Authors: BRET LOTT
In June we sold off the chickens, in July, the furniture. We took our leads from the progress Brenda Kay made, slow progress, but progress just the same, her walking from the bed to the bathroom in June, in July Leston and Wilman moving the bed back upstairs, her able to move downstairs with the help of one of us.
But even in the face of the fact we were moving, there were still days that seemed like years, and I remember one afternoon in particular when Leston hadn’t been able to make it off from the plant, and it’d been Wilman to come with me to Dr. Beaudry’s to have the dressings on Brenda Kay’s legs changed. Wilman had a job working after school at the soda fountain at Miller’s on Main in Purvis, and’d spend most evenings there serving up ice cream to kids from all up and down the county, giving extra heaps to Babs no doubt for nothing. Then he and his friends would drive the county back roads until all hours, and I wouldn’t see him until the next morning, dressed for school. “I’m just getting it out of my system, Momma, ” he’d say whenever it seemed I might be giving him an ugly eye, but truth was I didn’t mind, didn’t mind at all. He was good about putting his money away, about contributing his time to helping sell off everything, right down to standing by the bushel-barrels of sweet potatoes by the side of the road Saturday mornings, those potatoes selling off for a penny and a half a pound to whoever’d stop. We were heading to California, better, I figured, to get his system cleared here than there.
In late May the heat’d gone up into the nineties, and with the heat had come more and more changes of the dressings, and I remember heading up the stairs to the doctor’s door. Once I reached the landing I’d turned to see my son Wilman with Brenda Kay in his arms, his face as stone as he could make it at the stench that rose up off his sister, the smell magnified by the wet heat as he carried her up the stairs.
Inside, Wilman carried Brenda Kay to the examination room, a room as familiar to me as my larder, and set her down on the table. Dr. Beaudry started right in on the same old routine, unwrapping layer by layer of gauze on down to the last lengths drenched in brown and dead and pussy skin, the horror if it near nothing for me, Brenda Kay giving out the same old heart-heavy whimpers, her face squeezed and pinched shut with the pain, while the doctor’s low, calm voice guided us along.
That was when I turned to Wilman, saw him leaning back against the white wall, his hands crossed on his chest. His eyes were right on the leg worst burned, the source of the smells, of the giant burden that’d been rolled back on us like a rock we’d thought we’d gotten out from under when she’d started to walking.
Wilman only stared at her legs, and I could see in his eyes tears welling up.
Often enough I thought on my children and what they had to go through, on all the long line of moments I’d lost of my life to Brenda Kay, moments not spent on them.
This was one of those moments. I figured maybe the best thing I could ever do in his entire life would be to go to him right then, to hold him close to me and tell him it was fine to cry, to let go whatever notion he had of a man not crying.
But then Brenda Kay screamed out, and I turned to see Dr. Beaudry give one more small tug with his tweezers at a piece of skin just below her right knee, skin that had to come off before it got infected, and I held tight to Brenda Kay’s hand, rubbed her back, rubbed and rubbed, a million gentle circles to get her through this. Progress, I thought, and I wondered what that really meant, and saw I’d only figured the idea of progress into Brenda Kay’s life, and on our progress toward her walking, and on our progress toward getting to California. I glanced up to Wilman again, saw how the idea of progress with my own children was something I hadn’t figured on, how they’d been progressing on their own, how I’d exited their lives for the most part in order to save this one life.
Then Wilman pushed himself off the wall, left the room, and the moment for him and me was gone.
On the first of August we sold the house, got $6, 700 for it and the 180 acres around it, more money than we’d seen come through our hands in the last five years. One of the owners of the ice cream plant bought it all, a short fat man who’d never had a farm in his life, and who said he admired the craftsmanship he found in Leston’s work. He’d walked through our house touching doorjambs and switch plates, taking off his spectacles now and again and peering into a cabinet, a corner.
He’d given us the money within the week, told us we could move out any time that month.
Then, two days before we were to move there was nothing to pack, nothing for any of us to do but just wait until Leston’s and Billie Jean’s last days to work Annie and Brenda Kay and me met Billie Jean at the bank so we could spend her lunch hour shopping for new clothes for us all.
Wilman dropped us off, him having driven his daddy into work that morning. He was headed over to Babs’ house for one last dinner with her family before leaving.
