After the Flag Has Been Folded Read online

  Evelyn patted down her skirt, her hair. “Don’t mess with me anymore, girl, you hear me?” she ordered.

  I shoved past her, through the circle of gawkers, and took off running for the trailer house. I was still crying when I got there. Grandpa was sitting in the living room, watching a ball game. He never asked me why I was crying, or why my face was covered in dirt. I think he figured the less he talked, the less bother he’d be to any of us. Unlike Mama, he knew what no-good things us kids were up to. But he didn’t really know how to put a stop to it. I imagine Grandpa Harve spent many a lonely night in that trailer praying that God would send Daddy back or grant Mama an easier life.

  CHAPTER 11

  i take it back

  FRANK AND I WEREN’T THE ONLY ONES WHO TURNED TO SEX FOR CONSOLATION DURING THE CHAOTIC AFTERMATH of Daddy’s death. Mama observed her first year as a widow in the custom of that day. All her dresses were black, her demeanor reserved. But by early 1968, she’d discarded her widow’s cloak and invested in a wardrobe of hot pants, baby-doll dresses, and miniskirts short enough to make Jeannie C. Riley blush. Men shot through that twelve-by-sixty-foot trailer house like paper airplanes on a breezy day. They’d start their evenings in the living room but frequently end their nights in Mama’s bedroom.

  Years later, Mama asked me if I could name all the men who had been her lovers. I recalled the construction worker that she married, oh so briefly; a young soldier named Delmer, whom we called Floyd (he moved in with us for a short while); Uncle Hugh Lee, one of Daddy’s younger brothers; a burly guy whose name I couldn’t remember who sold fire insurance; and Lewis, the architect she loved but was too afraid to marry.

  Mama grinned when I finished ticking off the names. “Is that all?” she asked.

  “Were there more?” I replied. Her gleeful eyes told me there were. “Maybe a few one-nighters?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said, refusing any more information.

  The widow Spears married a construction worker named Auld, on New Year’s Day in 1968. By that time, she’d already earned her LPN certification. Uncle Ray, one of Daddy’s brothers, had introduced Mama to his friend Auld. I think it was Ray’s way of trying to take care of us. Auld worked construction in Alabama. He was a big guy, well over six feet tall and 230 pounds. He had a ready smile that seemed all the more brilliant against his tanned face. He didn’t talk much to us kids. He was only around on the weekends. Even then, I don’t remember him being out of Mama’s bedroom much.

  The wedding was small. Just us kids and Uncle Ray and Aunt Helen from Selma, Alabama. The church was somewhere out Victory Drive, a red-brick structure with white posts, not pillars. Mama wore a pale pink dress. Her thick black hair was piled extra high atop her head in a beehive. I remember her being more scared than elated.

  Following the brief ceremony, we pulled out of the church’s gravel drive and headed for the reception at a hotel on Manchester Highway. Mama smiled nervously at her new husband as she laughed a jittery laugh and began to sing the lyrics of a country song: “I take it back, I didn’t mean it. I must’ve been outta my mind.”

  The small reception had all the trimmings—cake and dancing and toasts—but six weeks later, Mama called the whole thing off.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking when I married him,” Mama said. “Your uncle Ray and aunt Helen and the Spears family thought it was a good idea.”

  When she told Auld she wanted to end the marriage, he didn’t seem too shaken. “The only thing he said was would I be wanting any money out of him for support,” Mama recalled. She told him no; she just wanted out.

  The marriage was annulled, and Mama never, ever married again. And it was decades before she would step foot in a church again.

  Shortly after Mama married Auld, I had the first of what would become a reoccurring lifelong dream. It starts with Daddy suddenly appearing at the front door of our trailer. He doesn’t knock. He just walks in with that “Honey-I’m-home” welcome of his. I run to him, and he embraces me. “Where’s your mama?” he asks.

  My stomach knots. I try to avoid his question. “I love you, Daddy. Why have you been gone so long? We thought you died. They told us you died.”

  He laughs. “They had the wrong guy,” he replies. “It wasn’t me.”

  With tears streaming down my cheeks, I bury my face in the crook of his neck. “I knew it! I knew it!” I cry. “I knew it wasn’t you. I kept telling Frank it wasn’t you.”

