by Fannie Flagg
The day was so hot that the musk scented honeysuckle dropped heavily into the gardenia bushes, sighing like hot honey pouring on flour white buttermilk while lazy yellow winged bees hummed languidly from blossom to blossom.
Oh, brother.
The story concerns a spinster who is afraid of inheriting a bad case of menopause that had caused her mother to go mad.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was reviewed in the Hattiesburg Press Register, but I wasn’t mentioned. The reviewer did say that Mrs. Nanny C. Teasley, the director’s mother, was heard to laugh out loud several times during dramatic parts of the play.
April 9, 1958
Today after school I went over to Daddy’s bar and there sat Pickle’s brother, Lem Watkins. He’s been in the Army for eight months and is about ready to go to Germany for two years. When he heard Daddy was running a bar in Hattiesburg, he decided to look me up. We sat there and had a few beers and he told me what had happened. He thought I should know it wasn’t Mustard Smoot that had gotten Pickle pregnant.
Pickle had been home alone, ironing some clothes one Saturday afternoon, when her daddy came in from one of his speaking trips for the White Citizens’ Council and began screaming at her and accusing her of having sex with Mustard. He started hitting her and calling her names, then he dragged her into the back room and raped her. When Lem got home and found her all beaten up and bleeding, he got a gun and went after his father to kill him, but he never found him. They told Mrs. Watkins what had happened, but she wouldn’t believe it and said that if it was true, Pickle had caused it. When Pickle discovered she was pregnant, Mustard married her. Lem said he had to leave home because he knew if he ever saw his father again, he would kill him for sure. He started to cry and made me swear never to let Pickle know he had told me, because she was so ashamed. The last thing he had heard was that his bastard father was home again, saying grace every night.
All this time I was only thinking of myself and how Pickle had deserted me. She must have been going through hell all by herself. What kind of friend was I that she couldn’t tell me? I guess I had talked too much about us leaving and going to New York and she was afraid she would disappoint me. I don’t hate Mr. Watkins. What I feel for him is deeper. Why does somebody like that go on living and somebody like my mother, who never hurt anyone, die? I’m going to see Pickle tomorrow.
April 11, 1958
I took a bus to Magnolia Springs and got off in front of the bakery. I asked all over town if anybody knew where Pickle was. The woman at the drugstore said she heard she was working at the potato shed. When I got there, some old country woman told me a girl named Pickle Smoot was working in Shed No. 3. As I was walking over, I remembered how Pickle and I always joked about the people that worked at the potato shed.
I saw her before she saw me. She was separating potatoes and my heart was pounding so hard I almost didn’t have the nerve to go up to her. I said “Pickle?” She looked at me for a long time and then, as if seeing me was the most natural thing in the world, she said, “Hey, girl, what are you doing down here?” I told her I was just back for a day and thought I’d look her up to say hello.
She told me to wait a minute so she could let some man know she was going to take a break. When I asked how she was, she said, “Just as fine as kind,” and that Mustard was farming for his daddy and she had a wonderful little boy named Lemuel. I explained all about the theater I was in, but the whole time I was talking I kept looking at her. She seemed old and tired, and her eyes weren’t Pickle’s eyes at all.
Pretty soon we just stood there and didn’t have anything more to say. Finally, she said, “Well, I better get back to work,” and then she asked, “Hey, girl, are you still gonna be an old maid?”
“I guess so.”
“Well you ought to give married life a chance sometime.”
Just as she was leaving, I asked, “Pickle, do you ever take any more pictures?”
She looked at me sorta funny. “Pictures?”
“You know, photographs, like you used to?”
“Oh, yeah. That was so long ago, I had forgotten. Write me a letter sometime, ya hear.”
I walked back to town and got on the bus. The whole way home I was looking out the window. I don’t think there is anything in the world sadder than dead things along the side of the road. Do you?
