miz mae's sparkle

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Daddy and I were a ways out on the Lafayette road, easily ten miles from town, when the turn signal commenced clicking. “RighT-righT-righT-righT” with emphasis on the T.

Something felt wrong.  More wrong than usual, I mean. Or odd, really. More odd than usual to be specific. Out on that highway, “wrong” covered a whole lot of things. There wasn’t a lot of right things that took us out that way.  That was already in the back of my head, but the clicking blinker brought it to the front.  Moonshine was what usually brought daddy up that road, but this felt different.  I knew these particular pines. It wasn’t the first or even the second or third time I’d seen them.  The ‘shine houses were always changing, moving from one place to the next, as revenuers pursued them.  What Daddy called ‘the hot pillow places” tended to settle in for longer periods, staying put for a while once they found the right person to give payoffs to. The difference that I noticed was that the trees looked familiar, and what that meant.

When he actually turned off the road, I recognized it.  It wasn't any one thing. It was the visuals and the timing, and something else, like I could smell it.

This was Miss Mae’s place.  She’d got her start in business – daddy said – in a neighborhood called Storyville, down the highway t' New Orleans. After a while, she’d come up here and opened up her own house with five or six girls of the right age.

When we came here, or other times when he brought it up, Daddy always liked to mention he cut his teeth on Miss Mae, back in Storyville, but now she was retired and just managing. I didn’t know what “cut his teeth” meant, but I could tell it was kinda personal.  Now, he came for the new girls, he said, all between the ages of sixteen and twenty five.

Daddy drove slow and easy down the windy road. It was a year past the end of the war, but the ’36 Studebaker was going to have to last another year or more. It was already 11 years old with lots of hard miles, but daddy told us practically every trip that it was “gonna have to last” a while longer.  He rolled down his window as we crackled down the macadam and gravel.  The road curved side-to-side between big old cypress, reminding us each time how close we were to the river’s personal space. Even that was iffy, ‘cause even in my life, the river had gotten restless and changed its bed. They was even some cypress knobs scraped off by drivers who were too lazy, drunk, or wore out to swing wide enough of the trees.

“Daddy?”

He looked at me with a serious face for just a moment, like he was saying “oh, no, here we go again”, then followed that by giggling like a kid on his birthday, then shrugged with just as much energy.  He knew the question I hadn’t finished asking cause it was always the same question.  He danced a little in his seat and popped his gum louder.  He was on his way to a party that, whether I understood it or not, I’d been explicitly forbidden to mention to Mama.  Repeatedly.  “Women folk don’t understand these things” he would explain, then more often than not, add “… and neither do little boys.”  Sometimes he’d ruffle my hair and sigh, then end with “But you will, boy.  One day, you will, heh-heh.” If he said that much, he always ends with a chuckle.

I knew it had to do with animal urges, with naked bodies, and the lure of sin, like the preacher was always saying.  Smoking and drinking and laying with strange women, like he was supposed to only do with mama, but there was always an excuse, even if it was “… you’ll understand one of these days …”  I pictured people on the far side of the door laughing, dancing, and writhing against each other with cigarettes and glasses of alcohol in their hands. I did know that, sometimes if you writhed in a particular way, a baby would eventually come out. At that point in time, I wasn’t eager to learn more than absolutely necessary about writhing, so I avoided it altogether.

At home, I walked in on them twice, mama and him, I mean. There was once when I was a clueless five and once when I was a curious eight.  I saw very little of them under the blankets either time, just the writhing, but I felt the strop very clearly later. When daddy was done with his doings with mama, and she was taking another one of her silent baths, he come up behind me and started stropping me before I begun to know he was there.

“You shouldn’t oughta did that” he said, each word delivered with a lash of the razor strop.  Three or four times he said it, the phrase I mean. That meant a total of fifteen or twenty licks altogether, and whatever it was about, I was left with burning welts.  Even though I saw nothing, whatever it was they were doing was something I shouldn’t oughta seen and especially not do until I was older.  That’s the look he first give me when we pulled in at Miss Mae’s.  It was a look that said, “Soon enough you’ll understand.  But not yet, boy.”

He pulled the car in just shy of the house’s main entrance.  It wasn’t a grand old house like daddy would describe from when he was young and in New Orleans. Why he would go into such detail about those mansions to a boy who didn’t get it, I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. Maybe it was all just for his own benefit. It was just a half-kept, rambling clapboard farmhouse that trailed off at the back, a nothing building just right for the middle of nowhere. No liveried footman, no porte cochere, no big double doors at the entrance.  The door was single, sober, and sturdy, with a little apple sized port hole peeking out at eye level.

