The Christmas Pearl (6 page)

They skulked away in a combination of anger and unfamiliar mortification, saying something about assigning the cleaning job to Andrew to help him lose some baby fat.

“He could use the exercise,” Cleland said with a snort.

“I gots plans for Andrew!” Pearl said.

George, unaccustomed to being bossed around, especially by a woman, opened his ugly mouth. “We’ll send him
skirt side
when he gets home.
He’s gone shopping at the mall with his granny and his mommy.
”

George’s high-pitched nasal tone implied that Andrew was a sissy. I didn’t like it one bit.

“He’s just a little boy,” I said, empowered by Pearl’s presence to register my discontent.

Pearl arched her eyebrow in disapproval. They saw it.

“He’s probably going to shake them down for some candy. Or a last-minute toy.”

Holy cow!
Cleland
had made a halfhearted attempt to render an awkward moment less tense.

“Probably,” George conceded.

Pearl looked George up and down with what we used to call the
hairy eyeball
and I could sense George’s discomfort.

“That’s how you speak of your only nephew on Christmas Eve? Or on any eve for that matter? That’s not nice.”

“Oh, I was just kidding,” George said. “Can’t you take a joke?”

“Hmmph. You call that a
joke?
Whatever you say. Anyway, they went shopping for me for
y’all’s
supper, too. When they come back, send that child in ’eah to me, and his cousin Teddie, too! And Camille!”

In the span of one morning, the arrival of Pearl had put sarcasm and laziness on a short leash. Verbally spanked and without any further objection, the men went to set up the manger in the front yard.

Pearl took out a large mixing bowl. She snapped her fingers and it was filled with fruitcake batter.
What?
I couldn’t believe it! I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes once again, and stared hard at the batter in the bowl. It was there, all right. There was simply no explaining it.

“What you think? I ain’t got all day to be chopping nuts and messing with all this sticky fruit,” she said. “We gots bigger heads to knock!”

My eyes were about to grow wider.

She took out a smaller mixing bowl and snapped her
fingers again. In an instant it was filled with the mixture for sands.

“This is just…you are amazing,” I said, with a definite gasp.

“Fuh true!” She winked at me. “We ain’t got one minute to waste. Remember how long this used to take us? Lawsa! We woulda been chopping nuts for two months!”

She pointed to a third bowl and it was quickly filled with all the ingredients for rum balls. She covered them all with dish towels, tied the towels around the rim of the bowls with string, and placed them in the refrigerator.

This time I put my hand to my chest to be sure my heart was still functioning. Surprisingly, it was. Why had I expected anything less? I was actually becoming accustomed to Pearl’s paranormal display and, I’d admit, I was thoroughly amused. Although still extremely curious. It was just like watching a magician pull rabbits from a hat or make people disappear—it didn’t seem possible! Face it, Theodora, I told myself, everything normal had been left at the door when Pearl walked in!

“May I ask how, just
how,
you did that?”

Pearl looked up to the ceiling, folded her hands, and smiled in total innocence. “With a little help from my angelic friends.”

“Hmm. It’s reassuring to know there
are
angelic friends to be had.” Pearl squinted at me like she was using X-ray vision to see if I had pagan blood flowing in my veins to even question such a thing. I cleared my throat and continued: “No, no! I believe! I believe!”

“Hmmph! You had better!”

“Hmmph, yourself! By the way, nowadays we have a plastic wrap that can seal bowls tightly. It’s in the drawer over there.”

Pearl opened the drawer and saw boxes of plastic bags in three sizes, a box of plastic wrap, and another of aluminum foil.

“Well, would you looky ’eah?” She pulled a long sheet of plastic wrap, tried to sever it on the serrated edge of the box, and of course it stuck to itself and became entangled into a plastic wad. “Hmmph. Waste of good money iffin you ask me!”

“Oh! My dear friend, there are so many things that are a waste of time and money in today’s world, it would make your head spin.”

“I reckon that’s fuh true, too!”

