The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (5 page)

“About five of them,” Sonny Boy said. “Right down there. One is blind and especially dangerous.”

“Well, we’ve got them up where I came from,” Tucker turned to all of us and said. “Where I used to swim we had seventeen of them. And they don’t bother me at all.”

I looked at him and thought to myself,
He is lying through his teeth
. But I didn’t say anything. Seventeen alligators. Brother.

Sonny Boy grabbed the rope first and showed Tucker how to get on. Sonny Boy was kind of showing off, hanging on to the rope with only one arm.

He said, “You climb up to the second knot, then you push off from the tree with your feet to get going. If you don’t push out far enough, you could land in those roots and you’d be a mess, man. You’d be cut up and have a big old snake and a blind alligator over you in two seconds.” Sonny Boy winked over at me when he said the blind alligator part.

Then my brother pushed off the tree like he’d done it a thousand times and swung out over the water. At the last moment he let go, and everybody clapped and hollered. He made a big splash and then he swam out a few feet and yelled back, “You have to swim out here far enough to be away from the bushes and then swim back over to the sandy beach.” He started to swim back himself, but then he stopped and dog-paddled out to the middle of the river to watch and see if Tucker would really do it.

So Tucker climbed up there, and he grabbed the rope. He swung back to the tree, kicked his feet, and pushed off. Then he let go and did a big cannonball that made a huge splash, a much bigger splash than Sonny Boy, even though he was smaller. Then he started swimming out to the river, and they swam back together.

Everybody said, “That was really great.” And Sonny said, “I can do better than that.” So he climbed up there again—this time to the
third
knot—and said, “I’m going backwards this time.” And he did a big old cannonball backwards!

And so Tucker went up there too, grabbed the rope, and
he
climbed up to the third knot and he pushed off. He went out there over the water, but he didn’t let go. He swung back again and pushed off even higher—but just as he was swinging out, the rope broke! He went straight down and glanced off the roots and fell into the water right under the roots!

Dear Lord, there must’ve been a moccasin nest right where he fell, because suddenly there were ten or so little light-colored baby water moccasins all around him! And I couldn’t believe it, he was hollering and we were all screaming and then, quick as lightning, he grabbed up onto a root and pulled himself up halfway and—I swear to God—this new boy
walked on water.
I mean it. He walked on water about four feet to climb a log, and he just climbed and scrambled up those roots and brambles and crawled up the bank. He had trouble right at the top when the big root he was holding onto started to break. I ran over and grabbed his arm that was reaching up and pulled as hard as I could. I could feel him kicking and scrambling to get back on the top of the bank. I kept pulling for all I was worth and then suddenly he was over and I tumbled backwards and he kind of landed on top of me and then rolled over on his back. He was breathing hard and I thought, he’s
got
to be snake-bit. I didn’t know if I should help him or run back to the house and find M’Dear so we could get a doctor. Tucker LeBlanc was pale as a ghost and his eyes were kind of wild-looking. But he was cool as a cucumber. When he could finally catch his breath, he looked at me and mumbled, “Thanks.” Then he started checking over his body.

All the others were still frozen in their tracks with their mouths hanging wide open. None of us could believe how he had pulled himself up and got out of there.

“You better sit back down while we go get help,” I told him.

“Nah, these are just scratches,” he replied in between breaths. “I didn’t get bit.”

Not a single snake bit him!

In half an hour the whole town had heard the story about the new boy Tucker, and of course, every time the story got told it grew bigger and bigger. How he had grabbed three of the snakes and threw them into the bushes. And how he had walked on water for about twelve feet to get up out of the river.

The next morning I actually heard somebody say he took one snake in his hand and just flung it around above his head like a lasso. Just threw it out through the trees, out into the water. He banged it up against the tree itself and said, “I’ll show you.” Can you imagine?

Sonny Boy and Tucker got punished big-time. But when I asked Sonny Boy if it was worth it, he just smiled his wide smile and said, “Oh yeah.” But then he quickly added, “Don’t tell Papa I said that, though.”

For all our growing up, Tucker was known as Snake Boy. And that’s how people thought of him until he became a football star in high school, and then people kind of forgot about the snake business. But even on the football team his nickname was Snake, just to intimidate the other teams. We made sure all the other schools heard the story of Snake Boy, who killed thirty water moccasins with his bare hands and wrestled an old blind alligator to his death.

You’d think that after I had saved his life, Tucker would act like a decent human being. But no. He went and picked a fight.

