Moving
"What do they call you, li'l girl?" the old man asks.
He smiles and cackles, wrinkling his face up and pulling his old felt hat down over his forehead in the January wind and drizzle.
The whites of his eyes are real yellow and the copper palms of his hands are lighter than the backs. He has grizzly grey whiskers on his face and very few teeth. But he is paying attention to me and being nice.
“My name is Georgia Mae and I’m ten years old. I was born in 1929 and I’ll be eleven in February. That’s next month.” I tell him.
“That’s my sister, Alice, over there.” I point to Alice. She is holding Jerry by one hand and carrying blankets under her other arm.
“She’ll be thirteen in a few days. Jerry’s four, and Maxine’s just a little baby; she’s seven months old.”
“You know who I am?” the man asks me.
He leans against his truck, which is loaded with almost all of our stuff – beds, mattresses, a table, a couple of chairs, clothes, and other odds and ends. We don’t have much – but it’s all there in the back of the truck, held in by ropes and wooden slats that look like the upright pieces of a picket fence – all attached to both sides of the truck bed.
Everything is getting damp from the drizzle.
“You’re Mr. Red Shivers. I remember you from Berwick.” I tell him.
“That’s right. I’ve knowed your daddy, George, for a long time” he says. Everybody likes daddy,
I know more about Mr. Red Shivers than I say. I know he has come to move us, on credit, back to Berwick.
Mama gave daddy the money she saved up and he went to Berwick a few days ago to rent us a place, I'm excited about moving back to Berwick, in St. Mary Parish.
We been in Delcambre a little over three months now. Delcambre is in Vermillion Parish.
Mama can’t stand Delcambre. I don’t blame her.
My last day in Berwick, before we moved here, my teacher, Miss Geisler, handed me my report card, hugged me and kissed my forehead in front of the whole class, and she was almost crying.
I really liked Miss Geisler, and I always went to school, never missed a day no matter what.
Once in a while, I used to go to help dust Miss Geisler’s big house and she would pay me a dime. She even used to share her lunch with me at school sometimes, when I didn’t have anything.
In Delcambre, everybody talks French. They pray in French, gossip in French, give directions in French, and laugh at you if you can’t talk or understand French.
Mama talks French, but none of the rest of us do.
The house where we lived here was ok, but we had to walk to school a good distance. We had to pass a beer joint called The Grey Goose Inn. I like that name. It was one of daddy’s favorite places in Delcambre.
Daddy worked here in Delcambre shucking oysters. Sometimes Mama worked at the same place. They brought home oysters for us to eat. We ate oysters raw, with peas, with smothered sweet potatoes we got out of a field by the house, and with just about everything else almost every day. I hate oysters.
The only good thing about Delcambre was the pair of red shoes I got for Christmas. Oh, and going to the movies to see “Tom Sawyer”.
We’re all glad we’re moving.
Daddy comes out to help Mr. Red Shivers roll a piece of raggedly, dirty, stiff canvas over the top of the back of the truck bed. They tie the canvas down on the sides but leave the back open.
Daddy tells me and Alice and Jerry, "Y'all get in the back of the truck."
We crawl in and find places for ourselves on top of the mattresses.
We cover up with some old blankets Alice digs out.
Mama, carrying Maxine, then daddy and Bumba – our grandma, daddy's mama – come out. They all squeeze onto the front seat.
Bumba tells mama, “Mable, you ought to let me hold that baby for you.” But mama keeps Maxine herself.
Maxine is a pretty little baby, but she is always sick. She has something wrong with the inside of her nose and she has to breathe through her mouth. You can hear her breathing at night and even during the day. She is sick now, but we don’t have the money for a doctor.
Mr. Red Shivers gets into the driver’s seat in the truck and starts it up. We are on our way!
I hope things are different, this time, when we get to Berwick.
Daddy and mama used to argue and fight all the time when we were there before, just like they did in Delcambre.
Daddy was always gambling. Mama used to send me and Alice to Bud and John Smith’s gambling hall with a note. We were not allowed to go in there. We had to stand just outside the door until somebody came out or went in then ask them to give the note to daddy.
Mama would tell us, “Give George this note and don’t you come back home without him.”
We used to wait outside on the sidewalk by the door for a long time sometimes.
Once in a while daddy would come out and tell us “Go home. I’ll be there shortly,”
We would cry and beg him to come home with us,
When he had money, daddy would give us 25 or 50 cents to take to mama.
It seemed to satisfy her when we came back with money.
Mr. Bud Smith, one of the two brothers who own the gambling hall, is an old man.
Mama said he is married to one of her good friends about the same age as mama. Her name is Mary Bullard. Mama says that once in a while she gets sent to Jackson, the mental institution. People talk about her a lot and they say a lot of funny sounding things.
I hope daddy finds work in Berwick when we get there. I don’t want to be left with Alice and Bumba again like when mama, daddy, Aunt Addie and Uncle Jack all left to go look for work in Alexandria. That happened four years ago. Me and Alice were both in school. Bumba was already real old, in her seventies. They went in October after somebody got a letter that said there was work building a bridge in Alexandria. I don’t know what parish Alexandria is in, but they say it’s up north from around here.
