The Christmas Pearl (7 page)

Unfortunately, as soon as lunch was over, the spell was broken. Pearl came into the dining room to clear the plates.

“What’s that smell, Jewel?” George said, leaning back in his chair.

“Pearl,” Pearl said sweetly. “Fruitcake.”

“You’re going to break the legs of that chair, son,” Barbara said, and as you might expect, she was ignored.

“Fruitcake! Oh no! I
hate
fruitcake!” Cleland said with a juvenile scowl, opening the door for further dissent to fly right in on the wind.

“I thought Eliza said your name was Jewel,” Barbara said.

“I reckon Eliza got her gems confused,” Pearl said.

“Fruitcake’s
nasty,
” George said.

“You don’t have to eat it, then, George,” I said. “But we’ll see what we see when it’s all done.” My money, the smart money, was on Pearl.

“By and by, you gwine come to love my fruitcake,” Pearl said, smiling at George and Cleland. “Then you gwine miss it when it’s gone, ’eah?”

Little Teddie exchanged looks of horror and disgust with her father, George, and threw in more than a few escalating gagging sounds for emphasis.

Lynette held her fingers up to her lips and said in nearly a whisper, “Shush now. That’s not nice.”

“Oh, sorry! Like you come from a family of
aristocrats
? Leave her alone,” George said, and snarled, looking to Camille for support. “Hicks.” Even Camille, with that acid-dripping viper’s tongue of hers, knew better, and she looked away.

What was the matter with him? Insulting Lynette in front of everyone? On Christmas Eve? George had gone too far.

It seemed that no one was terribly bothered by George’s rudeness except me and you know who. Pearl, still moving about in the room but disbelieving her ears, stopped dead in her tracks. I looked at Bar
bara and waited for her to say something. She cleared her throat.

“That wasn’t very nice, George,” Barbara said.

Her words held all the power of someone trying to kill a grizzly bear with a broom straw. She didn’t even ruffle one of George’s feathers.

I stood up. “It was inexcusably rude. Apologize at once.”

George gave me an icy dismissive glare and then he cocked his head to one side, stared at Lynette, and said nothing. Lynette burst into tears and ran from the table.

“You children come with me,” I said.

Obediently, Teddie and Andrew followed Pearl and me to the kitchen without a word.

“Wash your hands,” Pearl said, marching them to the smaller sink.

They did as she asked without one objection and I thought just
that
was a small miracle in and of itself. I mean, when you had him alone, Andrew almost always did as he was told, but sometimes when he and Teddie were in cahoots, he could try to wiggle out of a chore. He was a regulation boy. Teddie’s face was flushed and I realized for the first time that she was embarrassed by her father. She was growing up.

“Now, sit up there on them stools and get ready to help roll sands,” Pearl said to them, placing the bowl of mixture and a cookie sheet in front of them.

“I’ll show you how to make them,” I said. “They’re like fingers. We used to call them moldy mice!”

“Ew! Gross!” Teddie said, wiggling down from the stool. “Yuck! I’m going to go watch TV.”

Andrew, who had pinched off a piece of dough and was munching away on it, said to Teddie, “It’s good. Try it!”

“You stay put, missy,” Pearl said, and seeing that she meant business, Teddie slowly climbed back to her place. Teddie had some terrible problems with authority figures, but that wasn’t the issue then. I thought that perhaps she wanted to escape in order to suffer the indignities of her father’s behavior in private or by losing herself in a television program.

“Thank you, sir!” Pearl said to Andrew, and smiled.

Teddie ate a crumb, then a larger bit, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “It’s not great but it’s not terrible. Sorta reminds me of cookie-dough ice cream. Just how long is this going to take?”

“Till we’re done,” Pearl said.

Teddie sucked her teeth and made a noise that sounded like
snick.
“Now, how do I do this?”

“Like this,” I said, smiling. We had a small win at last. I took a tablespoonful of dough, rolled it between my palms, tidied up the ends, and laid it on the cookie sheet. I handed them each a tablespoon and said, “Now, let’s get busy!”

“Andrew picked his nose,” Teddie said, and giggled.

“Did not!”

“Did. I saw you.”

“Stop your nonsense, Teddie, this is Christmas!” I said. “Andrew? You are only allowed to engage in those activities outside of the house!”

