On the shabby old dresser that the two women shared were family photographs that I had not yet had sufficient opportunity to study. Perdita and Cleonie were respectable AME church ladies and worshipped as conscientiously as they worked for Miz Verlow.
Their AME church was not included, of course, in the listing of local churches and their schedules that Miz Verlow provided for her guests. The most exotic church on that list was St. Michael’s Roman Catholic in Pensacola. Jews, Baha’is, Mormons and Muslims never did get any listings, nor did any snake-handlers or Holy Rollers. Pensacola certainly had some of each and no doubt they all had their places of worship. Pensacola had then and has now as many churches as any other town, so about anyone not a total heathen could and can find their own brand. Heathens, of course, have nothing to complain about.
In her defense, Miz Verlow expressed absolutely no interest in the religious affiliations or practices of her guests. If she knew that some of them were Catholics or Jews or Buddhists who practiced their religions anonymously, it did not stop her letting them her rooms. I am confident that she would have found a means of turning away a suspected snake-handler, not because she had any particular feelings about snake-handling but to spare her other guests being proselytized. She had a great feeling for the privacy of her guests that she observed by her own idiosyncratic set of rules. And she was quite willing to drive them back and forth to the place of worship of their choosing.
That very first Sunday we did not attend church at all.
Mama said, “I cannot take you out in public looking such a fright. I don’t suppose the inconvenience to me entered your calculations, did it?”
“I ain’t got a dress anyway,” I said, “or a hat or coat or gloves.”
Reminded that I had arrived at Merrymeeting with little more than a couple of changes of clothes in my suitcase and had lost one change, Mama glared at me.
“I was nearly growed out of the grey dress anyway,” I pointed out.
She pursed her lips. “I suppose you think good clothes grow on trees? Stop saying ‘ain’t’ and ‘growed.’ You’ve been raised to know better. I swear the Dakin in you has destroyed all the Carroll.”
Mama slept in until noon that Sunday and then spent the afternoon on the beach. It was scarcely warm enough yet for sunbathing but Mama had decided that she was sickly pale, due to pining away in widowhood and having lost a child and all the other terrible shocks of recent months, and so she shivered on a chaise in her sunsuit. I was in charge of fetching her coffee or another magazine from the house. Sadly for her, I was also her only audience.
Mama explained to Miz Verlow the necessity to go into Pensacola to buy me a dress. On Tuesday, with her guests all settled, Miz Verlow drove us to town in her Country Squire. Miz Verlow knew where the best store was, she assured us, which happened to be having a sale on children’s clothing. Between flattery and pointing out all the bargains to be had, Miz Verlow baited Mama into buying me not only these new dresses, but a new coat, new Mary Janes, new socks and a hat, another straw boater that fit over the napkin on my head, new underpants, new pajamas, and new overalls and shirts. Each piece of clothing fit me, but it was all in colors that made me look half dead. I was indifferent. I never had had any pretty clothing and didn’t expect any. The whole collection really came surprisingly cheap, which pleased Mama intensely. Of course, after all that shopping, I had to massage her feet for an extra-long time that night.
Mama was forced to give me a few inches of closet space to hang my three dresses, but she made me unload the books from my clothes drawer to accommodate the rest of my new clothing. She threatened to throw the books out. My wails brought Miz Verlow, who saved my books by granting me the lowest, least used shelf in the linen closet.
The following Sunday, the first in May, Miz Verlow very kindly chauffeured Mama and me to Christ Episcopal. A blind fog obscured our passage on and off the island as thoroughly as the dark of night had on our arrival, yet Miz Verlow always seemed to know where she was.
My appearance with the napkin around my head under my new boater caused a little flutter in the church. Mama wore black, including her veil. When we left the church, the pastor took Mama’s hand in his at the door. I thrust myself between them and stepped on the toes of the pastor’s well-shined shoes, producing a satisfactory wince and the release of Mama’s hand.
On our return, the mist so blurred Miz Verlow’s house, it appeared to be abandoned. The lights were all out; the power, off. Inside, the house felt empty as an old barn. The diffuse, feeble light of the dark day did not penetrate the darker corners of the house, while the cold damp pierced us all to our marrow.
Miz Verlow sent me to the kitchen to fetch the cold plates Perdita had left for us. We ate in the dining room, by the light of a single yellow candle in a silver candlestick that had come from Mamadee’s house. I was not so foolish as to mention that I recognized it. What interested me more was that the candle was obviously homemade—not crudely either, but with skill. As it burned, it gave off a tarry but not offensive odor that made me think of Mama’s foot balm.
Little as I wanted to think about Miz Verlow’s terms, I was not enough Mama’s child to be able to exclude from my thoughts that which was—unpleasant. On the contrary, the more I wish not to think of something, the more I do. I have learned to think what I have to think when I have to think it. Naturally, unwelcome thoughts return but they do so less annoyingly.
Once dinner was out of the way, Miz Verlow suggested cards.
Though Mama’s first reaction to the suggestion of Sunday card playing was a scandalized hitch of one eyebrow, she realized immediately that her outrage was wasted without an audience. She sat down to the card table with a coy lack of enthusiasm. Mama always loved cards. She played the worst and had the worst luck of anyone I ever knew. In Mama’s world though, she was a sharp, a player without equal. Presented with an opportunity to exercise her skills, she seized upon it. Quite aside from anything else, cards might very well provide her with leverage over Merry Verlow.
Mama and Miz Verlow and I sat down in the large parlor to play Hearts. My card playing skills at that time were very basic but I already knew enough to let Mama win. Rather than open new, we played with an old deck of cards, a red one with the initials CCD on the back. My initials—though the cards were at least twenty years old, and truly unfit for anything but cheating at Solitaire. The parlor was as quiet as it could be with the three of us in it, speaking as little as possible, concentrating on the cards. Our only light was the candle that Miz Verlow brought with her from the dining room. Its light was magnified by the parlor’s enormous mirror, hanging opposite me and the fireplace behind me. The small flame burned intently, the burnt wick collapsing sadly into the pooled melted beeswax. In the mirror, it appeared as a tongue of fire, kindled out of the depthless shadows in the reflected fireplace. The scent of the burning candle reminded me of the church service we had attended, and of my daddy’s funeral.
It won’t make any difference.
“What won’t?” Mama responded tersely, glaring at her exposed cards in hope of defying Miz Verlow’s unexpected gibe.
“Pardon me?” said Miz Verlow.
Miz Verlow and Mama then looked at me, though the voice that had spoken possessed neither the scale nor timbre of a seven-year-old girl child.
Miz Verlow passed the question on to me. “What won’t make any difference, Calley?”
It won’t make any difference to me simply because I am dead.
We were at that moment all looking at one another. None of us had spoken.