The Three Miss Margarets

by Louise Shaffer

  Mama rolled her eyes in exasperation and said, “Will you stop calling her that? Do you want to make her even more ridiculous than she is already?” But Li’l Bit understood that the pet name was her father’s way of trying to make her life right and she clung to it. Then Millie started calling her Miss Li’l Bit, others in town soon picked up on the name, and there was no going back.

  Eventually she understood that her daddy was wrong. Mama did mean to be hurtful. Beth Banning was the kind of woman who didn’t like other females. The only way her daughter could have pleased her would have been by paying her the compliment of being exactly like her, which shy and clumsy Li’l Bit couldn’t do. Instead, she became her daddy’s lieutenant in the ever-escalating war that was her parents’ marriage.

  When she got older, she realized her father had not played fair with her mother. When Harrison met Beth, she was an Atlanta girl. She had a substantial pedigree and an active social life her daddy could no longer afford, because he’d been a cotton broker and the market had crashed.

  Young Beth agreed to marry the hayseed from Charles Valley because he was small-town royalty and, more important, thanks to the first Harrison Banning’s having invested heavily in Coca-Cola decades earlier, the family was still rich. She decided it was better to lord it over the yokels in a rural backwater than to continue dwindling in the city she loved. It came as an ugly surprise when she realized she had married not the town’s prince but its rebel.

  Li’l Bit never knew exactly what it was that made her father cast himself in that role. It could have been the brutality of his own father, a pillar of the Church of God who spoke in tongues, parented through pain, and was an enthusiastic behind-the-scenes supporter of the Klan. It could have been the years Harrison spent in New York getting his law degree at Columbia. Whatever the reasons, Harrison Banning developed a lifelong antipathy to all forms of organized religion and became a member of the NAACP. Both stands were undertaken from heartfelt conviction. An added bonus in later life was the fact that they drove his wife crazy.

  Li’l Bit’s mama threw temper tantrums and had sick headaches. She invoked her most powerful mantra: What-will-people-think-of-us? It didn’t even touch Harrison. Sunday mornings, while God-fearing people were in church, he sat on his porch reading the newspaper. And his sizable donations to the NAACP went out four times a year like clockwork.

  Her father’s sympathies were well known in the Negro community, and to the extent that any white man was ever going to be trusted there, he probably was.

  Negroes who were forced to deal with the white legal system went to Harrison as a matter of course. He kept their cases out of court, where they would have lost, and pulled strings when he could to get sentences reduced and fines rescinded. His greatest source of pride was his role in the battle to reopen the colored high school in Charles Valley. It took the elders of three Negro churches seven long years to get it reinstated. During that time, when they needed legal advice it was Harrison they called.

  None of this made him popular in the white community. The men continued to do business with him because he was too rich and too good a lawyer to be ignored. But he was not welcomed as a dinner guest by their wives. Beth grew shrill and shrewish as she was forced into social limbo at his side. Harrison shrugged it off.

  At night he sat on his front porch with his young daughter at his feet and talked about hearing Paul Robeson sing, the writings of Ida B. Wells, and William H. Hastie being appointed the first Negro federal judge. Li’l Bit learned to revere the NAACP and the Harlem Renaissance. She could recite Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” by heart. Her heroes were W.E.B. Du Bois and James Russell Lowell. And her daddy. With all her heart, she believed her daddy was the bravest man on earth. And as she grew into her teenage years, his courage made it easier to bear being the Giantess.

  Then everything changed. It started on a bright Sunday morning when Millie’s oldest son, George, cut his arm almost to the bone mowing hay. He was bleeding so badly, there wasn’t time to go over to the next town, where the doctor was young and good and willing to treat colored folks. So Millie’s cousin Lottie ran to get old Doc Brewster, who everyone agreed was so prejudiced it was embarrassing. While Lottie banged on the back door of his house and screamed that a child was dying, the doctor told her to go home and come back on Monday. He wasn’t going to disrupt his Sunday dinner because some little jiggerboo had scratched himself. George bled to death while Millie and Lottie were trying to get a car to drive him to the next town. Later, Doc Brewster would explain he hadn’t taken the situation seriously because Negroes always got hysterical and gibbered over nothing.

  The story was so ugly no one wanted to think about it. Folks liked Millie; she was hardworking and churchgoing and had a cross to bear putting up with Beth Banning. But old Doc was set in his ways, and it was unlikely that he would have had the skill to save Millie’s boy even if he had been willing to try. So people said it was too bad and forgot it.

  Li’l Bit wanted to scream. A terrible thing had happened and they couldn’t just go on as if it hadn’t. She couldn’t make it better for Millie, but she wanted to make a statement, loud and clear, that not all whites were like Doc Brewster. She came up with an idea that was simple but bold. Mama would hate it, but she hadn’t cared for years what Mama thought. Daddy would see the rightness of it. They had talked for so long about equality for Negroes and human dignity, now there was something they could do.

  Heart pounding, she broached the subject.

