It's Not Like I Knew Her (18 page)

“What you want I should tell them poor disappointed kin of yours, should they show before I go?” Arthur chuckled.

“Tell them I got a better offer.”

Jodie burst into the café, her jacket tucked under her arm, thinking that Arthur would make a perfect department store Santa. But the image of his black face behind a snowy white beard set her to wondering what Negro kids believed about a white, cherry-cheeked Santa. On those Christmases when Santa hadn't shown, her mama sought to blunt her disappointment with a story of Santa's obligation to fill the wish lists of rich kids before dividing the remains among kids like her and those on the row. She would have likely said that Negro kids deserved to come last, or not at all, but she would have been wrong. Santa had everything to do with privilege and nothing to do with deserving. That much she knew.

Crystal Ann led Jodie across the street to where she had parked her car. Gripping the driver's side door handle, Crystal Ann delivered a solid hip bump, forcing the door open. The passenger door, wired shut, had a diagonal crack in the glass, and Crystal Ann motioned for Jodie to slide in under the steering wheel.

Alternate coaxing and cursing had the vehicle leaping like a tipsy frog into the intersection. Crystal Ann hung a wide left into the path of an oncoming car. The driver laid down some serious rubber, avoiding a head-on collision. Crystal Ann gave up a tight laugh, swore at the gesturing driver, and pushed the Rambler westward out of Selma.

She looked at Jodie, who was cowering. “You haven't been in a car lately, have you?”

“Not with the likes of your driving.” Jodie smiled, prepared to take her chances with a wild woman behind the wheel of a last-gasp car.

C
rystal Ann drove in silence, and Jodie stared ahead into the whirling tunnel the headlights cut through the darkness. Jodie chose to believe Crystal Ann's silence was the result of exhaustion, and not that she regretted her hasty decision.

Over the car radio, Bing Crosby sang of a white Christmas, and Jodie turned to Crystal Ann and asked, “Did you ever see one? White Christmas? Like the song says?”

“Did once, right here in Selma.” Crystal Ann frowned. “Was the same year I started working at the Wing. Can you believe twenty years ago come January? Minus six months spent in Waco, Texas.” Her laughter was thick with regret.

Desperate for more talk between them, Jodie asked, “What'd it feel like? Snow, I mean.” She sat back against the torn seat, a cushion spring jabbing into her shoulder, prepared to wait out any silence.

“Wet, cold, and short-lived.”

Jodie sat forward, fervently nodding, and she must have looked like a puppet tangled in its strings.

“I did like the way ice hung in the bald trees like tiny fairies, dancing in the wind.” Crystal Ann paused, glanced at Jodie and back at the road. “Then, pretty don't last.”

Crystal Ann could be hard to follow, but Jodie recognized talking in riddles as a way of staying away from the hurting parts of her story.

After miles of more silence, Crystal Ann's mood seemed to turn a page the way Jewel's could, and she began to hum along with Andy Williams.

“Don't you just love his brand of holiday? It's so fucking perfect.”

They turned onto a bone-jarring dirt road and after a mile or so arrived at a Pepto-Bismol pink trailer, raised on cinder blocks, situated in a small clearing cut from a withered corn field. A string of colored lights hung from the roof's edge, giving the tin box a false gaiety, akin to a made-up, but not made-over, aging woman.

“Those lights … they're from a better time. But they're kind of nice. Like a welcome home you can count on.”

Jodie nodded. More riddle talk, she decided, and she followed Crystal Ann along a weedy, trampled path and into the trailer.

“Place ain't much, but it's always better after I've shed my girdle and thrown back a few.” Her tone was one of getting her through the door. “Don't know why I bother. Damn thing pushes my belly fat to where I once had a waist.”

Crystal Ann slipped off her white oxfords and walked stocking-footed into an alcove that served as a one-butt kitchen. Jodie watched as she poured a double shot of Four Roses, the cheap whiskey the band boys had drunk. Jodie imagined it burning its way down her throat, making her braver.

Crystal Ann downed the drink, then tossed Jodie a box of matches and told her to light the kerosene heater in the hallway. When she had a fire going, she glanced about the shoebox shaped room, bare except for a lumpy brown sofa, a coffee table made from a wire spool, and a television with splayed rabbit ears wrapped in foil chewing gum wrappers. There was no Christmas tree.