April 16, 1958
Mr. Cecil is back from his yearly trip to New Orleans. He didn’t find his friend this time either. He’s about to give up hope. He ought to contact the Missing Persons Bureau like they did for my Granddaddy Pettibone when he disappeared
I am now doing sound for a play called Anne of a Thousand Days. It is all about Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn, and it is great. All they do is fight, but in the end Anne gets her head cut off and Henry stops being a Catholic.
One of my sound effects is firing a cannon. It’s supposed to come in the middle of a speech of Henry the Eighth’s to let him know that Anne Bolyn has been killed. Then he goes into a long speech about how he will miss her. At last night’s performance my tape machine jammed and Hubert Jamison, the actor playing Henry the Eighth, just sat there and stared at the audience. I was in the sound booth at the back of the theater and there was no way I could let him know the sound machine was not working. He should have figured it out, but he never did, so I finally leaned out of the booth and yelled, “BOOM.” Hubert got very mad at me and claimed that I ruined his best speech when everyone in the audience turned around and looked up at the light booth.
Mr. Cecil and I have written this funny sketch for me. I play a very rich society lady who goes to an exclusive restaurant for lunch. I wear a black cocktail dress and have a long black cigarette holder that Paris will loan me. I walk into the room yelling hello to everyone and then I see my husband. I act shocked and say, “Why, George, what are you doing here? Mind if I sit, George? You know, I would just die if word got out that our marriage was … uh … shaky.” I sit down real fast before he has a chance to say anything, and I wave at some other people in the room. “George, you haven’t been home in six months now and the dog misses you. Is it something I’ve done?” I stab myself in the chest with my cigarette holder. I say hello to someone else across the room. I look back at him. “George, you could say something, after all …” Then you hear a gunshot. I stand up and grab my stomach. “Is that all you have to say, George?” I notice everyone in the room is looking at me and I laugh and try to pretend nothing has happened. I stuff a handkerchief in my stomach like I am sticking it in my gunshot wound and sit down. “Now, about the funeral. Nothing too elaborate. Five or six hundred and, George, Billy Graham would be nice.” I wave at someone else across the room, say, “This will just ruin me socially,” flip ashes on the next table and say, “It’s not that I mind so much, George. It’s just that you didn’t even consider the children. What? Oh, that’s right. We never did, did we? Well, it’s not my fault Mother was so strict!” I yell to someone across the room, “Hello, Kay Bob, you look wonderful, darling,” and I turn back to George. “Don’t you dare invite Kay Bob to my funeral. I would just die if she showed up.” I look back at George. “George, is my makeup all right? Good!” My head hits the table and I die.
I think it’s funny and so does Mr. Cecil. He made all the Cecilettes come and watch the sketch, and they loved it. I am going to do it at the cast party for Anne of a Thousand Days.
April 23, 1958
My skit went over great. Everyone said it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Even Hubert Jamison. Professor Teasley was so impressed he’s putting me in the next play called Yellow Jack about the war against yellow fever at the Panama Canal.
Mr. and Mrs. Gamble, Sally’s mother and father, were at the cast party. Mrs. Gamble asked me if I would entertain at Sally’s coming-out party at the Hattiesburg Country Club for $25. I told her I would.
Jimmy Snow is dusting crops in Fayetteville and should be home soon. I wish he would stop doing that kind of work altogether.
> I don’t see much of Daddy. He and that old woman he’s running around with just sit and drink all day long. A lot of the time he stays over at her apartment. She lives on the south side in the worst part of town. Oh, well, there is no accounting for taste.
I am failing algebra again.
April 28, 1958
You should see the Hattiesburg Country Club. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to in my life. All the furniture is real old and the rugs are great. I am going to get into a country club as soon as I can. Sally Gamble looked gorgeous and all the boys were dressed up in tuxedoes that fit. There were flowers everywhere, and the Gamble coat of arms was all over the walls.
