Chapter 27
Meg
Snack. Now that is a word that tastes as good as it sounds.
Mealtime is about the only way I measure the days around here.
It starts with a juiced orange with Tom in the morning, then a hot breakfast cooked by Willy May, a cold lunch in the icebox, that dab of a snack to get you by, and finally a supper that will dazzle the mind.
We are in the kitchen having breakfast when Lucille announces she is going shopping. If the word was on a page, it would have a line drawed under it.
That’s a swell idea, Tom says. Why don’t we all drive to town together?
I’m not going to those claptraps down the road, Lucille tells him. I’m driving to Memphis and checking myself in at the Peabody Hotel.
Tom follows her up the stairs. I wait so they don’t notice me slip up to the hall to listen. I like to know what is going on around here.
Now sometimes, Lucille is very sweet to Tom and lets him nuzzle all up on her neck.
They kiss on each other’s mouths on the sofa when they think I am not looking.
I have not been around that type thing, I do not mind it.
But who knew a husband and wife could mash and kiss one minute and fight like damn cats and dogs the next.
From what I can find, there is not a manual for how married people are supposed to operate.
And in no book I have ever read does the wife call the husband a goddamn mama’s boy, when all he was trying to do was address her drinking.
Lucille, I want to address the drinking, he will say.
Most times when he says this, she tries to skip over to how she ought to be out shopping for shoes with somebody named Bergdorf Goodman. Or how she is more apt to come across a cure for polio than a Chesterfield cigarette in this town.
But if he keeps at her, she will say, Fine. Address it.
I want you to stop bringing so much liquor into the house, darling, he says. Mama’s already suspicious, she has Willy May searching the cabinets. That is all we need is for her to find something when we’re trying to regain her trust—
NO. That is Lucille’s answer when it comes to addressing the drinking. N. O. End of story, type it up and send it to Scribner’s. Call it The Book of NO by Mrs. Lucille Heidelberg.
I will say, Lucille knows how to run a argument.
When I asked her could I go play with some of the cousins tomorrow—
NO. Before Tom could even get a word in, N. O. She was afraid I’d let it slip that I came from Oxford, from that disgusting place they call a orphanage.
But Marybeth said being first cousins is important. I may have whined this.
Lucille raised a eyebrow up at me and said, You’re lucky to be here. You need to count your blessings, young lady.
Why in the hell is everybody always telling me that?
This morning’s big discussion, though, is Lucille going to Memphis and why we can’t come.
Because I don’t want a husband and a little girl following me around all day. I’m entitled to my share. Don’t forget how you spent yours.
I don’t know what that last part means, but I hear Willy May come in. I always try to catch her before Tom shoos her off so he does not add to what he calls the repression and subjugation. Besides her visits, it does get very quiet around here.
I climb up on a tall stool and watch her cook me bacon and a sunny-side-up egg.
Most the questions are generally asked by me.
What I have managed to get out of Willy May so far is that she is sixty years old, her seven children are growed and gone, her limp is because of something called a corn on her toe, and No, baby, you not allowed to see it.
Go on and eat you eggs, Willy May running late today.
After I finish, I go watch her sweep under the dining room table. I could help you clean that, I tell her. I promise I won’t let them fire you and use me for free.
Lemme fish sweeping, baby. Running late today.
She polishes the table in long arcs with her arm and then moves to the front parlor.
I sit on the vegetable sofa just to be in the same room with somebody.
Willy May wipes down all the nooks and crannies, the red vase decorated with Oriental people with large eyeballs on their faces.
The fingerprints on there are mostly mine.
I used to know another colored Negro lady named Ophelia, I tell her. Did you ever know you a Ophelia?
No, don’t know no Ophelia, baby.
Well. She is dead.
Willy May stops wiping and puts a hand on her hip. Maybe she has had it up to here with my questions.
Why you don’t ever play with them other cousins? They playing together most ever day. Girl your age needs other chirrin to play with.
What can I say? I cannot tell her why Lucille won’t let me. Even if I am Good with the big G at lying, I slip up once and that is it for ole Nutmeg. Back to where I damn started.