  “You want to do what?” Mama screamed as predicted. Li’l Bit tuned her out like radio static and turned her attention on her father, knowing this was going to be their finest hour.

  “Daddy, after the funeral for Millie’s George, I want to have the reception here at our house.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Mama yelled.

  Li’l Bit kept her eyes on her father. “We’ll ask Millie and her family and all her friends to come here for lunch.”

  “In my house? You want me to entertain Negroes in my house?” Mama’s voice was heading toward the stratosphere. Li’l Bit ignored her.

  “We’ll make it pretty for them, Daddy. We’ll use the china and the silver, and I’ll put flowers on the table.” Mama was making inarticulate sounds of rage now, but Daddy was silent. “We have to show that we care, Daddy. We have to say to Millie and her family that what happened was wrong.”

  Mama found speech again. “If you care about Millie, young lady, you won’t say a word about this to her. You won’t be that cruel.”

  There was no way to ignore her anymore. She faced her mother.

  “It’s not being cruel to want to do something for her.”

  “You think she’d want your reception? You think she’d want any part of doing that to me?”

  “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Millie would be mortified if she knew you were even thinking like this. She isn’t one of those uppity niggers you and your father are always talking about.”

  Daddy never let anyone use that word in his house. Li’l Bit waited for him say something. But he stared blankly, as if he was in a dream, as Mama ranted on.

  “I know what you’re up to. You want to drag poor Millie over here so you can prove a point. You want to show her how smart you are.”

  “No!” But there was just enough truth in the words that tears started stinging her eyes.

  “Because you’re a selfish mean girl and you always have been.”

  The tears were spilling over now, running down her cheeks.

  “You and your father giving yourself airs, thinking you’re better than everybody else. You’re nothing but a homely girl who can’t get a beau!”

  Finally Daddy seemed to wake up. “Beth—” he began, but she drowned him out.

  “This is what you’ve done to her!” she screamed at him. “You’ve turned her into a freak. Are you happy? This is the only child I’ve got left, and you’ve made her into a freak!” And
she ran out, slamming the door behind her.

  Minutes seemed to go by. Daddy was very still, staring at the closed door. Li’l Bit swallowed back her tears and went to him.

  “She’s wrong,” she said. “I just wanted to do something—”

  “I know, honey.”

  “She’s wrong about Millie too.”

  “No, honey, that’s where you’re wrong. Millie doesn’t need us to have a reception for her. She needs to grieve with her own kind.”

  It was the first time she’d heard him say anything like that.

  “Why don’t we ask her? At least she’d know we thought of it.”

  “She’d think she had to come.”

  “We’d tell her she didn’t.”

  “Li’l Bit, leave it alone.”

  “But if you just told her—”

  “No.”

  And then she realized. “You’re afraid she might say yes.”

  “I don’t want to put her in an awkward position.”

  “You don’t want to do it any more than Mama—”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Then why don’t we ask her, Daddy?”

  “It would be a strain on her. She needs comfort now.”

  “Let her tell us that.”

  “I told you to leave it alone! Millie and her family wouldn’t know what to do if they were guests in our house.” He took a long pause, and then he said quietly, “And I wouldn’t know what to do either.”

  He looked beaten. She wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him it was all right, she was sorry she ever had the idea, and he was still a brave good man. But then he said something that made it impossible.

  “Your mother’s right,” he said.

  That was what she couldn’t forgive.

  In one way it wasn’t very significant. Life went on. Millie came back to work with an ache in her eyes that was hard to look at. But she still cooked and cleaned. She was still the only one who could soothe Mama when an evil spell hit. And Mama and Daddy continued their war.

  But in another way everything changed. Li’l Bit and her father still sat on the porch and talked, but never again about Negro rights. Gone were the stories about Robeson and Ida B. Wells. Daddy tried to find other topics, she could see him racking his brain, but she didn’t want to tell him about the misery that was her school day. And the weather was good for only a few minutes. Soon, he began going inside early because it was too chilly, or too dark, or just because. Finally he stopped coming out on the porch altogether. So Li’l Bit, not knowing what else to do, sat out there alone.

  She felt she’d lost everything. The feeling stayed in the core of her until the night so many decades later, in a situation that was so different and totally the same, when she had finally taken action the way she had wanted to when she was young and still believed all wrongs could be righted. When her daddy was her knight in shining armor.

  LI’L BIT SHIFTED IN HER CHAIR. The mass of magnolia trees down by the highway had gotten so blurry she could barely make them out. She wiped her eyes angrily. She was old and silly, getting all watery-eyed about something that happened a million years ago. But of course she knew the tears weren’t just for old losses.

  Inside the house Petula began the frantic barking that signaled that the phone was ringing. Li’l Bit hadn’t even heard it. Her hearing was not what it used to be, which was not always a bad thing. It could be a wonderful excuse when she didn’t want to answer her phone. Like now. She heaved herself out of her chair and walked slowly inside. By the time she reached the kitchen, Petula had stopped barking. But the red light on her answering machine was flashing. Now there was no escape. With a shaky hand she reached out and pushed the button on the machine.

