©Photograph by Clapboard House
“Back off sister, or you’ll be pulling this Christmas tree out of your ass.” My head snapped to attention, as if Mother’s voice were the hiss of a rattler in the aisle opposite me in the flea market. Nose-to-nose, her red bouffant bobbed back and forth with an Elvis-jet-black bouffant, their shrill voices brittle on the cool air.
I had left her at a Christmas booth where Christopher Radko ornaments had been reduced to half price. New pieces were being brought out hourly. And there to snatch the best of the lot was a wide hipped woman, basket on arm, who had been blocking the way between the counter and the tree so that she had first choice of the ornaments.
Mother was still taking exception to her tactics when I reached the booth.
“You’ve been planting yourself right there so none of us can even see what they’re bringing out. Now you can just back your lard ass out of there or . . .”
“Mother,” I begged, pulling on her elbow. “Come along now Mother. Come with me. Cooperate please.”
I managed to shuffle her further down the aisle, her neck craning back to glare at the Radko hoarder.
“Mother, what in the world has gotten into you?”
“Ellen, didn’t you see what that heifer was doing?”
“Yes, I saw” I turned her face to mine. “Mama, ordinarily you wouldn’t care if a woman like that had toted off the whole tree of ornaments. You aren’t yourself.”
And of course, that is why I was with her that day. Dad had wanted me to see if I could find out what was up with her. He was certain menopause had set in. My brother Doy suspected some bad acid “Moms” dropped in the seventies was coming back on her.
I thought they might both be right as I struggled to steer her out of the building.
“Unhand me,” she said, twisting her arm free. “I will not leave yet.”
She marched toward the Christmas booth.
“Promise me Mother.” I caught her as she neared the cash register. “Just pay for the ornaments you want and let’s go. Okay? Please?”
“Okay, alright, just stop pulling and pawing me.”
She jerked her arm away again, rolling her eyes over to the man at the cash register.
She began chatting with another woman in line so I took the time to check out the Roseville Pottery at an adjacent booth. Moments later, above the booth owner’s lengthy lament about reproduction pieces, I picked up the black-haired woman’s conversation with the Christopher Radko proprietor.
“Ma’am if you would just step aside for a while and allow these other folks equal access, give the others a chance.”
“I got cash money and I was here first,” she said, grabbing another ornament from his hand. “First come, first serve. That’s what I say.”
“Yes ma’am,” the man said, snatching the box back from her reach. “But I think you’ve helped yourself to quite enough, thank you. Now if you’ll just move along please.”
“Who’re you, the Christmas fairy? All you faggots think you own Christmas, don’t you?”
“Okay . . . that’s it,” Mama hollered, plopping her ornaments in my hands. She pushed up the long sleeves of her red cashmere sweater, approaching the woman. “Ol’girl, I’m gonna . . .”
“Mother, please,” I said, toppling her off balance, pulling her back.
“Did you hear what she said to these . . . these nice boys? Can you believe it? At a Christmas booth for Christ’s sake.”
She faced the woman with a low growl through gritted teeth. “You’d better get from here or I’m gonna mop up this filthy floor with your fat ass.”
All that was keeping Mama from fulfilling her promise was my firm grip on her arm. Her popped, blood engorged blue eyes stared the woman down until she backed away, turning around frequently as she walked on, as if not trusting her back to Mama.
“Thanks,” the booth owner whispered to her. “I’m so sorry for this.” He handed Mama an ornament, a cupid sitting atop a red heart. “Please take him as a thank you.”
“Oh, you sweet thing.” She showed me the ornament. “Oh Ellen, isn’t it lovely?”
“It certainly is.” I nodded to the man. “Thank you.”
“Yes, thank you so much,” Mama said, cradling the ornament to her chest as if it were a newborn living thing. “Why do people have to be so mean?”
She choked, convulsed with sobs. “I can’t believe she could be so cruel. How could she say such mean things? I don’t understand. I don’t. I just can’t imagine . . .”
She looked up at us, startled, as if forgetting she had an audience. She ran out of the building, the ornament still cradled against her chest.
I found her sitting on the curb by the car, gently rocking, with the ornament held prayer-like between her hands, under her chin.
