Elaine Hussey - The Oleander Sisters

“This is not pity, it’s a fact. If you want somebody to wear that leg, wear it yourself.”

“All right. Forget the leg for now. But don’t think I’m done. We lost Daddy and Mark to war, and I’m not going to lose you, too.”

“We lost Daddy in a car wreck.”

As if she didn’t know. Sis had turned and walked out of the room, the sound of crunching metal and the screams of her parents echoing through her mind. She’d been in that car, a teenager happy she didn’t have to stay home with the twins and Sweet Mama while her mother picked up Major Bill Blake at the bus station and brought him home for the holidays.

The driver who hit them was so drunk he didn’t see the red light, didn’t notice the car or the three people inside who were singing “White Christmas.” He never knew the look of surprise on Bill Blake’s face or the way Margaret Blake reached for her husband’s hand or the thoughts that tumbled through the head of a teenage girl flung clear of the wreckage. Sitting on the side of Highway 90 with her head hurting, Sis had checked her new red sweater set for damage.

What she should have been doing was checking her parents for a pulse, checking her future to see how she’d ever live with the guilt that she’d survived and they hadn’t.

Remembering, Sis jerked weeds out of the flower beds so hard she rocked back on her heels. She was not going to get mired down in the past and she most certainly wasn’t going to let her brother be one of those vets who returned from war but never really came home. The military had taken too much from her, and she was determined it would not take another single thing.

The back screen door popped, and Sweet Mama called, “Sis, can you help me with this?”

Her gardening gloves were on, her bonnet was askew and she was wrestling with a huge basket full of flowers. Plastic, for God’s sake. Sweet Mama wouldn’t be caught dead with a plastic flower in her house.

If Sis were Emily, she’d send up a petition to God, but she’d discovered if you wanted something, you’d best do it yourself.

“What in the world are you doing with plastic roses?”

“Shh, not so loud, Sis. I don’t want to wake that heifer.”

That heifer was Stella Mae Clifford. Sweet Mama marched to the edge of the yard and peered through the rose hedge toward the two-story Victorian house next door, a twin of theirs except it was painted yellow instead of pink.

Satisfied that her archenemy wasn’t about, she came back across the yard, chuckling, then plucked a pink plastic rose from the basket and secured it to the hedge with green gardening tape.

“Imagine that silly cow’s surprise when she wakes up and sees these on my rosebushes.”

Emily would die when she saw them. Still, Sis started taping plastic roses onto the nearly naked bushes.

“She’ll never believe you still have roses, Sweet Mama.”

“Yes, she will. She can’t half see.”

Black spot blight and aphids, enjoying the long stretch of intense heat and dry weather, had stripped every rosebush in Biloxi, including the hedge Sweet Mama was now decorating with plastic blossoms.

“Hurry up, Sis, before it gets daylight. We’ve got to get down to the café so I can put the coffee on for the regulars.”

“Emily can do that. Why don’t you and Beulah stay here and enjoy Jim’s first morning home? I think he could use the company.”

“Beulah’s in there now petting him like he’s three years old. Jim’s going to be all right. He’s like me. Made of strong stuff.” Sweet Mama plucked the last rose out of the basket and taped it to the disease-ravaged hedge. “Thank God he didn’t take after that jackass I married.”

There was a picture of their granddaddy on the walls at Sweet Mama’s, captioned simply The Jackass. Everybody knew it was Peter Blake, and everybody knew the story.

Sweet Mama had the misfortune to marry a man who was already married—to the bottle. Hardly an evening passed that he didn’t come home full of alcohol and bad attitude and smelling of another woman’s perfume.

After she had two boys, she made up her mind they’d not have Peter Blake as an example. One full moon when he came home sloshed and fell dead asleep into his bed, Sweet Mama went into the garden and pulled up two stout, dry cornstalks. Then she proceeded to tie her husband to the bed with the sheets and beat the devil out of him. When she’d whipped him sober, she packed his bags, threw them out the door and told him she didn’t want to ever see his sorry skinny self again.

Through the years he’d been spotted everywhere from Maine to California. The last they heard, he was up in Anchorage, Alaska. Wherever he was, that day he hightailed it was the last of Peter Blake in Biloxi and the beginning of Sweet Mama’s transformation from wife and mother to independent businesswoman, an unusual thing for a woman in 1921.

Some said Stella Mae Clifford was Peter Blake’s mistress, that he was the one who’d built her house next door. Once, Sis had asked Sweet Mama if the rumor was true.

“I like to keep people guessing, Sis. A juicy rumor is good for business. Better than a full-page ad in the newspaper.”

With the last plastic rose in place, Sweet Mama settled her bonnet on her head and shot a bird to the house next door.

“Take that, you silly old cow.”

What if Sweet Mama’s escapade with the plastic roses was not a sign of senility but a sign that the sassy, unsinkable Lucy Long Blake of years gone by was still shining through? What if she were made of such strong stuff she could defeat all the alarming signs of a mind and a body roaring toward old age?

“Let’s go inside so you can eat, Sweet Mama. Then I’ll drive you to the café. We’ve got a wedding to plan.”

“I don’t want to ride with you.”

“Why not?”

“You drive like a bat out of hell.”

It was true. Was it because Sis was in love with speed or was she thumbing her nose at fate, saying I cheated you once, see if you can catch me now?

“All right. We’ll go in separate cars. But you be careful, you hear?”

“Pshaw” was all Sweet Mama said.

Sis took her arm and led her up the back steps that might be a grandmother trap. Beulah was in the kitchen waiting for them.

“It’s about time ya’ll come in from the garden,” she said. “Breakfast is getting cold.”

“You and Sweet Mama go ahead and eat. I’ve got a few more things to do in the garden.”

“Not without something in your stomach, you don’t.” Beulah slapped two pieces of bacon between a biscuit and handed them to Sis as she headed back to the garden.

Sis decided to leave the plastic roses for a while. By tomorrow, Sweet Mama would have forgotten all about them, and Sis could remove them without causing a fuss. The rose hedge itself was another matter. She could fertilize and water a few of the bushes and hope for a little bit of greenery in time for the wedding, but most of them had to be dug up. She’d plant new ones tomorrow.

She went into the double garage where Jim’s baby-blue Thunderbird was parked, and the fishing boat Sis hadn’t used all summer. Thinking that fishing might be just the thing for her brother, she found her spade, then went back to the rose hedge and started to dig.

In spite of spindly growth with only a few blighted leaves, the rosebush had roots that seemed to go all the way to China. Sweat darkened her shirt and poured down her face as the mound of earth piled up.

Suddenly, her spade struck something hard. It was probably part of a brick or an old Mason jar. These old houses had yards full of junk tossed out and buried under years of accumulated dirt. Dropping to her knees, Sis leaned close to investigate, using her hands to carefully rake away the earth.