Grandma Moss, Cousin Mayhew, and the Road Grader
by Anita West Moss ©
See, my grandmother is eighty-six years old and doesn't know who she is or where she's at most of the time. Sometimes she thinks I am one of her daughters and sometimes she thinks she is a little girl herself. But sometimes she knows everything and just pretends not to -- like the time she took off her clothes and paraded around the house just to shock that fat Baptist preacher she can't stand. Grandma is my daddy's mama, and her full name is Martha Virginia Duke Moss, but most folks call her Miss Virgie. I help take care of her even though I am only 5 years old, but she thinks she takes care of me. I have to help her give herself shots twice a day for sugar diabetes. See, she grabs a bunch of flesh on her leg and holds onto it while I swab it with rubbing alcohol. Then I measure the insulin from the little glass bottles until it reaches the right mark on the syringe. Then I put the needle in quick and press on the syringe real slow. It looks awful and Grandma's legs are all purple. She says she has had sugar diabetes since she was thirty-five years old and plans to eat anything she wants as long as she lives. Old Dr. Reed comes to see her about once a month and cusses and carries on because she won't stay on a diet. Anyway, she ain't hard to take care of except that time she stuck her whole hand in the electric fan and got blood all over the room. It was summer and Mama and Daddy were working in the cotton field. I quick bandaged her up with a kitchen towel as best I could and then hightailed it out the back leaving the screen to slam behind me. Mama had a literal bloody mess on her hands, but it all ended up okay - she didn't lose no fingers or nothing. Most of the time she sits in her big rocking chair on the front porch in her navy blue cotton dress that buttons up the front and has a white starched collar and cuffs. She rocks and fans herself with a heart-shaped palm-leaf fan that says Pickel Funeral Home on it. "Get pickled at Pickels," I'd sometime hear the adults joke like that. She watches Greenbriar Cemetery close to see who has died lately because it tickles her that she has just about outlived everybody she knew when she was young.
She likes to look out at the little green cotton plants and the dark fresh-plowed earth and fruit trees and garden and say that this farm is the garden spot of the world and all the heaven she needs. She likes to tell how she took care of her thirteen children and lost three babies down there in the cemetery and buried her husband and raised three orphan grandchildren all by herself. "I organized this farm and made it flourish when they were all saying I would have to sell it off for a song when the depression hit," she'd say, her black eyes flashing. Lots of times I could get her going and telling about when she was a little girl or she'd quote verses she memorized in school or the proverbs or Ben Franklin's aphorisms. Anyways, she has a saying for everything, and sometimes I wish she would just shut up. Aunt Alice says the same thing. If I want to get some sleep in the morning, she'll start quoting "early to bed, early to rise..." or "the early bird catches the worm." Or if I'm trying to primp in the mirror and complain because I don't look like Heddy Lamar or Veronica Lake or even Betty Grable (who ain't, I mean isn't, that pretty anyway). Grandma will start in with her favorite saying of all: "Beauty skin deep, ugly to the bone; beauty fades away, but ugly holds its own." Then she'd start in about how pretty she used to be -- better looking than any of her daughters, daughters-in-law, or granddaughters. "And just look at me now -- pore old pitiful ugly thing!" Or if my sister would try to take her picture on Sunday when she was all dressed up for preachin' with her cameo shining at her bosom, she'd slap away the camera and say "Get that thing away from me! You know I look like hell!" And we'd all laugh and she would too except I'd notice she looked a little sad, too.
She likes to look out at the little green cotton plants and the dark fresh-plowed earth and fruit trees and garden and say that this farm is the garden spot of the world and all the heaven she needs. She likes to tell how she took care of her thirteen children and lost three babies down there in the cemetery and buried her husband and raised three orphan grandchildren all by herself. "I organized this farm and made it flourish when they were all saying I would have to sell it off for a song when the depression hit," she'd say, her black eyes flashing. Lots of times I could get her going and telling about when she was a little girl or she'd quote verses she memorized in school or the proverbs or Ben Franklin's aphorisms. Anyways, she has a saying for everything, and sometimes I wish she would just shut up. Aunt Alice says the same thing. If I want to get some sleep in the morning, she'll start quoting "early to bed, early to rise..." or "the early bird catches the worm." Or if I'm trying to primp in the mirror and complain because I don't look like Heddy Lamar or Veronica Lake or even Betty Grable (who ain't, I mean isn't, that pretty anyway). Grandma will start in with her favorite saying of all: "Beauty skin deep, ugly to the bone; beauty fades away, but ugly holds its own." Then she'd start in about how pretty she used to be -- better looking than any of her daughters, daughters-in-law, or granddaughters. "And just look at me now -- pore old pitiful ugly thing!" Or if my sister would try to take her picture on Sunday when she was all dressed up for preachin' with her cameo shining at her bosom, she'd slap away the camera and say "Get that thing away from me! You know I look like hell!" And we'd all laugh and she would too except I'd notice she looked a little sad, too.
