All the Dancing Birds (19 page)

“But when’s that going to happen? When’s my face gonna come along? When’re my legs gonna come along? Huh?”

Ma smiled. “All in God’s time, Lillie Claire. All in God’s time. Now get yourself away from that mirror and read me this book.” Ma handed me her worn and yellowed
Paradise Lost
. “There’s nothing like reading about hell to scare you into heaven’s ways. Nope. Nothing like that at all.”

Somehow, over the next summer, my face thinned, my legs lengthened and little breast buds formed to give me something new to ponder in the mirror.

All through the thinning and lengthening and forming of the woman I was to become, Ma kept me busy with the puzzlement of John Milton’s poetry.
There’s nothing like reading about hell to scare you into heaven’s ways. Nope. Nothing like that at all.

Oh, my children, I can still hear those words from your MeeMaw. She was right, I suppose. Being frightened of a thing can certainly serve to propel one toward its opposite. For all of Ma’s prodding me to fear hell, though, I could never bring myself to likewise scare the living daylights out of you.

Maybe I
should
have folded my arms around you, or pulled you to my lap to read you disturbing poetry about heaven and hell. Who’s to know what a mother should do?

Sadly, your MeeMaw didn’t have the opportunity to help settle that question on behalf of her grandchildren. I hope then you’ll forgive me for my ignorance about this one little point.

All my love,

Mom

I return the letter to its rightful fold and tuck it back into the box. The closet is dark and I feel suddenly unsettled. It’s only the low shadows of late morning, but it feels like the dark of hell. My woman is still singing in the kitchen, but her song is muffled through the walls and about as far away as heaven can be.

I go to the bathroom to splash cold water and sense onto my frightened face.

YOU LOOK. You look into the mirror hoping to see your face, your familiar face. Instead, you see the startled eyes of a new woman, winking, blinking back at you. You engage her in conversation, because you’re a polite woman and conversation is the congenial thing. She’s nice to you. You don’t question that she’s in your bathroom because that would be confrontational and certainly wouldn’t speak kindly of an upbringing that taught you charm and Southern hospitality. So you smile and welcome and extend gestures of conviviality. She seems to know you. She’s not at all like your woman who pulls diapers up your protesting legs or ignores your commands by wretchedly withholding your evening glass of red. No. This is a woman of genteel sensitivity whose company you enjoy. You admire her hairstyle, her quick and witty words, her smile that slides easily across her rouged and powdered face. When you’re finished conversing with your companionable new friend, you step out to find your woman still singing to the kitchen walls. “Well,” you announce to her. “I don’t care any longer that you can’t find the courtesy to serve me properly. I’ve just had a lovely glass of wine with my new friend down at the clubhouse. She, at least, has Southern manners.” You turn on your heel and return to your room where you spend your afternoon glad in the appearance of your new friend and blessedly unaware that notions of heaven and hell are‌—‌at least, for a short and dear moment‌—‌far, far from your thoughts.

Chapter Twenty-One

B
ryan no longer bothers to ring the doorbell like a proper guest; he has a key and simply appears inside, unannounced and always breathless. I assume it must be his job, which is always compelling, demanding. Exhausting. It keeps him away for days at a time only to spit him out now and then, wild-eyed and panting, always when least expected.

This morning, my son slides open the door and calls my name. Again, he is a surprise.

“Mom,” he calls out, his voice like a song. “The life of the party is here.”

Jewell answers. “We’re on the patio. You’re just in time for coffee.”

“Excellent,” Bryan says, sliding open the patio door. “Just black this morning… I need all the go-go juice I can get.”

He bends down to kiss my cheek. “Hey, Mom… how’s my favorite gal?”

“I wouldn’t know about your favorite gal,” I say. “
I
, however, am fine.” I throw my head back and strike a movie star pose; I splay my fingers open like a fluttering fan.

“Very cute,” he says, sliding his lips across my cheek. I want to hold his soft mouth endlessly to my searching cheek.

