we started calling “our camp.”
Over the next few weeks, she showed me how to crochet, how to pick tomatoes at the store, how to thump melons to test for ripeness, how to know when to flip a pancake, how to really change a baby. We took turns reading Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass out loud. I insisted Sweetie didn’t get these, but Aunt C said you never knew.
She prepared a day in advance for something as simple as going to a farmers’ market in a downtown parking lot or for our trekking to the park.
Walking was for poor people, it was thought. Neighbors in cars were always stopping us to see if we needed a ride. Aunt C told them we could use the air and exercise, thanks so much. It was seven blocks down to Center Street, four over to the Terminal Hotel, where sometimes we’d stop for lunch, or what she called “tea.” In the dining room on the mezzanine, we would order crustless sandwiches and little cupcakes, asking for them to be put all on one big plate. It was an English habit she got in Kenya. From that spot we could look down on the whole lobby, with its grand piano in the middle and towns-people and travelers coming and going.
Once, on a Saturday when I came in from playing, Daniel La Fever was sitting on a painted chair, his shoulders cradled by its back. He was relaxed, left leg crossed over the other at the knee, so I could see his big splattered work boots, which he wore without socks. His expression was kind of hard to me, too serious—I was a little afraid of him.
“The lions, they come into town? Now and then or all the time? Or never?”
“Almost never,” Aunt C said.
“And, the streets, are the streets like ours? Or are they dirt?”
“In Nairobi, like ours, it’s a big city—”
“I’m going there before I die,” he said.
She leaned toward him, said, “Mr. La Fever, you are too young to think about dying.”
He threw his head back and laughed.
I loved the sound, had never heard anything quite like it.
He was in the kitchen a lot by late September. He started giving Sidney a ride home every day in his old, dilapidated car.
My mother praised Aunt C, said she was a godsend—finally the family could get some rest. About a week after my aunt arrived, my mother started dressing up again. My father insisted she had no excuse now, she should go downtown with him, be seen in places like church, or the buffet at the Terminal Hotel, or out at the Fayton Country Club. He always liked taking her on his arm and opening the door for her, driving off in his dark Mercury, to places where people could see her. Going out improved her mood—at least the part about being dressed up, about being admired from afar. In church, with C and Sweetie and my father, we took up a whole pew. My mother sat stiff, her lipstick perfect and her hair in a French twist, lacquered. She liked to be a little late, so she could make an entrance.
Two territories formed in the house. My parents lived in their blue wing with the satin quilt on the bed, the chaise lounge, and the air conditioner. They still had muffled arguments—but they weren’t fighting the way they were before, when Sweetie had just come home.
In our camp, we had our schedules and our projects, our plans for the baby. We kept a book about her milestones, designed our days around her naps.
I started back to school, so I had a life outside of the house, but I missed my sister all day. In the morning I always checked with Aunt C to see what we were doing with her when I got home.
Sidney was the neutral party, in charge of downstairs. She did the meals and ran the vacuum. Out on the laundry porch, she spent hours resurrecting my father’s shirts. She used powdered starch, which she mixed with water in a Coke bottle with a perforated stopper. She sprinkled the solution and then slammed down the iron for steam. When she was done with all that, she cooled off with a quart of iced tea in the kitchen by the fan, her hair and forehead dripping. Then she jumped up again and went into the dining room, which was dark and cool, to polish the silver.
Sidney did go away for a week to Philadelphia, to see her brother’s family. This was in late September. She took the Trailways bus. We got along okay without her for five days. My mother complained, and my father did the dishes. Aunt C made a roast with potatoes.
We even started eating in shifts. Aunt C and I went to the table around five-thirty with Sweetie. More and more, Sidney and Daniel lingered, talking. My mother roused herself late in the day and dressed carefully. She and my father had dinner alone.
When I arrived home from school, we’d all go see my mother. This was Aunt C’s rule.
Almost every time we came in, she looked surprised to see us, as if her mind had been a thousand miles away. “Well, how is she today?” she’d ask.
She’d have her mystery novel, or a fashion magazine. Slowly, she’d put it down, say, “And what have you all been up to?”
If we said, “Nothing,” she refused to believe us.
So we would start to tell her how we’d gone for a walk, or to the hotel, and Aunt C would hand the baby to her. But before we’d gotten too far, my mother would change the subject and say something like, “What are we going to do about this heat?” and then she’d hand Sweetie back, sort of so we wouldn’t notice.
One day in late October, she was on a “jag” (as she called them when she was not on them) in the second parlor. She hadn’t played piano in a while—except for that first day we went to Thornton Park. I liked to see it. She was messier and happier when she was playing.
We came in quietly and sat in the two slipper chairs near the door. Sweetie was in the pram. I listened and loved it. The baby closed her lids and opened them, moving her lips slightly as if she were about to sing. Her fingers made a trill. I was sure of it. I pointed this out to C.
But my aunt didn’t notice. She interrupted the song, said, “Diana, Diana, we’re here. Odile’s waiting.”
My mother eyed her and me and the baby from across the room. Her fingers did not rise from the keyboard, though. I didn’t see why they should. My left hand was waving back and forth, keeping time, conducting.
Aunt C didn’t understand.
Finally, it was over, the last chord. “All right, C, all right,” my mother said as she turned round to us. She was breathing through her mouth, her chest heaving like someone who had been running a race.
Aunt C said, “So glad you can.” Then she lifted my baby sister up and held her out for my mother to take her.
My mother did not do it. She thrust her face forward and pecked Sweetie on the cheek.
Aunt C stood there, did not move, holding Sweetie under my mother’s chin.
“That’s enough,” my mother repeated. “Take her, C. Didn’t you hear me? I said that’s enough for now.”
Aunt C didn’t react, as if she were deaf.
“C?” my mother said, irritated. “C? What did I say?”
By the beginning of November, my mother had gotten her figure back entirely, something I would never have noticed, but my father remarked on it every time he saw her because it was of great importance to him—fat women horrified him.
Once, she abandoned her music and drove off to Rocky Mount, a town where, she said, people “had a prayer.” She came home with booklets and a mound of pamphlets in bright colors: orange, purple, red, and burgundy. There were pictures of women dancing with baskets of fruit on their heads and photos of black men in white jackets with gold braid and short pants, large oval diagrams.