I did my number and Mr. Cecil got the gunshot in the sketch in the right place. Thank God. Mrs. Gamble gave me an envelope with my money in it and told me I could eat in the kitchen. Some of the girls I go to school with came and talked to me there. I watched out the window when her daddy presented Sally to society. It was better than the Rainbow Girls. Daddy said he was going to give me a coming-out party at Jonnie’s Bar. Very funny. Paris said her coming-out party was the dullest thing she ever went through.
I found out today Sally Gamble had gotten mad at the girls that had come into the kitchen to talk to me. She said it wasn’t correct to talk to the hired help. Can you believe that? According to Paris, Sally’s daddy has paid for her to have two abortions already. I think you are supposed to be a virgin when you come out She’s cheating like crazy, if you ask me.
Mr. Cecil has a new boyfriend and is he happy! I told him to be sure and not make any costumes for him and let him go to the Mardi Gras.
The rehearsals for Yellow Jack are great. I play an English noblewoman who comes to the Panama Canal to visit her father and her boyfriend who are both doctors. While she is there she comes down with yellow fever and lets her father and her boyfriend use her as a guinea pig and give her the serum they have been working on. That way she can die knowing she has done something to help medical science. They agree to do it because she is the only one with yellow fever who can speak English. All through the play, she lies there dying, talking about the effects the serum is having on her.
My death scene is fifteen minutes long. This is my big chance. Anyway, after she dies, they are able to get the serum just right and they discover a cure for yellow fever, but too late to save her. Mr. Cecil is helping me with my makeup and my English accent.
May 1, 1958
I am a big hit. This is my very first professional review:
At last night’s performance, all the players were especially good, but the performance of Miss D. Frances Harper as the doomed Cecily Bundridge was one of the finest performances this reviewer has seen on the local boards for a long time. Her timing was superb, and as she clutched her throat and waved good-bye to her father and her bereaved lover for the last time, not a dry eye was to be found in the audience. During the play we saw the doomed Cecily Bundridge progress from a gay young English lass into a creature consumed with the dreaded yellow fever. We could hardly believe that the frail, jaundiced, hollow-eyed girl was the same person we saw in the first act. Kudos to Miss Harper.
Hubert is mad at me again, claiming I took too long to die and that I should have warned him I was going to put on makeup at intermission. My makeup was terrific. I mixed yellow and white together in a jar and smeared it all over the parts of my skin that show and painted big dark circles under my eyes. I really looked sick. Hubert told Professor Teasley yellow fever doesn’t make you yellow. You only turned yellow from yellow jaundice, and that I looked like a Chinaman. He’s just jealous I got such a good review.
But the best news of all is that the play’s of such historical interest it was picked to tour all over Mississippi this summer. Professor Teasley claimed that when we travel the highways and byways of Mississippi, “it will be like bringing rain to a thirsty soil.” And I don’t have to make up algebra. Professor Teasley went to the Mississippi school board and had them fix it so I could graduate anyway on account of I was an artist who was going into show business and didn’t need algebra. Kudos to Professor Teasley!
I have twenty-three copies of my yellow fever review. I am sending them to all the big Broadway producers in New York. I can’t wait to get there. The first place I am going to is Sardi’s and have a martini. Then over to the Algonquin Hotel to sit at the famous round table, where Dorothy Parker sat. And I’ll try to get an apartment over the Copacabana nightclub or the Stork Club. I need a big apartment because I want Mr. Cecil and everybody from the theater to come visit. I wish Daddy and Jimmy Snow had seen me in Yellow Jack. I don’t think they know how talented I am.
May 8, 1958
You could have knocked me over with a feather. Last night Mr. Cecil took me to this party some of the Cecilettes had and I met his new boyfriend. Guess who it is? Father Stephens, the priest who teaches catechism at the school where I gol He didn’t have his collar on, but I recognized him and he recognized me. I didn’t say anything. I just sat there and minded my own business. Pretty soon I got tired and wanted to go home. When I went in the bedroom to get my coat, he came in and sat down and started to talk to me. He hoped I understood that love wasn’t bad, no matter what form it took. He still felt he was a good priest. I told him what he did wasn’t any of my business. I wasn’t going to tell anybody and to forget it, and I got my coat and left.
