story

I brought my pillow and blanket down and started sleeping on the stairs on Monday night. Nobody noticed. It was in the summertime, June to be exact. My own room was too hot, because it didn’t have a vent for the central air, and I always kept my door closed.  I didn’t want nosy people, you-know-who, to see what I had.

It was only at the end of the week, a Thursday I think, that the maid Helen started complaining to my daughter-in-law about the stuff on the stairs.  I don’t know how Helen even noticed.  My daughter-in-law Roberta and son Jimbo had been living in the house for three years, and they hadn’t even unpacked the Mayflower boxes.   The boxes were all shut off in the parlor and dining room.  Can you imagine? Two professional people living like that? Just like gypsies.  Sometimes I went in there and unpacked a box.  Just to have something to do.  I’d unwrap a brass candelabrum.  Then I’d take out all the little prisms that went to it, one by one.  I’d hold each one up to the window and look through it.  I could see rainbows.  Or I’d look out at the Rose of Sharon tree blooming in the back.  The prisms made it into different little pictures of purple flowers.  Then, after awhile, I’d wrap each little prism back up, better than the movers had done, because the prisms were worth a lot of money. I’d put the brass candelabrum back into the box with all the prisms like children gathered around it.  That maid Helen would walk through the living room and say to the air, “Somebody’s been in here messing around with this stuff.  I just know it.” Then she’d look real mean at me.  But I would just sniff and go on like I didn’t know who she was talking about.

Helen was the kind who couldn’t wait to find out somebody else’s business.  Anyway, she’s the one who hinted around that something funny was going on on the landing.  You see, it was a big old house.  Built in the twenties.  Could have been a nice place if you-know-who would have taken any interest in it.  It had two staircases that went up to a landing. One staircase started in the kitchen. I guess it was for the servants in the old days when people had a lot of help.  The other staircase had a certain grandness.  It started out in the parlor.  Nobody ever went up that way.  That’s the one I chose to sleep on.  I figured I wouldn’t be in anybody’s way.  The first night I just took my pillow and my pink cotton blanket that I got on sale at Sears.  At first I couldn’t get comfortable, in spite of it being a whole lot cooler than in my bedroom.  Then I shifted around some.  The doctor had always told me to elevate my feet.  You see, I had a tendency to swollen feet.  I was a telephone operator before I retired five years ago.  So, I put my feet going up the stairs.  You just don’t know how good it felt.  My head was on the fifth step from the bottom, resting on a feather pillow.  I could feel all that blood circulating and circulating and making my brain feel better and better.  I think it was making me smarter and smarter, too, hanging like a bat. But I didn’t think of it that way until Helen made the comment that “Somebody had been sleeping upside down on the stairs just like a bat.  Somebody who was real peculiar.”

Well, I got the first good night’s sleep since I’d come here to live a year ago, when my dollars didn’t quite stretch to where I needed them to. So, next night, I decided to make it even a little more comfortable.  I got me a midnight snack.  I put a glass of buttermilk and a piece of caramel cake on one of the steps going down into the parlor.  Those ones nobody used. Then, the next night, I put May’s Reader’s Digest and Family Circle, last two issues, on another step.  All stacked up neat, mind you.  Then, I thought, why not put out what I was going to wear the next day? I could change right there before anybody was even up.  I brought down my new blue housedress.  The one with the red embroidery.  Got it on sale at Penney’s.  I hung it up real careful over the bannister.  Why, it looked just as neat and tidy.  Sometimes Helen gets the sheets folded and leaves them at the bottom of the back stairs to take up when she gets ready to go upstairs and make up the beds.  I didn’t see a bit of difference in the world.  Just so long as you keep things in order.

After Helen’s comment, I noticed a real shift in people’s feelings around here.  I went down to breakfast.  Roberta said, “Now, Eula, there’s something happening here that we need to discuss.” Anytime the word “discuss” comes up, I know I’m in trouble.  Discuss means “let me tell you what you’re doing wrong—this is my house and you better get it right.”

