Tiger lillie, p.15
Tiger Lillie, page 15
Oh, Lord, be kind to Hannah now. Surround her with so much love for all of her days.
The day Daddy told me why he went into the priesthood coincided with the day I lied to my parents. I told them they couldn’t come inside the house because it had just been fumigated, a stupid fabrication, because Hannah Grace was sleeping up in her crib. But I didn’t want to share my little haven with anyone just then, for lately God had begun wooing me to a place I needed so desperately, a place of such devotion and calm I knew it was His gift. I hated being pulled from where I’d been called to go, but there they were on the front porch telling me they wanted to see their granddaughter. I knew Rawlins would be furious that I didn’t clear it with him first, so I told them to go around back and I’d meet them on the deck. For some reason Daddy got on a “don’t waste your life” topic, one I had a hard time figuring out because I didn’t know what it had to do with me, really, especially as I had become a mother.
But nevertheless, he told me why he went into the priesthood. I knew he had a brother who killed himself, years ago. Daddy was only nineteen at the time and on a very rough path. Doing whatever kind of drug they had in the ’50s. Opium? I didn’t want to ask. Drinking a lot, running around with the guys wreaking havoc on their small town. Like something out of Steinbeck, I guess. They called him “the bad seed” and “James Dean” and I could hardly imagine Daddy like that Daddy! Just unbelievable, this blind priest was the bad seed.
Everybody thought he was the one who “should have” died like that. Not Robert. Carl was the upstart. Carl was the one who ran fast and loose. Carl was the one destined to be plucked from earth like a weed. Well, it jarred something loose, he told me. And it was then, even though he hadn’t been born into a religious family, that he found himself inside the local parish, praying. Even before he knew God initimately, before he knew Jesus had died for him, he knew he was called to serve.
It took some time for his lifestyle to follow suit, and maybe a good dose of Kathy Bajnok. Yep, he ran from God for a while, but when God’s got plans, he told me, it’s best to get with the program. Sooner than later.
And there he sat on my deck, ready to retire, blind and learned and still sassy and still in love with his Lord. Daddy and I had so much in common by then, spiritually speaking, and I had to push him away.
I wanted to tell him I had no way out, really. That if my marriage and family weren’t God’s program, what was? I wish he’d have just come right out and said what he wanted to say. Maybe we could have put our heads together. Maybe I wouldn’t be rolling down this hill right now.
Lillie
Monday noontime finds me and Pleasance at the discount fabric outlet over in Eastpoint. Although why she had to drag me along, I still can’t say She springs like a lithe cricket from table to table, picking up and unwinding the bolts, touching and rubbing the fabric against her brown cheek.
I point to a length of navy blue something-or-other, and she just waves me away saying, “You’ve got to wow them, pow them, and show them Lillie Bauer means business.”
“Gee, Pleasance. I thought navy blue was business.”
“Not our kind of business, Lillie Pad. We need romance, imagination, pizazz.”
“Panache?”
“Oooh yeah, I heard that! Besides, you already have a navy-blue fancy dress.”
I swear she has the contents of my closet memorized.
“Are you sure you’re going to be able to get this outfit done by tomorrow morning?”
I don’t know what possessed me to ask that. I don’t want to wait around for the diatribe. “Let me know when you’ve decided. I’ll be over at McDonalds getting a Coke.”
Pleasance doesn’t answer because she’s already rushing over to a cart two clerks are just wheeling in from the back. When she literally cries, “Oh baby!” at the sight of a raw silk in a deep mustard color, beautiful, no doubt, I exhale a wary sigh and hurry out the door before she grabs me.
Mustard. Just great.
Sometimes I wonder how I got so lucky. I love so many people. Mom, Dad, Tacy, Hannah Grace, Cristoff, Pleasance, Peach. And Gert’s a sweetie, too. I enjoy watching her and Peach interact. They work comfortably side by side, their wide derrières swaying with their steps, and when she starts softly warbling some old tune, he joins right in. They usually stop the words at the same place and just keep humming. Peach seemed so isolated down there before, but now Gert’s with him and she’s taken on the role as receptionist as well. And she likes it.
