Memory plays tricks, gives us insight we never had during the real time unfolding of events. And memory is all we have. Darlene always said that she’d write a book when certain people died. She wanted the memories preserved and the actions justified. She wanted her story told. They are all dead now, the nice boys and the sassy girls, the mean men and the angry women. Darlene never wrote the book. When she thought she might, it was too late. Her brain, riddled with metastasized breast cancer, led her to believe and see things that never were. She didn’t want to write the book anyway. That was always going to be my job. I was the watcher and the thinker. I wanted to know what happened next and why things happened the way did. I wanted to have all the answers.
I remember a golden day when the sunlight produced diamonds out of nothing but the cascade of sweet water as it splashed into the long-sided, rounded end, copper wash tub. It had been her mother’s, so my grandmother Leone told me. They would boil the water in it over a fire and the washer-woman would take a long, wooden pole and stir the clothes to get them clean. Sometimes she would add ash from the fire to the mix and lard from a previously boiled down pig. I was too young to think such things strange. I simply took it in as I was told.
The copper pot was now my bath tub. During the hot summer before my second birthday it was perfect to climb into and feel the delicious thrill of cold force a sharp intake of breath as the water miraculously rose to just under my chin. I was in and then out, then in and out, in again and out in just that time. I couldn’t stay in that cold sweetness long. My warm body and the hot summer sun needed to warm it. But then it would get too warm and more water would need to go in. The small square of grass in my grandmother’s back garden became soaked and muddy in patches. I don’t remember anyone around while I was engaged in this absorbing activity. I only remember the sun and the water and the light.
During that summer my mother, Darlene, lay in a darkened room. The window looked down on the yard but the blind was pulled and the curtain closed. I have pictures from around this time. I look shocked and solemn whenever she’s holding me; she’s grimly smiling. Two babies appear in the pictures too. The twins. Wriggling, squinting, squalling lumps on pulled up blankets so the camera can see them better. A tall, darkly handsome man with deep ocean-blue eyes, looking a little like an overweight Elvis, appears occasionally too. Don the missing.
Darlene told the story later when I found myself beginning to hear some of the unsaid. She said she had to go and get him from Georgia. She got on the train at the Union Station in Portland. She was dressed in a swing-coat with a Peter-Pan collar that she’d made herself of green and black wool in a large plaid pattern. She packed a picnic basket with fried chicken, apples and cheese for the trip because she didn’t have any money. It was September and the swing-coat couldn’t begin to hide her second pregnancy. Twins never occurred to her. She just thought this was a very big baby with very busy arms and legs.
She got up to go to the bathroom. She did this often on the train trip but this time when she got back to her seat, a very large black lady in the Darlene’s coat was finishing off the last of her fried chicken. The apples peeped out of one of her pockets and the cheese wrapper held only crumbs. Darlene stood there watching her in silent shock. She didn’t even have enough presence of mind to feel outrage. The woman licked her fingers and just as silently handed Darlene the basket. Then she turned on her side and went to sleep in Darlene’s seat.
Darlene spent that night on the train and the next night sitting up, listening to the growls of her stomach punctuated by the snores of that lady. When she got to Georgia, Darlene gathered up her things and turned to leave the train, passing this lady again. “You-all have the nicest time in Georgia,” she said grinning and laughed out loud.
Darlene continued to hear her laughter as she made her clumsy way off the train. Don stood there waiting for her, hands in pockets and a scowl on his face. Darlene burst into tears. “Oh, for Pete sake!” he said and stomped off, looking back at her laden with empty picnic basket, huge belly and scruffy suitcase. He waved at her impatiently to come along.
My father took her to a boarding house and left her. The woman there, taking pity, gave her a cup of tea and a sandwich and listened with growing disgust to my mother’s tale of woe. The woman settled Darlene in bed and made a few phone calls. That night, Don, looking like a brewing storm was at the boarding house dinner table next to my mother who was so delighted she couldn’t sit still. On his other side was his soon to be former Commanding Officer of the National Guard. His “war games” as mother put it would soon be over. Since it was long after World War II and the Korean War wouldn’t heat up for another year or so, my father was discharged and sent home to be with his heavily pregnant wife and very young daughter.
On the train back to Oregon, Don slept, draping his long, heavy body over my mother much like a child would. But for the time being, as uncomfortable as she was, Darlene was content.
No comments:
Post a Comment