The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (30 page)

T
he day I was supposed to move, I was slow to get out of bed. Finally, I took a long, deep breath and swung my legs out from under the covers and sat up. It amazed me that not so long ago, I was just lying there, never wanting to get up again.

I knew where I had to go.

When I got to the Butterfly, the spot that Sweet first showed me, the spot where we took the boat out and where he asked me to marry him, I sat for a while to contemplate all that had happened. I watched as the boats went by on the river. You hear those words, “the mighty Mississippi,” and they seem like just a cliché. But they’re not. This
is
such a wide and powerful river, and my Sweet loved it so much. I needed him, sitting right there by me, watching the ships go by. There was no amount of money that could make up for him being gone.

But I wasn’t going to think about that. I was going to think about
this
moment, about this day of leaving, about the part of me that was moving forward. I was going to think about starting my shop and transforming the Swing ’N Sway. I was on my way.

Ricky and Steve came over mid-morning to help me pack.

“Guess whoo?!” Ricky called. “We’re here with a bag of beignets and coffee. Where are you? We’re here! Your moving men!”

I took a bite and a sip, and I have to admit, life always looks better after a beignet and coffee.

“All right, let’s get going,” I said.

Ricky was already pulling my clothes out of my drawers and packing them in boxes.

“Calla,” he said, “we’re going to set you up with a little ‘three-day emergency pack’ of clothes that you can wear till we get up to La Luna with the U-Haul. You’ll be so busy you probably won’t even notice.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “And I’m going to take all the most special wedding gifts in the car with me. Every single thing that people gave us has a meaning—every fork, every spoon.”

So very carefully, we packed all my wedding gifts in newspaper. With each object we touched, I got a little flash of memory. Especially the big, round Coca-Cola zippered thermos container.

“Why, Calla,” Sweet had said to me, “that looks a whole lot more like a wig-carrying case than a thermos! Let’s keep it in case you get some really hot wigs you need to cool off.” We laughed so much about that. The two of us had actually ended up rolling around on the floor. I thought about how absolutely silly the two of us could be.

Ricky saw me looking sad and said, “Let’s go get some nourishment. I could go for a po-boy right now.”

“I’ll stay here and keep packing,” Steve offered. “But pick one up for me, too.”

So Ricky and I headed out to Delucia’s. Edna was behind the counter as usual.

“I think I’ll have an oyster po-boy,” I told her, “with as much sauce as you want to put on it.”

“You got it.”

“I’m sure going to miss you, Edna.”

“Calla, I can’t believe that you’re really moving back home,” she said. “Not a lot of people can leave New Orleans. You know, once you get down here, the gravity of this place can hold you tight.”

“Oh, I know! The pull is strong,” I said. “But going home has been a longtime dream for me.”

Edna wrapped up our po-boys and put them in a bag.

“Could you give us three soda fountain Cokes, too?” I asked. “Not bottled or canned but real soda fountain Cokes with a lot of ice, please. And a big bag of Doritos.”

We brought the food home and sat out on the glassed-in porch to eat. Ricky and I sat on the swing where Sweet and I had spent so much time.

“I’m gonna miss these tomatoes on the po-boys, and how the bread gets soft from the sauce,” I said.

“Yum,” Ricky agreed. “But don’t you worry. You’re going to have plenty of good food in La Luna, too.”

Steve came out and joined us. “Are you going to miss Ginger Rogers, too?” he asked, unwrapping his po-boy.

“Yes, I am,” I said, thinking of that crazy little dancing dog they had.

We finished our po-boys and the entire bag of Doritos. Then Ricky said, “Y’all can lounge around here as long as you want, but
I
am getting back to work. Lazy butts, lazy butts! How do you ever expect to get packed?”

“Just let me finish my Coke,” I said.

Ricky and Steve went into the house, and I took a few minutes to enjoy my Coke and think about my move. The idea of it both thrilled and scared me to death. Then I opened the porch door and heard a tippy-tap sound, like Sukey in high heels. “Hey, Suke?” I called out.

But it wasn’t Sukey. Instead a little creature with wonderful blond and white hair, big eyes, and long floppy ears came tip-tapping out from the kitchen.
I must be dreaming,
I thought.

Then Ricky and Steve appeared in the kitchen doorway, both of them grinning. Ricky said, “Now you know why Steve wanted to stay here while we went for po-boys. Calla, honey, this little guy is a stand-in for the two of us. He’ll be with you to keep us on your mind.”

“Oh, how adorable,” I said as I picked up the little dog, who was just the right size to hold and pet in your lap.

“He’s a cockapoo, just like Miss Ginger,” Ricky told me.

I set the little dog down, and wouldn’t you know it? He just started tip-tapping in this little backward dance on the wooden floor.

