superstitions

I did not want to go back into Mama's and Papa's room the day after the funeral. The whole house seemed scary to me. Yesterday it had been filled with people eating and drinking, talking and even laughing.

" How can they laugh?" I thought. " Don't they care that Mama is dead?"

Now the house was empty and quiet. The furniture  was still out of place. They had moved it around to make room for Mama's casket beneath the double windows. There were some petals that had fallen to the floor from the many flowers that friends and neighbors had sent. Shadow leaves moved across the walls as the sun came and went, shining through the big maple tree in the yard. It looked like it might rain. I was glad it didn't rain yesterday when we buried Mama.

My sister, Gertrude, was with me. Papa and the others had gone back to the cemetery. Gertrude was eleven, four years older than me but we still liked to play together. We played dolls and had tea parties on the back steps. We drank pretend tea from our Blue Willow tea set that I'd gotten for Christmas two years before. We would sit on the steps playing while Mama and our aunts sat on the porch and snapped beans or shelled peas. Sometimes they had peaches to peel and would give us little bites to go along with our tea. Mama put up all the fruits and vegetables that Papa could grow to feed our big family through the winter.

As the women worked they talked, their voices keeping rhythm with their busy hands. They talked about their husbands, their children, the neighbors, even about which ever sister happened to not be there that day. Sometimes they talked with words like "you know who" or "you know what".

One day Mama began talking about something called superstitions. She told us that if you pulled a tooth and didn't stick your tongue in the hole that was left, your tooth would grow back gold.  My Aunt Bertie said that if you cleaned your hairbrush outside and a bird wove some of your hair into it's nest, you would go crazy. Aunt Evelyn told us that she had heard that when a person died you could open up the pillow they had died on and if the feathers were in the shape of a crown that meant the person had gone to heaven.

Aunt Johnnie made us laugh when she said if you pulled a tooth and lost it on the ground and an animal stepped on it, your tooth would grow back like that animal's tooth. I could just see Gertrude with a big cow tooth in her mouth. Gertrude said, " What if a chicken stepped on it? They don't have any teeth."

But there came a time when Mama couldn't sit on the porch with her sisters and work. She got very sick and her sisters took turns coming to the house to cook and clean and take care of Mama. Mama cried because of the pain and the doctor gave her medicine but it didn't help much. He said he could operate but Mama said no, she was afraid of being put to sleep. She stayed in the bed all the time and when the weather got really hot, Papa moved the bed to the screened in porch where it was a little cooler. Aunt Bertie plaited her hair and pinned it up because it was so hot on her neck. One day they cut the plaits off and Mama looked funny with such short hair.

Mama was sick all summer, growing weaker and weaker. We hoped she might get better when fall came but she only got worse. She was skinny and her skin had a strange color to it, kind of yellow looking. Her room began to smell bad, like nothing I had ever smelled before. Papa went to the drug store and bought some disinfectant to use to try and kill the odor.

One day Papa came out of their bedroom. He had one of his handkerchiefs, wiping his face that was strangely wet. I noticed how dingy the handkerchief was, not bleached or ironed like Mama used to keep them. I think Papa was crying. I had never seen him cry before.  I knew why he was crying when he told us that Mama was dead.  I could not believe that Mama was dead,even though I knew that she had been very sick. How did you get by without a mama? Papa couldn't take care of us like she did. Besides, he had to go to work. Papa  gathered us all up in his arms and said we should pray and thank God that we'd had such a good mama. I didn't feel like thanking God. He shouldn't have let her die. So when everbody else was praying I kept my eyes open.

I thought about that as we stood in the house. I guess that's why I felt so scared. Gertrude was pulling at me to go in the bedroom.  I kept telling her, "No, I don't want to. I don't want to do it."

"Lillie Mae," she whispered to me, " I want to see. It won't hurt anything."

"But Papa will get mad,"I whispered back.

"Papa won't have to know. We'll hide it before he comes home."

She grabbed my arm trying to drag me through the door. I held on to Papa's trunk that always sat in the hall. It was full of important papers like the house deeds and his discharge from the army.  Although it was heavy and I held to one of it's leather handles, Gertrude was too strong for me. She pushed open the door and forced me into the room.

The tan shades were pulled down over the long windows. When the sun came out and shined through the shades, the room was colored with a brownish wash. The color came and went with the sun. I  could see myself in the mirror above the dresser. Gertrude and I looked like brown shadows as we stood side by side with our backs against the door. Gertrude looked scared now. Her eyes were wide and she kept biting her lower lip.

"Get the scissors, Lillie," she said to me.

I pulled out the dresser drawer where the scissors were kept but I couldn't see them in the dim light. I reached in and felt around until my hand touched something that made me snatch it away as quick as I could. It was Mama's braids. I wrapped my arms around me, trying to make myself as small as possible so I wouldn't touch anything else in the room. I wanted to run outside and hide in Papa's old junked car where I kept my favorite books and spent long afternoons reading and eating green peaches and plums.

Gertrude shoved me away and got the scissors herself. I watched as she slowly walked to the bed. The sheets and pillowcases had been stripped from the bed and the mattress and pillows were left in their blue and white striped coverings. I watched as she picked up a pillow, the feather pillow Mama had died on.

"No! No!" I heard myself scream as I rushed across the room and grabbed the pillow from Gertrude's hands.  I crushed the pillow to my chest and fell across the bare mattress. " Gertrude, please, I don't want to know," I cried.

Gertrude lay beside me, face down. I could feel her trembling as she began to cry. She cried with long deep sobs as if she was losing her breath. I felt her arm move across my shoulders and heard her say with a gasp, " I'm sorry, Lillie, I don't want to know either.

Exercise Three/Creative Writing Assignment

Huntingdon College 2001