The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (26 page)

The party was still going strong at midnight, when Sweet and I stole away for our first night together as husband and wife.

People always want to go far away for their honeymoons, like Panama Beach or Cancún, Mexico. But I was lucky. I lived right where I wanted to be.

When we left the reception, Sweet brought me to our new home. I’d seen it in different stages of remodeling and had helped pick the colors and curtains and light switches. We decided to keep as much of the original house as we could, including the yellow claw-foot tub and the old gas range, which worked just fine.

Of course, we had to get a new washer and dryer from Sears, since the ones in the house were old and stinky. I got the kind with a glass front, so I could watch the way the clothes swished around. I’ve always loved just staring into the front of those washers to see clothes swimming, sudsing, and turning, with the water beating against the glass.

When we got to our house, I was so surprised. The porch was all decorated with twinkly lights. Then, when we opened the door so Sweet could carry me over the threshold, rose petals came sprinkling down on us!

Who in the world would do this?

Later, I found out that with Ricky and Sukey’s help, Sweet had gotten all our furniture moved in, unpacked, and placed right where it belonged. Even the dishes and silverware were put away. I didn’t have to lift a finger.

“Thank you, Sweet,” I said. “Thank you, my husband, the man I will love all my life.”

And then Sweet carried me in his strong arms to our bedroom, where we made love, deeply and tenderly, for the first time.

When I lay there with Sweet, together in our wedding bed, it was not as though the bed were a rocket ship—like they sing about in the songs—but rather a round bowl of light.

I didn’t have a lot of experience, but those girls in high school were right when they named him Sweet. He touched me in places I’d never been touched, hidden places I didn’t even know about myself.

“How do you know to touch me there? Like that?” I asked.

“I just know,” he said.

Then he kissed my neck and all the way down my spine.

“How did you know to do
that
?”

“I just took a guess,” he said, and then he gently rolled me over. I began to feel my legs relax of their own accord. And somehow I felt myself become larger, my hips become wider.

Ohhh! As we started to rock back and forth, it was as though I could smell the La Luna River, the Mississippi River, and then on out to the ocean. All of that, and Sweet—oh, he is a wave. He is a wave that I can hold on to and ride. And we are out to sea and the waves are floating, they are flowing us back and forth and back and forth, coming into us and then back out into the water, and everything that ever held us back is going out to the ocean. Out to the ocean, which M’Dear said can hold anything, and it does hold anything. And I am holding on to my husband and he is holding onto me, until finally, we each break onto shore like a huge wave. And we land on the beach. And by that time, it has been so good and so full that we both start laughing.

We locked and unlocked one another for hours—until we fell asleep in each other’s arms, husband and wife.
So this is what lovemaking can be. I see what Renée means when she says, “Calla, sometimes I just feel so wide open, you know, it feels like there’s room for anything.”

Afterward, I watched my husband sleep. And I knew why marriage is a sacrament. Why it’s sacred. That night our love was sacred, and I vowed that it always would be. At least one thing in life has to remain sacred, or this whole world will fall apart.

At dawn, I woke up and realized: I’m married! I’m a wife! Oh, it was terrifying to have said that big, fat, holy
yes
to Sweet! Marriage is not an escape hatch, not something to escape into so you can run and hide from the world. In fact, I thought that my commitment to loving Sweet was a commitment to loving the world more than ever before.

Oh, I hoped not just that I could let Sweet be a gift to me, but that through our love he would be a better gift to the world and to the people in his life. That I might be a blessing to him. That I might help him find out more about the kind of man he wanted to be. I knew that I’d married a man who had less fear than anyone I’d ever met. I wanted to see the good in Sweet, to keep on seeing it, no matter what happened, and to accept him for who he was, and for who he might become.

And I wanted to heal him, if he needed it. Because I was certainly in need of healing myself. Every time I thought that I was “put together,” I realized that we’re
always
putting ourselves together, gathering the world in, letting it sift down and form us.

