MAID IN THE SHADE

I picked up the glass of wine and made a silent toast to me and a whole bunch of other folks: folks I don't know, but they look like me. I was feeling a bit generous so I made a toast for the many that don't look like me too, but only if they're the kind that don't mind when I get too relaxed on the cross-town bus, that's the ninety-eight, and my left leg gets heavy and flops over to the side and touches theirs just a bit. None of the people in my second toast actually had to have ridden the ninety-eight with me. They just have to be the types who won't grunt really loud in that nanosecond when our legs meet and then sigh all loud like a hungry bear and then start blowing that pastrami breath in my face. Folks that don't look like my family and don't be acting like that on the ninety-eight are all right with me. I don't worry none about what they be saying when I overhear them talking to each other, ‘cause a whole lot of us Americans been raised by fools.

My Grandmama always used to say you can pick your friends, but not your relatives. And Grandmama was right too, even if she was always looking at my Mama's baby sister's husband when she said it. And was nothing much wrong with Uncle Buddy, least that's what Daddy would say. Daddy said the only thing wrong with Buddy was he started "smelling himself too soon," and by the time (Auntie) Raylean met up with him, he was already worn out. I ain't never known what Daddy meant by that, "smelling himself too soon." It would seem to me that there's never going to be a good time to pick up your own scent, but that's just me talking and folks know I'm clean about myself.

I leaned back on that white sofa and sipped that wine like I knew who killed the hog. It was good too, not thick and sweet like that Mogan-David my folks used to drink on Christmas and Grandmama would sometimes put in her cake batter. The wine was just sweet enough to make my toes curl, like they do when Raymond Scott sings a solo on Sunday. But not sweet enough to make my toes curl so tight they crack—like old Raymond has been known to do during our personal Saturday night services.

And yet the wine was bitter too, if a thing can be both. The bitterness hit me right under my ears like it was trying to make them turn in on themselves. I remembered that's what Grandmama's right nipple did just before she died, but I shook off those thoughts. I don't have to think like that when I'm in a groove.

Yeah, I likes me some wine. The way I figure it, if Jesus made some out of water and passed it around, who am I to say something's wrong with it? You know what was making that wine taste even better? I'd put on an old Wes Montgomery album before I sat down. That man was in the toe curling business too. That old album was a little scratchy, but that's okay with me. There were some CDs over there, but somehow it doesn't seem right that all that pretty music can be coming out of something ain't round enough to support some fried chicken, Auntie Raylean's potato salad and some cornbread. Yes indeed, that was living. I rubbed my first finger over the mouth of that crystal wine glass and it made a humming noise. The first time I saw somebody do that I wanted to shout, "Lawd, if the wine won't talk to you the stemware will!" But I was working and I couldn't be making testimonies that some folks might deem strange. Talking strangely at the wrong time can get you locked up in a place where you can't properly dispose of your toenail clippings. I know about places like that, but I don't let myself think about it when I've got a glass of good wine and Wes Montgomery to keep me company.

I was getting ready to flip the album over and pour myself just one last taste when I heard the car in the driveway. I couldn't curse them or say "Damn" or anything, because two glasses of wine and a full side of a soulful album ain't nothing to get mad about. I took a linen napkin and wiped out my glass. The glass is part of my collection now—has been for months. I hurried and turned off the record player that they call "a system." By the time the front door opened, I was coming down the stairs with the dust mop in my hand.

"All finish upstairs?" Miz Audrey asked me.

"Yes Ma'am," I said grinning, my breath still sweet with the wine from that dusty cellar bottle.

There was something in the way she said, "welcome," that immediately pissed me off. It's not like I was running late or anything. Hell, I wonder how long it would take her to haul her fat ass off that couch and catch two buses to Miz Audrey's and back. I laughed. I could picture my "little" sister, Emerald, spread out in one of those sticky number 98 seats sitting next to the Fly Man, that's what all of us regulars call him. He's about a hundred years old and always dressed in the same dirty brown woolen three-piece suit that has big blobs of his most recent meal on his wide triangle-shaped lapels. He looks like the kind of gentleman you feel a bit sorry for. The kind of old man you figure has seen some stuff in his days, and most of it was pretty horrible. His look makes you inclined to say, "Good morning, Sir," but you better not say it. He's always looking for a smile or a little kindness from some woman, so he can sit next to her and open his fly—exposing his old withered self.

