FIRST TORNADO

Okay. So I come from Earthquake Country and that scares the beejesus out of anybody who’s never been in an earthquake. It’s like the Apocalypse and the Four Horsemen Come to Git Ya. Out-of staters think the earth cracks open like the Grand Canyon and small children and cherished pets are never seen again. Whole towns disappear and fall into the ocean. Well, that hasn’t happened yet although people have been squashed under bridges, and as they lay dying, ne’er-do-wells ransack their cars and take their wallets and anything else of value. Mostly, though, earthquakes just rattle things up a bit; a few cans get knocked off of shelves in the grocery stores; some windows get broken and people’s nerves are shot for a few hours. The thing is: They come without warning. There are no earthquake sirens. No high-tech tracking on the television stations; no Pete Thompson telling you when to head for the basement if you have one. Just slam. All of a sudden your feet go out from under you and it’s over before you’ve even figured out what it was. The real blockbusters only happen every 10-20 years and the death tolls and injuries are minimal compared to other natural disasters.

But tornados? Shut the hell up! They happen every year, several times per season. Talk about whole towns being blown away and small children and pets disappearing. They really do. How do you get used to having your roof blown off every year? So, I knew I had to prepare and prepare good.

First of all, what does one wear to a tornado? Will I be able to hear the sirens over the TV murder I’m usually watching on Lifetime or TNT and they don’t do up-to-the-minute warnings? Do I have a “safe room?” No. I have a bathroom with no window so that’s going to have to do even though it’s on an outside wall. What do I need to stock? How long will I be stuck in there? In bad earthquakes, the ones that usually happen in Peru and Pakistan, people are often trapped for hours and days. How will anyone know if I’m dead? Hard to tell some mornings. But I didn’t know anybody then and who would think to look for me?

And so, putting all of my bleached blonde faculties to work, I devised a plan. If I’m going to die in a tornado, let me go happily and in comfort. Keep it simple. In the linen closet I placed a bottle of Perrier, a corkscrew and a cheap California pinot noir. Oh, and some tennis shoes and a leash and some Milk Bones. Happily, the first couple of years, I had no need for the equipment and forgot about it as I went about the business of building my new life. By 2007, I wised up a little, having seen some pretty devastating stuff down here.

By then, I had put some low-lights in my hair and could think better. What if it happened here in Maumelle like it did in Dumas? I’ve got 20 trees in my back yard, mostly pine that crack like twigs in the wind and smash houses in half. I called out the tree guy and had him take down the one that loomed most precariously over my house; the one that would bisect my life, and left the others that would only demolish the kitchen on the north side or smash me flat in my bed on the south side. The decisions one makes in this life….Then I went to Circuit City and got conned into buying one of those crank-em-up weather radios. Feeling empowered, I stocked the bathroom with a comforter and pillows to cover my head if my dog and I had to cower in the bathtub, a crowbar and axe in case I had to bust my way out from under a bone-crushing pine tree, tuna, dog food, flashlight, peanut butter, a can opener, first aid kit, extra shampoo, canned ravioli. Being from Good Pioneer Stock on my father’s side, I was going to survive, by God. And intrepid explorers on my mother’s side. My Uncle Octave was on the Greely Expedition to the North Pole and the story goes that the survivors survived by eating up their traveling companions. Not being one to devour my neighbors for any reason whatsoever, I instead decided on the tuna and canned ravioli.

It was only a matter of time before a tornado sliced through Little Rock. Long-time residents gloried in regaling me with tales of tornados past that had taken out whole neighborhoods and Harvest Foods and sent cars flying across Main Street. Well, spring of 2008 seemed fairly tame to me until that night when I was visiting friends in Cammack Village. Something didn’t seem quite right. It was raining a little but the vibes in the air gave me what they call down here the willie-nillies. Californians are big on vibes and when you get one, you better act fast. I made a polite but speedy exit and headed across the bridge to Maumelle.

It was the most astonishing light show ever. Even San Francisco nightclubs of the 1960’s couldn’t compare. Miles-long, serrated bolts cracked the sky and splintered light on the river. I could hardly keep my eyes on the road but my hands stayed firm on the wheel to keep the winds from blowing my little Toyota into the roiling waters below. Get the hell home. It may be pretty but it’s dangerous and you are so in for it. Alone. You and your little dog, too.