“What are you going to call him?” Steve asked.

“There’s only one name I could give him,” I said. “Why, he’s Fred Astaire!”

Finally, there was nothing left to pack but Sweet’s clothes. Ricky and Steve had offered to box them up and take them to the thrift store. But that just didn’t feel right to me. I wasn’t ready to have every trace of my husband scattered to the winds as his body was. I didn’t want strangers—who didn’t even know that he always wore the sleeves of his shirts rolled up—to have more of Sweet than I did.

“Let me look these clothes over and think,” I told them.

So they left me alone as I opened Sweet’s dresser drawers and flung open the door to the closet. I wanted to feel the fullness of his presence.

“Sweet,” I said, “I believe in the kingdom of heaven, and I know that while you were here on earth, you earned a just reward by bringing people joy. Your joy, your spirit, is still in these clothes. Help me figure out where they belong.”

And then it came to me, just what I needed to do. I called Ricky and Steve back into the bedroom.

“Let’s box them up,” I said. “I’m going to take them all with me.”

So we did. When we were all through, I walked through the empty house. I looked at the floors, remembering how we’d stripped off coats and coats of paint and then sanded and oiled them—Sweet was so good at that.

“I hope the people moving in will treat these floors as nice as we have,” I told Ricky and Steve.

“They’d better,” Ricky said, “or they’ll have us to contend with.”

As we walked down the front steps I said, “Y’all, wait a minute. Hold Fred Astaire for me. There’s just one last little thing I need to do inside.”

And I went back in. I kissed the door handle of our bedroom, and I looked around the room and thought of all the times we’d made sweet love in there. Then I went in the kitchen and I kissed the stove, thanking it for all the pots of red beans and rice we’d cooked on top of it, and all the gumbos. I looked around the kitchen and then stood on the back porch, and finally, the front porch. As I walked down the steps for the last time, I turned around and gathered it all in my hands, pulling it into my heart. And then—
whoooshhhh
! With a whoosh, I let it go.

A
fter kissing our house good-bye, I climbed into my Mustang, and drove away from New Orleans, my home for over ten years—the place where I’d found the love of my life, the city where I’d made a home. I felt kind of relieved that it would be a few days before Ricky and Steve arrived with the U-Haul. I needed to feel myself at home again in La Luna.

So it was just me and Fred Astaire, heading out on the highway. He was a good little traveler, curling up on the front seat and sleeping the whole way. I had Stevie Wonder on the tape deck. I love Stevie Wonder. His music has often comforted me. It’s made me laugh and cry and dance and sing.

Pretty soon, trees and fields, sky and water, took the place of buildings. I saw a wide flat horizon with billowy white thunderheads coming up from the south. I knew I’d better get on home before those thunderstorms hit.

Living in New Orleans, it had been easy to forget how beautiful the home soil of rural Louisiana was. Fertile fields and farms and bayous whizzed by as I made my way along the red-earthed low flatlands. Gradually the road drifted away from the river delta into prairielike land that wasn’t farmed as much as the rich soil next to the river. The road climbed just a bit, and the two-lane highway began to split patches of piney woods and stands of hardwood trees. There was just the occasional white clapboard farmhouse now and then, and white egrets standing motionless in the fields that opened up between forests.

I began to breathe a little easier and deeper, and I turned my thoughts to La Luna.

Papa still taught a class or two, and the first Saturday of the month still found everybody dancing and playing music, starting at nine in the morning. The Swing ’N Sway had been constantly in my thoughts, with its floor-to-ceiling mirrors and its rich history, in my vision for the Crowning Glory.

I could not wait to get into that studio and make it even more beautiful than it was. Soon I came upon the last rural stretch of the parish before Claiborne, where the curved edges of the fields and the unexpected stands of trees made me think of the old European landscape paintings I’d seen in the museum in New Orleans. As I got off the main road and took a detour to avoid going through Claiborne, I came to the bridge that crossed over the slow moving, red-brown water of the La Luna River.

And then I was home! La Luna was about a mile square, bounded by the river on one side and farm fields and woods on the other three. I got off the bridge and drove toward the town center about a block in. There was a small black AME Baptist church at the edge of town, then Our Lady of the River church, then the high-steepled white Southern Baptist church. I smiled as I drove by Nelle’s Shop, Snack ’N Skate. Nelle, I’ll see you soon!

Our home was downriver from the bridge, a few sleepy blocks away. And indeed, all was quiet as I pulled into our gravel driveway. I turned off the ignition and leaned back in my seat for a while. My window was open, and I listened to the silence and the soft sounds of the river. I let the shadows of the live oaks and magnolias settle down upon me.