Well, there you go. Things really do work together for good, I guess, So as I sit in the booth at McDonald’s and sip on my Coke, I pray for a lot of things. But I pray about the meeting tomorrow, that we won’t blow this one chance to get Extremely Odd going big time.
Pleasance joins me half an hour later. “I put the fabric in the car.”
“The mustard one?”
“You color blind?”
What did I say?
“Ready to go?” she asks.
“Back to your place?”
“Yep. I’ll measure and draw the pattern while the soup cooks.”
“Soup? What kind.”
“Don’t know yet. I’ll see what I have in.”
Boy, I wish I was more like Pleasance.
Pleasance and I met at The College of Notre Dame in an elective course. Children’s Lit. We discovered a shared penchant for Madeleine L’Engle and spent hours at the study lounge discussing the time-travel series. One night she invited me over for stew cooked on a Bunsen burner. Clothing designs papered the walls of her studio apartment, a room containing a scarred set of wooden bunks, a daybed, a dinette set, and some bookshelves. This small apartment in the poor section of Towson was all she could afford at the time, but in her way, Pleasance had combined her skills with the offerings at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I’d never seen a place like that before, a small Aladdin’s cave with one rule—don’t you ever be turning on that overhead fluorescent light! Juney, and Pleasance’s younger son, Stefan, sat wide-eyed on their bunks, eating their stew as we talked about Meg and the gang from A Wrinkle in Time, about which of the cherubim was our favorite.
Something clicked that night, whispering long after the boys slept beneath their quilts, and the dream of the business began when I told her about my first bungee jump with The Extreme Delights Sporting and Adventure Club. She asked what I wore, since it was a formal occasion and all, and when I told her about the prom dress I dug out of my bedroom closet, well, her face took on a horrified expression the likes of which I’ve never seen in real life. My dark-blue chiffon evening gown, the standard bungee gown for eleven years now, resulted.
Pleasance is my friend and I love her. I wonder if I’ve ever told her that so plainly?
Tacy
Rawlins was mad at me again for letting my parents stay without calling him.
“What about ‘honor thy father and thy mother’?” I said in a moment of bravado.
“Don’t throw Scripture at me, Anastasia. I know more about Scripture than you do.”
I wanted to say, “Yeah, Scripture the way Pastor Cole interprets it.”
But I didn’t. God help me, I just couldn’t.
I only said, “I’m sorry.”
“You know you’re supposed to clear all visitors with me first.”
“But they’re my parents.”
“All visitors, Anastasia.”
“But—”
And he grabbed my arm. “Are you questioning me?”
Yes! Yes!
But I just hung my head and told him I was sorry yet again. He let go.
Did Rawlins worship the same God as I? The God of love and freedom, grace, mercy, and forgiveness?
He only knows God’s laws and His justice.
“I am responsible for you before God. Do you really want me to have to answer to Him someday for your disobedience? Your…your subterfuge?”
Subterfuge? Right now, as the Rover bangs against a tree, the word tickles me.
I was chained to my own home.
“I am the head of this household, Anastasia!”
“I know.”
“Go to bed, Anastasia, I’ll be up soon. Wear the white nightgown.”
Oh, dear God, no. Not now.
I left the kitchen and halfway up the steps he called to me from where he stood at the bottom. “Anastasia, turn around.”
I turned. Of course I did.
“If they come again without notice you are not to answer the door.”
“Yes, Rawlins.”
“Do you understand me, woman?”
“Yes, perfectly, Rawlins.”
Woman. He called me woman.
After he took me—I didn’t cry that time—when he slept, for he sleeps so lightly, I tiptoed down to the hammock on the deck, wrapped myself in my quilt against the fall chill, and I found God again. And I asked Him why and He only said, “My grace is sufficient. You are cared for, you are loved. By Me.”