Screeching into the garage, I went straight for the TV. The networks were ablaze with reports as the tornado ripped up from the southwest, through Bryant and Benton, then straight into Cammack Village where I was visiting not 15 minutes before. Cranking up the TV to full volume, I grabbed my beagle, Simon, who was sleeping on the forbidden sofa and ran for the bathroom. Yanking open the linen closet I pulled out the comforter and pillows (the wine was long gone) and threw them in the tub along with the dog. I grabbed the peanut butter and the crow bar from under the sink and along with my cell phone, leaped in the tub and slammed the door shut. Time to call my only child, Eyren Michaela, in Charleston and bid her farewell.

Having heard the reports on CNN, she was just about to call me. The vibes again.

“It’s five minutes from Maumelle. I’m a goner. I am so sorry I never bought you a Lite Brite and that I grounded you for using the F-word. I never taught you to pray. I never taught you how to handle money. I never taught you how to use power tools. Your cooking stinks and it’s all my fault. And I’m so sorry I yelled at you when I was trying to teach you to drive and ride a bike and for all the kites I couldn’t get to fly that crashed into the ground and made you cry.”

Simon was starting to squirm among the pillows, turning around and around, trying to nest. He was distracted by the open jar of peanut butter and licking it off my fingers, sticking his nose in the jar to get bigger portions. I wasn’t going to fight him. I’d share my last drop of peanut butter with the most loyal, true-blue man I’d ever known.

“Mama,” Eyren squeaked, “I can hardly understand you. Are you eating peanut butter again? You’re not going to die. You can’t. You haven’t bought me a Lite Brite yet and I still owe you a trip to Italy and you can’t die until we get there. And back.” She knows, most of the time, not to argue with me when I’m insane.

“Yes I am. I am so dead. And I never took the time to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Everything I ever did or didn’t do. I’m sorry I divorced your wretched father and that you never had a daddy. I’m sorry that your hair turned green when I tried to give it new life with a cheap box of hair color. I’m sorry I never taught you to pray. I’m sorry for all the times I made you eat fish and pork chops and that I read whole passages out of The Grapes of Wrath to make you feel guilty. I should have let you eat more French fries. The sirens are blaring! I hear trains coming! All hope is dead and so am I. They’ll find us in a few days. Decomposed, reeking of peanut butter. But at least I have on a cute outfit.”

By now, the dog was standing on his hind legs, pounding on the shower door to get out. My cell phone was blowing sky high as friends and family tried to reach me from both coasts.

“Vaya con Dios, my precious baby girl. I have never loved anyone as I have loved you. I’ll wait for you in our next life and we will be safe. You’ll have a daddy and never have to eat pork chops. It will be in Mexico or somewhere where it’s always warm and the breezes are gentle. Listen for me in whippoorwill songs. (I wouldn’t have known a whippoorwill if it landed on me with a business card). Feel my love when you look into the eyes of your first born child. I was never perfect but my love for you always was.

“Mama?”

The cell phone died. If you think this was maudlin, imagine the conversation if I had found that bottle of wine.

The TV, still at full volume, started giving reports that the tornado was bypassing Maumelle. With stiff knees from crouching in the tub, I cautiously slithered out and headed for the living room. The wind was subsiding and I watched in astonishment the amazing technology that tracked, to the block, what neighborhoods were still in danger of touch down. Mine was not in the mix. The house phone rang. It was my neighbor across the street, checking in on me. She comforted and reassured me that we were not in danger. She detailed the course tornados take from southwest to northeast. She laughed with me. Probably at me but was too refined to let me know. She told me I can always come to them. They were there for me. Always. Southerners to the bone. Just checking in on their neighbors. I’ll bake them a pie in the morning. It’s what Southerners do. Pie. Pah. No matter how you say it, its significance runs as deep as that river I cross each day. I won’t even use the ready-made crust. I’ll make it with my own hands and set it on my kitchen windowsill to cool. And when I take it to them the screen door will slam behind me, resounding the unmistakable protection of the Southern home.

I called my daughter from the house phone to tell her we survived. There was a lot of peanut butter involved but we were, indeed, alive and well. I didn’t put in the part about how I really wasn’t sorry I divorced her father or that if I had to I would read Steinbeck until her ears fell off if that would make her more grateful for all she had.

“You ever going to get me a Lite Brite? Oh, and by the way, Mama, your love is perfect. Sleep tight.”