She hummed Christmas carols softly to herself as I drove. Her behavior and appearance were so unfamiliar to me that I didn’t speak, for fear of disturbing her calm, albeit a scary, post electric shock treatment calm. I watched her out of the corner of my eye and prayed nothing more happened during our almost three hour drive home from Atlanta.
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Whatever was going on with Mother began a few months before, the second day of January, the day my parents always, without fail, put Christmas back in the attic. Dad telephoned in hysterics, pleading for me to come over and, “See if you can do something with your Mother.”
The house was quiet when I arrived, except for the sound of Dad pacing the hall floor. “Thank God you’re here,” he said, hugging me and holding onto me as he led us to Mama’s sewing room door. “She’s in there with the Christmas tree.”
“Excuse me?” I looked back up the hall at the trail of scattered broken glass ornaments sparkling in the sunlight. “Dad, how did it get here from the living room?”
“Your Mother. You should have seen her drag that tree down the hall. You know how it always takes me and your brother, and the Simmons boy, to get that thing down from the attic and set it up. She put it on the hall runner and dragged it, just damned well pulled it all the way to her sewing room.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. Everything was fine. We had a nice breakfast, French toast, strawberries, and then we took the wreaths and lights down from outside, like always. But she was getting a little testy by the time we were taking the garland down from the stairway, so I left her to it and went in the living room to start on the tree. Thought I was being helpful. But she came running in, screaming at me, froze my blood I mean to tell you, hitting me and pushing me away from the tree. I never heard her . . .”
“It’s alright Daddy,” I said, holding his head to mine when he choked. “We’ll figure it out. Now just tell me what she said.”
“That’s just it. She wasn’t saying anything, just screaming every time I moved or opened my mouth.”
“Daddy, none of this is making any sense.”
“You’re telling me,” he said, releasing me, needing his hands to talk. “She dragged it inside and then proceeded to take every dadblamed piece of Christmas decoration we have in there with her. She locked the door and wouldn’t come out or answer me. I’ve been beside myself. I’ve . . . I . . .”
“Okay Daddy, let me see what I can do.”
Before I could knock, I heard a Christmas carol from one of her collection of Christmas music boxes and musical snow globes.
I turned to Daddy as another began playing and then another.
“What the hell is going on here?” I whispered.
He shrugged his shoulders, choking down again as yet another music box began playing.
“Mother, It’s Ellen.” I knocked harder, hoping she could hear above the dozen or so carols playing at once. “May I come in? Please let me in Mother.”
“Ellen,” she said, swinging the door open wide. “What a nice surprise. Come on in sugar.”
“Mother, are you alright?”
“Of course dear.”
She picked up a crotch mahogany box with holly inlay I’d given her that, oddly, played Bridge over Troubled Waters, not even a marginal Christmas song.
“You know, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have them all playing at once.”
“Mama, Daddy is worried sick.”
She began winding another musical Christmas globe. “That’s it. The last one,” she said, her chin dropping, her eyes lifting upward as if the music boxes and globes were suddenly aloft.
“All at once.” She smiled, closing her eyes. “They’re all playing. But I declare . . . when I close my eyes and I’m completely still . . . I hear them . . . a chorus of separate angels.”
Eyes still closed, her hand reached out to me, “Ellen, listen. Hear them?”
“Mama,” I said, kneeling with her at the tree. “Mama, how about I make us some hot chocolate? We can sit in the kitchen, you and me, and have a long talk. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“None for me sweetie,” she said, putting the tree skirt in place. “But you’re Father may like some. You know how he gets those post holiday blues. He’d appreciate the company I’m sure.”
I was clearly being dismissed, along with Daddy, from her sewing room, and, for the next few months, from her life. A room I had known all my life as a safe haven, a warm, chintz draped womb, where all would be made right by Mama, was now off limits.
__________
As I drove on, with Mama still humming her carols, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was missing her music boxes and the Christmas cocoon where she had spent the better part of the last three months.
“Stop!” she screamed. “Turn! Turn right. Now! Turn in there. Ellen quick . . .”
My left leg was shaking so I could barely keep my foot on the pedal as I braked to turn into a cemetery entrance. I brought the car to a stop just past the towering old rusted and warped wrought iron gates.
