Authors: Ruth White

Belle Prater's Boy (3 page)

BOOK: Belle Prater's Boy

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“
G
ypsy,” Granny called from the front porch as we approached the house. “Just 'cause Woodrow's here, don't think you can get out of practicing your hour like always. And don't forget you gotta unplait your hair and wash it before the party.”

I groaned. It wasn't the piano practice I minded, but when it came to washing my hair, I'd rather clean up vomit. It had to be done twice a week no matter what, and it took hours to dry. If that wasn't enough, I had to brush it one hundred strokes every night to make it strong and shiny. After that Mama always rolled the ends for me on paper rollers, which I slept in. My hair was a great source of pride for her. She
would tell everybody how many inches long it was and how many years she had been growing it, like it was one of her prize azalea bushes or something. To even hint at cutting my hair could spoil her day.

“What party?” Woodrow said. “And what are you practicing?”

“Oh, it's Porter's birthday,” I said. “We always have a big supper and a cake on everybody's birthday.”

“Hot dog!” Woodrow said.

“And I have to practice the piano an hour on Saturday and an hour on Sunday and a half hour on weekdays. I've been taking lessons from Granny since I was six years old. You know, she was a piano teacher for forty years, but I'm her only student now.”

“How can she teach with her bad hearing?” Woodrow said.

“She watches my hands when we're having a lesson, and she can see a wrong note almost before I hit it. It seems as her hearing gets worse, her vision gets better.”

As we reached the porch, Dawg greeted us. We sat down and petted her.

“You know,
she
played the piano,” Woodrow said softly.

“She who?” I said.

“Mama. Granny taught her, too. She played so pretty it made me want to cry.”

“Y'all didn't have a piano in that li'l ol' shack, didja?” I said, then bit my tongue. “I mean â¦”

“No,” Woodrow said, seeming not to notice my blunder. “Mama always wanted one. She played over at the church on Poplar Creek of a Sunday. Can Aunt Love play?”

“No,” I said. “She never could get the hang of it. Granny told me that Mama tried her best to learn, but she was so bad when she started practicing, the dogs would leave home.”

We giggled.

I did my duty that afternoon, and about 7:00 p.m. we all settled down to supper in Granny's dining room.

There sat Mama looking like royalty, with Porter beside her, his arm draped across the back of her chair. Porter's brother, Hubert Dotson, the town doctorâwe called him Doc Dotâwas there with his wife, Irene, and two little twin girls, Dottie and DeeDee Dotson. Woodrow started giggling when he heard their names, so I whispered to him, “That's not the worst of it. Porter and Doc Dot's daddy was named Bobby Robert Dotson.”

I thought Woodrow was going to have to leave the table when I said that.

“What are you two young'uns giggling about?” Grandpa said.

He was standing at the head of the table fixing to carve the pork roast. When I looked up at him with his thinning hair and wire-rimmed specs, it struck me how much he favored Harry Truman.

“Nothing,” I managed to say.

“Nothing?” Porter said. “Well, nothing seems to be mighty funny.”

Everybody looked at us, but nobody was mad. They were smiling and in a good mood, and glad to see Woodrow having fun.

“Well now, Mother, is that a bottle of your homemade blackberry wine I see there on the sideboard?” Porter shouted to Granny.

“Oh Lordy, yes, I nearly forgot,” Granny said, and fetched the bottle to the table. “Here, Doc Dot, will you do the honors?”

She set the wine in front of him.

“Certainly,” Doc Dot said as he stood up to open and serve the wine. “You know, all a body needs is a taste of spirits to soothe the nerves. Sometimes a little sip from a bottle like this one in front of me could mean the difference between sanity and insanity, and frankly â¦”

Doc Dot had a twinkle in his eye as he raised his voice for the benefit of Granny and Grandpa.

“Frankly, I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy!”

We all just about died laughing.

Doc Dot was so tickled with his success he decided to try again.

“Speaking of tension,” he said. “Mose Childress came to see me the other day and he said, âDoc, one night I dreamed I was a tepee and the next night I dreamed I was a wigwam. What do you think my problem is?'

“And I said, âWell, Mose, that's simple enough. Your problem is, you're just two tents!'”

That one got a good laugh, too. And so it went all evening. The wine seemed to loosen everybody up, Granny's cooking was blue ribbon, and even Porter didn't get on my nerves as much as usual. I caught myself almost smiling at him once.

“Can we do this on my birthday?” Woodrow suddenly blurted out when there was a quiet moment.

