Rita Will Read online

  Aunt Mimi, burdened as a child with the responsibility of “watching over” Juts, was a real bossyboots. Naturally Juts defied her, sabotaged her and goaded her at every available opportunity. Those occasions when they behaved maturely in each other’s presence were rare. Generally it was like living between Scylla and Charybdis: watch out. Even their husbands ducked.

  The gods gave both sisters a fabulous sense of humor. More times than not, that sense of humor freed them from yet another scrape. In a way they were the character Lucille Ball modeled Lucy on. Back then I think women weren’t as earnestly good as they seem to have become, or perhaps the gray pleasures of psychology hadn’t seeped in to steal away people’s primary colors. One thing was certain—they were funny, wonderful and often mean as snake shit. You couldn’t take your eyes off them.

  Their family, the Buckinghams, were blue bloods. The first Buckingham arrived in Boston in 1620. Thomas Buckingham, perhaps driven mad by those Boston accents, headed south as soon as he could. A talent for making money never evidenced itself in the Buckinghams. Whatever they made, they spent. Mother’s motto was “Tomorrow can take care of itself.”

  Both sisters—indeed, most people of their generation—had witnessed the deaths of brothers and sisters, close friends, or parents. Life was fleeting. Mom and Aunt Mimi had lost their older brother, John, to meningitis, and a beautiful, truly beautiful sister, Maizie, to diphtheria. They nearly died of it themselves. The youngest Buckingham, George, a handsome man—the Buckinghams are fine-looking people—lived only into his thirties.

  Witnessing death at a young age terrifies some children, silences others. In Mom and Aunt Mimi’s case they wanted to sing, dance, taste the world—carpe diem. This lasted until Aunt Mimi was sent to McSherrystown Academy, a Catholic boarding school of some rigor. Charles Buckingham, their charming, alcoholic father, had abandoned them. They hadn’t a penny. As Aunt Mimi showed musical talent, a relative who worked at the academy took her in so she was fed and properly educated. With all the passion of a grade-schooler, Mimi embraced the One True Faith and determined that the rest of us would embrace it with her.

  Mom was farmed out to Sadie Huff Young, her mother’s half sister. George, called Bucky, still an infant, remained with his mother. Juts once told me, and Aunt Mimi confirmed it, that before their mother found homes for them they would go down to the pretzel factory to beg for scraps. Big Mimi’s vegetable garden spelled the difference between survival and disaster.

  Big Mimi suffered at breaking up her family, but it was the only way to keep them alive. Mother was close to six, so Aunt Mimi had to be nine or ten.

  The good thing about Juts’s being placed with Sadie was that she remained close by. Big Mimi and Sadie had the same mother but different fathers. Over time Juts felt that Sadie was her mother and Big Mimi was her aunt. The two half sisters cooperated all through their lives, so Juts came out on top.

  Sometimes I think my life has been framed by these two pairs of sisters, Mom and Aunt Mimi, Big Mimi and Sadie. Or perhaps framed is the wrong word. I’ve been shadowed.

  Back to 1911. Big Mimi did what most women have to do in painful circumstances. She worked at any job she could find, kept up her small farm and looked for another man, a reliable one. This was before she got big as a house, so attracting men was no problem.

  George “PopPop” Harmon fell in love with her. A merry creature no matter how cruel her fate, Big Mimi drew people like a magnet. People were important to her. She let them know it and she made them laugh. Hearing her tinkling laugh made you laugh.

  I never knew how Big Mimi and PopPop met, but they both admired good hounds. I wonder if they first saw one another at a hound meet.

  After they got married Big Mimi wanted her girls back. However, my aunt Mimi, popular and bright, was flourishing at McSherrystown Academy. Her schoolmates couldn’t bear to see her leave. She stayed, and it’s a testimony to my aunt that she remained friends with those schoolmates throughout her life.

  Mother adored being at the center of life in Hanover instead of out on the farm. Hanover, a small town, might not seem like a hot spot to today’s casual visitor, but to a child as impressionable and sociable as Juts, it was the center of the universe. Knowing Mother, I suspect she rather enjoyed the drama of being separated from her mother. It made her special.

