Jacob Have I Loved

“He never paid me no mind. Old heathen.”

I felt as though I had stumbled off a narrow path right into a marsh. “Grandma, do you mean now?”

“You was always a ignorant child. I wouldn’t have him on a silver plate now. I mean then.”

“Grandma,” I was still trying to feel my way, “you were a lot younger than the Captain.”

She flashed her eyes at me. “I would’ve growed,” she said like a stubborn child. “He run off and left before I had a chance.” Then she put her head down on her gnarled hands and began to cry. “I turned out purty,” she said between sobs. “By the time I was thirteen I was the purtiest little thing on the island, but he was already gone. I waited for two more years before I married William, but he never come back ’til now.” She wiped her eyes on her shawl and leaned her head back watching a spot on the ceiling. “He was too old for me then, and now it ’pears he’s too young. After scatter-headed children like you and Caroline. Oh, my blessed, what a cruel man.”

What was I to do? For all the pain she had caused me, to see her like that, still haunted by a childish passion, made me want to put my arm around her and comfort her. But she had turned on me so often, I was afraid to touch her. I tried with words.

“I think he’d be glad to be your friend,” I said. “He’s all alone now.” At least she seemed to be listening to me. “Call and Caroline and I used to go to see him. But—they are gone now, and it isn’t proper for me to go down alone.”

She raised her head. For a moment I was sure she was about to hurl one of her biblical curses at me, but she didn’t. She just eased back and murmured something like “not proper.”

So I took another bold step. “We could ask him for Christmas dinner,” I said. “There’ll be just the two of us. Wouldn’t it seem more like Christmas to have company?”

“Would he be good?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by “good,” but I said I was sure he would be.

“Can’t have no yelling,” she explained. “You can’t have a body yelling at you when you’re trying to eat.”

“No,” I said. “You can’t have that.” And added, “I’ll tell him you said so.”

She smiled slyly. “Yes,” she said. “If he wants to come calling here, he better be good.”

I wonder if I shall ever feel as old again as I did that Christmas. My grandmother with her charm, gaudy and perishable as dime-store jewelry—whoever had a more exasperating child to contend with? The Captain responded with the dignity of a young teen who is being pestered by a child whose parents he is determined to impress. While I was the aged parent, weary of the tiresome antics of the one and the studied patience of the other.

But I shouldn’t complain. Our dinner went remarkably well. I had a chicken—a great treat for us in those days—stuffed with oysters, boiled potatoes, corn pudding, some of Momma’s canned beans, rolls, and a hot peach cobbler.

Grandma picked the oysters out of the stuffing and pushed them to the side of her plate. “You know I don’t favor oysters,” she said pouting at me.

“Oh, Miss Louise,” said the Captain. “Try them with a bit of the white meat. They’re delicious.”

“It’s all right,” I said quickly. “Just leave them. Doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t want them on my plate.”

I jumped up and took her plate to the kitchen, scraped off the offending oysters, and brought it back, smiling as broadly as I could manage.

“How’s that now?” I asked, sitting down.

“I don’t favor corn pudding neither,” she said. I hesitated, not sure if I should take the pudding off her plate or not. “But I’ll eat it.” She flashed a proud smile at the Captain. “A lot of times I eat things I don’t really favor,” she told him.

“Good,” he said. “Good for you.” He was beginning to relax a bit and enjoy his own dinner.

“Old Trudy died,” she said after a while. Neither the Captain nor I replied to this. “Everybody dies,” she said sadly.

“Yes, they do,” he answered.

“I fear the water will get my coffin,” she said. “I hate the water.”

“You got some good years to go yet, Miss Louise.”

She grinned at him saucily. “Longer than you anyway. I guess you wish now you was young as me, eh, Hiram Wallace?”

He put down his fork and patted his napkin to his beard. “Well—”