Then, seeming to regret his boldness, he ducked his head into his plate and blushed scarlet.

There came a chorus of replies:

“Certainly!”

“Of course!”

“Naturally!”

“When is your birthday, Woodrow?” I said.

“January 1,” Woodrow said, smiling with pleasure at all this attention. “Or December 31. Mama never knew for sure. I was borned right on the stroke of midnight, New Year's Eve, 1942.”

“Right on the stroke!” Mama said. “Belle never told us that.”

“Well, she told me lots of times. She told me that story so many times I know it by heart. A midwife was with her and she was having a real hard time. She was trying and trying to birth me, but I wouldn't come. Finally Mama passed out from all the pain and she went out of her body. Then she felt peaceful and free. She said she drifted around the room and could see the midwife and her own body on the bed.

“Then she realized she wasn't alone. Another person was there floating around with her. It seemed like it was somebody who just arrived from far away, and it was somebody she felt like she used to know a thousand years ago in another place.

“And Mama said to that person, âOh, it's you! I've waited for you, and I missed you so much! What took you so long?'

“And the person said, âI couldn't get away. They just now let me go. But here I am, so let's get started.'

“Then Mama came to herself and she heard the clock strike midnight, and I was borned all at the same time.”

“Who do you think it was she met?” my mama said breathlessly.

I looked at her and at the others. All their eyes were on Woodrow. The wine and cake were forgotten in the fascination of his story.

“Why, it was me!” Woodrow cried joyfully. “Me!”

There was complete silence as we digested what he had said. A shiver ran up my spine as I thought what a strange story that was.

Suddenly there was a ring, and we all jumped like we were shot. Then we laughed nervously as Mama ran to answer the phone. It was for Doc Dot. Somebody was having a fit up on Grassy Lick and he had to go see about him. The party scattered when he left. The twins curled up on the couch and went to sleep while the women cleared up the dishes, and Grandpa and Porter commenced discussing President Eisenhower.

Woodrow and I went out to feed Dawg; then we sat in the swing on Granny's tremendous porch. It was a still, clear night. The moon was full and there were millions of stars. The mountains loomed over us like friendly giants, and we could hear the frogs having a spring fling down in Slag Creek.

“This is the day I will choose,” Woodrow said softly.

“Choose for what?” I said, and yawned.

I was about ready to turn in.

“Mama told me when we die, we're allowed to live one day over againâjust oneâexactly as it was. This is the day I will choose.”

I was surprised. A day that for me had been only slightly special was the most wonderful day of his life.
It made me wonder how bad things had been in Crooked Ridge.

Then we talked real serious about the pagan babies over there across the ocean dying with filth diseases. And what about those poor folks in New York City who were living practically stacked on top of one another. And in Russia they had gobs of people all living together in one little bitty house. If you complained, they had you hauled off to Siberia to live in an igloo and see how you liked that. Both of us said we felt real lucky to live right here on Residence Street.

“I wonder how my mama could ever have left here to marry my daddy and go live up there with him,” Woodrow said. “It seems like this beautiful place has everything you could ever want, and nothing could ever hurt you here.”

Five

A
lmost an hour later Mama and I were in front of the mirror in my room as she rolled my hair for the night. She was in her thin rose robe for the first time of the season, and I was wearing my summer pajamas.

My room, all ruffled and lacy, was very spacious, and as pink and white as the spring, with a canopy bed; a nightstand and a lamp beside it where I always had good books to read; my own desk; a dresser with a big brass mirror over it; a chest of drawers and a closet so full of clothes I couldn't keep track of them.

“You never told me my daddy was Aunt Belle's sweetheart first,” I said to Mama.

She was startled.

“Who told you that?” she said sharply.

I shrugged. “Does it matter who told me? Is it true?”

She didn't answer. She wasn't listening. Her face had taken on that hurt look I recognized as belonging to her grief for Daddy.

“I guess Aunt Belle really loved him too, huh?” I said softly.

“Love?” Mama said. “Belle was eighteen, I was nineteen, Amos was twenty-five. We were mesmerized, brainwashed, hypnotized, whatever you want to call it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don't know, my Gypsy girl,” she said, and gave me a quick hug. “I guess I mean when folks are in love they say and do things they wouldn't dream of doing when they're in their right minds.”

“And I guess Aunt Belle was pretty shook up when Daddy picked you over her, huh?”

“I guess so,” Mama said with a sigh. “And I was so caught up in your father's spell, I'm afraid I ignored her feelings. Amos did, too. We didn't see anybody or anything but each other.”