All we Hilburn girls walked down Juniper to Main and on into Bancroft’s Dress Shop, all of us sopping wet by that time from the heat, and’ we bought clothes. We bought four outfits that matched from head to toe for Brenda Kay, though I wouldn’t permit, would never again permit, anything other than pants for her, enough people ogled my child every time we left the house, whether for Sunday Meeting or Wednesday night supper or just to buy flour and coffee, I didn’t need her scarred legs adding to what they saw.
We bought three pairs of cotton slacks, pink and blue and yellow, and a pair of navy blue cotton overalls with a winged dove applique at the bib, two white blouses embroidered at the collar and along the front, and two plain-front blouses, one pink, the other pale blue. With each pair of pants I held up to Brenda Kay, Myrtle Bancroft, proprietor, stood back, put her hands on the hips of her green silk dress, and said, “How wonderful, how becoming, ” the words lost entirely on my daughter.
Myrtle acted as though Brenda Kay were trying to win men, which just showed me that, like everyone else, she had no idea what to do with a retarded child, had no idea how to talk or act around her. Finally, after I’d had Brenda Kay try on the third pair of pants, Myrtle’d pulled me aside, whispered in my ear, “Don’t she like dresses? ” and I’d whispered right back at her, “She doesn’t think she has the ankles for it, ” my small joke lost on her.
Annie bought skirts, though, red and navy and white, even a seersucker blue and white one, cut close to her hips and straight, something I would’ve never dared dream of wearing or of letting Billie Jean wear.
But we were off to California now, where I figured most every girl had skirts like that.
Billie Jean moved slowly through the racks of dresses in the shop, touched things here and there, once in a while pulled something out and held it to her. But it wouldn’t be more than a second before she’d shrug and smile, file it back on the rack, take hold of her purse with both hands again.
Then I pulled out a dress for her, a light summer dress with a full skirt and short sleeves, the pattern on the material all kinds of pink orchids. I left Brenda Kay with Annie, went to Billie Jean across the shop from us, and held it up to her. I said, “You try this on.”
“But Momma, ” she said, and she smiled, dipped her head a little again.
“This just isn’t right.”
“What do you mean? ” I said. “What’s wrong with this dress? ” I pulled it away from her, made like I was examining the hem and sleeves for flaws in the stitching.
“There’s nothing wrong with the dress, ” she said, and looked down at it, smiled a smile that let me know she really wanted it, wanted plenty of what she’d looked at so far.
“Then you get this dress, ” I said, and pushed it at her, “and don’t you be worrying over whether or not this is right.”
Slowly she lifted a hand from her purse, took the dress. She nodded, said, “Yes ma’am, ” though there was no heart to those two words. She was twenty-two now, a woman with no need for a momma pressing clothes to her body like she was ten, and suddenly the words I’d used on her seemed top heavy and too loud in this small dress shop on the main street of Purvis, and I’d had to swallow touch a hand to my chest, look around to see who’d heard me.
But there was only Annie and Brenda Kay across the room from us, Annie on tiptoe and pulling down a gray felt hat from the shelf above the dresses, Brenda Kay next to her, hands loose at her sides white high-top shoes on.
Billie Jean ended up buying only that dress, along with a slip and a plain white blouse with pearl buttons. I’d said nothing more to her on it, finally figured she knew what she was up to.
That night Leston and Wilman and Billie Jean all came home from the last day at their jobs in the Plymouth, a huge and fat and beautiful car pulling up behind the house so that I thought it might have been the man who’d bought the place, out here again to have a look in a kitchen drawer.
By the time I made it out onto the porch, my Leston and Wilman were already climbing out the car, and it took me a moment or two to see exactly what was going on. Wilman brought me down the steps, and I saw early evening summer clouds reflect up off the hood saw on the other side of it Leston smiling and smiling, Billie Jean leaning out the back-seat window, smiling just as big, all of them looking at me.
Annie banged past me, placed both hands on the hood, pulled them back at the heat. “A brand-new car! ” she hollered out. “I can’t believe it!
I can’t believe it! ” “You best believe it, ” Leston said, the cigarette in his mouth bobbing with his words. “No way in hell we’re heading cross-country in that junkheap truck we had.”