Daddy practically hopped out of the car.  His only instruction was “Don’t wander far, buster” which he emphasized with a jab of his finger. He slicked his hair down, dusted the road off his shirt and pants, and before the dust had settled, he was on the far side of the door and I was alone with the trees.

I got out of the car, escaping the swelter.  I spent a while playing mumblety-peg with myself.  I nearly nicked my right sneaker when a squirrel ran across the branch above and startled me, so I stopped.  Mama woulda beat me herself – which she usually left to daddy - if I’d messed up my good school shoes.  I found me a branch and was peeling off the bark in strips when I noticed someone creeping up on me from around the left side of the house.  Not necessarily scary creeping, just curious maybe.  He was too small to scare anyone anyway, maybe a half a head shorter than me, and was taking the long way around the little clearing this end of the driveway.

He'd come ‘round the clearing til he was right off my other shoulder and just back of the trees.  Ten feet away maybe.  Dungarees … blue shirt … bare feet. Just a shadow in overalls.

When the shadow got close enough for an attack, I asked, “Mind if I ask what you’re looking for?” without even turning his way. Daddy always told me to be polite at first, even if I knew I was sliding toward a fist fight.  I was ready to throw my pocket knife aside and lunge at him or be lunged at by him. I waited, then just as I turned to look, he spoke.

“Hi.” Not a he. A she. It was a girl. She was about my age – around eleven probably. She sounded shy but not scared. “Your daddy in there?”  She nodded toward the front door.

I looked over to the door for confirmation, like a new check would do any good, then back at her “Uh-huh.”

It was definitely a her, not a him, even though she wasn’t at all developed.  She had whispy blonde hair, tiny figure inside a shirt that could have come from a high school football player.  The dungarees fit better than the shirt, but were probably a boy’s also, maybe one two inches taller than her.  The cuffs were rolled up so far they clunked against her ankles.

All that spying back and forth went on a while, with neither of us saying anything.  It was like dogs sizing each other up. Or cats or something.

“Is your m~ ?“ I was about to ask, but stopped myself from asking the worst thing.  I adjusted.

“Is your … daddy in there?”

She shook her head in a way that answered the other question that I didn’t ask at first.

She walked on, back tracking a little. Best I could tell, she wasn’t blushing or carryin’ shame, just maintaining distance.  She was out there, separated from me by the trees and from her mama by the walls, just like Daddy and me.  Well, not exactly like, but as close as it was gonna get.

I started, “Um …” and she slowed to see what I was about to say.

“Umm …” now I had to actually deliver words, which I had none ready. “Uhh … “I have gum. You wanna stick of Black Jack?”

She stopped.  It wasn’t the magical lure of a stick of gum, but a tiny little bridge being offered. I was treating her like she thought I might treat a regular person.  Like I could see her as a regular person. Truth was, I didn’t know if she was, but I thought she might be and I wanted to find out, and even more than that, I wanted to be less alone and more bored than I felt like I was out there.

She walked slow, crossing her feet in front of each other, making a straight line, one foot after another, like one of them woman in the movies. It was clumsy the way she was doing it, but there was also something exciting about it.  It was something she’d seen, and probably not just in movies, but maybe she wasn’t copying it well.  It was a stroll, but it was also a lure.

She plucked the stick of gum from my fingers, then peeled back one end of the paper.  I was just stunned as she pulled the gum into her mouth using just her tongue, all the while watching me.

I looked back at the front door.  I was all of a sudden more intrigued by what else might be on the other side of it. When I did, she drifted away again, glancing over her shoulder at me. I followed her over to the porch and leaned a few feet over on the rail.

“What do they call you?”

“Jimmy. I’m James Edward, but everyone calls me Jimmy.”

“I’m Sparkle.  I was born Isabelle, but everyone here calls me Sparkle.” She watched me for a reaction – something from my eyes or mouth or maybe a twitch, but I didn’t move nothin’.

“Made you blush.”

If I wasn’t already, I was sure I was then. I could feel the burn spreading across my face.

“Oh … heh … what do they really call you?”

“Naw, that’s really what they call me.  Sparkle.”

She didn’t look like a “Sparkle,” not nowhere close, but I was just gonna leave it lie. Besides, if I could blush even more than I had been, I was.  She was enjoying it. I was hating it, and not entirely hating it at the same time.

“How old are you, Sparkle?”

“How old are you, James Edward?”

“I’m ten. And three quarters.”

“I’m the same. Ten and three quarters.”

