Go Ask Alice…when she's 94

There have been a few. Some examples:

Mix-Up #1

During our phone call last night, Alice told me that Mr. Whipple had taken her hand and patted it when she passed his table in the dining room.

“You mean Mr. Fickle,” I said.

“What did I say?”

“You said Mr. Whipple.”

“Who is Mr. Whipple?”

I reminded her that he’s the guy who can’t stop himself from squeezing the Charmin.

“Oh, right,” she said. “No wonder I thought of him.”

Mix-Up #2

The other day as we drove home from an appointment, a dreary and relentless rain fell. Alice, lost in thought, stared straight ahead. “Poor Mary out in the rain,” she said finally. “Fall, winter, and spring.”

I nodded, thinking about our friend Mary who takes the bus to work every day and spends hours waiting at bus stops throughout soggy Portland winters. “It’s too bad she never learned to drive,” I said.

I glanced over at my mother, who was looking at me as if she’d never met me, let alone given birth to me.

“Who are you talking about?”

“Our friend Mary,” I said. “Who are you talking about?”

“Virgin Mary. With child, or whatever the saying is. In the courtyard at The Place.”

“She’s a statue.”

“How would you like to be pregnant and out in a downpour all the time?” She turned her face toward the rain, laughing.

Mix-up #3

Recently, Alice recalled the time her sister Mattie, age nine, was sitting on top of a clothesline post loudly singing Stephen Foster’s song, “Massa’s in the Cold Cold Ground.” Alice, five years old, came around the corner, heard the singing, and ran into the house to tell her mother that Mattie was singing a naughty song.

My grandmother came out to the clothesline with her face set to scold, but when she heard the old song she understood right away that Alice thought Mattie was singing, “My ass is in the cold cold ground.” (This would have been a more fitting lyric for a newly deceased plantation owner, instead of the minstrel tribute Foster wrote.)

“Mama and Mattie laughed at me,” Alice told me. “I’ll never forget that. No, I won’t.” She pretended to be upset about something that happened ninety years ago, but she knew I didn’t believe her.

This offense, which she does not really take any more, reminded her of another one that she still can’t let go. At the same age of five, she used to follow her older sister LaRue up and down the dirt streets of the small Dakota town where they lived. When LaRue started hanging out with a boy, Alice followed them both. One day the frustrated boy said to her, “Why don’t you go home and tell your mother she wants you?”

It was the cruelest thing anyone had ever said to her, and she ran home in tears. This time her mother didn’t laugh. She stopped what she was doing to comfort her. She did want her. She wanted all six of those little girls with their mix-ups and their heartbreaks and their screechy voices singing about dead plantation owners, their stick ball playing, their lazing around reading books, their chasing one another all over town with milk pails (see Alice and Mattie), their tantrums and jealousies and very real devotion to one another, and all the rest of their peculiar and funny ways, some of which I hope to share with you here.

Little Alice

Lyrics to “Massa’s in the Cold Cold Ground.”