The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (15 page)

Time passed, and Tuck never wrote. Not once. I couldn’t stop my mind from going back to the last time he kissed me, right as he was about to board that Greyhound bus. “I’m going to call you as soon as I get settled,” he promised. “I’ll write you as soon as I get there.” But he didn’t write. And he didn’t call.

I still wrote to Tuck every single week. I even tried to call. But I stopped after a few times, not wanting to hear the guy call out down the hall, “It’s Calla Lily for Tuck—again.”

I could see how someone like Tuck could get caught up with school, but I still missed him. I looked at the pictures of us on my dresser, with my dried corsage from the senior prom hanging off one of them. I thought about his smell and his hair, and how I loved to run my hands through his hair when it was clean. It was just amazing, the way it was so blond, and so thick that when he moved, it shook from side to side.

Every time the phone rang, my heart leaped and I ran downstairs, even though I knew that Papa could see me acting like a schoolgirl. I answered the phone, “Hi—hi, this is Calla Lily—” But then it would just be Renée.

Then we’d have some conversation about how she was feeling with the pregnancy and about how my feet hurt after my waitress shifts. And she’d ask, “How’s Tuck doing?”

I’d say, “Oh, just fine.”

I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that Tuck hadn’t been in contact. Finally I got so fed up one night that I threw his football trophy across the room.
Damn it! He said he would call! If Tuck was in the room right now, I’d say, “You liar! I hate you!”

After supper one evening, Papa and I were sitting on the porch swing and we could hear classical music coming from the Tuckers’ house. We often spent evenings alone since Will was away studying music and Sonny Boy was spending more and more time with his new girlfriend, Melise.

“How you getting along with all this, Calla Lily?” Papa asked, patting my hand.

“Not so good.”

Right then, as though it was planned, which I don’t think it was, Miz Lizbeth came over.

“I was wondering if y’all could do with some figs and homemade ice cream. I made the ice cream for the Garden Club meeting on Friday and had some extra.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, and I knew Papa knew why.

“Thank you, Miz Lizbeth,” Papa said. “Won’t you join us?”

“No, but thank you very much.”

“So, how’s that boy doing?” Papa asked, like it was no big deal.

“He’s doing just fine. Studying hard, making friends.” Then she paused.

By that point I had left the porch without excusing myself and was in the kitchen, hearing them only faintly, as I dumped her dessert offering in the trash.

When it was almost Thanksgiving, I thought, Well, some kind of plans ought to be made by now! So even given my last nasty letter to Tuck, I went over to the Tuckers’ and knocked on the door.

“Good morning,” I said. “I brought you some mayhaw jelly that I put up myself.”

“Calla,” Miz Lizbeth said, as she opened the door. “How lovely to see you. And how sweet. Would you care for a cup of tea, or coffee?”

“Well, some coffee would be lovely,” I told her.

“Okay,” she said. “Come on in. Have a seat at the kitchen table, and I’ll make you some coffee. I know how you like it, with cream and sugar.”

So she brought two mugs of coffee, sat down, and we talked about this and that until I finally said, “Um, how’s Tuck?”

“Well…” She paused and looked down into her coffee. “He’s doing real well out there, Calla.”

I tried to make it sound like it was just small talk. “How’re his grades?”

“Fine,” she answered. “Up at the top of his class.”

Then Miz Lizbeth got up from the table and busied herself with washing dishes.

“Is he coming home for Christmas?”

She turned around and looked at me with kindness in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Calla, he’s not. He’s going to spend Christmas in California this year.”

I tried to keep breathing. “California?” I said.

“Yes, sweetheart. He’s made a good friend who’s from San Francisco, whose family has a place in Big Sur.”

“Place?” I asked. “Big Sur?”

“It’s a beautiful town on the Pacific Ocean.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want her to know how sad all this made me feel. “Well,” I said, “I guess that just leaves us turkeys here at home,” and tried to make a little laugh.

Miz Lizbeth looked away for a moment, then said softly, “We’ll be flying out to California to join him.”

“Oh,” I said, and then I could not stop from crying.

Miz Lizbeth put her arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Calla. I wish it were different.”

“I do, too,” I said, my voice hoarse.

After that, I started feeling really low. Tuck had erased me. I couldn’t even get mad because I was too low. I guess people would say I was depressed, but I wouldn’t talk to anyone about Tuck—not Sukey and Renée, and not even Papa.

When Christmas came, it was hard. For the first time in as long as I could remember, Papa and I walked down along the river, just the two of us.

“You doing okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah. Might be sad every Christmas for a while.”

“Oh, Papa, I’m sad, too!”