“Mama, what in the world?” I asked, fighting for breath, “scared . . . living . . . hell out of me.”
“This isn’t good enough,” she said. “No. This won’t do. Drive on.”
“What are we doing here?”
“Drive Ellen.” She motioned forward. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”
I drove deeper into the dimly lit cemetery. I coasted slowly, mostly to give myself time to decide if I should be obeying her or taking her to the nearest hospital.
“Here. Stop here. This is fine.” My car was swallowed by the massive jagged edged shadow of an ancient cedar tree.
“Why here?” I asked, afraid to face her. “Why this spot?”
“It’s dark enough.”
“For what Mama?”
“For me to talk. Dark is comfort.”
A bit of ornament glitter on her cheek pinpricked the darkness like a lightning bug and I faced her.
“Ellen, I’m not crazy,” she said, patting my white-knuckled hand, still clenched to the steering wheel. “Relax sweetie. Just listen.”
She grabbed my cold hand as I released the steering wheel. “Ellen, will you promise that what I say to you now stays here? We leave it all here with the dead when we drive out those gates?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Sure Mama. Whatever you say.”
A few awkward moments passed in silence, Mama twitching and shifting in her seat. She made several false starts, after which we exchanged forced half smiles of embarrassment.
“This isn’t working,” she said, swinging the car door open.
I followed her down a narrow sidewalk, left cracked and uneven by bulging knobbed oak tree roots that meandered through an old part of the cemetery.
“Mama, I’m not sure we should be doing this. We don’t even know what town this is.”
“Does it matter?” she asked. “These people are just as dead as the ones back home in our cemetery. Follow me. I’ve spotted a place.”
“Mama, oh Mama it’s way too dark in there. You’re really scaring me now. Have I said that yet Mama?”
She stopped in front of an old family plot overgrown with cedar, azaleas and camellias. At the feet of the two above ground crypts was a lavishly carved marble bench. A large marble angel stood guard at the other end, opposite the bench, hand extended and lips parted, as if posed to speak to whoever sat there.
“Perfect,” she said, sitting on the bench, facing the angel. Then she nudged me. “No Ellen, I want you to sit facing the other way, with your back to me. That’s right. This will do.”
Our shoulders were touching. I turned my head slightly when she trembled. “Don’t look,” she ordered, shifting away from me. “I’m just going to say it outright and fill in the details after. That’s best. I’ll just say it, you don’t comment though, and then I’ll try to explain. And remember your promise.”
“It’s okay Mama. Nothing you could say now would change . . .”
“Last New Years Eve, in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, I kissed a nineteen year old bag boy.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or shriek in horror. I felt a strange mix of disgust and delight, relieved that she hadn’t murdered someone, yet revolted by the thought of my Mother in any remotely sexual context, especially with someone only several years younger than myself.
“Well, say something Ellen.”
“Who was he?”
“That Kuykendal boy.”
“Lucas?” I faced her. “You kissed Lucas Kuykendal? Doy’s friend?”
“Actually, he kissed me.”
“Mama, Lucas is not nineteen. He’s younger than Doy, not even eighteen yet.”
“Stop,” she yelled, her hands flying up. “If you go on I won’t be able to finish this. Now hush until you’ve heard it all.”
“What? There’s more?”
She shifted further away, folding her arms across her chest and rocking again, her eyes on the marble angel.
“Dear God, a broken wing.” She shook her head. “Oh. Oh no, that’s just too symbolic.”
She swung her legs over to my side and slid close to me. “Ellen, the boy had always flirted with me. I’d tease back, jokingly, not taking him seriously. I admit I was flattered. You know I do think I’ve held up well, face and figure.” She straightened her spine, lifting her chest as her red-nailed fingers smoothed down her trim torso. “Anyway, yes I was very flattered, having a big, good-looking young buck flirt . . .”
“Buck? Young . . . buck? Mother, really.”
“Okay, a stud puppy? A hunk?” She propped her leg up on the bench between us. “Oh, I see. Shocks hell out of you to think Mommy could ever . . .”
“You’re right.” I waved my hands, as if erasing the image from a chalkboard. “I’m sorry. Please, just continue.”