So I prayed,
Moon Lady, M’Dear, let me love Sweet, that he might be healed and be strong. May your purpose for him and for me in the world be helped along in this marriage. May any ghosts in my past be removed. Moon Lady, who wants to give us the Kingdom of Heaven right here, right now, help me so that Sweet can find the Kingdom of Heaven through the love that we’ve declared to each other, in the sight of God and everyone we know. Moon Lady, M’Dear, thank you for giving me the gift of my husband Sweet.

Now, please help me stop trembling, so I can get up and make my husband some cinnamon rolls
.

Sukey called me late that afternoon. “Good morning!” she said. “We partied until six a.m.! The Jasmine Inn kicked us out on our butts! I stayed sober the whole night, and was the designated driver for at least fourteen of Sweet’s relatives.” She laughed and was silent for a moment. “And how are you?”

I said, “I’m married. I’m a wife. I’m a very happy wife.”

A
fter I was married, I started to go to La Luna more often. Many times Sweet went with me. One weekend, Sweet and I arrived late in La Luna on a Friday night. We had breakfast with Papa, then I walked over to Renée and Eddie’s while Sweet went fishing with Papa.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her over coffee and cinnamon rolls. “You’re hiding something from me. You haven’t met my eyes all morning.”

“Nothing,” Renée said. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“I’ve known you all my life, Renée. You can’t hide from me.”

She finally met my eyes. “Tuck got married, Calla. In San Francisco. His wife is from there. That’s where they’re going to live.”

I turned away. Tears started to form in my eyes. Renée handed me a tissue. I brushed her away.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Oh, of course, I’m okay,” I said.

“I’ve known you all your life, Calla. You can’t hide from me.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said.

“I know,” Renée said, and stepped toward me. I stepped forward, and we hugged without speaking.

It was moments like these that M’Dear called “girlfriend moments.” When I’d asked her how she came up with that phrase, she’d answered, “Because I witness it all day long. And because I get to have them with Miz Lizbeth and with Renée’s mother. ‘Girlfriend moments,’” M’Dear had said. “They’re a little like ‘mama and daughter’ moments.”

Yesterday was the most beautiful blue-sky Sunday. Sweet made coffee, and then I sat in his lap in my kimono from JoAnn’s Vintage Palace, just one of the many clothing items that JoAnn decided I needed. We had our Sunday breakfast of coffee and cheese biscuits.

Then we got dressed and just started out walking. Most everything was in bloom, and there was that spring excitement in the air that just seemed to jump from the flowers right into you. I swore I could smell flowers in my hair and on my skin.

Sweet liked to take things in like I do and not talk too much. But when he did talk, it was to point out things that I would have never even noticed. That day he took me out on his boat, and he just turned off the motor and let us drift. “Feel the river,” he told me. And I felt so embraced by her and how her strong, steady current moved us along.

“Everything changed for me when I realized that the La Luna River flowed into the Mississippi,” I told Sweet. “If I moved to New Orleans, I would always have a ribbon of connection to home.” And oh, I really felt it in my body on the boat with Sweet.

Seeing New Orleans from a boat makes you realize, from a different perspective, that when you live in this city, you are living underwater—the water of the enormous Mississippi River is
above
you. In La Luna we just took for granted that the La Luna River was below us, but here I sometimes feel like I’m living in an exposed place that could get washed away at the drop of a hat. Don’t get me wrong, I love New Orleans. But sometimes I worried that we were living in the river’s place, and someday she might want it back.

It’s part of why, when I thought about making a baby with Sweet, I thought of being back in La Luna.

That evening after our trip on the river, we climbed into bed and made a new and different kind of love. Baby-making love. And afterward, I lay on top of Sweet and fell asleep. We were on the sleeping porch with air cooling our bodies, and it had started to rain. When I woke up, I started to think that something was cooking inside me. Just maybe. In fact, I invited a baby to come on down any time it was ready.

