My Drowning (21 page)

She was never very much for the outdoors. I can picture her standing with me, inhaling the scent of these tea roses and these evening damasks; she would be wearing a hat and scarf, maybe even sunglasses, and she would be squinting behind the sunglasses, and sniffing delicately at the roses, as if too much of the scent would make her drunk.

We had known each other all our lives, or at least for most of our lives, but when I was ten years old and going to church we became friends. At first she watched me in the Sunday
School class with a special suspicion; I would catch her at it and she would look away. Then she started to stand beside me during recess on the school playground. We simply stood together and glanced at each other. I noticed her clothes had worn thin, though not as thin as mine, her shoes were scuffed, her socks were darned. For some reason this realization relaxed me and suddenly the idea of being close to her became easy.

Then one day at lunch she said, “I brought two sandwiches.”

In the classroom everyone was opening the tops of desks, unfolding lunchpails or unwrapping cloth-covered bundles. My empty stomach growled.

June spoke in a whisper. “I can't eat but one.”

When I unwrapped the sandwich, June refused even to glance at me or to acknowledge my actions in any way, until I had finally stuffed the corner of it into my mouth and took out a bite. That first day June Frances brought two sandwiches, she looked at me, dark-eyed and sad. We chewed our lunches together. I avoided disturbing June's somber mood, but for myself, I was almost delirious. I had never eaten lunch at school before, and my belly was turning flip-flops to have so much in it so early in the day.

At the end of the meal June broke her pickle in half and gave me one end. I chewed, savoring the fine quality of the pickle brine that streaked my chin, all but smacking. June chewed her pickle in small bites, holding it delicately with the tips of her fingers. The white skin of her face and neck nearly glowed in the light from the window, and a smattering of tiny moles mottled her throat to behind one ear. The tracery
of moles fascinated me, some no larger than pinheads, some the size of peppercorns.

Depending on the dress she wore, some days you could see more of the moles and some days you could see less. I wondered, in a formless way, how far the dark spots reached along the slender part of her back. I wondered if all her skin were as pasty and white as the mild flesh under her chin and along her throat.

“I want you to come to my house,” she said one day, and my heart stopped, and the whole universe wrapped itself in this one moment. I had waited for her to look at me with exactly this serious expression, to make exactly this request. She had the troubled blinking gaze of the gospel soloist from Goldsboro who sang at church some Sunday mornings. June Taylor carried an air as if she saw all in the faces of the people around her, every imperfection in every soul. I myself did not see so much but I was willing to learn.

“I have to ask my mama,” I answered.

“You can come Sunday after church.”

“I have to ask.” I sighed, trying for an effect of melancholy like hers. “But I guess it will be all right.”

BUT I HAD
never asked, and now it was Sunday.

All during the church service I sat with the folded note in my hand, the heat and sweat of my hand softening the paper, till by the end of the service it was moulded to the shape of my palm. June Frances sat with her parents and Piggy, her older brother, swollen to the size of a black bear in his suit. I sat by myself a few rows behind them, studying the backs of
their heads, Mrs. Taylor's tattered hat, Mr. Taylor's cowlick and sprinkle of peppery hair.

No other earthly human being distracted me, except Johnny Holland with his slick hair and square, thick shoulders, passing the collection plate and flirting silently with all the women of the congregation.

When the sermon was over and the preacher had prayed his last prayer, I filed out of the church with all the rest, stopping to find Carl Jr. who sat up and rubbed his eyes on the back pew. He had put so much hair grease on his head the hair was all stuck together smooth in the back. But he still thought he was cute, and so did Jeanie Foy and Carol Askew at the end of the pew, giggling with their hands over their mouths.

While Carl Jr. and I walked down the aisle I said, like it was nothing, “June Taylor says her mama wants me to come to Sunday dinner at her house.”

Carl Jr. blinked slowly, but made no reply.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.” He paused. “I never heard you say anything to Mama about going to the Taylors for dinner.”

“I didn't say nothing to her because I didn't know.”

Carl Jr. eyed me sideways, then began to smile. The smile was telling me something about freedom, but years would pass before I understood.

