Sissy’s preacher read out loud from Isaiah. “But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” He talked some more, but he never did get wound up like Grandpa. When he finished, we sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “God Bless America.” I knew the words to those. We put our hands on our hearts and said the Pledge of Allegiance while the men in uniforms saluted. One of the deacons put out the candles with the back of a spoon.
Sissy’s daddy took us by the Dairy Queen for a double cone of vanilla with a curl on top. On the way home a spring shower dimpled the dusty road. I stuck my head out the window and opened my mouth.
Soft summer rain fell on my vanilla tongue.
“I do not know why in the world you have such a time with bee stings,” Grandma said. “Wouldn’t happen if you did what you were told and kept your shoes on like any reasonable person because you know perfectly well that Mr. Lilly’s honeybees are all over the place this time of year and now here you are with a foot swole up big as your head and having to use a piece of kindling to hobble around—are you listening to a word I’m saying?”
I pulled another splinter off my makeshift cane.
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
I’d worn a mud poultice for an hour to keep the swelling down and draw the poison out. Now Grandma wanted to slather the sting with Vicks. She thought Vicks was the remedy for any bite or itch or sting, whether the culprit was chigger or mosquito, poison ivy or poison oak, honeybee or yellow jacket. Of course she used Vicks anytime I hinted of a sore throat or coughed a couple of times. If slicking me down from my neck to my belly button or stuffing it up my nose didn’t work, she’d put a big spoonful of the salve in a basin of hot water, throw a towel over my head, and make me breathe the vapors. When all else failed, she’d have me swallow a glob.
“Might help some and won’t hurt any,” she’d say.
When I bloodied my leg shinnying up a tree or split my knee on the red dog road, Grandma reached for the brown bottle of iodine, using the stopper that came with it to paint great swaths of orange on my skin. As she swabbed, she blew on the hurt place to keep it from stinging. I still squalled. I hoped she didn’t go for the iodine to doctor my foot.
Grandma forgot all about my sting when a siren blared into the night and drowned me out. We rushed to turn lights off and pull shades down. We yanked curtains closed. Although we hoped the blackout was just for practice, you never really knew. We didn’t want a glimmer from a flashlight or candle to give away our position to Japanese airplanes that could at that very minute be circling overhead, ready to bomb 211 Fourth Avenue. We sat in the stairwell like we were posing for a family portrait, afraid to look in case we saw our fear reflected in Grandma’s eyes.
“No need to be afraid, we’re in the hands of God,” Grandpa said. He led us in the Twenty-Third Psalm. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . .”
About that time a signal sounded to end the blackout.
Grandma bustled about turning on lights and opening shades, and the shadow of death and the fear of evil were no longer upon us. Grandpa lit a fire in the stove and put the percolator on. Before long the plink, plink, plink of the coffee perking could be heard, and the smell filled the house.
“Come on down, Rindy, I’ve got your cup waiting for you,” Grandpa hollered upstairs.
“I’m coming, Clev.”
“Well, you might want to hurry it up—they’s a letter from New York I clean forgot to give you because of that blackout putting us all in the dadgum dark.”
“Clev, you know I don’t like that word.”
“Why, dark is a perfectly fine word,” Grandpa said.
Grandma said for him to stop his foolishness and read the letter to her. Grandpa told her he thought she’d want to read it for herself, but she said she had left her glasses upstairs. He started reading, but it was too low for me to hear. I was tired from all the commotion, and although I tried, I couldn’t keep my gritty eyes open.
3
The Color of India Ink
My mother was coming home for a visit. You would have thought it was the Queen.
Grandma gathered old newspapers and vinegar water and set me and Grandpa to cleaning windows, him on the outside and me on the inside. She attacked the oak floors with Johnson’s Wax and elbow grease while Grandpa and I slung the cabbage-rose carpets over the fence and beat the devil out of them. Any cobwebs hiding near the ceiling were brushed away with a broom covered with an old shirt that she’d cut the buttons off to use later.
After she washed and ironed the kitchen curtains, Grandma decided they wouldn’t do after all, so she made new ones. She sent Grandpa to paint fresh whitewash up five feet on the fruit trees. It looked nice, and it kept the boring beetles out of the cherry and apple and plum trees that shaded the back yard. When she had a few minutes to rest, she pinned starched doilies on cardboard like butterfly specimens. And every time she caught me and Grandpa sitting down, she assigned us another job.
There was no escaping Grandma when she got to cleaning.
The car spraddled over the whole road. It was the same indigo blue color of the bottles
