If Ramparts was no refuge, she could not show her face anywhere in Tallassee—in the drugstore, the church on Sunday—without being followed by whispers that were just barely whispers. If the words were too soft for her to make out, the tone was audible always, and always it was accusatory. Mama kept her spine straight and her head up but in the privacy of Ramparts, she was jumpy. Every passing day was like the Chinese water torture (a practice Ford read about in one of his boys’ yarns and threatened me with whenever he remembered it), wearing her down a little more and a little bit more.
We stayed at Ramparts through the warming days and nights, through dogwood and magnolia blossoms, the leafing out of the trees, the return of the hum of bees and the racket of the birds courting and nesting—a period of about two months. For most of that time, I was able to be out of doors. Mama was preoccupied and nobody else seemed to notice whether I was there or not either. I didn’t care whether they did or not; I just wanted to be out of sight and hearing of Mamadee and Ford—my enemies, my tormentors. Away from them, I could remember Daddy. Out of their hearing, I could speak and sing to myself in his voice, so as not to forget it.
My childhood memory of Tallassee was that it was an up-and-down sort of place, in the middle of which a great wall of water fell over a dam and raised a mist. The ups-and-downs were much greater, the houses and stores and trees much larger, the streets much longer, of course, to a child of seven. I wandered all over. In the margins of the old bird and tree books on Junior’s bookshelf, I marked the ones that I already knew and the ones that I encountered in my meanderings. Grackles and catbirds, hickory and catalpa. The names in my mouth were satisfying. It felt a little like being in school again.
Frequently I tramped to the Birmingham & Southeastern train depot. Bump & Slide Easy, Daddy used to call it. No regular passenger trains stopped there anymore—though the mail still did—and the depot was next door to abandoned. The windows of the old depot were tall, with low sills that allowed me to peer through the glass that was as dusty as an old blind woman’s eyes. In Sunday school and in church, I had heard many times that we see through a glass darkly. As I peered into those windows into the depot I realized all at once that a darkly was not an object like a pair of sunglasses or binoculars but an adverb, describing a manner of seeing. Because right then, I was seeing through a glass darkly.
Nineteen
GETTING an even dozen blown clean without cracks took me nineteen eggs. Tansy had herself a satisfying rag about it but the only real consequences of my combined profligacy and clumsiness would be a head of meringue to shame the Pope on the lemon pie. After girdling the eggshells with strips of lace ribbon, I dyed them in water and vinegar and food coloring. While they dried, I wove a paper basket and collected hanks of Spanish moss to make a nest in it for the eggs. Slipping the ribbons off the eggshells, I found the results exquisite. I placed them in the basket with a care that was not less than a jeweler might give to a Fabergé egg, and centered the basket on the dining table.
It was the first time we went to church after Daddy’s funeral, and because it was Easter, Mama had a new outfit. Since Ford was scarred for life, he stayed home. Otherwise he would have had a new suit, which he probably would need, for despite his terrible bereavement, he was growing like Japanese knotweed. Mamadee had a new outfit. Rosetta the seamstress clucked a little when she found out that I did not have all new clothes, as everyone knew that new clothes on Easter brought good luck, and old ones, bad. Even at seven, I thought the custom was silly, since it should be obvious that anyone with new clothes had enough good fortune to afford them, and old clothes were surely sign of poverty or perhaps meanness.
I wore my grey dress and my black Mary Janes, which were good enough for Daddy’s funeral, and was told by Mamadee to be grateful to have a straw boater and gloves I had only worn once. I fidgeted through Sunday School before the service, and then, during Easter service, I fought the scent of lilies so thick that it was smothering. I actually fell asleep for a few seconds at a time, only to jerk awake again. A strange thought intruded: If I were Jesus, I wasn’t having any success moving the rock aside.
On our return from church, having taken off my boater and gloves, I went directly to the table that was now set for dinner to admire my basket of eggs. Mamadee followed me but she did that all the time and I thought nothing of it. I assumed that she wanted to make sure that I didn’t break any of her crystal.
“Exquisite,” I murmured to myself.
From behind me, Mamadee said, “Pride goeth before a fall.”
Then she jabbed me in one shoulder blade with the hatpin she had drawn from her hat.
In shock, I shrieked, “Jesus God!”
Mamadee slapped the back of my head.
“The Lord’s name! On Easter!”
“You stuck me with that hatpin!” I shouted.
“I did not!”
I could have spat. I lifted my chin and declared, “I hate you.”
Mama heard it all. Saw it all. She was right there in the doorway of the dining room, with her hat in her hand.
“Go to your room, Calley,” Mama said.
As I passed her, she slapped the back of my head. Maybe she thought Mamadee hadn’t done it hard enough.
“She’s a monstrous little heathen,” Mamadee said. “How you can doubt for two seconds that Calley is writing those terrible notes to you, I don’t know.”
“I am not,” I shouted from the stairway. “I never did! You lie!”
I took the rest of the stairs two at a time. I was confident of enough of a head start that Mamadee would not be able to catch up with me. I slammed the door of Junior’s radio room behind me hard enough to crack the glass in the window. The whole house echoed with that slam. It echoed longer for the silence that followed it.
Opening the door again, I stomped back to the landing and shouted into the now churchy stillness: “I’m gone wet the bed now! Somebody call for my color television set!”
My provocation produced no response.
Back in Junior’s radio room again, I poked out the glass from the windowpane and climbed out onto the roof. There I sat cross-legged and made plans. I would run away. Find one of my Dakin uncles. One of them would take me in—Billy Cane and Aunt Jude for sure. If Mama did not want me, she should have left me with them anyway. The thought of Ida Mae Oakes came to me, but, of course, even if I had known where to find her, I could not go to her. Should I take three steps into the colored part of town, some grown-up would take me by the hand and walk me right back out, and find some white grown-up who would return me to Mama. Ramparts might as well be on the backside-of-the-moon from there.
A crow was eyeing me from the nearest live oak but one. I made eye contact with it. It shouted a great ugly cawwwww! I shouted it back. The crow took off as if the devil were after it. A few minutes later, it settled on the same branch. It went side-to-side, claw-to-claw, deciding where on the branch to clutch. It kept its cold eyes fixed on me the whole time. By way of experiment, I moved suddenly. The bird jumped. But when I froze again, it stayed.