  Juts continued to stay with Sadie and Jack Young until tenth grade, when the boredom of Hanover High School propelled her to leave. Not getting your high-school diploma wasn’t a big deal then. Since she danced the night away, was the life of every party—in fact, she was the party—both her mother and Sadie realized the futility of trying to keep her in school.

  She had adventures and she even married one of them, a big secret she kept all her life. Being divorced carried a tremendous social stigma, and Mom was a divorcee by her early twenties. Somehow she managed to overcome it. Everybody knew, of course. The secret was really for the next generation and the one after that (mine). By that time divorce wasn’t so awful.

  Sadie Huff, as Mother has always called her, had a great effect on my mother’s life and on mine. Mother wanted to be the refined lady that Sadie was and loved her aunt until Sadie’s dying day.

  Sadie’s slow death from pneumonia allowed her to keep her wits to the end. She asked Mother to take care of her youngest daughter, Juliann. Sadie’s other daughter, Betts, a few years older than Juliann, was in good shape, or at least Sadie thought she was. But Juliann at fourteen needed a strong hand.

  So when Sadie died Mother took in her cousin, helping to raise her. That half cousin is my natural mother.

  Like I said, we’re all mixed up worse than a dog’s breakfast.

  Mother honored Sadie’s wish just as Sadie had honored her sister’s need. Really, there were three sets of sisters if you count Juliann and Betts. The debts of generations were paid off by my person.

  The individual who seemed most sensitive to this was not Juts, really, but her sister Mimi. The sordid romance of my beginnings reverberated somewhere in my aunt’s mind. Perhaps it was because I was a daughter. Aunt Mimi preferred daughters to sons. Juts, of course, would have preferred sons to daughters.

  When I came along I was a clean sheet upon which to write Aunt Mimi’s religious longings. Mother, a Lutheran, viewed this prospect with horror. Besides, she had her own plans for me. The true path of Our Dear Lord, as Aunt Mimi would say, was also the true path of gargantuan family blowouts. Aunt Mimi wanted me to rectify whatever mistakes she felt she had made with her own two girls, i.e., they hadn’t become Dominican nuns. Mother wanted me to become a movie star. She’d argue with Aunt Mimi, “Look, she can play a nun, she doesn’t have to be one. Think of Loretta Young.”

  These theological matters meant nothing to me as an infant, although I did perform admirably at my baptism. Daddy held me and I didn’t cry when the holy water was dabbed on my head.

  This incident was recalled to me many times in my youth as a counterweight to my occasional pranks in church. If nothing else, I was determined to find out if God had a sense of humor.

  In 1940s America, especially out in the country, your church affected your business and social affiliations. We worshipped at Christ Lutheran Church on George Street. Tombstones in the small graveyard in the quad go back to the seventeenth century. It is the oldest church west of the Susquehanna River. As an old family, we had a pew near the front, the fifth row.

  This was never spelled out, of course. But no one sat in your pew. The location of our pew, so prominent, meant I had an audience for my capers.

  One of the first of these occurred before I could walk under my own power. The glorious choir enthralled me. Because of the stupendous Bach—one of the great things about being a Lutheran is that you listen to Bach all the time—I was inspired to sing and sing. No amount of bouncing deterred me from my mission.

  Mom said that I turned around, beheld the congregation beholding me and really belted out my “hymn.”

  A red-fa
ced Dad carried me out, to general relief. I, however, was displeased. It was summer, the windows were open and my bellowing carried from the courtyard. Finally, Daddy walked around the block with me.

  When Mother shook Pastor Neely’s hand, as is the custom at the end of the service, he said, “Well, Julia, I believe the baby will live.”

  I have no memory of this, obviously, but I do remember the patterns on the rug, Mom’s cat, Mickey, purring, and Mom’s shoes. I was still crawling, and as I grew I used to ask Mother to verify my memories, those from the time before I could talk—really talk. She was astonished at what I remembered.