Bryan slides a chair away from the table and folds his long legs easily into its shape. Jewel brings a steaming cup of coffee and a white linen napkin.

“Thanks so much, Jewell,” he says. “Please, join us.”

I look down my eyelids as Jewell flutters briefly and then slides into a chair.

“I like her, you know,” I say. “Very much, in fact. But does a Southern lady allow such familiarity with her woman? I’m just asking.”

“Of course, Mom,” Bryan says, leaning into his coffee. “A Southern woman has
all
her women sit at the table with her.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.” Bryan winks toward Jewell, which abruptly stops me from commenting about Mrs. McKenna who, during my childhood, never allowed her domestic help to “sit table,” as she called it. I assumed it was so the lady’s conversation wasn’t disrupted by either the beauty of their skin or the wisdom in their words.

“In fact, Jewell needs to be part of this conversation because it involves her time,” Bryan states.

“Her time is best spent singing. Wouldn’t you agree, Jewell?” I reach out and pat her arm. The warmth of her skin soothes my fingers.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jewell says, casting a broad smile across the table. “Yes, indeed. More coffee, Bryan?”

He waves away the coffee pot. “Well, if that’s the case, then I’ve found a terrific way for Jewell to have more time for singing.”

“More singing time? Goody!” I clap my hands. “We should sing now. Sing something for Bryan. Go ahead,
sing
.”

“Maybe later, Mom,” Bryan says. “We’ll sing later. Here, look at this. I brought a brochure for the Golden Years Day Center. They have a great daycare program with various classes for all levels of people. They even have dances and daily luncheons.” He pulls a folded paper from his pocket.

“Now, why would we have my woman go to daycare?” I say. “She’s needed right here. First you bring me a woman that I don’t need and now that I
do
need her, you want her to go somewhere else?”

“No, Mom. It’s for
you
. Look, look here at the pictures in the brochure. Doesn’t this look like a nice place?”

Bryan unfolds a glossy advertisement with colorful pictures of people dancing and eating and smiling. “Why ever would I go to such a place? It’s not nice at all. It’s full of… of…
old
people. Look at them! I don’t eat with old people and I certainly wouldn’t
dance
with the likes of these people.”

“May I see those pictures?” Jewell asks.

Bryan hands the brochure to her; she turns it over in her hands, looking thoughtfully. “I see what you mean, ma’am. Yes, there are some older people here. Now, here’s what I wonder when I look at the pictures of these nice-looking folks. I wonder if they need a young woman like you to show them how to dance Southern style. I’d bet anything they don’t know how a proper Appalachian woman does a jig.”

Jewell hands the brochure back to Bryan.

“I see what you’re doing,” I say, pulling my eyes into narrow slants. I push myself abruptly from the table. “You’re evil… both of you. Evil! You’re trying to get rid of me so you can have my house and my things and my
cat!
”

I turn and head for the patio door. My fingers fumble with the screen door latch.

“See here,” I yell. “You’ve already locked me out of my own home. You’ve changed the locks. Help… help me, someone!” I call into the sky and over the backyard fence and into a tree where I see a squirrel running the length of a long branch. “
Help
me!”

“Mom.” Bryan reaches me in one step. He catches up my wrists at the narrow places where the skin sags away from the bone. He pulls me to him. “Stop this. We’re not trying to take your home. How could you
think
that?”

YOU SCREAM. You scream into your head and into the air because you don’t recognize the man who, with the web of his large hands, has taken hold of yours like they are tender, fragile birds. You struggle to free yourself. He is a stranger to your eyes and to your heart. You know he has locked you from your home and from your thoughts and he has a woman with him who is in on the dirty deed too. Your eyes scan for escape, but there is none. The man calls you his mother, the woman refers to you as ma’am. You would tell them your true name, your lack of relationship, if only you could remember who and what you are. The man looks at you and his face shatters into a thousand pieces. It’s only then you recognize something familiar about the man‌—‌the man‌—‌oh, there he is! There’s your son.

