Lesley Kagen - Land of a Hundred Wonders

Miss Florida does not miss a beat. “Boys, wind that game up now. I need for y’all to take these girls home,” she says, just about pulling her screen door out of its frame. “I’m fixin’ to call Grampa to tell him you’re on your way.”

I say, “For chrissakes, don’t do that,” but she’s already speeding through her sharply decorated parlor. Besides a green brocade sofa, she’s got a rag rug she made herself, and golden lamps she got from a catalog that sit on two matching spool tables. And she must have a pie in the oven because something smells divine. “Please, please, don’t call Grampa,” I say, when we catch up with her. “Clever is knocked up.”

“What?” Miss Florida says, bringing her face close to mine and then jerking it toward Clever’s stomach. For a bit, it’s like an ice storm swept through and froze us all up. Except for Vern and Teddy, who are bickering hotly about something outside the window.

“Knocked up means Clever is goin’ to have a baby,” I try to explain, but before I can, Miss Florida yells, “Mercy,” and collapses into her red watching-television chair with a crashing thrump .

“And Mr. Buster Malloy is dead and after I solve the crime and write my awfully good story for the Gazette ,” I say, “Mama will finally be able to rest assured ’cause she’ll see I’m gettin’ more Quite Right and that I can take care of myself and…”

Damn.

Clever and Miss Florida chime in together, “What?”

Hat’s out of the box now, no sense denying. “I said, Mr. Buster Malloy is dead and-”

Miss Florida interrupts with a wave of her hand. “Lord knows, there’s plenty of good folks wish it upon him.” Mr. Buster is known countywide for paying dirt cheap and not supplying near enough shade breaks to the colored men bent over those tobacco plants from sunup to sundown. “But Buster ain’t dead. Talk at the diner is he’s missin’, is all.”

I can tell by the sassy look on her face that Clever doesn’t believe me either. Good by me. According to The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation: Breaking News: One of the most important aspects of solid investigative reporting is the ability of a reporter to keep a story under wraps until he has gathered the proper substantiation of said story.

Miss Florida groans, “Why din’t you tell me you was pregnant? Thought ya just been eatin’ too much barbecue.” She jabs her finger at Clever, who drops onto her knees and lays her head in Miss Florida’s low-valley lap. Everybody in Browntown’s probably running for cover, ’cause when that girl lets loose with her wailing, it cuts through the still of the night like an air-raid siren.

I report, “I don’t know why she didn’t tell you, but I suspect the who is Willard and the what is his highness, Lord Sparky.”

“Willard?” Miss Florida asks with a screwed face. “He that hippie boy livin’ up next to ya for the summer?”

I nod my head the same way she always does, slow and with deepness.

“Who’s this Lord Sparky?” she asks.

“Lord Sparky is what Willard calls his… ah…” I bring my finger down to the front of my shorts, waggle it, hoping she gets the idea.

“Oh, man alive, man alive!” She lifts Clever’s slippery face up in her hands. “He the father?” Clever does not answer right off ’cause she’s heaving pretty bad, so Miss Florida tempers herself some. “Ya should know by now, tears don’ help none.” Drawing a hankie outta the sleeve of her polka-dot house dress, she dabs at Clever’s blotchy cheeks. “That Willard boy… he the baby’s daddy?”

Clever stutters out, “Can’t… can’t… say.”

“Ya can’t say? How many men you done had, for godssakes?” Miss Florida thunders, which gets Clever air-raid sirening again.

“Stand up, girl. Let me see that stomach a yours.” Miss Florida hikes up the flowing skirt past Clever’s underpanties. Goodness. I can still see her ribs, but right in her middle section it looks like she swallowed a world globe. And something real bad has happened to her belly button. It’s sticking out like a doorbell.

“You ’bout eight months?” Miss Florida asks.

Clever whimpers.

“Yer not all that big, but see how that baby’s come down low? It’s gettin’ ready.”

I ask, “Gettin’ ready to do what?”

“To get on out of there and start bein’ more trouble than you can ever imagine,” Miss Florida says. Then the oven bell goes off-oh, that simply delicious smell. Maybe cherry? And with a shake of her head and a few tsks… tsks , Miss Florida braces her dimpled arms against the sides of her chair, pushing up hard on her way into the kitchen, and Clever is left to stew in her juices.

“Why’d ya tell her?” Clever snarls, shoving me down onto the sofa.

“Hush the hell up,” I say, bouncing back up, ready to shove her to kingdom come ’fore I remember her condition. If she wasn’t about to have a baby, I’d shove her back real good. She’s so irritatin’ when she acts like this. I’d much rather spend my time with that bubbly fruit smell than put up with her crab appleness. “I’m goin’ to get me a piece of that pie now. Do NOT get any bright ideas,” I warn her as I head that way. “I expect you to be here when I come back.”

(It wouldn’t be ladylike to repeat what Clever sasses back to me. Suffice it to say, when she gets a bee in her bonnet, her mouth gets mighty waspish.)

Coming into the small kitchen, I can see that Miss Florida is bent over at the waist in front of her old black stove. Her rump being so big, I cannot see past it into the oven.

“What will happen when the baby comes out and will be more trouble than I can ever imagine?” I ask her. “May I have some lemonade?” Uh-oh. That makes me remember Grampa. (If he should wake up and come to check on me out on the porch like he does sometimes, well, I leave it to your imagination what kind of tangled-ass trouble I’ll be in.)

When Miss Florida straightens, she’s got a beaut of a pie in her hand. Browned just right. About the same color as she is. “Hep yourself,” she says, nodding over to the Amana. “That girl is gonna have to give that baby up, is what’s gonna happen. She’s not much more’n a child herself and gots no money. How she gonna buy it food and diapers and such?”

“No, I meant… how will I know when it’s time to take her to the hospital?” I am pouring the lemonade into my favorite jelly jar that’s been mine since I was tiny. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”

Miss Florida stands back, appraises me like she does one of her pies. “You’s been a good friend to that gal all these years, ya know that?”

“Like my mama was to Miss Lydia?” Folks around here still talk about how Addy Murphy and Lydia Malloy were glued together practically from birth. And how if you pinched one of them girls, the other would cry. Miss Lydia was in almost every old picture I have of Mama. Until Grampa cut her out. “And the kind of good friend you are to her now?”

“ Just like your mama was to Lydia back then, and I am to her now.” When she isn’t working at the diner washing up or rolling out dough, Miss Florida helps out Miss Lydia, who has pet named her the Tender. Miss Florida has mentioned to me that she’s not sure if that means she’s good with the bees, or that she’s got skill with the growing of things, but that’s not unusual. Because Miss Lydia? She is so, so meaningful in her ways that sometimes we all have to think for days to figure out what she’s really saying to us. Like in some of those Bible stories. Ya know how you got to ponder them some to figure out what the hell the Lord is really trying to tell you? Like when He uses that word smote and you’re not exactly sure what He means by that, but you get a sense that he’s madder than a sprayed roach? Well, same with Miss Lydia.