Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth (8 page)

"Mama, I can't use this book. It says candy bars is a nickel."

"Don't matter," says Mama. "Numbers is numbers."

"And nobody wears paper hats no more, neither."

"We'll just have to make do," says Mama.

"When are we doing my spelling test?" I say.

"After dinner," says Mama.

I don't eat much. Want everyone to be reminded I ain't pleased.

***

After dinner Mama gives me my spelling test. "The ones at school we had was much harder," I tell her. I show Mama my list of questions again on Matthew 13.

"Did you show them to Granny?" she says.

"Granny says to show them to you."

Mama sighs, takes a look. "Use the encyclopedia," she says. "That's what I got it for."

"But what should I look up?"

"Parables!"

So I look it up, but it's only got one paragraph, says parables was told by Jesus.

"Mama, the encyclopedia ain't no help. You got to explain things, Mama. Miss Sizemore explains things, and she has discussions."

Mama thumps the table. "I'm getting tired of you talking about Miss Sizemore. She may explain things and have discussion, but she ain't a-telling you God's truth. Let me see them questions."

I hand them to her.

"First of all," says Mama, "it don't matter what sea Jesus was at. Why do you want to know?"

"I just do. So I can look it up on the map."

"You don't need to look it up on the map. It ain't important." Mama takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Mary Mae. You do need them questions answered. But I can't do it right now. Soon's I get my curriculum done, I'll answer your questions."

"You can't answer no questions because you don't know how to teach!" I tell her. "And I'm tired of your stupid lessons."

"You don't talk to your mama that way," she says.

Even Granny gives me a look.

***

Mornings, Mama gives me a bunch of problems in that math book and something to read in the Bible. She's jumping all over the place. "Why are we going from parables to Psalms, Mama?" I say.

"Don't ask questions," she says. "Just read." Then she adds, "I'm doing the best I can, Mary Mae."

At night Mama sets down at the dining-room table with her Bible and tries making notes on her curriculum.

"What's a curriculum, anyway?" I hear her muttering. She gets the dictionary. "'Curriculum,'" she reads aloud, "'course of study.'" Mama sighs. "That's what I'm a-trying for. This weekend I'll figure it out."

***

Herschel Cadwallader calls, and Mama puts me on. He's never called me before. He says he carved a woolly mammoth today out of Ivory soap. "Wish you was in school," he says. "I got me some new fossils for my collection."

"What kind?"

"Found me some crinoids down at Duck Creek. Me and Dexter walked down there. It was fun. When you coming back?"

I swallow hard. "I don't know. Never."

***

Saturday, Mama makes more notes. I hear her talking to Sister Coates. "I thought teachers just made assignments—give a little spelling, a little history, a little math. But it ain't that easy." She hangs up and cries.

I look out the window and pray.

***

Lord, I'm happy my mama's crying. And I'm real sorry I'm happy. It ain't Christian. But you got to do something. Reading your Bible's nice, but we're jumping all over the place. And I can't take no more of this moldy encyclopedia, and I don't like this math book.

***

Saturday evening we's eating dinner and the doorbell rings. It's our old boarder, Lucinda. She's in a rainbow-striped poncho and yellow tennis shoes, and wants to know can she stay overnight.

"My cousin's dropped me off," she says. "I can't stay there no more. They been evicted." She starts to cry.

Lot of folks been crying lately. Me. Mama. Lucinda.

"Honey, you can sleep on the couch," says Mama. She always did like Lucinda. Said she was the most innocent-est person she'd ever met in her life. Just didn't know how to take care of herself.

"And I have a favor," says Lucinda. She's sniffling more, choking down big sobs. "Can you take me to the bus station tomorrow morning? I know it's Sunday, but it's Daddy's birthday tomorrow and I told him I'd be home."

Lucinda's looking real tired, her being pregnant, and her hat's on crooked, with the tassel swinging down in her face.

"I don't think you should be riding a bus down there, you being eight months pregnant," says Mama. She glances at Granny. "Why don't me and Granny take you down to Clarksville?"

Granny nods.

"Oh I couldn't ask that," says Lucinda.

"No, we want to," says Mama. She goes over and closes her Bible. "That school can wait one more week for their curriculum."

