Accounts of my mother’s first year on earth describe the most extreme temperatures ever recorded, all around the globe. In Missouri, so oppressive was the heat that citizens in St. Louis slept in Forest Park under the stars, cooling themselves in breezes drifting in from the Mississippi. I envision Mammy, up with the babies through the hot nights, walking through fireflies to pick white grapes from the arbor or sitting on the back step, under the walnut tree, brushing her hair out in the dark, as she did before sleeping. She would soothe the little ones with washcloths moistened with well water as her husband—a light sleeper with shadows about his eyes—lay awake, worried over the day to come and the state of his business.
During 1922, one hundred and forty-four biscuits were served each morning at the Poor Farm in Monroe County, where residents included the insolvent, imbeciles, and the insane. According to one account, some of those confined “uttered nary a word for days on end while others chattered to themselves of imaginary trips to destinations as far flung as Mississippi and Alabama.” For suppers, the matron of the institution, Mrs. J. P. McGee, served two hundred and seven chickens in 1922, all raised by herself with the help of an inmate known as Stick Horse John. Between 1924 and 1928, one hundred and eighty-seven property owners in Monroe County were forced to sell their homes or properties at trustees’ or sheriff’s sales.
Children died often and early of the influenza virus. In an old diary of my mother’s there are only two kinds of entries: the noting of piano recitals and the names of classmates lost to flu. Most of the pages, though, are blank. Today Betty remains closemouthed about what was.
In Paris now, there is almost no one she knows. Gone are the abattoir, the jeweler; the fountain at the courthouse goes without its goldfish. Gone are the fine old families who lived in the big houses on Locust and Cooper streets and wintered in Biloxi. Gone are the women who served weak coffee, labeled “troubled water” by my grandmother, in demitasse cups. No more are the old friends who arrived unexpectedly with embroidered baby clothes, canned peaches, or jars of pale green gooseberry jelly. My mother’s family name brings little recognition. Once more, the weather is the most frequent topic of conversation. The lakes are down, their beds cracked and dry like parched mouths. From the stately houses in the river towns—Boonville, Louisiana—one sees banks, vulnerable to fire, above the currents of the waters that eddy in slow, languid circles.
Betty asks for food made from her mother’s recipes: pimento cheese, lemon pies, burned sugar cakes, oysters, peppered fiercely and baked with crumbled saltines. She craves fresh peaches, sorts through old baby announcements and birthday cards, worrying slyly over whom she will likely offend as she changes her mind, over and over, about which of my cousins will inherit her gravy boats, gold bracelets, and silver salvers. Like most who live now in the place where she is from, she does not care to contemplate the past or to consider the future. Here and now is trouble enough.
. . .
The clock says it is after four. Betty says she will never make the meeting, beats her hand on the table. They will think she is too old. They will say she shouldn’t even be on the committee, that she can no longer keep track of the expenditures. “They will say I forget,” she keeps repeating. Her hand beats the table again and again and again. “Why did you leave? Where did you go? Why today? Why don’t you ever pay attention?”
My mother yells for her shoes. Only the sandals will do. I give up immediately, all vows rescinded. The war has been brief, but filled with shock and awe. I get the worn sandals from the closet, and when she sees them, when it is confirmed beyond denial that I have hidden them, a new wave of hurt and anger emerges as she sits down at the kitchen table and tries, unsuccessfully, to put them on her feet, a task that she cannot manage because she is so enraged at me, at her feet, at the people at the church, at herself, the way she is.
“Calm down,” I say, taking her hand, which she pulls away, slapping me away. “Please, Mama,” I beg her. “Please, please, Mama. It is all right. It is okay. You’re all right. You’re okay.”
“Am I?” she asks. “Am I? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”
For the meeting, she has put on her good black pants that we found at J. Jill. Mean tattletales, they keep record of every day’s spills, every crumb or bit of lint, everything she has brushed against, every speck. Tight at her bulging waist, baggy over her narrow legs, they hang down over her feet. Sometimes, because of her vision, she cannot make out how much of her life has accumulated on her outfits and just doesn’t realize how badly they need to be cleaned. How unforgiving the eyes of the world can be, even over small things: She knows that now. A trip to bridge has sometimes become a lesson in humility.
Bending down , face-to-face with the sandals, I salute my victorious adversaries and brush off the legs of Betty’s trousers with my hands. Her fingers, resting tentatively on my shoulder for one fleeting second, when it seems that she has almost lost her balance, are trembling. Her shoes, her good old shoes: She thought I had just walked off and left her.