Mare's War (2 page)

“You girls be good,” Dad says to us again, and my grandmother groans. She takes another drag on her cigarette, and Tali coughs loudly, instantly diverting my father’s attention.

“Mama, you’re not going to smoke in the car with the girls, are you?” My father’s voice has that edge that means he’s not really asking a question, and Mom’s not here to tell him to be cool.

My grandmother sighs deeply, drops the cigarette on the driveway, and grinds it out with her sandal. “Goodbye, son,” she says pointedly, and turns away.

“I’ll just get you something to pick that up with,” my father shoots back, and vanishes toward the rear of the house.

Mare mutters something under her breath and turns toward Tali. Tilting down her enormous sunglasses, she stares down at my sister.

“Talitha, you’re not going to be a pain in my behind this whole trip, are you?”

“ME?” Tali huffs, offended. “I’m not the one blowing smoke on people.” She replaces her headset and turns up her music, hunching into her hooded sweatshirt and closing her eyes.

Mare tugs an earphone out of Tali’s ear. “Don’t put that thing on when I’m talking to you. You’ve had something to say from the beginning—first it’s my driving, now it’s my cigarettes. Tali, I’ll tell you what—you keep those earphones out of your ears, and I will keep my cigarettes in my purse.”

“Whaat?”
Tali squawks, indignant. “Forget it. Me listening to my music is totally not like you poisoning me with your cigarettes. I mean, I’m not making you listen to it. It can’t be bothering you.”

“Oh, it can’t?” Mare’s brow rises. She reaches into her pocket and fishes another cigarette out of her pack. “It bothers me. You put those things in your ears and you’re dead to the world.” Tali tenses as Mare lights up again and drags in a deep, poisonous breath. “You think you know everything, and you can ignore anyone you don’t want to hear. Those headphones are bothering me, all right.”

Last week, when Tali had tried for the ninth time to get out of going on this trip, she’d claimed she didn’t feel Mare’s driving was safe. So Dad told Tali she was in charge of half of the driving, and Mare agreed not to drive more than six hours a day and not after dark. But then Mare said we’d have to be up every morning by six. “We have to drive early if I can’t drive at night,” Mare had insisted. Tali had gone to her room muttering about spending her whole summer waking up at the crack of dawn. Now she crosses her arms, looking sullen and sleepy.

“At least my headset isn’t giving anyone cancer,” my sister says. “Forget it, Mare.”

My grandmother doesn’t answer her. The silence stretches as Mare studies my sister, her unreadable expression making Talitha squirm. Finally, she jerks out her earphones in disgust.

“All right! Fine! I won’t listen to my music right now, okay? Just don’t smoke anywhere near me, either, and you
have to turn on the radio, okay? I can’t sit in the car all day without listening to something.”

“No earphones where I can see them at all,” Mare counters, “and we’ve got a deal.”

“No earphones at all? Mare, that’s not fair! Octavia has a CD player!”

“It’s for books. I’m listening to books,” I insist.

“You have music CDs, too,” Tali accuses. “Don’t lie.”

Mare shakes her head. “I’m not talking about Octavia. I’m talking about you, Talitha. No earphones from you, no smoking from me. Deal?”

“Whatever.” Tali sighs. “Let’s just go before the summer’s over, okay?”

My grandmother drops the butt onto the ground and puts it out deliberately.

“Girls?” Mom’s coming down the stairs, holding a paper shopping bag. “I packed a few things for you to snack on.” She glances down at the butts on the driveway. “Mare, you’re going to give him a stroke one of these days.”

My grandmother flashes her a conspiratorial smile and takes the bag. “Girl, what have you got in here? There’s enough to feed an army!” She puts the bag into the car and gives my mother a hug. “We’ve got to get going, Thea,” she says.

Mom hollers for Dad. “Phillip!”

My father erupts from the house with a whisk broom and dustpan and holds them out to my grandmother, who looks at them and grins.

“I’ll take those,” Mom says smoothly.