“Mom, it’s me… I’m Bryan. Don’t you know me? It’s
me
.” His face pulls into a tight mask of sorrowful skin, redeemed only by wide blue eyes now filling with tears.

“Bryan!” I smile. “Of course I know you, you silly boy. When did you get here?” I lower my voice into a conspiratorial whisper and pull myself up and into his ear. “There are people trying to take me away from my home,” I say. “You need to stop them.”

“Let’s go in the house. Jewell can make us a nice lunch or something… okay, Mom? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Bryan cups his hand around my elbow to help me inside. I know we’ve just had an awful moment and my heart feels as if it has split apart, causing a chasm to form deep in my chest; it’s as wide as anything I’ll ever know. I step inside the house, trying to decide on which side of my heart I stand. I hope it’s the safe side that still contains at least a modicum of restraint and good charm, although I can’t figure out why I should feel so ashamed of myself.

Jewell hurries to the kitchen and soon I hear her stirring a lusty song into the soup pot. Bryan settles me in my chair and John Milton the Cat comes from the nether reaches of the house to find my lap. For the time being, my heart has scotch-taped itself into a ragged, yet passable piece of equipment.

By the time Jewell serves lunch, I’m happy with peaceful thoughts. I’ve discovered lately that if I close my eyes around these tiny fragments of peace like I’m wrapping myself beneath the blanket of my eyelids, the posture seems to help me feel safer. I hear Bryan shifting carefully in his chair so not to awaken me.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m still in here.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

M
y beautiful, dear children,

I’m not certain how to address this delicate issue except to simply come right out with it. You should know that your mother is a fraud, a charlatan, a complete fake. I can envision you as you read this, shaking your heads in disbelief. After all, we’ve been so careful during those delicate times when we’ve needed to hold each other up to the light and peer through one another until we’re satisfied that what we see is the truth of one another. We’ve spent countless times measuring and comparing and filtering through every possible way in which to gauge each other’s weight and worth.

In every way, I suppose I was a good mother‌—‌except, perhaps, for the one way that most mattered: mathematics.

I want you to remember that it was your father who curled his round arm around you at the kitchen table, your faces crumpled around all those math problems that seemed so much larger than your small bodies. It was your father who walked you through mazes of word problems and equations.

It was your father who suffered your tearful wails of
I don’t get it
, while I offered nothing more than well-timed handfuls of tissues and plates of cookies.

On those days when your father traveled for business, instead of urging your little hands to open your math books, I gave you crayons and coloring books. I gave you scissors and glitter, paper doilies and brightly colored sheets of construction paper. I gave you finger-paints.

Sometimes we heaved the living room furniture aside and set up a tent on the floor. We lined it with blankets and pillows and then crawled inside to eat bowls of ice cream and play flashlight wars. We made up rhymes and stories. We baked little cakes and poured chocolate sprinkles over them. We played dolls and trucks until your eyes turned red with sleep. We took up scissors and clicked and clicked them in our hands until we created scores of paper dolls and winter snowflakes.

We made tea parties.

We did all those lovely things. But never‌—‌not once‌—‌did we ever sit bravely at the table to spread open books filled with frightening strings of numbers and equations and terribly confusing word problems. It was in that regard that I was a cowardly, diminished woman in front of your innocent souls.

For that I am sorry.

I should have prepared you for life with numbers. I should have held your tiny shoulders and taught you how to measure and count and perform the task of what your MeeMaw and PaaPaw would have called
ciphering
.

I meant no harm. Still, I went weak when your eyes widened at the thought of working through problems, especially when there were pages to color and cupcakes to devour and tents to crawl inside.

When your father would return from his trips, you would once again sit straight at the dinner table, books open like butterflies, your eyes set doubly hard at your tasks. I would circle the table without coming close enough to be found out for my neglect.