Copyright 2008 by Judith Gardner

THE MAMA INDUSTRY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH (MIASma)

Being reared in California by a Louisiana mother is a sure-fire road to schizophrenia or just about any other mental impairment. The cultural forces are in constant collision with one another and trying to act like you belong when you know better is a damn, lousy set-up.

When I uprooted myself from my fifth-generation California family and allowed the Louisiana ghosts to rise up and claim me, I was more prepared than most for dealing with the Mama Industry of the American South (MIASma). Mama is as pervasive as the humidity and the scent of dogwood in the spring. And my mother wasn’t just any Southern mama. She was French Catholic from southwest Louisiana and brought up primarily by a nursemaid from the Caribbean. Talk about collisions: French Catholicism laced with voodoo? Oh, and the etiquette edicts of the old French families were as rigid and unarguable as the Ten Commandments. I never knew if Mama’s commandments were based in bad luck or bad manners but I knew better than to take any chances.

1. Thou shalt not ever pass the salt without the pepper.
2. Thou shalt not ever place a hat on the bed.
3. Thou shalt not address an adult by anything other than sir or m’am.
4. Thou shalt not fail to RSVP.
5. Thou shalt not give a sharp or pointed object as a gift.
6. Thou shalt not cut all your meat at once.
7. Thou shalt not fail to cross yourself when a hearse passes by.
8. Thou shalt honor thy mother (daddy is optional but if he buys lots of jewelry then he gets equal honoring).
9. Though shalt not ask personal questions of people.
10. Thou shalt not repeat to anyone what goes on in this house.

California kids just didn’t get this stuff and neither did their parents unless there was a Southerner in the backstretch somewhere. They thought I was being sarcastic when I said sir or m’am. They thought I didn’t like their cooking if I left a bite on the plate for Miss Manners. They didn’t know why I clammed up when they asked me how much my father paid for his car. And unless they were Catholic, they really didn’t get the part about the hearse. They just didn’t get it and it’s not their fault and Jesus loves them, too.

The devil, like mama, wears many faces. They are as varied as spots on a blue-tick hound. You think you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all? Uh-uh. They’re of all ethnicities and religions: Italian, French, Hispanic, African-American, Middle Eastern, Asian, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist. Sorry if I left anyone off the list---it’s the bleach factor again. There are two imperatives that run through them all: The importance of inducing guilt and fear of motherly reprisal. But as I said, down here it is an industry and reaches into every level of one’s being, thus the preponderance of country music lyrics written on the subject. Why, even trains and pickups aren’t mentioned nearly as much as mama. And there ain’t no song saying “There Ought to be a Hall of Fame for Pickup Trucks.” But there’s one for Mama. Swear to God.

And don’t think for a minute that they are all chubby, cheery faced darlings in hand-knit sweaters and calico dresses. They can be tall and stringy with machete-sharp eyes. They can be wearing anything from Escada to Escape-from-Rehab wear. Socialites, floozies, soccer moms, young, old, wise as Solomon, dumb as a bag of hammers, professional women, secretaries, retail clerks, power brokers or senators. It just doesn’t matter down here. If you have given birth, you are a Mama and your rights are up there with the Bill of Rights and would have been written in if there hadn’t been a bunch of dumb-ass men who forgot all about their mamas when they were writing it. And they should have known better, even then, because down here, you just can’t get elected to public office unless you have a Really Good Mama Story.

And it has to involve sacrifice of the highest order. There might be a random constable or state rep who managed to slip in without a good mama story but they are the exception. If your mama was a Supreme Court judge, by God, she would just shut those boys down if you were starting in the game against Central or performing your first ballet recital. It doesn’t matter if she were waiting tables or running a corporation or anything in between. Her children came first. Tell us about the whoopin’s she took so your sumbitch step-daddy didn’t take it out on you. Tell us about all the sumbitches she didn’t marry so you wouldn’t have to have a step-daddy at all. Tell us about how she always believed in you even when you didn’t make the team or get picked for Homecoming Queen. Tell us about how her car broke down on the way to the doctor and she carried you a mile in the snow. Tell us about how she went without her heart medications to buy food for the puppy she let you have when she could barely afford to feed you. Tell us about how she slapped the principal’s face when he said you cheated on your math test. Tell us about how she went to college for the first time at age 40 to set a good example for you. Tell us about all the toys she put on lay-away at K-Mart and paid for all year so you wouldn’t think Santa thought you were bad. Tell us about how she always expected the best from you. Tell us how many days she was in labor giving birth to you. Tell us how she said you weren’t poor, you were just on adventure. Tell us about how you’ll never forget the look on her face the day you graduated high school.