So, I put on my best telephone operator voice, all dripping honey.  But don’t ever forget who makes honey.  And they have stingers.  “Yes, Roberta dear.  Things are going just fine around here.  Helen and I are an unbeatable team.  She does the cleaning so well.  And I do the cooking.  Didn’t you just love that caramel cake that I fixed? It’s Jimbo’s favorite.  Helen and I are probably even going to get all those boxes unpacked.  I know that you and Jimbo are so busy with your new jobs that you haven’t had time to breathe, much less unpack anything.”  Of course, it goes without saying that

a new job can only be a new job for so long.  They’ve had their government jobs at the Choctaw Indian Reservation now for going on three years.  Counselors.  That’s why they think they can boss me around.

“Helen says that somebody’s been leaving things on the stairs all week,” Roberta kept on.  “Maybe even staying on the stairs at night.  First it started with a pillow and blanket found on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, one of my best Wedgewood plates with the pink flowers was left with caramel cake crumbs, along with a half-empty glass of buttermilk. Thursday, a nightgown and magazines.  Friday, it was a blanket, a pillow and a top and bottom sheet, new set with the packaging on the next to last step.  And the features section of the newspaper opened to the crossword puzzle.  And today, Saturday, well I haven’t looked yet, and Helen doesn’t come today.  So no telling what’s up there now. This has just got to stop.”

I was thinking real fast. Trying to find the right thing in my mind.  It was like when I was working at the telephone company in Prentiss. Before dial phones.  Everybody just had a number.  You’d pick up the phone and say, “Central, give me number two.” And I’d ring up number two.  Sometimes they’d just say, “Give me Sister Mary’s house, and I’d say that she was taking a nap when all the time I knew she had passed out from having too many toddies in the afternoon. Some husband would call me up.  He’d say, “Central, I need to find my wife.  She told me she was playing bridge at Miss so-and-so’s house.  But she’s not answering over there.” So, I’d put two and two together and remember which bridge club was meeting that day and whose turn it was to have it.  Then I’d call up Mrs. So-and-so and tell her to call home that her husband was looking for her.  But I’d never give the husband the phone number. ‘Cause it could be that Mrs. So-and-so didn’t want anybody in particular knowing where she was.  It’s what I called being discreet. So I was going to be discreet now.

“Why, my goodness, Roberta.  It was me who put all that stuff on the stairs.  I just took a hint from Helen.  She’s so organized.  Why she folds the sheets up so neat and places them on the bottom of the stairs so she’ll have them real handy when she goes up to make up the beds.  I just thought what a great idea Helen had.  She does such a good job. I thought I’d take a hint.  I had taken my pillow and blanket downstairs to take a nap on the sofa while I was watching Dance Party U.S. A.  I folded it up real neat and laid it on the stairs so I would remember to take it on up the next time I went to my room.  And the dishes.   Well, I just got up in the middle of the night and took a teeny piece of caramel cake and a glass of buttermilk up to my room because I got hungry.  I put it on the steps so I would remember to take it down to the kitchen the next morning.  Helen must have left the nightgown on the stairs.  She was folding up laundry and stacking it up there.  The nightgown got left behind.  And the magazines.   Why, I gathered up the magazines out of the den and put them in a neat stack so anyone who wanted to read could reach over and grab one on the way up or down the stairs.”

“It’s all right, Roberta. I’m sure Mama will help Helen move the things off,” Jimbo said.

“It’s Saturday.  Helen’s not coming.  So please, Eula, you need to move those things back up to your room or wherever they go,” Roberta said.

“Oh, yes indeedey. I certainly will.  Whatever I can do to help out around here. You know I’m more than willing,” I said in my best telephone operator voice.  “What are you two going to do on this pretty Saturday?”

