafty painter at the once-a-month Bring-It Auction in Expedia—one of those ladies who always puts in apostrophes when she paints people’s names on stuff---and they just wouldn’t stop raising on a rusty old crosscut saw til the other lady’s husband grabbed both her hands and held them til the gavel fell, to keep her from bumping the price up to $60.00.    Only the little scatter of applause kept everybody in the house from hearing the losing bidder hissing through clenched teeth, “Billy Clyde, you turn loose a me, and I MEAN IT!”

Jessie Paul sanded that old saw, and painted it in a little down-the-road scene on each side---one looking out at rows of corn like comb-tracks in a little boy’s wet hair, and on the other, a long-distance look at a little farm, all laid out like a grits Grandma Moses, with tiny bright brushtips dobs of white cotton on the knee-high rows of green.

 

   It came with two small painted bike-brackets, so you could hang it up easily, then switch scenes---take your pick any time.    She got double her money and then some at the next Art Fair up in Clarksdale, where people really liked all those country scenes.

She stayed the weekend with her cousin up there, and they had reservations at The Madidi on Friday night.   She took a nice dress and some pumps, and they dressed really fancy for that wonderful evening.  

She and her cousin had a martini, and about the time they started on their Shrimp and Grits, they were disappointed to find out that Morgan was not in town.   So they had another martini and got home in time for a Housewives.  

Jessie Paul made $602.00 that weekend---Delta folks sure have taken to those gussied-up sawblades.

PAXTON PEOPLE--MISS DOVIE'S MAMA

The New Preacher’s wife dropped in on Miss Dovie Caldwell and her married daughter one afternoon---one of several visits she made around the town a day or two a week.  Miss Dovie was in her accustomed place on the corner of the couch, with her crochet hook in hand and her feet up on the footstool.   A glass of tea was offered and accepted, arriving in a pretty frosted glass with one of Grammaw’s long silver tea-spoons and a little plate with a slice of Devil’s Food cake. 

Preacher’s Wife sampled, admired and completed her required manners by asking for the recipe.    On hearing that there were THREE kinds of chocolate betwixt the cake and the icing, she gasped at the luxury. 

Miss Dovie smiled as she cast on eight stitches, and looked up as she began:

In my whole life, I don't think I’ve known but two people who didn’t like chocolate. One was a bit strange in her ways, anyhow, and the other came by it honestly as anybody ever could.

That one was my Mama---Miss Birdie Mae Pritchett, she was, and  my Daddy was Vonn Pardee, from over at Expedia.  She was fifteen and Daddy was nineteen when they ran away and got hitched---Ole Granpaw just forbid them to see each other until she was sixteen, and it finally got the best of them. So, when all the younguns got all dressed up in sheets and charcoal-smudge whiskers and Granpaw’s oldest clothes on that warm Halloween night, they dressed up, too.

She’d been a-wearin’ clothes under her clothes for several days, sneaking them out into the barn and hiding a couple of outfits and her best dress and shoes in a pillowcase under some old stuff stored out there.

On Halloween, she put on a long checkedy skirt and one of her Daddy’s shirts over a dress, crammed her stockin’s and her Bible in her purse, and then “went walking” with the rest of the young people of the community. This was back in that time when the kids ‘ud soap your windows or tip over your outhouse, and one time two of those Williams boys got mad at Sonny Pollan for making eyes at one of ‘em’s girl, and they opened up the front door of the Pollan house and turned two pigs and a turkey in on his Mama’s good Sears Roebuck rug.

Mama met Daddy waiting down the road and they set out on his horse to Expedia, where they had been going to church, and knew the preacher.   So they were married the next day, staying with his kinfolks for a while, then coming home to a very cold reception from her family, though the Pardees were really well thought of hereabouts.

