On the Gulf

On the Gulf

1 ON THE GULF Mary Dee went out in the heat in the early afternoon and began to swing. Back and forth, back and forth, sitting with her skirt around her, flying open and shut. It was something to do. Semmes, their old colored woman, came out and said, “Don’t swing so high, Dee-dee. It worries your mama.” “She’s on the other side,” said Mary Dee, swooping past. There was a daytime moon. When she went her highest , her tennis shoes rested on it. “Them folks coming from N’Orlens. You know how your mama is about company.” “Wears her out,” said Mary Dee, and getting tired, her hair damp and hot, she let the cat die. It died slow as anything , then she was scarcely moving over the bare place in the grass where you pushed, and then she turned around until the ropes wound tightly around each other, going higher and higher. She let herself go, spinning. She did that three times. 2 / On the Gulf “Your head swimming, I bet,” said Semmes. She was sitting down now, a little way off, in a lawn chair. “Whyn’t you go to the pool?” Semmes asked. “It’s too late. Time I get there.” “Ain’t no more than three-thirty.” “Ain’t you got to cook?” “Certainly I do. Got to start in.” “Who’s coming?” Mary Dee asked, the first she’d thought to wonder. At the table when there was company she sat and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am”; her mother liked it that way. “Them Meades,” said Semmes. “Comes every summer. Eats like horses.” “It’s cool out here; over there it’s hot,” Mary Dee said. “Ain’t that entirely. They counts on my dinner, Deedee .” She looked toward the house. It was two-story, red brick, old, with a big side yard where they were. It was afternoon-still. Way up in the live oak, even the Spanish moss looked as sound asleep at that hour as a dog would be. “Any minute now, Miss Annie going to get out of that bed and start straightening up.” “When I grow up I’m not going to worry any.” Mary Dee started spinning the other way. “One time them Meades come and got into rain crossing the Pearl. Rain like brickbats; hail big as eggs. I’d a-turnt back, been me. No, sir! Car dented all over the roof with hail. Hail that big around. Chunks big enough to put in the highballs, which they did. Frozen solid.” On the Gulf / 3 Mary Dee stopped. “How’d they get it?” “It skips, don’t you know. Goes bouncing along. Put their hand out the car window and caught it. That’s how. Blamming on the roof of the car. Them Meades inside, scaredandlaughingboth.Iain’tsostruckonthemMeades.” “Mama’s not either. I heard her say so. Twice. ‘I just can’t stand them another year.’ That’s what she said.” “They keep on coming,” said Semmes. “It’s got to be regular.” “What you going to have?” “Crawfish bisque, stuffed hen, pickled peaches, biscuits , cauliflower, beets, tomatoes, rice and beans on the side, strawberry chill with macaroons. Chicory.” “Same as ever,” said Mary Dee. “Between here and Florida, ain’t no cook good as me,” said Semmes. “And we got you,” said Mary Dee, complacently, repeating what she’d heard. “Got to take me home, though,” Semmes gloated. “Got to go get me. Even if I move a hundred miles. I ain’t walking nowhere. Not before I die.” “When you die? Where you think you can walk to when you die?” “Lord knows,” said Semmes. “He tell me, chile.” “I’m eight years old,” said Mary Dee, not knowing exactly what she meant, and ran into the house. Semmes scratched in her ear with a straw, and presently , smoothing out her dress, she got up and walked over 4 / On the Gulf to the fish pond. She turned one or two of the lawn chairs straight on the paving around the water, brushing them free of twigs and droppings. Gulls were the worst. Sometimes , when stiff weather came on, rain hanging in dark splotches way out on the gulf, the gulls sailed in to refugee. Once they ate the goldfish. The glass-top table needed polishing . That was Miss Annie’s job...