Two Shades of Morning (4 page)

Foil stars revolved from the stage ceiling on varied lengths of twine. We hoped that the audience could see only glittery, air-spun stars, but we, in our pastel clouds of net, knew the twine was there. The scenic backdrop, tempera globs and strokes of Sunday-school-book blue, green, yellow and red, across a giant scroll of freezer paper, was what it was, up close. (The theme of the pageant was “Stairway to the Stars,” emblazoned in silver glitter on paper taped to the back curtain.) From the rear of the ancient, musty auditorium, red and yellow finger-dots blurred to fields of flowers on palm-swirls of green pastures. The tree trunks, fists of muddy brown, had emerged into the shape of live oaks. We’d been amazed. Up close, on stage, we had to hold on to the vision from a distance to avoid disillusionment.

Looking back, I believe I had to hang onto that vision-from-afar of Robert Dale and P.W. or my illusions would have been shattered long before they were.

Posted like waiters in a fine restaurant, one on each stairway to the stage, Robert Dale and P.W. ushered the contestants on and off stage. Not only were we exhibited onstage, but between judges’ decisions, we were forced to sit with the audience, straining against a collective gaze. Perched stiffly forward, so the net wouldn’t scrub our backs, we endured the hoots, whistles and jeers from the audience. Elbows out for comfort, and to prevent crushing the octopus orchid on my waist, I could see Mama and Daddy mouthing encouragement to me. Aunt Birdie sat complacently on the other side of Mama, fanning with one of the programs that we, the contestants, had typed and mimeographed.

Robert Dale and P.W. posed at the foot of the stairs in identical white sports coats. Hands clasped over their crotches, they wrangled with black bow ties by craning their necks and swayed to the repetitious melody being cranked out on the piano by Miss Effie, our church pianist. Placed in the center at the foot of the stage, the piano tinkled on under her caressing fingers. Her graying chestnut head remained perfectly still as she played sheets and sheets of music for two hours, each piece a rendition of the last, the tinkling swallowed by the hiss and burble of the auditorium.

P.W. smiled and winked my way, strutting his stocky chest. I recognized the sneer for the Future Farmers of America, which he had been pressured into representing. He was flushed from the heat, bothered by the crowd, and eager to drive the winner home—either me or Betty Jean, I suspected. At intervals, he would sneak a small black comb from his rear pocket and rake it through his blonde hair. Then glancing my way, he’d smile, mouthing words I couldn’t decipher. He had already said, “You got it, Earlene!” as he’d escorted me down on wobbly high-heels, following the semi-finalists’ presentation.

“I don’t want it,” I lied between gritted teeth. I did so want it: after Betty Jean dropped out, only the homely remained. I would never go to school again if I didn’t win.

Aunt Birdie had known in advance who would win, and she hadn’t hesitated to say so—not in words though. Mere words couldn’t match her gritty expressions. Ambling in that night, arms akimbo, she’d shouted my name in a smug and satisfied look. Overhead fans blew at wisps of her red hair as her languid pace quickened on the downslope of concrete to the front. Glowering at the rows of collapsible wooden chairs, she sidled through and sat. She called the chairs “kid-catchers,” because during any school program, a child could be heard squealing murderously, having stood in the seat and been gobbled up whole in the gap between the back and the bottom. Any attempt to free the frantic child would be made more torturous, because if he turned sideways, the mama or daddy would tug futilly, bringing on a siren of screams from the child and a rescue team of other experienced mamas and daddies and draw attention to the embarrassing predicament. Crawling beneath to turn the child face-forward, one of the grownups would try to persuade the child that all he had to do was let go. Trust me.

* * * * *

Chapter 3

Come Easter morning, there stood Sibyl at the front of the First Baptist Church, presenting herself in an out-of-style dress: gray jersey with a gored skirt and raglan sleeves. She dropped her arms to her sides, with an air of surrender, jeweled fingers grazing her skirt folds. Her face was holy and wan and guileless as a child’s.

Center pew on the right, I clenched my fists and tried to keep from looking down at my fake-linen navy dress with giant pockets piped in white. I couldn’t believe she had worn an old dress too! I blinked, my face blazed, and I punished myself with watching Sibyl, now holding hands with the preacher.

