The Fear

            They say nobody liked her even as a girl; it was for different reasons back then. Mama was in grade school with her. Mama breaks down and tells me from time to time after being worn down by questions about our mysterious neighbor. Mama says Miss Daisy would have been a pretty child if not for the rags her mama dressed her in. She sure looked like a Daisy back then they say - a daisy that’s been kicked around in the dirt and stomped on a few times, but a daisy none the less. Mama took her home once and cleaned her up nice and she told me that Miss Daisy was the prettiest thing you ever saw. Mama gets real sad when she talks too much about the old days when she was Miss Daisy’s only friend. Miss Daisy doesn’t keep friends these days, or maybe friends don’t keep her.

            Miss Daisy’s papa lost his job when she and Mama were 10, and then it was just Old Mrs. Joseph’s income from the dry cleaners paying the bills. They say Mr. Joseph ran out on them; nobody’s seen him since Miss Daisy was 12. Miss Daisy used to tell my mama how rich she would be someday. “Not just regular rich like your family,” she’d tell Mama, “real rich like those people who have so much money they just fill a bed with it and roll around on it.” She talked a lot like this around the time when her papa went missing. Some people just aren’t made for struggle; Miss Daisy sure wasn’t. For Miss Daisy’s Sweet 16, mama saved up all her babysitting money for a year to buy a necklace with the smallest diamond pendant you ever saw. To see Miss Daisy’s face light up like that was like watching a child’s face on Christmas morning, only more so.  Miss Daisy never had Christmas and she certainly never had a diamond before, even a small one like that one. Miss Daisy could buy bigger diamonds now, and she sure did, but she still wore that little pendant that mama bought her all those years ago.

            She never did well in school and nobody seemed to notice that Miss Daisy could barely read. Some people have one spark to them that is so bright that the rest dulls out in response to it Mama says. Book learning just wasn’t her specialty, mama says, but then she’s not one to say an unkind word about people. No matter what anyone ever had to say about Miss Daisy, my mama always stuck up for her like that was her sister they were talking about. “Once upon a time she was,” mama said when I asked her about it once. Then mama got real quiet like she was deep in thought about something. I didn’t think I had any business interrupting.

                        I once asked mama what happened to Miss Daisy, but she always said someday when I was older she’d tell me the whole story. I asked why she and Miss Daisy didn’t talk anymore and you could see the war in mama’s eyes as she fought back those tears. She patted my head and she told me, “Sometimes people go through something so awful they aren’t the same after that. Sometimes it’s best to just remember them how they were like they had died in that moment of change.” Mama made tea cakes that day; the last time I remember her making tea cakes before that was just after Grandpa passed on.

            It was a beautiful spring day and mama was gardening while all the Christians were sweating in church. That day she told me about the time Miss Daisy ran away from home. She got caught trying to take a shirt from Miss Garcia’s shop and her mama was real mad. She was a proud woman and, when she was sore at Miss Daisy, it was only a matter of time before Miss Daisy was sore all over. People weren’t so likely to call the cops over a kid getting hit back then, but Miss Daisy screamed so loud that night the neighbors thought someone was killing her. Once her mama set her free, Miss Daisy ran like a cat whose tail had just been set on fire. Mama found her the next day and hid her in the basement until her papa found out and sent Miss Daisy back home.

            Everyone knew Miss Daisy’s reputation and why she had so much money now. I asked mama once if she knew how Miss Daisy ended up like that and, when I was old enough, she finally told me the story. Mama and Miss Daisy were 17, but they both had fake ID cards that said they were 21. They went into the city one night after telling their parents they were going on a camping trip. Miss Daisy saw a help wanted sign in a bar window and mama went in with her for the audition. Mama was never one to tell someone what to do (except for me, but I guess she has to tell me what to do), and she never judged someone for making bad choices in life. She told me with a calm face that Miss Daisy took her clothes off because that was what girls like Miss Daisy did. Mama didn’t go on any further that day even though I still wanted to know more. I would have asked mama, but she had a look on her face I’d never seen. It had a crystal clear message: I would be wise to keep my questions to myself for now.

