Under Magnolia : A Southern Memoir (9780307885937) by Mayes Frances

Author:Mayes, Frances [Mayes, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Itzy, Kickass.to
ISBN: 9780307885937
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2014-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

What my mother does the nights of those long months, I have no idea. I stay with my best friend on Saturday nights. Her parents go out to the club for supper and as soon as they pull out of the driveway, all the boys in our group appear. We make popcorn, talk, talk, talk. Edna Lula and Virgil bang out four-handed “Heart and soul / I fell in love with you,” and suddenly I like Sammy Dixon but as I lean back against the piano, laughing, my first kiss happens with Jeff Hardy. They switch to the first chords of “Blue moon / You saw me standing alone” and he quickly kisses me hard with his thirteen-year-old lips and I let him while everyone shouts and stomps. Sometimes we end up at Angela Moore’s (her parents go to the same place as Edna Lula’s for supper). There, playing spin-the-bottle, I kiss nine boys. These cold, slippery tight-lipped kisses are dry runs for the real thing—Sonny Stone, for instance. I am sure he wraps Pamela in his arms and kisses her deeply, her back bent as in movies. I imagine kissing someone so powerfully, we both pass out. But when? I practice on my ancient musical teddy bear and on the folded washrag in the bathtub.

Often at night, my friends and I walk through the Willcox’s woods to a wide stream with beautiful springs. David Willcox, more handsome than Montgomery Clift, lives a block from me and later becomes my real love who loves me back. I played kick the can with him for years. He is a natural in the woods and loves all waters, as I do. In daylight you can see through clear water to the boils, which bubble so blue and pure far below that it seems a goddess could be born there. Such pleasure, diving through sunlight in water. Deeper and colder I swim down, my eyes open. I press my face into the icy surge, my fist into the opening in the earth. At night, it’s different. We build a fire on the bank and step out of the circle of light to change into bathing suits among palmetto bushes. In the spooky light, which just reaches to the lower tips of swaying Spanish moss, one by one we push off with a running start, swing on a vine, up, out, up, then, at the highest point, drop into the spring, darker than black. When Lard goes, howling out the Tarzan cry, I hold my breath, afraid the vine will snap. We love the exhilaration of the fall into the night, our shouts scaring away every polecat and fox. Crocodiles, rattlesnakes, and snapping turtles lie concealed among the grasses—we know they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.

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