Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind (13 page)

“All right, then,” I conceded. “But we’ve got to get you in better shape.”

“Maybe,” she said, pointing at the sherry bottle still gripped in my hand. “Maybe a little of that would help.”

I gave it to her and watched her turn it up. She took several long swallows straight from the bottle. When she came up for air, she coughed and sputtered and had a hard time getting her breath back.

“Shit! What is that stuff?”

“Watch your language in my house, miss,” I told her. “And keep in mind that beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Yes’m, sorry. I thank you for it.” She turned away, trying not to gag.

“Come on over to the sink,” I said, helping her get up. “I’ll fix some warm saltwater so you can rinse out your mouth. That’ll help that missing tooth.”

“Teeth,” she said, pulling back her lip to show me where two had once been.

I thought I’d start gagging, too, but I got her to the sink. When she finished rinsing her mouth, I gave her some aspirin and started her toward the stairs.

“A good, hot shower will make you feel better,” I said.

“But I have to find Junior.”

“Listen to me,” I said, stopping on the landing and taking her by the shoulders. “You’re in no condition to find anybody. You can’t even think straight, and straight thinking is what we need right now. So you just come on with me and get yourself cleaned up and feeling better. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

By the time I got her out of the shower, dried off, and into one of my gowns, it was all I could do to get her into Little Lloyd’s bed. She was out on her feet. Pretty tired, I guessed. To say nothing of four aspirins and a fair slug of cooking sherry.

I closed her door, but left mine open. I lay in bed, thinking about this turn of events, wondering if I should call Deputy Bates
or Sam or who. Nothing they could do that night, though, as dead to the world as she was.

I’d wait till morning, then try to get more out of her, like why did Brother Vern have her beaten half to death, and why did he want Little Lloyd, and what in heaven’s name was it all about?

I finally went to sleep and dreamed about tires as tall as my head trying to run me down while I searched all over creation looking for that child.

I
T WAS NOT
a restful night. I came awake fully about five o’clock and got on up, with that child still on my mind. He was all I could think of, for he’d been wandering in and out of my dreams most of the night. And, Lord, what was I going to do about the woman across the hall? I thought about calling the sheriff, or telling Deputy Bates, and just washing my hands of the whole mess. On the other hand, it would be worth keeping her around just to see Pastor Ledbetter’s face when he heard of it. Maybe I’d remind him of David’s harem, and see if he would excuse Wesley Lloyd then.

And at that thought, I began to feel downright dejected again. My house had become a way station for Wesley Lloyd’s second family, people popping in and out, and me not knowing who to trust and who not to.

One thing I did know. I’d been tricked again, and this time by that preacher in sheep’s clothing. Wesley Lloyd Springer had tricked me, just pulled the wool over my eyes as slick as you please, and now Brother Vernon Puckett had done the same thing. They’d taken advantage of my trusting nature, and I was getting mad as thunder, not only at them, but at myself for being so easy to fool. It wasn’t going to happen again, believe you me.

And in the bed right across the hall was the loose woman who’d slept with my husband for untold numbers of years, and here she was sleeping now in my house. If Wesley Lloyd hadn’t been six feet under, all he’d have to do would be to walk from one bed to another.

The thought made me sick to my stomach. I needed my morning coffee.

I put on my robe and tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen. Strange, I thought, to start the day with pictures in my mind of Wesley Lloyd with that woman, yet the night before when she’d stumbled into my house with the evidence of a beating all over her, I hadn’t given one thought to Wesley Lloyd. And what they’d done together.

I made the coffee and sat at the table with a cup of it before me. Thinking. Trying to understand what was going on. Trying not to worry about Little Lloyd. A hard thing to do, now that I knew his mother was worried sick about him.

It’s funny about women and children, isn’t it? There was Hazel Marie Puckett, with no money, no home, and no husband. Yet she had a child. And here I was, a respectable married woman with everything to give to a child, and the Lord hadn’t seen fit. This was just one more situation where I wondered what in the world He was thinking of.

I’d fully expected, within a decent time after being married, to welcome a blessed event. But it hadn’t happened and I hadn’t questioned it. But Wesley Lloyd had. He’d announced one morning a few years into our marriage that I had an appointment with Dr. Monroe to find out what was wrong with me. I didn’t like it, but who was I to question Wesley Lloyd’s decisions?

