No Daughter of the South by Cynthia Webb Page A

excuse.
     
    Four-thirty a.m. came just as early as I had dreaded it would. I woke on the double bed in my childhood bedroom, a pink-flowered shrine to the kind of girl I’d never been, cursing the fates. I could smell bacon cooking, and heard noises from the direction of the kitchen, so that I knew my mother was up. She hadn’t asked me to help. I could just go back to sleep. But I didn’t want her to have to make this big meal all by herself for all those men. On the other hand, I didn’t want her to think she was right to serve them this way. I could be selfish, or I could aid and abet my mother in her doormat-hood. Some choice.
    I got up and brushed my teeth. I don’t own a bathrobe, so I pulled one out of my mother’s closet. It was lavender quilted polyester with a chiffon ruffle around the neck and down the front. The effect it had over my red union suit, which I had worn due to the air-conditioning, almost scared me when I went past the hall mirror. I mean, I’m partial to outrageous, but this even frightened me.
    In the kitchen, Momma was neat in a flowered gown, matching robe and slippers. She had a skillet of bacon browning, another of sausage frying, a boiler of grits going, and she was scrambling eggs. I smelled biscuits in the oven, and the coffee was brewing. I heard men’s voices in the yard and in the garage. They were loading the fishing equipment into the boats. Under Momma’s instructions, I set the table for six.
    The men came in the kitchen door. Some of them weren’t quite as tall as me, but the situation made me feel small. Real small. Almost invisible. There were nods in our direction, but the men were intent on their talk. They were jovial and expansive. They sat down without removing their caps and started right in on the food. I was busy just keeping the platters filled. More biscuits, more eggs, more bacon, another jar of Momma’s fig preserves. One of them, a guy I went to high school with—he’d been a football player—thrust his coffee mug in my direction. “Can I have a refill on that fine-tasting java your Momma makes, Sweet Thing?” I wasn’t sure if I was going to get him more coffee or pour the hot coffee on his lap. In the kitchen, filling his mug, I thought about spitting in his cup.
    Momma never sat down, of course, and I didn’t have the stomach to sit with these men. They left, finally, carrying out the coolers Momma had filled, one with sandwiches, the other with beer and soft drinks. They complimented Momma’s cooking, and made jokes about all the fish they were going to catch and how she was going to fix them.
    When they were gone, I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at the table. The plates were covered with cold bacon grease, congealed eggs, and sticky fig preserves. Momma looked at me with surprise when I started carrying the dishes off the table into the kitchen. We cleaned up in silence, the sky lightening outside the window as we worked.
    She went out to get the paper and I filled two cups with coffee and sat them on the table. I thought for a moment, then went back in the kitchen and filled two glasses with orange juice. I was adding a good measure of vodka to one of them when Momma came back in.
    She saw what I was doing, but she didn’t say anything. We sat down across from each other, drinking our coffee. In the harsh light, I could see how old Momma was, and how tired.
    Momma went back into the kitchen and put some cold biscuits on a plate for us and stuck it in the microwave. While they were nuking, she picked up the vodka bottle I’d left on the counter, and carefully poured a few drops into her own juice. I had never known Momma to drink, aside from a rare whiskey sour on those occasions when we had been far enough away from Port Mullet to make it extremely unlikely that she would run into someone from her Sunday School class. And here she was, drinking vodka before eight in the morning. “Us ladies do deserve a treat now and then,”