Roxanna Slade Part 30

I'd been convinced from nearly the start that everybody in a ten-mile radius was bound to know the true story. It had to be known to the whole school full of teachers and students old enough to have heard what a baby was. As for other adults I could sit down with our thin telephone book and literally pick out the names that would be sympathetic and those that would laugh or shake their blue-rinsed hair. Of course it pained me to know that much.

But since I'd never really had a woman friend apart from my sister and a few black women whose judgment didn't count with anyone but me, all I truly worried about was the child itself. Dinah had borne enough already to bear this next round. I kept reminding myself that young children, prior to adolescence anyhow, are more elastic to knocks and cruel words than modern parents want to believe. But that didn't stop me aching fairly steadily at the thought of the meanness my next grandchild might have to weather.

The child was a girl. She arrived on schedule, was strong and well; and her mother came through with less in the way of drawn-out pain than I'd have guessed for a first delivery by so young a parent. I'd secretly hoped for a boy, with the notion that a boy might take the meanness better. Girls in those days hadn't yet started taking karate cla.s.ses. Also I had serious doubts as to whether a b.a.s.t.a.r.d girl would ever get noticed by a decent husband. But then the Second War had done so much for s.e.x in this country--spreading it around, making it public and humorous. Maybe by the time this girl was grown, the rules and feelings about illegitimacy would have long been eased.

So when the nurse came out and told me and Mally and Simon that it was a girl and weighed seven pounds, I nearly broke down in genuine relief. Somehow I knew that, though I solemnly vowed on the spot to let her mother raise her so far as a teenager could, this child would be my last long happiness. I didn't shed tears but Mally did (she'd borne the greatest burden of

anyone but Dinah herself), and Simon hauled out the cigar I'd bought him. It cost me half a dollar and smelled like tar rags burning in the night.

Harley had just left home for school when the labor started. His mother and I had spoken on the phone and decided not to call him out at that moment but to let him join us at the end of cla.s.ses. When he got to the hospital at just past four, the nurses were almost ready to roll Dinah back toward her own room. So all of us went in together. And when Dinah's bed came through the door, she looked older still but no worse for the whole slow day. She kissed Harley first, then me, then Mally. Then they both shook hands with Simon.

After that Harley stood at the head of the bed, and together he and Dinah announced their private decision. The girl was named Olivia Roxanna. It turned out Harley had also insisted that he be named on the birth certificate as the child's father, so Beecham was the baby's family name from her first moment.

But since I'd mostly been called Anna, everybody tried to call the girl Roxanna from the start. That made me happier than I'd have guessed. And when I'd held her and said her whole name, I soon began to feel that something was getting completed somehow here in my arms. I'd always wanted the use of my whole lovely first name, and I'd been denied it as I said before by almost everybody but Ferny. So much else that still felt incomplete in my life would work out in this girl, I suspected. I knew that grandmothers tended toward such unrealistic hopes. But as time demonstrated I was one accurate grandmother in that respect.

She was n.o.body's beauty--Olivia Roxanna--but she had a healthy goat's appet.i.te, and she grew like a weed in the house that Palmer and I had bought with Betsy's money nearly twenty-eight years before. We fixed up the back bedroom off the kitchen for Mally who'd silently chosen to live with us now and to take a modest salary. So as much as we tried to let Dinah make her own decisions, the baby had three mothers from the start. And together--with almost no pouting matches--we brought her through the early months of colic, ear infections and a stubborn case of whooping cough with about as much luck as you

get with babies.

It was while she was coughing so badly that for some odd reason all of us, me included, began to shorten her name to Rox. I guess it came from the hopeless tenderness we felt for a little thing tortured by a dangerous illness that we couldn't spare her. We didn't call her Anna since that was me; but we needed something short to get her frail attention when her eyes drifted off or froze, terrified, in the midst of her spasms. So Rox is hardly a charming sound, but Rox it's been pretty much ever since-- Rox and Livvie Rox to friends her own age.

