The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat - By Edward Kelsey Moore



Chapter 1





I woke up hot that morning. Came out of a sound sleep with my face tingling and my nightgown stuck to my body. Third time that

week. The clock on the dresser on the other side of the bedroom glowed 4:45, and I could hear the hiss of the air conditioner and

feel its breeze across my face. I had set the temperature to sixty before going to sleep. So common sense said that it had to be

chilly in the room. Well, common sense and the fact that my husband, James, who lay snoring beside me, was outfitted for winter

even though it was mid-July. He slept like a child—a six-foot, bald-headed, middle-aged child—wrapped in a cocoon he had

fashioned for himself out of the sheet and blanket I had kicked off during the night. Just the top of his brown head was visible

above the floral pattern of the linens. Still, every inch of me was screaming that the room was a hundred degrees.

I lifted my nightgown and let it fall, trying to fan cool air onto my skin. That accomplished nothing. My friend Clarice claimed

that meditation and positive thinking eased her path through menopause, and she was forever after me to try it. So I lay still in

the predawn darkness and thought cool thoughts. I summoned up an old summer memory of hopping with the kids through the cold water

jetting from the clicking yellow sprinkler in our backyard. I pictured the ice that formed every winter on the creek that ran

behind Mama and Daddy’s house in Leaning Tree, making it look like it was wrapped up in cellophane.

I thought of my father, Wilbur Jackson. My earliest recollection of him is the delicious chill I got as a little girl whenever

Daddy scooped me up in his arms after walking home on winter evenings from the carpentry shop he owned. I recalled how cold

radiated from Daddy’s coveralls and the way it felt to run my hands over the frost-coated hair of his beard.

But Daddy’s shop had been gone for ages. The Leaning Tree property, creek and all, had been the domain of various renters for

half a decade. And my children were each at least twenty years beyond dancing in the spray of a sprinkler.

No thoughts, at least not the ones I came up with, proved capable of icing down my burning skin. So I cussed Clarice for her bad

advice and for making me think of the old days—a certain recipe for sleeplessness—and I decided to head for the kitchen. There

was a pitcher of water in the Frigidaire and butter pecan ice cream in the freezer. I figured a treat would set me right.

I sat up in the bed, careful not to wake James. Normally, he was as easygoing a man as you’d ever meet. But if I woke him before

dawn on a Sunday, he would look at me sideways all through morning service and right up until dinner. So, in order not to disturb

him, I moved in slow motion as I stood, slipped my feet into my house shoes, and made my way to the bedroom door in the dark.

Even though I had made the trip from our bed to the kitchen thousands of times in pitch blackness, what with sick children and

countless other nighttime emergencies during the decades of our marriage, and even though not a stick of furniture in our bedroom

had been moved in twenty years, I rammed the little toe of my right foot into the corner of our old mahogany dresser not five

steps into my journey. I cussed again, out loud this time. I looked over my shoulder to see if I had awakened James, but he was

still snoring away in his linen wrappings. Hot and tired, my toe throbbing in my green terrycloth slip-ons, I had to fight the

urge to run and wake James and insist that he sit up and suffer along with me. But I was good and continued to creep out of the

room.

Other than the faint growl of James snoring three rooms away, the only sound in the kitchen was the bass whoosh made by the

lopsided ceiling fan churning above my head. I turned on the kitchen light and looked up at that fan wobbling on its axis. With my

toe smarting, and still longing to distribute my bad humor, I decided that even if I couldn’t justify snapping at James about my

hot flash or my sore toe, I could surely rationalize letting off some steam by yelling at him for improperly installing that fan

eighteen years earlier. But, like my desire to wake him and demand empathy, I successfully fought off this temptation.

I opened the refrigerator door to get the water pitcher and decided to stick my head inside. I was in almost to my shoulders,

enjoying the frosty temperature, when I got the giggles thinking how someone coming upon me, head stuffed into the refrigerator

instead of the oven, would say, “Now there’s a fat woman who is completely clueless about how a proper kitchen suicide works.”

