Mama and Maggie’s Boys Part 2

In the blink of an eye

Audio narration on YouTube coming soon.

In the four months she’d lived there, my Mama did what she could to comfort this sad little boy, but Leland never let her get too close. She’d never been around a five-year-old like him. Always so quiet, he was the one she had to go lookin’ for. All she had to do with the others was listen an’ follow the noise.

At breakfast that mornin’ he’d been even quieter than usual. When ever’body else had gone to start their day, he just sat there, alone. Mama was pourin’ hot water from the stove into a dishpan at the bottom of the deep kitchen sink when Leland snuck up behind her an’ tugged on her skirt.

“Darline, what happened to my Mama?” Puttin’ the pan back on the stove, Mama took a breath, preparin’ herself. She knew this was her one chance to tell this child his mama’s story. She wanted to get it right.

Turnin’ around, she sat down at the table where she had watched him push oatmeal around his bowl a little earlier. He stood in front of her an’ didn’t turn away when she looked him in the eye an’ explained, “Your Mama got real sick, Leland, an’ it made her forget ever’thing. All the happy times she had an’ the people she loved, like you, she lost ’em all. They all disappeared. They’re all gone an’ she can’t find ’em anymore.”

Leland’s big blue eyes, so much like his mama’s, widened an’ his little face scrunched up tryin’ to understand somethin’ too big for a boy his size to carry. Darline felt the weight of his gaze, as he searched her face for an explanation, a way to clear the fog in his little-boy head. Ignorin’ the lump risin’ in her throat, she wouldn’t look away.

In that quiet moment, the ache in her heart matched the worst that life had ever brought her way as she watched Leland search for his mama, even if he didn’t know where to look for her anymore. The silence between ‘em stretched wide, fillin’ the room, until Leland finally dropped his eyes.

Starin’ at his hands twistin’ my Mama’s apron, longin’ to find his own mama there instead, he knew somethin’ important had gone missin’. It left a hole in his chest, like the postholes Daddy dug around the farm, only this little boy didn’t know what to put in there.

That’s when Leland remembered his mama sayin’ a prayer when things disappeared. She made it a game they’d play together ‘til whatever was lost was found again.

Tony, Tony, look around, something’s lost an’ must be found. Lookin’ high, lookin’ low. Tony, show me where to go.

One time, they looked all day for a ring. It belonged to his mama’s mama, his Mormor, who was born in Denmark an’ brought it with her when she came to America. A plain gold band, nearly lost forever, until his mama started prayin’. She told him the ring had come from the old country, a place called Det Gamle Land, only he heard, “the camel lands”.

Searchin’ through ever’ drawer and pocket, ever’ bag an’ under ever’ cushion, his mama just kept lookin’. When there was no place left to look inside the house, they went outside. Nothin’ was off limits, an’ mama just kept prayin’. When he went to bed that night the ring was still lost, but by mornin’, as if by magic, it had been found.

Maybe the Tony prayer would work for him, too? Help him find his mama; bring her back where she belonged.

My Mama could see the wheels turnin’ behind Leland’s eyes. He was thinkin’ about what she was sayin’. Takin’ it all in. But she’d never heard of the Tony prayer or Camel Lands, an’ Leland didn’t tell her.

He just prayed.

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Darlene tried to fill the cavern his mama’s absence had left, but she didn’t fool herself into thinkin’ it could be done. She watched him, month after month, her heart breakin’ a little more each day.

Once Walt’s visits to his wife ended an’ Mama’s care brought stability to Leland’s life, Maggie got better. She found a measure of peace. Leland still spent time with her, but he stopped lookin’ for his mama. The prayer didn’t work.

Mama was gone. Lost, just like the ring, but there’d be no findin’ her. The Camel Lands were too dark for him to see. Leland gave up, but he didn’t let go.

He had to learn to live with all the empty post holes in his heart, an’ tread carefully around the woman who looked like mama, but wasn’t.

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Darline tried to shield him from the hurt that lingered. She could see it in the way he watched Maggie from the doorway of her room, his little fists clenched around somethin’ too sharp to let go. Maggie would glance at him sometimes with the faintest flicker of recognition, but most days her gaze drifted past him like he wasn’t there. Each time, Leland turned a little quieter, a little smaller, as if he was foldin’ himself away.

Mama saw what it was doin’ to him. She saw it in Walter, too, the way the strain of holdin’ the family together bent him lower ever’ day. Maggie wasn’t just lost to herself; she was pullin’ ‘em all into a world where nothin’ made sense. Somethin’ had to change. Leland needed to find his way in life without the mother he’d lost. Besides, Maggie needed the kind of care Mama an’ Walter just couldn’t give her anymore. But it would take another year for him to finally make the decision to admit Maggie to the Clarinda State Hospital. Mama stayed on through it all an’ it wasn’t long before she an’ Walter were fallin’ in love.

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Maggie’s story came to a tragic end, but it wasn’t the end of the burden we carried. No, ma’am. It’s just the beginnin’. The mess we were left with after the real Maggie disappeared, was more’n just the farm chores or raisin’ her boys. This mess settled in your bones. It was the kind you couldn’t clean up an’ scrub away no matter how hard you tried.

An’ then there was Evelyn Lee. That poor child carried more’n his fair share of the family troubles. He didn’t ask for it, didn’t deserve it, but life don’t care ‘bout fairness.

Years later, when Evelyn was dyin’ in a cancer hospital in Buffalo, NY, he wondered if his Iowa family would come see him. He loved the Mama who raised him an’ cared for him now, but he wanted to know the mama who’d lost him. Later, his question, “Will they come see me?” sharpened like a butcher knife into, “Why don’t they come see me?” My Mama had no answer, at least, not an answer that would make it any better.