I went over to the Tuckers’ the next day, and there he was, just lording it around the stables like he was king of the universe. So I ignored him and went in the stable to get the Shetland pony, Ricko, that I always rode. Uncle Tucker had been letting us use his stables and ride his ponies forever. I was putting the bridle on him when Tucker walked in and said, “What are you doing?”

“Well, what does it look like I’m doing? I’m putting the bridle on Ricko.”

“Who told you you could do that?”

“What do you mean, who told me I could do it? I don’t have to ask anybody. Uncle Tucker lets me ride Ricko any time I want.”

“Who gave you the right to call him Uncle Tucker?”

“Because that’s what I have called him ever since I was born! It’s what you grow up calling someone who is very close to your family. I bet we even knew him before you did.”

That’s when he hit me, hard, on the shoulder! What could I do? I hit him back. I was so mad that I couldn’t finish bridling Ricko. So I walked outside, and Tucker followed me.

“Where do you come from,” I turned around and asked him, “that you think you can just start off hitting a girl, a girl you hardly even know? I’m sorry, but that’s not the way we act around here.”

He said, “What do you mean, where do I come from? And what do you mean, you knew my grandfather before I did?”

“Well, it’s true!” I said. “You’ve hardly ever been out here. You weren’t even born here.”

Then he hit me again—in the leg! I couldn’t believe it.

So I just went over to him and grabbed his blond hair, pulling it as hard as I could. I’m as tall as Tucker. In fact, I’m taller, by about four and a half inches.

Then he grabbed my hair back. Well, I don’t like people grabbing my hair. So I just pushed him till he fell on the ground.

“Ha, ha-ha-ha!” I said. “I don’t know where you come from, but I bet girls there can’t beat you up like this, can they?”

He got up real quick and shoved me right down on the ground. Before I knew it, we were wrestling like crazy.

Then I heard Miz Lizbeth saying, “Tucker! Tucker LeBlanc! Don’t you dare! Get in here—get in here right now!”

We turned to see Miz Lizbeth and Olivia standing on the porch. Though she is Miz Lizbeth’s maid, Olivia is at our house enough to know what M’Dear and Papa’s rules are. Whenever any of us did something bad, it seemed like Olivia was the one to catch us. She said M’Dear had eyes in the back of her head, and so did she.

I gave Tucker’s hair one last pull. “Ouch!” he said. As far as I was concerned, getting an “ouch” is as good as winning the fight. So I burst out laughing. “Hah!” I laughed. “Hah! Hah! Hah!”

“Calla? Stop that laughing,” Miz Lizbeth said. “Now you get up, both of you, and come over here. Y’all are filthy dirty!”

As Olivia picked us up by the collar, Miz Lizbeth told her, “Olivia, take these two children into the house and wash them up right now.”

Olivia made us stand in the kitchen while she cleaned us both up. I tried to kick Tucker one more time, but Olivia stopped me. When we were presentable, she marched us into the parlor, where Miz Lizbeth was standing.

Miz Lizbeth told us, “Calla and Tucker, you look at me. I want the two of you, right now, to say you’re sorry and then shake hands with each other.”

Tucker said, “Are you kidding? She’s so ugly with that long pigtail! And that’s what she is—a pig! She’s a pig!”

“Tucker! Don’t you
dare
talk about Calla that way.”

I said, “Huh.” Just kind of giving a little laugh and a smile so Tucker could see that I had not only won—hands down—by getting the “ouch,” but also by getting a little laugh in while Miz Lizbeth was facing him.

Miz Lizbeth then turned around and said, “Calla, don’t think you can get away with that little laugh and that smile. I can feel it behind my back—I’m like your mama. Now shake hands.”

Neither one of us put our hands up.

“I will not repeat myself one more time.”

Well, I had never heard Miz Lizbeth talk like this. But she was just so nice, with all her soft white curls, and I had loved her since forever. And she was one of M’Dear’s best friends. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Besides, if I put my hand out, that would make it look even more like I won the fight. Because who puts their hand out first? Certainly not the loser. Even I know that’s how the game is played.

So I put my hand out to shake, but Tucker didn’t even move his arm. He just stood there. I couldn’t believe it.

“Tucker, can’t you hear what I keep telling you to do?” Miz Lizbeth said.

Finally, Tucker put up his hand and we shook. His hands were still so dusty and grimy that I had to wipe mine on my shorts afterward.

“Now, say you’re sorry, both of you.”

