Playing by the Rules: A Novel (6 page)

But Jeremiah and Ruby Rose couldn’t sit still long enough to rest. In less than a minute, Jeremiah lurched forward and turned the key, and Ruby Rose sat upright, anxious to learn what would happen next. Finally the car started and they were on their way, driving west again on Interstate 64. Jeremiah couldn’t remember when the knocking noise had stopped, but he noticed his gas was low and it was time to fill up his tank. He spotted the familiar dinosaur
through the trees and was glad to know there was a Sinclair station up ahead. Because of the nationwide gas shortage, he prayed the prices wouldn’t be too high and the lines too long. He had seen signs along the interstate as high as one dollar and twenty cents per gallon when it had been only thirty cents about a year ago, and just last week he had waited over an hour at an Esso station. But since it was Christmas Day, maybe he wouldn’t have to worry. Hopefully most people would be at home, celebrating with their families.

The doorbell rang. Nana patted her hair into place, straightened her festive new red dress with mistletoe print, and smoothed down her white lace collar with matching lace attached to the sleeves that looked like doilies wrapped around her wrists. When she opened the door, there stood Billy and Elvira.

“Merry Christmas,” Nana said, throwing her arms open wide as a mountain gap for a big hug and kiss.

“Merry Christmas,” Billy and Elvira replied.

“Oh, good. We’re the first to arrive,” said Elvira, stepping into the room, placing bags filled with gifts by the tree. “Nana, do you need any help?”

Billy slid his wife’s coat off her shoulders and hung it in the closet.

“You can take the crystal cups out of the china cabinet and set them on the table for Granddaddy’s eggnog,” said Nana. Admiring Billy in his double-breasted charcoal knit suit, she added, “Looking mighty handsome today. It’s real nice to see you out of uniform.”

“Thank you, Ma’am. You’re kinda fly yourself,” Billy teased as he jokingly eyed his grandmother up and down like he would a young woman if he were single.

“… And Elvira.” Nana didn’t want to leave her granddaughterin-law out of the conversation. “That’s a cute dress you’re wearing, dear…very festive…red, the color of passion.” Nana winked, as she usually did when hinting at what Elvira needed to do or to wear to make a baby. Elvira was a big woman, but she wasn’t fat. She was solid like bedrock yet had curves in all the right places, like a bluebell in early spring.

Elvira smiled wearily as she distributed gifts under the tree.

“Where’s Granddaddy?” Billy asked, starting toward the kitchen.

“Here I am. I’m just stirring up the eggnog so that it stays good and fresh. Y’all ready to have some?”

“Yes, sir,” said Billy. “I’ve been waiting for this all day.” He rubbed his hands together with anticipation. “In fact, I’ve been saving a taste for this eggnog since last Christmas.”

The doorbell rang. This time it was Clement, Medford, and Louise at the door. After an exchange of holiday greetings, the first thing Nana noticed was that the oversized, neatly wrapped gift Medford was holding was way too big for a tiny diamond ring, and the second thing was that her granddaughter was inappropriately dressed for the occasion. Because both matters required her immediate undivided attention, she was torn. Thinking quickly, she concluded that Medford was a smart man and there was probably a smaller box inside the one he was carrying. Inside that box, there was probably another box that was smaller still, and so on, and so on, all the way down to the tiny diamond-ring-sized box just waiting to be revealed. Of course he couldn’t possibly let on to Louise that he was carrying something small; that would be a dead giveaway, Nana thought to herself. He’d have to trick Louise so she’d be pleasantly surprised. “Medford, just put that present underneath
the tree along with the rest of the gifts.” Then she smiled at him much longer than she should have, which she could tell made him feel uncomfortable.

While Medford placed his gift underneath the tree, and Clement found Granddaddy drinking eggnog, Nana pulled Louise aside.

“Girl, what you got on there?” Nana pointed at Louise’s slacks and turtleneck, talking in a sharp whisper. “Why didn’t you put on something nice for Christmas? This is a special day. You don’t want to walk up in here like you going to work.”

Louise tried to respond, but Nana wouldn’t let her.

