The Improper Life of Bezillia Grove (11 page)

Nana just rolled her eyes and tossed Nathaniel a quick good-bye. Then she grabbed my grandfather’s forearm and started dragging him back toward the house. I looked at Nathaniel and smiled. He stepped toward me, and in a very soft voice, to make certain that my grandmother would not hear what he was saying, made me promise to call if I needed anything or just found myself wanting to come home sooner than expected. He said it as though he thought I might need him. I said I would and then hugged him real tight. Nathaniel and I had kept our distance for too long, and it felt good to wrap my arms around his big, strong back. Standing next to Nathaniel was about the safest place on earth.

My grandparents were waiting for me in front of their little white, wood-frame house. Nana had patiently watched our good-bye from the porch, but now she was waving her right arm, signaling for me to move it along. “Food’s on the table, and it’s getting cold,” she hollered and then reached for the handle on the screen door and disappeared inside the house.

The table was set with nothing more than a checked vinyl cloth and some worn, white china. The food was served in a variety of mixing bowls, and a stack of white paper napkins was left piled right in front of my plate. “Oh, Nana, this looks so good,” I said, trying to be gracious, picking up a piece of fried okra between my thumb and forefinger, and popping it in my mouth. “Mmm. This is even better than Maizelle’s. But I swear if you tell her, I’ll have to call you a liar.”

“Well, sweetie, that’s quite something. Did you hear that, Macon? I can fry okra better than Elizabeth’s colored woman.”

“Nana!” I said, noticeably surprised.

“What, honeybee?” she asked, sounding both shocked and innocent in return. “We all know the colored can fry anything better than anybody. Ain’t that right, Macon?”

“I’ve always said that your nana is the best cook God ever put on this earth,” Pop answered obediently, and then he licked his fingers clean, leaving his paper napkin untouched by his plate and my grandmother’s words simmering in the air.

After the dishes were washed and left to dry on the counter, the three of us took our places on the back porch, where we watched the moon’s reflection as it poured itself across the lake. We sat in flimsy old folding chairs Nana had bought at the Kmart at least ten or fifteen years ago. Wherever a strap had broken, she had mended it with a piece of gray duct tape that stuck to your legs, especially when the air was heavy and thick, like it was tonight. I wondered if my mother had sat on chairs just like these. Heck, I wondered if she had sat on these very chairs, judging by the amount of tape holding them together. Maybe that was why Mother liked her wicker furniture with the big, thick cushions so much. Maybe she got tired of her legs sticking to this old tape.

Pop lit his cigar and blew smoke rings into the black night sky. He said he’d been studying the clouds since daybreak, and as best as he could tell, now looking at the stars, nice weather was going to last all week long. He said he planned it that way just for me. Nana said my grandfather knew no more about the weather than that damn fool they paid to look into the future on the Channel Four evening news. Then she glanced at her watch and let out a howl.

“Oh, my Lord, it’s after midnight, Macon. We got to get to bed or we’re gonna be worth nothing tomorrow.” And as if we were singing in a church choir, the three of us stood in unison and said good night.

My grandparents slept in a small bedroom next to the only bathroom in the house, at the end of a short, narrow hallway. I slept in the other bedroom, the one that had belonged to my mother. And even though my eyes were tired and heavy, I forced myself to stay awake long enough to soak in the few remaining details of her childhood still scattered about the room.

A dark wooden plaque with a picture of Jesus glued in the middle was hanging on the wall by the switch plate. A signature down in the right-hand corner confirmed it was hers, although I could never imagine her doing crafts of any kind. Nana said Mother had made it at Vacation Bible School. She said she had even burned the edges of the picture with a match to make it look ancient or something. She said my mother used to love to go to church when she was a little girl, rededicating her life to Jesus every chance she got. Mother rarely went to church anymore, unless she was parading a new Easter hat.

On the old oak dresser was a baby’s silver drinking cup, dull and tarnished from years of neglect, surely a gift from some generous distant relative or a dear well-heeled friend, as I’d never known my grandmother to buy anything this nice or expensive. I held it in my hands, trying to imagine my mother’s tiny fingers wrapped around the very same cup. It was so pretty, surely my mother had meant to take this with her.