            “Didn’t she ever try anything else besides stripping?” I asked Mama one day a year or so later. Mama said she’d tried making a career singing, but she never got far with it. Miss Daisy was meant to be famous, but her only time on stage was spent dancing on it for money. She figured she’d have plenty of time to be famous, but first she’d best get out of her mama’s place while she could still walk out on two legs. I began to notice that Mama seemed to know everything about Miss Daisy up until she married my papa. I learned they were both Libras and mama was only two weeks older than Miss Daisy.

            I always wondered how Miss Daisy made so much money from being a whore back when she was young. She must have done real well to have such a big house. Mama was a calm person, but when I called Miss Daisy a whore, a rage took over my mama and I thought she’d forget all her beliefs right then and there and whoop me fierce. It took a long time before she calmed down enough to say very calmly to me, “I didn’t raise you to go repeating small town gossip.” I must have looked real shocked, but mama just shook her head and went to her room.

When I’d gotten into the age where I liked boys, I asked Mama if Miss Daisy ever dated before she’d gotten her reputation. She told me there had been only one boy who’d ever asked Miss Daisy out during high school, as far as she knew he was the only boy she’d ever been out with at all. He was a sweet boy and didn’t mind that Miss Daisy was what other people called “poor white trash.” They were fourteen and it never got very serious, but Mama thought Miss Daisy might have been in love with him. His family moved him away before Miss Daisy ever even got to kiss him properly. She’d been devastated Mama told me. She ate everything that wasn’t nailed down and gained 20 lbs within a few months’ time, a great accomplishment for such a small girl. “So why does everyone act like Miss Daisy made her money from being a floozy?” I asked mama. Her smile faltered a bit and she looked real old in that moment and said, “When you live in a town like this and people think of you a certain way, you’re always that way in their minds.” Mama told me how two girls from their school had found out about Miss Daisy’s dancing and spread it around that she was a stripping, drug-addicted hooker. Even though only a third of that was true, the rumors spread and grew until the most this town would ever think of Miss Daisy would be that she’s a high class whore. The truth doesn’t matter so much when everybody knows the lie by heart.

            The first time I spoke to Miss Daisy was the day Papa had his stroke. He was 15 years mama’s senior, but it was still young for him to be having such troubles. When the ambulance pulled into our driveway, Miss Daisy had just gotten into her car. She jumped out of that car real fast and began screaming “Pearlie, oh god, Pearlie!” She looked me in the eye for the first time I ever recall her doing so and screeched like a wounded bird, “Where’s your mama? Is she alright? Has something happened to Pearl?” Once I regained control of myself I told her about Papa falling over. She went silent and walked shakily back to her car without a word. A week later, when Mama was bringing Daddy home from the hospital, we got flowers from Miss Daisy wishing a speedy recovery for my Papa. The flowers were daisies, my mama’s favorite. I took a semester off from college to come home with my parents after Papa’s stroke. I asked my mama if she and Miss Daisy would start being friends again since she’d been so nice in sending those flowers and being all concerned that day. My mama sighed heavily and told me that sometimes no matter how much you loved somebody, sometimes you just can’t go back to the way things were.

            Papa’s funeral was on a Wednesday morning. His parents were Christian, so Mama agreed to have him buried even though she’d always told me that she thought it was silly to take up perfectly good land by burying someone. She had loved my daddy in a way that I didn’t quite understand. They never looked deeply into each other’s eyes like in the movies, but they had something special between them. They never said an unkind word to each other, and Mama always said how lucky she was to have married someone she thought so highly of. “Not many women can do that”, she’d told me many times, “It’s hard see every part of a person and still think well of them.” The whole town came to Papa’s funeral, even Miss Daisy. She came up to me, gave her apologies and hugged me real tight. She didn’t say a word to my mama, but when she quietly hugged her, Mama let a tear slip from her eye.

