It is morning, and the sweet smell of the honeysuckle outside beckons to me as I open my window. It is like this every spring in this house that I have lived in for the past eighty-four years and one hundred and two days. The earliest memory I have of this house was in this season too. The sun was bright and the trees had turned green again from their winter sleep. I was three, and Momma had thought me old enough to go with my sister Bonnie to the hen-house and get the eggs. As we get there I notice this rope-thing lying on the ground and I go to put my hand toward it and Bonnie yells and the thing darts from the ground and opens its mouth with a hiss and I see two sharp teeth and I fall over and scream and Momma come a-running from the house with a hoe in her hand and she hit the snake with it and the head flies off, landing at my feet. I turned my head away from it and sobbed into Momma’s apron as her warm embrace comforted me. That was the first time I seen a living thing die, and it was so fragile. One second the snake was snapping at me, the next it was in two pieces, still on the ground. I wish I had a better first memory, perhaps one to do with the time I was baptized down at Johnson’s Crossroads at the First Presbyterian Church and Momma and Daddy told me all the ladies there cooed all over me and how beautiful a baby I was and I didn’t cry a peep as they poured the water on my head in my snow-white gown. And afterwards, as the church held the luncheon to celebrate, I clung on to Bonnie and to Aunt Evelyn and Momma got a bit flustered because she thought I was getting too much attention. At least, that’s what she told me. But the first thing I remember is the snake. It’s never gonna leave me, because I saw the end of a life that day.
It was not the first life I watched end, like when I had to
kill the rooster when I was 10. I had
fed that rooster from my hand, but it grew time for slaughter, and Daddy
thought I was old enough to help. I held
it down as he snapped the poor thing’s neck.
It didn’t struggle at all, because it trusted me to the end and I had betrayed
it. I could never eat chicken after
that. I was there when the men in the
green suits and the pointed hats come to our door and tell Momma that Daddy had
been killed somewhere far-off like in France and that he ain’t coming back no
more and she fell over herself crying and two weeks later his body come and we
buried him in the graveyard on the hill surrounded by the live oaks where his
daddy was, and his daddy, and even his daddy before him, where the old gray
tombstones crumble away, stain brown, and where you can barely read where the
words 30th GEORGIA or BELOVED DAUGHTER are written on them, and the
Spanish moss hangs so low that it about near touches the ground but it look like
it come all the way from heaven. When
Momma passed, Jeb and me and Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Andrew put her in the same
ground right by Daddy so that they could be together with Jesus. She loved Jeb like he was her own son because
I know Momma wanted a boy because she was the only girl in her family and was
used to boys, but she only had Bonnie n’ me and none else. She thought Patrick would be the son that she
ain’t never had but then he and Bonnie moved to Atlanta where he was fixing to
be some big shot in some bank or something and they only come back once a year
to see Momma at Christmastime, but me n’ Jeb stayed to take care of her. I never did like Patrick anyway because he acted
like he was too good for Scarsboro. He
would talk about how he had gone to school at Sewanee and he would take Bonnie
somewhere where she could wear pearls and drink from crystal glasses and he
didn’t even go to church on Sunday but she bought everything he said. I just knew he was gonna leave her someday
but I couldn’t do nothing about it and the day before they got married Bonnie
told me that she loved him and that I wouldn’t never understand because I was
jealous of her and to mind my own goddamn business before she hit me. I cried that night.
It was also spring when I could see the magnolia a-blooming
four years ago when I woke up and I found Jeb cold in the bed beside me. He never wanted to be buried in a Chatwood cemetery
because he wasn’t no Chatwood; he was a Richardson and he wanted to be buried
in the forests where he would go hunting, right by where we buried Red, and
Joe, and later Tucker who he would take with him on Saturday mornings and they
would stand arrow straight with their noses out and their front legs up where
the quail were hiding in the brush and then he would shoot ‘em when they flew out
and they would fall down to the ground and later he would gut them and clean
them and I would brush them with butter and rub them with spices and cook them
and we had many happy dinners that way, Jeb and Cynthia and Beau and me. I still couldn’t eat the quail because I
couldn’t get the image of that chicken out of my head, but everyone else loved
them and I was happy to make it for them.