Funny how Mama can do that. Now if I was to go to Miss Sizemore and say, "You can wait one more week for my report," I'd be in trouble. Would get my paper marked down for being late—and for being a smart aleck besides.

"Church can do without us for one Sunday, too," says Mama.

Church, I'm thinking. I'd like to skip church since Brother Lucas won't let me practice. And going down to Clarksville would get me out of here. Besides, Lucinda's my friend, too. We used to play Chutes and Ladders. "I want to go, too," I say. I smile and try to make up for my meanness.

"No, you and Daddy's going to church," says Mama.

"I gotta work," says Daddy.

"Sunday?"

"We got two trucks coming in for emergency service."

Mama shakes her head. I know she's fed up with me, plus she don't want me in the car when they're discussing Lucinda's condition.

So when Lucinda wanders off to the bathroom, I whisper to Mama, "I know all about Lucinda. She's pregnant and ain't married to her boyfriend."

Mama rolls her eyes. "You got puppet show practice."

I want to say I ain't got no puppet, but then she'll be reminded of my throwing Mrs. Noah into the trash. Besides, I know she's hid off in one of Mama's drawers. "I'm ready for the puppet show," I say. "We've done had all the practices we need. And Brother Lucas won't answer none of my questions."

"That's because you ask too many," says Mama.

***

Mama calls Sister Coates to tell her we won't be in church tomorrow. Later I hear Mama telling Granny, "Sister Coates says it's so nice we're helping Lucinda. Says Wilma Tatters can play piano."

Lucinda drags her duffle bag into the kitchen and shows us how she keeps her underwear in plastic food bags. "That way I can keep things nice and neat," she says.

Her and Mama make pancakes.

We leave the house about eight o'clock and take I-71 South. I want to say to Mama it's too bad we don't have no more of them John 3:16 stickers. But I'm still being punished, and I don't want to overdo my niceness.

We drive through Kentucky listening to
Vernon Valley Gospel Hour.

And then Mama asks Lucinda if she's heard from Thornton.

"Not for a while," she says. "He might be locked up."

I see Mama glancing through the rearview mirror at me. She don't like me hearing such things.

"He comes around you again," says Granny, "you just get the law."

"I will," says Lucinda.

We drive past Carrollton, then cross the river at Louisville into Indiana. Lucinda's giving directions.

***

She lives on Whippet Street, near the Ohio River. We drive down this road under a big railroad trestle, and off in the distance there's a dam. We pass a sign that says
FALLS OF THE OHIO
. I'm wondering where I've seen that at. Falls of the Ohio. Then I remember—that was in the book Miss Sizemore give me,
The Wonder of the Trilobite.
It's where some of them fossils was dug up.

"Lots of driftwood down there," says Lucinda. "When the river's low, there's heaps of it along the bank."

"I'd like some of that," says Mama.

"Pull over," says Lucinda. "We got time."

Mama parks, and we walk down the stairs. "Now be careful," says Mama. It's a long ways down. Mama's helping Granny, who's holding on to the banister, and Lucinda's taking it slow, too. I lead the way, kicking seedpods off the stairs.

I can see the riverbed out there, like I seen in Miss Sizemore's book, and the little pools of water, and when I get down off the stairs, I start seeing fossils. Everywhere fossils. Like God come down and pressed fossils into the riverbed.

The sky's overcast now, so you don't have to squint.

Mama settles Granny down on the bottom step. "You just set right down here," says Mama.

"You all go on out there," says Granny. "I'll be all right."

"Over here's the best driftwood," says Lucinda. She points off to the left, where it's heaped against the bank, left from the last time the river rose.

But Mama don't even look at that driftwood. She's picking her way across the riverbed. Me and Lucinda's right behind.

"Look at this, Mary Mae," says Mama. "You can see these little plants left in the mud."

"That ain't mud," says Lucinda. "That's limestone."

"Can't be," says Mama. "A river's got mud." Mama probably thinks them plants is from last summer.

"Not here," says Lucinda. She gets down on her hands and knees in her rainbow poncho. "These little fossils here is millions and millions of years old. My grade school brung us down, told us all about it. And us kids used to play here. We'd take little pieces home. Course you ain't allowed to do that no more."