He gave me a big hug, and I could tell he was trying not to cry. My heart just broke for him. His sadness was so deep, all I could think about was cheering him up. I said, “Papa, remember M’Dear’s Refrigerator Rules? How she said she was going to haunt us to keep us laughing? I believe she meant that, don’t you? It’s Christmastime. We should go inside. I got some presents I haven’t wrapped. You want to help me?”

“Yes, I do.” Papa seemed to take heart a little, and he said, “You know what? I got some eggnog in the fridge that Miz Lizbeth dropped off before she left for California. Let’s put a little bourbon in there and have us some.”

So Papa and I went back to the kitchen, and we laid out our tissue paper, the special kind with the glitter on it. We found our extra shoe-boxes that we’d saved for wrapping gifts. I’d gotten two albums for Sonny Boy and two books for Will. Will would probably know what his gifts were, but I didn’t want Sonny Boy to guess, since he was such a trickster.

Then Papa had a great idea. He told me, “Hey, I got me one really long, flat box that my rifle came in. You know, the one I got a couple years ago?”

“You saved that box, Papa?”

“Oh, you never know when something’s going to come in handy.”

So Papa brought in this long box. The albums would fit in there for sure.

I laughed and started to ball up some newspaper to cushion the albums. But Papa said, “No, let’s not use newspaper. We’re going to pop some popcorn.”

So we did. And that popcorn smelled so good that we just started eating some right out of the pot.

“Calla,” he said, “I have a special little gift that I’d like to give you, you know. When you were born, your mama and I took out a savings bond for you. We did that for each one of you kids. Yours matured around Thanksgiving. It’s earned a good little bit of interest. So here you go,” he said, and handed me an envelope.

I opened it and looked inside, and felt so touched.

“It’s from your mama and me, you know. I thought maybe it would help you go on down to New Orleans for your beauty shop training earlier than you planned.”

“Oh, Papa,” I said, “thank you. Thank you and M’Dear, all those years ago, for thinking of your daughter.”

Then, all of a sudden, we were having fun, Papa and me. We even put on some music and started dancing. But after a few songs, my tears came so quick that I didn’t have a second to bite them back. Papa put his arms around me.

“I miss Tuck, Papa,” I told him.

“I know. How ’bout I be your date for tonight?”

“I would love the pleasure of having you as my date.”

“All right then,” he said.

We turned out all the lights in the house except for the Christmas tree. Then we just sat there, drinking eggnog, eating popcorn, and watching those lights sparkle and fade.

It was not the Christmas I thought it would be. You don’t always get all the things you want. I thought I had learned that already, but here I was learning it all over again, and it hurt. But my papa was sitting on the sofa with me, and the lights were twinkling. If there’s one thing that can make you feel like the girl you were before the big hurts began, it’s staring at a Christmas tree, all lit up, with your papa. A sparkling tree growing up from a circle of gifts.

T
he next day, when I went back to work, I let Mrs. and Mrs. Melonçon know my decision to leave for beauty school earlier than I’d planned.

“I don’t want to leave you in the lurch, though, so how about if I work for a couple more months to give you time to replace me,” I said.

“Calla,” they said, giving me a hug, “there’s no replacing you. But we will have to find someone else to serve our food! You’re a part of the family now, and you’ll have a hard time shaking us.”

Once I gave notice at my job, I knew there would be no turning back on making the big leap out of La Luna. But I was feeling nervous about it all. It made me wish Sukey was living closer, because she wouldn’t be so afraid. She’d just pack her bags and go.

So Sukey got the weekend off and came for a visit. Saturday night, Eddie was out to play bourrée, leaving Renée free, so I gathered with my girlfriends to try and help me get Tuck out of my heart. Renée showed up with soft new T-shirts and panties for the three of us.

“It seems every time we get together, we end up in our T-shirts and panties. So I decided to give us new ones.”

“Ooh, goody!” Sukey said. “I love uniforms.”

It was a T-shirt Louisiana early January. In the eighties, and humid as all get-out. “He didn’t even bother to send a damn Christmas card,” I said. They knew who I was referring to.

“Well, you did send him a letter telling him you would never speak to him again. You’re just not over it, are you?” Sukey asked.

Renée looked at me, then at Sukey, and said, “I have an idea! We’ll just ‘wash that man right out of your hair!’”

And so the three of us headed to the outdoor shower behind our house, in the middle of the thick trees where nobody could see. We all took off all our clothes. I had never in my life known Renée to be so open about her body. She always had been so modest, but with the pregnancy, that had changed.

“Wow!” said Sukey, “You are some kind of
pregnant
! And your
boobs
!”

Renée looked down at her big belly, and smiled. “Yep,” she said.

They then took turns trying to wash my hair. I said, “Please stop, y’all. I don’t like other people washing my hair! I’ll wash it myself!”

And so I scrubbed and scrubbed, and all the while we were singing at the top of our lungs, “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair!”