When we buried him the whole church congregation came and Bonnie and
Patrick were there but they didn’t say no words to me and they left right afterwards. Didn’t even stay for lunch. Beau wasn’t there but it was okay because he
was always traveling about for some business thing or another and I knew he
would have been there if he could make it and he was still a-thinking ‘bout his
daddy wherever in the world he was. But Cynthia
wasn’t there either and I was the saddest about that. I remember when she was born down in the
hospital in Newberryville and the nurses told me she looked just like I did and
I was the happiest in the world. She
loved the trees and the flowers that grew in the front yard of the house and before
she could even walk she wanted to grab the watering can that Momma had bought
for a nickel from the five-and-dime run by Mr. Sexton on Oak Street and pour
the fresh water over the tomatoes and the celery and the tulips and everything
else I grew in the front yard and later on when she got big enough she picked out
her own plants at the store and grew them and she won third prize in the 10-and-under
category at the county fair for the strawberries that she grew. I think we were prouder of her than she was. We spoiled her; for Christmas she would get all
the dolls she wanted, and later the dresses and lipstick, and one year we drove
all the way to Atlanta and let her sit in Santa’s lap at Rich’s and that year
she got a Talky Tammy doll and Beau got his first baseball bat. She grew up with Tommy Dalton who lived a
quarter-mile down the road and I knew they would be married someday because
they got along so well and he always danced with her at Cotillion and we knew
the Daltons and it would have been lovely if they ended up as part of our
family. We had scraped and saved to send
her to finishing school in Atlanta and then to Emory because Tommy had gone
there too and she sent us letters every week and we thought that surely she
would announce that he’d proposed but the letters started coming less and less
and soon we find the next time that she returns that she brings along with her
some Yankee boy who came to Athens from Ohio or Michigan or one of those states
where it’s colder’n the Ninth Circle and I tell her straight to her face that she
was making a mistake and I only did it because it was best for her because all
those damn Yankees had ever done was steal from Forrest County and they shot my
great-great-granddaddy at Shiloh and by God they wouldn’t take my daughter from
me. I hated him as soon as I lay eyes on
him because I knew when I saw him he was just like Patrick and he would take
Cynthia from me just like Patrick had taken Bonnie. I knew he must have blackmailed her or
threatened her or something like that because there was no way my sweet girl
could have ever fallen for a rat like that and I told her that but he had
blinded her or put a gun to her head or something and she talked back to me and
she had never done that before. I told
Jeb to run him out of Newberry County but he just sighed and said to leave her
be and I wasn’t gonna change her mind like that. He was my husband, he had to understand and I
cried because even he couldn’t realize it.
The next morning I wake up to find they both left and Cynthia left a note
on the table saying that she had come back to tell me that the Yankee had
proposed and she was leaving with him to go to where he came from. I heard Tommy Dalton drank himself to death
years ago and they found his body in a river and he didn’t deserve that and
neither did Jeb and neither did Beau or I and it was all that damn Yankee’s
fault for stealing Cynthia away from me and I’ll never forgive him for as long
as I live because she ain’t never come to see me again and it’s probably because
he killed her or locked her up in his basement.
I knew he was no good and I just know the good Lord will send him to
burn in hell if there is any justice in this world.
It used to be that this house stood alone on this road,
first you would pass by the Daltons’ and then go a ways down Briar Creek road
and come to this house, and then past that it was a straight shot to Johnson’s
Crossroads and the church. But it seems
like this place has grown up in the last few years because now I have all sorts
of neighbors and I see them passing by all the time and I wave to them and chat
with them. Now that I’m the only Richardson
in this house it’s good to have some company some of the time. All the women from church and from Cynthia
and Beau’s Cotillion passed before me or they grew too frail to leave their
houses, but though I am also frail and old thank the Lord I can move and leave
my bed. There’s even a restaurant down
the street and it’s close enough to walk and sometimes I even go there and I
see my neighbors there frequently. I
chat with them over tea or a biscuit or even a steak sometimes and it’s good
food but it’s not close to the type of cooking that Momma would make and I miss
it very much. There are also the maids
and the first time I saw them and they came in I was surprised because they
were wearing these funny green clothes and I thought they were supposed to wear
aprons, but I never been rich enough my whole life to have any maids and Jeb
neither so I guess I wouldn’t know what maids wear nowadays. Beau studied hard and went to Athens and ended
up studying law and now he makes so much money working for the government I
guess he hired them to help me in my old age and I’m grateful for them because
they help me when I’m too tired to leave my bed or when I cough they put this
funny thing in my nose and it helps me breathe and when I’m sick they give me
medicine. They even make food in the
kitchen for me and bring it, and I keep telling them they don’t have to do none
of that and I’ll cook because I been cooking in that kitchen for nigh on
seventy years, but I’m afraid my memory is too foggy and I forget where the
kitchen is in the house because I ain’t been down there so long and I have to
sit down again and let them do it for me.
