Authors: E.J. McCay
Uriah asks me to lunch after church, but I don’t want to stay in town.
He says I can come eat with him and his momma, but I don’t want that either. The idea that I could spread my trash in her house just bugs the tar out of me.
He reluctantly drops me off at the cabin, and I disappear in the house instead of watching him drive away. I wonder if I could watch him drive away if I knew he was never coming back. The thought slaps me hard.
I switch out of my church clothes into my pajamas and take my place outside. It’s just me and the woods again until the movie projector in my head starts replaying the events at church.
Pastor Jeffrey in his Sunday best, Bo in his even better Sunday best, his momma, and the entire congregation twisting their necks to look at my train. Tell me again, Papa, how going to church was good for me.
I stew and chew. I get mad and madder and maddest still. I’m steaming before long. Those people don’t know me. They know what I show them. They know what they think they know and nothing more. They throw stones at my glass house and think the stones pass through their own without causing any damage.
The birds have stopped singing and the squirrels are staring at me with their little beady eyes. “What you haven’t seen anyone mad before?” I ask them. They just keep looking at me. Tails twitching.
I pad into the kitchen and pull out a soda and pop the top off. The cool liquid rolls down my throat, cold and frothy. I head back out to the deck with it and a bag of chips that were stashed in a cabinet.
My anger is simmering at the top of my pot and I can feel the water about to boil over. I open the bag of chips and pop one in my mouth and chase it with a swig of the soda.
Papa comes sliding in and casually sits down next to me. “I’m in no mood to play, Papa.”
He doesn’t say anything, so we sit in silence while I eat my chips and drink my soda.
April is such a moody month, I think to myself as an almost warm breeze blows by. The thought strikes me as funny because I’ve been so moody. I begin to laugh and it turns into a cackle. Now that I’m laughing I can’t seem to turn it off. I’m still mad and giggling like my jackets should come in white and buckle in the back.
Papa still sits quietly. I look at Him, laughing my head off, drinking my soda, eating my chips. I’ve gone nuts. “Papa, what am I to do about that homework?” I ask, still laughing like an idiot. “Why don’t I miss momma?”
The laughter dies in my throat. The sobering thought wipes all my funny away. I want to know the answer to the question as much as Chrissy does, but I don’t know the answer.
“Why Papa? Tell me why?”
Papa is eerily quiet. Maybe He doesn’t know the answer either. I feel a sharp prick in my heart and I try to think real hard about momma. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of her.
She died. The end.
I wrack my brain trying to think why her death doesn’t bother me. It should. The woman raised me as her own, gave me food and shelter, snuggled me at night. “Wait,” I say out loud. “She didn’t snuggle me at night.”
My head hurts. All this thinking and laughing and being mad has given me a headache that makes my eyes want to bleed. I try to remember if I’ve got anything and I go to my room and rummage in the nightstand drawer. The bottle is childproof, so I slip the top off with ease, and pop two of them in my mouth and take a drink of my soda.
I pad back into the kitchen. Those chips just aren’t doing it for me. The cabinets are stocked with all sorts of can goods. I find bread, peanut butter, and jelly and go for the simple things in life: a PB&J.
Back out on the deck, with my sandwich and another soda, I’m in a frame of mind to not think. If only it were that simple.
Papa is still sitting in the chair. Still waiting for me to find an answer to a question I didn’t even know I had until I got back to my hometown.
I finish my sandwich before I do any real thinking because for once I’d like to eat a meal in peace. The peanut butter sticks in my teeth and I take a long drink. Man, Uriah really knew what he was doing when he bought these sodas. I sure hope I can save one for him the next time he’s here.
Clouds are rolling in and I can smell rain in the air. These evening showers are nice, and I know Texas needs the rain. All that thinking I’ve been putting off comes rolling in too.
Papa’s been waiting.
“Why don’t I miss my momma? Why doesn’t it hurt like the dickens when I think about her being gone?” I ask out loud. Maybe the birds or the squirrels or something in the distance can give me an answer.
I certainly don’t have an easy answer.
Nothing about this question feels easy either. I play the memories I have of momma and me together. She only busted me real bad once or twice. Most of the time she played referee between me and daddy.
I start to touch on a memory of daddy and force it back. I can only deal with one devil at a time, I say in my mind. Momma’s face floats to the front. I see her smile.
Momma and daddy were older when they adopted me. In pictures of when momma was young, she always looked sad, even when she was smiling. Daddy was her third husband. She told me he was a rough man when they met and by my thinking he wasn’t much different when I came along.
On those rare occasions when momma and I did talk, she’d tell me she came to Jesus later in life. She’d tell me she was sitting in church and she was about to leave and Jesus told her if she left, she’d die on the spot. So, she went to the altar and prayed and accepted Jesus in her heart.