“Mama, we’re going to drive over to Vicksburg and go through the battlefields.  Do you want to come?” Jimbo asked.  He was a real Civil War buff.  Nut if you asked me.  He was always trying to find somebody in our family who’d fought on the Confederate side.  I didn’t know of a single one. I got so tired of him asking.  His daddy was from Illinois.  But Jimbo didn’t ever want to hear that. He was dying for me to try and get into the United Daughters of the Confederacy. I believed Roberta would have preferred the Daughters of the American Revolution.

“No, I’ll just stay here and clean off the stairs so it’ll be spic and span for Helen on Monday,” I said.  “I’m also going to fix ya’ll a good old vegetable supper—green beans, squash, lady peas, and cornbread.”

“Now, Eula, don’t put bacon grease in any of those vegetables.  You just don’t understand about clogged arteries.  And don’t you run off to Sears and charge up anymore anything.  We’ve got a huge bill there now,” Roberta said. She took a little sip of her coffee. She never took a big sip of anything.

“How can I? Jimbo’s hidden the car key,” I said.  They didn’t want me driving. Said my eyesight wasn’t good enough now.  “And how can I put bacon drippings in anything when you don’t allow bacon in the house?” I wouldn’t dare tell them that Mrs. Ellis next door saved me her bacon grease.  I kept it in a Maxwell House can under my bed.

As soon as I heard them pull out the driveway in the Cherokee Jeep, I went up to my room and got my car key.  I had hidden it in an old telephone.  One of those wind-up kind.  The telephone company had given it to me when I retired.  Jimbo didn’t think to get the extra key I had to my Ford Escort.  I figured even if Helen or Roberta snooped around my room, they’d never think to unscrew the mouthpiece and find it.

Sears was having a summer sale.  I drove as fast as my little Escort would carry me.  I stopped to get a bag of popcorn once I got to the mall.  It smelled so good. I sat down on a bench next to the pay phones.  My feet were beginning to swell up from the heat again.  I sat awhile.  I watched a family go by.  A mother and daddy and three little girls.  The little girls had their hair pulled up on top of their heads like little fountains.  I sure wished Roberta would give me some grandchildren.  But I was beginning to think she was too pinched up and sour to ever have any. Probably all that food that was so good for you. I bet if Jimbo had married his little high school cheerleader, I would have had me some grands.

I’d be a good grandmother.  I would bring those little kids out to the mall every day and buy them ice cream cones.  I’d take them shopping at Sears for school clothes.  I’d buy them all ballerina outfits and take them to dancing at Miss Ella’s studio.  All those things that Roberta wouldn’t have time to do.

First time I ever saw Wigley Brister was that day in Sears.  And, you know, I didn’t pay him a bit of mind. Wigley was working in the hardware department.  I wanted to get me a little fan to plug in on the stairs at night.  It was getting hotter and hotter in that house.  I had on my housedress, the blue one with the red embroidery.  My hair was loose and pulled back in barrettes on each side like a little girl’s.  I had on my slides because my feet were hurting.  Wigley had on blue jeans, Levi’s. Although I wasn’t paying any attention to the brand that day.  I just wanted to find my fan and get on back before you-know-who got back and found out I was gone.  But I wanted to get a good deal, too.  Wigley came up and asked if he could help me.  I said, “Show me what’s on sale.” Just like that.  Like I meant business.  One thing I don’t like to be and that’s gyped.

Only thing I noticed about Wigley was his wandering eye.  You know, one of those eyes that is always looking sideways.  It’s like the wandering eye is looking out ahead of the other eye and seeing more to boot.  It’s like you just want to go up to that eye and say, “Eye, tell me what it is you’re seeing and I can’t see.” The eye’s not looking frontwards or backwards.  It’s looking out to the side where nobody else ever sees.  And that’s the direction things get to coming from when nobody is paying any attention.