It was a good thing we had the house to ourselves. Papa was off at the fishing camp, Will was playing music in South Louisiana, and Sonny was at the movies with Melise. The showers kind of got us worked up, so we came inside, dried off, put on our new T-shirts and panties, and poured ourselves some Cokes.

“Hey, y’all, I’ve got an idea!” Sukey said. “Let’s get out the yearbook, and start tearing his pictures out!”

“That’s great!” I said, “y’all come on up to my bedroom.” We all piled up on the big old four-poster bed that had been in my father’s family for decades. I grabbed my copy of the yearbook from the bookshelf.

“Okay!” I said.

“Here,” I said to Renée, “Open this sack from the grocery, sweetie.” I handed her a huge sack filled with M&Ms.

“Great girlfriends-grill-the-son-of-a-bitch food!” Sukey said.

Renée started ripping the bags open to pour the candy into a bowl. “Rip! Oh, I like that sound,” Sukey said. “That is a very good sound for the business at hand.”

“Y’all wait a minute now,” I said. “I don’t want to destroy the whole yearbook. Let’s just rip out his football picture, and sit here and eat M&Ms.”

After we finished downing several hundred M&Ms, I leaned back and said, “Y’all, this has been fun. Well, more than fun, but I’m kind of tired.”

Renée said, “I am too. This is the latest I’ve been up since I got pregnant.”

“I’ll only go,” Sukey said, “if you’ll lift up your T-shirt and let me feel your belly.”

“Sure,” Renée said, and lifted her shirt.

Sukey put her hand on Renée’s big belly.

“Me too?” I said, looking at Renée.

“Yep.”

And so Sukey and I both pressed our hands and felt a little baby kicking.

“Wow!” Sukey said.

“Yeah, wow!” said Renée.

“Wow,” I said, then turned my head away so they could not see that I was crying.

After they were gone I reached up on the shelf in my closet, in the back where I had stored the tux shirt that Tuck had given me that early morning on the pier.

I went down the stairs and out the back door. I walked out to the fire pit, an open area that lay far from the heavily treed area on our property, and put kindling under a couple of thin logs. On top of that I laid the white tuxedo shirt. With it I laid the part of my heart that had been wounded by Tucker LeBlanc. Wounds can be healed, I thought, but I doubted if this one would. Then I let it all go as I watched the flames turn the shirt into cinders that rose up into the January night sky.

The next morning, I woke up and went to M’Dear’s desk, which Papa had offered to move into my room. I sat down with a hot cup of coffee and, no longer needing to write to Tuck, decided to send M’Dear a little message.

As I was saving my last dollars and planning my move, Renée’s due date was getting closer. I started spending a lot more of my free time with Renée. Each time I saw her I’d think, Well, her belly can’t get any bigger that this. But it would!

Then, at 5:30 in the morning on February 16, 1972, a sweet little gift arrived in La Luna. Calla Rose Gremillion was born! I went over to Eddie and Renée’s house the night after they got home from the hospital. I couldn’t help but notice how Eddie looked at Renée and Calla Rose, who lay in her lap. The love in the eyes of this muscular man, now a police officer, touched me to see.

“I love my baby,” he said.

“Our baby,” Renée corrected.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” he said, and kissed Renée on the mouth. “I keep forgetting.”

“Right, baby,” Renée said. “Now, go on to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he smiled. “Good night, little mama. Good night, little baby. Good night, Calla Lily. Good to see you again.” Then he headed toward their bedroom.

Renée and I sat and whispered as Calla Rose slept. One moment the baby was completely silent, then the next thing I knew, she was wailing and squealing.

“Right on time,” Renée said, smiling as she unbuttoned her soft white cotton nightgown that Aunt Helen had made for her. She opened one side of the yoke, unhooked her nursing bra, and plopped out her full, swollen breast. My goddaughter knew exactly what to do. I heard gurgling, sucking sounds as her tiny fingers found their way around her mother.

“How many times a day do you need to do that?” I asked.

“Oh, about a million.”

I watched in silence and marveled that my girlfriend carried within her all the nutrients that my goddaughter needed to survive.

Awe. That’s the word, that’s what I feel. That, and a tangle of other emotions. After Renée finished feeding and Calla Rose had given a very unladylike burp, Renée held her in her arms and looked at me.

“Want to hold her?” she asked.

At first I was afraid, afraid of the longing in me that might rush forth.

“Yes, I’d love to.” I sat close to Renée on the sofa as she handed Calla Rose to me. The longing did rush forth. But the beauty of the creature in my arms pulled me back to the present moment. I lightly touched the little tufts of hair on her head, which reminded me of M’Dear’s hair after radiation began to take its toll.
Oh, M’Dear. You would be so happy to see this!