  “Where’s your mama?” Daddy asks again, taking me by the hand and walking from room to room. “Shelby Jean? Shelby Jean?”

  Finally, I blurt out: “She’s not here, Daddy. Mama’s not here.”

  “Where is she?” he asks.

  “She’s out with another man. She didn’t know. She thought you were dead.”

  That’s when I wake up, and I never find out what Daddy thinks about Mama being with another man.

  The dream leaves me feeling horrible. I’m angry with Daddy for dying and leaving us. And I’m angry with Mama for being unfaithful to my father.

  Mama has had her own troubling dream, over and over again. She dreams Daddy comes home from Vietnam, but he won’t come live with us. Instead, he lives with another family. He makes love to another woman. When Mama wakes up she feels awful, too.

  MAMA’S NEXT BOYFRIEND MOVED in with us. Juanita, our next-door neighbor and Mama’s girlfriend, introduced her to the soldier boy named Delmer Floyd. We always called him Floyd, the name printed in black above the pocket of his Army greens. He had a twin brother named Elmer, and they came from a family of nine kids. They weren’t Mormons, or Catholics, just Baptists without birth control. There was another set of twins, a boy named Lester Lavelle and a girl named Janelle. Floyd’s family was from Arkansas. That explains that.

  Floyd was such a nice guy that I didn’t even mind that he and Mama were living in sin. He was always real sweet to us kids, perhaps because he was such a kid himself. He was twenty-four, Mama thirty-one. He was built more like Daddy than Auld had been. Lean and muscular. His sandy-colored hair was shorn clean off except for the bristle right on the top of his head. He wasn’t tall enough to tower over folks, but he could reach the glasses on the top shelf without having to stand on his tiptoes.

  Floyd never did anything abruptly. He spoke in that same deliberate tone that history and Latin teachers use. Never yelling, never demeaning. He was always willing to explain one more thing, one more time. He seemed to have an innate understanding that some folks are just born slow-witted. Out of all the men Mama danced with, I liked Floyd the best. He filled that trailer with so much life that there was no place for grief to linger. Sometimes I would catch Mama humming along to a Buck Owens tune: “No more loneliness, only happiness. Love’s gonna live here again.” When Floyd was around, Mama wasn’t so lonely.

  I used to pray that Mama would marry him. I think he was praying for the same thing. Mama invited Floyd to move in with us just a few months after her marriage to Auld was annulled. She was working as a licensed practical nurse. She wasn’t even considering college yet. Nor was she ready for another long-term love.

  Floyd had been living off base with an older brother, Bobby, who was also stationed at Fort Benning. Floyd had joined the Army in 1965. He signed up purposely, in an attempt to avoid being sent to Vietnam. At that time there was the notion that soldiers who volunteered had more options about where they served than those who were drafted. Sometimes it worked in a soldier’s favor, sometimes not. In Floyd’s case, it worked. He served with the 507 Engineer Corps, building roads and bridges. By the time he met Mama, Floyd had already finished a tour of duty in Thailand. His older and younger brothers had both done tours in Vietnam. Much to his and Mama’s delight, Floyd wouldn’t be headed there. Mama was understandably fearful that she’d get into a relationship with another man headed off to war.

  When Bobby was discharged in spring of 1968, Army brass wanted Floyd to move back into the barracks. He wiggled his way out of that b
y moving in with us. When Floyd lived with us, life seemed almost normal again. The dreams of Daddy continued, but there was something about Floyd’s presence that made me feel safe. And I didn’t worry so much about Mama. Floyd made her laugh like Daddy used to do.

  GRANDPA HARVE HAD moved back to Tennessee to live with Aunt Cil, Granny Ruth’s sister, just outside Church Hill. Mama had sent him there because she had to have surgery to remove uterine cysts during the summer of 1967 and couldn’t care for Grandpa while she was recuperating. Grandpa Harve was happy to return to Tennessee. He liked Aunt Cil, and he especially liked being back in the foothills of the Smokies. Grandpa never cared much for Georgia. Too hot, too flat, too many flies.

  Aunt Sue and Thelma made sure we were looked after while Mama healed. Spurred by my concern for Mama, I took a jar and went door-to-door throughout Lake Forest, collecting nickels, dimes, and pennies.

  “Do you have change you could spare?” I asked one man who answered the rap on the door.

  “What’s this for?” he asked.

