Waiting for Sunrise (8 page)

Mama cried a lot since they’d moved, and Billy thought he knew why. For one, when Patsy came home, she’d not be able to find them. Billy knew Mama missed Patsy something awful. She kept a framed photograph of her hidden in the same drawer she kept her underwear. Billy knew, ’cause he’d followed quietly behind her once and seen her taking it out.

He figured Daddy didn’t know about the picture or he’d for sure tear it up and throw it away. Then there’d be another fight between him and Mama and no telling what would happen after that.

Another thing was that Mama didn’t know anybody in Miami. Billy had been able to make at least one or two friends at school, but Mama had no one. No one, she told him once, but him and Harold.

Harold was hardly ever home, though. He was always off with his friends.

Daddy wasn’t home much either. He said his job kept him plenty busy. Billy could tell that Harold missed Daddy, but Billy more dreaded the weekends Daddy came home than looked forward to them. Daddy yelled and hit on Mama all the time, even when she
didn’t
deserve it.

Sometimes Daddy would whip Mama for the things she did when he wasn’t even home. Things Daddy shouldn’t have even known about except that Harold was tattling on her. Telling Daddy about her crying jags and getting paid to do it too.

Jags. That’s what Daddy called Mama’s crying spells.

One time, Billy asked Mama why she didn’t at least go outside a little and try to meet some of the other mamas in the neighborhood. Mama said she just didn’t have the time, but Billy had started to wonder if, with all the bruises she’d been sporting lately, she was afraid for the other mamas to know how often she misbehaved and Daddy had to whip her. Billy also wondered why Mama didn’t try to be gooder.

Harold got whupped a time or two for staying out too late on Daddy’s weekends home. Sometimes way past supper. But even Daddy’s belt didn’t seem to stop him none.

Billy worked real hard at not misbehaving, and it paid off. Daddy hardly ever spanked him. Billy was determined to be a good boy. And one day, a good man.

He just hoped that when he got all grown up, he’d meet a woman as pretty as his mama . . . and that she’d try real hard to be good too.

9

Spring 1949, Trinity, South Carolina

Since turning sixteen, Patsy had been anything but still. Papa and Mam employed her immediately after she received her driver’s license so she could drive the delivery truck, the ever-faithful 1939 Ford Papa had picked her up in years before. While she enjoyed being a part of the family business, she especially liked the getting paid part, which meant having enough cash to buy nylons to her heart’s content, and pocket change for going to the movies or to Add-a-Scoop afterward. But she knew her parents’ real intent was to keep her time so consumed, she didn’t have so much as a minute for seeing Gilbert.

Fat chance.

If anything, the busyness only encouraged them to find more creative ways to see each other. They’d already withstood the sideward glances of Trinity’s finest citizens and the hard stares down Miss Grace’s prim nose. And Patsy had heard enough of the gossip and innuendos about the difference in their ages. So when it came to Mam and Papa’s deliberate antics, she saw them as just another hurdle on the track field of love.

Not that Patsy wanted to hurt her parents; after all, they’d been good to her since her arrival three years earlier. But she knew, deep down, that in spite of the age difference, Gilbert Milstrap was the man for her. And needing a “real father” had nothing to do with it.

“Remember, Mam,” she said one afternoon as Mam tried to dissuade Patsy from seeing Gilbert even in group settings, “that Laura Ingalls Wilder and her husband were years apart in age. And look how wonderful that turned out.”

Mam, whom Patsy was helping pull fresh-scented laundry from the line, only frowned over a linen sheet in response.

Papa was a little more verbal. He reminded her that she’d been sent to them for safekeeping, that she’d been a model daughter and even in this she was respectful, but that he thought life had so much more to offer her than to be the wife of a grease monkey.

His words, not Patsy’s.

“Papa, you may not know this, but my father—my biological father—was older than my mother. And my mother was just crazy in love with him. If he’d not died so young in life, I’m sure they would have grown old together, still just as in love.”

Papa was sitting in his favorite chair in the parlor, chewing on the stem of his pipe. “Now, I’m going to say this as kindly as I know how, Patsy. Your parents, when they married—no matter how much in love they were—could not have predicted that your daddy would die young and that Ira Liddle would come into the picture. We plan one way, and sometimes life gives us something else.”

Patsy knelt at his feet and cupped her hands—one on top of the other—over the pressed line creasing the pants at one of his knees. “That’s true, Papa, but what about you and Mam? When you married, you were in love, right?”

Papa chuckled in answer.

“And you still are, right?”

Papa puffed a moment on the aromatic tobacco before saying, “I love her with all my heart, sugar foot. But we had a lot going for us from the start.”