So I'd get her going every time I could 'cause I loved more than anything to hear what happened a long time ago before I was even borned or even before mama or daddy was borned. "Lord, child," Grandma would say, "I'm older than dirt! I can't remember all that mess that happened so long ago." But then she would cross her wrinkled spotted hands in her navy blue lap like two gnarled up sassafras roots and set in to tell about it. She said that her daddy was a Virginia aristocrat with a club foot who came to Mississippi from Norfolk to buy land and wound up marrying a black-eyed girl who was one-quarter Chickasaw and an orphan to boot and so his uppity family wouldn't have anything else to do with him. That part-Chickasaw woman was my great-grandmother, and Grandma said she was mean as a snake and never gave her husband a minute's peace. "She drove pore old Papa directly into his grave," she'd say with a mean look on her wrinkled face. "And then she just couldn't wait to marry off her daughters. If Papa had just lived I could've been studying Latin in my old age and remembering my students instead of wasting time on this farm. I always said my girls wouldn't have to marry unless they wanted to. I said "There's plenty of work for all of us and plenty of food on this fine farm. As long as I have a home, you have a home; as long as I have bread, you have bread." Yes, sir, those are the very words I said to Leo after her sickly mama passed and left her with nobody because her papa had already worked his poor self to death." And she'd sit quiet for a while and say, "Lord, I didn't want to marry that old man."
Lots of times, like I said Grandma got stuff mixed up. Like that day in July when we sat on the front porch and she started thinking about her cousin, Mayhew Duke. She said Mayhew was her favorite cousin and she hadn't seen him and his wife Estelle for the longest time. "You remember Cousin Mayhew, don't you?" she asked?
"No, ma'am, I never heard of him. He doesn't go to the Baptist Church, I reckon."
"Course he does; Mayhew's been a deacon for years." Grandma looked at me with those black eyes she got from her Chickasaw Mama, and they were flashing and spitting. They could bore right into you if she was mad or curious. "I'll tell you what. Go get my bonnet and your sun hat and we'll just walk down to Acker Corners and visit with him and Estelle for a while. Estelle is a wonderful cook -- makes the lightest pie crusts and cooks her vegetables just right and makes good cornbread. Course, she ought to cook right; I taught her how to cook. Grandma said an old nigger woman named Aunt Annis taught her how. Aunt Annis had been the main cook on the Flint plantation before the war. "My own mama couldn't put a meal fit for hogs on her table," Grandma would say, her lips curling.
"So, come on, let's get going. Estelle'll have dinner ready about the time we get there."
I looked at that big pan of purple hulls and thought that just about anything would be better, so I ran to the back porch to get Grandma's sunbonnet. My hat was straw, but painted white and looked like Dale Evans' hat, so I didn't put up a fuss about having to wear it the way I usually did. "Do you want your brains to boil, you silly fool?" my sister would say, "Put on that hat." I pictured the pork brains Mama fried up with eggs for Daddy's Sunday breakfast and put on the hat quick. I got Grandma's walking cane, too because I knew she'd need it on the graveled road, even if I heard the road grader buzzing and whirring that morning.
So that's how we started out walking on the hottest mid-morning in July I could remember. You could just see the heat rippling in waves in the distance; dust and gravel burned my red sandals from Montgomery Ward's in Chicago. I trudged along feeling that maybe we ought to go home before we got too far away,
"Cousin Mayhew's wife, Estelle will most likely give us a good drink of fresh lemonade when we get there; she likes to make it in that cut-glass pitcher she inherited from her aunt in Memphis," Grandma said. She stumbled along in her cotton flesh-colored stockings rolled on garters above her knees. Her swollen feet were encased in black lace-up oxfords with thick square heels. My daddy had to take her all the way to Pontotoc to get them. They were thera-something shoes. "Old lady shoes," I thought looking at my neat brown feet in their red sandals. "I hope I never have to wear ugly shoes like that or have ankles fat that way." Then I began to dream about Dorothy's ruby slippers and wish I had them right then. Grandma and I would just fly over to Cousin Mayhew's and get that lemonade.