Renée and Eddie had hardly any married time together before they had Calla Rose. I wondered, if I got pregnant, would I still have the same fun and joy and high times making love with Sweet? I hoped so! Renée told me that I should get ready for a happiness that I could never imagine, if I had a baby inside me.

Summer arrived, and it was
hot
in New Orleans—I mean burning up, I mean scalding. I am talking high nineties with 98 percent humidity, and none of those sweet rains that usually come along in the afternoons to cool everything off. Everybody was running their air conditioners on high blow. All we did was slip from our air-conditioned houses to our air-conditioned cars to our air-conditioned work. Sometimes I had to tell the ladies on their way out of the shop, “Y’all, close that door! You’re going to let all our cool air out!”

One night Sweet and I woke up from a deep, sweaty sleep. He looked at me, and then got up to check the air-conditioning unit. Sweet told me, “Calla, that thing is deader than a doornail. We’re going to have to open up the windows.”

“Oh,” I said, complaining. “I hate this. I hate sweating. It is so hot.”

Sweet got up to fix us two cold Cokes over ice, and he brought mine to me in bed. He took his glass and held it against my cheeks. “Feel, Calla. Feel good?”

“Yeah,” I said, grouchily. “It feels good for a minute.”

“Okay,” he said. And then I could hear him quietly drinking his Coke. I sipped on mine. Soon I could hear my husband set down his glass, take several deep breaths, and then fall back asleep. I tried the same thing myself but I couldn’t. I was too angry at the air conditioner.

Why does this kind of thing happen when it’s just the hottest, I thought? Why? I’m never going to be able to get to sleep with this heat. And then I began to realize that I heard more without the air conditioner on. I heard the sound of my husband’s breath dropping in and out. I heard the sound of my own breath dropping in and out. And I remembered M’Dear talking about breath and gratefulness.

She’d say, “Okay, Calla. When you are most afraid, find things to be grateful for.” And so I began to just let myself hear the sounds of the night. I could hear some traffic rumbling by, but not much. Even in the city, I could still hear the insects making their summer sounds, the comforting hum of the refrigerator. If I had a dog, I thought, I would hear it breathing, but a husband is enough. A husband is enough. This house is enough. This life is enough. I do not want what I do not have. I do not want the air conditioner. I do not have it, and so I do not want it. And the more I dropped down into these feelings of gratitude, the sleepier I became. And the less sweaty. I took off the T-shirt that I slept in. The big old T-shirt of Sweet’s. I still took that off, and my panties, and lay there nude without even a sheet. The ceiling fan roaring on me. I heard that whirring sound and became thankful for it. Thankfulness flooded me, and then so did sleep.

I
hadn’t told but two people that Sweet and I were trying to make a baby. I’d told Renée because I’ve known her all my life and because she loves making and taking care of babies. Then I told Ricky, but not by choice. Even though I worked side by side with him all day long, I managed to keep quiet. Then one night, Sweet said, “Babe, what do you say if I soak some red beans overnight, cook ’em up in the morning, and then have friends over tomorrow night?”

So we did, and Ricky and Steve came. They all started out with cocktails, but I drank soda water. I’d stopped drinking wine with dinner because it was bad for getting pregnant. I’ve never been much of a drinker, and that means a lot in New Orleans. Louisiana does happen to be the birthplace of the go-cup and the drive-through daiquiri stand. But I used to drink a beer or two or some wine with shrimp boils or po-boys at parties and get-togethers. So that night Ricky noticed that I wasn’t even doing that.

So he cornered me in the shop the next day and got it out of me. “I am appalled,” he said, “that my
cousin
and my dear, dearest girlfriend did not care to share this with me.”

“We wanted to wait until we had real news,” I told him. “Plus, it might be a while in coming. We’ve been saving our money because having a baby makes you think about every dollar.”

Shortly after our talk, a new line of hair products began to stream into the salon. Ricky had turned the shop into a Naturatique salon, where nothing but plant-based products were allowed. He claimed that he’d done it for his health, that eventually all those bad chemicals were going to catch up with him. But Steve told me that the night Ricky heard that Sweet and I were trying to have a baby, he started his research into Naturatique. Ricky did not want me to be exposed to any chemicals that might hurt me or the baby. Once he began to look into it, he became more concerned, because research showed that many of the chemicals cause serious problems in utero.

