NELDA ROSE
By F.J. Nita Wilson
Nelda Rose stood on the train station,
listening to the whistles and cat calls from the young men going off to
war. The radio in the little stationmaster’s
office played “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”, but she could barely hear it for
the roar of the train going into the future without her. From the crowd of men and boys, hanging out
of the windows reaching to touch the skirt of her dress she saw a boy… maybe
eighteen. He was standing still and handsome in the cross section between two
cars; his eyes looking into hers, asking questions she couldn’t answer… would
she wait for him? She watched him until
the train passed down the track and even after. She could still feel the
questions from those eyes and wanted so badly to say, “Yes”. She was awakened by a baby’s cry.
The sun was already up; she’d
overslept. She dreamed this dream for the hundredth time but in the cold light
of day, there was no baby crying, as there were no babies left to cry. They were all grown and gone.
Nelda Rose was the oldest of twelve
children born to tired parents on a tired piece of land in the heart of pine
trees and wild sumac in the woods of Mississippi. She’d never had a childhood or girlhood nor
had she ever been to a dance. She didn’t
remember a time she wasn’t carrying one of her mama’s babies on one hip, and
pushing another in a hand-me-down stroller so worn out and wobbling from so
many walks, it was a miracle it moved. Her
one solace… as she got bigger the babies got smaller but there were always
more.
When she was seventeen she was
carrying her own baby on her right hip and one inside of her, and her young
husband had left to live in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. His eyes; unlike the eyes of the young
soldier on the troop train, had never asked the questions.
She moved back home and finished
raising her mama’s babies and her own babies and her mama’s grandbabies until
the last grandbaby left home at fourteen to follow a bad man with a carnival up
to Memphis.
Nelda Rose turned thirty-nine without
a baby on her hip for the first time in her life. But this year God blessed her with ‘pretty’.
Truth be told, she’d always been pretty, but no man ever said the pretty words;
just the young soldier’s eyes declaring her beauty in her faded memory and
recurring dreams. Discovering she was
pretty came swiftly and unexpectedly.
She’d gone to town to send a package to the daughter in Memphis, and
twenty dollars to pay the gas bill. She
saw her reflection in the window of the little post office; a beautiful woman
standing ghost like, trim and willowy with soft curls falling around her face.
She walked around for days looking in mirrors, window reflections, and the lids
of old coffee cans seeing if the pretty was still there or if it’d passed like
the man on the train. On the evening of
the third day Nelda Rose approached her mama shelling peas on the back
porch.
“Mama, I think I’m pretty?”
“Speak up girl; I can’t hear you when you mumble so.”
“I said, I think I’m pretty, Mama.” Emotion and embarrassment crept into the
second saying, restraining a need to run up to her mama and fling her arms
around those strong shoulders, but she stood still… waiting to see the
reaction. Maybe she’d been wrong, maybe
her mama would put things right and she’d go on as before.
Mama put down the pan of half shelled
purple hulls and looked up at her oldest and prettiest daughter. The only child left at home now, her right
arm, her constant and sweetest companion… the child who hadn’t had a childhood,
very little love, no attention but… never complained. How had this sweet soul
gotten to be this old and not known she was the prettiest woman in the state of
Mississippi?
“Nelda, baby you know you’re beautiful. What’s all this
about?” Mama was so proud of her for not
letting her beauty turn her head by the devil’s vanity.
“I didn’t know it, Mama. I think maybe it just now
happened.” Nelda Rose had considered
that possibility. Maybe God decided to
make her pretty one day, and in his infinite wisdom bestowed the gift of beauty
on her; a modern miracle so small nobody but herself would notice, but what was
she to do with it? The only miracle was…
Nelda Rose had time for herself. There was time to see herself in the stove
hood while heating the coffee pot, and God knows she even had time to put on a
little lipstick instead of biting her lips for color on her way to church.
“Honey, I just don’t know what to say. Are you tell’n me you didn’t know you was
pretty?”
“Yes.” She sat on the porch swing next to her mama.
Mama had always envied her daughter her good looks, and
looked for the same in her own face, but too many years and dirty floors had
taken any resemblance of pretty she ever had.
Of all her children this one should
have had beaux bringing bouquets of Zinnias and wild honeysuckle on those long,
sultry summer nights. There should have
been men walking up the long sandy driveway carrying gifts with promises of
love and happiness; suitors with handsome good looks and good jobs. There was never a one except that no-good
husband of hers that came down the lane for a couple of years to use her up
like a bag of rice and then move on to the next bar. This girl had no time for life; she had no
time for romance and she had no time to dance, and the guilt of this sat on mama’s
shoulder like a big black crow.
Mama went inside and brought out a
framed picture. Nelda Rose looked at the little girl close up for the first
time. It was she with long brown curly hair and large honest green eyes. There
they were; perfect features for the face of a budding young beauty. She actually existed before this moment; even
before yesterday when she discovered her new self. She was a laughing, happy young girl. She must have enjoyed her life; she was happy
in the picture. Nelda Rose was dumb struck. Where had her life gone? Had each of the babies taken part of her and
left her soul naked? She did have one
memory of herself though. It had turned
into a dream that was visiting her almost every night now. But it was the memory of the event itself
that so filled her with joy, she couldn’t give it over to the light of day for
years. She was sent to town to sell
eggs. She must have been about fourteen with
a figure twice her age and on the way back she stopped for a passenger train
going through town. It was a troop train
full of young boys standing and sitting chock a block in those train cars
looking all the world like a muddy box of used crayons… too many greens and
browns stuffed into the box helter skelter.