Out loud I said, "She might give us some tea cakes, too," because my tummy was beginning to fuss, "or some ice cream from her frigidaire."
"Lord have mercy," Grandma said, "Estelle wouldn't be caught dead serving any store-boughten ice cream with that tacky cardboard taste, but she and Mayhew are crazy for freezer ice cream, specially with peaches cut up in it."
"Well let's hurry and get there, Grandma. I'm burning up and starving, too," I said, wriggling under my floursack sunsuit because the sweat was streaming between my skinny shoulder blades. I could see wet spots under Grandma's arms and she mopped her fiery red face with a wadded up lace-trimmed handkerchief.
Loose dirt was piled high on one side of the road where the road grader had scooped it up that morning, I knew it was way too soft to sit in, but Grandma didn't remember that.
"Lord, I'm wore out," she said, "Let's sit down." And with that, she plunked her bottom down on that soft loose dirt and kept on going. The first thing I knew, her black oxfords and flesh-colored old lady stockings were flying over her apron and navy blue skirts in a crazy backward somersault and her sunbonnet was nowhere to be seen. She landed right in the middle of that steep ditch in the middle of the brier patch, just like Brer Rabbit, but for Grandma, this was no laughing place. In fact, that fall didn't improve her disposition at all. Grandma didn't often say bad words, but she would cuss if she got mad enough, even if she did like to pretend to be a well-bred and tragic confederate lady.
"Goddamit, get me out!" she yelled. I took off my red sandals and clambered down the steep bank into the briers and bitterweed at the bottom of the ditch and began pushing her from behind.
"Get up, Grandma. No, take your shoes off and then climb out like this," I said, and scrambled back up the bank.
"Take my shoes off? It would take a week to get them off these swollen feet in this heat and I'd never get them back on again, she yelled. "I can't believe I've lived eighty-six years, birthed sixteen children, raised thirteen, just to die of heatstroke in this snake-infested ditch," she said. And then her old voice cracked and she set in to blubber. I jumped back down in the ditch and didn't cry yet because my feet were so full of stickers but instead I hauled on her some more. But then I could tell, I wasn't big enough to get her out, and I began to bawl myself. I watched the little rivulets on my dusty feet and legs where my tears fell on them. "We're pitiful and lost, aren't we, Grandma?" I said feeling terrible because somehow I had failed at my job of taking care of Grandma. "But I'll dig up some roots and pick some berries when it cools off a little," I said, remembering a story I heard of two lost babes.
"Durn Mayhew," Grandma muttered, "I never did like him anyway."
About that time, I heard a motor complaining and whining up the road and climbed out of the ditch fast to see who it was.
"Hurrah!" I cried, "The road grader is coming -- we're saved!" I waved my arms wildly and shouted "Emergency - Mayday - Mayday!" like they did in the WWII movies I saw on Saturday afternoon.
Mr. Cooper Cantrell was driving the road grader. He was an elected official -- the county supervisor of roads, but folks could never find him in his office because he liked to drive the road graders so well. I knew him and liked to go back to his house because he had a mean old parrot named Al who attacked me once, but then we made up. Some folks said he sold whiskey on the side, and that's why he could build Miss Lalia-Faye such a fine house. Mr. Cooper Cantrell pulled up abreast of us and stopped the road grader. He climbed down with his eyes big and his mouth hanging open and slack. "Miss Virgie, what in the world are you doing in that ditch?"
"Just taking a little nap," Grandma snapped, real sarcastic, and then she said in a real mean voice, "Get me outta here this instant, Cooper Cantrell. Miss Rosie Cantrell didn't bring you up to stand there and gawk with a lady flat on her back in a damned brier patch. She brought you up to be gentleman, and I know that for a fact because we were inducted into the Daughters of the Confederacy at the same ceremony, now hurry up and get a move on."
