Page 4 of Under the Tulip Tree
SEPTEMBER14, 1936
The old diary lay open to the page I’d never finished.
No one came to my sixteenth birthday party.
It’s a selfish thing to be concerned with, considering all that is happening to so many people, my family included. Yet I can’t help but wonder if my very existence became invalidated when the world shifted that day. As though my presence on the planet no longer matters in light of such terrific loss and misery. To know that money, status, and privilege supplanted the place I’d held in my family for sixteen years set an ache in me I fear will never heal. How could it, when the evidence faces me every waking moment?
“Are you going to see Mr. Armistead today?”
Mama’s voice startled me. From my place on the back porch steps, I turned and found her inside the house, speaking through the screen door. The frown on her thin face made me wonder how long she’d been there, watching me. I could hide the diary I held, but what would be the point? She’d already seen it.
I shrugged. “I suppose, but I know what his answer will be.”
George Armistead, editor of theNashville Banner. Six months ago I called him boss. I still didn’t understand why I’d been fired—“let go,” as Mr. Armistead liked to put it. Despite being a faithful employee since graduating high school, starting in the mail room and ending in the news office as a city reporter, I was fired on a Monday. So every Monday for the last six months I’d made my way to his smoke-filled office to beg him to rehire me. And every Monday he’d said no.
“I don’t know why you put yourself through that humiliation each week. If the man hasn’t rehired you by now, he isn’t going to. Something else will come along. Something that better suits you.”
Her words, meant to encourage, only grated. I wished Mama would, just once, kick and scream and complain with the rest of us. I wasn’t sure which was worse: my mother’s continued pretense that everything was fine or my father’s wallowing in a whiskey bottle.
I tucked the book under my arm and stood. “Mrs. Davis asked me to help her hang wallpaper next week. She said she’d pay me ten dollars.”
Mama’s eyes widened. “Sissy Davis? Oh, Rena, I hope you told her you didn’t need the money.”
“Why would I tell her that? I do need the money.Weneed the money. Lots of people are out of work, Mama. There’s no shame in accepting help when help is offered.”
My tone was far from respectful, considering to whom I was speaking, but I wouldn’t amend it. I was sick of ignoring the fact that our family was broke and broken. Mama thought asking Mr. Armistead for a job was humiliating. Had she forgotten the humiliation of learning my own father severely mismanaged thousands of dollars belonging to his customers? When he didn’t come home at his usual time the day of the stock market crash, we’d feared the worst. It was the only time I could recall Mama letting herself sink down into the pit of despair. He eventually banged on the front door at three o’clock in the morning. Mama, Mary, and I silently watched him stumble inside without a word of explanation about the crash, the bank’s fate, or his whereabouts all evening—although the smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke gave us the answer to that question. He locked himself in the study with a bottle of bourbon, and that’s where he’d spent most of the past seven years.
“Sissy Davis is one of my dearest friends. I won’t have my daughter performing manual labor for her.”
So many words flew to my lips. I stopped them all from escaping. I’d come to the recent conclusion that Mama’s sanity was tied to her determination to act as though all was well in the Leland household. Of course, most of Nashville knewit wasn’t. People who’d once been considered friends turned away and whispered when we ventured beyond the house. To make ends meet, Mama took a job at a sewing shop in a neighborhood where she was certain her friends wouldn’t see her. That was, if one could still call the women she used to associate with friends. Most of their husbands had lost money in my father’s bank failure, and although they didn’t blame Mama, they weren’t completely forgiving either.
“Mrs. Davis simply needs help, Mama. She enjoys decorating her home herself.” I stomped up the steps and faced her through the screen. “I’m not too keen on manual labor myself, but I don’t have much choice, do I?”
After a moment, she conceded. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to help a friend with her decorating. Sissy does have excellent taste. You can learn about the latest trends in decorating while you’re there.”
Leave it to Mama to put a positive turn on hanging wallpaper.
I joined her inside. A glance toward the study revealed a closed door. I hadn’t seen Dad in three days. Mama took food to him when she got home from work in the evenings, but despite being home nearly all day together, he and I rarely spoke. Not because I didn’t have plenty to say to him, but because I realized shortly after my sixteenth birthday that he somehow linked me to the stock market crash. As though the date on my birth certificate served as a painful reminder of the day he lost everything. He retreated from my world and barred me from his, with a whiskey bottle between us.
“I’ll stop at the library after I see Mr. Armistead. Some new job listings might’ve been posted over the weekend.” Odds were there weren’t any, but I enjoyed going to the cool, quiet building to think without the scrutiny of my mother or the indifference of my father looming over me.
Mama opened a high cabinet and took down a soup can. She turned it over and removed the false bottom. A wadded-up handkerchief was stuffed inside, and she unwrapped it to reveal dozens of coins and some dollar bills. I’d seen her do this a hundred times or more in the past seven years, yet it still struck me as one of the saddest things I’d ever witnessed. A banker’s wife hiding money from her husband in a soup can.
She handed me two nickels for the streetcar. “I won’t be home until late. Mrs. Watkins needs me to help with inventory.”
I nodded, if only to cover the awkwardness that always stood between us when she mentioned her job. I still found it difficult to accept my mother working in a sewing shop. Before the crash—that was how I measured time: before and after the crash—I’d never seen Mama sew anything, not even a loose button. How she’d managed to find this job, I didn’t know, but she’d been there over four years now. Her meager wages kept food on the table, although she had to hide the money so Dad wouldn’t take it and buy liquor. Somehow, he managed to get his hands on alcohol anyway. Even during Prohibition, he was rarely without bootleg bottles.
The morning was sunshiny and cool, which made the three-block walk to catch the streetcar pleasant. Gone werethe days when my parents drove the latest cars. An old 1925 Ford sat in the garage behind the house, covered with dust, its tires flat. Fuel cost too much, as did repairs and upkeep. I wasn’t certain the thing even ran anymore. Grandma Lorena owned a car and used it from time to time, but I didn’t like to trouble her if I could take the streetcar.
TheBanner’s offices were located in Printers Alley, a street teeming with publishers and the city’s two largest newspapers. I missed coming downtown each day, feeling a part of the city’s lifeblood and flow. Nashville’s business district hummed with activity, although I noticed men’s suits were more threadbare and fewer vehicles clogged streets in desperate need of repair. Our city, like the rest of the country, was feeling the effects of the depressed economy, yet folks valiantly met each day head-on with the determination toget back to normal.
Every time I heard that phrase, I silently asked myself if we’d ever see normal again. What was normal anyway? It had only been seven years since the crash, but the life I’d lived then seemed to belong to someone else.
Mr. Armistead’s office sat at the back of a noisy room filled with desks. Several reporters looked up from their typewriters as I entered, nodded at me, and went back to work. No doubt they’d guessed long ago what my weekly visits were about, but I trusted Mr.A. not to divulge the details of my begging sessions, which was what I’d dubbed them. He might not be the most compassionate person in town, but he was no gossip.
He saw me coming through the glass window that separated his office from the larger newsroom. His thick graying brows folded over the black rim of his glasses. “Leland.” His gruff greeting never changed. Smoke swirled from an ashtray on his messy desk where a stub of cigar rested.
“Good morning, Mr. Armistead. How are you today?” I put on my brightest smile even though I knew he wasn’t fooled. He might be as old as most grandfathers, but he was no pushover.