“Like what?” Patsy’s curiosity piqued. Mam was very close-mouthed about her love story with Papa, always saying, “That’s an old story for another day.” But maybe Papa would give her even the tiniest of glimpses into what life and love had been like for them when they’d married.

“For one, we were the same age . . . or near about. We wanted the same things out of life.” He tilted his head toward her. “We had the blessings of our families and friends. And we had a plan. Do you have a plan, Patsy?”

“Of course we do, Papa. Gilbert’s work is going well. He’s even talking about opening up a station and café in another town soon. And as soon as I graduate next year, we’ll marry.”

She watched Papa’s chin rise in defense. “And reside where? In the back of the station?”

Patsy’s shoulders sank. “Well, I figure by the time we say our ‘I do’s,’ he’ll have another place for us.”

Papa’s eyes held that all-knowing I’ve-got-this-one look. “And if he doesn’t?”

Patsy felt herself grow warm with emotion. “Oh, Papa. I’d live in a paper bag with Gilbert, I love him so much.”

She watched her father deflate. “Well, with that kind of attitude, what can I possibly say?”

“Indeed.”

“However,” he said, shifting and allowing himself one more puff of the pipe, “I will not give you my blessing, Patsy. I can’t. It goes against everything I believe is right for you.”

“Papa . . .” Her hands fell to the floor on both sides of her narrow hips. “You don’t mean that.”

He stood, towered over her. “I do. You won’t get any sympathy from Mam either. She and I feel the same way. Gilbert is a good man, but he’s not going to marry you come next summer.”

———

The wedding was set for June 27, 1950, the last Saturday of the month. The weeks leading up to the day of their nuptials became a flurry of caps and gowns, followed by luncheons, teas, and bridal showers given in her honor. Mam had worked since February—when Gilbert placed a miniscule diamond ring on Patsy’s finger—on designing all the floral arrangements, the bridal gown, and the bridesmaids’ gowns, of which there were three: Rayette, Sandra, and Janice.

Mam created Patsy’s gown from yards and yards of white on white Chantilly lace. The bodice featured a crossover style with gathered shoulders. The skirt was full—fuller than full—with layers of netting underneath, all settling in the newly popular tea length near her ankles.

Rayette insisted Patsy wear the highest high heels possible. “You’re so short, after all,” she said one afternoon during a planning meeting with the other bridesmaids, all gathered around Mam’s kitchen table, with bridal and ladies magazines from DeSpain’s Corner Drug fanned out before them. “We don’t want to lose you in the crowd on your wedding day.”

Patsy added high heels to her growing list of things to do and purchase. “Got it,” she said. “I’ll make sure Mam and I get them soon so I can break them in. I certainly don’t want my feet pinched the whole day.”

If Mam wasn’t fully on board with the wedding, Papa barely hung on to the edge. But his firm resolve
not
to bless their union had been undone by Martha, Gilbert’s cook, whose cuisine Papa had taken to for lunch and Saturday breakfasts with the church’s men’s group. “Not as good as my wife’s, but close enough,” he’d say.

Martha had become the happy couple’s crusader. In her not-so-subtle way, she’d leave the hot kitchen for the back side of the serving counter just so she could give Papa her opinion.

“Whether I ask for it or not,” Patsy overheard Papa telling Mam one evening. The two of them were enjoying an after-dinner cup of coffee in the living room while Patsy cleared the dining room table for Mam.

“And what does she say to you?”

Patsy lingered near the wide-open doorway leading to the foyer so she could hear as Papa humphed. “Just that ‘those two young’uns are gon’ do what they gon’ do and you may as well give ’em yore blessins’ or lose ’em in the process.’”

Patsy had to stifle a giggle at Papa trying to imitate the sassy old cook.

“‘And when she brings those grandbabies into the world,’” Papa continued in his mimicry, “‘then what you gon’ do? Not see ’em? Pretends they don’t exist?’”

“Martha makes a good point,” Mam said. Patsy heard the gentle resting of cup against saucer. “Don’t you think so, Patsy?” Mam asked, voice raised.

Patsy inhaled quickly, said, “I’m not listening,” then moved along to the kitchen to finish her voluntary chores.

From that day on, Papa wasn’t 100 percent pleased, but at least he wasn’t hard-nosed against the wedding either.

To his chagrin, however, Patsy
would
be moving into the back of the garage with Gilbert. So, while Mam worked on the wedding dress, Patsy stitched frilly curtains and overstuffed decorative pillows, hoping to change the four tiny rooms from a bachelor pad that reeked of motor oil to the sweet-smelling home of a young married couple.