I couldn’t get over the fact that Ricky would do that for me and my baby. A couple of the customers started to gripe, but there were those who still complained about not being able to
smoke
in the salon, for heaven’s sake. When they did, I just told them about that beauty shop in Natchez, Mississippi, where a woman lit up a cigarette at the manicure table. Somehow the flame reached the saucer of acetone used to remove false fingernails, and it caught on fire! That woman was lucky to get off with only one side of her hair and both eyebrows singed. Lord knows what could have happened.

When I have my own salon, it will be safe too, I decided. Sweet said that was fine with him. I knew he’d be a real hands-on father. He was already one of the most liberated men I ever knew. He loved to cook and had an ace collection of perfectly sharpened knives. I remembered coming home one day when he was off from work for a week. Sweet was standing there
ironing clothes
, with a pair of boxer shorts on and no shirt! That body of his was so wiry and strong, I could see all the muscles in his stomach. And what was he doing? He was dancing to the song “Barefootin’.” Just dancing away while he was ironing. I burst out laughing.

“Hold on, hold on a minute!” Sweet said. “All right now, dance with me, my baby. Dance with me!”

He turned off the iron, and I kicked off my shoes. Then we played that song over and over on that old forty-five record player M’Dear gave me when I was thirteen years old. We just danced and danced, cracking each other up.

Then we wound up making love that afternoon. Afterward, as we lay beside each other, Sweet ran his hand down my belly to my crotch. His hand cupped perfectly around me.

“When that baby comes, I’m gonna help catch him. You got to catch babies when they drop down from heaven.”

His hand was warm against my folds, all relaxed from lovemaking.

“You got to catch ’em careful,” he continued. “If they’re little miracle girls, you got to catch ’em with your right hand.” He kept his hand cupped around me.

“If they’re boy miracles,” he said, switching hands, “you got to catch ’em with your
left
hand.”

His finger slipped a little ways into me.

“You got to catch those miracles when they’re thrown,” Sweet said, then rolled on top of me again.

“Miracles flying through air like curveballs,” my husband said, and again he entered me.

“Curveballs,” I said, and breathed in deeply. “Curveballs flying through the October sky.”

Sukey’s going back to school inspired me. I knew that if I ever wanted to open up my own shop, I needed more training, so I signed up for business classes at Grassido Community College. Grassido is on City Park Avenue, which is lined with those old live oaks I love, on the fringe of the cemetery zone. New Orleans is so divine and weird at the same time! Fourteen cemeteries all sharing about a square mile of high ground. Sometimes, on the way to Delgado, I stopped by to look at the graves and studied the things people had brought for their loved ones. It always touched me—besides all the flowers, there were lawn chairs for the dead and Xerox portraits of them attached to the gravestones, faded with sun and rain. Once, at a child’s grave, I saw a little toy lawn mower. Oh, it made me cry. I stopped and said a prayer.

Maybe one day I’ll have a baby. I hope she or he will like to play with little toy lawn mowers and a zillion other toys, and will laugh and let me hold him or her like M’Dear held me.

Most of my classes were in bookkeeping, business law, contracts, and other things a small business owner has to know. But I also signed up for some English classes, because I loved English in high school. Mister Robert Peletier, our teacher, asked us to read the play
Romeo and Juliet
. I’d heard of it, of course, but I’d never read it.

Romeo and Juliet
just tore me apart. Those two, they were so young. They were about the age that Tuck and I were—no, they were even younger, like thirteen and fourteen years old—and they loved each other so deeply. Their families had been fighting for centuries. They had been fighting for so long
they
had forgotten what they were fighting about.

I read the whole play in one weekend. I was out on the screened porch, and I couldn’t stop crying. Juliet had this plan where it would look like she was dead, but she’d really taken a potion from a monk to put her to sleep.