I won’t go into too much detail about what that doctor did to me, but you wouldn’t have liked it, either. They put me up on a table and stuck my feet in these metal contraptions; then the doctor pulled on the bottom sheet and said, “I’m going to
scoot you down, now.” And when he did, my knees splayed out on each side, and I thought I’d die when he threw up the sheet and sat down on a little stool to get a good look. And that nurse of his was right down there getting an eyeful, too. And in the midst of that, another nurse opened the door so that anybody in the hall could get in on the picture show. I’m not going to describe how Dr. Monroe poked, prodded, and mashed around down there. Nor where he put his fingers.

It was a mortifying experience, and I decided as soon as they let me off that table they’d never get me back on it. If that’s what it took to have children, I’d just pass altogether.

And wouldn’t you know it, the very next Sunday there was Dr. Monroe waiting in the narthex to usher us to our pew. I couldn’t look him in the face, especially when he smiled and squeezed my arm, so pleasant and genteel with that pink rosebud in his lapel. Humiliating, was what it was, after what he’d looked at and fingered and handled on his examining table. And I didn’t like the way he shook Wesley Lloyd’s hand and asked how things were going.

That did it for me as far as seeking help from medical science. As a predestinated Presbyterian, I had reason not to go messing around with what wasn’t meant to be. I told Wesley Lloyd that I’d just do what Sarah and Hannah and several other barren women had done, and depend on prayer alone. He couldn’t very well argue with that, since that was what he was always recommending to me. I figured if the Lord wanted me to have a child He’d give me one.

Coffee slopped out of my cup as Little Lloyd’s pale little face came to mind. I stiffened in the chair and said aloud, “But, Lord, I didn’t mean give me one
this
way.”

The night was slowly giving way to morning, with the gray shadows of shrubs and trees taking shape in the yard. I heard the chirping calls of birds break the stillness of the night. Early birds
getting their worms. Which reminded me that an Oreo would taste good with a second cup of coffee. That was not the kind of breakfast that Wesley Lloyd would’ve approved of, but as we’ve all noticed, he was no longer around to pass judgment.

I went to the pantry and commenced rummaging around to find the cookies. Lillian liked them, too, and we’d been known to hide the last few from each other. I moved cans of Luck’s beans and Campbell’s soup, and jars of Jif peanut butter and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and sacks of Lily Maid flour, Dixie Crystals’ sugar, and Yelton’s cornmeal, but I couldn’t find the Oreos. I was determined, so I went through the folded grocery sacks that Lillian saved and, bless Pat, I came across one with something in it.

“Lillian, you sneaky thing,” I said to myself, smiling at the thought of her searching for the Oreos I was fixing to eat.

I reached in the Winn-Dixie sack and pulled out a picture book. I stood looking at it for a minute, coming to realize that I was holding Little Lloyd’s precious sack. The one he always had with him, the one he slept with, the one he never let out of his sight, the one I’d never thought in a million years he’d go off without. I’d thought it held a little boy’s treasures, that’s what Lillian had told me. And she’d also told me to keep my hands out of it, and here I was holding a child’s well-used picture book that’d been hidden away among the empty sacks. I should’ve put it back right then. The child had a reason for leaving it there, even though I couldn’t think why in the world he would’ve.

But, as I’d already discovered its contents in all innocence, I opened the front of the book and read the inscription. In for a penny, in for a pound. I recognized my husband’s heavy, confident penmanship. He’d written: “For your birthday,” and signed it with his full name, “Wesley Lloyd Springer.” I sighed, my heart heavy with the thought of my husband’s rich private life and my barren one. I turned to the title page.
Aslan’s Book of Pictures
. Wesley
Lloyd had no more an idea of what a child wanted for his birthday than I did. But I think I would’ve picked out something better than a book about lions.

I heard Lillian on the porch and felt guilty for plundering through somebody else’s belongings. Then I thought better of it. Lillian should know about this so she wouldn’t gather up all the empty sacks and throw them out.

“What you doin’ up and in the pantry?” she asked as soon as she came in the door.

“Come see what I found,” I said, holding out the book. I told her how I’d come to find it, without mentioning Oreos. “I was looking for a pencil,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “you just put that book back where you found it.”

“I intend to.”

“You know what it mean, don’t you?”

“What?”

“It mean,” she said, “that he want to come back. When you leave something you loves somewhere, it draw you back to that place.”

“Lillian, you know better,” I said, putting the book in the sack and folding down the ends the way Little Lloyd had left them.