“So how did Aunt Belle take it?”

“Badly,” Mama said. “She â¦”

Mama paused and I saw her chin quiver.

“She â¦ she was like a whipped dog. She shut
herself up in her room, wouldn't talk to anybody, lost weight, cried â¦”

Mama abruptly walked to the window and placed her forehead gently against the frame.

“That's okay, Mama,” I said quickly. “You don't have to talk about it. I was just curious, but that's okay.”

She gave me a brief wave of the hand, as if to say, “I'll be all right in a minute.”

So I watched her and waited. A soft, scented breeze ruffled her hair and her thin robe. She shivered and hugged herself, then walked back to me and calmly started rolling my hair again. There were tears on her cheeks.

“In the last months I have relived those days over and over again,” Mama said. “And I have promised my sister in my heart that if I ever see her again, I will tell her how truly sorry I am that I caused her pain.”

“But, Mama, if Daddy loved you best, that wasn't your fault. What were you supposed to do?” I said, trying to comfort her.

“I could have been kinder,” Mama said.

Our eyes met in the mirror, and she smiled a sad kind of smile.

“It wasn't your fault,” I insisted. “Nor Daddy's either.”

“I remember that Saturday so vividly,” Mama said. “The day Belle finally came out of her room. She came down the stairs all dressed up fit to kill in a red dress and bright red lipstick, and smelling like she fell in a vat of perfume. Mother and I were in the living room altering a dress I was going to wear on a date with Amos later that night.

“âWhere are you going?' I said to Belle.

“And she laughed. There was something unnatural about that laugh. I should have been more tuned in to her feelings.

“She had one of those sheer white scarves she kept twirling around her neck and through her fingers like she couldn't be still.

“âGoing to find myself a beau,' she said, and laughed again.

“âOh no, Belle, don't go out tonight,' Mother pleaded with her. âIt's payday for the miners and the town is full of drunks.'

“But she was out the door in a flash. We should have stopped her right then. We should have sat down with her and talked to her. We should have seen how alone she felt. But we didn't.

“And that was the night she met Everett Prater. She ran off with him and sent us word the next day she was okay. A week later she sent word again she was married. And two weeks later she came
home and got all her stuff while we were gone to church.

“We were shocked at her behavior. Don't get me wrong. Everett's okay. A bit dull, maybe, but a good man, I guess. It's just the way she did it, you know, picking up the first man that showed an interest in her. I guess she was lucky it was Everett. She could have done worse.

“At the time it seemed to me a terribly immature, impulsive, reckless thing she did, and so spiteful! Like she hated us. Like it didn't matter who she married as long as she got away from us.

“But now I see it with different eyes. She was so hurt â¦ and desperate. She had to leave, not because she hated us, but because seeing me and Amos together every day was like opening up a wound over and over.”

Mama walked back to the window.

“Now I almost admire her for what she did then,” Mama said, more to the night than to me. “She was courageous in an odd sort of way. It was like stepping off a familiar and safe place into darkness, not knowing â¦”

“Maybe she's done it again,” I interrupted. “Have you ever thought of that, Mama?”

Slowly she turned back to me.

“Yes, I have thought of that. But there's Woodrow.
I don't think she would leave him on purpose.”

I crawled into bed and Mama tucked me in.

“How grown-up you seem tonight, Gypsy,” she said wistfully. “It's almost like talking to another adult.”

“Really?” I said, pleased.

“Really. But now give me some little-girl sugar and get some shut-eye.”

I slept in the soft night with the sounds and smells of spring in my senses, and my dreams were filled with the face of my Aunt Belle. I followed her down through the corridors of bright seasons when she and Mama were girls, through warm summer nights and cold white Christmases, through schoolrooms and parties and autumn in the golden hills she climbed.

Where did you get lost
,
Aunt Belle?

It was near dawn that the nightmare came. Just like the ones before it, there was an animal, limp and lifeless, in a puddle of blood. Was it a deer? A dog? A kitten? An ugly, ugly thing was in that animal's face. The ugly thing that I could not see. The ugly thing â¦

I woke up crying for my mother, and I didn't feel grown-up at all, nor did I want to be. She came to me as she always did, gentle and silent, rocking me like a baby in her arms.

“I can't see its face, Mama,” I sobbed. “Why can't I make out its face?”

She said nothing, but the sadness in her eyes told me she knew the answers and could not bear to tell me.

BOOK: Belle Prater's Boy

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