Nana said she had kept everything in this room exactly the way it was the day my mother left home, the day she taped a note to the door explaining that there was nothing left in this town for her except beaten-down dreams and broken hearts. Nana didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s what I imagined Mother meant to write.

When I was small, I’d thought this room was strange, like some kind of memorial to a fallen soldier. I figured Nana was afraid that if she put anything away she might forget one precious memory after another until they were all gone forever. Now I wasn’t so sure, but finally I closed my eyes, knowing that it would all be the same in the morning.

chapter seven

P
op was already down at the corner market buying some fresh minnows and a gallon of gasoline so we could go fishing later out on the lake. I heard his truck rolling over the gravel just after the sun came up and knew where he was headed without anyone bothering to tell me. Nana was in the kitchen cooking. I could smell the bacon frying on the stove.

She hollered from the kitchen door, asking if I wanted a cup of coffee. Nathaniel always said drinking coffee before you were good and grown would stunt your growth. But Nana said it would make you smart. She said she gave it to my mother as soon as she was big enough to hold a cup. And when I walked into the kitchen, my grandmother was standing by her worn metal percolator with an empty mug in her hand, the words
ROCK CITY
now barely visible on the dull white porcelain. Nana and Pop had gone to Chattanooga seven or eight years ago, the first trip she said they’d taken since Mother left home. She said it wasn’t much of trip, but she always drank her coffee out of that mug.

“I guess this explains Mother’s love for her morning coffee,” I said, thinking my grandmother would be pleased that she had affected her daughter in such a habitual kind of way. “Nathaniel always takes Mother two cups before she gets out of bed. Mother says she just can’t face the day without it.”

“Before she gets out of bed? No fooling. Sounds like a spoilt princess to me. Lord, sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that child is mine,” Nana puffed, the word
princess
leaving a familiar and unsettling ring in my ears. “She didn’t always think she was better than everybody else. Big city done gone to her head. Hardly acts like she even knows who we are anymore. Hell, that girl never once appreciated what she did have.” Nana was suddenly spewing all sorts of foul, nasty words about her only daughter, sounding like an old, leaky pipe that had finally burst, flooding the room with anger and disappointment. She stomped out of the kitchen muttering something about needing to have her bath before Macon got home.

Sometimes I used to wonder if I was adopted. Cornelia said most kids do that at one time or another. She’d read that in
Seventeen
. For a time, I was certain that my real mother was a sweet, quiet woman with a kind smile who loved to work in her garden and greet me after school with a shower of hugs and kisses and questions about my day. Now seeing my grandmother, dressed in her worn-out chenille housecoat and dirty terry-cloth slippers, with pin curls clipped against her head, I wondered if my own mother had ever shared the same dream.

I sucked a tiny bit of the coffee over the rim of the mug and let it set in my mouth, but even doctored with milk and sugar, it was too strong and bitter. Nana said I’d come to like it if I kept at it. But as soon as I heard the water running in the tub, I poured the coffee down the drain.

From the open kitchen window, I could see Pop’s dilapidated green tractor still sitting in the lake. After the engine blew a few years ago, he just rolled it right down into the water. He said that a nice tasty fish would love to make a bed under that John Deere. I used to think it looked wonderful out there in the lake, half of it sticking straight up like some kind of crazy artist’s sculpture, the other half mysteriously hidden below the surface. Now it looked like nothing but a piece of junk that desperately needed to be hauled away.

“Bezellia, hey, honey, is that you?” I knew that voice without even looking to see who was calling my name. Mrs. Clara Scott had lived next door to my grandparents, well, since I could remember. I believe she may have been the kindest, sweetest woman I ever knew. And whenever I spent any time with Mrs. Scott, I swear the sun even shone a little brighter.

She had spied me from her own kitchen window and was practically falling out the small opening above the sink, contorting her body to get a better look, her large bosom pinched against the windowsill. The Scotts lived next door in the only brick house on this side of the lake. Mr. Scott worked at a bank down in Nashville and made the hour-long drive to the city and then back home again every single day. Mother never could understand why they chose to live so far from town, but Mrs. Scott simply said this lake was the most beautiful place on earth. Mother couldn’t help but wonder where
all
on earth she had been.