“I guess most of you have met Little Robert Dale’s wife, Sibyl,” he said. “Well, she comes to us this fair Easter morning to move her membership from the First Methodist Church in Orlando.” He smiled at her, then at us. “What’s the pleasure of the church?”

Mr. Ben, our next door neighbor, spoke up, “I move we take her.”

Everybody laughed at the crafty old man’s eagerness. Chips of Easter pastels falling on my eye like patterns in a kaliedoscope, I tried to ignore all the crisp new dresses and shirts bought just for Easter. Vinegary-sweet scents of Easter egg dye and lilies teased me. I felt robbed of my dress and my notion.

“I second the motion,” somebody else said, and I turned, spying Aunt Biride across the aisle, her jaw set like a vice and ice-rimed eyes tuned in on Sibyl.

For an instant, I forget my new neighbor as other than a worm nibbling at my vanity. Aunt Birdie’s face was an open wound of discovery—something about Sibyl. Maybe she was figuring Sibyl for a hypocrite. Maybe she had just decided that Sibyl wasn’t dying (if she was dying, as everybody claimed, it stood to reason she’d fear playing church). Or maybe Aunt Birdie had somehow caught on to Sibyl trying to cheat me out of being the first in Little Town to wear an old dress on Easter. I hoped so—I hoped somebody knew besides me and would credit me with not having imitated Sibyl, and not the other way around. All I could think was I wanted a new dress; who knew when I’d have another rational reason for buying one? Let Sibyl wear rags. Probably nobody even noticed sacrifices like that anyway.

Aunt Birdie’s face was inscrutable while everybody was singing “Blest Be the Tie that Binds.” Could she be thinking that Sibyl was despicable for drawing attention to herself by wearing an old dress on Easter? I hated Sibyl. I had never hated anybody before, especially not somebody dying. There was a first time for everything. I twirled a picked thread on my dress.

In keeping with church customs, everybody paraded past Sibyl, welcoming her, then looped along the center aisle. Miss Leona hugged Sibyl, then turned, facing me on my way to the front. “To a sweet girl,” she had written on her graduation gift to me—a lacey pink slip wrapped in whispery white tissue. Most of the other cards said, “To the prettiest girl in Monroe County.” Did Miss Leona notice I had worn an old dress too?

Mama had offered to have a new dress made for me when she’d learned I wasn’t going to buy one. Now, she and Daddy probably thought P.W. couldn’t afford me—he really couldn’t—and that made him look bad. Though they’d never put him down since we got married, I could tell they doubted whether he could take care of their little girl and now I’d proved them right. Their excuse for not wanting me to get married had been that I was too young. But seeing I was determined to marry anyway, Daddy had said, “Okay, you’re making your bed, now lay in it,” then he deeded us an acre of land close by. If not for that, we’d surely have moved ten miles across the Withlacoochee River to P.W.’s daddy’s farm, and though I would have been bothered by Mr. Buck’s firing off and Miss Eular’s sniveling, I wouldn’t have been bothered with Sibyl and this whole dress mess.

I pocketed my hands and crept behind P.W. in line to welcome Sibyl. Aunt Birdie, standing out among all the huggers, cooly shook Sibyl’s hand and shuffled past me. P.W. hugged Sibyl and started out, and there I stood facing the copycat.

She reached for me, but I stuck out my hand. God, I felt stupid shaking a woman’s hand—soft, thin and loosely gripping. Something perverse about horning in on a man’s gestures, and weird too, shaking hands with somebody you hate. I came within a breath of saying “I like your dress!” for spite. What everybody said to each other on Easter, whether or not they meant it. Sibyl’s topaz eyes snagged mine, and I felt the nibble of the worm. On the way to Mama’s for Easter dinner, I couldn’t resist quizzing P.W. about the dress affair. He had gotten off without having to admit he’d overheard me and Sibyl discussing dresses, but he couldn’t claim he hadn’t witnessed her wearing an old dress after I was the one who’d given her the idea. The all-of-it went deeper than that, I suspected, but was too complicated to accurately define. Spotting her as a copycat was easy, on an understandable level.

“P.W.,” I said, “didn’t you think it was kind of strange, Sibyl wearing that dress for Easter?”

