Aunt Sookie & Me Read online

  Aunt Sookie

  & Me

  Aunt Sookie

  & Me

  THE SORDID TALE OF A

  SCANDALOUS SOUTHERN BELLE

  Michael Scott Garvin

  © 2017 Michael Scott Garvin

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1545568723

  ISBN 13: 9781545568729

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906389

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  From the award winning author of A Faithful Son.

  Huffington Post – “Garvin ultimately writes not about finding faith – but about finding himself – and maybe, in some ways, that is the same thing.”

  Janet Mason - Huffington Post

  IPPY Awards – Gold Medal Winner – Independent Publisher’s Award

  “...A Faithful Son is bound to be a new all-time favorite and classic...” Anita Lock, San Francisco Book Review.

  Nominated for 2017 Indie Reader Discovery Awards

  Winner of the 2016 Beverly Hills Book Awards

  New York Book Festival Finalist

  5 Stars -San Francisco Book Review

  5 Stars - Foreword Reviews

  Best Fiction of 2016 - International Book Festival

  The Novel Approach – Best of 2016

  “.... Zach’s joy, pain, longing, and isolation are real and palpable throughout, and every piece of the story and setting only furthers the life and experience bled onto the page....” KIRKUS REVIEW

  - Finalist on the Table of Honor - International Book Festival

  “...A Faithful Son is a visceral experience, realistic and vibrant, wrought with the same craftsmanship as a painting resembling a photograph, or a window into another time and place. Michael Scott Garvin has populated his pages with vivid scenes filled with all the colors and sensations of nature, grounding narrator Zach’s story in the inevitable passage of time in a way that is particularly rural, attuned to the slow, even pace of life’s wear upon the body and the soul...” Patti Comeau -

  “...Garvin’s debut is nothing less than stunning... in the flavor of Harper Lee’s inimitable novels—To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman—Garvin, like Harper, has created a colorful cast amid chaotic and enlightening eras...” San Francisco Book Review.

  “...Garvin avoids easy resolutions, caricatures, and shocking twists in the service of a strong story populated by believable characters. A Faithful Son is a highly recommended, enjoyable read for lovers of quality literature that needs no flash or hype to leave an impression.” Foreword Reviews

  Dedicated to my sisters,

  Lori and Christi.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  This story is mine.

  It belongs to me and me alone. Why I have chosen to lay bare such private matters to unfamiliar eyes is a mystery to me. Plenty of well-intentioned folks have warned me to keep such messy matters out of sight, hidden below my box springs.

  The Sunday morning before we buried the frozen corpse beneath the vegetable garden, Aunt Sook looked me straight in the eye and said, “Folks who go around leavin’ their screen door swung wide open for every passin’ stranger and wild critter gets precisely what’s comin’ to them.”

  Old Sookie was a wise one. I suspect her sentiment was true. Opening my door to y’all may be plain foolishness, and there lies the rub.

  I was planted on Sook’s lap, plucking stray black hairs sprouting from her chin, while she painted my lips with apricot lipstick.

  Peeking over the top of her bifocals, she declared, “Child, it ain’t no one’s concern how you live your life. It ain’t no preacher’s business, no politician’s, and it certainly ain’t no nosy neighbor’s concern.”

  Stricken with the shakes, old Aunt Sook’s trembling hand applied the waxy lip color like we was traveling on some unpaved road. She drew a crooked line on my upper lip from one corner, clear across my mouth and up the far side of my cheek. Yellow cataracts blanketed her eyes, like two blue marbles coated by lemon custard. As she applied a teal eye shadow to my upper lids with a foam-tipped stick, I listened to Sook’s every word.

  “Missy, you heed what I’m saying to you. A child with your peculiarities should just bolt her door tight and keep your private matters to yourself. Are you listenin’?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  My aunt Sook’s front door was always shut tight, locked, and bolted. I reckon I was the only living soul to possess my very own house key, strung about my neck on a tied shoelace. Jesus Christ himself, returning from heaven, could be knocking on Sook’s door, but she wouldn’t never unlatch her three deadbolts.

  Sook pulled me in close and cupped my face in her quivering hands. Searching my eyes, she said, “Poppy, you gotta take a tight grip of what is rightfully yours, or someone else is likely to snatch it up. You understand, child?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ain’t no one ever gonna snatch up my story. This here story is mine to tell.

  What are little boys made of?

  Frogs and snails

  And puppy dog tails.

  That’s what little boys are made of.

  What are little girls made of?

  Sugar and spice

  And everything nice.

  That’s what little girls are made of.

  CHAPTER 1

  Savannah, Georgia, 1968

  I am Poppy Wainwright.

  I am thirteen years of age. Some two years ago, by way of a dusty Greyhound bus, I came to reside on 22 South Digby Street in Savannah, Georgia. All my kin come from Mountain Home, Arkansas, but I was brought here to Savannah to reside with my aunt Sookie shortly after my grandma Lainey kicked the bucket.