One of his married brothers had just finished building a new little house for himself and his own bride, and they asked the newlyweds if they’d like to stay with them for a bit until things cooled off some.    And they did, with nothing but his steady job at the sawmill and the clothes she had carried from home.  Apparently they lived on there for quite a little time, for the main part of the story occurred on over in the hot Summer out there a good little ways out in the country.

Mama and Aint Nettie Frances got along fairly well, as long as the chores around the house and yard and milking-barn were divided about 70/30, Mama said, in favor of Aint Nettie Frances, and she was gettin’ more and more pleased with the arrangement.  Aint Nettie Frances allowed it was HER house, and she since was giving them “house room,” they could just do their share.   Mama had to bite her tongue many a day, for fear she’d say something that would cause her sister-in-law to toss them right out into the road.   

Mama did most of the cooking, all of the kitchen work, a lot of the animal-tending and the milking, whilst her sister-in-law quilted and tatted and made herself clothes all the Winter through.

Then, in the Spring, the menfolks plowed up a garden plot, and Mama planted and hoed it, then canned everything that wasn’t needed for the three-meals-a-day for the four of them.    It got hotter and hotter, and the canning seemed to stretch on farther than that distant Delta tree-line.

She’d start the day way before daylight, getting the men’s breakfast on table and their lunch pails packed, then made her way out to the bean rows or pea-patch or cornfield as soon as she got that morning’s milk into jugs in the springhouse.  That Delta sun beat down on her back as she squatted in the middles, and sweated her scalp fierce under the big-brim bonnet that kept the sun off her face.    She’d pick as much as she could calculate she could shell or shuck and can in that day’s time, and take it up to the porch, getting it into dishpans and setting out the old bushel for the hulls or the shucks as the chickens came running over to wait for something to fall through a crack.

Aint Nettie Frances “slept as late as she could,” ja know, to avoid as much of the morning heat as possible in the shady bedroom.   She didn’t like hot food on a Summer morning, so she usually had some berries or peaches on clabber with the coffee left in the pot, or she’d open a big jar of Mama’s just-canned sweet pickled peaches, and eat them right off a fork with the sticky juice drippin’ on the table.  

She also had a “morning bath,” though there was but the one in a day.   And in Summer, she pumped the water straight out of the red pump on the kitchen counter, sluicing it off into the big old #3 tub from the back porch.   She did love a cool bath, and great fluffs of body-powder, with more settling onto counter and table and the pine floor than onto herself.  You could mark the time of day by the big shining ring of unpowdered floor, until somebody swept it out the back door in a cloud  across the yard.

Unca Jrome and Aint Nettie Frances would go to town almost every Saturday afternoon from the farm, getting the week’s staples such as coffee and sugar and tea, and some sody crackers and vi-eenies and all,  and Aint Nettie Frances would look through the Butterick book and feel the quality of fabric for a new dress and maybe price some of those pearly buttons.  They’d spend the time visiting up and down the streets with friends and storekeepers, always stopping at the drugstore, where they’d have a cold Cherry Phospate, sitting on those high fountain-stools and crunching that real cracked ice til the last sliver was gone.

Mama wasn’t hardly ever invited on these trips, and Daddy was usually up at Grammaw and Grampaw’s doing their little chores, so she’d stay home on the place, week after week. And every Saturday, she’d pray so hard for them to just get gone for a little while---just a breather from the work and the constant company, so she could wash her hair and dry it in the sunshine of the yard, and sit in the swing in the shade a bit without a pan of peas in her lap.

The noon dinner dishes were done, the floor swept, the shoes polished for church in the morning, and a bit of rest was in sight, she hoped.