“He’s going to have to say sorry first,” I said, “because he’s the one who started it.”

“I am not! She’s the one who started it. She went out there without asking and saddled him. She was putting a bridle on him—my horse, the horse I wanted to ride.”

“Ricko?” Miz Lizbeth asked. “Tucker, that is the pony that Calla has always ridden. There are plenty of other ponies, any one that you can make your own.”

“Well, I’m not saying I’m sorry.”

“Do I have to go through this all again? Do you want me to have to go in and get Papa Tucker? Because he will handle this a little bit differently.”

“No, no, ma’am,” Tucker said quickly. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

First he was so tough, and then he acted downright scared when he heard Uncle Tucker’s name, like Uncle Tucker would beat him up or something—when everyone knows that Uncle Tucker is gentle as can be. I apologized, too, and started to walk off, but just then I decided to turn around for a second and whisper, “I’m still taller than you.”

O
n the day it happened, I swam in the river first thing in the morning, like any other summer day. I dove in off the pier and swam the Australian crawl, like Papa had taught me. Then I turned on my back and floated for a while, looking for figures in the clouds above.

I walked back home along the path, making sure not to step on any stickers—those things that stick in your feet when you’re barefoot. After I changed into my shorts, I stuck my head into the Crowning Glory and asked M’Dear if I could go to the Shop ’N Skate. She gave me a kiss and a quarter, and I headed out.

One of the things I have always loved about our town is there are all these paths that you can walk without having to go into the streets with the cars. Once I crossed the street in front of our house, I could go all the way to Nelle’s Shop ’N Skate without ever having to walk on another road! Some are just sandy paths, but some are covered with pine straw, which smells so good on a hot day. When you walk on the paths, you pass other people’s backyards and vegetable gardens. And if they’re outside I always wave and they wave back and we talk and visit a while. That’s how it is in La Luna.

I had my mind set on a cold Orange Crush when I pushed open the screen door to the Shop ’N Skate. Orange Crushes were the onliest cold drinks I would touch because I’d read in
Teen
magazine that anything brown in a bottle gives you pimples.

And there was Nelle. I can still remember the way she looked that day, beautiful like always, sitting on her swivel stool behind the counter, wearing a blue cotton short-sleeve shirt tied up over a pair of faded yellow shorts. She loved color, and it showed all over. She had a deep tan all year and pretty light brown hair that she cut very short with fingernail scissors. It looked kind of sophisticated in what M’Dear calls a Bohemian way. That hair had a mind of its own, and so did Nelle. She was an original, what everyone called “a character.” She and I took to each other the first time we met, which would have been when I was three months old. M’Dear was about six years older than Nelle, and had watched her grow up.

“Nelle,” I said, “if it was any hotter, I’d have to crawl up under the porch with the yard dogs!”

“Well, come on in, girl,” she told me. “You’re smart to have your hair up in pigtails like that—keeps your head from getting too hot. Get yourself a cold drink out of the cooler.”

The heat never did seem to bother Nelle like it did the rest of us. She was always cool and slow, like she and the store’s old ceiling fan were on the same speed.

Nelle was the proprietor of Nelle’s Shop ’N Skate roller-skating rink. After her daddy died and left her the family place and some good-size acreage, Nelle shocked everyone by up and buying the old La Luna grocery and fixing it up.

She fixed herself up a little apartment to live in behind it. Everyone had just assumed she would settle down and get married, but now folks said she was “not the marrying kind.” Sukey, Renée, and I suspected Nelle had a secret boyfriend who she went to see when she went away for three or four days every month and closed the store but we never told anyone, because we didn’t have evidence that Nancy Drew would approve of.

Besides the grocery and roller rink, Nelle kept horses in her own barn, and gave lessons to Renée and me, along with a few other girls. Both M’Dear and Papa loved Nelle. Sonny Boy said he wanted to be like her because “she comes when she wants to come, and goes when she wants to go. She’s got her business set up good, and she has time to go fishing.” I guess that described Nelle pretty well. That, along with the fact that, along with M’Dear and Papa, she was one of the best dancers in La Luna. Folks just liked it when Nelle liked them, because she sure didn’t like everybody. When Nelle decided she liked someone, M’Dear called it a “Nelle Endorsement.” Mama knew who liked who because of being in the position she was in, both a dance teacher and beautician. A whole lot of town “information” came to my mother, but you’d have to put bamboo shoots under M’Dear’s fingernails to get it out of her.