In September Dinah went back to school. I've said she was in the same grade as Harley which was some rea.s.surance for anxious me. And then I knew how much time she'd spent reading books in the months she was gone. The only thing of value that Dinah had really missed was first-year Latin. Otherwise her good mind took the leap like a squirrel to its perch. And with Harley beside her in all their cla.s.ses but football practice, she got less mean talk than I expected.

Or so Dinah claimed and Harley backed her up. The two of them went on dating like children on Sat.u.r.day nights, more careful children. And in general the school months went so well that late in the summer of '55 when the baby was eighteen months old, I offered them a weekend trip to Wilmington and tagged along as a pointless chaperone. All of us got brown as biscuits and came home rested and ready for more.

The more was the children's last two years of high school. They went along with the usual tizzies and one completely uncalled-for sermon from a vicious old-maid algebra teacher but no other big troubles. Oh also in their senior year, their calculus teacher--a forty-year-old bachelor with rat's hair and one wall-eye--made some remark in cla.s.s about scarlet women, and the whole room snickered till Harley just stood up silent in the midst of the room and waited for silence. Given Harley's muscles, silence descended.

Of course I wanted to go up and s.n.a.t.c.h the fool teacher bald, but Dinah just laughed and sang it like a song--"Dear Ma, he's nothing but a miniature pebble in the rocky road of life." And in no time she and Harley had their diplomas,

age seventeen and eighteen. To that point believe it or not, none of us had ever sat down again and talked out their future. Everybody had thought about it endlessly but never called a meeting.

Turned out we didn't need to. The children had their plan well set. They graduated on a Friday night. I went to commencement while Mally stayed home with the baby. And though I noticed when four or five old hawk-eyed women tried to let me see they were snubbing me--the youngest one all but dislocated her neck to show me how fast she could turn away from me--I just took a prominent aisle seat and clapped hard every chance I got. Sang all the hymns too, every one of them "Christian." That was well before the multiethnic days such as now when Christians scarcely get mentioned in public.

The next noon--Sat.u.r.day--Dinah and Harley walked into the kitchen and asked if I was feeling all right.

When I told them Yes, they said in that case they were bound out right then for South Carolina. They'd be back Monday morning. In those days there was a thriving marriage mill in Dillon, S.c.

You didn't have to wait for a blood test or license, just turn up male and female together with the money to pay for some old bird to read the civil vows in your presence while his wife stood as witness. I was hoping they'd eventually take church vows for the seriousness of the undertaking.

But as later months pa.s.sed they chose not to with no ill effects that I've ever noticed, so who was I to insist? In short they've been married for nearly four decades--far longer than Palmer and I got--and they've never lived more than eighteen miles from me. They've likewise never let me feel overlooked or of no use to anybody else alive, which (believe me) is more than a great lot of parents can expect.

Harley hasn't burned up anybody's stock market making big money. With no inclination for a college education, he's had a succession of small-town jobs down through the years. In recent years he's wound up running his own landscaping business with a handsome new store that sells not only trees and shrubs but nursery inventions my mother never dreamed of like knee pads for kneeling gardeners. Last Christmas was Harley's first

since the new store opened, and he looked forward to a b.u.mper business. He took Simon with him up to Pennsylvania back in late August to place advance orders for his holiday greens, wreaths and Santas. When they got back Harley told me he was going "strictly plastic" for that first year. He said "I can't fail with plastic, can I, Miss Anna?"

I winced within but said No to please him. He was so proud of being on the verge of a boom. And sure enough there was not a real leaf or actual berry anywhere near his shop from Thanksgiving well on past the New Year. To help him out I even bought an artificial tree myself that I've been ashamed of ever since despite its safety and the cedar-smelling spray Harley threw in to make it more natural. In any case Harley sold every plastic Santa and Rudolph as fast as they arrived. Still he made a small killing for himself and Dinah which always relieves me.