I poured out my soul to You then, dear God, as I do now, and I asked You to be close to me. To show me Your goodness, to reveal my freedom in You, to realize that no matter what man can put upon me, I am Your child, Your beloved, and no one, not Rawlins, Alban Cole, or Satan himself can ever take that away.
“You shall be free indeed.”
And I am free. I hear a great crack, taste metal, and I am released.
Cradle me. Cradle my child, Hannah Grace.
Lillie
We drive back to Pleasance’s apartment after the trip to the fabric store. She drags out the Bunsen burner for old times’ sake and spins a Shirley Bassey album while she heats up some chicken and stars. By the time the boys arrive home from school, she’s cut the pieces out with those zigzag scissors and begins setting up the sewing machine.
I clear my laptop off the kitchen table so the boys can do their homework. “Are you sure about that mustard color on me?”
“First of all…mustard? Lillie, this is caramel.”
I examine it more closely. And shut my mouth if she isn’t right. Well, that makes it all seem much more acceptable. I love caramel candy.
“I considered making you that all-occasion little black dress, Lillie. It’s time for that. But when I saw this fabric, I just couldn’t let it go.”
“Sleeveless?” I ask. Dear God, please don’t let it be sleeveless. Not with these ugly hams I call arms.
“Of course not! Tight three-quarter sleeves, scooped neck baring your shoulder bones—”
“Are you serious?”
“I certainly am. Your neck and shoulders are gorgeous. Now stop interrupting. Cinched waist and a full skirt with a petticoat underneath it.”
“What?!”
Nausea literally begins creeping up my throat. But how can I tell her that? She seems so pleased with the idea.
“Lillie Pad, you’re going to look like Audrey Hepburn!”
Like that could ever happen! What a shame I can’t figure out this clothes stuff for myself.
“Did you like to play dolls when you were little?” I ask her. “Did you make their clothes?”
“Yep. In between beating up the neighborhood boys.”
Juney and Stefan complete their homework at the kitchen table, ruffling textbook pages and shuffling notes, asking questions about algebra and biology. Sometimes Pleasance fields the questions to me when she has too many pins in her mouth; sometimes she answers them herself.
“Should we have bagels or something in the conference room tomorrow morning?” I ask above the hum of the fabulous Viking sewing machine we bought when the business started.
“How about pastries? Don’t the English like sweets?”
Well…? “They do go better with tea, that’s for sure.”
Juney pops his head up from his books. “Maybe you should call Peach. Isn’t that his territory?”
The boy is so right.
Stefan jumps right up to get the cordless phone.
Pleasance has never told me where Juney and Stefan came from in the first place. She does such a good job at mothering, I wouldn’t dream of asking about the father of these boys. But I can’t help the fact that I wonder. And the fact that I just assume they’re illegitimate is horrible.
“If Miss Lillie would deign to get a cell phone, you wouldn’t have to bother, Stefan,” Pleasance says.
“I don’t mind, Mama.”
Good boy.
“Thanks, Stefan.” I throw a daggered expression at Pleasance. “It’ll be cheaper anyway.”
“You got that right.” Juney nods and smiles at me. And shoot, if Pleasance isn’t right! That special little spark of admiration gleams in his light brown eyes and it shoots off flares into mine before he looks down. Aw, bless that sweet boy’s heart. Now if that doesn’t make a girl feel good, I don’t know what does.
Of course, Peach has everything under control. I should have known.
By five o’clock the dress is basically put together and odds are it will fit perfectly. Pleasance informs me it’s time to go on home, and being the obedient person I am, I comply.
“You boys stay here,” she says. “I need to walk Lillie to her car.”
Oh no. A sermon cometh. I can feel it. I have no earthly idea why though.
Before I can grab the door handle, Pleasance lays a hand on my arm. “You white girls need to lighten up.”