I grabbed the water pitcher and saw a bowl of grapes sitting next to it looking cool and delicious. I pulled the bowl out with the

pitcher and set them on the kitchen table. Then I fetched a glass from the dish drainer and brought it to the table, kicking my

house shoes off along the way in order to enjoy the feel of cold linoleum against the soles of my bare feet. I sat down at what

had been my place at the table for three decades and poured a glass of water. Then I popped a handful of grapes into my mouth and

started to feel better.

I loved that time of day, that time just before sunrise. Now that Jimmy, Eric, and Denise were all grown and out of the house, the

early hours of the day were no longer linked to slow-passing minutes listening for coughs or cries or, later, teenage feet

sneaking in or out of the house. I was free to appreciate the quiet and the way the yellowish-gray light of the rising sun entered

the room, turning everything from black and white to color. The journey from Kansas to Oz right in my own kitchen.

That morning, when the daylight came it brought along a visitor, Dora Jackson. I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle a squeak

of surprise when I first caught sight of my mother strolling into the room. She came from the direction of the back door, her

short, wide body waddling with an uneven stride from having her left leg badly set by a country doctor when she was a girl.

People used to call us “the twins,” Mama and me. The two of us are round women—big in the chest, thick around the waist, and

wide across the hips. We share what has often been charitably called an “interesting” face—narrow eyes, jowly cheeks, broad

forehead, big but perfect teeth. I grew to be a few inches taller, five foot three. But if you were to look at pictures of us, you

’d swear we were the same woman at different ages.

My mother loved the way she looked. She would strut through town on her uneven legs with her big breasts pointing the way forward,

and you knew from looking at her that she figured she was just about the hottest thing going. I never came to love my tube-shaped

body the way Mama loved hers, but learning to imitate that confident stride of hers was probably the single smartest thing I ever

did.

Mama wore her best dress that Sunday morning, the one she usually brought out only for summer weddings and Easter. It was light

blue with delicate yellow flowers and green vines embroidered around the collar and the cuffs of the short sleeves. Her hair was

pulled up, the way she wore it for special occasions. She sat down across from me at the table and smiled.

Mama gestured with her hand toward the bowl of grapes on the table and said, “Are you outta ice cream, Odette?”

“I’m trying to eat healthier, maybe take off a few pounds this summer,” I lied, not wanting to admit that I was thinking of the

grapes as a first course.

Mama said, “Dietin’ is a waste of energy. Nothin’ wrong with having a few extra pounds on you. And you really shouldn’t drink

so much water at this time of day. You were a bedwetter.”

I smiled and, in a childish show of independence, drank more water. Then I tried to change the subject. I asked, “What brings you

by, Mama?”

“I just thought I’d come tell you about the fun I had with Earl and Thelma McIntyre. We was up all night goin’ over old times

and just laughin’ up a storm. I had forgot just how funny Thelma was. Lord, that was a good time. And that Thelma can roll a

joint like nobody’s business, tight little sticks with just enough slack in the roach. I told her—”

“Mama, please,” I interrupted. I looked over my shoulder the way I always did when she started talking about that stuff. My

mother had been a dedicated marijuana smoker all of her adult life. She said it was for her glaucoma. And if you reminded her that

she’d never had glaucoma, she would bend your ear about the virtues of her preventative vision care regimen.

Other than being against the law, the problem with Mama’s habit, and the reason I automatically glanced over my shoulder when she

started talking about that mess, was that James had worked for the Indiana State Police for thirty-five years. Mama got caught

twenty years back buying a bag of dope on the state university campus on the north end of town, and as a favor to James, the head

of campus security brought her home instead of arresting her. The campus security chief swore he’d keep it under wraps, but

things like that never stay quiet in a little town like Plainview. Everybody knew about it by the next morning. It tickled Mama to

no end when her getting busted became a sermon topic at church a week later. But James didn’t see the humor in it when it

happened, and he never would.

I was eager for Mama to get back on track with the story of her evening with the McIntyres, skipping any illegal parts, because

foremost among my mother’s many peculiarities was the fact that, for many years, the vast majority of her conversations had been

with dead people. Thelma McIntyre, the excellent joint roller, had been dead for twenty-some years. Big Earl, on the other hand,

had been just fine one day earlier when I’d seen him at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat buffet. If he had indeed been visiting with Mama,

it was not good news for Big Earl.

“So, Big Earl’s dead, is he?” I asked.