The whistles and calls from the boys headed to parts of the world she
would never see filled her head and ears for days. Those young yearning voices bellowing the
eternal call of the male heading into battle leaving the young maidens
unattended and untouched, still filled her mind. But there was one among them who stole her
heart and took it with that train. She
remembered those eyes staring into hers causing her body to awaken and yearn. After her young husband ran off and she was
lonely for the touch of a man, she’d remember those eyes and yearn again… still
wanting to say, “Yes”. She wondered if
that boy on the train remembered her and if so where was he now? How many of those boys lived through the war? How many slept in shallow graves so far away
from home. Did he remember the pretty
girl on the platform?
“Sometimes baby, life just goes so damned fast and out of
control that it runs over people. Then when you try to gather all the broken
parts of the one you hurt, and repair the damage…” Mama searched for the right words for her
apology. “The person’s soul has already
started healin’ and all you can do is just set back and ask Jesus for
forgiveness.”
“Mama, why are you feeling bad… because I discovered I was
pretty?”
“How can a mama never at least tell her girl she’s pretty? Was I that unknowin’ of you, child?”
Nelda hadn’t meant to make her mama
feel bad. She’d been through so much. If
Nelda had to take care of all those babies, Mama had to carry them for nine
months wondering if her husband would send money that week or just show up for
dinner one night and complain about the noisy kids. Mama leaned into her daughter and traced her
face with two fingers gently, like a moth with half a wing.
“Nelda Rose, you’re the most
beautiful woman I’ve ever saw and if it gives you pleasure to know that, I’ll
remind you ever day.” Mama got up off
the swing with the picture held tightly to her breast. Nelda saw her painful
progress down the hall to the bedroom.
The light was wearing out and dying
under the big magnolia trees down by the creek. Birds were calling obscenely
for each other to come to roost and Nelda was discovering the beauty around
her. She felt as if she should run in
and start supper but there was no one to feed.
She wasn’t hungry and mama would probably eat a bowl of cereal in her
room while listening to the radio.
Nelda couldn’t believe how beautiful
the old place looked this time of day.
How come she hadn’t seen it all these years, and how come she didn’t put
some time away for herself in all those days of all those years? How come she was so blind to the world around
her? She’d have trouble taking time for
herself even now. Wasn’t she just
itching to make supper? Wasn’t she even
now wondering if the clothes were folded from the last batch off the line? This was going to be hard; maybe Celine would
come back and let her keep the baby. The
baby would sure be a lot better off with her and mama than God-knows-what was
going on with Celine and her bad news boyfriend in Memphis.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the
scream of Mr. Flurry’s peacock. She could just see it through the trees;
strutting its full plumage out by his barn.
There it was, just spreading beauty, like a fine perfume… a blast of
ecstasy up against the browns and grays of the old cypress barn; bringing color
to the world of dirt, horse manure and tractor tires. Not a place for such a bird and his pretty
feathers. It was needed though, it had a
job, the very presence of the bird reminded everyone that there was great
beauty in the world to be appreciated and enjoyed.
Mama turned on the radio and the
strains of “The Tennessee Waltz” were floating around the porch gathering
momentum and building a romantic desire in the lonely young woman. Nelda Rose had never been to a dance. She wondered again where the young soldier
was. Where had he taken those eyes and his questions that she needed so badly
to answer?
Jeb got off the train in Magee and
stood on the old platform looking around to get his bearings… tall and slim,
still nice looking, his shirt tucked and pinned under the stub of his left
elbow. He was still not sure he was
doing the right thing but he wouldn’t stop now even if he thought he
should. He’d left his heart at this very
station many years ago. The sight of the young girl saved him during the war.
Her face and generous green eyes came into his head like spring on a bad winter
while he tried to sleep in muddy trenches. Her eyes came out of his dark
unconscious… waking him up and bringing him back from death after he was shot. Those
eyes appeared sometimes out of nowhere during his life since the war, giving
him hope, courage and the will to go on.
Before his wife, before his children,
this phantom girl was his imaginary love and lover. His wife knew it; she lived with it for years
and she died knowing it. She had
stopped… relinquished her space on earth and vanished into the world some call
death… freeing him to seek what he needed and could no longer live without.
He felt it, the pulling, the knowing
that he’d make this trip to find her. He
knew he’d find her; hadn’t he answered the need to be here? Yes, he’d find her. This wasn’t the first
time he’d loved her; he felt there were other lives and other places, but in
this life he’d find her and she’d be ready for his touch and know him. Oh, yes
she’d know him and his touch, and she would fit well against him in the dance.
He walked across the street to the
little newspaper office. He asked the
questions of the old man sitting behind an ancient typewriter. It was easier than he ever imagined it could
be. She was known as Nelda Rose and she
was within walking distance. He half
walked, half floated out of the little newspaper office. How electric this strange and happy feeling,
like the first remembered Christmas, when you dream of a thing and there it is,
real and touchable. But with the anticipation of love, the happiness turns to
thunder bolts in your gut and you think you may die from having to contain the
turmoil. He needed flowers. A gentleman caller didn’t walk down a country
road to his ladylove without flowers. He
stopped by the side of the road and picked a handful of honeysuckle and wild
jasmine.
Nelda Rose was on the front porch watering
the ferns she nurtured in the big clay pots.
There was someone coming down the long dusty drive. Some vague feeling of remembrance touched her
hairline, crawled into her scalp and
across her head as she took off her apron, and smoothed her hair. She bit her lips to create color and became
aware of her heart beating. Would he ask
her to dance?
The
End
No comments:
Post a Comment