“What?” he said, fiddling with the radio, tuning it in to a country station between two heated preachers.

I didn’t really expect much, but I did expect something. “Listen,” I said, turning down the volume. “Remember that night at Robert Dale’s when I told Sibyl I was not getting a new Easter dress and she tried to tell me where to get one. You know, she said that sweet little slenderizing lavender cotton dress at Sears?”

“I remember y’all talking about dresses, yeah.” He turned off at our road, right behind Robert Dale and Sibyl in her red convertible.

“Well, did you notice how she ended up wearing an old dress too?”

“She’s just curious,” he said, motoring along and waving as the red car arced through the crescent of oaks. “But what was the matter with her dress, sugar, too short or something?”

#

On Monday morning, Sibyl sat at my kitchen table with the spring sun warming her face while I served her coffee.

“I just had to get things straightened out between me and you,” she began. “If I’ve done anything to make you not like me, I want to know. You didn’t even hug me at church yesterday.”

Suddenly, I was guilty, she was blameless, and the clear sky scrolled up in ugly scenes.

“I’m sorry,” I said and sat.

She sipped her coffee, tears brimming in her hazel eyes. Again, I watched her for signs of sickness and only her hunched shoulders hinted at any give in strength.

“Sometimes people hate me for no reason,” she drawled, dabbing beneath her eyes with a tissue, “I don’t know why.”

I reached across the table and patted her hand and repeated, “I’m sorry,” meaning it: I’d spoiled my own Easter by dwelling on a silly dress. “I’m so sorry.”

“I forgive you.” I pulled back my hand and sipped my coffee. I guess I thought she might say I’m sorry, too. “Robert Dale says people’s probably just jealous.” She looked critically around my doll-house kitchen. “But I’ve never been the type to brag about what-all I’ve got.”

If not Christian love, maybe I could feel a milder form of hate for Sibyl. Be ye not lukewarm or I will spew you out of my mouth. She smiled. “P.W. and Robert Dale get along so good; I hope you and I can be good friends, too.” She clanked a heavy gold ring on the cup while holding me with her bold eyes.

“All right,” I said, thinking: only mention the dress and maybe...

“I’ll pray for you.” She pushed back to rise. “I’ve got a man coming to put down some floors so I better get on home.”

Floors, put down floors, you’ve got floors. Otherwise, what was I standing on the other night?

“Oh!” she said, grabbing the door frame and springing to the doorsteps. “I thought there for a minute this trailer-thing was gonna tip over.” She laughed—no, brayed. “Tell your Aunt Birdie, I’ll be praying for her too.”

#

I washed every dish I could find, cleaned the cupboards and put all the dishes back, anything to keep from thinking. The shag carpet had needed vacuuming for two weeks, so I did that too, glad for the whiny roar of the machine. I picked up a cushion, P.W.’s socks, moved the ottoman from its mangy rim of shag pile. Found a cookbook I’d been looking for under the couch. But my mind kept flitting to Sibyl and her floors and her praying for me, the heathen, and her, the angel, in her gilded heaven where right now new floors were being laid, the inequity of it all, whatever it was. I rammed my foot on the power switch of the cleaner and listened to it die and the sound of trucks next door come alive. Sibyl. I would clean the bathroom, musty with damp towels, and forget her. Let her stay where towels never molded. All she had to look forward to was buying stuff. And dying.

“She thinks she can get away with anything because she’s dying,” I said to myself, the rough, undone me in the flower-embossed mirror above the lavatory. I dropped the toilet brush in the middle of the floor and headed out the kitchen door, banging it shut.

As I started along the peened blue wall of the trailer, I almost tripped over the yard rake belonging to my next-door neighbor, Miss Lousie. Sweep around your own back door, Aunt Birdie would say. Yes. I picked up the rake and crossed our grass-knitted yards, scolding myself for not taking it back before. How many times had I passed Miss Louise’s house, on my way to Mama’s, and still forgot the rake? I had to get myself together—quit putting off things and neglecting the house. Starting now, I would clean regularly, instead of letting jobs pile up; I’d put Sibyl in her place and forget she was there; and I’d break my childish habit of noon walks to the end of the road where I always ate dinner at Mama’s or Aunt Birdie’s.

“Miss Louise?” I called, halting at her carport door.