Then I went over to the women’s clothes and bought four housedresses.  I liked the style that was on sale. One was blue with pink piping down the front.  The other was yellow with green piping and tulips on the pockets, and the last two were the same color, red with white trim and white tulips on the pockets.  Then I went on home and went to bed. I just didn’t feel up to discussing cemeteries with Jimbo that afternoon.  I knew he’d be going on about his family, just like the Mormons.  Wanting to know who all he’s descended from and where they came from and all that razz-a-ma-tazz.  All I knew about was his daddy’s family. They were corn farmers from Illinois.  That wasn’t fine enough for him.   My own family had just vanished without a trace.

Helen called in sick on Monday. To tell the truth, I was glad.  I’d always done my own housework.  I wasn’t used to having somebody around all the time.  Now I didn’t have to clean anything off the stairs.  In fact, I got on to my next project.  I’d been saving milk cartons.  Jimbo and Roberta drank a lot of milk anyway.  Skim, not even two percent.  They’re kind of health nuts.  I had a good many under my bed.  But I’d also branched out and gotten Mrs. Ellis to save them for me, too.  She had twelve cats that lived in her house.  I went next door and got her jugs.  She had twenty for me.  Stacked up real neat on the screened-in back porch.  I had taken some string.  I tied up ten together and another ten together.  Then I carried them home and lined them up along the kitchen counter.  I filled up two at a time with water and carried them into the dining room.  It opened off of the parlor.  It had big old red brocade curtains and a big brass chandelier.  There were two book shelves on either side of a fireplace.  The dining room was painted a robin-egg blue.  That house could have really been something.  Just needed a little freshening up.  It had belonged to the musical director of that evangelist from Baton Rouge before Jimbo and Roberta bought it.  You know, the one that got in all that trouble.  It was all on the TV and in the papers how he’d contacted ladies of the night. The musical director used to live here when he wasn’t on tour with the evangelist.

I counted my jugs; including the twenty added today, I had fifty-two.   One for each week in the year. Now that was a good start, but I’d still keep working on it.  You see, I was saving up pure water.  The Floraville Times said that the Choctaw were going to sell off some of their reservation for a hazardous waste dump site. They stood to make a lot of money off the deal.  But I knew that no hazardous waste dump is without a hazard.  I could just picture that hazardous waste seeping into the ground water.  Our water right here in Floraville came from a big old well.  So, I was going to be prepared.  I was going to have me plenty of pure water stored up so no old hazardous waste dump would mess me up with bad water.  I say if you have a plan, you can beat most anything tries to beat you.  Just like when I was a telephone operator.  The kids used to call me up and ask if my refrigerator was running. And before I could answer, they’d say, “If it is, you better catch it.”  Then they’d hang up the phone, bang.  Blam it right in my ear. So, that would be the start of them playing with the telephone while their mamas were off playing bridge or drinking coffee. So, I had me a plan.  When it started, I’d just call up their mamas.  I always knew where they’d be and I’d say, “Mrs. So-And-So, this is Central. If you think little Butch is home doing his homework for tomorrow, you might want to call up and check on him.  Because I don’t believe he is for one minute.” And Mrs. So-And-So would thank me most graciously and she’d call home and get on to little Johnny and that would be the end of the telephone pranks on the operator.  It just proved my point. You can get through anything with a plan.

I’d just finished counting my water jugs when the phone rang.  It was Wigley Brister from Sears.  Well, he hemmed and hawed.  He asked me how my fan was doing.  Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, he said, “Miss Eula, I was wondering if you’d care to go dancing with me.”

I almost fell out in a dead faint. All my life I been wanting to go dancing.  Even took dancing lessons one time and learned to foxtrot.  But never had anybody to go dancing with.  Jimbo’s daddy just wasn’t interested a bit. Now I watch

Dance Party U. S. A. and the ballroom competitions on the TV. But I had never danced outside the Arthur Murray studio. I couldn’t really dance too good. That was years ago while I was still an operator.  I’d never given Wigley a second thought outside of Sears, and here he was, calling me up to go dancing.  Well, of course, I had to turn him down.  I was Eula Sharp Roberts, and I didn’t accept invitations from strange men.