  I think we each remember a lot from that early time. After all, we’re seeing the world for the first time. Impressions swirl in our brains. We can’t tell anyone because we can’t speak.

  These impressions are far more vivid than, say, something you did in your thirties—or at least I think they are.

  Cats and horses. Those are my earliest impressions. Daddy’s deep baritone, almost bass, voice. His big hands. He could hold me in his palm. Mother’s perfume, Chanel No. 5, and her laugh. But mostly I recall Mickey and the Percheron horses in the next pasture as well as the stunning Standardbreds of Hanover Shoe Farm—still there and still breeding the best.

  I also remember everyone laughing at me. Big Mimi used to clap and I would “dance.” In fact, I just remember laughter. The Buckingham clan—all the Dundores, the Zepps, the Haffners, the Finsters, the Weigels, the Bowerses, the Beans and even some of the Youngs—what people. They loved life.

  The Browns were quite a different story.

  2

  Butter Wouldn’t Melt in Her Mouth

  When Caroline Brown said “Jump,” she expected her three surviving sons to say “How high?” Daddy, the eldest, looked exactly like his father, Reuben Brown, a dramatically handsome man.

  Earl, the dark middle son, didn’t resemble anybody. We never knew where he came from, and he didn’t act like a Brown. He acted like a banty rooster.

  Claude, the youngest, another handsome blond fellow, radiated goodwill and happiness. He and Daddy were alike except that it’s always easier to be the baby of the family than to be the eldest.

  Dad was not the firstborn. Carrie (Caroline’s nickname) bore a son, John, before my dad’s birth. The death of a child is deeply painful, but in those days people knew better than to believe all their children would live to adulthood.

  Carrie bore it in stride. She was a strong woman. The hopes of the Brown line now transferred to Ralph, a sunny, jovial, sweet-natured man who was willing to work hard and did. However, he was not a man to carry the burden of the world on his shoulders or even the burden of the Browns.

  You see, Carrie nursed ambitions. In that respect she was a bit like Aunt Mimi. These women were going to get ahead. If they couldn’t push you, they’d pull you. Failing that, they’d put a stick of dynamite under your ass.

  Fortunately, Reuben possessed vision. The Browns had sprung out of the Pennsylvania soil. They’d been here since the earth was cooling. Graveyards throughout York County are filled with their ancestors. Bold, they pushed over to the west bank of the Susquehanna River—when most white folks clung to the Atlantic shoreline.

  Unlike Mother’s family, the Browns were tradesmen. They were greengrocers and butchers for generation after generation, with a merchant’s keen eye for value. They believed in service, not just customer service but community service. Between Reuben and the three sons, they must have lent their support to every worthy cause in the town of York, Pennsylvania, to say nothing of joining organizations like the Rotary Club. They were doers, people who worked with other people, whereas the Buckinghams were people who worked with animals. It wasn’t that the Buckinghams didn’t get along with people; they were exceedingly popular and fun-loving. It’s just that their view of life contrasted sharply with that of the Browns. The Buckinghams displayed all the characteristics of impoverished English dukes, barons or squires.

  The Browns displayed the characteristics of organized, fanatically clean Swabians, the inhabitants of the German state from which they originally emigrated before the Revolutionary War. And like the Swabians to this day, the Browns were tight with a buck.

  The Buckinghams belonged to the “consider the lilies of the field” philosophy of finance. They didn’t give a rat’s ass what you thought of them. A Buckingham liked you, or didn’t like you, based on you, your character. Money couldn’t sway them.

  The Browns preferred that you be swaddled in the clothes of bourgeois abundance. The Victorian age was their highest point. All that overstuffed furniture, doilies, drapes, all that propriety and careful grooming of image suited them perfectly.

  The Buckinghams could be happy in a bloody palace or in a simple Quaker farmhouse with a few chairs and beds. Mother and Aunt Mimi deviated from this simplicity in that both adored color.

  The dominant possession of Reuben and Carrie Brown was an imposing black clock from the 1840s that ticked away on a big mantelpiece. It now ticks away on mine, and if Carrie Brown could come back from the dead and see that I have her clock, she’d pitch a hissy.