            Mama was still quite young and very beautiful when daddy passed away. After a year or so, she found she was frequently asked on dates, but she turned them all down. I had managed to finish my schooling at the local university and I stayed with Mama so she wouldn’t be lonely. I was feeling quite curious one day and I pulled mama aside from her laundry and asked with determination, “Mama, don’t you think I’m old enough now to know what really happened between you and Miss Daisy?” She sighed in defeat, sat down slowly, and began telling me about her 19th birthday. Her parents wanted to throw a huge party for her, but she just wanted to spend it at Miss Daisy’s. Miss Daisy had just bought a house down the street from Grandpa’s house, now Mama’s house. Mama started crying a little and told me that she’d left her slippers at home. Her papa went to Miss Daisy’s to bring them over and heard them giggling from Miss Daisy’s new pool in the back yard. He walked around back to bring Mama her slippers and to tell the girls they should be getting in the house before it started to rain. Grandpa was a calm southern man, but there were some things that southern girls just didn’t do. He walked right up to my mama and pulled her out of that pool, scaring mama half to death. After throwing mama on the ground, he bent down and smacked Miss Daisy right across her pretty face leaving a hand shaped welt on her cheek.  Mama’s father would not have his daughter kissing another girl, especially not Miss Daisy.

            Mama told me she tried to go back to see if Miss Daisy was alright, but her papa grabbed her by the arm so tight that it seemed senseless to try to fight against him while he was in such a rage. He brought Mama into the bathroom as soon as they walked into the house and held her face real tight and yelled into her ear, “You look into that mirror girl and you look good. Now you say this and you say this like you mean it, ‘I am not a dyke lesbian who kisses white trash girls.’ You say it NOW.” Mama couldn’t tell any more that day and I didn’t ask her to. It was a few weeks before she could speak any more about it. She was more prepared this time and she brought out some iced tea to me while I’d been laying in the sun working on my tan. She told me that she’d been forbidden to see Miss Daisy again. I asked my mama if she was a lesbian. Mama knew I asked the question without judgment about it one way or the other. She never said yes or no; instead she looked at me softly and said, “Darling, in this world people fall in love, and most of the time, it’s not something they can help. I fell in love with Daisy and later I fell in love with your father. I have never and will never fall in love with any other person.” This was enough for me; it didn’t matter to me one way or another if my mom liked men, women, or chickens.

            “I did see her again a few weeks after my birthday,” Mama said with a sly grin that I knew all too well. Miss Daisy’s birthday was coming up, and mama wasn’t going to let anybody stop her from spending it with her. She couldn’t find Miss Daisy at home, so she walked to the beach nearby. Mama wasn’t expecting to find her there, but she was very happy when she did. The bruise on Miss Daisy’s face was now a light yellow color, but it lit up when she saw my mama there. They spent her birthday on the boardwalk and Mama won a giant stuffed horse for Miss Daisy. That night they both knew it would be the last time they saw each other. It was a time when girls couldn’t be together that way; they couldn’t stand being in each other’s company knowing they could never truly be together.

            It was getting near Christmas time, our third one without Daddy.Mama and I had settled into our own holiday routine with just the two of us. “How did you and Miss Daisy fall in love anyway?” I asked her absent-mindedly while stringing kettle corn. She told me that it had been right around the time Miss Daisy had her only boyfriend that Mama realized that she was in love with her. Of course she didn’t tell her so, knowing how happy she was and all. It was during the second month of the eating binge, when Miss Daisy had just put on her 15th pound, when Mama looked into her eyes and realized she’d never love anybody as much as she loved Miss Daisy. She went on, telling me that Miss Daisy was over her house raiding the freezer again when Mama pulled the ice cream container out of her hand and kissed her full on the mouth. Miss Daisy had gone quiet for some time, long enough to make Mama feel embarrassed for what she’d done. Then it seemed to all become clear to her and she looked at Mama like she’d seen her for the first time in her life. That had been it for them. For four and a half years they kept their relationship a secret, but they didn’t mind the secret part as long as it meant they could be together.

            Spring came early in the season. It was April and according to the weather channel it was 80 degrees outside. Walking home from the school, I spotted Miss Daisy gardening in the front yard. She was sweetly humming while watering some freshly planted daisies. I walked past unnoticed and rushed home to ask Mama something I’d wanted to ask since finding out their little secret. “Do you think Miss Daisy gave up trying to have a singing career because she was too sad over you?” Mama looked at me the way one looks at a child who has finally put together a puzzle for the first time and gave me an indulgent half smile. “She took the separation harder than I did. This town hates her, but I had family and was even able to make friends. She had nobody.” When I asked why she never moved away mama just shrugged like she didn’t know and I could tell that a small selfish part of her was glad Miss Daisy hadn’t moved away.