“I don’t mean it act’ally draw you. I mean it what you
want
it to do. That chile left here intending to come back, ’cause he left what meant the most to him.”

“Well, I declare,” I said, touched in spite of myself. “I do believe you’re right. I can’t think of any other reason he’d leave it. He certainly put a lot of stock in this sack, or what was in it, or both. And, Lillian, he found a good hiding place for it. I would’ve never thought to look here, if I was looking for it. So,” I said, thrusting the sack under the empty ones, “back it goes, and it can wait right there for him.”

I closed the pantry door and sat down at the table. “Get some coffee and come sit down,” I said. “I’ve got something else to tell you.”

When she was settled, I told her about our new houseguest and her pitiful condition. She punctuated my recitation with a series of “No’s!” and “You don’t mean it’s!,” but I finally got it told and admitted I didn’t know what to do next. Which was no surprise to her.

“That chile in trouble, an’ his mama, too,” she declared. “What we gon’ do ’bout it, Miss Julia?”

“I wish I knew. I’ll take something up for her to eat, it’ll have to be something soft or liquid, Lillian, two of her teeth have been knocked out. Maybe when she eats a little, she’ll be able to help us decide what to do.”

“Soup,” Lillian said, getting to her feet. “I’ll heat some soup and crumble up some body crackers in it. That be good for her. You pour some milk. She’ll need building up.

“Now, what I want to know,” she went on as she put a pan on the stove, “is what you gon’ tell Deputy Bates? He be here pretty soon.”

“I don’t think I’ll tell him anything,” I said. Then, at her quick glare, hurried on, “At this time. He’s in a bad position, Lillian. The sheriff, or rather that big lieutenant, wants to question Miss Puckett and that could take all day when we could be looking for Little Lloyd. If I tell Deputy Bates she’s here, he’ll have to report it and no telling what that would lead to. If he doesn’t know it, he can’t report it. So, I’m just thinking of what’s best for him.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. She poured soup in a bowl and crumbled in saltines until it was a thick mush. She put the bowl, a spoon, a napkin, and a glass of milk on a tray. I added a bottle of aspirin.

“You take this on up to her,” Lillian said, “and I’ll fix his breakfast. Go on, now, I think I hear his car turning in. And put
yo’ clothes on, too. Sound like we got lots to do soon as Deputy Bates close his eyes.”

I hurried upstairs with the tray, wanting Deputy Bates to think I was still in bed. Hazel Marie Puckett groaned when I touched her shoulder. Lord, she looked worse in the daylight.

“Shhh,” I whispered. “Here’s something to eat, but we have to be quiet. There’s a deputy sheriff in the house.”

Her eyes flew open, as much as the swelling would allow, and I could see the fear in them.

“Is he here for me?” Her mouth was so misshapen that she could hardly form the words.

“Should he be?” I asked sharply, realizing again how little I knew about her.

She shook her head. “You never know.”

Well, that was the truth, especially after my run-in with Lieutenant Peavey. “Eat,” I told her, “but be quiet about it. Deputy Bates lives here and pretty soon he’ll be sleeping right down the hall.”

When she’d finished the soup, I helped her across the hall to my bedroom and ran a hot bath for her. Deputy Bates would think it was my morning ablutions. I told her to soak out the soreness while I dressed. I gave her some of my underclothes and then went to the closet to pick out a dress for her. When she came out of the bathroom in my slip, hunched over against the pain in her ribs, I had three for her to choose from. None of them Sunday dresses, just my good, everyday shirtwaists. She looked at them for quite a while.

Then she said, “Do you have anything else?”

“What’s wrong with those, I’d like to know?”

“I’m sorry. I just meant, maybe some jeans or shorts.”

“There’re some things,” I informed her, “that ladies don’t wear. And jeans and shorts are two of them.”

“Sorry,” she said, and picked up the first one and put it on.
It was maybe a size too big for her, but she was skinny to start with, and it was somewhat longer than she was accustomed to wearing, which wasn’t a bad thing. I started looking for some slippers that would fit.

We heard a tap on the door, and Lillian stuck her head in. “He gone to bed,” she said, sidling in and closing the door behind her. “I come to fix you up,” she said to Hazel Marie, holding up a roll of Ace bandage.

So we helped Hazel Marie undress again, and Lillian displayed another of her unsung talents as she wrapped the bandage around the chest of the woman who’d had my husband’s arms around the same places.