Day 109
This is Part II of my story, Scent of Lilacs. Part I posted on 5/22/2012 – Day 108
But I was told that white folk and colored folk weren’t friends, especially colored folk that were “hired hands”. Some sort of taboo or was it voodoo? I don’t remember, it all seems like a whole bushel of nonsense to me. Mama told me time and again that some people didn’t think it’s right. I wish they did.
Lost in my thoughts I realized I was watching a rather large ant on the porch floor – it was carrying something. I leaned forward and realized it was carrying another ant – injured or dead, it was being carried home by a friend or family member to be nursed or mourned. I wondered if carpenter ants made tiny caskets for their dead? Mama’s casket was white. It was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. I don’t remember much of that day – just how it glimmered in the sunshine and how I wished Mama could see it because it was so beautiful. I remember all the lilacs on top of it, at one end, and how their scent perfumed the air. And I remember how totally scared and empty I felt. There were lots of people crying and praying, and then Daddy carried me away. I wonder if I looked like that ant on the porch to God that day? Being carried away to be nursed or to mourn?
Daddy dropped me off soon after at Aunt Grace’s. Said he couldn’t bear it: the guilt, the heartache. And what did he know about raising a girl-child – especially one in my “condition”? The postcards came for a while … West Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia … a few and then fewer, and then they stopped altogether. I heard Aunt Grace tell Preacher Young one night after Sunday supper (I was pretending to read but was really listening) that “the man was consumed with guilt – and rightfully so, for crippling and abandoning his child and killing his wife and unborn baby.” She went on about how she had known from the start that he was nothin’ but trouble for her baby sister and that Frenchmen were always trouble – with their fancy names and accents and all. Daddy’s name was Emile – it didn’t seem fancy to me for, after all, it was just Daddy. And an accent? Aunt Grace had more of an accent than he did. I cried myself to sleep that night, again – as always.
I feel sorry for Daddy – he has lost everything that has mattered most to him – his job, his home, his family. The light had gone out of his face when Mama died. I always thought he was a handsome man – he had thick, dark brown wavy hair and sparkling blue eyes. But after Mama was gone – his eyes were hollow and everything about him was gray. I wonder every day about him – and I wonder if he wonders about me. “It” wasn’t his fault. “It” was an accident and “it” just happened – and in an instant all of our lives changed.
I feel sorry for myself, too – because I miss Daddy and Mama so and I wonder about that baby – would they have given him a name with five letters? Mama’s name was Eliza Mae but Daddy called her Wheatie Mae because her hair was gold – just like wheat. I’ve never seen a whole field of wheat but always thought that it would look just like Mama’s hair blowing about in the wind. Mama always said she and Daddy were blessed ’cause they each had five letters in their names – and that’s why I have five letters in my name – to continue the blessing. She said it was God’s blessed number – we have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, and five commandments on each tablet – so, it had to be a blessed number.
(When I was littler, back home, I heard that the Sheriff’s cousin had six toes on his left foot. I can’t imagine trying to squish an extra toe into an already tight shoe. No one I knew had ever seen those six toes, but I sure would have liked to.)
I feel sorry for just about everybody these days – even, a little, for Aunt Grace for saying what she had to Preacher Young, because surely she will go to Hell for saying something so nasty about Daddy in front of a man of God.
Preacher Young – I shrink a little when I think of him. One would think he was young because of his name but everything about him is old. His clothes are old, his Bible is old, his breath is old. He is as old as Grandpa was when he died, and that was really old, even for around here, where everyone and everything is or seems to be old – except for me.
As for Mama – she’s about the only one I don’t feel sorry for; not one bit. I figure she is in a beautiful place: Heaven. To me it is endless fields of clouds of cotton candy – pure white, not pink – like the kind I got at the fair a few years ago. Mama would have on a beautiful, long, white gown with a gold rope tied around her waist (I’d seen one of those dresses once in a book about Greek goddesses and it seemed like a good Heaven outfit.) And her cheeks would be all pink and rosy and all around the outside of her body, she’d glow. Funny, I never ever picture Mama with wings – it just doesn’t seem natural. Oh, and of course, the air would always smell like lilacs.
(Watch for Part III)