Flavors (4 page)

Nellie Jane would snatch the paper up after our grandparents read it, devour it as she ate dinner, and then ceremoniously fold it up and hide it until I obliged and dried the dishes to her satisfaction. Only then did she relinquish the treasured comic strip to me.

Grandma never came to my aid. I suppose with so many kids fighting and fussing and running wild all over the place, she just learned to turn it all off. At least when it was conducted out of her earshot.

Did Nellie Jane's highhandedness bother me?

Yes and no.

Yes, because it often deterred me from adventure. No, because she fascinated me and I came to accept her eccentric mood swings.

Nellie Jane's hissy-fits and name-calling merely heightened her mystique. “Lazy-bones” became synonymous with “Sadie.” In those pre-ego days, I didn't even bother a nasty “sticks and stones” retort
.
I was too curious about where her passion came from. Lordy, that girl could work herself up. And in ire's wake, my wordless,
clueless
gaping would send her stalking away, muttering angrily to herself.

One thing Nellie Jane and I did together was to slop the hog Frances. We would linger a little to watch her eat. Frances' appreciation of her unsavory cuisine never failed to engage me.

The rare times Nellie Jane managed to escape the kitchen and sneak off to the woods with me were fun. Not magic, like when I played alone, but fun still. There, wrapped in the forest's pine fragrance, slowly, guiltily, she would condescend from her precipitated adult zone. I deferentially allowed her to stop at whatever level she felt comfortable with. Adolescence was
her limit. I don't remember us ever romping or playing chase together.

We did word and guess-who games. Our favorite was guess-who-the-movie-star- is. We used initials and gave subtle clues and since, on the farm,
Photoplay
and
Silver Screen
magazines were cherished above all treasures, we always guessed each other's stars. Our excursions, while seated cross-legged on damp sod, eating succulent wild purple muscadines and golden scuppernongs until our tongues grew sore, were some of the few times she and I settled down to talk seriously. The mellow grape-flavor of the wild fruit always takes me right back to there and then.

And as we talked, Nellie Jane would begin to slowly, cautiously open up and once she did, she was like a sunflower on a beautiful sun-washed day

Those were times I remember, when we smiled and shared our secrets.

It was then that I saw a different side to Nellie Jane. One that loved.

One with compassion.

One which I would always love.

Nellie Jane figured heavily into my early education.

“There's no such thing as Santa Claus,” she had declared when I was nine years old, shattering forever the magic. During one of my family's Sunday farm visits, she and I had escaped to the meadow and lounged there, chewing on sugarcane.

My mouth was hanging open from the shock of it, sugarcane forgotten.

“Nuh uh,” I had protested.

“Sadie,” she said, as in
how stupid can you be
? “That's the truth. Your
daddy
and your
mama
are Santa Claus.” That I had held onto the illusion of a real, live, breathing St. Nicholas until the age of nine was somewhat miraculous considering how street-smart most mill hill kids were. But with Daddy's ironclad stay-in-the-yard edict, my parents had shielded me from the cold veracity that was Nellie Jane's revelation.

“But Santa Claus comes to see you,” I insisted.

She humphed. “Sadie, them presents all come from your mama and Lillian and my older sisters.” She looked at me kind of irritated. “Sadie, you're too old to believe in Santa Claus, anyhow. Little Joe's still a baby. That's different.”

Now, three years later, she had more disclosures in store for me.

“You know where you come from, don't you?” she asked nonchalantly.

“From my mama's tummy,” I replied, feeling quite proud that I had deduced such because Mama had birthed my little brother when I was old enough to notice her entire metamorphosis from start to finish. Besides, Mama had been quite open about it all, letting me feel the baby's movements after her fourth month.

“Do you know how you got there?” Nellie Jane broke a straw and stuck it in her mouth, looking off into the distance.

She had me there. “I don't know.” I shrugged, at a loss.

She looked at me then, a knowing glint in her hazel eyes. “Your Daddy put it there.”

My gaze narrowed on her, a thread of dread snaking through me. But the question stuck in my brain; I had to know. “How?”

She gestured then to body parts and explained in detail about mating.

Truth, bald and brutal, struck me between the eyes and shot into my bones and vitals. It was like the Santa Claus
wham
all over again
.

Reeling, I felt a heavy dose of disillusionment weigh me down. I sighed and shuddered, settling down into the meadow sod, strangely depleted. Nellie Jane's words lingered, scandalizing me with details of how Mama and Daddy had made
me.

It was too, too much.

“You're
lying,”
I accused weakly. But by the look in her eye, one that radiated pity for my inanity, I knew that she was not.

All these years later, I still marvel that I'd not – by osmosis – gleaned from those mill village peers the low-down on the birds and bees.

At that time, I had not a clue that my innocence was slowly leaking away.

At that time, I had not a clue as to what innocence
was.

 

“How's ol' Sadie Ann?” Conrad ruffled my hair as he passed by. Again, Nellie Jane and I were going at our favorite crossword pastime, this time at the unoccupied kitchen table, perched side by side on the long bench anchored against the wall.

I looked up at him, returning his grin and feeling that unique alliance we shared.