It's funny that Mama don't argue with Lucinda. Mama's on her knees now, just running her fingers over them patterns.

"Sometimes if you wet something, you can see it better," says Lucinda. She splashes water from a little pool up onto a sponge fossil. "Ain't that beautiful!"

"Oh yes," says Mama, "and what's this?" She's pointing to something at the edge of a crevice.

I take a look. "It's a trilobite," I say.

"Looks like a crab," says Mama.

"Yep, they's related." I don't say nothing about how old it is. Lucinda already done that. "And here's a crinoid." I point out the tassel. "And over here's sponges, and look at this, it's a pipe organ coral." I never seen that except in the book Miss Sizemore give me. Wish I could tell her.

Mama's taken with this place. It's all here, millions of fossils, like the Lord's science lesson.

"This all used to be ocean," says Lucinda, standing up.

Mama don't argue. She's just running her fingers over them fossils.

I'm picturing how it was, millions of years ago, with the warm salt water, and palm fronds and jellyfish and trilobites and squids.

But it's beginning to rain.

We pick our way across the rocks to the steps where Granny sets.

"River ain't usually this low," says Lucinda. "We need this."

We all pile into the car and drop Lucinda off on Whippet Street. Her daddy's setting on the porch waiting for her.

***

Granny dozes off on the way home, and Mama don't say a word. I'm thinking I better say something now before Mama forgets what she seen. "Them fossils was really interesting, wasn't they?" I say.

But Mama don't answer.

"It was like a science lesson, wasn't it, Mama?"

She still don't answer.

"Be nice if we could go there again, wouldn't it? And take our time and look at everything."

Mama's still quiet. Then she says, "Mary Mae, it's something we shouldn't be looking at."

"The riverbed?"

"Them fossils," she says. "They's not meant for us to see, Mary Mae."

"But they's out there," I say.

***

We get lunch at the Dog-Gone-It Café in Sparta. Old people dressed in church clothes is a-coming in.

"I missed going to church this morning," says Mama.

"Me, too," says Granny.

"I missed singing," I say. "But I liked seeing that riverbed."

"Mary Mae, I don't want to hear nothing more about that riverbed."

"It's God's creation, Mama. No sense in not talking about it."

"I told you I've heard enough."

***

Mama orders us all the Sunday special—fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy—but I'm back to not eating again.

***

We get home at three, and Mama opens up her Bible and starts working on her curriculum. I go upstairs and dig my cigar box out of my dressing table. I pull all them fossils out and line them up. Then I wait for them to talk to me.

"Wish you could put us out on a shelf, Mary Mae," they say. "Sure would be nice."

"I'll do my best," I say. I pack them all up again, hide them away, and go downstairs.

***

Ain't allowed to go out in the neighborhood, but I can still go out in my own backyard. It's quit raining, and I'm a-walking around in the wet. Sneakers getting all shushy. I go climb on the fishpond. Daddy keeps saying he's going to tear it down, but he don't. When we moved in, I was never allowed to climb on it or nothing because a kid could get hurt there, Daddy said. But I'm ten years old now. It's a whole lot of rocks all piled up, and there's a cement basin for water, only we ain't never filled it. Anyways, I climb up on it. I squat down and I'm a-looking around, and then I just about slide off into the basin. Can't believe what I'm seeing. Every slab of rock is teeming with fossils. Just like them slabs down at school.

Must have been dug up from the ground here.

Slabs so thick with fossils it looks like crab gumbo. Fossils even thicker than they was at Falls of the Ohio. Or at school. I'm climbing all over them rocks like a chipmunk. In one slab there's six little trilobites enrolled together.

I go into the garage and get three lawn chairs. Line them up in front of the fishpond.

When Daddy comes home, I invite everyone out to see.

"I'm busy," says Mama.

"I'm tired," says Daddy.

"No, you got to see this."

"I'll go," says Granny. So Mama and Daddy follow her out.

"Take your seats," I say. "I got something to talk about."

Mama says, "Do this fast. It's cold out here."

"Now you see this here fishpond," I say. "Daddy, where do you think these rocks come from?"

"I s'pect right here in this yard," he says. "You go deep enough, you'll hit bedrock."