Andrew and Teddie laughed at that and I smiled at them.

Looking up to the ceiling for patience, Pearl scraped the dishes, put them in the sink, and turned on the spigot to cover them with hot sudsy water. Moments later, Camille came in with the remains of the dirty flatware and opened the dishwasher.

“Just throw the plates in here,” she said to Pearl.

“No good for the gold trim,” Pearl said.

“Oh, who cares?” Camille said. “Buy new.”

Barbara came through the swinging door with an armload of goblets and heard what Camille said.

“Pearl’s right,” I heard myself say. “Anyway, you
can’t
buy new. That china belonged to my mother. Isn’t that so, Barbara?”

Oh, please stand up for this one small cause of preservation, I thought.

“Well, actually, Camille, they
did
belong to my grandmother. Aren’t they pretty?”

“Yes, they really are,” she said, and looked at the apple green border, pin-striped and edged in gold
leaf, as though she were seeing it for the first time. “Just FYI, George’s upstairs hollering his head off at Lynette.”

“FYI?” Pearl said.

“It’s an abbreviation meaning ‘for your information’…do you want me to go have a word with George and Lynette?” I said. “See if I can help them cool off?”

“No,” Barbara said, to my surprise. “I imagine that’s my job.” Then her self-doubt and hand-wringing returned. She said, “Actually, Cleland can make him behave better than I…”

Pearl shot me a look. The moment for my maternal lecture had arrived.

I lifted my chin, stared at Barbara directly in the eye, and said, “I think
you
should be the one who runs this house and sets the tone. Cleland has a bank to run and
you’re
supposed to be in charge
here
.”

Barbara looked from me to Camille.

“Lots of luck, Mom. They’ll never change. He’s just mean because he can be, and she takes it because she’s afraid of him. Sick,” Camille said, and took a bite of the dough. “Hey! This is fabulous! Y’all need help?” She went to the sink and washed her hands.

Camille was right, or at least it seemed to be a plausible explanation.

“Well, it’s almost Christmas and stranger things
have happened,” Pearl said, referring to the surprise of Camille pitching in. “Go show them who’s the boss, Ms. Barbara, and don’t take no gruff from them.”

“Well, I’ll try. Dinner was delicious, Pearl. Thank you.”

“You are entirely welcome,” Pearl said.

Minutes later, the noise overhead became louder. Next we heard Barbara yelling from afar, then Cleland. Doors were slamming, feet were stomping, and it went on and on. It was very upsetting for all of us. Except Pearl, who had a cool demeanor.

“Why can’t they just get along?” I said to no one in particular.

“I hate it when they fight,” Teddie said, and a sudden flood of hot tears streamed down her scarlet cheeks. “I just hate it. It makes me so mad.”

Perhaps the fact that her parents fought all the time was at the root of Teddie’s poor behavior. I had not given it much thought until then. It was true that she was constantly being manipulated to choose her father’s affection over her mother’s.

Out of the mouth of Andrew came, “Maybe they don’t know how to.” We all looked at him and he added, “Get along, that is.”

Camille looked up and smiled at Andrew and her love for him was apparent to Teddie, who seemed to
sulk as she noticed it. She was jealous. I did not blame her. That child needed some affection, and heaven knew, she needed a lot of guidance.

I took a tissue from my pocket and wiped Teddie’s face. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s not cry.” I felt enormous sympathy for the poor little wretch.

“Well, maybe we’re gonna
teach
them how to behave, Teddie,” Pearl said. She reached over and rubbed Teddie’s back. “It’s all gwine be fine, honey. Don’t you worry.”

“I sure wish
somebody
could,” she said, and she stopped crying. “I wish I could believe you.”

I felt deeply sorry for the child. She was certainly entitled to a peaceful home. They had no real problems that I knew of except for George’s bullying and churlish ways.

Wait! I had almost overlooked the obvious! We were in the kitchen doing something
together
and it was a start. In fact, it was a
marvelous
new beginning!

Dozens of sands were baked and rum balls were rolled. Toward the end of it all, the children understandably became antsy and we told them they could scamper off. Then the shopping bug bit Camille. She excused herself on the pretense that she had to pick up a last minute gift.