"Yes'm. yes'm," Mr. Cantrell said. He got down in the ditch and shoved Grandma out on the gravel. She moaned and cussed and complained the whole time. I sat down in the hot gravel and picked the stickers out of my feet and put my sandals back on; then I tried to brush off all the dirt and dust that was smeared all over my yellow sunsuit. Cabby would be mad because she had just ironed it; my french braids were coming undone too, and I had lost my yellow hairbows. I finally spotted Grandma's sunbonnet, though and my sunhat was hanging down my back. Finally, Mr. Cooper Cantrell got us both in the road grader, and we all began to feel a whole lot better. Mr. Cantrell let me sit in his lap and drive the road grader all the way back home.
"Miss Virgie, where were you going on such a hot day, anyway?" Mr. Cooper Cantrell asked.
"Aw, I was takin' this young 'un to visit Cousin Mayhew Duke."
"Lord God, Miss Virgie! Mayhew moved to Birmingham forty years ago. Nobody lives in Acker Corners no more." Mr. Cooper Cantrell was grinning now.
"Course, I remember it," Grandma said, "I was taking her to see where they used to live." She snapped her lips together tight and folded her arms across her bosom.
When we drove up, Mama, Daddy, Cabby, and all the dogs came running out to greet us. "Thank God," Mama said. "We've scoured the place looking for you." I jumped down and bounced on my rubber-soled sandals. "Where have you been, you dirty little pissant?" Cabby said and looked me up and down. I knew I was going to get it for being so dirty. But Mama hugged me and said come on in and eat. She said I wouldn't have to eat purple-hull peas after all - I could have tomato sandwiches on light bread and crisp-fried eggplant and lemonade and frozen custard for dessert. "Can I stir a little bourbon in my custard this time? My nerves are shot." She and Daddy laughed and said, "We'll see."
Then I said to Cabby, "You needn't be so smart and mean. You're just jealous because you haven't saved anybody's life and now I've saved Grandma's life twice. Today, and that time she put her hand in the electric fan and I wrapped it in a towel real tight and ran all the way to the little place to get Mama and Daddy." Cabby rolled her eyes at me. After dinner, Grandma and me took a long nap in the cool of the hall. "Well, I don't reckon I'll ever see Cousin Mayhew and Estelle now." "No'm" I whispered, as I fell into sleep remembering how it felt to be high up in that road grader in the afternoon July sun, "reckon we'll have to do without that peach ice cream, but that bourbon in my custard was good."
"Lord, God, she'll be a drunkard. Mark my words."
"Miss Virgie, where were you going on such a hot day, anyway?" Mr. Cooper Cantrell asked.
"Aw, I was takin' this young 'un to visit Cousin Mayhew Duke."
"Lord God, Miss Virgie! Mayhew moved to Birmingham forty years ago. Nobody lives in Acker Corners no more." Mr. Cooper Cantrell was grinning now.
"Course, I remember it," Grandma said, "I was taking her to see where they used to live." She snapped her lips together tight and folded her arms across her bosom.
When we drove up, Mama, Daddy, Cabby, and all the dogs came running out to greet us. "Thank God," Mama said. "We've scoured the place looking for you." I jumped down and bounced on my rubber-soled sandals. "Where have you been, you dirty little pissant?" Cabby said and looked me up and down. I knew I was going to get it for being so dirty. But Mama hugged me and said come on in and eat. She said I wouldn't have to eat purple-hull peas after all - I could have tomato sandwiches on light bread and crisp-fried eggplant and lemonade and frozen custard for dessert. "Can I stir a little bourbon in my custard this time? My nerves are shot." She and Daddy laughed and said, "We'll see."
Then I said to Cabby, "You needn't be so smart and mean. You're just jealous because you haven't saved anybody's life and now I've saved Grandma's life twice. Today, and that time she put her hand in the electric fan and I wrapped it in a towel real tight and ran all the way to the little place to get Mama and Daddy." Cabby rolled her eyes at me. After dinner, Grandma and me took a long nap in the cool of the hall. "Well, I don't reckon I'll ever see Cousin Mayhew and Estelle now." "No'm" I whispered, as I fell into sleep remembering how it felt to be high up in that road grader in the afternoon July sun, "reckon we'll have to do without that peach ice cream, but that bourbon in my custard was good."
"Lord, God, she'll be a drunkard. Mark my words."
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