Nelle added the skating rink about two years after she took over the grocery. Papa says he remembers coming in and seeing her in there hammering right along with the builders. Even back then she had a sign in the grocery like she does now, that read, “Help yourself. Leave your money on the counter. Honor system.”

Nelle was petite, maybe about five-feet-one at the most, and what little there was of her was muscle. She was a fine horse lady, and I only wished I could someday be as good as she was. She taught me how to ride, and from the minute I got my own horse, she helped me learn good horsemanship. She was good to our town, too. Always donating canned goods for our Christmas food drives and opening up the skating rink for special causes. I looked up to her—well, I actually looked
down
to her, since I was already taller than she was. But I was still a kid, and she was a grown-up. She could have been my mother, age-wise. But no one else in the universe could be my mother but M’Dear, the brightest star in La Luna.

I hopped up on the big red Coke cooler, which is where I liked to sit, to sip my Orange Crush and watch Nelle zero in on a fruit fly. Nelle was still as a turtle for a second or two and then she
whomped
that flyswatter down so fast it made my head spin. Then she reached for a clean rag and slowly wiped her counter clean. Nelle always had that old wooden counter polished to a shine.

I loved to just sit and look around the Shop ’N Skate. The store had wide old pine plank floors that Nelle kept gleaming. On one side of the store Nelle had her food aisles—mostly canned goods and what have you. Then there were the stacks of empty soda bottles in wooden racks and Nelle’s big shiner box for folks who liked to use live bait. I mean, that shiner box had some of the biggest worms you’d ever see in your life! Next to that was a big bright yellow display card of all kinds of fancy fishing lures. On the walls were old painted metal signs to advertise things like Holsum bread, Viceroy cigarettes, and Coca-Cola. Nelle also had this great rack of used paperbacks. They cost a nickel, but if you brought in a paperback to exchange, they were free!

I would have to say, though, that my favorite part of the Shop ’N Skate—besides the rink, of course—was the magazine rack. Nelle had all these magazines from all over the place, always displayed so nice and neat. She let me look through them if I was real careful not to bend them up.

To get to the rink you had to go beyond Nelle’s counter, sitting first at a long wooden bench to put your roller skates on. There was a small room there where the skates were stored, in all sizes—black for boys, white for girls, and little bitty red ones, cute as could be, for the small kids. Rows and rows of skates on plywood shelves, skates with wooden wheels. Nelle paid me a nickel a pair for polishing those skates every month or so. She had an old carpenter tray filled with tubs of shoe polish and brushes and Texana heat powder to sprinkle inside so the skates wouldn’t stink. Skaters had to provide their own socks, but Nelle always had a few clean pairs lying around for people who forgot and came in barefoot.

I was staring at the cover of the new
Life
magazine that had a lady with a swirly hairdo swept high on her head when Nelle broke me out of my daydreaming.

“Calla, girl,” she said, “Ruth Ellen Ronson came in here yesterday after you did her hair. Looked like movie star hair—even on Ruth. I suspect you have the gift of beauty, honey. Anyone that can make Ruth Ellen Ronson look that good has
got
to have the divine grace. You ought to get yourself some training, sweetheart. Start up a
career
. A career’s an important thing. That’s what kept me going when I first opened the store. I thought, ‘Nelle, you get to call the shots now. You got your own place and your own possibilities.’ A career’s something to hold on to, Calla. Look at your mama. She’s got a career, and I suspect that she gets almost as much as she gives.”

Well, it was true. I
was
getting pretty well known around La Luna for doing hair.

When Mariane Trichelle got married—a huge wedding, every single soul in the parish of Tallabena was there—I helped M’Dear do the entire bridal party’s hair. After that, word just spread that I was good with hair. And I
was.
I had flips down cold by the end of that wedding, and I could tease a head into a smooth bubble in nothing flat. Later, I told M’Dear that I wanted to learn a French twist, and she said, “Calla, I think you might just be what we call a beauty prodigy.”

But until that day, talking to Nelle in the shop, I had never thought about beauty as a career. I was still thinking about beauty as a career when the screen door squeaked open and in walked Cleveland Bonton.

