The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (10 page)

I
had been so worried about M’Dear. I kept waiting for her to start getting well, but as the months went by she didn’t seem to be getting any better. I knew she was fading away when she was too weak to celebrate much over the holidays. She had always enjoyed Christmas the most and had always worked to make it special for us. Now she barely noticed its arrival. And when I thought about that, my throat closed up and my stomach felt twisted inside.

One night M’Dear and Papa knocked on my door to ask me to join them in the studio to dance. I looked at my alarm clock and it was three in the morning. We danced all the time as a family, but even for
us
, starting at 3:00 a.m. was a bit surprising.

We went to the boys’ room and said, “Y’all, wake up! We’re going to the studio.” The boys looked at us like we were crazy, M’Dear in her nightgown, and even in January, with no shoes on. I looked at her bare feet and wanted to cover them up immediately. I didn’t want any inch of her body to get cold or be in any way stressed. M’Dear must have read my mind because she looked at me and said, “I want to feel my bare feet touch the floor, to touch the ground.”

Sonny Boy and Will got up out of bed in their striped pajamas and followed us through the hallway that connects the house to the dance studio. Papa turned on the big industrial heater, and M’Dear slowly walked over to the stereo player and put on “Clair de Lune.” I knew that song because we danced to it in a summer concert that M’Dear planned when we were little. She held it outside in the park under a full moon because we lived in the moon’s hometown. That was what she told us.

Now M’Dear took my hand and Papa’s hand, and Sonny Boy and Will linked theirs with ours. We stood there in silence, nobody moving, all of us waiting for M’Dear to start. M’Dear who we loved so much, who looked so tiny now, but who had all her radiance shining through. M’Dear squeezed my hand, and I stood there with my eyes closed until I absorbed all the energy I could from her squeeze.

Then M’Dear dropped our hands and began to move by herself. “This is a dance to honor the Moon Lady.” Then her body changed, like it was charged somehow with new energy, and she went to Will and pulled him close to dance with her. Fluidly moving his thin muscular body, Will kept his eyes on M’Dear the whole time, not imitating her but moving his hands to the beautiful music that was like moonlight, like turquoise water flowing over white rocks. Then M’Dear stepped up to Sonny Boy and took his hand. Sonny Boy, over six feet, towered over M’Dear and looked down at her like he wanted to remember this moment forever. Then she stumbled and held on to his shoulders. She stood there for a moment. We could see her taking a deep breath, seemingly to get some strength back.

I watched them, and I had to hush the voice in my mind that said: “Me, M’Dear, now
me
! Me, please!” Finally, she took my hands and she looked me in the eyes, smiling, shaking her head like she was so happy at what she saw. Her eyes told me, “Calla, you are all that I hoped.” Then we moved together. I reached my arms up to the sky and M’Dear raised her arms as much as she could. We reached our hands out, went low, down to the ground, and then turned our bodies in slow circles that ended in light steps of stillness. M’Dear came toward me, touching my arms lightly, and whispered, “Remember to look up now and then and throw me a kiss, baby, and I’ll send one back to you. Remember the stars, Calla.” We looked at each other, tears rolling down both our faces.

Then it was Papa’s turn. To see M’Dear and Papa together was like watching butterflies. They smiled at each other so deeply that they seemed lost for a few moments. “My Lenora,” I heard him whisper. Then the smile cut loose into movement. At first, I thought their dance was too intimate to watch, my father in his pajamas, his eyes all red from lack of sleep, my beautiful mother’s face drawn and tired—both of them dancing themselves out of pain. I could see that it wasn’t easy for M’Dear and Papa to move like this when they hurt so much. I watched as she leaned into him for strength. I saw that pain is part of beauty—that inside of all that music, all that love, all the moonlight and sunlight, are shafts of pain, and we are meant to bear it all.

Then M’Dear and Papa reached out to the three of us. We all stepped together and wrapped our arms around each other.

I did not want my mother to leave me. But I knew she must.

After our night of dancing, M’Dear was so weak that she rarely left her bed. Olivia and Aunt Helen were always by her side. Often as not, when I got home from school, M’Dear would be sleeping, so I started spending the hours between school and dinnertime over at the Tuckers’.

And that’s how it happened that Miz Lizbeth wound up buying me shoes for the Valentine’s Day Ball.