  Sook ain’t my proper aunt. She’s my late grandma’s sister. After Grandma Lainey died of a weak heart, the officials of Mountain Home started shuffling me around like a deck of playing cards, determining who’d take possession of me. For reasons unclear, Sookie raised her hand and staked her claim. I reckon she drew the short stick.

  My grandma Lainey and Aunt Sookie shared no sisterly affection, and I don’t suppose God could have created two more opposite creatures. Any love the sisters might have ever felt was buried beneath quilts of grievances. Hurtful, poisonous words kept flesh wounds infected, and neither of the two stubborn women had a hankering to reach a forgiving hand across the divide.

  My late grandma had long warned me that her older sis, Sook, was a blasphemous heathen with a wicked tongue. Sook said my grandma Lainey was a rigid, Bible-thumping imbecile.

  My sweet grandma woke every morning with a
kindly smile on her face, but I never once witnessed a grin turn at the corners of old Sook’s mouth. Sookie cursed with ease and couldn’t string a single sentence together without using the Lord’s name in vain.

  Sook’s eyes had heavy lids, and her skin was as wrinkled as a river turtle’s. She moved about like the slowest creature. Her pink and blistered scalp was sparsely covered with thin patches of gray and black hair, like some molting chicken. Gathered with bobby pins, the remaining wiry strands were pulled back into a tight bun. Her teeth were chipped and coffee stained, and her puffy face was round and spotted red. A pair of spectacles was roped around her neck on a silver chain and rode low on her nose. She had herself a pair of heavy udders that rested on her bloated belly like two sacks of flour, and she spent her days lounging in a raggedy, terry cloth house coat and a pair of soiled, green, fuzzy bed slippers. Sook had a crop of whiskers, rolled her own ciggies, and used a salad fork to clean crud from under her toenails.

  My late grandma Lainey’s face was as smooth as a porcelain doll’s. She laughed with ease, and her complexion was as pale and perfect as a pearl. Soaking wet, my grandma couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, and her fragile bones pushed through translucent skin. At the dimming of the day, Grandma Lainey would sit at her upright piano and serenade me with her favorite hymns. Her pale green eyes were always upturned, focused on the glorious hereafter. Grandma wasn’t much for this earth; she knew with certainty she was heaven bound.

  “This life is only a resting place,” Grandma Lainey declared, “before my final march on to glory.”

  The soft-spoken sort, Grandma carefully went fishing for her words, cautious not to make more than a ripple in the water. Only when she was quoting scriptures or sitting at her upright piano did I ever hear her volume rise to over a murmur. But Aunt Sookie entered a room like an angry storm, cussing like the foul-mouthed sailors loitering near the old Pirate’s House. Aunt Sook spoke directly at a concern and didn’t much care if her truth telling wasn’t delivered wrapped in pretty ribbons and bows.

  Before her passing, my grandma Lainey reminded me, “Poppy, propriety and discretion is the Lord’s way. You must always carry yourself like a proper young lady.”

  Grandma was long widowed. My grandpa, Samuel Faulkner, had passed long before I was born. A banker by trade, he’d kept my grandma in silk and satin finery, even though he preferred the green felt of a poker table. Rumor had it Grandma lost her husband to both the guiles of another woman and the seductive lure of the playing cards. When Grandpa lost his position at the bank he squandered the last of their wealth at the tables.

  After I was bussed here to Savannah, Aunt Sook declared, “Your Grandma Lainey was a fool who gave her money to that worthless, womanizing gambler from Mountain Home. And after Samuel passed on, she gave her heart to every pick-pocketing pastor this side of the Mississippi.”

  Sookie’s disdain for my grandpa Faulkner burned as hot as a poker. “That man couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants,” she said. “The very last time I spoke to Lainey, she was bawling over the phone. I told my foolish sister the sure way to castrate old Samuel was to kick his secretary square in the jaw!”

  For his final few years on this earth, my grandpa turned to gin for comfort, while grandma turned to scriptures for her constant companion.

  As for Aunt Sook, she never seemed to go about hankering for a man. I remember Grandma telling me that her older sister hadn’t ever taken her a husband.

  “Sookie had herself a beau in her youth, a sweet young man, about nineteen years of age, who pledged his undying love to her,” Lainey recounted the story. “But after he courted that vile creature for nearly nine months, the sweet boy opted to park his pickup on the tracks of an oncoming freight train. The young fella lost his life on the tracks that day, but he freed himself from a lifetime of grief living with my hateful older sister.”

  “Sookie was no good from the start,” Grandma complained. “Being the firstborn and all, even our own sweet momma confessed, ‘The first waffle should be made only to heat up the iron and then tossed out in the bin!’”

  It seemed that years before I was born, the two stubborn sisters had planted themselves deep on opposite sides of a barbed wire fence, and forgiveness couldn’t take root in such hard, barren soil. Even after the muddy earth had swallowed up my grandma Lainey, Aunt Sook still couldn’t find a tender word for her deceased younger sister. I reckon some cuts are so deep that the flesh rots, withers away, and is left to the wind.