  Mamaw Brown did not like me. Papaw accepted me but he wasn’t a man to spend much time with children. Neither one had an ounce of affection for me. I don’t remember ever being hugged or kissed by them. Perhaps they did but I can’t remember, which says something right there.

  How could Ralph Brown, their golden boy, the beautiful, strapping son whom everyone adored, lower himself, first to marry that wild rat, Julia Ellen Buckingham, and then fifteen years later, when they both were old enough to know better, adopt Juliann Young’s illegitimate baby? No bastard could carry the unsullied Brown name.

  Of course, the Buckingham name was far grander than the Brown name, if you wanted to be picky about it, and if you weighted English aristocracy over Swabian merchants. Mother ignored her in-laws’ sense of superiority. Aunt Mimi didn’t. She’d sniff, lower her voice and say, “Carrie Brown, who does she think she is?”

  Carrie and Reuben turned their backs on Dad when he married my mother, a worldly woman. As members of the Church of the Brethren, their views of what constituted worldliness were quaint. Mother smoked, drank, danced all night and, horrors, worked in a silk mill.

  What good were exalted bloodlines when you worked next to common folk?

  Dad rebelled and married her. It was the smartest thing he ever did. They were made for each other.

  Carrie Brown all but huffed and puffed and blew the house down. However, the Depression roared into everyone’s life shortly after Mom and Dad married. They lived in a tree house on Long Level on the Susquehanna River. They worked like mad and saved as much as they could—never easy around Mother, since money burned a hole in her pocket.

  Had Dad chosen a suitable wife, they would have been invited to live for free on the third floor over the store, Browns’ Meat Market, on a corner on Market Street in West York, Pennsylvania.

  Earl and Claude received favors and goodies from their mother and father. Mom and Dad got a fat nothing, but they had each other. That was enough.

  I should add that both Earl and Claude married women who passed Carrie’s test. All the Brown men had emotional sense when it came to women. They had the sense to know what they needed in a partner. All three marriages endured and grew, as did Reuben and Carrie’s marriage, for they too were a good team.

  The Depression forced Papaw to lay off workers at the store. He called back his oldest boy. Mother, usually a font of information, clammed up on the details.

  What I think happened, though I can’t prove it, is that Reuben promised the three sons the store and probably finalized his will even though he was in the prime of life. He may well have done this over Carrie’s objections. The Browns enjoyed robust health. Built like Warmblood horses, they had solid, heavy bones and big muscles, yet a cleanness, even refinement of facial features.

  So Dad came back to the store. He and Mom moved into the third floor
of the building after all, and if Carrie wasn’t welcoming to Juts, she at least tolerated her.

  Mother didn’t give a fig.

  However, by the time I appeared Mom and Dad lived in a small, adorable house on a hill in south York very close to the Maryland line.

  Carrie couldn’t abide what her son had done. She froze him out again. Mother never could understand how a grown person could be so cruel to an infant. Carrie wouldn’t let me in the house.

  So Dad and Mom didn’t go over. Dad dutifully appeared at work. The tension probably resonated in Browns’ Meat Market.

  Then one evening Daddy showed up at a huge party at his parents’ house with me in his arms. He strode through the door, and I expect everyone there was struck dumb, a truly amazing occurrence given that gathering. He held me up over his head in one big hand and called out, “I have the most beautiful baby in the world right here. Who will bid on this beautiful baby?”

  No one knew what to do.

  They tell me Uncle Jim, Carrie’s brother, made a bid. Soon everyone was into the spirit of it. Carrie stood in the kitchen surrounded by “bidders.”

  Finally Dad yelled, “You can’t have her. A million dollars won’t buy this baby. She’s mine!” At that everyone cheered and Uncle Claude came up asking to hold me. Dad told him he could in a minute and then, with me still over his head (the man was strong beyond belief, but I guess you get that way lifting three-hundred-pound sides of beef), pushed his way through the crowd.