Romeo came out of hiding to see Juliet and thought she was dead. He didn’t know she’d taken a potion and was just asleep. He cried out to her, but she didn’t wake up in time. His heart was so broken that he took his dagger out of his belt and stabbed it into his own heart.

When Juliet woke up, finally, and found her Romeo covered in blood, she began to scream. She held him in her lap, with the blood flowing all down her gown. Sometimes I imagined it like Jackie Kennedy’s pink fleecy suit, with all the blood on it in the back of that convertible.

The night I finished that play, I was heartbroken. But when I lay down to go to sleep, my sadness lifted. There was something in the beauty of the way the story was told that lifted me up out of my sadness. And I thought,
Mister Robert Peletier is right. Beauty and art are everywhere and can lift us up out of our suffering
.

It was at Grassido that I got my T-shirt that said “Another Hairdresser for Nuclear Disarmament.” I got it when my class was called off one day. There I was, with an hour and a half to kill, so I decided to wander around and see if there was something going on on campus.

It turned out that there was a lecture in the auditorium called “Will We Survive Till the Year 2000?”

It had already started when I got there. The woman talking on the stage showed us a screen with one of those detailed diagrams of the human body. I swear, I will never understand why they make those things look so much like a doll with its hair ripped off. I am not kidding, there wasn’t a single hair on the entire diagram, when everyone knows that people have got hair
everywhere
.

Anyway, this woman was pointing to different parts of the body and explaining how “rems” would affect each of them. I knew what rems were—radiation. That’s what they hit M’Dear with when she got breast cancer. Finally, the woman mentioned the word
hair
. She told us that if a nuclear bomb was to get dropped, people’s hair would melt out in
clumps
! Without them smelling anything or tasting anything or knowing what in the world hit them.

I was horrified. I saw M’Dear, propped up on her pillows, in the big bed she and Papa shared. I saw her bald head, only tufts of hair sticking up like a crazed, half-plucked chicken. The sounds she made as she bit back the pain. The burned spots on her body left from the radiation.

I wondered if this lady could be telling the truth. It blasted me to think of millions of radiation-melted heads.

Walking home, I couldn’t shake this idea, even with the smell of May in New Orleans, which meant gardenias and magnolias in bloom, their scents almost too sweet. Sweet was napping on the couch when I got home, with the TV on, snoring like a truck stuck in the mud.

I stared at his thick curly black hair and at his lean body, all muscled from working on his boat.

His hair is getting too long, I thought. I am going to have to give him a cut soon. Then suddenly, I saw Sweet’s hair start to melt out.

I swear, I was sitting there in our big comfy chair, and I had a vision of Sweet’s hair getting soft and falling out. And then his eyebrows and eyelashes melted off, leaving him looking like a painting that somebody went off and didn’t finish. His face was smooth, with no male stubble at all—all his whiskers and his mustache gone. And where his denim work shirt sleeves were rolled up, there wasn’t any arm hair. Sweet’s arms were thin and bare, like a starving child’s. They didn’t look like Sweet’s arms at all.

Then it was all over. Everything went back to normal. All I saw was Sweet asleep there on the couch, with his black hair that always pleased me so much, the way it brushed against my face when he kissed me good-bye in the morning. I got up, leaned over him, gave his hair a tousle, and kissed his cheek.

“Come on, babe, wake up,” I whispered. “You know it kills your back if you sleep too long on the couch.”

Then we had dinner, watched a little TV, and went to bed. But before I fell asleep, I thought about hair—about babies’ soft little tufts, and about how when people get old their hair is like baby hair again. I thought about minds so evil that they could build a bomb that would not only poison every organ of our bodies but melt out our hair as well. Besides, if that bomb ever dropped, I’d be out of business. There wouldn’t be any hair left for me to do. Or much of anything to do, come to think of it, for any of us.

The next morning, I sat down and wrote a letter to the president in Washington, D.C.