Chapter 12 #3
She knew it but she plumb forgot to buy curling fluid and she had just as soon go on her own.
She said Ophelia would sit me while she was gone.
See now, my mama generally did not forget things ever.
I remember she had on her nice yellow wool dress with the red rickrack on the collar and when she fooled with one of the buttons on the front, I knew something was up.
But I played along, smiling, and said, Alright. You just go on back to town, then.
And she smiled funny back at me and said, Alrighty, I’ll drop you at Ophelia’s on the way.
Before we left the house, she fingered a strand of my hair. Gentle like it was a strand of gold, and said, Tomorrow I am trimming this hair of yours. No excuses.
See I thought she was going to town to get my secret Santy Claus. She wanted to buy those red mittens for me and did not want to ruin the surprise.
When we got to Ophelia’s house, Mama tried to give me a hug goodbye, but I was too excited and ran inside. That is a regret I have.
I was not there a hour when Ophelia said, I ain’t feeling too goot.
So I made a big grown-up fuss tending to old Ophelia.
I was feeling smart with my nine-year-old self for figuring out my present.
I told Ophelia, You just get in bed and I will do it all.
And I brought her some coffee she had boiling and a cool cloth for her head and set her up with a old Life magazine to look at the pictures since Ophelia couldn’t see well enough to read.
Then I let the big fat pregnant mama dog outside, and later on I let her back in.
She always let the very pregnant mamas sleep inside the house.
I petted Ophelia on the hand like she would do me when I was not feeling goot.
She said, You a goot doctor, Coreen.
Coreen was Ophelia’s sister. But I figured why tell a old sick person they mistaked you for somebody dead, it would only make them feel worse.
She said, You go on and rest now, Coreen. I be fine.
I said, Alright. You get some rest too, Ophelia.
At dark I ate the buttered grits she had on the stove and played “Oh Peter Go Ring Dem Bells” on her piano and laid on the little settee, waiting for Mama to come and get me. I remember thinking I had done a good job.
When I woke up next, I was not getting carried down the road. It was light out and had turned a awful cold. Ophelia coughed and said, Why you mama didn’t come get you, Meg?
At first I was scared I was not already at home.
Ophelia said, You reckon she fell asleep?
I said, That must be it, and I tried to act grown up about it.
I got Ophelia something to drink and let the pregnant mama dog outside.
After a while, I decided to just run my own self home the mile or so.
Mama had let me do it a lot of times before.
I ran fast in all that cold. So cold I saw not hide nor hair.
Not too many people lived out this way but us.
But when I got home, Mama was not there. I waited around the house all day worrying where she might be, playing pretend with my magazine meals. I put my money on that old car of ours broke down again. It was barely worth the cost of the gasoline from the service station.
It got dark early with it being so near to Christmas.
Froze-up rain started coming down from the sky.
I was very mad at my mama by then and was not walking back to old Ophelia’s in this mess.
I will wait right here for my Santy Claus, I decided, and when she gets home I will yell at her a little for the cold cornbread I had to eat for supper, but then I will cool off because I will be happy she is home with my secret surprise.
I believe I cried in the night, but that is not something to be repeated.
The next morning when I woke up, she was still gone.
I got very scared then and thought of more things that could have happened to her.
What if she had a automobile accident and was bleeding by the road?
Or got locked in the lending library and was waiting on Mrs. Block to let her out?
It was Christmas Eve, she would have to spend a couple days locked up in there.
That would be about heaven for Mama. Which made me madder.
Finally I put on as many clothes as I could still walk in and headed back to Ophelia’s because I was too hungry to even play with my toys.
Plus that seemed the thing to do with sense.
But it had got so cold out like you would not think Mississippi could get.
It froze up the inside of my nose holes.
I had tee-teed my pants a little in the night and that felt froze too.
That is something else I do not want to get repeated.
When I made it to Ophelia’s, a white man in a red-checked coat was standing in her house. I had not knowed a white person besides us to ever be in there. He said, Who you?