Dinah works with him at heavy rush seasons. But otherwise she's been what's now called a full-time homemaker as if that were any less an achievement than chairing the board of Ford Motor Company. Of course at Dinah's age, her mothering duties are long since over.

I asked her once maybe two years ago if Harley paid her a salary at Christmas when she worked in that shop twenty hours a day.

She waited, frowned awhile and then said "Mother, Harley's paid me a good dog's loyalty for you-know-how-long. I couldn't ask him for another plugged nickel."

I felt rightly chastened and have never mentioned the matter again. My concern just came from the fact that I have so little in the way of funds or property to leave the children, and what little there is is complicated in a way I'll speak of later. That fact sometimes has me scared in the night that they'll starve without me when I've pa.s.sed on. Not likely of course but very few mothers of my generation --who've gone through the various wars, depressions and Cuban missile crises of our lifetime--can ever really believe that their children are fit to go outdoors on their own alone.

Dinah raised young Rox as well as anybody that young could have. Once she and Harley were married, they lived with me for the first two years, Mally

helping right along. When they moved on into their new place, I was more than ready to spread myself again into too many rooms.

And as much as she loved Rox, Mally was ready to settle back into a calmer situation with no child pulling on her by the minute. She and I had done all the nursing while Dinah finished school. Mally was a great deal younger than I but was still past thirty with no visible boyfriend and clearly no children of her own. I even risked asking her one time, when she and I had been living alone together for over a year, if she didn't have any hopes of her own--her own house, a family.

She said "Miss Anna, when you want me to leave just say the word leave. I'll be gone in ten minutes. But don't try to drive me into no man's hands. That ain't going to happen to Mally Shearin, not for you nor n.o.body."

Needless to say I've never mentioned the subject again. And Mally is fifteen yards down the hall in her own bedroom as I write this line. In many ways that I'm glad and thankful to acknowledge her presence near me is the last substantial blessing of my life. And yet with all the turmoil of the past decades in matters of race, and with victories for tolerance that I couldn't have imagined, Mally's in her own s.p.a.ce alone as I am in mine. That's not merely the normal result of a younger woman's putting an elder to bed and then relaxing in her own quiet s.p.a.ce. It's more or less the iron unchangeable pattern of our lives, set in a time and place where the tint of your skin may still be the main thing about you and may never relent, not even in death (you'll be forced to spend eternity in separate graves).

At ninety-four years old with the average amounts of rheumatism and brittle bones (i broke a leg last year), I don't move through the house as freely as I did. So I often eat from a tray in my bedroom. But on those days when I go to the dining room or even the kitchen to eat at the table, Mally will very seldom sit with me even when I ask her. Of course she's seventy herself by now and has her own problems with "the high blood" and dizziness. But once I sit and unfold my napkin, Mally will mostly discover some brand-new ch.o.r.e she's got to perform that instant or die. And though we're both slaves to three soap operas and the morning, noon and evening news

on color TV, we tend to watch our separate sets at opposite ends of a house that's emptier now than the dried-out Ark once the Noahs left it.

I sometimes tell myself--I've even told Mally--that her and my habits were not formed by brown and black skin as much as by our age and long acquaintance. We're like two old mules that have plowed in the same yoke for near forty years and are ready to put some distance between them, provided we hear each other sneeze every hour or just breathe. A cross word between us is heard no more than once or twice a week--always about some trifling business like Mally not raising my window shades when she comes in at dawn (i love early sunlight) or me not leaving my knife and fork in the right position when I've finished my dinner. Mally's a member of the Etiquette Police, trained by the finest Chief of them all, Olivia Slade.

It was just recently, eight months ago, that Mally brought up a matter that I'd buried deeply long years past and had no notion that she'd ever heard of. My burying it so long may seem incredible to anybody not bred up in my world. But take it from me straight--Roxanna had that question underground well past her own reach. Then for a change one evening I'd begged her to sit with me in the shank of the evening and hear those famous three tenors sing on television.