“Nuh-uh – the same? Ten and three quarters? You funnin’ me?”

“Think you’re the only baby born in August of 1937?”

I shrugged. Maybe she was telling me true, and maybe she was just making it up.  If I made it a big argument, I’d end up standing there alone and bored for the next hour.  I eyeballed her, and even if she looked a little puny, it seemed possible she was the same age as me, or close.

“So, where do you live?” I half-glanced toward the house and stopped myself.

“They’s some little houses out back, like apartments. Or cabins, reckon. Some of the women and such as just stay out here if … well, it just depends.”

“And you and your mama …?”

“Yeah.  I was almost nine when mama and me moved out here. So, like two years and such.”

“Where do you go~”

“… to the toilet?”

“No! No, lord no. Not that – where do you go to school?”

“Sorry – just tryin-a make you blush again. I useta go into town, but now a man comes out oncet a week and teaches us.”

“Us?”

“They’s several.  Me, two older boys, and two other girls ‘bout my age ‘n younger.”

“Uh.  So … where do you go to the restroom?”  I figured if she was going to mention it, it must’ve been someplace strange.  If she was there, Mama’d give me a sharp look if she heard me not say “water closet” like a gentleman, but Sparkle already said “toilet” so I figured she wasn’t gonna chafe at “restroom.”

“They’s a little house for showers and so forth, right between the cabins.  That’s where the toilets and all are.”

“Cabins like tourist court?”

She looked off like she was remembering something, then after a moment said, “Not that nice, but they’re okay.” She sounded as far away as she was looking.

“Oh”

“You can see ‘em if you want.”

I didn’t know about that, so I made a good excuse. “My daddy would tan me if I wandered all the way back there.” It was my turn to look off. I wouldn’t like that, not at all.  I shook my head as much for myself as for her.

“He just gone in.  He’s gonna be a while, less’n he’s one of them fast ones.”

She had a point, I guessed. I didn’t know what a “fast one” was. It made me uncomfortable for some reason.

“But if you’re afraid …”

I was honor-bound to set my face all serious and say “It ain’t that, but …” Since I didn’t have a “but,” I tried to distract her and stood up from the rail.  I looked around slow, surveying my borrowed realm.  “I could take a walk, I reckon.  It’s not like I’m walkin’ to Lafayette.”

She reached out her arm and caught part of my hand with her pinky finger.  “Then maybe let’s walk around in front” she added when her hand touched mine.

Our pinkies hooked together and I follered her to a path that went into the trees, parallel to the road, sorta.  She started trailing ahead of me, so I asked something – anything. “Your mama have any other kids?” to pull her back a little. I wasn’t sure about saying it, but it kinda just popped out.

“A boy.”

“Does he … Is he one of the~”

“He died.  Like that same day he was born.  Mama cried a bunch, and I just brought her fresh handkerchiefs.  Wasn’t nothing else to do. I was five.” She said the last like, if she was ten, there might have been something.

“Yeah.” In my head, I added “I’ll bet” but there wasn’t no point in saying it, so it didn’t come out of my mouth. “So, you didn’t know him at all?”

“Wasn’t nobody to know.”

That thought give me a start for some reason, but I still couldn’t argue with it.  I just nodded my head and kept nodding it a while after she stopped.

She stopped us at a little bench in a tiny little clearing out in the trees, then moved behind so it was between us.

Her fingers danced slow along the back of the bench, like her fingers were walking over for a stick of gum.  “I never even seen him up close.  The midwife just put him right in a box and they buried him right off that day.  Mama said he was real early – it wasn’t his time - and such as, and that was all for the best any way.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t some kind of stupid, so I just looked around and said, “This is nice, right here.”

I looked around again, “So …”

“What are you lookin’ for?  Worried about your papa comin’ back out?”

“Naw.” She was right, though.  It was still too early for him to come out, but I was still too worried about him doing just that.  It had been maybe fifteen-twenty minutes at most.

“Anyone ever learn you how to kiss, James Edward?”

“Huh?”  I heard it, but part of me pretended I had just imagined it.

“Kissing.  You know how? Or don’t you?”

“I … uh …”

Her eyes rolled. “Sit down”

I sat.  Sparkle came around and sat next to me.  She took my arm and lifted it behind her head so it was across her shoulders, then she turned both of us so we were at a pretty close angle.

She leaned in toward me.  Even inches away, I could feel the warmth coming off her face.  I could smell the clove gum on her breath, and the moisture as she breathed washed over me like a sweet fog.  It was like being under the covers at night, reading with a flashlight, with the light adding to the warmth from my body and the moisture from my breath.  Only it was a hundred times better than a book.