  “We’re buying flowers for a lady who had to have surgery,” I replied. My friend Leslie was standing beside me, not saying a word.

  “Which lady? Which lot is she in?” the man inquired, pressing me for details, suspicious, I suppose.

  “Shelby Spears,” I said. “She’s my mama.”

  The fellow studied me for a moment longer before dropping a dollar in the jelly jar cupped in my hands. The memory of going door-to-door collecting money to buy Mama flowers shames me in ways I can’t explain. I was only ten. I knew no other way to earn money to do the things for Mama that I knew Daddy would do if he was around, like buy her flowers when she went to the hospital. In those early years after Daddy died, I tried hard to be our family’s caretaker, to ease Mama’s life just a bit.

  Mama’s workday didn’t end until 4 P.M., and she often didn’t get home until five or later. Once she finished school, she’d let Thelma go. All the insurance money was gone, and Mama needed every penny she made to pay the bills. For women like her, child care was a luxury. Besides, at age thirteen, Frank was plenty old enough to watch over us girls.

  I hated having Frank in charge of me. He was stupid and mean. Always bossing and knuckle-punching if he didn’t get his way. We fought over the television constantly. I liked to watch Dark Shadows, a Dracula-themed soap opera. Since I walked to school and he rode the bus, I usually got home before he did. So, there I’d be, tuned to Barnabas Collins the vampire and some peroxide-blond victim with blood dripping from snakelike puncture marks on her neck; and Frank would drop his books and flip the channel. I’d scream. He’d punch. I’d yell louder. He’d ignore me. Then, just for spite I’d decide it was a good time to do chores. Yanking that Kirby out of the closet, I’d plug it in and run it right up between Frank and the television. Over and over again. That section of green shag carpet between where Frank sat cross-legged about a foot away from the television was the cleanest in the whole house.

  When Floyd moved in, the bickering between Frank and me subsided. Floyd stepped into the paternal role as easily as he did his lace-up boots. Because he usually got home before school was out, Floyd would watch for Linda and me. He’d stand at the corner where the entrance of Lake Forest joined Morris Road and smoke a cigarette. It was pretty much a straight shot down Morris Road to Tillinghurst Elementary. Floyd would count the cars and kids going by until he saw Linda and me. Then he’d mosey down the dirt path a bit and take Linda by the hand and chat with us all the way back home about our day.

  “You kids were like my first kids,” Floyd said years later. “I loved your mother, and I loved all you kids, too. I remember waiting for you to get home from school. I worried about kids before the world got crazy.” I was touched by his remark. During a time when childhood abductions were uncommon and when he was barely more than a boy himself, Floyd worried about our safety.

  After school, Floyd would fix us a snack. A bologna sandwich on white bread with mayo for me, and a mayo-only sandwich for Linda. And he’d pour a glass of iced tea or cup of milk for us while he talked about what we should have for supper. Floyd was a good cook. He liked to grill and bake. He gave me my first cooking lesson. Teaching me how to make cookies one afternoon, Floyd gently chided me when I nervously attempted to stick a pan of cookies into a hot oven with one very shaky and outstretched arm.

  “Here,” he said, taking the cookie sheet between two gloved hands. “Don’t be afraid of it, Karen. Remember, in the kitchen, you’re the boss.” Then he confidently slid the pan onto the oven rack without once burning himself. Floyd was the first man I ever met who knew his way around a kitchen. The only thing Frank knew how to make was fried-bologna sandwiches, and they weren’t even really fried. He’d put a slice of bologna on top of a piece of Little Miss Sunshine bread, and, not bothering to use a cookie sheet or biscuit pan, he’d place that directly on the oven’s top rack. Then he’d switch the knob up to broil, and as soon as the bologna started to sizzle and the sides of the meat curled up, Frank’s sandwich was done. He never offered to make Linda or me one. If we were hungry, Frank would tell us to fix our own.

  SHORTLY AFTER FLOYD MOVED in, all hell broke loose in Georgia, when Daddy’s sister and her baby moved in with us. Mama didn’t care how crowded the trailer was or how chaotic our lives were; Aunt Mary Sue needed a safe place for her and Baby Melissa, so Mama gave her one.