“Leston, ” I said, “watch your mouth, ” though I was smiling at him, smiling and moving toward the passenger-side door, Wilman standing there and holding it open for me like a chauffeur. Leston’d never said word one about buying a car. Not a word. I’d figured we’d drive from here through to California in the truck, just limping from service station to service station. But a new car.
“Pardon my language, ma’am, ” he said, and nodded at me. “Nineteen Fifty-two Plymouth, ” he said, and slapped the hood. “Sixteen hundred dollars cash money.”
He grinned. He took out the cigarette, held it away from the car, flicked off the ashes.
I took a big breath, shook my head. “That’s a lot of money, ” I said.
“It’s a lot of car, ” he said. We were all quiet a moment, the only sound the start-up whirr of the cicadas in the trees.
Brenda Kay said, “Huh, huh, ” her forced laugh as always pitched and twisted in her throat, and suddenly we all laughed right along with her, no matter none of us could know why she’d started.
“How does California sound? ” Wilman said.
I went to the car, touched the chrome handle, climbed in. He pushed the door to, clicked it closed. The window was down, and he squatted next to the car, looked in at me.
“Sounds fine, ” I said. “When do we go? ” “Not soon enough, ” Leston said from his side, and climbed in next to me. He said, “Everybody in.”
We drove and drove the back roads that next-to-last evening in Mississippi, drove and drove, Leston and me in front, Wilman and Annie each at a window, Billie Jean in the middle with Brenda Kay on her lap.
Wilman and Annie talked away, Wilman about which roads back here would take us where, Annie about how fine the car would look rolling into Los Angeles, about the clothes she’d bought, about anything else crossed her mind. Leston only smoked and drove, the smell of the new car mixed with that smoke something magnificent. Every now and again I’d feel a touch at my hair, turn to see Brenda Kay’s hand up, stubby fingers spread, her eyes on my head. “Momma, haah! ” she shouted every time.
And there, behind her, sat Billie Jean, turned to a window and smiling, just looking out at the countryside fast growing dark on us.
The next evening we were doing the last straightening up of the house, me scouring the sink, Annie grabbing at whatever cobwebs she could find with the broom, Wilman and Leston outside, the hood of the car up, the two of them peering into the engine like it might speak.
Billie Jean’d been gone all afternoon, picked up at lunchtime by one of her girlfriends at the bank, Ruby Sit well, who drove a pickup not much different from the one we’d just gotten rid of the day before. They were giving her a farewell party, Billie Jean’d told me as she ran down the front porch steps, her eyes, I’d seen, blinking and blinking at tears coming up. She climbed in the cab, the two of them giggling and crying already. Then Billie Jean’d leaned out the window, blew me a kiss, and the two of them had headed off down the road.
Near sunset I finished scouring the kitchen sink, and turned to see I I’s l Billie Jean just inside the kitchen from the front room. She stood with her arm looped in the arm of a man we’d only met twice before, one Gower Cross, a plump man whose face seemed too red, maybe even flushed, whenever he talked. He smiled what I figured was entirely too much, but he was a salesman for a tractor-trailer operation out of Jackson, was starting up an office here. All that smiling, I figured, just went right along with the job. He’d been over to dinner a month ago, the first time a month before that, but that was it, and he and Billie Jean’d gone out a few times otherwise. Nothing serious, as far as I could see, she’d had boyfriends on and off, boys I could only recall by how they’d acted around Brenda Kay, some wouldn’t come in the house, some smiled too much and patted her head like she was a strange breed of dog, others stood with their hands behind their backs, their eyes never falling on Brenda Kay.
Gower Cross’d been of the smiling variety, just smiling and smiling those times he was over, hesitating with his fork between his plate and mouth a moment or so when Brenda Kay’d smack her lips too loud, or when she’d let fall from her mouth a piece of gristle she wanted rid of, all of it her general manners at the table, no matter how hard I tried to teach her different.
“Gower, ” I said, and nodded. “Here for dinner? Because all we’re having is sandwiches. Tomorrow’s ” “Momma, ” Billie Jean said, and she pulled him even closer. She had on the orchid dress we’d bought the day before, her eyes and lips and cheeks made up. Then I saw Gower’s hair was greased and combed, and he had on a painted tie, his white shirt crisp and starched and clean, nowhere near the rumpled and tired it would’ve been had he worn it all day. His face was more red than I’d seen it either of the nights he’d been here. Billie Jean glanced up at him, then at me, grinning.