Free Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons Page B

spite of the breeze from the fan, she looked buttered, glistening with sweat. My grandmother checked for dehydration, which was present, and then slipped a thermometer underneath Maveen’s arm, and when she read it, she whispered, “Why she’s not dead is a mystery.” Then she told us we were all going to stay there as long as it took. I asked her how long she thought that might be. She unclipped the railroad watch from her bosom and said, “It’s ten o’clock now. Mercy will take her by suppertime.” My mother led Maveen’s sister, dazed and staggering, from the room.
    Maveen held on until nine o’clock that evening. My mother kept her sister in the yard most of the time. I could see them through the bedroom window. My mother had pulled two metal chairs close together, and though I couldn’t hear anything, I could see that the sister held a Bible in her lap. Her head was nodding in rhythm to the verses. Under different circumstances my mother would’ve nitpicked discrepancies and rolled her eyes over the miracles, but on this afternoon she nodded along with Maveen’s sister. I stayed inside with my grandmother in the dying light of that old woman’s dying day. My grandmother held one of Maveen’s hands, and I held the other. She slipped away from us in a manner that I almost want to call graceful, and she purged, not much but some. I put my head on the foot of the bed and cried until the lingering odor of vomit in the sheets made it impossible for me to breathe.
    I felt my grandmother’s hand on my back. I asked her, “What do you think she meant to say? What do you think were her secret wishes and desires?”
    As she covered the body and reached over to stop the clock on the nightstand, and moved about the room, hanging towels on mirrors and glasses, making all her death rounds, she said, “I’m not sure, but it could’ve been something having to do with a certain useless doctor. I’m thoroughly disgusted. He’s blinded one and helped starve another, and that’s just the two I know about.”
    When we left that evening, my grandmother directed my mother to drive to Anderson Heights, a neighborhood of grand houses and fine lawns. In these homes lived Raleigh’s chief doctors and lawyers and a dying breed of Southerner, white people who seemed to earn a living automatically. She gave me a street address, and she would not listen to my mother’s protests that she couldn’t go to anybody’s house this late in the evening. My mother asked into the rearview mirror, “What do you want me to do?” She said, “Keep driving. The hour does not faze me.” We drove through what felt like a true maze of affluence before we found the right house. My mother and I sat in the car and listened to the radio while my grandmother went up to the house. A butler let her in. I remember my mother’s saying, “Remarkable. Truly remarkable. People are hungry three miles from here. A butler. Remarkable.” My grandmother stayed in the house about fifteen minutes, and when she returned, all she said was, “I took care of the situation for certain this time.”
    The next week my mother brought a newspaper article to my attention. She pointed to a picture of a fine-looking gentleman and said, “Isn’t that him?”
    I said it was. It was the real doctor, and the world, I’m sure, was shocked to learn of his early retirement. My grandmother came in the kitchen and looked over my shoulder at the article.
    “What do you think about this?” I asked.
    She said, “I think I should have taken him off the streets a long time ago.” Then she took down her mortar and pestle, mashed two cloves of garlic, spread the paste on toast, and ate it without blinking.

    One morning my mother asked why I wasn’t dressed for school. I reminded her that it was the end of a grading period, and students with high averages were allowed to skip the reading day before examinations. She suggested that we go to the movies. She wanted to see Gone