Two Shades of Morning Read Free

there was no tug between us. But by Friday of the second week, I didn’t want to ride home with Mama and Daddy and Aunt Birdie, who had driven over to pick me and Robert Dale up. I pitched a fit and rode back with the county agent to be near P.W. So did Robert Dale.
    “Scat!” Punk shouted, and the cat streaked toward the house. Aunt Birdie and I were on the front porch, brushing our feet on a raised-daisy mat.
    “That white’ll shore show up dirt,” she said, fingering the clapboards by the door. “Just wait till the wind goes to flirting up that plowed dirt out yonder.” That said, she rapped on the door.
    I straightened my skirt; at least it was clean. “She’s got her radio running and can’t hear.” Aunt Birdie knocked again, mumbling, “If she wants it, she better come on.” Then she hollered to Punk, “Ain’t she home?”
    “Yassum,” he said. “She don’t answer though, less you rings the doorbell.”
    I pressed the lighted tab on the door frame and chimes traveled inside like a handheld music box.
    The door opened almost immediately and there stood Sibyl. Taller, up close, and darker, with hazelnut eyes and golden hair (not falsely brash, but tinted) and a shaped-clay face that loomed like the moon. Smooth, thick skin, the kind that looks permanently tanned. Coral lipstick, her only makeup, whitened her scalloped teeth. But it was her eyes, those smirky hazel eyes, that zapped you. And while she zapped us, I searched her for signs of sickness and doubted the rumors about her dying. She looked too healthy, too sure. Sure, maybe, that I was giving her the once-over, and standing there as if she knew she was unique and was used to being scrutinized and her tolerance for scrutiny was one more quality that made her unique. “Well?” she drawled and laughed. And if she hadn’t laughed, I might have tried to like her. “I brung you a little jelly,” said Aunt Birdie, “put up last year.” She still held the jelly as she stepped onto the plush white carpet.
    I brushed my feet again and followed.
    “I’m Sibyl.” She cocked her head; her hair was swooped into a beehive with topaz pins along the tuck. She was dressed up—too dressed-up not to have been waiting for some of the locals to stop by and gawk.
    “Birdie Hall.” Aunt Birdie laughed crustily, then added: “Miss Sibyl, huh?” She turned, traipsing back onto the porch, and spat wildly into the hedge of trimmed boxwoods, then traipsed again into the room, wiping her mouth with her handkerchief.
    Sibyl must have thought Aunt Birdie had changed her mind and was leaving, but I knew the white carpet had prompted her to get rid of her snuff. Also, she had just confirmed her suspicions of Sibyl being pretentious. A dead give-away was Aunt Birdie calling somebody Miss or Mister in that strong tone. “You must be P.W.’s little wife?” Sibyl said to me.
    “Earlene,” I said, feeling the scour of those hot eyes for the first time. First times, last times stayed with me, but I was never too sensitive about Sibyl, her actions and reactions. I looked about the narrow living room, stunned by the glare of twin chandeliers shimmering on glass. White walls, white floors, white upholstery and mirrors in varied shapes, duplicating the starkness of the room. But still the whole of it seemed rich, and Aunt Birdie and I were poor and plain, the stuff of stale old houses and cheap mobile homes. The luster of new, blending with the fragrance of roses and Sibyl’s sophistication, set me apart like an ottoman set to trip over in the middle of a room. I felt shorter than the little girl I thought I’d left at home when I’d married P.W. the year before. Aunt Birdie’s earthiness balanced the scales for me that day; she would have given Jackie Kennedy pause. She simply checked out the chairs and the angular doodads and paintings—one with ruches of red like blood on black ink scratching—looking up and about with unabashed awe, and exclaimed honestly