I said, What?
He said, You know ’bout that dead nigga that let my dog freeze?
I said, Who?
He said, That nigga Ophelia! You think she’d have the courtesy to let the damn dog in the house ’fore she died!
I said, Who? Died?
He said, Now I got a dead nigga and a dead dog, and if that dumb nigga had the means to let the dog out, you’d a thought she’d a let her back in!
Ophelia is dead? Or the dog is dead? I did not like how he was waving his hands at me.
Both’s dead! Any fool knows you let a dog that pregnant shit on the floor ’fore you make her stay out in this weather!
I said, Ophelia is dead?
Dead setting up reading a goddamn Life magazine!
The mama dog is dead too? With the puppies inside?
I told you they both dead! he said, grabbing at me. I already done sold four a them bird dogs and if somebody ’sides that nigga let that dog out to freeze, I wanna know who’s respons’ble.
I turned and ran. I ran and ran all the way home.
Ran inside and stuck a chair up under the door and hid up under my bed.
I cried hard then for my mama being gone and for the mama dog with the puppies inside and I cried for my old friend Ophelia.
I cried until I had to sleep so as not to think of it anymore.
Two more days passed by with me in the house.
I gnawed my teeth on what was left of the hambone.
I tried mixing up cornmeal with the last of the milk and baking it.
It was awful but I ate it. We did not have eggs or any type thing left to eat up in the house.
Except a short can of red beans and a jar of oysters that Yankee lady Mama worked for gave us.
When I smelled the oysters, I could not touch them with a ten-foot pole.
Where had Mama gone to? Maybe she was trapped down in a wellhole. Maybe some highwaymen captured her for ransom. Maybe in the automobile accident, she hit her head and got the memory loss, you hear about that kind of thing on the radio.
Or maybe the accident was worse than that. What if Mama was dead like poor Ophelia? If I had gone straight back over there, maybe Ophelia would not have died. I know the mama dog would not have froze or the puppies inside her.
It got to where I could see my breath right in the house.
It was a bone-hurting cold. I could not get the oil heater to work.
Somebody special had to come light the thing.
When I toted some wood in to make a fire, my fingers stung and I could barely get it lit, froze up wet like that.
So I fastened up every coat and mitten I could find and got up under the covers and told myself it was just my imagination I had to go to the bathroom.
To pass the hours I looked through the books Mama had borrowed from the librarian, Mrs. Block.
The Age of Innocence. The Sun Also Rises.
She was bound to be fuming that Mama was late on her return.
I tried to read one Mama had ordered by mail.
She pronounced it You Liss Sees. It was spelled different on the spine, and the story was dull, and I couldn’t follow much of it.
One of those days I went outside, looking around for someone.
I walked up and down the road, but there was not a house or a car or a person nohow.
We lived rural. When I walked over to the school, it was locked up tight.
Then on my walk home, I saw somebody! A car way off down the road, maybe coming from our own house, and I ran after it hollering and waving and acting a fool, but it kept on going.
It had got even colder, too cold to stay outside chasing it for long.
Except for those oysters, it was like a olden tale you read in the torn-up books at school, the cupboard was bare so the poor dog had none.
When I still could not get that wet firewood to light, I started eyeing the household items. Smiling at the chairs and books like I could trick them into the fire without my doing the throwing.
Would it still be my fault if some books hopped their own selfs in there?
It got to where I was colder than I was afraid of getting in trouble.
Oh what a feeling, to get warm for a few minutes.
But before it was even nighttime, I had burned all the books, the pages fluttering like Mama’s ghost was turning them.
One night I felt something odd on my face, and in the mirror I saw a red spot on my cheek.
That is when I started burning up more things, wooden spoons, wood crates, clothes hangers, my special important colored papers I had drawed at school, hand fans, a wood stool, the cushions off the sitting thing.
A table and a wood chair I could not fit in there to light but I still tried.
I guess it had been five or six days when I started talking like her and carrying on.