Roseflower Creek (3 page)

    She kind a' looked like a hawk 'cause of her nose. And she had a real fat body with funny little bird legs, too. I felt sorry for her and hoped people wouldn't laugh 'cause that'd be real mean, but truth be known, I was having trouble not laughing at her a little myself.

    "How long's it been—how old are you now?" Maybelle asked. Her voice was big as she was and she talked real loud.

    Lexie said it certainly had been a long time and it'd be nice to chat, but we had to get going.

    "Lori Jean hasn't even rode the merry-go-round yet and here we got us two tickets left," Lexie said and grabbed my arm.

    I thought we'd used the last ones on the funhouse, which weren't even much fun, so I was real happy finding out we had us two more, but in truth we didn't.

    "Lori Jean, when you're grown," Lexie told me when we left, "don't
ever
tell your age! A woman who'll tell her age will tell
anything.

    "Another thing, stay clear a' that woman. Maybelle Hawkins will do you more harm than a hurricane that hits in the night—and don't you forget it."

    Turned out she was right. But I did forget. On my tenth birthday, I shared a secret with Maybelle after she coaxed me. When she called the law, I remembered what Lexie said. By then it was too late. That's when all our lives changed—and I don't mean for the better.

When a girl got a daddy who's run off and a mama beat up and hurtin', there ain't a lot of happy times, but the summer Lexie Ann found out she and Melvin was having a baby sure was one of them. She went to this doctor and he give her this test with a rabbit and it showed she was having a baby for sure. She was real glad. Only thing, that poor little rabbit, it died. That was real sad.

    "See, honey, if the rabbit lives, that means I'm not pregnant. So don't you be sad now, hear?" Lexie told me. "They got a whole bunch of rabbits, sugar. They's just doin' their part is all, okay?"

    I told her it was, but it really wasn't. After that, every time I seen a lady fixing to have a baby, I thought about those little rabbits. Maybe they was doing their part and all, but who asked 'em if they wanted to anyway? Seems like them smart doctors could come up with a better way to tell someone they was having a baby than killing a cute little rabbit, hopping around, minding his own business.

    I decided I wasn't ever having me a baby 'til they found another way. I wasn't in any hurry to make one when I growed up anyway. That day Carolee told me how a lady and a man made one, it didn't sound like much fun to me nohow. Carolee said it was. Said her sister Connie Dee did it with her boyfriend in the hayloft on Friday night when their ma and pa was at the church revival. They caught her watching and give her a quarter to hush up. And Carolee said her cousin Millie Anne done it once, too, with a fella never called her again and she liked it real fine. Still, I don't know…seemed right peculiar to me, girl parts and boy parts plumb joined up. I sure couldn't imagine Melvin and Lexie doing something like that. Still, they was having a baby—but what other choice did they have anyway? They probably wanted one so bad they done what they had to, then just put it out of their minds. I'm pretty sure of that 'cause they's real nice folks, they is, go to church regular like and everything, they sure do.

    When we got back from the doctor's, Lexie told Melvin straightaway about the baby.

    "Heeeeeehaaaaa!" Melvin was dancing Lexie all around in a circle, 'til she got herself all dizzy.

    "Melvin, I'm gonna have this baby six months sooner than it's time if you don't stop that!" Lexie said and she sunk right down against him.

    "Oh, baby girl, baby girl," he said to me. "We're gonna have ourselves a little baby. What'd you think about that?"

    "Oh, that's about the next best thing to Christmas, I reckon," I said. "Better even."

    Mama come in the room and sat down on the sofa. She looked kinda poorly. Her eye was swollen on one side. She had her hair hung over the front of it, but I could still tell. That's what she always done when she was trying to hide it. She weren't eating much again, so she was real thin and she was a pretty thin mama to start with, so that weren't good.

    Ray, he was staying out all night. Twice this week I knowed of, so they was fussing at each other. I sure hoped she'd leave him be 'fore he hurt her again real bad. Why'd she care if he stayed out all night anyway? I was hoping he'd stay out all year. Suit me fine.

    "Mama, Lexie's havin' herself a baby. Now ain't that nice?" I asked her.

    "Babies cost money—that part ain't nice. The rest's okay, I guess," she said.

    Mama looked so sad I run over to give her a hug. I sat down next to her and just patted her shoulder.

    "Don't be sad, Mama. We're gonna have a little baby round here to love."

    "Babies is real sweet," she said.

    "MeeMaw always said babies is gifts from the angels, 'member?" I told her and just kept patting her, wanting her to be happy like us, about anything even. Just happy.

    "Yes, babies is real sweet," Mama said, and she patted me back. Then she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "And you're real sweet, too, Lori Jean." It was the nicest thing my mama ever said to me. After that, whenever I'd get sad, I'd think to when Mama told me that and 'fore long I'd forget all about being sorrowful.

Come winter, MeeMaw wasn't around to sew some pretty clothes for Lexie to wear. Her belly was getting bigger every week now. So she bought herself some fabric and a dress pattern, and we hauled out MeeMaw's old sewing machine and got to work.

    "Baby girl, I'm gonna lay out this here material on the floor, see?" Lexie said. "Then I want you to pin the pattern pieces here to the fabric for me, okay?"

    Lexie couldn't bend over hardly a'tall, so I pinned them pieces down the way I remembered MeeMaw doing it. We was making a dress with long sleeves and a bow in front, kinda like a sailor dress or something.

    "Okay, sugar, now just cut all around them pieces," Lexie said, and handed me MeeMaw's pinking shears. They was real peculiarlooking, like regular scissors 'cept they had these jagged teeth all around the edges.