  And so it was that five days after my grandma Lainey was buried deep in Arkansas dirt, I packed up my belongings in a single case and was put on a bus to Savannah by a county official in a pin-striped suit. With a safety pin, a smiling fella fastened a tag on my collar with my full name, the date of my birth, and my Greyhound’s final destination.

  It was a sweltering August afternoon when Sook came hobbling up to claim me at the bus depot. I stood small in front of her, no taller than May’s corn.

  Extending her quaking hand, she said, “Folks call me Sookie.”

  I replied, “Poppy. Poppy Wainwright.”

  She snickered, “You ain’t no bigger than a peanut.”

  “Yessum. I’m still holdin’ out for a growin’ spurt.”

  “If you were a fish, I’d toss you back.”

  “Yessum.”

  “You comin’ to stay with me for a spell?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good enough,” she grumbled. “I reckon, I ought to extend my condolences on the passing of your grandma, but can’t say I shed a single solitary tear. Your Grandma Lainey was a self-righteous nit-wit, and if I had the gumption, I’d drive myself up to Mountain Home and spit on her freshly dug grave.”

  I planted my feet firmly on the ground. Balling up my two tiny fists behind my back, I replied, “Well, my grandma Lainey said you’re as spiteful as a jackass and meaner than a rabid dog.”

  Sookie eyed me suspiciously from my untied sneakers up to my pigtails. “Is that so?”

  I gulped. “Yessum.”

  Sook shrugged her shoulders slightly. “It’s true, I suppose.”

  With the tip of her walking stick, she scratched a straight line in the dirt, directly in front of my sneakers. “Missy, you’re in Georgia now. I ain’t got no time for the foolishness of Mountain Home.”

  I cleared a lump lodged deep in my throat. “Ma’am, I’m suspectin’ my grandma Lainey’s conclusions about you were correct.” Gripping the handle of my leather satchel, I stepped clean over her line. “Shall we go?”

  Sook shook her head and mumbled. “Missy, that saucy mouth is gonna land you in a heap of trouble.” With a wave of her walking stick, we started down toward Digby Street.

  So, these were the cards I was dealt. My grandma Lainey once said to me, “There ain’t no sense goin’ around hoping for aces when the deck is stacked against you with only sixes and sevens.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Graceful, giant magnolias lined both sides of Digby Street. Their sprawling, heavy boughs reached to one another from across the lane, and their shading, green canopies provided cover year-round. On the clearest of summer days, only dappled sunlight breached the shade of the mighty magnolias. After a spring shower, water pooled in every upturned leaf, and a soft rain continued to drop from the canopies, well after the storm clouds had passed on.

  Aunt Sookie’s big old house sat on the corner of Digby Street and West Jones. The first time I ever set my sights on the decaying antebellum it had been entirely mummified with rolls of toilet paper. Draped in strands of white tissue, the grand old estate stood as ghoulish as a ghost covered in a linen bedsheet. Mischievous neighbor kids had selected old Sook’s place for the TPing and had tossed rolls of paper up into the tallest treetops and along the gutter pipes. Front to back, over and under, the tissue weaved through the fence pickets and porch swings, from atop the TV antenna to the highest awnings, and hung like strands of crepe paper from the eaves and rooftop.

/>   Arriving from the bus depot, Sook and I walked up the sidewalk and stood at the front gate.

  With her quaking hand, Sookie sheltered her eyes from the hot summer sun and declared, “Those gawd-damned little fuckers did this in the dead of night.”

  Clutching the handle of my suitcase, I surveyed the spectacle. “Ma’am, it looks as though they got you good.”

  She scoffed, “Child, it ain’t who fires the first cannon ball who is victorious in battle. This war has just begun.”

  It seemed the act of vandalism had occurred some several weeks earlier, while Sookie slept soundly. The deviant juveniles had crept under the cover of night and thoroughly toilet-papered Sook’s ramshackle. Tissue paper wrapped about the columns, railings, and balconies. The ancient house seemed to be completely wrapped in the sheer gauze.

  I asked, “Ma’am, can I help you clean up this mess?”

  “No, no! Don’t you touch nothin’,” my aunt insisted. “Understand me? Do not remove a single solitary strand.”

  In protest, it seemed old Sookie had opted not to remove the rolls of tissue—an attempt to further rile her neighbors—some of whom were the parents of the exact children who had done the dastardly deed. My stubborn aunt had chosen to go about her business as usual, leaving the house cocooned in the crepe-like paper. However, what vengeful Sookie hadn’t forecasted, after a few days under the sweltering Savannah sun and following a few summer rains, the soggy toilet paper formed a crispy shell all about her antebellum. Like some giant papier-mâché piñata, the goopy tissue had dried and hardened in the sizzling sun and now stuck to the English ivy-covered walls and window glass like a white paste, adhering like glue to the shingles and shutters.

  Standing on the cobblestone in front of the sad sight, I said, “That’s a heap of toilet paper.”

  “Yessum.”

  “How many rolls do you suspect they used?”

  “Dunno.” She shrugged her slight shoulders. “But, the gawd-damned little bastards better sleep with one eye open.”