Dad sighs sharply but gives in, his shoulders slumping. He bends toward Mare to brush her cheek with a cursory kiss. “Have a nice trip,” he says grudgingly. He won’t forgive her for the cigarette butts anytime soon. He leans into the car. “You girls be good,” he says once more. “I don’t want to hear about you two fighting or—”

“Your father loves you,” my mother interrupts, leaning in next to Dad. “Have fun, girls.”

“Have fun,” Dad echoes, looking sheepish. Giving Mom a sideways glance, he adds, “You give us a call if there’s any trouble, all right?”

Then finally, finally, Mare settles in the car and snugs her seat belt around her waist. She checks her lipstick in the rearview and puts the car into reverse.

“Where in Alabama are we going? And who’s going to be at this reunion anyway?” Tali asks suddenly. “Aren’t Dad and Aunt Josephine your only relatives?”

“You know, Tali, you’re working my nerves already. You remind me of a girl I knew when I was in Des Moines, Iowa.”

“Iowa? Didn’t you grow up in Alabama?” I interrupt, opening the map.

“Yes.” My grandmother raises a plucked eyebrow in my direction. “And I grew up in Iowa, too. Stop interrupting me and wave to your folks so I can tell my story.”

“Sorry,” I say, annoyed. Tali snorts. Reluctantly, I wave and manage a smile as Mom blows kisses and mouths, “Have fun,” in my direction. I catch my father’s grim expression as Mare backs slowly out of the drive. He steps into the driveway
and lifts his hand briefly before bending to sweep up Mare’s cigarette butts with the broom and dustpan he’s grabbed back from Mom.

“As I said,” Mare continues conversationally, “Tali, you remind me of a girl named Gloria. Now, Gloria was a pain in my behind. She had something to say about everything, and you couldn’t tell her anything, just like some people I could mention….”

Tali whines, “Mare … you said you’d turn on the radio….”

So much for summer vacation.

Around about six, just before it gets too dark to see, I pin on my hat, then shrug into my mama’s felt coat and tie the belt. It is still her coat, though she don’t never wear it. She hardly goes out after dark, but I do. Money is tight, and I am old enough to make wages on my own.

“You watch yourself, Marey Lee Boylen,” my mama, Edna, must have said, but the words were garbled up around a mouthful of pins she was holding, stitching up another Christmas gift for her new beau, Toby.

“Watch yourself,” is what Mama says every night, like I am a little old kid, not almost seventeen years old and knowing full well how to watch out for myself. “Watch yourself,” she says, even though I watch out for myself better than she ever watches out for me.

I don’t tell her none of that. Everybody know better than to argue with Edna Mae Boylen.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, tugging on my gloves. I grab my handbag and close the door.

I am tired, but I walk fast out here in the cold. If I don’t get on to Young’s Diner, where I work, Mr. Young will give my job to somebody else before I can say boo. At my other job I am the house girl for Mrs. Ida Payne. I dust and scrub the floors and wash up the kitchen there all day, make the beds and do the windows. Miss Ida got one of them fancy porcelain commodes, and I wash that out, too. Today was a heavy day: Miss Ida’s friends came by for bridge, and she had a girl from the hotel come and serve. All afternoon I washed up and fetched and carried for her.

She leaves me a list: “Marey Lee, please see to the window in the guest room.” “Marey Lee, please polish the silver and my good tea things.” Miss Ida tells me I’m a smart girl. She is glad I read so well.

I am smart, smart enough to go to secretarial college, but Mama don’t have that kind of money. Daddy up and died and left Mama with nothing but two babies to raise and the farm. Mama takes in washing and mending and has ever since I can remember, but there wasn’t money enough. I had to leave high school. We have a garden, and we sell chickens, eggs, and hogs. We get by better than most, but Mama don’t see no use for more school. If I can read and do sums, she says, what else do I need?

I could save my wages and go to school, but the closest colored college is all the way in Tuskegee, and I can’t leave Mama and Josephine yet. Actually, it’s Josephine—Feen, we call her—who I can’t leave, not with Mama’s new man around the house. Sister Dials at church say every colored man in five counties know Mama got a farm on her own. All
kinds of men pass through, talking ’bout, “Do a little work around the place for you, ma’am,” tryin’ to talk sweet, all the while makin’ eyes at Mama, hoping to get themselves a little land.