When they left us in Berwick, they took an old home-made trailer with a pot-bellied trash burner and a couple of roll-up homemade moss mattresses to sleep on. They used Uncle Jack’s old car to pull the trailer.
They were only supposed to be gone a week or two and they said they would send money to us right away.
Every day we checked at the post office.
Bumba talked with Aunt Lucretia, one of daddy’s sisters, about how worried she was with no money and no food to feed us.
Bumba had good friends, though, especially the Footes, who owned a restaurant. They brought us ham bones and some other things they had left over and didn’t need. We ate a little.
During that time, on Friday’s, after school, I would take a Bull Durham sack, a piece of paper and a sharpened pencil, and I would go out to all the best houses to try to sell chances on a homemade cake for five cents a chance. I had to go around until I had sold enough to buy the makings for the cake and to have at least a little left over for us to be able to make it through the next few days. Most of the time I did ok.
But daddy and mama were gone a long time and they never did send any money.
One day, right before Christmas that year, we did get a package, though. We were real excited. When we opened it, it was some giant-sized colors in a cardboard wagon pulled by a cardboard duck – no coloring book or even paper to color on. We didn’t even have an extra paper bag to color on. So we put them aside to admire.
I’m really glad to be going back to Berwick. My friend Dolores is still there. She’s the daughter of Ethel and Wash Carter. They lived by us.
One day when we were trying to catch some crawfish in the drainage canal by the house, when Jerry was just a little bitty boy, he fell in the canal. Me and Alice couldn’t swim, but Dolores jumped right in and saved him. We were real scared. She was my best friend in the world.
Ethel and Wash used to give us fish or crabs sometimes.
We helped Ethel, too. When she got hooked some way on a big alligator hook through her arm, Bumba took the hook out and treated the hole and pretty soon Ethel was almost as good as new. The Carters were good neighbors, the best we ever had.
Boy, it seems like a long time has passed since we left Delcambre.
I ask Alice if she knows how much longer it will be till we get to Berwick.
She just shakes her head no,.
I try to sleep a little, but it’s pretty wet back here, and I can hear a little of what’s going on in the front seat of the truck.
It's mama fussing at daddy again. It still bothers me a lot.
Bumba tells mama, “Now Mable you know you don’t mean all that. You’re just upset.”
It’s still raining, a lot harder now, just pouring down.
We didn’t have any breakfast or dinner, only some coffee when we got up this morning and I’m hungry, like always, But I’m glad we’re on our way .
I look out through the opening of the canvas cover and I recognize the town we’re getting into. It’s Patterson, in St. Mary Parish, not too far from Berwick.
The truck drives in under a old roof sticking out from a closed down filling station.
Mama is really yelling and cursing at daddy now. Alice, just sitting there with Jerry, starts to cry.
I hear mama cursing at daddy, fussing about him gambling away every cent and now here we are, stranded.
Daddy tries to quiet her down.
He opens the truck door, gets out, and walks away in the rain, yelling back that he will be back in a few minutes.
Mr. Red Shivers gets out of the truck and comes around to the back.
“You folks all right?” he asks.
We nod yes.
“Well, don’t you worry none. Your daddy will be right back” he tells us.
Mama is crying in the front seat, rocking Maxine.
Bumba is singing, real low, one of her favorite church songs.
After a while, daddy does come back.
A lady is with him. She has on lots of powder, red red lipstick, and her cheeks are real pink.
She has a open umbrella, trying to keep herself dry.
The lady goes to the side of the truck and opens the door where Bumba and mama and Maxine are.
She gives mama a hug and a kiss on the cheek like she knows her and she says “Don’t cry Mable honey; everything is gonna be all right.”
I hear mama call her “Mary” and tell her how sick and tired she is of the same old thing over and over and over again.
I guess the lady must be Miss Mary Bullard, the wife of old man Bud Smith who owns the gambling hall in Berwick.
They must live in Patterson.
“Now you just stop your crying, honey” she tells mama again.
They talk for a little while longer.
Then Miss Mary Bullard comes to the back of the truck and crawls in with us.
Daddy and Mr. Red Shivers get in the truck. Mr. Red Shivers starts it up and gets back on the road then turns off the highway after a couple of blocks.
Miss Mary Bullard takes my hand, pats it, and tells me “You’re gonna be staying with me for a while here in Patterson. I have a big house with lots of room and I don’t have any children but I just love children. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. I’ve got some nice hot cocoa and you all are gonna have some to warm you up in just a little while.”
So now we are gonna be here stuck at Miss Mary Bullard’s house.
Miss Mary Bullard looks like a nice enough lady.
I wonder if she has any marshmallows for the cocoa.
I really do love hot cocoa with marshmallows.
I try not to cry, but I sniffle a little.
I wonder if I’ll get back to Berwick to see Dolores and Miss Geisler again.
The End
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