“I imagine so,” she said.

I sat there for a while, not saying anything, just thinking about Big Earl gone from the earth. Mama gazed at me like she was

reading my mind and said, “It’s all right, baby. Really. He couldn’t be happier.”

We found out about Mama seeing ghosts at a Thanksgiving supper back in the 1970s. Mama, Daddy, my big brother Rudy, James, Jimmy,

Eric, and me—I was pregnant with Denise that fall—were all gathered around the table. In keeping with tradition, I had done all

of the cooking. Flowers Mama understood. She had the best garden in town, even before she devoted a plot to her prized marijuana

plants. Food Mama never quite got the hang of. The last time Mama attempted to cook a holiday meal, we ended up feeding her black

-and-gray glazed ham to the dog and dining on hardboiled eggs. The dog took one bite of Mama’s ham and howled for six hours

straight. The poor animal never quite recovered. So I became the family chef at age ten and we ended up with the only vegetarian

dog in southern Indiana.

That Thanksgiving supper had started off real nice. I had cooked my best feast ever and everybody loved it. We joked and ate and

celebrated having Rudy at home. My brother had run off to Indianapolis as soon as he graduated high school, so we didn’t see much

of him and my boys barely knew their uncle. Everyone was having a good time, except for Mama, who was testy and distracted all

afternoon. She got more agitated as the meal went on, mumbling to herself and snapping at anyone who asked her what was wrong.

Finally she stood up from the table and hurled the butter dish at an empty corner of the dining room. She shouted, “Goddammit to

hell!”—my mother can cuss a blue streak when the inspiration hits her—“Goddammit to hell! I have had just about all I can take

from you, Eleanor Roosevelt. Nobody invited you here and it’s time for you to go.” She shook an accusatory index finger at the

corner of the room where the stick of butter, avocado-green plastic butter dish still adhered to it, slid down the wall, leaving a

shiny trail like the path of a rectangular snail. Mama looked at the astonished faces around the table and said, “Don’t give me

that look. She may have been the perfect little lady when she was in the White House—all lace doilies and finger bowls—but since

she died, she ain’t done nothin’ but show up here drunk as a skunk, tryin’ to start some shit.”

Later, Jackie Onassis came to see Mama, too, but she was much better behaved.

Daddy reacted to Mama’s ghosts by trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade her to see a doctor. James and I worried about her in

private, but pretended in front of the kids that there was nothing odd about their grandma. Rudy decided that Indianapolis wasn’t

nearly far enough from the craziness of his family, and he moved to California a month later. He has lived there ever since.

Mama reached across the kitchen table and poked at my arm. “You’re gonna get a kick out of this,” she said. “You know that

woman Earl was livin’ with?” “That woman” would be Big Earl’s second wife, Minnie. Mama couldn’t stand Minnie, and she

refused to utter her name or acknowledge her marriage to Big Earl.

“Thelma says that woman set up a fountain in the front room where Thelma and Earl used to have the hi-fi. Can you imagine that?

Do you remember how nice that hi-fi was? Best I ever heard. And they saved up for a year to get it. We sure had us some parties to

remember in that house.”

Mama watched me eat a few more grapes and then said, “Earl said the nicest things about you. He was always so crazy about you,

you know. And I don’t need to tell you how much he loved James.”

James loved Big Earl, too. Earl McIntyre was the closest thing to a father James ever had. James’s daddy was a low-down, dirty

son of a bitch who ran out on him and his mother when James was barely more than a toddler. James’s father stuck around just long

enough to leave a few nasty scars and then hightailed it out of town a few steps ahead of the law to inflict more damage somewhere

else. The visible scar on James was a half-moon-shaped raised leathery line along his jaw made by a razor slash intended for James

’s mother. The deeper, invisible scars he left on James, only I saw. Only me and Big Earl.

After James’s father ran off, Big Earl and Miss Thelma took it upon themselves to see that James’s mother always had food on the

table. When the All-You-Can-Eat, the first black-owned business in downtown Plainview, opened in the mid-1950s and Big Earl couldn

’t have been making a dime, he hired James’s mother as his first employee. And they kept her on the payroll long after emphysema

had made it impossible for her to work. More important, the McIntyres kept an eye on James, so he wouldn’t end up like his daddy.