I had been telling her about the dress that Aunt Helen was making me for the ball, with Tuck as my date. We had picked out the fabric together, and I showed Miz Lizbeth a swatch I had in my purse. It was white, with little red hearts all over it.

She said, “I can just picture you wearing that with a pair of red shoes.”

Now, I was so excited about the dress—the ball was still a month off—that I hadn’t even thought about my shoes. “Tell you what,” Miz Lizbeth offered. “We have plenty of time to ride over to Claiborne and see if we can’t find you something nice.”

So the two of us got into her Buick and headed out for Richardson’s Department Store. And, wouldn’t you know it, there was a whole display of pumps and platforms. “Get out that swatch,” Miz Lizbeth told me. We held it up to the shoes, and sure enough, a pair of
red
platforms looked perfect.

“I’ll have to talk to Papa about these,” I said. “I don’t have enough money of my own to buy them today.”

“I didn’t mean for you to buy them, Calla. It would make me very happy if you just let me get these shoes for you as a gift.”

“Oh, Miz Lizbeth,” I said, “I could never impose on you that way!”

“You’re not imposing. I offered to get these shoes for you, and I mean to do it.”

When we got home with the shoes, Miz Lizbeth dropped in to see if M’Dear was awake. She was indeed sitting up, and she seemed a little more energetic than usual.

We both kissed her, then sat down at her bedside to tell her all about our shoe-shopping adventure.

I got out my swatch and held it up to the shoes. “Look, M’Dear, isn’t this a perfect combination? Can’t you just see this with my dress? And I have to give Miz Lizbeth all the credit. She just imagined exactly the kind of shoes I needed.”

“Well,” M’Dear said, lifting a shoe from the box, “the color is perfect. Reds are hard to match. Lizbeth”—she smiled at her—“has always had great fashion sense. But you’re only sixteen years old. I think you’re going to break your neck trying to dance in these.”

“Oh, M’Dear,” I told her, “Sukey gets to wear even higher than these, and so do other girls. Watch how well I can walk in them. And they do make me feel sooo glamorous.”

I put on the shoes and paraded around the bedroom, proud that my ankles didn’t even wobble. “You see?” I asked her. “Everybody’s going to love these shoes.”

“Now, just where did you get the money to buy them?” M’Dear said.

“Lenora, I insisted on buying them for her,” Miz Lizbeth said. “I practically had to press the gift on her. It was just something I wanted to do for Calla.”

“Hmmph,” said M’Dear.

I heard the anger in M’Dear’s voice—M’Dear, who never snapped at anyone, whose heart was full of love.

M’Dear said, “Lizbeth, Calla is not
your
daughter. She’s mine. And it’s not my fault if your own daughter left!”

Miz Lizbeth couldn’t even look at her.

I saw M’Dear gripping the sheets, trying not to cry. She was that tired and spent. I didn’t understand what had just happened, but it scared me. “M’Dear, are you okay?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Lenora, don’t even think about this,” Miz Lizbeth said. “I’m going to let you rest now. I promised Bernard that I would have his supper early tonight because he has a Rotary Club meeting.” She kissed both M’Dear and me lightly on the forehead, saying, “Good-bye, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

M’Dear grabbed at her hands and said, “Wait!”

She held Miz Lizbeth’s hands between her own and said, “Lizbeth, I was unkind. It hurts me that you bought Calla her first pair of grown-up dress shoes. I am laid up here, unable to do that for her. And it hurts me that you’ll get to watch her become a woman and I will not be here.”

“M’Dear, don’t say that,” I protested.

But Miz Lizbeth was telling her, softly, “I understand. But I also know that no one could ever take your place in Calla’s heart—or in mine.”

M’Dear sank back on her pillows, tears spilling down her cheeks, exhausted.

Miz Lizbeth kissed her again and left to go home.

I reached out for M’Dear’s hand. “M’Dear, I’m sorry I’m spending so much time with Miz Lizbeth. It just happens, you know, because Tuck and me—”

M’Dear said, “You don’t need to say you’re sorry. She’s a woman I want you to count on. And you can.”

The next day was typical January weather, dark and gloomy. I usually woke up on Saturdays feeling excited about the weekend, but that morning Sukey and I were at Renée’s, and Sukey sensed my mood. “What’s wrong, Calla?” she asked.