“I don't know why you're grinning at me all stupid like that.”

“Mama will tear your tail up when you get home.”

Mrs. Frog Taylor walked up just then, clutching that hat to the top of her head, with June Frances trailing her like a pale
moon. “Tell Mama I'll be home after a while,” I said, in something of a hush, and ran to the Taylors' wood-paneled station wagon with the chrome stripe dangling off the side. June stood in the shadow of the car and waited for me, one moon-colored arm thrust forward into the sunlight, pale skin alive with white light. She was so happy I was coming, she clamped her lips tight together and stared straight ahead as her father, Mr. Albert Taylor, slid his broad shoulders behind the steering wheel and started the car. He rolled down the window and hollered to his wife, “Come on, Frog.”

“I told you, don't call me Frog at church.” She walked tottering on her spike heels, turning to wave to Mrs. Rilla Spokes, the midwife, “I can't stand you using that name in the churchyard.”

“Whatever you say, darling.” He swung open the door for her, she shoved her wide butt through the door and onto the seat, and beyond her head stood Carl Jr. at the edge of the churchyard, grinning and waving.

I waved feebly to Carl Jr.

“This here is Ellen Tote,” Frog Taylor said, by way of introduction, while arranging her faded skirt on the car seat. “We are taking her home to Sunday dinner with us.”

“I know who it is,” said Mr. Albert, chewing the wide edge of a blade of grass. “She's been picking in my fields since she was knee high to nothing.”

The daring of what I had chosen came to me fully when Mr. Albert slipped the car into gear, pumped the clutch, and coaxed us forward. Carl Jr.'s figure dwindled in the rear window. Side by side, squeezed against each other by the bulk of Piggy Taylor, June and I waited for the car trip to end. We sat
circumspectly, our eyes fixed straight ahead, neither daring to look at the other. I could smell the trace of molasses on her breath.

I AM FEELING
the constriction happiness brings to the chest; I stand beside the fence at the back where I have trained the honeysuckle to climb and knot. The memory continues rippling through me. I saw the Taylors' farmhouse in a whole new light, now that I could expect to walk inside it. The house sat prim and quiet in its Sunday repose, and the clouds lowered over it, the tops of the pin and water oaks moving. Beyond the fields, against a backdrop of pines, stood a lone sycamore, the outer bark stripped away to reveal chalky whiteness. Beneath the tree a cemetery stood, in the middle of the field. I noted details I had never before considered about the Taylor house and its surrounding fields and farm buildings. I could smell the hogs in the pens, out of sight. I stepped out of the car onto a dry mud rut where the tractor had crossed the yard.

The house, up close, had a dilapidated look. My heart flooded with sympathy when I comprehended the look of it. A rusted-out washtub sat indistinctly in high brown weeds. An old washboard lay flat in the grass, June showed me the corrugated tin washplate but refused to lift it out of the grass, because of snakes. An old rusted pump and well stood at the side of the house, but the well must have dried because spiderwebs filled the spout. The wooden lid that covered the well had rotten boards and we were not supposed to climb there, according to June Frances. A colored boy drowned in
that well once, June informed me, before her daddy rented the farm and moved the family into the house. But you could hear the boy whimpering, sometimes, of an evening.

When she spoke like this, the strange spirit of her drifted very far away. We stood over the dangerous well and stared down into the dark spaces. June stared at the well with longing, as if she might ease into the mouth of it herself.

The new pump stood inside Mrs. Taylor's kitchen, and before we changed clothes I primed it and pumped a bucket of water for the cornmeal Mrs. Taylor was mixing, and some to heat to wash the early dishes, the ones that were already stacked at the sink under the window. A pot of cactus sat in the windowsill, furry and prickly, and I studied it because I had never seen cactus, while I waited for the water to heat.

