Chapter 22 #2
I knew it, the old lady says. I knew I should have gone up there and done it myself. That money was for a baby, so you’d start acting like a grown woman, Lucille, not a wild Indian living up in New York City—
Lucille gives Tom a look like will you please say something?
—and learn some matuhity, for God’s sake, by taking on the responsibility of a baby!
Tom clears his throat and finally speaks up. Mama, please listen. I realize she’s … not what you had in mind. But when we met Meg … she just stole our hearts away.
The way he says that, it sounds realer than what actually happened.
Like the minute we met, we simply fell to tears over each other.
Hugging at the Orphan, oh yes, let’s be a normal, regular family.
And though I am starting to understand the lie they are telling this old dyed-haired woman, I do feel a little like crying.
Especially when Tom lays his hand on my shoulder.
Lucille keeps saying how these are special circumstances because I am so special.
Please, Tom says. Just give Meg a chance, Mama. For me.
My heart is pounding while I wait to see what this lady decides.
After a spell, she looks at me. Her eyes are black but they are not mean looking. She takes a deep breath in and out like she is letting go of something heavy.
You should’ve talked to me first, Son, she says. She cups her hand under my chin and clucks her tongue. Skinny as a rail, outgrown your dress. Look at those clear blue eyes.
I tell her, I sure am glad to be out of that Tennessee Children’s Home Society.
You’ll see, Mama. She really is something, Tom says.
She clasps her son’s hand between her own. Holds it like she does not love anybody more in the world. She says, We’ll discuss this later, Son. Meg, you go on over yonder across the hall and play with the cousins. Tom, there some folks here who want to tell you hello.
Tom nods at me to go on, so I walk slow across the hall.
I feel like I have just run a race for my life and now I got to go meet strangers.
I stand in the doorway and see eight girls are sitting in a circle on a plush rug.
They all know each other good, Lord I change my mind, I’d rather stay with Tom and talk about our special circumstances and how special I am.
But when I look back, the crowd has already swallowed him up.
I go in the room and I ease down on the rug behind the circle.
All the girls look over at me at once. The one I am nearest to looks my age.
She is on the pudgy side with a big blue bow in her dark hair.
She has on a white dress and white stockings like mine.
All I can think to say is, You look very clean.
Who’s your mamandaddy? she says, like it is all one person. Mamandaddy.
Lucille and Tom, I say. I am Meg, they adopted me from Mrs. Georgia Tann’s orphanage in Memphis. I figure I might as well use it for all I practiced. I believe they paid good money too.
You mean you’re a real live orphan? A little one across the circle knees her way over to me and plants her sticky hands on either of my cheeks. Did your mama send you there for acting up at the dinner table?
There is no point in getting into it. Yes, I say. So you better be a good girl from now on.
Well I have got their attention now. Another little one looks at me wide-eyed like can that really happen?
Before I know it, they are crawling all over me and touching my hair, asking was it awful, did they beat me with a broom handle, was it like Orphan Annie in the funny papers?
Lord, who knew this would get you the star treatment.
After a while, the pudgy one, Marybeth, puts a hand up and says, Y’all, that’s enough, let the poor girl breathe. Meg, don’t mind them, they’re just curious.
And like that, they forget all about the orphan business because Marybeth said so.
We start to play a card game called go fishing, and then Willy May lays a red-checked cloth on the rug like it is a indoor picnic.
She pats my head and says, How you doin’, Meg?
and I am proud that she acts like she knows me.
She serves us little plates of ham sandwiches and fruit floating in a red jelly mold with whipped cream on top.
While we eat, Marybeth covers her mouth chewing and says, Now listen, here’s how you and me are related. My daddy is your daddy’s big brother, which makes you and me first cousins. She has long curled eyelashes she bats when she talks. That’s real important in a family, understand?
I nod.
Now our daddies get along just fine long as nobody’s talking about Democrats or going to church or slaves in the war.
But your mama and my mama are like Oil. And.
Water. She flaps her pudgy hand at me. And don’t even get me started on Grandmama.
She can hardly stand the looks of Lucille.
I’ll tell you all about that later. Now how old are you?
I tell her, I am eleven and a half.
I am eleven and three-quarters! she says with a big smile. That makes us twin first cousins, so we’ll be doing the same lessons and grades at school!
I ask her where is it and when does it start, school can’t start soon enough for me. Marybeth says it’s not but a twenty-minute drive and Mr. Oney will stick us all in the one big car, but for heaven’s sake don’t talk about school yet when we’ve got a whole nother month of summer to enjoy.
Then she leans close and says, Look, I am only telling you this as a friend, but that dress you got on is too small and too baby for your age.
Now come on. She grabs my hand in her fat one and runs us out the back door.
Gets us behind a tree and we both yank our heavy petticoats off under our dresses, and then off go our shoes and the hot stockings and she says don’t tell on her but she was apt to pop in those church clothes, and here it’s not even Sunday.
It is just good to breathe again without that petticoat on!
In the backyard, we push the littler cousins on a swing set.
They get twenty pushes each, and no throwing a fit when your turn is over, Marybeth tells them.
They do exactly as she orders them to. Not one calls me crazy or Nutmeg, no sir, around here I am known as Cousin Meg. I think it has a nice ring to it.
When the little ones get swept off for naps by the colored ladies, me and Marybeth get the swings to ourselves.
We stand on the seats and swing high as we can.
Oh I forgot what it was like to swing high!
Pumping and laughing, swinging and laughing.
It is so fun! I whisper that old poem, it feels good and right to say it again—
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all!
While we swing high, two older girls over by a tree whisper about us. They think they’re too old now to enjoy a swing anymore. They are both dark-headed like Marybeth and wear matching red dresses. Whispering and eyeing us, they are missing a good time for growing up like that.
After a while, Marybeth says it is time to go.
So we get behind the tree and put it all back on, which is not easy when you are hot.
Stockings stick. Marybeth says she has got to go find that mama of hers, that she will talk at a party until the cows come home if you let her.
I follow her inside and look through the remaining people.
Then I rush over to Tom and Lucille. Soon as she sees me, Lucille says, Thank God, and that it is time to go.
And the three of us walk to the car and ride home like we are a regular ole family.