Part 1 (2/2)
I was much concerned for Dr. s.h.i.+rey. Standing there now behind the pulpit, he looked bone tired. And no wonder, for besides his parish work he was forever running here and there-to the juvenile detention home, the clinic for alcoholics, the mental health center, the Black ghetto. Often, he told me, he got discouraged over it all.
Never did I mention to him how I felt: bewildered, lost, like an autumn leaf caught up in an angry storm and carried far away from its forest, a leaf that longed to stay where it was, there to turn golden yellow, then brown, and finally, late on a winter evening, to flutter to the ground and to its sleep beneath the trees.
Nor would I ever breathe to my young pastor that some days I was utterly cast down, so broken in heart that I wished I were a little girl again and could run and hide under my grandma's bed.
I couldn't confide such a thing to Dr. s.h.i.+rey. It would show I had lost courage -as so many older persons do when change comes with the years. Half the patients at Crestview are like that.
They don't want to keep up. They want to look back. My roommate has that att.i.tude, and I try to tell her not to give up, to face the present, to look to the future. It's all right to remember bygone days with a grain or two of nostalgia, but there's no need living in the past.
I was doing just that-remembering bygone days-while I waited for the choir to finish its anthem. When I was a little girl in Arkansas, in the section of low Ouachita hills that lies between the Mississippi River and the Red, our manner was slow and simple, down to earth as gully dirt. The horse-and-buggy days were already fading away, but we didn't sense it. The swift pace that was to come, virtually overnight, was still undreamed of.
There were not many automobiles, no superhighways, no jets, and no s.p.a.cecraft. In south Arkansas, the fastest thing on wings was a thieving chicken hawk, and anything in the sky bigger than a buzzard was referred to as a ”flying machine.”
There seemed to be fewer problems then. n.o.body had yet thought to build nursing homes and inst.i.tutions for this, that, and every other kind of person with a complaint. The elderly, maimed, halt and blind were sheltered beside the hearth of their blood kin.
The Negroes I knew-Shoogie, Doanie, Sun Boy, Ned, Little Stray, and all the rest-lived out in the country close by us. I couldn't have managed without Shoogie, for she was my main playmate, even though my sister Mierd and my brother Wiley were still living at home. Why, if it hadn't been for Shoogie, I never would have learned to build a good frog house in the sand. I'd love to see Shoogie again. After she married Doanie's oldest boy, they went off to the West Coast. I'd like to be with her, climbing pine saplings, wading in the branch, and jumping deep gullies!
We were all eating our white bread then and didn't know it.
There were no alcoholics. A heavy drinking man was a sot, a sinner. Women didn't drink-or if they did, they didn't tell it.
And as for mental health, it was an unheard-of term. Any persons slightly off were said to be ”curious,” or at worst, ”touched in the head.” They were tolerated by family and friends, while those considered dangerous were sent off to be locked up in the state asylum.
Ah, old man Hawk! He must have had a mental problem! I hadn't thought of that old coot in years. I wonder what a psychiatrist would have said about him. And Miss d.i.n.k. She didn't have a mental problem; she was just blind and had to be looked after.
Fortunately her niece, Miss Ophelia, gave her a home. And Ward Lawson, Miss Ophelia's husband! Now he was sure a sot drunkard-an alcoholic if there ever was one.
One summer afternoon Mama had let me ride with her in our buggy to visit Miss d.i.n.k, who, at that time, was living with the Lawsons on the run-down Crawford place some few miles beyond Rocky Head Creek.
I had a gourd dipper in my hand and was skipping along the edge of the woods on my way down the path to Miss d.i.n.k's spring.
My hair, braided tight, was tied with ribbons that flipped and rippled as I bounced along the trail. I could smell honeysuckle blooms and climbing jasmine, and I was wis.h.i.+ng I had the time to chase the yellow b.u.t.terflies that were swooping and fluttering zigzag from bush to bush. But Miss d.i.n.k had wanted me to hurry to the spring and bring her a gourdful of fresh water. She had said, ”It ain't far from the house here to the spring, sugar. Just stay in the trail till you hit the branch and turn down left a little ways.”
Then she had skimmed her bony fingers over my face and braids to find out how I looked. ”Ah, Nannie,” she said to Mama while she still had her hands on my cheeks, ”I can tell you and Jodie won't have no trouble a-tall marrying your baby off. She's pretty as a pink. What color's her eyes and hair?” Miss d.i.n.k patted my head.
”Her eyes are sort of greenish blue, like a gander's. And her hair's about as yellow as a crooked-neck squash when it's good and ripe. But that don't matter. If Bandershanks does as well as she looks, she'll fare fine.”
”Just so she ain't got buck teeth. Many's the old maid I've seen with teeth like a beaver.”
”Well, we can't be sure about her teeth yet. She's still got her baby set.” Mama looked down at me.
I kept thinking about Miss d.i.n.k's eyes. Mama had told me she was losing her sight. Poor thing. The minute she said I was pretty as a flower, I knew she was plum blind, for I wasn't pretty. It hadn't been two days since Wiley had told me I looked exactly like a billy goat.
Mama was saying, ”Bandershanks, you take Miss Ophelia's gourd out of the water bucket on the porch and run get some fresh spring water. Follow the trail now, like Miss d.i.n.k said.”
I was following the trail, but I was beginning to think I wasn't ever going to find that spring. Then I heard Mister Ward Lawson yelling at his wife.
”Good G.o.d A' mighty, Ophelia! d.a.m.n you! What in G.o.d's name are you doin' down here, roamin' round at the branch this time of the evenin'?”
”Just looking for berries, Ward.”
”Berries, h.e.l.l. You're lookin' for my still, that's what you're doin'. Huckleberries ain't ripe yet!”
<script>