A Southern Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

Exhaling, he watched the smoke rise to the ceiling. “Then I lost my arm, you know that old story,” he said, looking far away from the room where we sat. “That put us behind even more. Delores was gonna start school the next year. Then—” Uncle Cal was silent. He smoked.
    After a minute or more of deep thought he said, “Things don’t always work out the way you think they will. That’s all. But she’s been a good mama to you, Cajun girl. Don’t you forget it.” Reaching over, he patted my knee, then grasped the box lid on the floor with his hook and with that, signaled an end to my family history lesson.
    “Wait!” I cried, grabbing inside the box before he could restore the lid. “What about this?” I took out a red plastic cube about the size of a jack-in-the-box. There were holes in four sides, holes in the shape of circles, ovals, rectangles, squares, and stars. Flipping open the top, I found little plastic pieces in all of those shapes. “Whose was this?”
    Uncle Cal stood up, rubbed out his cigarette in a little tin ashtray, and looked out the window again. He took the box from my hands.
    “It’s quit raining, you better be getting back home before it starts again. Your mama’ll have my hide if I send you home in the rain,” he said. The plastic cube, the picture frame, and everything else went back beneath the Thom Mcann logo. He closed the lid and put the box under his arm.
    Mama’ll have my hide if she finds out I came here, I thought, but I didn’t dare say it. Uncle Cal rose and walked to the door. Why was he trying to get rid of me? How could a plastic box, a baby toy, make him so—so whatever he was? I wasn’t ready to go home: I wanted answers. I sat on the couch with my knees practically in my ears and said, “That little box didn’t look so old. I’ve seen ones like it at Woolworth’s in Albany. They’re for little kids to learn shapes. Whose was it?” I asked.
    He smiled, his hook on his hip, pretending to be put out with me. “Well, okay, Miss Smarty Pants, you played with it when you were a little critter. Had to give you something to keep you outta my dog food.” He turned and opened the door to usher me out. I hiked myself off the couch and the two dogs looked at me, Hank never lifting his head.
    “Tell your Mama to bring me that sewing machine,” Cal said. “Put me to work, make an honest man out of me.” He gave me a quick hug and stood watching as I walked down the stairs. He waved as I climbed onto my bike, then he went back inside, closing the door.
    ❦
    Back at home, Mama was standing in the doorway, wearing the same expression Uncle Cal had worn when I left. When she asked where I’d been, I told the truth; she always knew when I was lying anyway.
    She grounded me for a month.
    “It ain’t Cal I don’t trust, Mary Jane, it’s those houses you pass between our house and his, and then the riff raff he’s likely to have inside.”
    I wanted to tell Mama about the things I’d seen: the diplomas, and awards, and how pretty she was in that picture. But she seemed about as closed to new information as Uncle Cal was at giving out the old kind. I left well enough alone, thinking I’d find a better opening later.

Chapter 3: July 1958
    Delores
    Delores Mullinax was unassuming, unsophisticated, and unexcited about life in general. Born smart and willful, her girlhood was cut short when she was forced into a quick transition from high school to factory life, strapping her in the monotonous struggle of the tired and weary working class of the south.
    She was outside under the smoking tree, on break from her job at the Nolan Manufacturing Company, a sweatshop that produced ladies’ panties from size 4 to size 44. One pattern. All cotton. In white, pastels, and various florals some big-wig found for next-to-nothing at going-out-of-business warehouses.
    Just panties. That’s all they made. Her mama had worked there years before, and she’d tried to find those