I’d already talked to Papa about converting the dance studio into my salon. On my last visit to La Luna, I’d brought him and my brothers some of my settlement money. Papa said, “Calla, honey, this money will let me do what I’ve wanted to do for a long time—move out of the house, start out fresh, and make new memories. I’ve been wanting to scale back on my teaching and play more with my combo. So if you want the house, it’s yours. I’d love to move up to my fishing camp full time.”

“Oh, Papa, I don’t want to kick you out of the home where you’ve lived forever.”

“I’ve been holding on to this place for you,” he said, “like your M’Dear told me to. I knew you’d be back someday.” Then Papa grinned. “And I got catfish with my name on them!” He laughed, and I joined in.

“Oh, Papa!” I said, then I hugged him tight. It felt wonderful to laugh together.

The next morning I stood at the front entrance to the Swing ’N Sway. There I was looking at an old dance studio to renovate into a salon—plus a house to make my own for me and Fred Astaire. I prayed,
Oh, Moon Lady and M’Dear, I need your help to step over this threshold and claim this place as my Crowning Glory.
Then I felt a slight nudge, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the studio with brand-new eyes.

I had a vision of just where I wanted the shampoo sink and the special, comfortable leaning-back chair—just one, because I’m going to be one-on-one with all my customers, hoping that healing will come with my touch for all of them. I’ll find someone to handle manicures and pedicures.

I’ll use M’Dear’s antique vanity for my rollers and perm rods and scissors. And I’ll get some kind of rolling unit made out of lightweight wood. I don’t want anything cold and plastic in my salon.

I can see it now. I’ll expand the old dance studio porch and get a new swing with pretty cushions on it. Then I’ll paint up our old wicker chairs and table, so clients can sit there and read magazines while sipping on real lemonade and ice tea. I’ll make my salon so inviting and beautiful that just walking in will make clients feel relaxed. So my vision for the Crowning Glory was emerging, and I had the Moon Lady and M’Dear to thank for it.

Oh, it was so wonderful to be back home! I wanted to keep the house more or less the way M’Dear had it, the way it had been for years. I’ll leave M’Dear and Papa’s room the way it was for the time being, but I’ll redo my room with a new paint color—a lavender that makes me feel both calm and alive.

And the kitchen—I
loved
that old kitchen! The walls were an old rich buttery yellow, and it had old green-and-white tile countertops, a painted wood floor, and all the wooden cabinetry originally built by my grandfather. The cabinetry was painted white when I was little, but then M’Dear painted it all a fabulous deep scarlet
.
Using that color in the kitchen was just unheard of in La Luna, or
anywhere
as far as I was concerned. But that was M’Dear for you. That kitchen with all its color always felt like a party.

The house still had ceiling fans in every room, which we used all year round. In winter, I loved how the blades moved counterclockwise, to push the hot air down to warm us.

How I loved this house that was once shared by the five of us. Now it would be home to me and Fred Astaire—and who knows, possibly someone else someday.

It was such a comfort to me to have Sweet’s clothes with me as I settled in, but I knew it was time to give them away.

One day I saw Olivia’s husband, Pana, riding by on his bicycle. So I called out, “Pana! Hello! I’ve got something for you.”

“Are you cooking?” he asked.

“No, it’s not food.” Then I gave him Sweet’s nylon windbreaker jacket, which was gray with black and purple diagonal stripes.

“Try it on,” I told him. “Go on in and look at yourself in the mirror.”

“Oh, this nice, this real nice. Thank you, Miss Calla. It so nice to have you in the house. I look out at night and see your lights. Since your daddy spend so much time up to the camp, this old house so lonely, be like you could just feel how lonely it was. You need anything done around here, you just call. I be watching over you all the time.”

Since the jacket fit Pana so well, I gave him some of Sweet’s shirts and pants too. I tied them up in a bundle with string.

“Are you sure you can carry all that on your bike?” I asked. “I can bring it to you later.”

“No, no, I carry lots of things on my bike.”

Then he was off, slowly pedaling the bike across the road, wearing Sweet’s jacket.

Little by little, I gave Sweet’s clothes away to people I knew. Then I piled up the rest and drove them to the black Baptist church. After that the strangest thing would happen. Every once in a while, I’d spot Sweet’s clothes on the back of someone heading out to pick pecans, on someone walking to the mailbox, on the school bus driver, on a man going to church. I even saw some women wearing Sweet’s shirts. At first, that threw me. I’d catch a glimpse of a certain plaid shirt, for instance, and would think it was Sweet. I’d have to stop the car and take a big, deep breath to calm myself down.

