Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [16]
My relatives’ house, on a treeless new street, had venetian blinds and glossy hardwood floors. The living room carpet had giant pink roses that made me think you could play hopscotch on them. The guest room had knotty-pine paneling and a sweet-smelling cedar closet. Aunt Mozelle had put His and Her towels in our room. They had dogs on them and were pleasurably soft. At home, all of our washrags came out of detergent boxes, and our towels were faded and thin. The house was grand. And I had never seen my mother sparkling so. When she saw the kitchen, she whirled around happily, like a young girl, forgetting her dizziness on the bus. Aunt Mozelle had a toaster, a Mixmaster, an electric stove, and a large electric clock shaped like a rooster. On the wall, copper-bottomed pans gleamed in a row like golden-eyed cats lined up on a fence.
“Ain’t it the berries?” my mother said to me. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” said my aunt.
Just then, the front door slammed and a tall girl with a ponytail bounded into the house, saying “Hey!” in an offhand manner.
“Corn!” I said timidly, which seemed to perplex her, for she stared at me as though I were some odd sort of pet allowed into the house. This was my cousin Betsy Lou, in bluejeans rolled up halfway to her knees.
“Our kinfolks is here,” Aunt Mozelle announced.
“Law, you’ve growed into a beanpole,” said Mama to Betsy Lou.
“Welcome to our fair city, and I hope you don’t get polio,” Betsy Lou said to me.
“Watch what you’re saying!” cried her mother. “You’ll scare Peggy Jo.”
“I imagine it’ll be worse this summer than last,” said Mama, looking worried.
“If we’re stuck here without a car, you won’t be any place to catch polio,” Aunt Mozelle said, smiling at me.
“Polio spreads at swimming pools,” Betsy Lou said.
“Then I’m not going to any swimming pool,” I announced flatly.
Aunt Mozelle fussed around in her splendid kitchen, making dinner. I sat at the table, listening to Mama and her sister talk, in a gentle, flowing way, exchanging news, each stopping now and then to smile at the other in disbelief, or to look at me with pride. I couldn’t take my eyes off my aunt, because she looked so much like my mother. She was older and heavier, but they had the same wide smile, the same unaffected laughter. They had similar sharp tips on their upper lips, which they filled in with bright red lipstick.
Mama said, “Boone sure is lucky. He’s still young and ain’t crippled and has a good job.”
“Knock on wood,” said Aunt Mozelle, rapping the door facing.
—
They had arranged for me to have a playmate, a girl my age who lived in the neighborhood. At home, in the summertime, I did not play with anyone, for the girls I knew at school lived too far away. Suddenly I found myself watching a chubby girl in a lilac piqué playsuit zoom up and down the sidewalk on roller skates.
“Come on,” she said. “It’s not hard.”
“I’m coming.” Betsy Lou had let me have her old skates, but I had trouble fastening them on my Weather-Bird sandals. I had never been on skates. At home there was no sidewalk. I decided to try skating on one foot, like a kid on a scooter, but the skate came loose.
“Put both of them on,” said the girl, laughing at me.
Her name was Sharon Belletieri. She had to spell it for me. She said my name over and over until it sounded absurd. “Peggy Peggy Peggy Peggy Peggy.” She made my name sound like “piggy.”
“Don’t you have a permanent?” she asked.
“No,” I said, touching my pigtails. “My hair’s in plaits ’cause it’s summer.”
“Har? Oh, you mean hair? Like air?” She waved at the air. She was standing