Post 21: Mae

At six, I was game for anything Natalie suggested, including my carrying the now-heavy cook pot all the way home. When we reached the backyard, Kit met us with her Kodak Brownie camera. Despite her disapproval, she proceeded to document our now mud-caked limbs. Natalie struck several dramatic poses, and I followed her furtive moves and facial expressions. We were both loving the attention.

At the peak of our frenzy of self-satisfaction (we had invented something!), Mama appeared in the backyard followed by Mae carrying a basket of damp laundry.

“Don’t even think of coming near these clean sheets with your muddy selves,” Mae cautioned with a wary smile.

“Just what have you done?” Mama asked, her smile betraying her feigned displeasure.

“Look, Mama. We just made it up.” We were giddy. “We just made ‘Instant Nigger.’” Natalie beamed. I followed suit.

Mama’s displeasure, no longer feigned, became instantly and clearly real. I could feel the heat of her glare as she asked me, “You made what?”

“Instant—”

“You don’t need to say it again. Not ever.”

Mae, standing not four feet from me, looked down at me with kind but pained eyes. Then she smiled and turned to Mama and said breezily, “I think what Drew meant to say was ‘Instant Negro,' isn’t that right, Drew?”

Before I could do any more damage, Mama dragged Natalie and me by the arm to the back porch, turned us under the garden hose, and proceeded to restore us to our god-given color. Then Mama sent Natalie and Kit in for baths and sat quietly with me on the back porch steps, watching Mae methodically hang our laundry on the line.

“Drew?” Mama was quiet and earnest. “Now, you know we don’t use that word in this house.”

“Yes, ma’am.” My eyes had started to burn, and I was now completely sure that Mama was more than mad at me. She was disappointed.

“So, Drew, where did you hear that word used?”

“Well, Mama,” I hesitated, “you and Aunt Camille said it yesterday when you were talking with Aunt Virginia about a man who had worked on GranDaddy’s farm.”

It was a look I had rarely seen. Never one to dodge responsibility, Mama took me by the shoulders and looked at me with sad blue eyes. “Your mama, I, was wrong, Drew. I shouldn’t have used that word. And I don’t want you to use it either. Not ever.” She looked like she was about to cry, and all I could do was sit there, not making anything right.

We sat for a while, not saying anything.

Then Mama went inside, “to have a talk with your sister and cousin.” I stayed, watching Mae remove dry laundry from the line, trying to smile when she would occasionally glance my way. Finally, not knowing what else to do, I quietly made my way to the clothesline and picked up an errant sock that had dropped to the ground. I turned to Mae and offered it to her. She smiled and took it, and then I leaned in and buried my face in her apron, which smelled of fabric softener.

I stayed in the sanctuary of Mae’s apron, not precisely understanding the gravity of my sin, but only knowing one simple truth: I had hurt Mae.

She had tried to hide it, but I caught the flash of pain. I had caused that, and that was enough to feel bad about. When I stopped crying, I told Mae I was sorry and that Natalie was sorry, too. She wiped my eyes with her apron, and we made our way back to the house. Mae had dresses to starch.

That Easter passed, and Natalie went back to McLean with Aunt Emily and Uncle Hal, returning to us in June to spend a far less eventful summer. At first, Natalie and I were tentative around Mae, but by summer’s end, it seemed that things were right again with the three of us.   

Mae continued to work for our family for twenty-four more years and helped Kit and me set up and serve cake at Mama and Daddy’s surprise fortieth wedding anniversary party. Ten years later, she was a guest at their Golden Anniversary party, held locally at one of the last of the remaining grand old hotels on the eastern seaboard, a remnant of the days of powerful and prosperous railroads.

Mae had been retired for several years and was well into her eighties. Mama talked Mae into trusting the Social Security system, which, along with a monthly check from my father, provided Mae with a sum that made stopping work possible.

I volunteered to drive Mae home after the party, which had been a large and sentimental success. “About half the people I ever worked for were there this afternoon,” Mae mused. Her long, smooth, onion-skinned fingers toyed with a large fold of napkins in her lap, which held a generous slice of vanilla buttercream cake, “for later” as she explained.

We turned off of Salem Avenue, and I guided Mama’s aging Cadillac literally across the tracks toward Luck Avenue and “colored town.” I slowed a little, wanting to buy some time to talk with Mae.

I waded in, tentatively. “Mae, do you remember the summer that Natalie and I came home caked in mud, and you and Mama were in the backyard with the laundry?”

Mae looked straight ahead, holding her serene smile steady. She answered after a slight pause. “Well, what I remember is a very embarrassed, confused, and sad little boy who cried and said he was sorry. You got my good apron wet.” Mae smiled at the recollection.

“I was just six. I really didn’t know what I was saying.”           

“I know, darlin’. I know.”

“But Mae, Mama knew. Mae, Mama had to have known better, didn’t she?” I held my breath.

            Mae paused, turned her head toward me, started to say something, seemed to think better of it, and then set the thought aside. “I’ve always liked the seats in this car. Like nice living room sofas, aren’t they?” She ran her hand over the leather armrest that divided us.

           We drove on in silence.