I didn’t say anything to Mr. Cecil, but I am disgusted over the whole thing. It made me mad as hell because they sure don’t let the nuns date and drink. The priests come and go as they please, but the poor nuns live in a convent and are watched all the time. Sister Jude would love to have had her own apartment and go to parties and all, but no … just the priests do that. Why do men get to have all the fun?
August 28, 1958
Well, I’m back from the tour. I died of the dreaded yellow jack fever in twenty-three counties and was a hit in every one of them. At the end of the tour my death scene ran thirty minutes. You should have heard those people carry on in the audience.
The traveling was pretty bad, though. We went in a school bus and it was hotter than hell. We put on the play mostly in high school auditoriums and gyms. The lighting was awful, but all in all, I had a good time.
The play went to Magnolia Springs and Patsy Ruth Coggins came. I asked Patsy Ruth if she had seen Pickle. She had and Pickle was pregnant again. I asked Patsy Ruth to send her my love. I kept hoping that Pickle and Mustard would show up, but they didn’t.
My biggest surprise was Mrs. Underwood, who came and brought all her sixth graders. I had to talk to them and tell them I had been a student of Mrs. Underwood’s years ago. She looks just the same, only older.
I wish I had had some time to see Peachy Wigham and Ula Sour, but we left the next day. So I wrote them a hello on a program and Patsy Ruth agreed to give it to them for me.
I had become pretty carried away with myself because I was getting so much attention. One night onstage I was crossing my eyes and trying to make Hubert laugh during my death scene. When the show was over, Professor Teasley came backstage and told us not to leave because we had a presentation. I started complaining that I didn’t want to hear any more speeches from any more local yokels. And besides, that yellow makeup nearly itched me to death.
I was acting like a horse’s ass when all of a sudden Professor Teasley came back with a girl in a white dress. She was about fifteen or sixteen and was carrying a bouquet of roses. Just as I was going to say something smart to the person next to me about being in the sticks, she walked right up to me and I saw the brace on her leg. She reminded me so much of Betty Caldwell, the crippled girl, my heart stopped. I could see that she was very nervous and her hands were shaking.
She looked at me and said, “I just wanted to thank you so much for coming here. This is the first live play I have ever seen. Thank you.” When she handed me the roses, I took them, mumbled a couple of words and then ran into the bathroom. I must have cried for an hour. I can
’t ever do a show again without thinking that someone like that little girl might be out in the audience.
September 16, 1958
Professor Teasley is making me play a seventy-year-old ax murderess in The Man Who Came to Dinner. I wanted the lead, but he couldn’t find any old lady actress that could stay up late for rehearsals.
We had to move into another apartment. The one we had is too expensive. We are living in the basement of this Christian Scientist woman’s house and it is full of pipes. I’ve hit my head about ten times already. Jimmy Snow knocked himself out the other night going to the bathroom. It may be cheaper, but it is dangerous.
Mr. Cecil has converted to Catholicism. I went to his baptism. I could hardly keep a straight face. All the Cecilettes were there. It sure was funny to see a grown man getting baptized. He had to bend over to get the holy water on his head.
We are working on a new talent number for me. I play a widow who is talking to her dead husband’s ashes in an urn. It is pretty funny. At the end I use his urn for an ashtray because I never did like him. I say, “Oh, George, you always did make an ash of yourself.”
I only have nine months to figure out how I am going to get to New York. I want to go right after I graduate. I am saving all my money. I didn’t buy any new clothes this year; New York is more important. Paris has some friends there I can call. None of the producers answered about the reviews I sent them. I guess I will just have to go to their offices in person. I am reading a book about Katherine Cornell. She has a cocker spaniel.