Now, Cleveland’s mother was Bertha Bonton, Olivia’s daughter, who had been ironing over at Aunt Helen’s house forever since I could remember. Cleveland must have been a few years younger than me, maybe nine. Sometimes he mowed our yard when my brothers couldn’t get to it. I will never forget one time M’Dear had me take him some ice tea out to the yard, and when I went back out there to get the pitcher, he was sitting under the pecan tree just singing like you never heard! He sang so sweet it made me want to cry—some gospel song, I can’t remember exactly what, but it was something like, “Over my head, I see glory in the air.” Beautiful, high, sweet little-boy voice. I stood there listening to Cleveland, just amazed. When he finished, I told him, “Hey, you are
good
. You could be the Little Stevie Wonder of La Luna, Louisiana.”

He smiled at me and laughed. “Onliest thing is, I ain’t blind!”

“Still,” I said, “you are a boy musical genius like Little Stevie Wonder.”

“Thank you, Miss Calla,” he said. “I sings in the choir at St. Claude AME Baptist.” Then he finished up the rest of that ice tea in one gulp.

Miss
Calla, that’s what he called me. Even though we weren’t nothing but kids, both of us.

When I went back in the house, I told M’Dear about Cleveland’s singing. She said, “Lord, yes, Negro people are blessed with a good ear. You should have heard Cleveland’s grandfather sing! Played guitar, too.”

M’Dear and Papa taught us to always say “Negro” because they thought it was more polite than “colored.” And we
knew
it was better than “nigger.” That word was not permitted in our household.

Anyway, so in came Cleveland to the Shop ’N Skate. Pair of long black skinny legs sticking out from under his cutoffs, his head hanging down, staring at the floor.

“Afternoon, Cleveland,” Nelle said. “How’s your mama doing?”

“My mama doing just fine. How you, Miss Nelle? Miss Calla?”

Then he kept on standing there. His eyes were glued to the floor like it was going to look up and tell him what to do next.

“What can I do for you today?” Nelle asked him.

Cleveland didn’t say a thing. We waited and we waited and we waited some more, but Cleveland didn’t say a word.

Finally, he said, “Miss Nelle, I wants to skate.”

Whoa! Negro people had never skated in Nelle’s place. Oh, Nelle served them, sold them bread, shiners, Coca-Colas, and all. But they didn’t use the bathroom there, they didn’t drink from the fountain, and they didn’t—
couldn’t
—skate in the rink. But there was Cleveland Bonton, standing there and asking if he could skate!

I’d known Bertha and her boys all my life, and I never thought that one of them would up and do something like this. It was wild. It was sticky.
It was against the law
.

I had been seeing so much on TV. In Birmingham, hundreds of Negro people out in the street, and huge police dogs with mean, sharp teeth. Dogs trained to kill, taking down little boys, girls, and old women. Fire hoses forcing regular everyday Negro people down on the ground, up against trees, with force so strong that M’Dear said, with tears in her eyes, “You know it must have ruptured kidneys and torn-apart spleens.” Oh, it was ugly business. The Sunday those four little girls were killed by a bomb, little girls in their best Sunday dresses. Papa cried when he saw the news with Walter Cronkite. Will, Sonny Boy, and me, we were all so sad and confused. M’Dear lit a sanctuary candle that day, and everyone was asked to join in prayers. For months, my dreams were all full of those little girls, the whiteness of their church dresses flying apart like burned feathers.

But we hadn’t ever seen anything like that around La Luna. The danger seemed far away. But when Cleveland asked to skate, though, it made my stomach start to hurt. What kind of mess was Cleveland fixing to get into? Did he want to skate so bad that he was willing to take this chance? Or was he just a little kid who wasn’t stopping to think?

Nelle didn’t answer Cleveland right away. The longer she didn’t say anything, the hotter it got, like that ceiling fan was somehow slowing down. Cleveland stood there, his knobby knees shaking like he was cold, even though sweat was dripping off his forehead.

Finally Nelle said, “Cleveland, it costs fifty cents to rent you a pair of skates. Two quarters.”

A big old grin spilled across his face. “Yas’m,” he said, “I got me the money.”

Then he reached down into his pockets, pulled out a handful of nickels and pennies, and plunked all the change down on the counter.

It seemed like time just stopped then. Nobody moved a muscle—not me, not Nelle, not Cleveland. I could still hear fruit flies buzzing over by the bait stand, the hum of the big red Coca-Cola cooler below me, the ticking of the clock with the Dr Pepper boy on it behind the counter.

All these things were flying through my mind:
What harm is it going to do, letting him skate on the empty rink?
I wanted Cleveland to skate, and at the same time I didn’t.

What did I see but Nelle picking up the change from the counter! She put it all in the register and asked, “What size skate you take, Cleveland?” She said it like she rented skates to colored people every day.