The Scotts’ only daughter, Megan, was a year older than me and one of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen. She was every bit as pretty as those models in the magazines, and Cornelia always figured she could have gone to New York City and modeled professionally except that Megan couldn’t say or hear a single word. During the week she went to the Lebanon School for the Deaf and the Blind, where she learned to talk with her hands. Nana said the real reason the Scotts lived out in the country, and not down in Nashville, was so they could hide their misfortune from the rest of the world.

As I stepped onto the brick walk that led to the Scotts’ front door, the loud roar of a riding mower drew my attention back to my grandparents’ yard. I turned around so hurriedly that I lost my footing and almost landed in the bed of bright red geraniums that were planted near the front steps. I expected to see Pop on top of his new John Deere, maybe taking it for a quick spin so I could admire it, ooh and aah over it. But there on top of my grandfather’s tractor sat a boy about my age. He was wearing a navy blue T-shirt and khaki shorts. A bright green ball cap covered his head, but his arms and legs were already a golden tan. He tipped his cap in my direction and then went about mowing the grass.

“Oh, my Lord, Bezellia, look at you. Oh my, I cannot believe that’s you,” Mrs. Scott shouted, forcing her small, almost childlike voice to be heard over the lawn mower. She pulled me into the entry hall and folded her thick, warm arms around me. Then she pushed me back, like my grandmother had, to get another good, long look. “You are so grown. Oh my, you are such a beautiful young woman. Looking more like your mother every day. Oh, my Lord. Get in this house and tell me what is going on with you.” No one had ever told me that I looked like my mother, until yesterday. Now I’d heard it twice and was surprised how much I liked it.

“Oh, how I wish Megan was here to see you,” Mrs. Scott continued, hardly pausing to take a breath. “She is going to be sick when she finds out that you are here. We didn’t know you were coming till just the other day.”

“Oh,” I said in a slightly wilted tone. “I really wanted to see her. Where’d she go?”

“Lord, that girl has gone to California for the summer.”

“Really?” I asked, obviously surprised. Suddenly it seemed very unfair that Megan’s parents would let her travel clear across the country and she not being able to speak one single word while my parents wouldn’t let me go to Paris, and I spoke the whole damn language—with an honest and authentic accent! I wondered how you said
quel dommage
with your hands.

“Yep, she just left day before yesterday. She’s staying with my sister down in some place called Marina del Rey and won’t be back till the middle of August. She’s learning to surf. Can you imagine that? She is just going to be sick when she hears you’re here and she’s there. Come on in and sit down and tell me what’s going on with you.”

Mrs. Scott put her arm around my waist and led me into a pleasant, sunny room with a large picture window. Beneath it was a long yellow sofa that reminded me of a big stick of butter with matching yellow lamps framing either end. The Scotts were definitely, as my grandmother would say, “highfalutin city people,” even if their address indicated otherwise. We sat side by side in the middle of the sofa, and Mrs. Scott laughed out loud as she repositioned the pillows behind her, admitting that her newly found passion for needlepoint might be becoming something of a hazard.

I told her that I, too, had done my fair share of needlepointing lately, and then I continued from there, spilling my story in tedious detail. Mrs. Scott sat patiently next to me, staring intently into my eyes, at least acting as though she was listening to every syllable spoken. I wondered if most mothers were this attentive or if she was such a good listener because she had to work extra hard to understand Megan.

I told her about my classmates’
life-altering
trip to Paris and mine to Old Hickory Lake. I told her about Adelaide and Baby Stella and all the other blue-eyed dolls that demanded my sister’s attention. I told her about Mother going to Minnesota every summer, and about Mrs. Hunt sitting on our front porch—first with my mother, then with my father. I knew my mother would die if she knew all the secrets I was sharing. But I didn’t care. I just kept talking, except about Samuel. I kept Samuel to myself.

Mrs. Scott offered me a bowl of homemade banana pudding, the kind that’s full of Nilla wafers and fresh bananas, the kind she said can help soothe an aching, troubled heart. I had two helpings while I flipped through the photo album of the Scotts’ family trip to Destin. The three of them looked so happy standing on the beach with their feet buried in the sand like one of those families you’d expect to see on a picture postcard inviting you to come and vacation on Florida’s sandy, white beaches. They sure didn’t look like they were trying to hide any kind of misfortune.

As I turned the last page, I realized that the lawn mower had stopped.

“Mrs. Scott,” I asked, still holding the album in my hands, “who’s that boy mowing my grandparents’ yard?”