Seventeen-year-old Conrad was my favorite uncle. Somehow, his genetics and mine were in perfect sync. He was a shorter version of my daddy. He didn't seem cut from the same stone-faced mold as some of the other Meltons, was, in fact, a soulmate to me, with his dreams of a boxing career or wrestling fame. His enthusiasm, as he spun dreams, matched my own.

He was as certain that he'd be the next Sugar Ray Robinson as I was that I'd be the silver screen's next Debbie Reynolds.

Conrad was in and out of the house during that summer. Since education was not a Melton priority – except with my daddy, who insisted that I finish high school – Conrad dropped out of school by ninth grade. His first-shift mill job enabled him to be home by mid-afternoon and have supper with the brood.

After our meal of fragrant, tender, crusty cornbread, ham, pinto beans, stewed potatoes, spring onions and cold fresh milk, Conrad said, “Let's go talk.” He indicated the dirt parking lot, the only nighttime privacy setting in the helter-skelter Melton province.

We spent hours seated in Grandpa's old truck, yakking away about our aspirations while crickets chirruped and frogs croaked from nearby creek beds. The rest of the clan spread about over the front yard in straight-backed chairs, shelling peas or butter beans or breaking snap beans, depending upon the current harvest, illuminated from the light of a single bald, over-the-door light bulb. Quiet prevailed except for Grandpa Melton, puffing on his crooked, fragrant pipe, whose hair-raising ghost stories mesmerized and entertained us all, giving me delicious nightmares.

Tonight, I bypassed the stories because excitement fluttered inside me as I awaited whatever Conrad would divulge. I felt honored to be his confidante.

“I'm gonna have a boxing bout next month,” he proclaimed in a pride-husked voice. “It's all set up.”

“Oh, Conrad!” I clasped my hands to my flat bosom and crowed. “I can't believe it!” Conrad was a welterweight contender, short and compact – yet slender. He could have later doubled for Robert Conrad, the sixties actor. His dark blonde good looks swiveled female heads wherever he ventured. Yet he was not conceited. Never. Too much Melton reality in his blood, I suppose.

We celebrated this first leg of his dream-odyssey, he by blushing and grinning like roadkill and me with asinine giggling and lightly cuffing him on his shoulders.

Conrad was, by nature, quiet and unassuming and always kind to me. Main thing was, he never talked down to me. For a going-on-thirteen girl, that was headier than being whistled at. The only vice Conrad had was over-imbibing beer on weekends. Grandma didn't much like his stumbling in drunk in the wee hours, but she tolerated it because by the time he staggered in drunk as a skunk, it was too late to do anything about it.

Too, Conrad held a special place in Grandma's heart and affections. I never heard her scold him. I suspect it was because he made it difficult because he was so danged sweet. The only concession Grandma made was in referring to his genetic “wild hair,” a term that covered any aberration from her perception of respectable behavior.

“You seen Lulu this week?” I asked Conrad that particular night, propping my bare feet on the old truck's rusty dashboard and tucking my skirt tail around my thighs. Mill Hill girls wore shorts, but Grandma Melton hated that display of female skin. She considered it shameful and the girls trashy. So Mama made sure I wore dresses and skirts while at the farm. Lulu was the cute fourteen-year-old girl up the road who spent every waking minute at Grandma's house – when Conrad was home – planted on Conrad's lap. She knew no shame in her pursuit of him, kissing and hugging him before the whole world. At least before the Melton world, making Grandma's nose lightly flare with disdain at such hot-tail wantonness. But in true Melton style, Grandma catered more to the males than the females of her household, so she held her tongue and allowed the brazen display of affection to wax bold.

That was a Melton thing, ignoring the ugly 800-pound gorilla planted right smack dab in the middle of the house. Everybody walked all around it, avoiding looking directly at it. No one acknowledged it.

It was my first close-up encounter with denial.

I knew that if it was
me
curled up on some stranger's lap, I'd get the stuffings beat out of me with the longest switch on the Melton's wild peach tree. Grandma picked and chose to whom she bestowed such amnesty. Once she settled the matter, most of the Meltons followed suit.

Personally, I liked Lulu. Being Conrad's soulmate gave me clout with her and underneath all the unbridled necking, she
was a sweet, giving person. And I knew, beyond a doubt, that she really loved Conrad. A part of me, one matured beyond my age, sensed that her “looseness” was desperation to hang onto him. He usually seemed more amused by her come-ons than tempted. At least – in so many words – that's how Nellie Jane explained it to me.

The thing about Conrad was that he celebrated rather than tolerated me, as was the general regard thereabouts. How quickly my period of grace had expired. But with Conrad, I was totally okay. That was my first whiff of strawberry-flavored pleasure, a prelude to the age of teens.

Life was good.

Denial had it's nemesis in the Melton Domain.

Temper.

It was the total antithesis of averted gazes and silent lips and closed minds.

Since I'd rarely, in my twelve years, encountered a real display of rage, when exposed to it, I never failed to react with open-mouthed, stricken-numb dismay.

Gene, my eldest resident uncle, was freshly home from the Army. He'd been in the Korean War and was discharged because of three non-life-threatening bullet wounds. He'd enjoyed near hero status at the beginning of that summer. Brother Cletus, barely sixteen, round-faced, bulky and rather clumsy, was not, in Nellie Jane's estimation, really smart. “He's like a child,” she explained rather gently. “His mind's not catching up with him, Sadie.”