Mally is devoted to the stout one whom she calls Papparachi. And I'm partial to the taller of the two Spaniards, the one whose name means Placid Sunday according to Dinah, always so soothing. Mally accepted and we scarcely spoke through the whole two hours except to agree that we wished they'd stop imitating the Three Stooges in the lighter moments and just trust their G.o.d-given voices. Once they were done, though--and I thought I'd be asleep in ten minutes--Mally looked over toward me and said "Miss Anna, you feeling all right?"

I told her I was tol'able, my father's old word.

She said "Well this won't take but a minute."

The face that she had managed to keep from the rough hands of time, a generally pleasant face that had plainly once been beautiful, was frowning so hard that I felt a quick chill. Mally was on the verge

of saying she had to leave me, move out on her own. And that would send me to the nursing home fast. But a sly smile took her, and then she said "Do you know who my father was?"

I was so overjoyed that she hadn't mentioned leaving, I couldn't hear the hardness of her question. I answered truthfully at once and told her No, I didn't.

For the only time in all our years of acquaintance, she waited and then said "That's the G.o.d's truth? No lie?"

I said "G.o.d's truth" and finally heard what a grave glimpse of the past might be concealed in her brief curiosity. So I got the best grip I could on my mind, and I said to Mally "Has somebody told you something mean?"

"No ma'm, not lately."

And then I did a thing odd as June blizzards. I said "Mally, call me Roxanna please--us two old women."

She frowned more deeply, shook her head hard but grinned. "Let me think that over. I'll get back to you on that any day"--an expression she'd recently got from TV. She revises her sayings every month or so as she hears them on our programs. I may well do the same, though I notice Mally more.

I said "Are you asking if you're kin to Palmer Slade?"

She said "Yes," leaving out ma'm for the first time ever.

I'd known for years now, not only that Coy had been Mally's grandmother but also that her own mother was Roebuck Pittman, who was still alive though out of her mind far worse than before. How Mally came to have the last name Shearin I still don't know and declined to ask. Maybe she was married briefly. I hadn't failed to learn either that Mally was born in 1925, not long after Palmer had known Roebuck in very close quarters. I'd also known for a great many years that, if Mally was right about her birthdate, then she was conceived well over nine months after Palmer had promised to do his best to focus on me. This moment, though, I gave Mally no more than the utter bare-bone truth as far as I knew it. I said "I wondered about that the day I met you, but I never asked Palmer."

Mally nodded calmly. "Miss Olivia

says the answer is Yes."

"Says?" I asked her. "You in touch with her still?"

"No, I'm talking about the month she died. Seemed like Miss Olivia felt her time creeping up on her. She was doing a lot of things, careful and right, for the very last time. So one night when I was was.h.i.+ng her feet--remember how I had to soak her feet to cut her old toenails, tough as whitleather? Anyhow I'd finished and was standing up when Miss Olivia said "You know you're my granddaughter, don't you?"'" Dinah was fast asleep a few yards away.

The news was not exactly a shock, but the echo of that old strong woman's voice was chilling. "Was that news to you?"

Mally weighed my question. "I'd heard it two or three times from Mama Coy long before I was grown, but I never asked questions. Roebuck was already more than half crazy; and so far as I knew, I'd never lived with her." Mally stopped there but didn't stop watching me.

For a change I was left with nothing to say. But this came to me next. "You believe Miss Olivia then?"

"I think I do. Now."

"Why now especially?"

You could tell by the calm in Mally's eyes that she'd rehea.r.s.ed all this a dozen times. "Because of what the old lady said next. She touched the crown of my nappy head and told me "You know I ain't got a cent to leave you?"' I told her I knew that. Far as cash was concerned, Miss Olivia was badly strapped by then. But you know that. I didn't want none of the land or timber, sure didn't want that old piece of a house."