Then I started to love seeing Sweet’s clothes being worn by people in La Luna. They were like little pieces of Sweet still moving, a reminder that he really was still there—not so I could touch him, but in the way that red birds flit past on a cold winter day. You can’t touch them, but they are there, giving a bit more color to the world.

The one thing of Sweet’s that I kept for myself was his T-shirts. I’d loved sleeping in them when he was alive, and I still did now that he was gone. Sometimes, I’d lift the soft cotton of the T-shirt to my nose and imagine that I could still smell his smell. That was such a comfort.

Once I let Sonny Boy know that I had to decided to convert the dance studio into my Crowning Glory salon, it seemed like everybody started calling and showing up, wanting to do something for me. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even have to ask most of the time. Somehow, I had forgotten how people in a small town just pitch in and help to “
get it done!
”

The first thing I discussed with Sonny Boy, who now had his own construction company, Sonny Boy Building, was how to divide the space so we could continue the first-Saturday-of-the-month dances and cook-ups that had been a tradition in La Luna since we were kids. I told him I only needed a third of the old dance studio for my salon.

He helped me with everything, making sure that those floors got resanded and then putting a good coat of varnish on them. He sketched a plan for putting French doors in at the entrance.

“I want to get that whole front section open for you,” he told me, “so that the light and a view of the river can come in. I think two, maybe even three sets of French doors. I’ve found you some good old brick out by the Bennett plantation, so I can make you a patio with a fountain. Will is on board to design everything. I want your ladies to look out there and see the river and be able to hear it. And you can plant all kinds of flowers around the patio and have an awning and little tables and lounge chairs where the customers can sit and relax.”

Aunt Helen, of course, offered to do anything involving sewing. We decided to drape gold tulle around the edges of the mirror where I would do hair. It had been the mirror that sat on top of M’Dear’s antique dresser, and it had these wonderful 1920s ornate rosettes and curlicues on the edges, plus two little drawers on the side where I could keep my instruments. I wanted to start with the mirror because it would be the first thing clients would see. I wanted the salon to feel like an old drawing room in the South, homey and a little mysterious.

As for the rest, Renée found me some gorgeous old wooden cabinetry and helped me paint it a glossy black with gold accents. And I found a comfortable plump chair that was red with tiny little gold specks.

Ricky and Steve arrived early Saturday morning for the weekend, and worked with Will and me to choose my color scheme. We decided that the walls should be painted mauve. Steve took control of having the paint mixed just right. Then we all went to work painting. By the time Ricky and Steve headed back to New Orleans late Sunday night, Ricky was saying, “My back is killing me. I shudder to think what the hairdos I come up with tomorrow will look like.”

The next weekend they came back, bringing Sukey along, too, to start focusing on all the accents for the salon. Ricky was particularly good with lighting. Ricky said, “Now, we need to start working with your aunt’s chiffon fabric. I’d like to be a little more careful in the relationship between the lights and the chiffon. We do have everything on dimmers, is that correct?”

“Exactly, Ricky.”

“I couldn’t take it if it wasn’t. Now—”

“Ricky, come over here. I want to show you this little area that I’m calling ‘the parlor.’ We’re going to have lamps in there, too.”

“Very good. The more lamps, the better. Remember, everyone looks better in a pink light.”

“Ricky, I know—but I want people to leave here looking like they will in the real world.”

“Calla, I ask you, what is more healing? To see yourself as you want to see yourself, or to see yourself as you think others will see you?”

I said, “Well, to see yourself as you want to see yourself.”

“I rest my case,” Ricky said. “Everyone looks better in
pink
light.”

I had to laugh, but that silly conversation made me think.
He’s right
.
This whole place is about healing. It’s about healing myself and healing anyone who comes in
. Then I walked Ricky out to the porch.

“Papa’s redoing the porch with Pana’s help. They’re putting in new screens and making sturdy new steps. I’m asking them to paint them periwinkle, along with the interior of the porch. So when my customers enter the Crowning Glory, they will know they’re entering a different kind of a place. And I’ll be having music playing that you can hear from out here, music that makes your hair feel good.”

“Perfecto,” Ricky said. “Yes, Calla, relaxation is everything.”

“This space,” I said, “which has healed for years, will continue its magic!”

That evening, Ricky, Steve, Sukey, and I cooked dinner and had a lovely, lively visit together before they had to head back to New Orleans. I missed them terribly as they drove off, but I was excited that the Crowning Glory was really coming together.

Miz Lizbeth was the one who gave me the rug for the parlor at the salon. The day I’d gone to visit and update her about all my plans for the salon, she said, “Why, Calla, I’ve got a rug here that has been rolled up forever that would be perfect.”

It
was
perfect and so beautiful, an old-fashioned shade of light blue with a wine-colored pattern.

“Are you sure you want to give this away?” I asked.