“Your Dad forgot to pick up our annual bottle of two ninety eight Andre Champagne that afternoon, so I had to make a run to the all night Pig. Creatures of routine, we couldn’t miss our yearly cheap buzz while watching the ball drop on the tube at Times Square.”
She laughed, placing her hand on my forearm. “Did you know that your Father asks me every New Years Eve, sitting in front of the television, ‘Mama where’s Guy Lombardo?’ And every year I tell him that Guy Lombardo is still dead. I hate it when he calls me ‘Mama’.”
I felt uncomfortable being so near Mama while she was doing this confessional thing. I dropped my rear off the bench, squatting in front of her on the even colder marble coping of the plot.
“I was putting my two grocery bags in the trunk when Lucas came up behind me, put his wide hands over my eyes wanting me to guess who. He was just going in to work. He flirted, for real this time, asking me to . . .”
“Mama,” I held my hand up, “please, just skip to the . . . that kiss.”
“Getting uncomfortable dear?” She slapped her hands on her thighs and leaned down to me. “Yes Ellen, your Mother has had orgasms, sometimes even with your Father in the room. And yes, if I had taken Lucas up on his overture, after drinking that champagne, I would have probably hurt that young BUCK that night.”
“Oh, I am not believing this.” I stood, pacing, hands on my hips.
“Get over it Ellen. This isn’t about sex anyway. Don’t let that get us sidelined.”
“Then tell me Mama, just tell me, what is this about?”
“A kiss. He said he would be working at midnight and wouldn’t get a Happy New Years kiss, so he asked if he could kiss me, just a peck on the cheek he said. I offered my cheek, but he took me in his arms and he kissed me full on the lips . . . firmly, with confidence, yet . . . sweetly.”
“Oh my God. How do I say this? I’ve got to know.” I stopped in front of her. “Mama, did you . . . was it an open mouth kiss?”
“Tongue?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, spreading my arms wide. “I cannot believe I am standing in the middle of a strange cemetery at midnight, asking my forty two year old Mother what it was like to French kiss a seventeen year old Piggly Wiggly bag boy.”
“Open mouth? What difference does it make anyway Ellen?”
I flung my arms in the air, letting them drop clumsily against my thighs. “Oh, I don’t know Mama, maybe the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor.”
She closed her eyes, swaying again, and held her hand over her mouth. “It was never about sex,” she said, her crying muffled through her hand.
I squatted at her feet, placing a hand on her knee while carefully pulling her slender porcelain white fingers away from her mouth.
“Then what was it about Mama? I won’t say another word. I promise. Just tell me.”
“Oh sweetie, I don’t know if I can. I thought I could, but I’m not sure now. How can I ever tell you what it’s like to be my age, my age, and want to believe in Santa Claus again?” She sobbed. “I want to know that innocence again, to believe in dreams, that wishes come true. To just not know any better. Oh God, I do remember how wonderful and pure that felt, to believe.” She shook her head as a child would. “No. You can’t keep it. And you can’t recapture it. No, you can’t. You can remember, but you can never feel it again, never, not even for a second, not once it’s gone.”
“Mama,” I said, holding her. “I had no idea you’ve been this unhappy.”
“It’s not really about being unhappy either. It’s about being reminded of a time when I believed anything I could imagine was possible, anything. It’s about an innocent, sweet kiss from a beautiful young man that woke me up and reminded me of all that is lost and will never be again . . . never.”
After a few wordless moments her crying subsided, leaving her with soft child-like snivels and weak sighs. Her body lay loosely against me.
“I don’t have it anymore.”
“What Mama?”
“Through the years I’ve sold, loaned and given away, mostly bits and pieces of what wasn’t outright taken, stolen.”
“What Mama?”
“Me.”
Holding her, I rocked her as gently as she had rocked herself and she talked. I didn’t understand all that she said, but that didn’t matter. .
“Remember your promise?” she asked as I started the car. “Not a word?”
“Yes ma’am. I remember.”
“You know Ellen, this is really a beautiful old cemetery,” she said, looking out at the shadowed marble and granite headstones, slabs, statues and crypts. “I could have only said those things to you in a strange place, among strangers—these dead strangers.”
Fay Bella Whaley declined to provide us with a biography, but we’ve been told she is a cosmetologist on a cruise ship and has vowed to singlehandedly bring back the beehive.
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