“It just feels like there’s so much
weight
on me! Sukey, I feel like there’s this heavy black coat on me, just weighing me down to the ground, and I don’t know how to take it off.”

Sukey hugged me and said, “We’ll help you, Calla.”

“Yeah,” Renée said. “Let’s just cut that coat right off.” She went and got two pairs of scissors and an old sheet, which she draped over me.

“Now, Calla,” she said, “this sheet is that heavy coat. Close your eyes. Do you feel it?”

“I do. It feels horribly heavy. I can barely walk in it. I can barely put one foot in front of the other.”

“Don’t even try to walk,” Sukey told me. “Just wait till we cut you free.”

Then they each took a pair of scissors, and with Sukey in the back and Renée in the front, they cut the sheet into strips, starting at the bottom. When their scissors met at my shoulders, they’d give one last snip, and that strip of the sheet would fall to the ground. I watched the strips puddle at my feet, and it did feel like I was slowly shedding that black and heavy weight. And at that moment, I realized that I had two sisters so strong and so smart that I would never be crushed by even the deepest darkness.

It was the night of the Valentine’s Day Ball. M’Dear watched me get dressed with dark, shiny eyes, sharing my excitement. She even helped me with my hair, sweeping it up and creating little ringlets in the back. She asked me to turn around and around so she could see me from all angles, as if she was memorizing me. When Tuck arrived, she made us pose for pictures, which Papa snapped. As I was leaving, she smiled and said, “You know, those shoes do make the outfit.”

When I got home that night, she was waiting up, hoping to hear all about the ball. I told her about the music and the dancing and tried to make her feel like she’d been there herself. She couldn’t get enough of each detail.

Later that night, after cookies and milk, Papa and I both fell asleep in the bed with M’Dear. The bedside table light was still on. In the middle of the night, I thought I heard something and woke up for a moment. But everything seemed still. I could see the moonlight on the windowsill, and I could hear Papa breathing. He always had a little snore, nothing too bad, just a sort of whiffle. M’Dear hardly made a sound when she slept. I heard a hoot owl in the trees near the river.

Then it was silent. Papa stopped snoring. The refrigerator downstairs in the kitchen stopped its old comfortable hum. There was only silence.

Then I knew. I couldn’t hear her heartbeat. Since I was alive in her womb, I’d been hearing that old, comforting sound. I reached out to touch M’Dear, and I felt it. Her heart had stopped beating.

Papa woke up, seeming to sense this, and he kissed my forehead.
He knew too
. Oh, how much my Papa loved me and how brave he was to do that, before he leaned down and kissed M’Dear’s lips and hands. Did Papa want to feel any warmth of M’Dear that was left? Or to try to give her some of his? Or had he already set her free?

There was so much I didn’t know about what lay underneath M’Dear and Papa’s strong love. You could see it the way they touched all day long, the way Papa would come up behind M’Dear when she was stirring a pot on the gas stove, kiss her neck, turn down the gas, then pull her around to start dancing, making us laugh.

I stepped back to the doorway of the room and watched them. Outside the window, I could see the trees were bare. The room started to spin.
M’Dear, you told me this would happen—that you would die
. How I hated it when she took me and showed me the spot under the live oak where she would be buried, in the little graveyard near her mother and father. “To be near a tree is a wonderful thing,” M’Dear said. She told me to think of the roots of the tree, to think of the limbs and the branches and the thick leaves and how the tree reached up to the moon and stars. “Think of the stars, Calla,” she told me, “and imagine that they’re just other towns, and I’ve moved to them.”

I started to cry, and that’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I knew who it was. I could smell her, that lingering scent of bacon from her breakfast and the scent of Ivory soap so faint you might not smell it if you weren’t me. Olivia. She stroked my shoulder, then my hair.

“Everything all right, baby,” she whispered. I didn’t realize that my hands were freezing until Olivia took them in her own warm hands, the strong black hands with the pink palms. “Every single little thing gone be all right.”

Olivia is the one who understood why I wanted to do it. Before the men came to take Mama’s body away, I trimmed off some of the white feathers of her remaining hair. “I’m going to put this in a locket so I can have it the rest of my life,” I said, sobbing. Will came in then, and put his arms around me.