I would have never given Wigley another thought in the whole world. But exactly one week later, I got a letter from South Central Bell Telephone Company. I was sitting at the kitchen table eating me a cold fried chicken wing and a baked sweet potato, dripping with real butter.  Roberta and Jimbo only ate margarine.  I heard the postman come to the front and put the mail in the mailbox, which was tacked up right by the door.  Nobody much ever used that door ‘cause you had to wade through all the Mayflower boxes to get to it.  I laid the letter on the kitchen table, right next to a little spot of muscadine jelly that Jimbo had dropped off his toast that morning.  Helen hadn’t gotten around to wiping off the plastic tablecloth.  I finished my chicken and took the last bite of my potato. Then I opened the letter:

Dear Mrs. Roberts:

In reviewing our files, we discovered your certificate of retirement from South Central Bell.  It should have been presented to you at the time of your retirement.  We are enclosing it now.  It is our official thank you for your forty-five years of service.

Sincerely,

Hank Smith

President, South Central Bell.

I looked at the certificate. It said: “In grateful appreciation for forty-five years of outstanding service, this certificate is awarded to Ella Sharon Robinson on the sixth day of June, 1986.” That was five years ago this month.  I’d worked all those forty-five years for the telephone company since I was seventeen years old.  And I’d met my husband through the company.  He’d been a repairman on the telephone lines before he got electrocuted and died young at age forty.  Why, they didn’t even get my name right! All those years there and they didn’t get my name straight! The more I thought about it, the madder I got.  I got so mad that I went upstairs to my bedroom and laid down on the bed.  I looked around my room.  The evangelist musical director was a big Ole Miss fan. He’d papered the walls with little rebels everywhere.  I looked over my stuff, just to make sure that no nosy person had been in shifting things around.  The plastic bags were still in a neat row along one wall.  I always left my clothes in plastic bags in case of a fire in this old fire trap of a house.  I could just grab them by the yellow cinch handles and run on down the stairs.  I was trying to straighten out things in my mind and get it real clear.  I would have gone and stretched out on the stairs and gotten some fresh blood to my brain so I could really think.  But Helen was poking around the house.  I knew she was always waiting to find something to tell Roberta about me.

I got up and put on a new housecoat from Sears, the yellow one with green piping and green tulips on the pocket.  I told Helen I was going for a walk.  Then I headed out to Winn-Dixie, just a few blocks away.  This neighborhood was getting run down just like the house. It was getting closer and closer to the stores.  It still took me awhile to get to the Winn-Dixie.  I didn’t suppose I’d ever get used to these hills here in north Mississippi.  I grew up in the Delta.  That flat land was a lot easier to walk on.  I was going to pick up a few things for supper.  I walked in through the sliding glass doors.  They needed a little Windex. I headed straight to the jelly.  I remembered we were out of muscadine jelly. I picked up a jar and held it up to the light.  It was a peculiar color. Not exactly yellow.  I was looking across the aisle through the jar of jelly. It’s always a good idea to check for impurities. It hit me then.  It was how I looked at my name being wrong on the certificate.  Maybe it wasn’t wrong. I realized that all along I might not have been who I thought I was.  I could be somebody else.  I might not be Eula Sharp Roberts at all. Eula Sharp Roberts, retired telephone operator, cooking for my son, living in a rebel yell room, trying to outfox Helen, worrying about my feet hurting and wearing bedroom slippers, watching ballroom dancing and Dance Party U.S. A., wishing I could dance.  I was Ella Sharon Robinson. I was somebody else.  Somebody I didn’t know.

I picked up my ten jars of muscadine jelly.  Two for a dollar on sale.  I went through the check-out.  I was wondering if the check-out girl knew if I was somebody else now.  I looked at her real hard, but I couldn’t tell a bit what she was thinking.  She just kept on popping her gum and running the jars through the scanner.