“I raised you better. How you ‘spect to get a husband looking like this?” Nana tried to keep her voice down, but it started going up, and when Medford looked in her direction, she calmed herself, nodded, and smiled.

“What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?” Louise defended.

“Come on back here tomorrow so I can give you something,” demanded Nana.

“Give me what?” Louise asked. “Money to go shopping?”

“No. I ain’t giving you no money,” Nana said, as if her granddaughter had turned into a fool. “I’m not gonna talk about it right now; we got company.”

“Nana, you can’t be serious.”

“Serious as the stroke you’re gonna give me if you don’t see that Medford is the right man for you and you better start acting like it.”

“Where is everybody?” asked Louise to no one in particular, in an effort to escape her grandmother. “I’m starving.” She politely excused herself to join everyone in the dining room gathered around the eggnog bowl. Louise was relieved when the doorbell rang and Nana had to redirect her attention.

When Nana opened the door, in walked Vernelle, Theola, and
Sadie, Nana’s friends, members of the Auxiliary Committee of the Ladies of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. They all greeted each other with the enthusiasm of women who hadn’t seen each other in years, even though they had just been together in their quilting club the day before.

Vernelle Hopkins was the shortest of the three women and as fate would have it, she also happened to have the smallest voice and the least to say. Some folks suspected it was because she was overrun by her husband, Rufus, who had a voice as loud as thunder, making it hard for Vernelle to get a word in without shouting up a storm. After giving herself migraine headaches from trying to have regular conversations with him, she gradually became more quiet over time, until one day she felt like she hardly needed to make her presence known at all because Rufus had enough volume to represent them both. Vernelle already had religion but it got to the point where she joined the Ladies of Mt. Zion Baptist Church just to have her own friends to talk to, which made the time she spent with her husband less frequent. The only time she didn’t mind him yelling was when they were in bed together and the level of his voice became a barometer of his pleasure. But today Rufus was at home sick in bed. Normally he spent Christmas Day at the church serving the elderly, but this year he had opened his mouth too wide and a flu bug must have flown in. Vernelle had given him a chest rub made of a combination of whiskey, lemon, and turpentine, which made his condition improve. He was at home, just getting over the chills, well enough for Vernelle to feel it was okay to leave him alone. Before she left the house, she promised to fix him a plate from Ernestine’s since he was at the point in his illness where he could actually appreciate and keep down his food.

As Vernelle waddled over to the eggnog, she heard Nana complimenting
Theola on the fine outfit she was wearing. Then she saw Nana throw her eyes in the direction of Clement just in time to catch Theola blushing like a sixteen-year-old.

Theola Dempsey was the tallest of the three women and just the opposite of Vernelle when it came to talking. Theola’s husband died in May 1968, a month after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Theola thought it was the assassination that killed her beloved, but the townspeople felt that she had talked him to death. Theola had an answer for everything, including why she was having a hard time winning Clement’s affections. She would say he was “crotchety,” and while to most people that meant “cranky,” to Theola it meant he needed some crotch to even out his temperament and hers was available. Many townspeople suspected that Clement couldn’t be with Theola because he’d rather die of natural causes or from consumption than be assaulted by an attack of words. What Theola had going for her was her beauty. She had long, wiry hair that would challenge a wide-toothed comb, a modest nose, and a broad mouth with thick lips that people specifically attributed to being the motivation for her talking. She was born with a shock of white hair stemming from the crown of her head, making a thin trail all the way past the nape of her neck. It had always been a source of teasing when she was a little girl, being called “skunk” more times than she could remember. But her mother told her to tell the children that her hair had been dipped in glory and baptized with light in the name of the Lord, and that seemed to get them to stop teasing her for a while, and it made her feel special. Nowadays when people looked at her and stared above her eyes, she took for granted that they might be thinking something but knew to keep their comments to themselves. What helped Theola age gracefully was following the exercise program on TV in the mornings and making her bicycle her primary means of transportation in the afternoons, weather permitting.
Her looks usually attracted a variety of men, but the only one she wanted was Clement. When Nana told Theola to help herself to eggnog and her friend went off to follow her suggestion, she couldn’t help but think that the white streak running through Theola’s hair reminded her of the white line drawn down the middle of a tar-paved road.