“Oh, Lord, isn’t he a doll?”

“I can’t really tell from here. Just wondering who my grandfather would trust with his new John Deere.”

“Oh, believe me, Bezellia, he is precious. Megan just loves him. I mean like a brother and all. And he is just as good as they come. He is so sweet to her. He’s even learned to sign enough words that the two of them can carry on a conversation.” Cornelia would say that kind of sensitivity in a man is a rare and wonderful gift and should not be overlooked. I knew that’s what she’d say.

“Rutherford. Rutherford Semple,” Mrs. Scott continued. “But he hates Rutherford, so we all call him Ruddy. His daddy runs a small farm on the other side of Old Cove Road. Lived up here all his life. Lord, your mama surely must know him. They might have gone to school together. Anyway, Ruddy’s mama takes in sewing. She’s the one who put all these pillows together for me. They don’t have much, but they’re good people. Real good church people.”

“How long has he been working for Pop?”

“Oh, my goodness. I guess it’s been ever since your granddaddy had that big heart attack. When was that? Two, three years ago now? Lord, has it been that long since I’ve seen you? Anyway, he’s been doing it ever since then,” Mrs. Scott said and paused for a moment. “Kinda thought I would have seen your mama up here at some point. But I know she’s real busy with all her volunteer obligations. Your grandmother tells me that she’s a very important woman in town.”

I smiled, knowing that mother would be so pleased to know that someone still thought that she was important.

“But you ought to go and meet him,” Mrs. Scott suggested. “It would be nice for you to know someone your own age way out here, particularly since Megan is gone for the summer. In fact, you better get going. Go introduce yourself. I’ve kept you long enough now.”

Mrs. Scott scooted me right out the front door, of course not before my promise to come for dinner one night soon when Mr. Scott would be home. He would love to see me too, she said.

“Go on, girl, before your granddaddy pays him and he gets gone.” Mrs. Scott gently laughed, kindly urging me in the right direction. She stood in the doorway with a smile on her face, watching my every step, making sure I stopped to introduce myself to the cute boy in the bright green ball cap. I was almost running to my grandparents’ house, even though I had this odd feeling in the pit of my stomach that I might be cheating on Samuel by the time I got there, cheating on a boy I hadn’t even talked to in almost two years.

The riding mower was already parked under the aluminum carport. It was still ticking and pinging, trying to cool its engine in the late morning heat. I slowed down in case Ruddy happened to be looking, not wanting to appear too eager or obvious. I caught my breath and pushed my hair behind my ears and then stepped onto the front porch. But as I reached for the screen door, it suddenly swung toward me, almost knocking me to the ground. And in that moment, as I teetered on one foot, it seemed that all those thoughts about Samuel I’d been carrying around for so long were knocked to the back of my heart, just far enough to make room for one more boy.

“Oh, man, I didn’t see you there. Sorry about that.”

“It’s a screen door,” I said and grinned.

“I’m real sorry. Just wasn’t paying attention, I guess. You okay?” Ruddy asked, standing right there in front of me with his ball cap in his hand but trying to look anywhere except at me. He scooted toward the edge of the porch, and I wondered if he was attempting to stage his escape.

“You must be Rutherford Semple,” I said, calling him by his full name. Cornelia said it was very alluring when a woman called a man by his full, God-given name. But this Rutherford tightened his eyes, letting me know he didn’t care for that much.

“I am. But I’d just as soon you call me Ruddy.”

“Sure thing, Ruddy.”

“And you must be the granddaughter I keep hearing so much about,” he said, now staring down at his work boots. “I knew you was coming. Mr. and Mrs. Morgan been talking ’bout you for weeks.”

“I guess I am. And I guess you’re the boy I’ve been hearing about, the one my grandfather trusts with his new John Deere.”

“Yeah, guess so. But it ain’t exactly new. He bought it used from a man on the other side of the cove.”

“Well, anything less than ten years old is new to my grandfather.”

Ruddy laughed, nodding his head in agreement. His deep brown eyes relaxed, and when he smiled, a little dimple on his left cheek appeared out of nowhere. I stepped closer to the house, brushing past him in a slow, deliberate way, and then carefully pulled the screen door toward me. “Maybe I’ll see you around,” I said, and then I stepped inside and let the door slam shut behind me.