“Come on in,” she hooted and scuffed to the television set and cut the volume on “Search for Tomorrow.” On any given weekday, the slow grating melody of the soap’s sound track, coming from all the look-alike houses, would converge along the dirt road.

I scraped the tines of the rake on the concrete floor so she’d think I hadn’t heard; she was secretly hooked on soap operas, like everybody else, except Aunt Birdie. On Sundays, our preacher would preach against the soaps, and by Monday, all of my elderly neighbors would be hard at it again. I hadn’t got started yet, but I was considering taking it up. Maybe help to break some of my other bad habits—roaming the road, eating between meals, and sleeping till ten in the morning. And I could sew while I watched the stories.

“There you are,” Miss Louise said, appearing behind the screen door. She wiped her hands on her apron and pushed the door open for me to come in. “I thought I heard somebody.”

“I don’t have but a minute, Miss Louise, but I thought I’d bring back your rake.” I leaned it against the outside wall by the doorsteps.

“You don’t have to be in a hurry,” she said.

“I’ve had it going on two months,” I said then caught on that she hadn’t meant no hurry about bringing back the rake but about visiting. “You can take a minute to come in and visit with me before going on to your mama’s.” She passed through the spanking yellow kitchen to the narrow den where the TV screen was dimming to a speck of light.

“I was just fixing to start on a dress for June Lee,” she said, patting a stack of cut-out fabric layered with tissue patterns.

“How’s she liking her new job at the bank?”

“She’s getting the hang of it.” Miss Louise fluffed the back of her blue-gray hair where it had matted from the recliner headrest. The orange corduroy chair was imprinted in the shape of her long slender body.

“I haven’t seen June in I don’t know when,” I said and sat on the sofa next to Miss Louise, both of us looking at June Lee’s graduation picture on the mantel shelf.

We’d been friends in school but never really close; I was popular and pretty and she was bookish and plain. Her elaborately framed glasses overpowered her heart-shaped face and made her keen features recede. Well, at least she’d landed a secretary job in Tallahassee. Now, we had less in common than ever. Still we tried; she wrote to me and sometimes I wrote back.

“Have you been to see Little Robert Dale’s new house yet?” asked Miss Louise.

“Yes’um, Aunt Birdie and I did the other day.”

“I bet it’s a sight.”

“Yes ‘um, it is.”

“Me and Eloise and Lavenia’s been talking about giving them a little housewarming. What do you think?”

“That would be sweet,” I said, trying to imagine my three elderly neighbors tottering over there with their gifts of crochet. I couldn’t picture a platter-sized starched and fluted doily on Sibyl’s dining table. Miss Louise’s specialty. Everybody in Little Town ordered her crochet handiwork for Christmas presents: Christmas tree ornaments of angels and bells, stiff and paper thin, even valances for doors. Not a house in Little Town was without one of her valances on the back door, except Sibyl’s. “Y’all think about it,” I said, “and I’ll be glad to help out.” I figured they probably wouldn’t do a party for Sibyl because, in spite of their neighborliness and their narrow views of the world, they’d understand that Sibyl was like a character on one of their soaps, to be observed, purely for entertainment.

“Tell your mama and daddy hello for me,” she said, seeing me out the door.

I felt cross with her for knowing I’d go to Mama’s, but already I was strolling west toward the house where I’d grown up. Across the road, Miss Eloise vanished around the side of her house and ducked back to wave.

“How’re you, Miss Eloise?” I called.

“Fine, honey, how’re you?” she called, sprinting before I could answer.

I fully expected her to send hellos to Mama and Daddy, too, and looked for Miss Lavenia, next door to Miss Eloise, to pop from her house with the same message. How could I expect them not to see me on daily walks to Mama’s? I’d been doing it every day for a year. They probably timed their soap operas by my passing.

No doubt they were bored since their children had grown up and moved away and they’d retired to their transplanted mill houses. Having cleared their lots of old farm houses in the fifties, they’d replaced them with those four-room square, wood frame mill houses bought from the cotton mill camp, across Walton Creek, north of Little Town. The cotton business had fazed out in the farming areas in the past twenty-five years, and the mill shut down. The campsite remained a bare-dirt monument to the only industry allowed or desiring to locate in Monroe County.