  “Li’l Bit?” Maggie’s soft low voice came at her and waited for an answer. “Li’l Bit, are you there? I do wish you’d get the loud ring put on your phone. Or at least get one of those cordless things to carry out to the porch.” There was another pause. Then Maggie, sounding painfully weary, said, “I’ve just had a call from Ed, Li’l Bit. He wants to come by and see all of us later today. I told him to meet us at your place. He seems to know we were at the cabin last night.”

  Chapter Eight

  DENNY DROVE IN SILENCE, waiting for Laurel to talk. He was giving her her “space,” or some such garbage he’d picked up in a twelve-step meeting. It drove her nuts when he did stuff like that.

  “Don’t you have any normal curiosity at all?” she finally demanded.

  “You suggesting I should pry into the intimate details of your life?”

  “I would, in a heartbeat.”

  “I’m a better person than you are. Besides, I know you’re gonna tell me all about it.”

  “See, that’s why no one likes you.”

  “Because I’m a better person than you are?”

  “Because you’re a know-it-all.”

  “Only when it comes to you, sugar.”

  He drove on in silence. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “He’s a writer. Works on big magazines like Vanity Fair and People,” she said.

  If Denny was impressed he didn’t show it. “Sounds like he should be right up your alley.”

  “Oh, yeah. Want to know why he took me home last night? He’s writing a story about Vashti Johnson, and he knew who I was.”

  Denny smiled. “Didn’t look like that was what was on his mind at the Grill. Sure you’re not just being paranoid?”

  “Okay, he says he didn’t know then. But he recognized my name from those damn books at my house. He’s done research on Vashti and her mom and why they left town. He knows about my daddy.”

  Denny stayed silent, which was smart. When they were small she used to beat up any kid who mentioned her father.

  The little strip mall where McGee’s Restaurant was located was coming up. “Stop and let me get some coffee,” she said.

  Denny drove into the mall parking lot, but he wasn’t happy about it. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked. “Lotta cars in front of the place this morning.”

  Of course, as soon as he said that it became a matter of pride to go in. “You afraid they’ll be talking about me?”

  “You were . . . having fun last night.”

  “It won’t be the first time I’ve gone somewhere and stopped the conversation.”

  “You’ll be late to work.”

  “Hank’ll live.”

  “Looking for a fight this morning, sugar?” he asked softly. Then, when she didn’t answer, “Your New Yorker isn’t coming back?”

  “I hope not.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t.” And that made her want to scream. “Don’t you ever get tired of living in a town with people who’ve known you since you were drooling?”

  “Laurel Selene, suppose you tell me what’s really got you going this morning.”

  And because she desperately wanted to talk about it, and because he was Denny who came to get her after a Friday night fling had left her stranded, she told him about Vashti dying. And as soon as he recovered from that piece of news she told him about seeing the three Miss Margarets.

  “They were there at the cabin? You sure?”

  “I was too far away to see their faces—but it was them.”

  “What the hell were they doing there?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d sure like to find out.”

  He watched her for a moment. “Lotta old shit will get stirred up, won’t it, Laurel?”

  She shrugged. “Ma’s gone. No one will even care.”

  He gave her a look that said he knew better, but he left it alone. “You still want that coffee?”

  “What the hell, I’ll make a pot at work.”

  “Good idea.” He drove back to the highway and took her to her car. As she started to get out he stopped her. “You gonna tell Hank about seeing the three Miss Margarets?”

  “Ed knows about it. I’ll see what he does with it.”

>   “Let it lie, Laurel.”

  “I can handle whatever comes up. I’m not Ma.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about you. They’re old ladies, sugar.”

  ED HAD SOUNDED SERIOUS on the phone, Maggie decided, as she headed for her morning shower. But Ed always thought he was more important than he was. She had never liked him much even when he was a child. Back then, he’d been an unpleasant little boy who liked to bully the younger children, but screamed like a banshee whenever she had to give him a shot. He’d married that twit Cathy Sue, who was tough enough to be the perfect wife for him, and then he’d cheated on her with Laurel—who wasn’t tough at all, no matter how hard the poor thing tried to be. Maggie sighed the way she always did when she thought of Laurel McCready. Let Li’l Bit say all she wanted that the girl wasn’t their responsibility; they all knew better. But when they could have done something, they’d been too scared.

  Maggie got into the shower and let the hot water beat against her tight muscles, loosening them enough so she could turn her head to the right. Mobility on her left side was a thing of the past. She had gotten so much older than she ever dreamed of being. If anyone had told her when she was young that she would be this person, she wouldn’t have believed it.

  WHEN MAGGIE LEFT HOME for college she was convinced she’d never forget Lottie or be happy again. She was right and wrong. She didn’t forget Lottie, or the guilt she felt for what had happened. But eventually, because it wasn’t in her not to be, she was happy again. It just took a while.