“Go on, girl, take a load off.” Crystal Ann poured a second drink.

Jodie took a seat on the couch and stared at the cover of the Sears Roebuck Christmas Wish Book, romance and movie magazines, and an ash tray running over with dead butts. Along with a couple of bad habits, Crystal Ann appeared to have more interest in wishful thinking than housekeeping. There was no evidence of Ted or his belongings in the room. Then, she hadn't seen the bedroom.

Crystal Ann's brow gathered. “You want to know why there's no tree?” She came from the kitchen to stand next to the wire spool table.

The question took Jodie by surprise, and before she could respond, Crystal Ann added, “Came home from work one day last spring to find her side of the closet cleared out. No note. Nothing, mind you—just an empty closet.”

Jodie had clearly heard
her
when she'd expected
his
, for she had decided the absence of his belongings could explain Ted's last visit to the Wing, and the hushed exchange that appeared to have to do with something neither of them wanted. Maggie had claimed that a hen's craw held the stories she'd swallowed while some rooster crowed, but that didn't appear to match Crystal Ann's story.

“The next morning, that creep, Buck, who'll never do better than pump gas, strolled into the Wing, wearing his normal stupid grin. Sally asked if he'd had a better night than he deserved, and he blurted out that she was going to be a gal short.” Crystal Ann got up and brought a box of Kleenex back to the couch. She dropped back down, honking into a tissue.

“That's how I learned for certain that Brenda had left me. Standing like a fool in the middle of the Wing, loaded down with a tray of hot food, my legs nearly buckling from under me.” Crystal Ann wiped at her tears. “And you know the worst? If she showed up here tonight, begging me to take her back? Against everything I know about her, I'd do it. I'd take her back.” She sobbed. “She promised we'd be family.”

Crystal Ann rested her head against Jodie's shoulder, and although Jodie had no notion as to the nature of a family of two women, Crystal Ann's painful loss was nevertheless real. But how did Ted figure into her story?

“Sweetie, tell me I'm right about you.”

The muscles in Jodie's shoulders twitched and she stared at the space above Crystal Ann's head. “There's nothing more to tell. You know what there is to know.”

“Did you understand anything I just said?”

“What if I did?” She stood and glanced toward the door. She'd walk back to her room over the Wing if she had to.

“Jodie, don't be afraid. I've known about you for some time. But I need to hear it from you.” Crystal Ann reached a hand, guided Jodie back onto the couch.

“Okay, so what?” Her relief was sweet terror. “How did …?”

“I know? Maybe it was the way you never flirted with the young guys. And there were the times you stared at my prizes when you didn't think I noticed.” She laughed softly, and Jodie felt her face flush hot. She swiped her sweaty palms along her thighs and stared at her shoelaces.

“Aw, sweetie, I think we somehow know each other. While straights miss what's right under their noses. That is, unless we slip up and say something honest.” Crystal Ann laid a warm hand on Jodie's knee.

She hadn't known there was a word for the others. She felt let down.
Straight
wasn't hateful enough to balance the names she'd been called.

“What about Sally? Does she know?”

“Hell no. Considering she's blind to Arthur's doings? If she knew he was mixed up in that civil rights mess, he'd be fired before he could boil a pot of grits.”

“What's that mean, exactly?”

“He goes nights to citizenship school. Means to learn enough civics to pass a test to vote. Then, nobody in Alabama's fixing to give Arthur the vote. If they intended to, they'd throw out them arbitrary tests and poll taxes.”

Crystal Ann looked at her. “Let's forget about him for now. I want to know more about you.”

“Got nothing more to tell.” Her breath got short, and she felt the walls of the trailer pressing in on her.

“I already know you're a runaway, plain and simple. Figure you may have left a mess behind. But I don't need to know about that.”

“What then? You already know about … the other.”

“But, you're so young. Are you sure?”

“I'm older than you think. And yeah, I'm sure.”

Crystal Ann smiled. “What'd your mama have to say?”

“Not a lot. I guess she figured a hard warning was all she owed me.”