Mama held her tongue when she needed to, but not when it came to how life had hurt this child who wasn’t her son but might as well have been. She let Walter have it more’n once over how Evelyn got treated, callin’ him “boy” instead of “son,” treatin’ him like the poor child was cursed. Walter had his reasons, but they don’t sit right with me even now. I’ve lived enough life an’ learned enough along the way to see how his heart got so beat up he locked it away an’ forgot where he put the key. Then he went on pretendin’ ever’thing was fine while the rest of us were drownin’.

Course, Daddy never liked questions he didn’t wanna answer, an’ Evelyn’s weren’t the kind you could sidestep with any real success. Those questions landed hard an’ heavy, stirrin’ up ever’thing folks didn’t wanna talk about. Maybe that’s why his Iowa family ignored him while he was alive. He died on March 25, 1977.

When Evelyn’s Iowa family finally showed up that summer to visit his grave, it was too little, too late. I’s there at Leland’s house when Maggie started recitin’ pieces of her life like a child repeatin’ her ABCs, but the sadness in her voice told me she knew somethin’ about how she got here an’ why.

“I have two boys. One of my boys is dead.” It was all so matter of fact; spoken by a woman-child who couldn’t comprehend the gravity of the situation, tellin’ you that someone is dead.

The air tasted bittersweet. She was happy to be with Leland. She knew he was her son, but there were tears in her eyes when she talked about the one who died. She never said his name, though. She just called him her boy. But when she said it, it was full of love.

Leland introduced her sayin’, “Wally Faye, this is my mama, Maggie Phillips.” Leland called my Mama by her first name, Darline. Maggie would always be his mama, the one an’ only.

Then lookin’ at Maggie, Leland said, “Mama, this is Wally Faye, Daddy an’ Darline’s daughter.” Funny, as I think about it now, he didn’t call me his sister.

Memories rushed through the room wrappin’ around us like a wave in the ocean. The force behind it was a mystery to me, somethin’ I wouldn’t learn about ‘til many years later. No matter though, the impact still nearly knocked us all off our feet. But we stood there, pretendin’ ever’thing was as it should be. This is normal, whatever the hell that is. No questions, please.

As I stretched out my hand to shake hers, our eyes locked, an’ the once whole an’ complete Maggie entered the room. “It’s nice to meet you, Maggie.” I could feel ever’ eye in the room on us as vibrations of a shared thread stretched across time. Separate lives spun from different looms, knots an’ patterns matched in ways we couldn’t explain, blurrin’ the world around us. We waded in an’ crossed into somethin’ strangely familiar, as I found a piece of myself in this woman’s story.

She answered with, “My boy is dead.” In a twinklin’ we stepped out of time an’ space an’ our hearts connected in that tender place where we had both loved “her boy.”

The fog of failed surgery lifted for a brief moment. Years of confusion ran to hide in a corner makin’ room for ever’thing to come clear. Her boy had played the role of my brother an’ I had cared for him as much as a scared-out-of-my-wits eighteen-year-old girl alone in Buffalo, NY, could.

 At that introduction, I saw the Maggie that Daddy had loved, an’ Leland called Mama. I saw the Maggie who held Evelyn Lee to her breast in a way-too-brief eight-week introduction, before bein’ whisked away to surgery where a doctor would erase her future.

They barely had time to bond, but she had loved Evelyn well… even before his birth. His father was the love of her life, an’ ever’ time she looked at that baby’s clear blue eyes, she saw his face.

“Did you know my boy?” Maggie asked me.

Lookin’ into the same bright blue eyes I’d seen in her boy’s face, I’s flooded with ever’thing I knew of him: a smile as big as the moon, an easy target for my teasin’, a boy who would learn to preach an’ love to sing. One in a long line of sin-eaters.

“Yes, Maggie, I knew your boy.”

There was so much I couldn’t say, an’ her sister Verna, who had made this visit possible, seemed to know it. She watched me as I held Maggie’s hand in mine, wishin’ I could tell her more.

Maggie’s smile made ever’thing better in that moment, even as it nearly wrecked us all. I wasn’t Evelyn’s sister, like Maggie had been told, I’s his cousin. My Uncle Gene was his father. Thirty years ago, she knew all the secrets that were dancin’ around us now.

When I look back at that visit, the tension in the room makes a lot of sense. Like ever’one knew somethin’ they weren’t sayin’, an’ it hung in the air like smoke. What must that visit have felt like for the man Leland an’ I called Daddy? This was his first wife, Leland an’ Evelyn’s mother, his first true love. It had been more’n twenty-five years since they’d come to their heart-breaking fork in the road. I can only imagine the wave of memories that must have flooded his heart that day.

But our family, with more secrets than a preacher’s Sunday confessional, we were experts at moments like this. In silent agreement, we held it all together. But the weight of what we didn’t say was heavier than what we did.

An’ poor Evelyn. He was the sin-eater, the one carryin’ ever’ burden we couldn’t bear ourselves. Maybe that’s why his life was so short. It was just too heavy.

These secrets though, they don’t stay buried forever. The dead bodies always come floatin’ to the surface … eventually.

Years later, when those cadavers rose up from the grave, they started blabbin’ secrets from the rooftops. The foundation of ever’thing I thought I knew ‘bout my family cracked wide open, leavin’ nothin’ untouched. How Mama kept it all hidden, an’ made others who knew the truth do the same, is almost as big as the secrets themselves.

It’s all bigger’n anything I ever imagined. But lies like these, they demand a reckonin’. Shock that leads to redemption taught me this much: diggin’ through the past, facin’ it head on, is the only way to heal. The burden of sin only shifts when the truth comes out.

Lord knows, we’ve all got plenty of healin’ to do.

Audio narration on YouTube coming soon.