  Mary Sue’s husband, Uncle Joe, was a mean fellow. Especially when he was drinking firewater, which he did just about all the time. Joe was an ex-con. He’d been jailed twice on attempted-murder charges after he nearly strangled his first wife to death. He wasn’t really our uncle, because he and Mary Sue had never gotten married. But that’s what we were told to call him, so we did.

  Joe picked up his taste for alcohol at an early age. Mary Sue told me that his father was a well-known bootlegger in the Kingsport area. Part Native American, Joe might have had a genetic propensity for becoming an alcoholic. It didn’t help matters that he was only a boy of two when his daddy gave him his first sip of beer.

  Mary Sue and Joe were dating when we moved back to Tennessee from Hawaii. Mama didn’t approve of Joe from the moment she met him. Mary Sue was only nineteen, several years younger than Joe. I’m sure Mama was worried that Joe was taking advantage of Daddy’s little sister. But mostly she didn’t like him because of the way he acted. Mama had even told Daddy all about her feelings in a letter dated Sunday, July 17, 1966:

  Mary Sue and Joe came down here Thursday, and I was off from work that day to go to the doctor. When I come back from the doctor’s they were here. He was drinking and they were fussing and carrying on here all day. About 4:30 in the afternoon I finally told him he had better get out of my house for he was saying things in front of the kids that no one should listen to. I couldn’t stand him at first sight and he just got worse all day. He wanted me to borrow Hugh Lee’s car to take him and Mary somewhere and I told him I wasn’t about to and he got mad. Your mother probably won’t like me telling them to get out but she won’t let him stay up there either. He is the sorriest thing I’ve run across in years.

  Hugh Lee was born ten years after Daddy. They weren’t very close as brothers, but Mama and Aunt Mary Sue repeatedly turned to Hugh Lee whenever they really needed help. He was never too busy to give a ride and never too broke to lend a dollar. And Uncle Joe was selfish and arrogant enough to demand both of him and anybody else who crossed his path.

  But Uncle Joe could be charming when he wanted. Complete strangers would stop him on the street and tell him how much he looked like that movie star Robert Mitchum. He had a head full of hair that was black as soot, thick-lidded eyes that made him look as though he was only half awake, and a slow grin above his cleft chin. Mary Sue was seduced by Joe’s looks. Unsure of herself and raised with a religious code that honored perseverance, she tolerated Joe’s alcoholic and abusive ways for far too long.

  After Melissa was born, Mama took us kids up to Atlanta w
here Mary Sue and Joe were living. Mama made the trip during the day when she figured Uncle Joe wouldn’t be home. Mary Sue had called and told Mama that Uncle Joe had beat the holy shit out of her.

  Driving that little white Corvair of hers, Mama found the rental house in Atlanta without much trouble. Mary Sue was standing at the gas stove stirring a pan of oatmeal when we arrived. Coffee was percolating in a tin pot on the back burner. Mary Sue turned the flames down, reached for a thick-glass cup, and poured Mama some coffee.

  “You okay?” Mama asked, gingerly taking the steaming cup from Mary Sue.

  “Yeah,” she replied.

  Mama eyed the nasty bruise on the fleshy part of Mary Sue’s arm. It was as big as a softball. “Ye Lawdy, Mary Sue,” Mama said.

  “I know,” she replied. Baby Melissa stirred. I walked over to the bassinet sitting next to the doorway to the expansive kitchen and peered at her. Her skin was pearly white. Like a bride’s gown, it captured light and dazzled onlookers. A crop of fox hair, orange and fuzzy, covered her head. God had fashioned Melissa from heaven’s raiments and Satan’s flames.

  “What time is he getting home?” Mama asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mary Sue replied. “He’s working construction. He might show up for lunch.”

  “Are you packed?”

  “Won’t take long,” Mary Sue said.

  “Well, let’s get going,” Mama said. She pushed aside her cup of coffee and stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer. That marked the first of many times that Mary Sue and Melissa would come to live with us over the next few years.

  It’s hard to remember who slept where once Mary Sue moved in. I think Mary Sue and Melissa took my bed, which was in the middle of the trailer’s narrow hallway. I moved into Frank’s room with Linda, She took the bottom bunk; I took the top one. Floyd and Mama had the back room, and Frank slept on the couch. It was always crowded and full of noise—a television blaring, a baby squalling, kids arguing, grown-ups yapping.