However, before our kitchen party broke up, the children agreed that the sands were the best things they
had
ever
eaten. As soon as the first batch was baked to a perfect golden brown and had cooled, Pearl rolled two in powdered sugar and gave them to the children with a glass of milk. They were just delighted.

“You can eat all the ones that break,” Pearl said.

“Let’s break some,” Teddie said. We knew she was only teasing.

“Don’t you dare!” Pearl said, taking the threat as a compliment.

Unfortunately, the wariness in Camille lived on, as she batted her eyelashes again and again in disbelief when Andrew and Teddie gave Pearl a firm hug around her waist.

“Be careful driving around in that fog,” I said to Camille.

“Don’t worry! I’m too young to die!”

“Don’t go tempting fate,” Pearl said.

Pearl’s face was grim as she spoke those words and Camille shuddered.

“I won’t,” Camille said.

Finally, when there was only Pearl and me left in the kitchen, I said to her, “Tough bunch, huh? Camille likes to take pills and go shopping. With vigor.”

“Gotcha. Heaven help us! I may have to resort to a little Gullah magic, too,” Pearl said. “I wonder if that would be breaking the daggum rules?” A few seconds later, a light came into her eyes as though she had
remembered something. “Hmmph. Watch and see. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Get that list. Call somebody back in here and send them to the grocery store for me. I need two quarts of pomegranate juice, a quart of orange juice, three dozen eggs, two quarts of heavy whipping cream, and a box of powdered sugar. And fresh nutmegs.”

I wrote everything down as quickly as I could. I looked at my scribble in frustration and wondered how in the world anyone else would read it since I could not.

“Pearl?”

“Oh, don’t worry yourself so!”

One snap of her fingers and my script became legible. I glared at it in surprise and Pearl laughed so hard she had to lean over and slap her thighs.

“How in the world do you…?”

“Being dead does have
some
advantages!”

“Well, that’s nice to know. I mean, I
guess
…”

“Oh, hand me the list and
I’ll
get them going!”

She snatched the paper from me and disappeared through the swinging door. I turned around, thinking I would put away the food we had made and try to finish the dishes, only to marvel that everything was as clean as it had ever been. Pearl must have snapped her fingers on the way out the door. All the sands were fanned out in layers on a cake plate, the rum balls were piled
high in a glistening cut-glass bowl, and the fruitcake, baked to perfection ahead of schedule, rested on a cake rack, filling the air with the exact same divine perfumes I remembered from my childhood.

Of all the five senses, the experts say that smell is the most powerful. For me it was certainly true. My good friend Pearl, on the other hand, seemed to be in possession of a variety of senses. At least six. With her sixth sense and her pockets bulging with every kind of Gullah magic, she was determined that her visit would create a loving order, or else. I didn’t want to think about the
or else
. If she succeeded, that loving order would force my family to rise from their acrimonious pit of discord. I hoped. Oh, how I hoped!

What did she want with all that pomegranate juice? I was to find out by six o’clock that evening.

Pearl must have blistered her fingers snapping them that afternoon because family treasures began appearing that we had not seen in years. She resurrected my mother’s large punch bowl from somewhere and polished it until you could see your reflection in its sides. My mother’s mother had owned a perfectly magnificent ladle that Pearl coaxed into duty from the dark corners of a silver chest and buffed until it was worthy of a queen’s table. She placed them both on a gleaming silver rectangular tray whose provenance I could not recall, but knew that I had not seen in at least thirty
years. I remembered that it had once belonged to a Charleston family whose ancestor had signed the Declaration of Independence. What could have been more fitting for the moment? This was certain to be a Christmas Eve of historic significance.

Pearl surrounded the bowl with the very same collection of mismatched engraved julep cups we had used for one of Barbara’s bridal lunches so many years ago. And for so many other occasions when times were happier and things were different.

I have to say, by then I was somewhat hopeful about success because there was tangible evidence of a shift in the atmosphere. The outdoor manger scene was set up, and to my surprise, everyone made a positive remark about it, even though it tilted to one side. Perhaps more importantly, the children and even Camille, whether they would admit it or not, had found some authentic holiday joy at one another’s side while they baked together. And I had gained some insight into Teddie.