As Nana helped Sadie take off her coat, she nodded in the direction of the piano, letting Sadie know she was welcome to make herself at home.

Sadie Washington was descended from one of Lemon City’s five Founding Fathers. Coming from a long line of religious leaders, she was dedicated to the church. In a way, Sadie was a woman ahead of her time, hanging on to her maiden name even after her marriage to Dugga Junior Dowdy in 1930. As much as she loved her husband, she refused to have a surname that reinforced her body type and frame. She was also a widow, but unlike Theola, she’d been happily married for thirty-six years. Despite being quick to keep the name she was born with, Sadie Washington was basically slow. Not slow thinking, but not quick or up to speed at anything else, either. And it didn’t seem as if it was always her fault that she was usually left behind.

No matter the circumstances, it seemed instead of
taking
time; Sadie was always
dragging
time along with her. Even menopause for Sadie was ten years late. When most of her friends had finished “the change of life,” she was just starting. Because of her hot flashes, Sadie always traveled with her church fan so she could wave it over any part of her body as needed, and was constantly pulling her clothes away from her as if she were afraid the fabric would melt her skin. The only part of Sadie that didn’t move slowly was her fingers, which graced the piano keys swiftly and with such dexterity that it seemed as if her hands belonged to someone else.

Nana hung up Sadie’s coat and when she turned around, her
friend had pulled out her blouse like a tent and was flapping it like she was airing out sheets so air could circulate and dry out her bosoms.

“Now we’re just waiting on Bootsie and Ole Miss Johnson,” said Nana. “Go on inside and enjoy some eggnog while I try to organize this tree.”

As Nana was arranging gifts underneath the Christmas tree, she listened while her guests made polite conversation.

“I don’t know what started this whole dern gas shortage in the first place,” said Clement, biting into one of Nana’s deviled eggs. “It’s a pain in the butt if you ask me.”

“It was the Arab nations that imposed the oil embargo,” replied Granddaddy, pacing himself on his eggnog. “They call that oil group OPEC. It stands for Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Betcha didn’t know that.”

“What do those people way over there have to do with us anyway?” Clement asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin, shaking his head.

“It’s where we get a lot of our oil,” said Louise, looking at Medford without smiling. “Oil is the lifeblood of any industrialized country. It’s almost impossible to function without it, unlike other entities that can exist on their own.” In her own way, Louise wanted Medford to know that she would be fine by herself.

“Well, let’s get it from someplace else,” said Theola, trying to get Clement’s attention by joining in the conversation. “Don’t they have oil up there in Alaska? Some down there in Texas?”

Clement looked at Theola and made the sides of his eyes turn up instead of his mouth, as if he was squinting at something that bothered his vision.

“All I know is I can’t take those long lines anymore,” complained Elvira. “It cost almost twenty dollars to fill up that tank in
that big old school bus. Not only that, sometimes I have to wait as long as an hour before I can even get close to the pumps.”

Elvira had a way of going on and on with her stories like a leaky faucet that had no way to turn off the drip. Sometimes she even got her tales twisted into knots and while in conversations, whether in person or on the phone, had to write things down to keep the details straight. Exaggeration was beyond her control, but because everyone knew she was well intended, they gave her their patience and undivided attention. “I remember one time I forgot to get gas and I had all my kids in the bus on my way to take them home,” Elvira continued, shaking her head. “And I was in that line and oooh, golly, goodness, gracious… those kids couldn’t sit still if I strapped them into their seats and chile, finally I just had to let them out the bus so they could run around along the side of the road—out of the way of traffic, of course.” She took a breath as if she was exhausted recalling the incident. “I will never take them with me again. Next time I get gas for that big old bus I’m going first thing in the morning, by myself, before I pick up any kids. Whooo-we… getting gas was really somethin’. I think it would be easier digging for gold in Nana’s tomato garden.” Elvira had the kind of laugh that made other people follow.