She tugged on my shirt and I tumbled onto her, even though she only tugged a little.  My lips fell onto hers.  We both slanted out heads to our rights, and suddenly we were kissing.  Our lips moved against each other and half my brain was saying “This is happening? Is this happening? I think so.  Is it?  Does she realize she’s kissing me?”  The other half was saying “What am I doing? Am I doing it right?  Is she just being nice? Is she about to stop and say, “Yuck!?”

At least my lips seemed to know what to do, even if my brain was confused, and they were doing the same thing her lips were doing, so that had to be a good thing.  Even it was going to be a mistake, it was a mistake that felt amazing.  As long as it was happening, I was going to make sure I enjoyed it.  It seemed the thing to do.

We kissed for a while, just barely touching, only by our lips, then she put one of her hands on my shoulder on its way to the back of my neck.  Then she commenced to teach me absolutely everything I was going to know about French kissing for the next five years.

I was lost in the kissing, totally absorbed in what our lips were doing when she took my hand and cupped it against her breast.  If I wasn’t sweating enough yet, this took care of it.  I didn’t know what to do, but she rubbed my hand in a slow circle, so I just kept that up.  Kissing and slowly rubbing.

We did that until I turned 75. We did that until man landed a rocket on the moon, or some such  Whatever.  It was a long, long kiss, however long it was, and I lost all sense of time.

She slowed down the kissing, then moved my hand down to her hip.  She shifted back and our lips separated.  She studied my face a moment and then said, “Alright, brown eyes.  They’re gonna be missing us soon.”

I wasn’t sure if it was my breathing or the wind or the two of them working together, but I was dazed. I didn’t even realize she had stood up until she again hooked my fingers with hers and tugged me forward off the bench.

I was lightheaded all the way back. Not just that, but my legs were pure rubber. I was wobbly enough to be bobbing and swaying, which I only realized because she would occasionally give a harder tug to square me away.

We were back to the clearing before I woke back up, and light was coming across the roof of the house, through the break in the trees back behind, where the cabins musta been.

“So …”

“Uh-huh”

“It’s been some kind of long, hot Summer, ain’t it, I mean hasn’t it, Sparkle?”

“My goodness, yes, you think it will ever cool off?” We were both trying to sound mature and urbane even though I had no idea what urbane meant.

“Well, y’know, of course it’s got to … I mean …” That wasn’t what she meant. She wasn’t talkin’ science or weather or nothin. She was just talkin and I was back to saying stupid things.  Didn’t take long. Maybe thirty minutes? Maybe twenty. Probably ten.

I tried again, “… I mean, yeah, it feels like it wants to go on forever, doesn’t it?” I went from nit-picking to sounding too eager to agree, which was probably still an improvement overall.

While I was talking, she’d drifted slow and easy, like a pinwheel of brush in the river. She’d landed over by an old pump handle in the middle of the clearing, one that someone had put a flower planter around.  Somehow, she’d gone from right next to me to being a good fifteen feet away.  I walked in a spiral toward her, like I was afraid of scaring her off, but I wasn’t scared.  I just wanted to take my time.  If anything, I was afraid of scaring myself off.

“That was nice, wasn’t it, Jimmy?” Her fingers fiddled with the old paint on the handle.

“Oh, yes, Sparkle. It was real nice.  I really … umm … well, I haven’t kissed a whole lot of girls and other stuff but that … that was the best.”  It was.  She kissed better than all the other girls put together.  All three of them. Not that three meant a lot anyway, when you come down to barely one kiss per girl.

“You don’t kiss other girls much?” I wanted to think that she meant that I kissed like a boy with a lot of experience, but even I knew that I had no idea what she really meant. She was probably saying “Uhh … yeah, I figured that out real fast” without actually saying it.

“No, umm, no, Sparkle.  I don’t.” I looked off into space again, like I was making a note to do more of that kissing stuff when I had some time. She wasn’t peeling the paint right – just kind of diddling at it and I could see a whole big piece just dangling loose near her fingertips.  “You’re not …” I reached for the flake and she plucked it away right before I got there, then laughed.

“You were waiting for me to do that, weren’t you?”

She just smiled, then flicked her tongue out and back in real fast.

She glanced at the house, then back at the pump.  “Reckon your daddy will be out soon …”

I squinted at the door, studying it for clues again, like I knew what an ‘about to be opened door looks like.’  “Yeah, I reckon. Sparkle, would you …?”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“You started to ask me something?”

