Honey Mathers was a large breasted, well-rounded, middle aged Southern woman who lived next door to me when I was a young girl. She lived with her invalid husband (re: drunk and medicated) and her two biker mechanic sons. Honey’s sons were basically faceless mutes dressed in greasy clothes, long hair, beards… always stuck in a bike or a car motor. “Honey” – her husband’s endearment, became her name. When even her sons began calling her “Honey” everyone else just followed suit.
I credit Honey with my love of jewelry, perfume, lace, flowery prints and other ladies’ things like: mirrored vanities, jeweled trays, sachets, and make-up. She dressed up every day: make-up, a flowery dress, girdle, stockings, lace slip, dress shoes with a comfortable heel, and pearls. She wore her long soft brown hair (showing streaks of gray) in a sort of a messy Gibson.
I spent hours sitting at her vanity looking at the items she had displayed on mirrored trays: assorted perfumes in fancy bottles, crystal lamps, lace doilies… which like Miss Havisham in a scene out of Great Expectations were covered with a fine layer of dust.
She gave me a present of a new dish rag wrapped in pretty paper and a pink silk ribbon for my hair. She tied the ribbon in my hair and wrapped a large white cotton flour sack around my waist for an apron. She let me help her with the dishes with my new rag. Standing on a stool there at the sink, I could see across the yard to my house where all the neighborhood kids were playing.
Out in the backyard she had a beautiful wild tropical garden with a shaded veranda, magnolia trees, palms, and even a banana tree that would occasionally bear fruit. She also had a shallow pool with greenish water, a few water lilies, and a full sized live alligator!
One of her boys brought it home as a prize from the County Fair. At that point he was only about five inches long, but “Al” or “Alllie”, as she called him grew into an eight foot full grown beast. Honey fed him bits of hamburger which she shoved down his throat with the end of a wooden spoon after having lost the tip of one of her fingers to one of his bites.
In her kitchen she had an old fashioned stove – the kind with legs and a top that folds down. She made us tea and cookies. We had our tea at the kitchen table which was set with a white linen table cloth ornately hand embroidered with little flowers and leaves around the perimeter. The white lace trimmed cloth napkins were folded into silver napkin rings. Allie sat under the stove eyeing us. In the cooler months Allie came inside to live staying either under the stove or in the bathtub which she kept filled with water for his convenience.
“Don’t worry. He won’t come out. He’s cold, so that’s where he stays.”
I wonder about living in a house with an alligator wandering around freely much like a cat or a dog.
“I can always hear where he’s going by the sound of his nails scratching on the floor,” she explained eyeing the linoleum in the kitchen and the hardwood floors beyond.
If she had to get up during the night she would call out as she turned the light on, “Allie, don’t worry…It’s only me getting up to pee.” She would sing to warn the gator. Sometimes he would be unmoving , eyes open half slit, in the tub of water – his tail too long to fit sticking up the wall.
In the summer, the pond turned bright green. In spite of the lily pads and a few gold fish thrown in to control it, the algae even bloomed on Ali’s back. Honey turned the water on full force as she watered parts of her garden, she drawled in a sing song, “Come and get it, Allie” And she blasted the spray into the gator’s mouth and around his body attempting to loosen the green growth. It was like a good scratch to Allie and he seemed to really like it. He smiled through his gaping tooth filled mouth. We both laughed. He was like a smiling dog playing in the water stream.
The yard was completely fenced in by a chain link fence and the pond itself was bounded by a wrought iron fence about four feet high. It was enough to keep Allie in, but not the riff raff out. The neighborhood boys like to torment the poor gator by throwing things at him. They would throw rocks and garbage, anything really, just to get a rise.
We moved out of the neighborhood, but shortly before she died I saw her one more time. She wore white goves, carried her purse, and used a cane to walk next door to see me at my grandma’s house. She was wearing an ill fitting wig now and her make-up was caked into the crevices of her face where it had been reapplied many times without washing off the previous days’ or weeks’ applications. Her clothes were older, worn, and stained, but she still held a certain dignity.
My grandmother warned me, “She’s gone crazy! Don’t let her in!” But I didn’t care if she was old and a little crazed, dirty and worn. She was “Honey,” and she had always been nice to me, and I loved her. I inquired about Allie and she told me that he had basically been teased to death by some neighborhood boys. A few years later they tore down the whole neighborhood and put up those horrible three story giant stucco apartment buildings. There isn’t even a remnant of the beautiful tropical garden with a shaded veranda, magnolia trees, a banana tree that occasionally produced real fruit… and a pool of green water for an alligator.
(First published 7/22/11)
