Candles Burning

Twenty-one

MAMA shook me before sunup with her finger to her lips to shush me. I was already awake, just keeping my eyes closed. She had been up awhile, putting on her face, fixing her hair, and dressing. She wore a tailored suit and a smart hat. Without a word, she pulled her suitcases out from under the bed.

I dressed hastily and helped her pack. Once I glanced in her vanity mirror and saw her slipping in a jewelry case behind my back. It wasn’t one of hers.

A sheet of paper on the dresser caught my eye. It read: Deirdre Carroll is hereby authorized to act in loco parentis for me, Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin, in relation to my minor son, Ford Carroll Dakin, until his majority. It was typed, except for Mama’s signature at the bottom, so I knew it was something Old Weems had conjured up.

Then we opened the cedar chest, lifted out the footlocker, and crept down the stairs with it. The thing was horribly heavy. I had no idea that money could weigh that much. Moving Mamadee’s petticoat table could hardly be more difficult.

Mama tore up her nails and stockings. Somehow she managed not to say any bad words.

By the time we stowed it in the trunk of the Edsel, I was staggering. Mama saw I needed a break. I sat down on the curb for a few minutes and examined the scrapes and bruises and nicks and cuts on my legs and feet. My overalls had given me some degree of protection but because I had been barefoot, my feet had suffered most. They were bleeding from multiple cuts and not only bruised all over, but several of the nails were bruised black.

Mama brought another one of her big suitcases down. Then I went upstairs again with her. We made several more trips down with the rest. The Edsel settled on its springs with the weight of it all. We did it all with hardly a word between us.

In a low voice, she told me to go get my suitcase and be quick about it.

I was up the stairs and down again in all of four minutes. The books in the suitcase shifted heavily with every step, so that I staggered against the uneven and unreliable burdens of it and my record player. Mama was just coming out of the downstairs powder room. She was barelegged.

She stopped me with a look.

Setting down my suitcase and then my record player nearly tipped me over. I dashed into the powder room. Mama’s torn stockings were in the wastebasket.

Mama darted in and out of the house with light steps. When I came out, my suitcase and record player were sitting where I had left them. Anxious that Mama might leave without me, I stumbled out with them. The suitcase banged against my legs, seconding the black-and-blue I was already sporting on them.

She was standing by the open trunk, a pair of Mamadee’s silver candlesticks wrapped in linen napkins in her hands. She tucked them neatly between the suitcases. Other napkin-wrapped objects were visible that had not been there previously.

My tennies were in the pockets of my overalls, along with Betsy Cane McCall. I wore Daddy’s shirt under my overalls. The toothbrush and comb I had taken to New Orleans with me were still in Mama’s bathroom. My coat still hung in Junior’s closet. I would have liked to have all those things and the crate of records too. That Mama would leave me if I tried to go back for any of them, I was sick-to-my-stomach certain.

There was no room for my things in the trunk. Mama even had luggage filling the backseat. I tried to fit my record player in.

Mama hissed. She reached past me, yanked out the record player and dropped it on the driveway. The impact popped open the lid, spilling the records inside onto the gravel. Mama snatched up my suitcase, gasped at its unexpected and unbalanced weight and dumped it onto the floor of the shotgun seat. She picked me up bodily, slung me into the Edsel and slammed the door.

Frantic to recover my record player, I scrabbled at the handle. Mama dove into the driver’s seat to reach over me and lock me in. Then she slapped me hard, making full contact with my left ear. My head rang with the pain.

As Mama turned the key in the ignition, Mamadee appeared on the verandah. Mamadee was still in her nightgown, silk kimono, and kidskin mules, with her silvery hair up in pink rollers. Greasy white cream covered her face. The flush from the powder room or the slam of the car door must have wakened her, or else some instinct that Mama was stealing her blind. Clutching her kimono over her bosom with one hand, Mamadee hurried to the driver’s side of the Edsel to rap sharply at the window.

Mama yanked out the cigarette lighter, jammed her cigarette onto its red ring, and put the gears in reverse. Then she rolled her window slowly down. Her cigarette smoke rushed out into Mamadee’s face.

Mamadee coughed as she tried to speak. “I caint believe you are leaving without saying a word! Not a word about where! Those FBI men are gone want an address and the papers for Ford’s custody have to be—”

Mamadee never got another word in.

Mama glanced quickly over her shoulder and punched the accelerator. Mamadee almost fell down. I was thrown forward into the dash, bumped my face, and bounced back into the edge of the seat. My record player crunched like the glorified cardboard box that it was under the Edsel’s wheels. Mama wheeled the car into a turn that took it off the gravel, over the grass, and then back onto the driveway. My scramble to gain some purchase left me hugging the back of the seat. The tires of the Edsel spewed gravel against the parlor windows as Mama floored it in drive.

Behind us, Mamadee ducked, holding up her hands against the pebbles and dust that peppered her. In the filtered light of the sun on the horizon, she was whitened from head to toe like a ghost. I never saw her again, in life, but we heard from her, Mama and me, and by then she was a ghost for real.