CHAPTER 13
That Friday morning, Mary was up earlier than usual. There was only blackness outside in the distance. Birds were singing and praising a new day, just as Mary was. Her cheerful voice and the smell of country ham brought Bernice to her feet. A hearty breakfast sat on the cloth-covered table just as daylight broke through the walls of town. Bernice pulled her chair up close to the table and noticed that Mary was unusually cheerful for such an early part of the morning. After all that praying the night and early morning before, Bernice half expected to see a tired, even exhausted soul in the kitchen. But contrary to her expectations, Bernice witnessed a semblance of new birth or rejuvenation in Mary that morning.
As she sat enjoying the well-prepared breakfast, Bernice was excited with the thought that Mary might possibly extend a hand to the Leigh’ family. However, she realized also that Fred, in all of his pride, might refuse any offers of outside help.
Still, Mary had always admired Gert; she felt Gert was such a genuinely good, smart and admirable young mother and wife, and nearly everyone in that town knew it and agreed with her. The two women had carried out many conversations over the years, both in private and in public. However, Mary always tried to keep a decent and respectable distance from the Leigh’ home; she felt young married folk should be left alone with themselves and their business, and she never wanted to be labeled a nosy busybody.
Mary was a less-than-slender, 55-year-old with very fair skin and coal black hair that reached below her shoulders, although she often wore it parted in the middle and in two braids that fell softly down her front. Many times she would have Bernice comb cotton into the teeth of a comb and proceed to scratch and comb her hair while she sat with her eyes closed; it was Mary’s way of cleaning her hair without actually washing it. Once Bernice scratched and combed through Mary’s hair time and again, she’d pull the dirty cotton from the comb’s teeth and toss it out, then she’d part and braid Mary’s hair into the same two braids as before, and Mary was satisfied.
Mary walked with an aggressive stride; her face always pointed upwards; she often said she felt “closer to God when He can see my face.” Some of the town’s residents had taken to calling her Auntie Momma also, a name that Bernice pinned on her many years earlier.