A young married couple in love.

———

With the nuptials just two weeks away, Patsy sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed, staring at a lineup of the wedding party she’d jotted on a piece of paper and palm-pressed against the quilt.

Her maid of honor was Janice, of course, because she was Gilbert’s sister. Gilbert had chosen his father as his best man.

Then came Rayette and Sandra as bridesmaids, with Terrance Swanson—an old classmate of Gilbert’s—and Lloyd as groomsmen.

Papa, of course, would give her away.

Patsy closed her eyes and imagined hearing Brother Michael as he said, “Who gives this woman in marriage to this man?”

Her mother and I . . .

Her shoulders slumped forward. In the years since her arrival in Trinity, she’d become an expert of sorts at pushing any thoughts of her former life into the dusty corner of her brain, the one so perfectly shielded by a brick wall she’d created. She’d deliberately changed her name. She thought of Mam as her mother; Papa as her father. Lloyd, of course, was her blood brother, and while he’d asked a lot of questions in the beginning, he’d eventually let them fall by the wayside after reasoning—she supposed—that talking about her previous home and family was nearly more than she could bear. She’d done everything within her power to forget. She worked hard on her studies, was dutiful at home and at the floral shop, stayed busy with her friends and with Gilbert. Trinity was her hometown. Buchwald was her last name. She had only one brother . . .

Still, she mentally calculated: Harold was nine years old now, Billy eight. She relaxed her mind enough to wonder what they looked like. When she’d left, Billy looked remarkably like their mother. Dark hair, almond-shaped eyes. Although hers were blue and his were coal black.

Harold looked more like his father.

Patsy imagined them both, all filled out, freckles across their noses, feet growing out of shoes faster than Mama could work her fingers to the bone to buy more. She also wondered, with the nation’s economy booming, if Mr. Liddle was doing all right financially. Maybe Mama didn’t have to work anymore doing other people’s laundry. Maybe she got to wear those pretty dresses she loved and had enough nylons to keep her socially in step with the other ladies in town.

Sometimes, when she tried—which wasn’t often—Patsy thought she could still smell her mother’s scent. And sometimes, when she was overly tired, she dreamed of Ira Liddle. Those dreams never came out right for her. Never. They left her frightened, a shell of the person she hoped to become.

Now she opened her eyes to the small room around her. Since her arrival, she’d made personal changes. She’d learned how to crochet in home ec and she’d made an afghan throw for the foot of the bed. When she and Gilbert married, she’d take it with her, lay it on their bed. The thought made her shudder with anticipation.

She’d joined the ladies of the church quilting bee. Three quilts, made from scraps Mam had been collecting over the years, were stacked in the rocker still in the corner of the room. The ladies of the bee had made a special wedding ring quilt with scalloped edges for her and Gilbert; she planned to use it as their spread.

Patsy had also taken up reading; it helped pass the hours between being at school, being at work, being at church, and being with Gilbert. Papa insisted that she purchase her books rather than get them from the local library. He went out and bought a beautifully crafted claw-foot, oak case. He and Mam gave it to her for her sixteenth birthday.

It would also go with her to her new home.

Her new home . . .

She spread her fingers wide and stared at the ring hugging her left third finger. Compared to the one her mother had worn when Patsy was just a little thing, it was hardly worth gloating over. Les Sweeny had given his bride-to-be the ring his grandfather had given to
his
bride, Patsy’s great-grandmother. It had been an unusual ring—perhaps that was why Patsy remembered it so—with intertwining diamonds and sapphires orbiting around a center round diamond. Patsy remembered how her mother pampered the ring, touching it lightly with her fingertips, refusing to take it off.

But at some point she must have.

“Patsy?”

Patsy jumped, turned her head toward the door to see Papa’s large size all but blocking the view into the hall. “Hey, Papa.”

He took a step into her room. “You look . . . have you been crying?”

She scooted until her back came to rest against the bed’s headboard. She brushed her fingertips across her cheeks, felt the moisture, and said, “A little. Maybe.”

He pointed to the foot of the bed. “Do you mind if I sit?”

She shook her head no.

His weight caused the springs to creak and moan. Patsy watched as he removed the round glasses pressed to the bridge of his nose. He made a show out of pulling a handkerchief from his front shirt pocket, then cleaning the lenses, one at a time. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

Patsy fought past a knot in her throat. “I was just thinking, Papa,” she all but whispered.

He grinned at her. “About changing your mind?”

She laughed lightly. “Oh no, Papa. That’s not going to happen.”

He took a deep breath, exhaled. “About your mother, I suspect. Your real mother.”