Unca Jrome  would pull the buggy up to the yard, while Aint Nettie Frances would check her hat in the mirror, then she’d walk out onto the porch.  Mama would watch her go, relief almost overtaking the fervent prayer that she’d just GO, and then it would come:

And EVERY BLESS-ED Saturday, Aint Nettie Frances would stop on the porch and turn, or she’d get all the way up the step into the buggy, settle onto the seat, turn to Mama, tuck her head and look up from under her eyebrows like a little kid you caught at something, and say, "Chock-littt CAAAAAAKE, Birrrrdie,” in the most irritatin’ voice in this world.    She’d blink her eyelashes real fast like one a them vampy women in the pictures, with that smirky smile that knew Mama couldn’t refuse, since they were so beholden to her and her husband for a place to live til they could get on their feet.

And so, Mama would stomp into the kitchen, get out the bowls and the spoons and the sugar and the Hershey’s can, throw some more wood into that already-sweltering woodstove, and start mixing batter and icing. Some days, she'd bang things around some---stove-lids and sifters, or yell out what she’d REALLY wanted to say to Aint Nettie Frances.   And once in a while, she’d just fling the whole shootin’ match out into the back yard, and then have to go all the way out there and pick up those cake pans and spoons from where she’d flung ‘em.

But she made that cake, every blessed Saturday that they lived there. She worked in that stifling kitchen every week, baking the layers and cooling and frosting, heating the whole house past bearing in that Summer sun, doing her part to help with their upkeep.

One Sunday morning, everything came to a burnin’ bush, as they say, when Grammaw Pardee overheard Aint Nettie Frances say something real mean about Mama and Daddy as she walked out of church with her two gossip-friends, about how beholden they were to her for the roof over their heads, and if she didn’t just work her hands to the bone with four people in the house, she didn’t know what.

Grammaw didn’t let on, but just went on home and got Sunday dinner on table for her and Grampaw.   She cleaned up the kitchen, took off her apron and put her hat back on and her purse on her arm.   By then Grampaw was dozing in the porch shade, and didn’t hear her go down the porch steps and way across the yard with her big black umbrella she called her “parasol” shading her from the sun.

She walked down the lane to the road, turned in at the New House, and went over to where Aint Nettie Frances was sitting in the swing with a magazine and her tea glass from dinner.   Grammaw could see Mama through the windows, straight through into the kitchen, where she was clearing off the table whilst the dishwater heated in the kittle. 

Grammaw just real slow eased down her umbrella and snapped the little cord around it whilst Aint Nettie Frances just sat there, swingin' real lazy with one foot.  Then her Mother-in-Law raised her voice for the first time either one of those two young women could remember. 

“Nettie Frances Pardee,  don’t you NEVER NEVER NEVER use the word “Beholden” to anybody again.   Not EVER, you hear me?

“I’ve seen that girl out at the washpot, Winter and Summer, washin’ everbody’s clothes and all them overalls and your own underwear, and you a-sittin’ in a sunny winder sewin’ lace on your drawers.   She’s out on the porch ironin’ ever Tuesdy of this world, and you out here in the swang in the shade, as big as you please, with your embrawdry hoop and a glass a tea!

“She ‘n’ Vonn put in a WHOLE lot more than they take, I’ll tell you THAT.  With him puttin’ in more’n half of his earnin’s for groceries and lights, and her doin’ all the cookin’ and washin’  up too? 

“All that for one spare room and the privilege of bein’ your housekeeper and cook?   Not one of us has seen you hit a lick at a snake since they moved in here. 

“I’ll tell you WHAT, young lady---they not goan be here forever.   They goan have therr own place, and she’ll keep it nice, and keep her family happy and be the good woman she is, and not look down on NOBODY, you hear?

“You just see how long YOU last in this new house you’re so proud of.   You’ll be cryin’ to me about your hands are rough and you just cain’t stand all that stoopin’ to pick the greens and you’ll both be eatin’ burnt pone like when you were first married.

“If I ever hear the word ‘beholden’ come outa your mouth again, or hear that you even said it, I’ll snatch you bald-headed, grown and married or not.”

And then Grammaw Pardee undid the big ole black umbrella, and walked off down the road toward home.  

But you know, I still don’t think I EVER saw my Mama take a bite of chocolate.