    "These pieces sure enough don't look like anything that would fit a body part, Lexie," I said.

    "Well, honey, that's 'cause we gotta fold them over and sew 'em together. Then it's gonna look like this, see?" She held up the front of the envelope the pattern come in. A lady with yellow hair was wearing the dress, showing how it would look, only hers was dark brown. Ours was red-and-navy plaid with some green and black in it. We bought that 'cause it was on sale. Fifty-nine cents a yard and the lady at the sewing place said it was a real bargain. Only we forgot to tell her we was beginners. Maybe then she would of told us it wan't such a bargain.

    Lexie sewed all the pieces together. She was real excited and I was kinda, but not too much 'cause I thought it still looked funny, but I didn't want Lexie to know that 'cause she worked so hard on it. When she got it finished, she tried it on.

    "How's it look?" she asked me.

    "Um, it looks, um, it looks nice, I think," I said, but I was telling a big ol' lie. Truth be known, it looked mighty peculiar. The plaid lines in the fabric was going every which way. It plumb changed direction every time it run into a different seam. Made my eyes go crossed just lookin' at it.

    "Do I look okay?" Lexie asked.

    "Well…" I was trying to say something good about it when Melvin come in. Lexie turned to him right off.

    "Melvin, honey, what do you think a' my dress? All I gotta do is hem up the bottom." Lexie swirled around so he could get a good look.

    "Honey, that dress belongs on a kilt somewhere in Scotland. Where'd you get that crazy thing?" Melvin said.

    Lexie started crying right off. She was doing a lot of that lately. Her hormone things was goin' haywire, Mama said. She said it happened to her, too, when I was growing in her belly.

    "Melvin, I
made
this dress, myself ! Lori Jean and me, we been here for hours workin' on it."

    "I'm sorry, sugarplum," Melvin said. "Maybe I just didn't see it in the right light." Melvin guided Lexie by the shoulders over to the window.

    "You just stand right there. Let me take a second look," he said.

    "Okay, what do you think?" Lexie asked. "Now, don't be tellin' me no lies, Melvin Pruitt."

    "Well, honey, in that case, I think we oughta go get you one them store-bought maternity dresses. That darn thing looks like the dickens."

    "Oh, Melvin!" Lexie wailed, and she run off crying with Melvin running after her.

    "Now, honey…" he said. "You said you wanted me to tell you the…"

    I didn't much hear the rest. I decided it was as good a time as any to head back home. I coulda told Melvin a woman might ask for the truth, but mostly she don't wanna hear it. 'Leastin' that's what MeeMaw always said.

    I left them to work it out and went on over to Carolee's to see if her mama would let her go down to the creek for a spell. We met at school in second grade, when her daddy come here looking for work. Times was hard. Lots of folks come here looking for work in the mills. We had a passel of cotton mills round these parts, carpet mills, too.

    Carolee and me got to be friends right off. She come in the middle of the school year. Our class didn't have an extra desk for her at first, so Mz. Pence give her a chair to pull up next to mine so's she could share my desktop 'til they found her one.

    Carolee wasn't stuck on herself like some girls in the class. She didn't boast none, neither. And she didn't insist on always having her way. It was my lucky day when she come to our school. Carolee was the kind a' friend a body'd be lucky to get once in a lifetime. And here I got one. Fancy that!

    Carolee sure was pretty and a whole lot a' fun, too. Me and her used to meet up before school and walk the rest of the way together. She had herself a umbrella, too, and when it rained she shared it with me 'cause I didn't have one. That way I only got rained on part of the way. And when it rained real hard, Carolee left early and come all the way to my house to get me, just so I wouldn't get so wet running up to meet her. That's how special a friend she was 'cause coming to get me was clear out of her way.

    We used to spend most our time down at Roseflower Creek. Before MeeMaw died she told me the story of how it got called that. It was a real nice story. Folks said it was pretty much true. A long time 'fore any of 'em was born, there was a woman who come by all the small towns in these parts and sold wildflowers to make her living.

    "She didn't have no family to look after, Lori Jean," MeeMaw explained. "She made the countryside her family and visited every nook and valley as the months wore on, selling her flower seeds along the way."

    "What happened to her, MeeMaw?"

    "Well no one likely knows for sure, child, but from what we can put together, she left one morning and headed to the creek yonder and nobody ever seen her again."

    "Nobody a'tall?"

    "Not a one."

    "What do
you
figure happened to her, MeeMaw?" I asked. It seemed to me a body come visiting what they took to be their family just wouldn't stop without so much as a "howdy do."

    "Well I'll tell ya'," MeeMaw said, "that creek she headed to—that one you and Carolee spend so much time at—it had those chinaberry trees and the longleaf pines that's so pretty that rest along its banks. And it had the handful a' red maples that's still there. It had all that moss running down towards the water, covering dead branches along the way. But it didn't have no flowers."

    MeeMaw was working on another quilt and her fingers was busy stitching a bright red square of cotton onto a patch of pale blue silk. She wasn't giving this one to the church bazaar, though. She was making it for my very own bed. Come winter I was gonna be warm as butter melting on toast.

    "That spring after no one sees her again, flowers was blooming everywhere along that creek, Lori Jean."

    "Gosh. Just like that?" I said.

    "Just like that. Folks called 'em Rose's flowers. That was her name. Rose. Said she musta grown tired a' all her travels and just lay down there and passed on, real peaceful like."

    MeeMaw took her glasses off and rubbed at the corners of her eyes.

    "The older I get, child, the more spots I see," she said. She always said that after long hours of quilting. She blinked and put her glasses back on real careful like.