I’ll be forever grateful to them for that.

That’s how Big Earl was, a good and strong man who helped other people to get stronger, too. All kinds of folks, and not just

black, loved him. You could take a problem to Big Earl and he would sit there and listen to you spill out a lifetime’s worth of

troubles. He’d nod patiently like it was all new to him, even though he was a man who had seen a lot in his life and had probably

heard your particular kind of blues a hundred times over. After you were done, he’d rub his huge hands across the white stubble

that stood out against the coal black of his skin and he’d say, “Here’s what we’re gonna do.” And if you had sense, you did

whatever it was he said. He was a smart man. Made a little money, kept his dignity, and still managed to live to be old—something

a black man his age in southern Indiana shouldn’t have been able to do. Something many had tried to do, but failed at.

Now, if Mama’s word was to be trusted, Big Earl was dead. But that was a mighty big “if.”

Mama said, “What was I talkin’ about? Oh yeah, the fountain. Thelma said the fountain in her front room was six feet tall, if it

was an inch. And it was made up to look like a naked white girl pouring water out of a pitcher onto the head of another naked

white girl. Who comes up with that kind of stuff?”

I poured another glass of water, and thought. Mama was often wrong when it came to her perceptions of the world, physical or

ghostly. And she’d said many times herself that ghosts could be tricksters. The whole thing about Big Earl being dead could have

been a prank played on Mama by a tipsy, belligerent Eleanor Roosevelt. I decided to put it out of my mind until later when we’d

meet our friends for our standing after-church dinner date. We were gathering that Sunday, as we always did, at the All-You-Can-

Eat. Little Earl and his wife, Erma Mae, had taken over running the restaurant several years back, but Big Earl still came in

nearly every day to help out his son and daughter-in-law. One way or another, I’d have my answer come evening.

Mama asked, “So why are you up drinkin’ all this water at this hour?”

“I woke up hot and needed to cool down,” I said, taking another swig. “Hot flash.”

“Hot flash? I thought you were done with the change.”

“I thought so, too, but I guess I’m still changing.”

“Well, you might wanna get that checked out. You don’t wanna change too much. Your aunt Marjorie started changin’ and kept it

up till she changed into a man.”

“Oh, she did not and you know it.”

“Okay, maybe she didn’t switch all the way over to a man, but Marjorie grew a mustache, shaved her head, and took to wearin’

overalls to church. I’m not sayin’ the look didn’t suit her; I’m just sayin’ you can draw a straight line between her first

hot flash and that bar fight she died in.”

I ate a grape and said, “Point taken.”

We sat in silence, me thinking about Big Earl in spite of telling myself I wouldn’t, and Mama thinking about God knows what. She

stood up and walked to the window that looked out onto the side yard. She said, “It’s gonna be a truly beautiful Sunday morning.

I love it hot. You should get some rest before you go to church.” She turned away from the window and said, talking to me like

she used to when I was a kid, “Go on to bed now, git.”

I obeyed. I put my glass in the sink and replaced the half-empty bowl of grapes and the water pitcher in the fridge and headed

back toward my bedroom. I turned around and said, “Say hi to Daddy for me.”

But Mama had already slipped out the back door. Through the window, I saw her slowly making her way through my sorry excuse for a

garden. She stopped and shook her head with disapproval at the stunted stalks, insect-chewed vegetables, and pale blooms that made

up my pitiful little plots. I knew what I would hear about on her next visit.

Back in the bedroom, I climbed into the bed and squeezed in close to my husband. I propped myself up on one elbow, leaned over

James, and kissed the rough scar on his jaw. He grunted, but didn’t wake up. I lay back down and pressed myself against his back.

Then I reached around and brought my hand to rest on James’s stomach. Squeezed against my man in the center of our king-size bed,

I fell asleep listening to the rhythm of his breathing.

Throughout the year that followed, I thought about that Sunday morning and how Mama’s visit had cooled me down and cheered me.

Even during the worst of the troubles that came later, I smiled whenever I recalled that visit and how sweet it had been for her

to come by, looking all done up in that cute sky-blue dress I hadn’t seen in the six years since we buried her in it.