When I walked in the driveway, I was relieved to see that Helen’s truck wasn’t there.  Maybe she had gone to pick up the cleaning. I put the jelly up in the pantry and went immediately to the stairs.  I laid down with my feet pointed up.  I wanted the blood to go directly to my brain.  I needed to think.  I had to decide who I was.  If I was Ella Sharon Robinson, who was she? I just laid there awhile.  I could feel myself getting smarter and smarter by the minute.  Ella Sharon could be anybody I wanted her to be. I could make her up as I went along.  I could be Ella like Ella Louise, who taught dancing right here in Floraville.  Somebody who could dance.  I could be Sharon for the Rose of Sharon tree, bright beautiful blossoms, pretty as a picture.  I could be the robin in Robinson, as free as a little bird.  Instead of connecting all those lines for people to talk to each other like I did for forty-five years, why, I’d be on that line myself.  And I wouldn’t be on one line, I’d be on the party line.  I’d be talking to everybody when I wanted to. I wouldn’t have to wait for them to talk to me like I did when I was Central. Just sitting there waiting for somebody to pick up their phone and ask for me.  I’d be that person on the other end, starting out with an idea.

I got up real quick.  I already had an idea.  I went and got The Floraville Times off the kitchen table.  Sure enough, there it was.  The advertisement for the Choctaw Indian Fair.  It was starting today.  Helen was still gone on her errand.  I got my key quick as a wink and jumped in my little Escort.  I had hold of an idea and I was going to follow it through to the end.  I stopped by the Country Fair and bought me a pair of Levi’s. Surprised myself.  I thought I would wear a sixteen, but no, I fit right in a fourteen.  Didn’t look half bad.  I pulled my hair back in a ponytail and bought me a denim shirt with little silver things all over it. Looked like flat bullets.  Matched my gray hair.  Got me a new belt with a big silver buckle.  Got me a pair of red Keds.  I wasn’t quite ready for cowboy boots, yet.  Boy, I could just see Roberta’s face when the Master Card came in at the end of June.

I stopped next door at the Rexall and bought a poster board and a red magic marker.  I got in my Escort and headed north of town to the Choctaw Indian Reservation.  The air in the Escort needed some Freon.  It was not cooling worth a toot.  And I guess my blue jeans were hotter than what I was used to being in my housecoats.  But I kept going.  I was a woman with a mission now.  I was in the middle of that party on the party line. I wasn’t sitting around waiting for anybody to call and tell me what to do.

I drove sixty out the country road and got to the Indian Reservation lickety-split.  The hills were beginning to look pretty good to me.  It was nice to be out of town.  There were already a lot of cars in the pasture where I parked.   There was an Indian on a tractor pulling a flatbed to give you a ride from the parking lot to the fairgrounds.  I sat in my car a minute.  I got my poster out and wrote in big letters: “Say no to toxic dump site.” I was just getting out of my car with the sign when I looked up and saw Wigley, of all people.

“Eula, it’s so nice running into you,” he said.  “Did you come to the fair by yourself?” He had on his blue jeans and a white cowboy shirt with red trim.

“My name’s Ella,” I said.  “I’ve come to protest the Choctaw putting a toxic waste dump out here.  It’ll pollute our water and mess up the whole town.” I held up my sign for him to see.  I was looking at his wandering eye without really meaning to.  I’d always told Jimbo it wasn’t polite to stare, and here I was staring to beat the band.

“Well, hell fire,” said Wigley. “You mean business.” He was running his fingers through his gray hair.  It was a thick head of hair.  He was leaning against the Escort.  “Did you ever stop to think that it isn’t polite to come out here and mess up the Choctaw fair?”  He was looking at me real hard with his straight eye.  “Folks come out here to have a good time, and the Indians make a lot of money out of this deal.  And here you are going to disturb everybody.”

“I never thought about it that way,” I said.  I let my sign down.

