Sunday is frying eggs and trying not to break the yolks; getting Betty off to church; Parade magazine; big men streaking down Main Street on Harleys with their hair blowing from their helmets; the long, silent afternoon. August is beginning to wane. I don’t want to get up; it’s barely 6 a.m., but I hear my mother in the living room, playing the piano.
Last night, strange news: A young man whose family sold tractors in Madison—a jolly-looking kid with a belly and bushy beard—was shot and killed, apparently by homeless people staying with him. The murderer or murderers are still at large. Taking all this in, I saw that a friend of the dead man had posted photos on Facebook, including one of the scene of the crime. “We had real good parties here,” the caption said. “RIP.”
I knew the place. It was Mammy’s house on Olive Street, remodeled now, with a wishing well where her garden was. Apparently not long ago a meth lab in the kitchen where my grandmother rolled flour for bread blew a hole through the roof.
I chased lightning bugs across Mammy’s yard on nights in the summer as, across the street, the old ladies in the neighborhood—my grandmother, Bassett, Dolly, Mary Virginia, and Virgie—chatted away on Dolly’s porch in their nightgowns, taking in the cool air.
Betty said nothing when I told her of the murder. We’d had a bad scene and she wasn’t speaking to me. For days I had searched for an old clipping—a story about Ella Ewing, the giantess circus performer whose shoes hang at the state capitol. I thought maybe I could try to write something about her, and the article was loaned to me by the historical society. But nothing ever stays put here, and finally Betty admitted to throwing it away. She wouldn’t say why. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. What is mine is hers.
“Dammit,” I yelled. “You won’t throw away your Kleenexes. But the one thing I need, you throw away. It wasn’t mine. Couldn’t you have asked? It was in a Ziploc bag. Didn’t it occur to you that someone was saving it?”
Betty, who never yells, looked back in disbelief, so upset, rising shakily from her chair, not able to cope with this. She began to make her sounds, as if trying to maintain some sort of equilibrium. Clutching the sides of her gown, she fled the kitchen as if attacked, making her way down the hall as fast as she could to her room where she closed the door. I thought I had made her cry and lay down on the couch shaking, knowing I had gone too far. On the rare occasions when my anger comes out, it’s a river that can’t be easily dammed up. I pressed my lips together hard, hoping my mouth would not fly open again.
I found Betty in her room, sitting—as she always does—at the far edge of her high bed, about to slide off, her hand cradling the side of her head. I tried to apologize, but couldn’t make it right.
“It’s the first time you’ve ever sworn at me.” That’s all she could say. She looked shocked, as if someone had died, passed away from her. I didn’t know whether she was angry at herself or mourning the son who never raised his voice to her. She would accept no apologies and now it is Sunday and I still feel terrible.
. . .
I can’t seem to get out of bed, though I need to make breakfast. “What’s wrong with you, Betty? What’s wrong with you? Why did you do that?” Betty is upset, talking to herself at the piano. She has played the wrong note. Later she is to accompany the choir at church and, scared of embarrassing herself, has gotten up early to practice. She still drives herself when she is scheduled to perform. The music stops; she coughs. I hope she won’t make more mistakes. A fragile bundle in pink flannel, she is sitting at the piano in the living room as the sun begins to fall through the lace curtains she says will crumble if washed once more.
“It’s imported,” she says of the fabric. “Switzerland. Somewhere.”
Betty is making her way slowly through “Take the Time to Be Holy.” Not as sure or certain at the keyboard as she was, she hits a few clunkers. Each one hurts us both, tearing into our pictures of the woman we remember, shoulders held stiffly erect as she played, never hitting a wrong note. “Hold up your shoulders,” Mammy always told her. “Hold up your shoulders.” If her posture sagged, her father walked up behind her and struck her between the shoulder blades.
“Why did you play that?” my mother asks herself. “You know better than that.” I get angry along with her when she makes a mistake. I get mad when she is less than she was.
Every time she plays, it’s more of a trial. She will no longer allow me to accompany her to church. She does not want me to hear her.