“Quit playing, girl.”
“Mace, you reckon we done brought enough food? Nellie so sweet and liable to cook a feast. I don’t want to seem like no beggar.”
“Mama, you bringing cobbler, collards, and macaroni. That’s practically a whole dinner.”
I shouted over the wind. “Is that too much air on you, Mrs. Williams?”
“No, it’s fine by me, Civil. Too hot to let these windows up.”
A truck in front of us was going too slow, but I was afraid to pass it. Daddy was right to be concerned. The car accident had made me a nervous driver. I slowed down and turned up the radio. Aretha Franklin’s voice belted out of the speakers, and Erica started singing. The child was off-key, but she knew all the words.
“Right here!” Mace shouted and I hit the brakes. We had almost missed our turn. The next road was narrow and unpaved, just wide enough for one car. But it was well tended, and someone had filled in the pitted holes with rocks so my car had no trouble making its way. The road ended at three houses that sat haphazardly across from one another.
“There go Nellie right there!” shouted Mrs. Williams. “Nellie!”
We all piled out of the car. I stood back as the family hugged. Nellie was a tall, thin woman with a narrow face. When she opened her mouth, a glint of gold shone in the midday sun. Behind her, a man waited for the talkative ones to finish. He stepped forward and patted Mace on the back and waited for Mrs. Williams to kiss his cheek.
They introduced me. I extended a hand, but Miss Nellie pulled me to her. “Out here we don’t fool with none of that hand-shaking business. Come on over here and let me squeeze you.”
The woman’s hug was strong but brief. It left me wanting more. I could not remember the last time my mama had hugged me. Daddy, either. We were not a hugging family. “Y’all come on inside. I hope you brought an appetite. I ain’t know if y’all had a proper breakfast, so I got some biscuits and jelly on the table.”
“She make the jelly herself,” said her husband. “Make you lick the jar.”
We followed her up the steps into the house. The wooden plank floors creaked with every step. I looked around. Miss Nellie had a thing for lace. Lace curtains. A long dining table covered in a brown vinyl tablecloth with a lace runner down the middle. A lace doily on the sideboard. The house was cozy, as if no room went unloved. It smelled of baking bread, and a cross breeze sailed through the windows. Nellie’s big voice boomed in the house.
“There’s three beds upstairs, and I’ve set up the couch out back. Maybe Miss Civil can take that one. It’s nice at night. Now, y’all go on and wash up and then come on in here and get some of these biscuits. I got some more coming out the oven in a minute. Mace, you sit over there next to Leotis. Your cousin Ricky and his family will be here later on. Your cousins Patsy and Doe, ooh, you wouldn’t even recognize them; they so tall I say they need to play basketball. Erica and India, y’all look good and healthy like you can eat good. I made two different kinds of jelly, what kind you like? Leotis, go out there and get that food out the car that Pat brung with her so I can put it in the icebox. Ooh, I’m so happy y’all here.”
I took India and Erica to the bathroom to wash up. Upstairs, it was just as neat as downstairs. I peeked through the wide-open doors of the bedrooms. It didn’t immediately appear that anyone lived with Nellie and Leotis. Such a large house for just the two of them. I’d had no idea the girls had cousins like this. If Nellie had known how they were living, surely she would have invited the girls sooner? I wondered if she was a first or second cousin. All Mrs. Williams had told me was that she was a cousin.
In the bathroom, the girls washed their hands in the sink. I showed them how to cup their palms and splash water onto their faces. Erica did it once and dried her hands on a pink towel. India did it over and over again, smiling at herself in the mirror. I stepped back, trying to stop myself from treating them too tenderly.
“Y’all been out here before?”
“I remember coming when Mama was alive. India probably don’t remember.”
“She’s your mama’s cousin?”
“Yeah. In Mama family, we got a lot of cousins.”
“Oh, okay.”
In the dining room, Mace had already started buttering and spooning jelly onto his biscuit. Leotis sat next to Mace at the table, sipping on a glass of iced lemonade.
The girls scooted into chairs and I moved the plate of biscuits closer to us. When I bit into one, it crumbled and melted on my tongue. I paused for a moment, then washed it down with lemonade.
When Miss Nellie came back in the dining room with a plate of butter, I couldn’t help but praise her. “Miss Nellie, these biscuits are out of sight.”
“Thank you, Civil. Eat as much as you want. I got some more cooling on the pan now. And take some more of this lemonade. This here ain’t made from no powder. Fresh from the lemons.”
The girls poked each other and giggled. I had not seen them act like this since before the surgery.
Everybody sat at the table, and I reached for another biscuit as Nellie talked on and on. The sound of her voice soothed like a rush of air, and none of us interrupted. I ate until my belly was full. Then I slipped my shoes off under the table.
“I’m so glad you made greens, Pat, because I didn’t have time,” Nellie was saying, “and I’m just hoping that pie holds up until after dinner, because them Joneses love to stick they fork into the dessert before dinner over.”
TWENTY-SIX
I had not fellowshipped with a family like this in a long time. All of my grandparents were dead by the time I turned thirteen years old. Daddy was an only child, and Mama just had one sister with no children. I didn’t have the dozens of cousins that so many Alabamans had, so being in that house fed my soul. We ate, rested and talked, and then ate again. We must have sat at that table for hours. They were talkative people, and it took the pressure off. I just listened and nodded.
After dinner, we sat around the table drinking coffee. There was Ricky, an auto mechanic from Lowndesboro who had married a much younger woman, Dina. They had three boys all under eight years old, who ran around the house chasing one another with toy guns. Dina kept an eye on the boys, punctuating their squeals with “Stop that running now!” Ricky just smiled and picked at his teeth with a toothpick. During dinner, the youngest boy sat in his daddy’s lap and ate from his plate.
“His first wife passed away. They never could have children,” Mrs. Williams whispered when we cleared the tables and moved into the kitchen to stack plates. “He love them boys more than a dog love a bone.”
Just as Nellie had said, Patsy and Doe were tall for women. They were sisters and had once babysat India and Erica. Both of them were magazine-cover pretty with identical puffed Afros and hoop earrings. Patsy sat beside India at dinner and kept refilling her lemonade and offering her more food. I caught Doe just staring at Erica, as if weighing what life would be like now for the girl, as if trying to determine if this barrenness was something you could see with your eyes.
Although we had not spoken about it at dinner, I was all but certain everyone had heard about the surgery. When Nellie introduced me, they observed me for a second longer than normal. At one point, a latecomer showed up—Tim, Mace’s brother-in-law. It was Tim who broke open the dam while we were sipping our coffee.