Mama calls the new hired man our “uncle” Toby. Mr. Toby has quick little eyes that slip around in his face. He told my baby sister, Josephine, her skin was like the color of honey, and he brought her candy every week like she was a real tiny kid when he was first here, courting Mama by being sweet to Josephine. Toby’s always looking at us, bumping into us like he can’t walk straight. Last week he told me I got hips like a boy.

Feen and me, we been through this before. Every time Mama takes up with a man, she gets forgetful of us. She play like she don’t got no kids, and he play like he’s our daddy till they get to drinking and brawling, then she runs him out. Me and Feen, we learn to stay out the way.

I told Mama she’d better watch herself, letting Mr. Toby come into the house like he is family, letting him help himself to our food and help himself to our beds. Mama slapped me in the mouth like I cursed her. You can’t tell some people nothing.

My mama’s a handsome woman. She’s tall, big-boned, and broad like all her people, and she can butcher and smoke a pig just like a man. She makes her own whiskey, sews a neat seam, goes to church every Sunday and prayer meeting on Wednesdays, and can sing like an angel. Folks all up and down Bay Slough think well of her.

Used to be that mattered. Used to be Mama
cared
what
people think. Since Toby come, Mama giggles and laughs all the time, preening and flashing her eyes. Sister Dials at church say ain’t no fool like an old fool got her head turned by some man.

Mama say Mrs. Betty Ann Dials best mind her
own
business.

Mama and Daddy bought this land; my daddy didn’t do no sharecropping for nobody when he was alive, and he built this house with his own two hands and his own sweat and blood. Mama says I take after him, bein’ skinny and all, but Feen takes after Mama, with that pretty long hair and her big old eyes. Feen’s just like Mama, except she’s a big old baby. Ever since Toby come, she been fussing, cryin’ about, “Mama don’t do this no more” and “Mama don’t do that.” Mama says we got to grow up now. She says I got to take care of Feen ’cause she’s the baby. She been saying that since I was just about a baby myself.

We got a tin roof, not no tar paper like the real poor folks have. My daddy built us four rooms and a privy, and Mama taught us to keep it neat, like we got pride. We got a garden growing corn and beans, but we don’t try to put in no tobacco nor cotton like Daddy would, seeing as we ain’t got no man around but Toby, and I hope he’ll be movin’ on real soon.

I wish I remembered my daddy. Aunt Shirley, Mama’s sister, is the only family we got, and she is up in northern parts. All we got around here is these “uncles,” and not a one of them’s no good, always bossin’ us like they’re the man of the
family, talking about, “Girl, get me a plate a this or a glass a that,” trying to eat up all the food and lay around. Don’t none of ’em do a lick of work, and Mama just can’t see what’s right in front of her.

Josephine’s in eighth grade, and if she can keep herself together, she’ll graduate high school and get on up out of here. She could be a nurse or maybe even a teacher. For myself, I got plans—deep plans. One of these days, I am going to be gone. One of these days, I am going to shake free of Mama, Miss Ida, and this whole town. I’m going to get out of here, and I won’t look back.

With the money I’m earning at Young’s, maybe someday I can go to secretarial school and live in a city. In a city, they got movies and jazz clubs and places colored folks see and be seen. Up north they got writers and poets and folks who don’t just work all day every day like we do down here. See, Mama thinks her girls are only looking to buy lipstick and talk to fast boys, but she’s wrong—I aim to do more than that someday. One of these days, I’m going to get up out of little old Bay Slough, Alabama, for sure. I’ve just got to wait on Josephine, and then both of us be gone.

The bus is already at the stop when I get there, the driver slouched against its side, lighting up a nasty cigar. I nod to him, then step on, sliding in my token, and walk down the narrow aisle toward the back.

A man with a newspaper climbs onto the bus and deposits his fare. He slumps down, reading. Probably war news, which is all anybody ever hears since those Japs fired
on Pearl Harbor. I hope they don’t start that mess here in Bay Slough.