That good wine still had me buzzing. I knew my "language skills," as Miz Audrey calls them, would be worse than usual. They're always bad when I drink. I tried to pull myself together, but I got the giggles. See, what folks don't know about me, giggling just makes me giggle more—always has.

"See, Ruby, there you go again. All that strange laughing at the wrong time is what got you shackled up out at Kincaid."

"I wasn't shackled up. I coulda left at any time. Kincaid ain't nothing but a hospital, just like Mercy General. They had to restrain me for a while because I was having a bad reaction to my meds."

"And if you don't do something about your language you'll be a maid for the rest of your life. Just because those foreign nurses were out there calling them meds, doesn't mean that's what you suppose to call them." I walked away. I work too hard to have to listen to somebody who, in a given day, doesn't move twenty feet away from her bed. Sure, she's getting disability for her bad hips, but that disability doctor wasn't in the kitchen yesterday when she made a strange move and three quarters fell out of her bra. She dived under the table like Jerry Rice trying to recover a bad pass.

I went into my tiny dining room to get my mail.
I love my little house; ain't no rental either. Every month I pay four hundred and seventy-two dollars to the bank straight out, even before I buy food. The way I figure it, both me and my sister can afford to lose a few pounds, but not nan one of us got a shell on our backs.
"Damn," I said, when I got to the dining room. "Even this room smells like her." About three months ago she ordered a perfume, no, excuse me not perfume—parfume. This parfume was supposed to capture her natural scent, therefore smelling different on every woman that wears it. Well, my sister's natural scent must be the Hudson Bay because she got the whole house smelling like rank salt water.

I gathered my mail. One good thing I can say about old Emerald, she might take a little longer than most to learn a lesson, but when she gets it, she gets it good. She finally knows I want to find my mail on the dining room table when I get home from work.

I recognized Jan Channey's stationary right away. Jan Channey is the best friend I've made since being out of public school. That's saying a lot, because it's hard to make a good friend once out of school. How are you going to build trust for a person you haven't seen naked in the gym shower or haven't switched brown bag lunches with? A best friend is somebody who still respects you after you've made a fool of yourself by standing next to Floyd Connors locker every day for a whole school year.<P> I count myself among the lucky to have Jan Channey for a best friend. And don't think we ain't that close because I use her whole name. She's one of those people who most everybody used to call by her whole name.
 Jan likes to write letters. She says it's because she likes to go to her mail box and see something other than bills. You can't get letters unless you write them, everybody should know that. Jan Channey's stationary is bright red, which can be a bit confusing in December, but with it being August, I knew it was her.

I saved Jan Channey's letter to the side and thumbed through the garbage mail first; the bills and the cut off notices.

I truly believe the reason so many Montgomery Wards stores are closing all over the country is because they waste so much time and money sending out so damn much junk mail. I swear, I get something in the mail from them five days outta six.<p> I slipped off my shoes and sat. It was time to read girlfriend's letter. I could tell right away it wasn't thick enough for one of her four pagers. I opened it. It was one page long. I got my mouth ready to smile because Jan Channey can write some funny stuff.

Dear Ruby, If you're reading this, then I'm probably already dead. If not, I'm close to it. Call my mother she'll  know if I'm dead. I just wanted to tell you I love  you, girl. You can do anything. Get out of that maid's uniform. I know you don't actually wear a uniform, but your mind wears one. It was signed Love, Jan Channey.

My hand was shaking when I put down the letter. Jan Channey is funny and fun; she ain't nobody's fool. She knows me well enough to know I don't be playing around with somebody being dead—I know her just as well. After high school graduation, both of us got one year scholarships to Burns College in Maine. She came from Oakland, California and I came from Petite, Tennessee. It was a program some well-meaning folk put together to get disadvantaged students ready for college. I went because it would be my first time on an airplane. I knew I didn't want to go on for a degree. Jan Channey said she came because Maine wasn't Oakland, California.

"Emerald, where's my cordless phone?"

"Not phone, Ruby, say telephone!"

"Where the hell is it?!"

"In here, next to me. And I don't know why you're getting all mad. You said you wanted to speak better. You asked me to help."

I went back in the living room to get it. I knew I wasn't going to find Emerald in motion bringing it to me.