Papa never struck me as someone to give those kinds of ultimatums, but I never dared tell momma that. She’d have busted me for sure.
Mama was short like me. Daddy called her a wasp of a woman. She had a sharp tongue and she always had an opinion. There was never a time she didn’t think someone wanted to hear it either.
Did she love me? I think so. We went to garage sales together, we went on trips to other states to see family, we laughed sometimes, and most of the time it was peaceful in the house. So why didn’t I miss her?
One girl I went to college with lost her momma and I thought the world had come to an end for her. I had no frame of reference for what she was going through and every time I tried to think of something to say, I’d fall flat. My momma was gone and I was just fine.
Papa, what’s wrong with me that I don’t miss my momma? Doesn’t it mean something is wrong with me if I don’t? Please answer me. Please give me an answer so I can tell Chrissy tomorrow.
The breeze picks up, it’s got a sharpness to it now and the clouds that were rolling in have taken over the sky. I peak out from under the roof line and see scary looking clouds. We’re about to have rain that blows sideways.
I feel Papa hold me. It’s a warmth that travels over my entire body. The only answer I have for the question is that me and momma just didn’t have that kind of relationship. I don’t know why. I may never know why, and it’s okay. Sometimes people just don’t connect.
Papa says to be grateful I had someone that cared for me the best they knew how. Now, that I believe. Mama cared for me the best she knew how and with all she had. She wanted the best for me and her best just wasn’t my best and that’s the way it is. I left for college, got good grades, and I was living a pretty happy life until I came home and knifed my daddy.
I start to think on daddy and Papa says I’m not ready for that yet. My heart needs some shoring up before I head into that dark tunnel.
The next day,
my therapist appointment goes better than I expect, but I’m done by the time my hour is over. Chrissy sends me on my way with more homework: to think of the best time I ever had with my momma. She doesn’t see me roll my eyes as I walk out the door.
Outside, in the fresh air, I try to let the sun burn away what I’ve spent the last hour talking about. Unfortunately for me, the sun doesn’t work that way so I take myself to the Kettlefish. Fancy is standing behind the bar drying glasses and talking to Mr. Marlin. I’m starting to wonder if he lives here.
I steer clear of him, too. After my reaction at church, I don’t want anywhere near him. His eyes catch mine and send me warning signs I can’t ignore. I sit as far from him as humanly possible in the small confines of the bar.
Fancy isn’t a dummy and she sees the exchange. She stops drying glasses and walks to the table in the far corner I’ve now claimed. “Is there something you need to tell me about Marlin?”
I drag my eyes from his direction as he puts out a cigarette and focus on Fancy’s eyes. “No, not that I can recall, but he gives me the shivers.”
Fancy hooks a look over her shoulder in Marlin’s direction and says, “You’d tell me if there was, though, right?”
“Yeah, Fancy, I would.”
“You want rum again?”
“No. I just want a soda today.”
“You came to a bar for a soda?”
“Yeah, all those white sheep won’t suffer a chance of being caught in here with all us black sheep. I can’t handle them right now.”
Fancy snorts and walks off. She returns with a large glass filled with fizzy soda and a thin straw. “I ran out of the big straws. Not sure if you want to use the little one, but I stuck it in there in case ya did. You want some company? I’ve dried about all the glass I can handle for now.”
I shrug. “Sure. I got nothing pressing.”
Fancy walks back to the bar and comes back to the table with a glass full with what I suspect is beer from the tap. She takes a drink as she sits down in the chair across from me. “So, what’s on your mind Lillian James?”
“I just came from therapy. I don’t need any more thinkin’. Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
“Oh, Lilly, you know, there’s some things a person ain’t supposed to talk about.”
“But I was supposed to tell you what’s on my mind?” I pull out the tiny eye-poker straw, lick the soda off, and stick it in my mouth like a toothpick.
“Seems like you the one with all the thinking that needs spillin’.”
I snort and then I look at her serious. “Fancy, do you remember my momma?”
“Of course, I do, Lilly. I loved your momma. We was good friends.”
She’s right. I do remember them being good friends. How that is, I don’t know because Fancy was a good twenty or so years younger than my momma. I’d ask, but Fancy is known for being quite nasty about the age thing. If you ask her she is always turning twenty-five.
“Could you tell me about her?”
Fancy leans back in the chair and takes a good swig of her beer. “Oh, child,” she says with a whistle, “your momma was a wild woman the first time I met her. She’d just left her first husband and rolled into town with two little boys. I babysat for her when she’d work for Montgomery Ward in the town over. The boys would go to school and I’d pick them up in the afternoon.”
“I met her momma a handful of times. She was a sweet woman. You know she’s who you’re named after, right?”
“Yeah, I know. From what I remember, everyone loved her.”
“Oh, yeah, Lillian was a gentle, sweet woman. Everyone she met loved her. I guess your momma got her sass from somewhere further up the tree.”