As I held the baby, I felt the weight of her head in my hands. How vulnerable the skull of this little one, so newly arrived from the heavens that the baby powder on her body might as well be the dusting of angels.

“I’m so happy,” I said, biting back the tears. “Here,” I said, carefully handing Calla Rose back to her mother. “I’m just so happy for y’all. This is just how you wanted it. To have a house and a baby, and you did it, not even a year after you graduated!”

“What’s wrong, Calla?”

I couldn’t answer her.

“Come on, Calla. What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s just that I’ve hardly done anything.”

“That’s simply not true. You have enough money for beauty school now. And you’ve been accepted to L’Académie de Beauté de Crescent. Your mama’s old friend has offered you a place to stay until you find an apartment. You’ll be in a big city and meet tons more people than I’ll ever meet in my life.”

“Yes, but will I have friends?”

“Of course you’ll have friends.” And she put her hand on top of mine.

“It’s just…I miss M’Dear. Just when I thought I was really over her death, Tuck has left me. What is it? Why do people leave me? Do I make them leave?” Then I was crying.

“You know that’s not true. And Tuck is not everybody,” she said. “You’ve made your decision to go, Calla. Everything’s lined up. It’s time to finally do it.”

“Well, I don’t feel excited,” I said, forcing myself to lower my voice. “They all leave.”

So there was my oldest girlfriend, Renée, holding my infant goddaughter in her arms. And there I was, crying on her shoulder. As I wept, I thought about how many kinds of love the heart can hold: mother and child, child and mother, girlfriend to girlfriend.

I gazed down at Calla Rose for a very long time. I let my tears fall, though not on her. Finally I breathed in and let it circle around my body until it blew out of the blowhole at the top of my head.
I will not be a godmother who hides because of a broken heart. I will be a godmother who holds her broken heart in her hands and walks with it without shame. Just holding that broken heart to the next place the river takes her. I will hold my broken heart for you, Calla Rose. For you, the beautiful blue-eyed wonder in front of me.

C
ONGRATULATIONS
, C
ALLA
, the banner read. When I came over to help clean up Our Lady of the River’s parish hall, I had no idea that I’d be walking into a surprise party—for me! I was leaving for New Orleans in just a few days.

Everybody was there, including all my friends from Melonçon’s Café. Papa was playing the trumpet with his little combo, and as soon as I came through the door they started playing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow
.
” Sukey had come up from New Orleans, and she gave me a big hug. She looked tired, her eyes a little blurry. Nelle blew me a kiss from across the room. Miz Lizbeth was there, and apologized that Uncle Tucker couldn’t be there because of a cold. My brothers were singing at the top of their lungs. Melise was there with Sonny Boy, and Will brought a friend of his from Ville Platte who makes fiddles. And I was so happy to see Cleveland and Bertha standing next to Olivia.

“Oh, Olivia!” I said walking over to them, “I’m going to miss you so much.”

Both Olivia and Miz Lizbeth had become just like mothers to me ever since M’Dear’s death. And just then, I could feel M’Dear’s presence at the party. Papa hugged me during one of the music breaks, and I whispered, “She’s here, isn’t she?”

“Oh, you better believe it!” he said, and kissed my cheek before the band started up again.

When they finished playing, I got another big surprise. Aunt Helen whipped a sheet off from a clothesline strung across the back of the hall—and on it were brand-new outfits she’d made for me to wear in New Orleans.

“Aunt Helen! I can’t believe this!” I’m on the tall side, and with my long legs and short torso, Aunt Helen’s creations always fit me better than store-bought clothes.

“Calla,” she said, “we can’t send you off to the big city not looking up-to-date.”

Then Miz Lizbeth and Renée’s mother announced that it was time to eat. Oh, the food! There was shrimp gumbo, chicken gumbo, crawfish étouffée, red beans and rice, cornbread, French bread—you name it. And that’s not even mentioning the desserts!

I said, “Y’all! You didn’t have to go to so much trouble! It’s not like I’m going away to Paris, France!”

“Well, what do you expect?” Miz Lizbeth said. “This is a party in La Luna, Louisiana.”

For drinks, they served punch and Cokes and 7-Ups. But Sukey, of course, had a little flask of something and took a few nips now and then, as did Sonny Boy and Will. Drinking wasn’t exactly encouraged in the parish hall, so they had to sneak outside for little breaks.

I got a little bit of everything on two paper plates and went to sit with Renée, who was nursing Calla Rose.

I gave Renée a hug and told her, “I’m going to miss you.”

“I know,” she said. “You and Sukey were always the closest, and sometimes I felt left out. It’s been really good to have you just to myself.”

Then Renée started crying, dabbing her eyes with a little lace-trimmed handkerchief.

“Now, you stop that,” I said. “This is a happy occasion. And don’t you worry—no matter where I am, we’ll always be best friends.”