“Aw, baby, that's awful.” The toughness Crystal Ann showed at the Wing melted, exposing a vulnerability Jodie had not seen from her.

“And the girl who broke your heart, sent you running?”

“We were going away together—to Dallas so I could try out for the Texas Cowgirls basketball team—but that didn't work out. Never meant to land in Selma. I'm putting money aside, leaving again for Dallas in about six months.”

Jodie felt emboldened, which maybe explained her reaching for Crystal Ann's hand. It was bigger, rougher than Clara Lee's, but warm and strong. Crystal Ann didn't resist, and Jodie felt her heart accelerate.

Crystal Ann's body tensed and she grew quiet. The only sound was the popping of the trailer's thin walls contracting from the cold.

“You've got to know I'm a drunk. But I like the word
alcoholic
better.”

“No way. If you can haul out of bed at dark-thirty, six days a week, and drive twenty miles to work, hung over or not, you're neither. I've known my share of drunks, and trust me, you're not one.” If Crystal Ann sought a contradiction she could hide within, Jodie meant to give her the benefit of her talent for lies and half-truths. There had been no good way to think about her mama's blues or the whiskey and drugs that pushed her down one wrong road after another.

Quiet returned.

“Jodie, have you thought about moving out of that nasty room? Rent here's cheap, and half wouldn't be but fifteen dollars. Best of all, it's a place where you won't need to live a lie.”

“Are you saying I should move in here with you?” Doing so would mean less for the coffee can, but she believed she'd heard more than charity in Crystal Ann's offer. Jodie glanced toward what she thought was the bedroom.

“Uh, that's if you don't mind sleeping on this couch.” She squeezed Jodie's hand. “Let's say I'm not over Brenda just yet.”

Jodie pondered her future, deciding that Crystal Ann would grow tired of being alone. What did she have to lose?

“I'll be fine here on the couch. I've known worse.”

“Okay, that's settled. Now, Jodie Smith, let's cut us a tree. I've had my eye on a pretty cedar out beyond the clearing.

“It's Taylor. Jodie Taylor.” She owed Crystal Ann that much.

“You had the entire phone book to pick from, and you chose Smith?”

“I was jammed in the moment.”

Crystal Ann laughed softly and Jodie Taylor breathed deeply.

C
hristmas morning arrived on the back of a hard freeze. Cold had penetrated the thin trailer walls and now hung damp, the smell of it strong in Jodie's nostrils. She moaned, threw back the quilts, and hurried off the saggy couch. She fumbled with stiff fingers to ignite the kerosene heater, and stood before it, shivering.

The cedar they'd decorated late into the night stood in a corner of the room, and Jodie felt blessed that she hadn't woken to the misery of the room above the Wing's kitchen. Still, she felt badly that she had nothing under the tree for Crystal Ann.

At the sound of water running in the bathroom down the hall, she decided to dress and go for a quick run. She pulled on yesterday's jeans, a double layer of sweatshirts, and two pairs of socks. She thought about leaving a brief note, but where would she find paper and pen? Still, it felt good to have someone who might question her absence.

After what she judged a brisk two miles, Jodie turned back for the trailer. Nearing the clearing, she made out the approach of a vehicle and wondered who it might be. She sprinted the last quarter mile and upon reaching the outer edge of the clearing she leaned, her palms braced on her knees, and sucked cold air into her lungs. An apple red Studebaker coupe, the ugliest car ever built, idled in the clearing.

A smiling Crystal Ann came from the trailer, and it was clear the passengers were welcome. The driver shut down the engine and the car belched, sputtering to a stop. Crystal Ann hugged a petite woman while a second woman got out of the car, frowned, and kicked a front tire. There was much about her stocky, muscular body and cocky, one-sided grin that reminded Jodie of someone she'd seen. But she was certain she didn't know the woman.

“Jodie, come on over. We have company.” Crystal Ann motioned her closer.

Jodie's pulse rate had leveled out, but for some reason she couldn't fathom, her flight reflex kicked in. Crystal Ann reached and put an arm around Jodie's waist, drawing her closer.

“Jodie, these are my dearest friends, Maxine,” she giggled, “and I do believe you know Teddy. She's the handsome one there, punishing faithful Bertha.”