“Here, lemme get that one, Sparkle.”  It was another flake, but smaller and still pretty stuck down.  She was fighting with it, but she was never going to get it with her tiny little nails. I flicked her fingers back and picked at the paint.  I picked it about four times before it came loose, then I handed it to her. “Here.”  It seemed important to hand it to her, but even as I was dropping it into her palm, I felt like a total fool again.  What kind of moron gives a girl a flake of green paint?  Still she smiled a little and asked again, “You were going to ask me a question?”

“Oh … umm …” My hands shot into my pockets to keep them from trembling.

“Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was nothing.”

She held the flake up and examined both sides, then tucked it into the pocket of her shirt.

Just then, the door opened and daddy walked out onto the porch. They was a young woman with him and they was being real playful, laughing and going back and forth and tickling each other.  He’d reach out and she’d slap his hand, then he’d pull her close and nuzzle her neck.

Sparkle and I watched without watching, and then we both turned our backs full to them.

“Heh”

“Yeah”

She knew what I wasn’t asking and volunteered the answer, “My mama.”

Nervous silence followed. It wasn’t a long silence, but it was like layers and layers of nervous.  It was like a deep lake full of nervous.

My ring finger made a discovery down in my junk pocket and I yanked it out.

“Oh, hey!”

I flipped it up & out of my pocket, between my thumb and index finger and she looked puzzled.  It was an old, dull grey quarter.  Standing liberty, 1925 (or Barber 1919, not sure), but you could barely make it out.  She musta got a lot of wear in X years.

I moved my hand maybe barely half an inch toward her to show it off better and her puzzle turned to a frown. Redness shot up from her collar and burst against her hairline, soaking her eyes and making them moist.  She stumbled back like I’d thumped her square in the chest. As she stumbled backward, she glanced from me to my dad and back.

Her frown and eyebrows got all bunched up before I realized my brand new mistake.

“No-no-no-no, Lord Jesus (Sorry, mama), no.  Not … it’s not … I’m not …”

I dropped the coin on the ground and she became a blur to me. “I wasn’t trying to pay you or nothin’ “

She was about six feet back, that much I could make out through my own blurry eyes.  “I just … it’s neat. It’s ‘most thirty years old and its kinda my good luck piece.  I just thought…”

She stepped a little closer, but only a little, and then said, “Uh. Well, I don’t want it.”

“Well, I wasn’t even …” but we both knew I was. Not that I was trying to pay her for anything, just it was the only thing of value, real or personal, that had on me.

“Well just pick it up and put it back where you got it.”

“I don’t want it either, not no more. It’s a stupid thing anyway, and I was fixin’ to throw it away after I showed you. I hate it. It’s stupid.” I said it all to my shoes. “I thought you might want it, or wanna look before I threw it away.”

She turned and took a step toward the trees.  I turned and took a step myself, and ran right into my daddy’s chest.

“What the hell, son!? Watch where you’re going.  Anyway, we’re done here. Let’s get on outta … hey, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head.  “Nothin, daddy. They was just some dust got stirred up and got in my eye.”

Sparkle had already commenced to walking off when he noticed her. She wasn’t going fast, but she was going sure, like wasn’t no reason to be where she was no more.

“Uh-huh … hey, you – girl!”

She stopped, but didn’t turn back.

“I’m talkin’ to you, little bitch.  Turn around and look at me!”

She was half-way round when he said, “I don’t know what you’re thinkin, but you keep your trash self away from my boy.  He don’t need nothing from the likes of some whore’s daughter. Ain’t no need for him to wallow in the muck and mire.” ‘Muck and mire’ was a favorite phrase of his, probably the only thing he ever really heard from our preacher.

Satisfied he’d said his peace to her, he reached up and boxed my right ear as casual as if he’d been reaching for a bottle. By the time my eyes focused again, Sparkle had vanished into the trees like a ghost.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, boy?  I leave you alone for five goddamn minutes, and you’re out here playing games with gutter trash?  I see anything like this again, I’m going to by-God wail the skin off your ass.  You got me?’

I didn’t answer him. I just looked down at the quarter, half-buried in the dust, and while I was looking, a tear splashed down and got it muddy.

He boxed my other ear, “Say something, moron!” That spun me around again, and I could see that Sparkle’s mama wasn’t round no more neither.

“Yes, sir. I got you. I got you!” I covered both ears and started bawling then.

“Well, let’s get on outta here, then.  Yur mama didn’t sweat all day over the stove so’s we could show up late for supper.”

“No, sir.”

I ground the quarter the rest of the way into the dust and followed him to the car.