I’m so grateful that the maids do their job so well. Beau is always so thoughtful, that boy. I remember when I first met the maids and I
was so pleased that he had sent them and I asked them what they thought of my
home and I told them it was sorry it was more shabby than they’d like but my
old bones just weren’t up to cleaning anymore, and they all said now Miss Lavinia,
this ain’t your home and this is the care home, and I just giggled because I knew
Beau had told them to say that, and get this every single one of them maids
said that before eventually they stopped and started to talk with me about my
home so they was joking. Beau is such a jokester
and he would always make Cynthia so mad when they was kids because she’d find a
bug in her sheets or a lizard in her chair and occasionally when he and the
Dalton boys were playing in our yard he’d hit her with the football and she’d
haul off and sock him and they both got spanked for that, but they were being
kids and he’d always have a sense of humor and he was just so pleasant to be
around. Especially since Cynthia left he’s
the only one I got. He ain’t been around
for a while because he’s always traveling or somewhere else for his job but I
know it’s not his fault and he’ll be back to see me before too long. Besides, he’s always right here in my heart so
I don’t feel lonely. Once I asked one of
the maids when he was next coming to see him and she looked very young and she
started to say something about a car accident but one of the older maids pulled
her away and when she came back she just done and told me he’d be there very
soon. Beau is a strong boy so I’ve been
praying for his health but I knowed he got through whatever problems he
had. He’ll be to see me soon.
Now I love my new neighbors but when I was sitting out the other
day I see a couple dark niggers come a-walking down the road, strutting in the
way that they do, and they came close to where I was and I yell at them to git
because this is Chatwood property and they ain’t stealing my flowers or
anything else the maids take such good care of since I can’t no more. They stop and stick out their heads like
chickens because apparently they never been told to git by no white man or something,
and I tell them to git before I go get Jeb’s shotgun and they moves away right
down that road while they keep looking at me.
I see more and more niggers passing by and it’s way too many for my
liking. The head maid is named Kim and
she is this kindly heavyset young woman who speaks in a drawl the likes of
which the white trash that lived down in the shacks out east of Scarsboro
would, but she is such a nice woman I don’t mind much. I tell her that the maids ought to do more
about the negroes because sure as Sunday they will be back in the night to dig
up the flowers and plants, and steal the cows and the horses, and the maids have
worked too hard doing all of that since I can’t no more, and oughtn’t they be
worried about it? She just sighs and says
that she n’ the others have it under control.
We never had no problem with negroes when Jeb was around because he’d be
out there with his gun and you’d have to be stupid even for a darkie to try to
rob when there’s a white man with a gun in the front yard. And there didn’t use to be one single nigger
in Scarsboro because they all lived in that part of Newberryville right until
that damned John Kennedy and that damned Johnson, traitor that he was, signed
that law and then nigh on every business in Scarsboro closed because the
darkies showed up to everything and everywhere.
But they all left eventually because we ran ‘em out and they went up
north. To that I say good riddance. When those niggers were marching down the
main street of Newberryville like they had the God-given right to sit at the lunch
counter of O.E. Gibson’s, me n’ Jeb were right there and waving the same Battle-Flag
that our granddaddies’ granddaddies fought for because it was us that had built
every corner of the South and we would be damned if those nappy-headed vermin
took it from us. But just like the
Yankees did in 1865, they forced us to take the niggers into everything and Scarsboro
ain’t ever been the same no more and now in the last few years it seems like they
come back from whichever state they went to.
I turn on the television sometimes and behind the President I see
niggers. There are niggers in the White
House, in the Capitol, everywhere. This
country has gone to the devil and in ’68 when I turned in my ballot for George
Wallace I warned Jeb that this was gonna happen but he didn’t listen and voted
for that Yankee Nixon and now look where we’re at.
Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and I feel for
Jeb but he ain’t there and I cry out and Kim comes running and holds my hand
until I calm down and remember he’s gone and she tells me Miss Lavinia, it’s
okay, he’s in a better place now. The older
I get the more and more I forget and one day I’m scared I’ll forget Jeb, and
Cynthia, and Beau, and Momma and Daddy, Bonnie, every one of them. My Bible sits at my bedside and I tell myself
trust in the Lord with all my understanding and he will lead my path. He led Momma and Daddy to him and sooner or
later it will be my turn. Last night I
had the most wonderful dream. It was the
night Jeb proposed to me, the night of the senior prom, when we were eighteen
and I was the young and cheerful girl who had just been voted the queen and him
the king; he was the tall, gangly, freckled quarterback on the football team
who had just beat Forrest Central and when he first asked me out he tripped
over his words and blushed scarlet and I burst out laughing because I couldn’t
fathom how someone who was so popular at school could be so awkward and it was
only three months afterwards and I already knew I would be his for the rest of
my life. We were lying down in the tall
grass at the side of Byers Creek, as his parents’ Ford grew cold behind us and
the sun set and the stars winked into light one by one. That night he told me he loved me and he gave
me the ring that I wore until the day we were married, but in my dream he didn’t
say nothing at all. We just lay there and
watched the sky. I’m sure he’s a-waiting
for me in the next life, and some days I want to see him more than anything else. But if I die then this house will have nobody
else to take care of it. So I keep
telling him to wait for a while more, when I’m content with this life, ready to
leave my home behind and meet him again.
I have lived in this house eighty-four years and one hundred
and two days. Tomorrow it will be one
hundred and three days. I hope I’ll
dream again tonight.
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