            “What did Grandpa do to you after he found out?” I asked one afternoon while kneading dough with Mama. “Oh he was frightful mad for days. I’d never seen my Papa in such a temper. When he finally did speak to me again it was to tell me to put on my Sunday clothes.” She told me about her daddy taking her to church every single day after work and making her listen to him pray for her soul even though he was sure she was “damned.” After a month of this, he stopped making her listen to him pray and let her wander around the church while he begged god to have mercy on her wicked soul. It was there that she met my father for the first time. His mama was there praying for his little brother who had been stricken with an awful fever. They both spent a lot of time at that church, for different reasons, and quickly took a liking to one another. Papa came to know all about Miss Daisy and didn’t look down on Mama for it, but he’d also never seemed eager to know much about it. He’d been supportive of Mama’s heartache and in time she fell in love with him.

            When I finally decided it was time to move, I begged Mama to come with me, but she thought it was about time for my husband and me to live on our own. George had been so sweet, agreeing to live with my mama for the first year of marriage, and now it was time for us to have our own life. I came home often since I’d only moved a few towns away and often spent the weekend with Mama. I was just finishing my Sunday morning walk when Miss Daisy called over, “Now Miss Jane, you are getting thinner than bone. You come on in and have a sandwich.” I looked up startled. I’d never been invited inside Miss Daisy’s home before; heck, I’d never seen anybody except her inside that house. My curiosity drove me forward quickly hoping she wouldn’t change her mind. As I settled into her antique wooden dinning chair, she gave me a knowing smile, “I know your secret, Miss Jane.” I looked up at her with unfiltered astonishment; how could she know when I hadn’t even told my mama yet? Surely she couldn’t. “My sister lost 10 pounds in the first few weeks when she was carrying my oldest nephew. You’ve got the glow about you.” I didn’t know what to say and glanced out the window into the back yard. I noticed her pool had been covered up. It looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. I gulped down the sandwich without any confirmation or denial of her suspicions. “You should come by the house some time,” I said biting my lip nervously, knowing Mama would surely have a fit if she heard what I was going to say next, “Mama would sure love to see you.” A kaleidoscope of emotions was still running across her face when I quietly exited her home after saying, “thank you for the sandwich.”

            The next few days must have been real exciting for Mama. I went to visit her the following weekend and I noticed a familiar corvette parked in her driveway. I don’t know how things were made right with them, but after a few months later I noticed a For Sale sign planted in Miss Daisy’s yard. After her house had been sold, a For Rent sign went up in front of Mama’s. When I asked why Mama was renting the house out she told me matter-of-factly, “Well, I’m not going to just sell the house you grew up in. You might want it someday.” I explained to her I’d meant to ask where she was moving to. She grinned sheepishly and said, “Closer to you of course. Daisy and I bought a house a few streets away from yours.” Some might feel crowded having their Mama follow them around like that, but I couldn’t have been happier if someone had unloaded a dump truck full of cash on my front yard.

            It was better for Mama and Daisy (I’d recently been told I had to drop the “Miss” business). They liked the new neighborhood and the fresh start. It was a good feeling to not have to hide their relationship from close-minded small town folk and the people here were real good about accepting them. It was the week after Mama’s birthday, and the week before Daisy’s, when I went into labor. It was a cloudy day, but midway through it became nice and clear. Twenty-two hours later I had a beautiful baby boy named James, after my Papa. I know they’re biased, but Mama and Daisy think he is the most beautiful baby there ever was. Mama and Daisy stayed in our guest room for the first few weeks after the baby came. Daisy sang him to sleep every night with her angelic voice. I made Daisy record a CD of lullabies before she left so I could make sure he went down easily once she wasn’t there every night to sing to him.

            Mama and Daisy lived together happily for twenty years. People sometimes asked them if they lived in fear that people would look down on them for their lifestyle. I loved Mama’s go-to response, “Well I don’t look down on people for their loveless marriages, so I don’t reckon they should look down on me for spending my life with someone I truly love.” That left most people taken over with chuckles. They left this world much like they came into it. Mama went first and two weeks later Daisy went with her. Mama never believed much in god, but when you had one life so full of happiness I suppose it’s not quite so necessary to have any sort of afterlife. It seems greedy to me, but if anyone deserved such a thing it would be my mama and her Miss Daisy.