They all going swimming to the lake this afternoon. Why you don’t go with ’em? she says.
Will you ask if I could go—
But here comes Tom carrying suitcases down the stairs with Lucille behind him. Tom says, Thank you, Willy May, we’ll take it from here.
Willy May eyes Lucille in the red dress with the shoes and hat to match and all those suitcases. See now, that is bound to be more clothes than one person needs. Tom has his shoes on too, not just his sock feet, like he might be going somewhere with her.
Want me to get up in your room and clean? It’s been a while, Willy May says.
We’ll tend to it, thank you, Tom says. You can go on back to the big house.
Willy May goes on while I watch all those blue suitcases get set on the back seat of the car. The air in my chest stops while Tom and Lucille stand in the gravel, discussing it. It’s not until she drives away and Tom is still here that I am able to breathe regular again.
I don’t feel like going back to work just yet, Tom says. Want to take a walk around the place a minute?
It has gone hot enough again to fry you a egg, so Tom puts floppy straw hats on both our heads. The Heidelbergs don’t grow anything here except flowers and grass and rocks and some anthills. Tom said they used to grow cotton out yonder before the whole world went to pot.
In the backyard, a ways from the house, Tom points to some bricks half buried in the ground and says, This was the old kitchen before it burned up with the cook still in it.
I imagine a person roasting like a hot potato, when they were just trying to cook some damn supper.
Then he points to the dark woods along the back, where he says is a field with the slaves buried in it.
Then yonder to a graveyard in the far corner of the yard where his dead relatives are buried in it.
You got more dead people here than you got living, I say.
That’s right, Meg. Anywhere you step in this world could be on the remains of someone who lived before you. Well I never thought of that. And I don’t think I will forget it either.
We walk toward the woods that run behind the yard.
I have heard wild dogs out there barking and chasing a thing at night.
But with Tom I am not scared. The little family cemetery sits on the edge of these woods, in the furtherest right corner of the yard.
It has a old iron fence around it, but that gate shrieked too scary one time when I tried to open it.
Tom points to a tall, crumbling stone in the middle.
That’s Benjamin Holt Heidelberg’s grave there. His grandson started the family business, the Heidelberg Sugarcane Factory. Sugarcane’s the plant that sugar comes from.
I push my hat back so Tom can see my eyes. And you are just now sharing this important fact with me? That your family GROWS sugar? Next thing you know, he will tell me he owns a candy store.
He nods. Shipping, cotton, and sugarcane. A hundred and fifty years of exploiting human beings. You might as well know that since you’re a part of this family now.
I do my best to look sad about all the sugar and money his family is making.
We walk and talk a little more about trees and rocks. Then we stop at the old water pump and pump ourselves a drink. When I pump too hard, I accidentally squirt some on his shirtfront.
You turkey, he says, smiling.
Sorry, Tom.
It’s getting pretty hot, might be time to go in.
I don’t want him to go back in his office and shut the door, so I say, I bet it’s nice and cool down at the lake.
So you’ve heard about the lake, have you? He is still grinning.
Yes sir. Do you think we could go? I do not mention those cousins and hope he doesn’t guess it.
Do you know how to swim?
No sir. But. You could teach me.
He looks over at his office window. I can tell he wants to go in there and get to work. We’d need to find you a swimming suit of some kind …
I smile and say, I already got one.
I get it on quick before Tom can change his mind, the pink suit and rubber sucking cap, my white sandals.
The only swimming this suit has seen is in the bathtub.
When I meet Tom on the front porch, he is wearing a long brown robe.
I keep myself from laughing at his skinny white legs sticking out the bottom.
He says it’s only about a twenty-minute walk, just on the other side of those trees.
The temperature turns cooler in the woods and our feet make no sound on the soft shaded pine needles.
He points out the clearing for the dead slaves.
I don’t hold his hand, but I stay close.
Then we cross a dirt road and a few more minutes and we come to a big hill.
At the bottom is a green, shining lake. It is big enough to where you can’t see all the sides at once.
A long wooden thing runs out into the water, I forget what it is called, and it has a little wood house built on the side.
Looks like some folks are out here swimming already, Tom says.