Because she was busy, I had time to look around. The kitchen was very plain, its walls dingy with soot, as if the chimney flues needed repair, or as if there had been a fire. I had always thought the Taylors rich because we worked for them, and I pictured Mrs. Taylor as having every convenience, like the women in the radio dramas that Carl Jr. played for me in the evenings. But the kitchen table was battered wood that had been painted over many times, the washbasin nicked and scarred, the water dipper bent and beaten back into shape. Mrs. Taylor changed from her Sunday dress into a cotton dress with a stained collar and mended pockets at the waist. She had patched June Frances's jeans. Mr. Taylor's overalls showed wear at the knee and his boots needed new soles. Everywhere I turned I found more evidence.

Yet there was some difference I could not yet define. Something having to do with the neatness of things, the clean quiet of the house.

Piggy, gross and white, walked through the living room with no shirt, the bib of his overalls hanging in front of him, hollering at his mama to find him a shirt, and he just stood there like that, a round, bulbous, slick white thing with a head stuck on one end of it, and small dark nipples marking off the upper part of him, and a navel drooping and smiling across his lower gut.

“You giving them hogs some feed?” Mr. Taylor asked, peering over the top of his
Farmer's Almanac
.

“Yes, sir,” Piggy sighed, “soon as I get me a shirt.”

“You're getting to be big enough you can lay down in the mud with them.” Mr. Taylor shook the almanac and raised it in front of his face again.

“Hush, Daddy,” Piggy said.

THE SUN HAS
given me a headache again, so I sit in the cool house to sip a cup of water. I am not one of those who will waste a slice of lemon on a glass of water; I drink mine plain from the tap. My children buy their water bottled from the grocery store but I fail to see the sense in that. My water comes from a well drilled in the backyard, same as when I was a girl, only now an electric pump raises it out of the ground and sends it cascading through my pipes and spigots.

I have a clean white kitchen, with wood cabinets for my china along one wall. I have a side-by-side refrigerator-freezer in the kitchen as well as an upright freezer in the utility room, visible from where I stand. From my garden I have
frozen enough corn and peas to last through the winter, eating no more than I do. Pots and pans of every description line my shelves, and three sets of dishes, water glasses, tea glasses, juice glasses and even, tucked away at the back, a pair of wine glasses and a shot glass for whiskey. Food cools in the refrigerator, enough to last for weeks. My own little Saturn sits in the yard, in case I need to shop for more. In my closet are dresses, blouses, coats, shoes, skirts, pantsuits, nylons, a box of jewelry to which I occasionally add new necklaces, bracelets, or brooches. I bought a separate box for my rings. I have a dishwasher, a washer-dryer, a humidifier. Carefully placed furniture fills every room and carpet warms the floor wherever I want it. All these things belong to me. I have collected them through my whole life, helped by my second husband, Ray. My first husband, Bobjay, I forget whenever I can.

I go through the whole litany, sitting at the kitchen table sipping the water. The pounding in my head subsides.

BEFORE WE CHANGED
clothes, June Frances showed me her treasures. She had a ring from the fair given her by her father, the gold band tarnished and flaking, but you could see how bright it used to be, the band, and the heart-shaped setting with its real diamond points, as June described them. “The purple stone is an amethyst,” she said, “but not a real one.” She had a locket of hair from her Grandmother Beatleburg, the best I could make the name out, tucked inside a tarnished locket that opened when she pressed a clasp at the top. The tiny bundle of hair was the same color as June's, which was to say, it hardly had any color at all, it was the color of mud or
dirt, a kind of dingy brown. The hair had a surprising weight when June let me hold it. She kept back the locket itself, which might be damaged. I soon surrendered the hair, tied with its bit of blue ribbon. She hid the locket carefully under the rest of her treasures, the seashell from Morehead City, the rock from Cherokee in the mountains, the fool's gold from Asheboro, the clay doll from Williamsburg. “We never went to Williamsburg,” June sighed. “My cousin sent me that. It is in Virginia.”

June spoke exactly and precisely, and I imitated her. “Did you go to all these other places?”

“Well,” she considered, “not exactly, but my parents went to Morehead City and Piggy went to Cherokee on a church trip.” The fool's gold had been given to her father by his brother Alvin, a tramp and a bum, according to June's mother, a man who showed up now and then with his pockets full of useless junk, to beg another handout, to eat all the food in the house and take up space sleeping on the couch.