I roll my eyes.
“That sass right there, Lillian Louise James.”
I snap my eyes to her. “Don’t you use my middle name. I’ll bite you!”
Fancy sat up straight in the chair, puffed out her chest, and smiled. “I’d like to see you try it, missy,” she teased. “Anyway, you know she was married before your daddy, right?”
“I know she was married three times. I don’t know anything about the second one.”
“After she married your biological grandpa, which by the way, he was a complete drunk. Worthless piece of a man. I met him once and that was all I needed. Your momma left him and she was right to do so. Drunk skunk, he was.”
“What about the second fella?”
“Oh, he was a one and done. She married him and then met your daddy. That fella didn’t stand a chance.”
“How long were they married?”
“Oh, couple months. Then your momma started seeing your daddy. She loved George. Back in the day, he was as fine as a man could be. Tall, dark, dangerous, mean as a snake to anyone he didn’t like.”
I keep my mouth shut and my expressions to myself.
“Lula met George and that was all she wrote. Started seeing him before she even divorced the second fella. Oh, and did she get looks, but your momma didn’t care. Lula would see people giving her the eye, and she’d straighten her back and give them the eye right back.”
“Sounds like momma.”
“Girl, you don’t know the half of it. By the time you came along she’d found Jesus. Even He couldn’t tame her all the way. The mouth on Lula. You’re just like her. You gotta mouth too.”
I pinch my lips together and squint my eyes, giving her the mean face.
She takes a drink and waves me off, laughing. “Oh, sometimes it’s good to have a mouth, but back to your momma and daddy.”
I nod my head.
“George ran moonshine. Did you know that?”
“No way.”
“Sure’nuff, he did. He had a still in the woods north of here. Your momma begged him to stop so he did. He’d done anything for your momma. Well, ‘sides loving those boys. He never did like boys. He’d say so too. You know you got a half-brother somewhere that’s his. That boy is a lot older than you and he lives somewhere up North East. I never met him and they never talked about him much.”
I’m slack-jawed. “I never heard that before.”
“Lula was a jealous woman and George was a good looking man with an eye for the ladies. Your momma put her collar on him and she’d yank his leash anytime his eyes got too close to someone else’s fire hydrant.”
“I sorta knew all that.”
“Did you know she clocked someone with her purse at the Denny’s in the town over one time?”
Again, my mouth drops open. “No. Way.”
“Oh, honey, she didn’t know what hit her. Your momma walked in on George having breakfast with her after being gone all night long. Lula walks into that Denny’s, takes her purse, and just knocks the ever livin’ snot out of her. Wouldn’t have been so bad if Lula hadn’t carried a .38 special in it. She flat out cold cocked her. Your momma was so mad, her whole face it lit up like a red street light. Lula storms out of the restaurant and the manager comes running out after her and starts telling her she can’t do that. Lula pulls that gun out and says, ‘You got something to say?’”
“My momma?”
“Oh yeah, your momma. You think all that sass and attitude comes from you? Nah, honey, you come by it honestly.”
“How do you know all this?”
“’Cause I was sitting at Denny’s eating breakfast with my folks when she did it. I saw the whole dang thing. If I had still been babysitting my folks would have made me quit.”
“Now that I would have liked to see.”
“The town talked for months, but your daddy didn’t go havin’ breakfast with no one after that I can tell you that. And if he did, he didn’t do it where Lula knew.”
“I suspect my momma knew if he did, she just toned it down.”
“Hmmm, I’m don’t know about that. There’s only so much Jesus can do with Lula Mae James.”
I sit back in my chair and think about the months before momma died. I remember her sitting me down, telling me she had bone cancer. She was diagnosed in August and by January, we were burying her. Right before my high school graduation. Even thinking back now, I was sad she was sick, but her not being at my graduation didn’t affect me none.
“She was real different before she died. All frail and kind and sweet.”
“Lilly, death is a weird thing and when you know it’s coming for you, you change your ways real quick. Not saying Jesus didn’t, but He sure had His work cut for Him with her.”
“I’m not sad she’s gone.”
Fancy looks at me, no expression, not even surprise. She throws back what’s left of her beer and says, “I know. I’ve known. I saw you at the funeral. I think you were sad, but I had a feeling you weren’t going to miss her. You two had a tumultuous relationship at best. Most of it being her shielding you from George.”
I can’t keep the dark shadow from passing across my face when she mentions my daddy. “I can’t talk about him right now.”
Fancy nods. “No, I don’t guessin’ you do.” Kettlefish has started filling in and Fancy looks at the clock behind the bar. The time has flown and I’ve sat here most of the day talking to Fancy about my momma. It helps that my therapy sessions don’t happen til eleven each day.
My soda is watered down and Fancy takes my glass with her when she goes and I shuffle out. I got no desire to deal with the regular crowd.