“Huh?” That sure is out of the blue.
“Really, Lillie Pad. You are so hard on yourself. So you’re a size fourteen. Now where I come from, that’s just right.”
“You’re thin. And I’m a sixteen.”
“But I’ve got me a nice booty. And I’m proud of it, girl. Stop worrying about it. Just stop. You are a beautiful woman just the way God made you. You better stop telling Him He didn’t do a good job.”
“It’s easy for you to say, Bishop Stanley. It really is.”
“No. It isn’t. We all have our things we have to come to terms with.”
I cross my arms. “And yours would be…?”
“Look at the size of my hands and feet. Look at my face, Lillie, really. I’m very masculine-looking.”
“No…you’re not. You’re the most—”
“I’m telling you, really look.”
So, okay. I examine. She’s right.
She grins. “See? I told you so. But I don’t go around blabbering about it. I decided a long time ago to do the best with what God gave me. You’d be wise to do the same. You’d maybe begin to stop cutting yourself off at the knees, baby.”
“Oh, please, I don’t—”
“Get in the car. Just get your womanly, feminine self into the car right now. And tomorrow, when I dress you in something worthy of your femininity, I don’t want to hear word one from you, you hear? Go out and get a pair of winter white pumps this evening. You’ll be needing them.”
I just nod. But I think the whole conversation is Pleasance’s roundabout way of telling me to be quiet when I slip on the dress come morning.
“Pleasance? You’ve never told me about the kids’ father.”
“I don’t talk about it much. It’s painful.”
“Will you ever want to?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because you’re my friend, and I love you.”
She nods and inhales deeply, looks down. “He was killed in the Gulf War, Lillie.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Tell me about it. But he left me these children to carry on. Juney looks just like him.”
“He’s a good boy.”
“James was a good man. Anyway, maybe sometime I’ll tell you more about him. But it won’t be tonight.”
On the way back to Highlandtown, after visiting the massive shoe warehouse out in Hunt Valley, I tune into AM radio, and much to my delight Jaime Pickerson is riding some very high horse about something-or-other. I love that woman’s voice. Sounds like someone sprinkled coarse cinnamon sugar on her vocal cords and then rubbed them with a sun-dried washrag.
She’s talking about guns again. Every once in a while I run into her at the shooting range. More women than ever are buying guns these days, or so I’ve read. Well, at least they’re starting to get into the hands of sane people now. Still, I wonder how I’ll feel if I ever have to use one and I pray I won’t. It’s good to be overprepared sometimes.
“And by the way, listeners, I have an announcement to make! Brian and I eloped!”
“What?!” I scream, reaching for the cell phone I don’t own, the cell phone I thought I didn’t need, the cell phone whose absence I have lorded over the rest of this technologically dependent world.
“We leave for our honeymoon early tomorrow morning so Les Kin-solving will be…”
Oh man.
In communist Hungary the workers had a production quota set for each of them. They called it a norma.
Poor Erzsèbet.
Every night she slogged into her shed knowing her paltry pay would be docked because she’d never be able to sort and clean that many bottles.
“Everyone equal,” Mom would say. “True. Everyone equally miserable and poor.”
“Some Utopia,” Dad would agree.
It worked like this: Some bureaucrat buffoon in the Ministry of Planning decided that in one shift a hard-working citizen could surely clean out some unbelievable number of bottles, some bureaucrat who’d never probably set foot in a winery, much less Erzsèbet’s winery in Sopron. And from then on, the wages would be set to that quota and her pay based on the percentage of the quota she fulfilled.
The Party of the People, by golly.
“No matter how hard I try, I’m the last in productivity on the list that always goes up on the wall,” Erzsèbet would complain to my mother each morning. And then she’d massage her own hands.
12
Lillie
“First round of business is the Pickerson wedding,” I say the next morning, exactly two hours before Remington and company are due.
“They’ve eloped!” Cristoff, darn him, blurts out before I can, the party pooper.
