Bodark Creek - 15. Chapter 15

When I think about Mama, I remember how hard she worked. She worked at the mill, and she worked in our house, and she worked at church. In our whole life together, I don’t think I ever saw her do anything just for herself. When she cooked, it was because we needed to be fed. When she sewed, it was because one of us needed clothes or something was ripped or had to be let out. She didn’t grow flowers in our garden, just vegetables. And she didn’t make fancy jams or jellies. She canned fruit. She could bake. She baked breads, and cookies, and cakes, and they all tasted fine. But they were always plain and served their purpose. And she never seemed to have time to think, or read, or sing. She was always busy.

“Did you go to school?” I once asked her. She was probably making soup, and I was helping her cut up vegetables.

“Until I was fourteen.”

“Why do I have to go then?” Actually, I liked school and wouldn’t have given it up. But I also liked making trouble.

“Things are different now,” Mama said. “And your mama’s alive, so you don’t have to keep house.” She smiled when she said that, but just a little.

“When did your mama die?” I asked.

“When I was fourteen. I’ve told you that.”

She told me that whenever she was trying to teach me the value of something. “This is how my mama taught me to make dough. Or this is how my mama taught me to darn.” When her mama died, Mama’s daddy was still alive, but he had other children and a farm. So Mama and Aunt Evie went to live with their uncle, who’d also lost his wife. Aunt Evie was seven, but Mama was old enough to cook and clean for her uncle and his sons.

“Did you like your uncle?” I asked.

“He was very good to Evie and me.”

“Did you miss your mama?”

“You’re always asking questions like that. Of course, I did.”

“Did you miss your daddy and brothers and sisters?”

“I saw them all the time, Addy. At church, and at home, and in town. We didn’t live that far away.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have lived with them?”

“Addy, it didn’t matter. And if you don’t watch what you’re doing, you’re going to cut one of your fingers.”

I couldn’t say, “I never cut my fingers,” because I did, all the time. But so did Mama. And we both cut them a lot less than Rosalind. Charley was never allowed to help in the kitchen, just because he was a boy. I once asked Mama how Sonny and Dougie and Walter learned to cook. But she didn’t answer.

Another time, I asked Mama, “How come Aunt Evie got married before you?” I can’t remember what we were doing that time, but I’m sure we were in the kitchen.

“I was still taking care of my uncle,” Mama said.

“While you were working at the mill?”

“No. I didn’t start at the mill until my uncle’s boys were grown. Then he got married again.”

“How come he didn’t get married before that? So you could get married before Aunt Evie?”

Mama looked at me like she was wondering how I thought of these questions. The truth was that they just seemed to make sense, like things I’d ask Rosalind or Charley.

“You’d have to ask my uncle,” she finally said.

That would be hard. I’d never met Uncle Ennis, since he always lived in Hattiesburg. Mama sometimes talked about going back for a visit, and she talked about taking us with her. Hattiesburg was only five hundred miles away, we could see it on the map, and you could get there by train. But we never went.

“Were you mad when Aunt Evie got married first?” I went on. It must have been a good day for her answering questions.

“Why are you talking so much about getting married?” she asked.

It might have been around the time Walter got married again. And while he didn’t have a big party like the first one, it was still exciting.

“Don’t you want me to get married?” I asked, mostly to see what she’d say.

“Have you been making plans?” she said. “Are you and Rosalind keeping secrets from me?” She was almost smiling.

I didn’t even have a boyfriend then. I was probably twelve. But a number of boys liked Rosalind. There were a couple at school, and one from church, and one we only saw in town.

“But didn’t you care that Aunt Evie got married first?” I asked Mama. “Rosalind would hate me if I got married before her.”

“You’re both so lucky you have time to talk about getting married. I never even thought about it.”

I’m not sure that was true, so she might have been trying to teach me something. But I’m also not sure that Mama was ever in love with Daddy, not the way I used to think about it. And I’m not sure he was ever in love with her.

They met once she started working at the mill. Her uncle’s farm was a little outside of Hattiesburg, so she didn’t see a lot of people, especially younger men. Except on Sundays, at church, and there was no time to be social. Working at the mill was the first really different thing Mama had done.

Daddy fixed the looms that she was learning to weave on. His first wife had died three years before he met Mama. That was right after Lorena died of the flu. Mary and Billie were taking care of the boys, but Daddy was the only one working for money.

“They never had a lot, and there were always so many of them,” Mama told me. “But when your daddy asked if I wanted to marry him, I said, ‘Yes.’”

“Why?” I wanted to say, but I never just asked Mama if she loved Daddy. I wouldn’t have known how. Maybe to her, all my questions seemed to come easily, or they didn’t seem very careful. But they were. There were some things you knew Mama would never talk about.

Mama died when I was sixteen. She was fifty-two. It was like an accident, but it wasn’t. She was sick at the mill one afternoon and never came home.

Daddy was with her. Someone found him, doing some repair, and told him to hurry to the infirmary. He held Mama as she died. Later, he told us, “It was her heart.”