“You can’t believe how people live! Start with that blasted huge television back there in the family room! It’s high-def, whatever
that
is! The drone of it is absolutely stupefying. When the adults aren’t staring at some violence beyond description on the thing, the young people are playing video games, which are like
a narcotic designed to make you into an idiot, if you ask me…”

I went on and on with my personal diatribe against the modern world and how it all but shunned board games, jigsaw puzzles, and other old-fashioned pastimes. These things brought families together in favor of all the solitary pursuits that didn’t enrich anyone’s life by one iota, and worse, these mindless, worthless activities kept families apart. Pearl agreed with me about it all.

Except she said, “I guess you have to wonder who allows all this foolishness to go on?”

“You’re right,” I said. “Barbara and Cleland should’ve put their foot down.”

“Iffin they ain’t gwine do it, who then?”

“Me?”

“Hmmph. It ain’t fuh me to be the judge.”

We talked for a long time as we drank cup after cup of tea, each of Pearl’s of course laced with a tiny shot of blackberry brandy. Although we were in the kitchen, we seemed to have been barricaded in our own space and time so that we could talk uninterrupted about all the heavy stones I carried.

“They don’t even like to read!”

“What? Lawsamercy! Now, whose fault is that? That is a sin fuh sure!”

“You’re right.” I sighed hard. “I see it now. You’re
absolutely right. I should have read to Barbara more when she was little.”

She stared at me with a crooked knowing smile. She had me nailed to the wall again. But Barbara had become apathetic and simply shirked her responsibilities. No! That wasn’t right. Barbara floundered because of my failure to give her a clear and concise direction. I had never adjusted to life without Fred, and in some ways was just sitting around waiting to die. I felt terrible that I had been so self-absorbed.

She patted the back of my hand and sniffed the air. “Don’t fret so. That’s why I’m ’eah, and guess what? That ham’s done!”

I felt my spirits rise a little, but oh, my soul was still deeply troubled.

Pearl lifted the fruited and glazed ham from the oven and placed it on the counter. I cannot tell you how divine it looked. There was nothing else in the world that mattered except that ham! It could have been on the cover of a magazine! I could barely muster the discipline to restrain myself from slicing a little piece off its bone right that second.

The red rice was steaming away, and the combined fragrance of bacon, onions, and tomatoes was fueling the flames of an appetite I had not known in decades. What was happening? The collards smelled—well, they smelled like collards smell. Rank. Pearl knew what to
do. She threw a long dash of vinegar in the water to squelch the stench. I would be tortured by
famine
until lunch was on the table.

She raised the oven temperature, dusted the marble slab with flour, and I knew she was going to make biscuits. The halfhearted but very necessary renovation of the kitchen three years ago had included recycling my mother’s pastry slab into the countertop, and from the moment the new kitchen was unveiled, it had remained unused. Good as Eliza was, her biscuits came from a tube in the dairy section of the grocery store. My family seldom ate carbohydrates. The slab would be ceremoniously rechristened by the hands of Pearl.

“There are some things I think I’d like to do myself,” she said. “Feels good to have my hands in the dough.”

Using her fingers, she crumbled the cold butter into the flour with a dash of salt, and when it looked like gravel, she made a well and poured in cream. As though she was preparing clay for a sculpture, she worked it all together, flopping it over and kneading it several times.

“Why don’t I set the table,” I said. I’ll admit I was thinking more about the rumble in my stomach than the desire to be helpful. “You make the manna.”

Pearl giggled, arched one eyebrow, snapped her fingers over her head (a little bit of dough flew in space and disappeared), and she said, “Done! Table’s set!
You sit and talk to me! Carrying dishes ain’t the best use of your time. So, tell your Pearl everything else what’s on your mind, Ms. Theodora.”

I sighed, loving her more than ever. How long had it been since anyone really cared what I thought about, worried about, or desired? On occasion, Eliza and Barbara did.

“Well, you have seen for yourself, haven’t you? I am heartsick about my family. First, there’s Barbara and Cleland. I don’t know what really goes on between them, but they surely don’t seem happy. Barbara is as sweet as pie, but maybe the problem is that she doesn’t take
command
. A stronger stance. With
all
of them. The mother has to be the mother to the
whole
family, not stand by while they all ride roughshod over each other. Don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do. Haven’t you told her that?”