Coming in a rush, that was way too hard for me to think my way through, morning or night, and it was well past my bedtime now. Miss Olivia had indeed died strapped, though August and Dinah would eventually have a little cash from her timber. But the first thing to say to Mally was "You're bound to feel cheated --a grudge anyhow."

Mally did something I'd never seen her do. She put her long hands over her face, bent down to her own lap and laid her head on her knees for the better part of a minute. When she looked up she made Miss Olivia's clearing-cobwebs gesture across her eyes, and it left her looking beautiful in a way I'd never seen before. She was

not the least like Miss Olivia. There was none of that obstinate heat and hardness but instead a far-off kind of strangeness in Mally's eyes and in the gentler set of her jaw--a strangeness that seemed on the verge of becoming at least as familiar as the taste of my own mouth. Then Mally said "I gave my grudge up when Dinah's baby come here safe."

"How was that?" I said.

"I'd made G.o.d a deal. See, I'd been dreaming about Dinah dying and strangling that child before it could breathe. I told G.o.d if he would spare both of them, I'd lay my bitter heart to rest."

"And you did," I said. It was no kind of question. Though I silently knew how much of a miracle that would have taken--to sweep Mally's feelings clear of regret if nothing worse--I had good reason to know such things happened every so often. Hadn't G.o.d or some indwelling angel swept Palmer's record with me as clean as a creature could manage? When I'd thought that much, I sat another moment. What happened next was as slow as my own efforts to walk but also as real.

I watched Mally Shearin's broad calm face go very slightly hazy before me and then Palmer's strong face move up behind it as if through water, not breaking the surface but barely showing its print from beneath. No question at all it was him near his best. He was there more plainly than in any of the others--August or Dinah or now young Rox. Palmer lived on in this aging child who'd saved my life so many times since he left the world. I thought it would but the sight didn't pain me. Then less slowly Mally's face firmed back to its usual state. The last thing I'd said had confirmed her refusal of hatred.

Mally surely didn't owe me thanks, and I didn't expect it, but she nodded at least and then smiled again--this time an oddly complicated smile that dawned more slowly. She said "If what Miss Olivia claimed is so, you know what else that makes me, don't you?"

I honestly didn't at that full moment. "No, what?"

"Your stepdaughter."

It hit me so hard I couldn't speak, not pain but as big a surprise as I've ever felt.

And in my long silence, Mally just said a single word "Maybe. Maybe's all I'm saying."

I hadn't had to think this fast in years, a great flood of thoughts, by no means all of them troublesome or sad. One of the first things came from my watching TV so much. I understood that tests could be done now on Dinah and Mally that would show if they were sisters--half-sisters anyhow depending on their blood. If it turned out Yes, we could wind up in court with Mally claiming her rightful share of Palmer Slade's leavings down to the very bed I slept in. Of course she'd got her small salary from me plus room and board for forty-one years.

Was Mally bringing this up now for fear I'd make my will and shut her out? Till now she'd never mentioned so much as a penny more than I paid her with a bonus twice annually, Christmas and the Fourth of July. Had she held off till now to slam me broadside? After what seemed like six weeks of silence, I finally knew I had to meet her straight. I said "Are you telling me you feel like this is part yours now?" I gestured to the whole house around us.

Mally said "Been feeling like that ever since I came here."

"You want me to leave it to you in my will?" That shocked her near as hard as she'd shocked me. Then she laughed outright. "Lord G.o.d, the Klu Kluk would burn me down the same night!" Local black people had called the Klan the Klu Kluk even when it had real life. I'd heard nothing about it here for twenty-odd years. There was plenty of loose hate to go around, though.

I had to smile with her. "Yes," I said, "they'd likely turn bitter."

She said "Doctors now got that test--that blood test. You seen it, I know, on the TV."

I acknowledged I knew. "You want to ask Dinah to take it with you--the test, so we'll know?"