It helps a lot if you really know how to uncork a good story, and there’s no story like a Southern politician’s Mama Story, but most of all, what we want to know is that you never forgot where you came from. You came from Mama.

And don’t go thinking for even a moment that the power of Mama comes just magically up from nowhere. We have this all worked out for the future generations. We gather and meet to advance the causes of society, politics and the will of God. We gather for church meetings and women’s club meetings, charitable organization and business meetings and the scheduling all hinges upon the goings-on of the key players’ mamas. If the meeting starts at 2:00 p.m. but the chairwoman’s mama has a (hair, doctor, plumber, handyman, pedicure, dog grooming, dentist) appointment at 3:30, well, you can bet your last piece of sweet potato pie that meeting is going to get moved or postponed to accommodate Mama’s schedule. Don’t even ask why Mama didn’t check with her daughter first to see if her appointment time was convenient for her. Convenience is not a consideration when it comes to a daughter’s duty to deliver and collect her mama. After all the sacrifices, the least we can do is arrange our days to suit our mamas. And God help us if her perm doesn’t turn out right. We’ll be hearing about it at the next three meetings.

Of course, we all want to be informed if anything unfortunate befalls any of our mamas. Because then cards, flowers and casseroles must follow and not a minute too soon. We don’t even have to officially cancel a meeting if anybody’s mama gets caught in a tornado, has lung transplant surgery or gets shot by a drunken deer hunter. Word is out faster than you can say cyberspace and we all just know not to show up anywhere except at said afflicted mama’s house. We’ll lift trees off roofs, harangue the surgical nurse manager into giving us the update, take in the 50-pound miniature poodle that Mama so adored, bake a casserole, roast a side of beef, make soup, cookies, whatever is required because don’t you just know something’s going happen to our mamas any day now and we are going to want to cash in our chips. Even if our very own mamas have already gone to Jesus, we are still in debt and will be until the day we die and then it’s up to our daughters to carry on the tradition. There’s a reason folks say, “Slap Your Mama!” when something turns out really good.

Convenience also knows no place in the life of any mama’s daughter. Take the impromptu visit, for one. I actually got disinherited over this one. Of course, Mama started disinheriting me when I was 15 for coming home late from a date. She probably disinherited me for at least six or seven other transgressions over the years but always rewrote the will after much drama, tears and recriminations. But the last time, she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and forgot to make yet another codicil to the will and I just won’t go into the high-impact legal aerobics I had to perform to get back in it.

Mama, as you can see even through this small window, drove me completely out of my mind. There was no escape. No breathing room. And yet, I would gladly rip the highlights out of the hair of any bitch that hurt or criticized her unfairly. Note: I refer to women as potential critics. Men just plain knew better than to say a word. The price was way too high.

Anyway, at the time of my last disinheriting, I was by then a single mother, working 40 hours a week, no child support and no nanny. Saturdays, then, were all I had to do all the errands, housecleaning, and other business of living items. Usually, I would get up, have coffee, and not think about anything more than Mr. Clean before launching into my duties. And then she would land on my doorstep. Always bearing gifts of some kind or the other. Now, most people would think this was so sweet and wonderful. And it was, save for the fact that she expected me to stop dead in my tracks, make more coffee and give my absolute, undivided attention to her nonstop monologue because she was not, I repeat, was not interested in a damn thing I had to say. God help me if I were to suggest she come into the kitchen while I washed dishes or swept the floor. That might mean my eyes and undivided attention were not fixed on her.

Back in the day before caller ID I could lay money down on the fact that if the call wasn’t for my teenage daughter, it was Mama. One night, after her seventeenth phone call to me---that’s another thing---you do not fail to answer the phone when you know it’s Mama---I stupidly suggested she call prior to visiting me.

“Far sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

I didn’t see or hear from her again for two weeks. It was like waiting to see if I’d caught chicken pox. One day, she just picked up right where she left off and life went on, as usual, until she started forgetting where I lived and what my phone number was. And then, somehow, my privacy and personal space didn’t matter all that much. When she checked out of today and floated back to some other time and thought she was still 23, all I wanted was my Mama back. Inheritance or no, just please come back. Even for an afternoon. I’ll put down the mop and broom. I promise.
Copyright 2008 by Judith Gardner