“And anyway,” Wigley continued. “Hell, we messed up the Indian’s land real good.  So why can’t he go ahead and mess up ours if he wants to? Turn about’s fair play. But maybe later on, we’ll go find the Chief himself and talk to him.”

I knew right then that Wigley could see things better than I could.  It was that wandering eye looking sideways at everything.  I couldn’t see things any other way than frontwards or backwards.

“Come on Eula, I mean Ella.  Let’s go on into the fair and have us a good time.”

If ever I was going to find out who Ella was, this was as good a time as any to start looking.  I put the sign back in my Escort, and Wigley and I got on the flatbed and rode into the fair.

First thing we did was get us a piece of fry bread.  I didn’t know that a piece of dough fried in hot grease could taste so good.  Just fried up with nothing on it. You could get it made into a taco, but Wigley said he liked it plain.  Then we got us a big old pink cotton candy. It was fluffy, melted in your mouth.  It left a sweet taste like you’d just been kissed by an angel.

“I want to go look at the beaded things for sale,” I said.  “I want something pretty for my hair.”

“Come on and I’ll buy you something,” Wigley said, “if you’ll dance with me before we leave the fair. The Hayes Brothers are playing out here.”

“Oh, Lordy. I don’t know if I can still dance or not.  I used to be able to foxtrot,” I said.

“This is no place to foxtrot.  But I’ll show you how to do the Texas two-step.  You look like you can catch on real quick like.” Wigley smiled.

We started walking through the booths with all the silver and turquoise jewelry laid out.  I stopped to look at some earbobs.  They were long and dangling with yellow and red and white beads and yellow feathers sprouting out of the top.  I thought they might be too much even for Ella.  I picked up a long barrette, too. It had blue and white beads in the outline of an arrow.  It matched my shirt.

“This is what I want.” I held up the barrette. It was five dollars.  I thought that was high, and I said so to Wigley.  I didn’t want him to get gypped.

“Hey, we’re here to have a good time.  Besides, any dance with you is worth five dollars at least.” We could hear the music playing off in a field nearby.  “Come on, Ella, I’m ready to dance.”

“Hold up a minute,” I said. I walked back and got the earbobs.  I put them on right then and there.  If I was going to keep on branching out, I’d better keep a going.

We stepped up on the wooden dance floor in the middle of the field.  We were the only dancers.  The Hayes Brothers were playing, “I Dreamed I Walked in a Field of Flowers.” Wigley took my left arm and draped it up over his right arm.  He put his hand on my shoulder.  He took my right hand in his left hand.

“You just follow me,” he said. I stepped back with my right foot.   We started moving to the music in a circle around the floor.  The step was a slow, slow, quick, quick.  Lord, it was just like the foxtrot.  The very same steps!  Only it was loose and easy.  I was doing the Texas two-step.  Ella could really dance.  Ella was right in the middle of the party line now. No sir, she wasn’t sitting around waiting for people to start calling and something to happen.  She was right in the thick of things.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a red Cherokee Jeep, creeping along a dirt road near the field. It was Roberta and Jimbo, staring straight ahead like they were scared they’d run off and maybe have a good time. Something flashed in my brain. I knew why they had never unpacked those boxes. They couldn’t commit to where things should go, and they couldn’t stand to make a mistake.

But I was through worrying about them.  I was wondering why Eula never could dance so good.   I didn’t know if it was because Eula had always been trying to foxtrot when she should have been doing the Texas two-step.  Maybe all along she should have been living in the hills with the hill people instead of the Delta aristocrats.  Or, it could have been because she never had anybody to lead her the right way.  Then again, maybe it just depended on how you looked at it, frontwards, backwards or sideways.

About the Author

Beauvais McCaddon
Beauvais McCaddon was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University and a recipient of a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship. Her work has appeared, among other places, in Quarterly West, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and New Stories from the South, The Year's Best, 1997.

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