“Well, not exactly, but I have surely indicated it! Gosh, Barbara seems so afraid that, I don’t know…who knows? Maybe she thinks Cleland might run off and leave her or something…”

“No man evah done leave a good woman when he gots a reason to stay. She gots to give him reasons to stay, ’eah?”

“You’re right, of course. You know me. I always think he married her for her money.”

“Hmmph. Maybe true, maybe not. He’s still here,
though, and that don’t mean she cain’t be spinning a spell to show him why he
should
love her, does it?”

“His career at the bank never amounted to much…”

“Well, you know men. They judge they own success by they family, they money, and how they friends see them as manly. Iffin he ain’t earning what he thinks he should and his wife be a little dormouse, then how’s he supposed to look in the mirror and think much of what he see?”

“No. That’s right. He can’t.” I took another sip of my tea and watched Pearl’s hands as she shaped the biscuits into perfect mounds. She was a marvel! “He’s just so sarcastic with her. It’s so disrespectful, especially when it’s in front of me.”

“He’s only like that because she lets him get away with it. You know, you could tell him to hush his mouth, too.”

“I’m not getting in the middle of my daughter’s marriage. She’s so depressed I don’t even think she knows she’s depressed.”

“So are you!”

“By golly, Pearl, you’re right! I’m depressed and so is she! And you’re right again! She
allows
him to behave the way he does! I’m going to speak to her before this day is out.”

“So that’s one thing. Now, what else we got to do?”

“There’s George and Lynette and that—heaven help me…”

“That’s why I’m ’eah!”

“Right! I mean, forgive me for the thoughts I have about that child of theirs. Now, George is a handsome devil…”

“Yes’m, he looks like Cary Grant!”

“He does but he’s terrible. He’s competitive with everyone, and he’s judgmental…”

“His Lynette needs to be growing some backbone…”

“Absolutely! Then there’s Camille and Grayson and their precious Andrew…”

I told Pearl all about how they treated one another, but of course she already knew every detail of the whole saga anyway. I guessed she just wanted to hear it from me. Still, she sighed and shook her head.

“Ain’t right. But don’t you worry.”

She ladled the rice and collards into two covered dishes, sliced the ham, placed it on a meat platter, put the fruitcake in a bain-marie and into the oven on low heat. The biscuits were almost too hot to handle. Still, she wrapped them in a linen cloth and put them in a beautiful sweetgrass basket.

The crushing urge to taste one overwhelmed me and I said, “May I?”

“Of course! ’Eah!”

“Thank you!” I couldn’t get it into my mouth fast enough! Where did my appetite come from? I was as hungry as a teenage boy! “Oh, Pearl!”

“Light as a feather from a cherub’s wing, huh?” She looked up to the ceiling with her hands folded in prayer; a little feather fell from the thin air and I giggled like a schoolgirl.

“Hmmph,” she said, “this situation ain’t funny!” Despite the truth of her observation, she giggled, too. “Now, that cake gwine take two to three hours,” she said, and changed into a fresh apron.

“Do you want me to call them to the table?”

“No’m.”

“Pearl? You don’t have to say no’m or yes’m or ma’am to me. No one does that anymore, either.”

“Ms. Theodora? You can keep your plastic wrap, your television, and your microwave oven and I’ll just keep my manners, ’eah? Besides, in the ’eah and now, I’m fabulous and forty-seven and you be my elder. By a lot! ’Eah?”

We laughed so hard at that! I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed such a robust laugh!

She slapped her warm hand on top of my cold one and said, “I’m going to call
Ms. Barbara
to tell the others to get their fannies to the table but quick!”

Oh, my word! Pearl was so mind-boggling, and even though it was logically and physically impossible
that she was there with me, with us, she
was
. I wondered again how she would bring about the transformation we all needed and then I remembered what she had said about getting here in the first place…Maybe dinner would help things along.

I reminded myself to have faith.

There was a lot to be said about Pearl’s cooking. First of all, it had greatly improved since she died. This became evident once we were all seated in our accustomed places and an off-the-cuff, disingenuous, slap-hazard, perfunctory, record-breaking blessing for our food had been offered by Cleland. Usually as rambunctious as a bunch of pirates, the dining-room table was as silent as could be as everyone devoured—I mean
devoured
like a pack of wild starving wolves—what Pearl had prepared.