When Billy Joe and Marilee stood in front of her, Sissy introduced them to Clara and asked if they weren’t ashamed of themselves.
Billy Joe hung his head and muttered. Sissy couldn’t hear him. But when he saw his mother brush watermelon pulp from her cutoffs and pick a seed from between her toes, he said in a rush, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Mama.”
“Me, neither,” said Marilee, staring up at Clara.
“You all can’t keep following after Chip. One of these days he’s going to get you in real trouble, bad trouble,” Sissy said, putting her arm around the little girl’s shoulder.
“We was learning about science,” Marilee said as if that explained it. “It was an experiment just like Icing… Fig Newton, or… something.” She lapsed into confusion. “The one who hit people on the head with apples!” Marilee grinned, proud to get it right. Sissy shook her head and tried to bite back a smile. “That’s what Chip said,” the little girl insisted.
“My brother’s gonna be a scientist,” Billy Joe said.
“What’s he studying, atomic bombs?” Clara asked.
Sissy made the two younger children clean up the sidewalk and then sent them to their rooms with orders to clean them up, too. “No reading comics until you’re done.”
“What about Chip?” Billy Joe wanted to know.
“I’ll take care of him. You just worry about Billy Joe, you hear?” Then turning to Clara she said, “Come on, I’ve got coffee on the stove.”
“Can’t. I gotta go home and take me a bath. I mean I have to go home and take a bath,” Clara said.
“No you don’t,” said Sissy.
Clara picked a chunk of watermelon out of her ponytail.
Sissy saw her point. “You can take one here.”
“Where?”
“In the bathroom. Where do you think?”
“Your bathroom?”
Sissy had never shared her bathtub with a colored girl and she knew Peewee would have a fit. But my God, she thought, the girl’s cleaner than any of us. “Of course,” she said nonchalantly as if this were something she did all the time. “Where else?”
Clara entered the house warily. So far this white family didn’t have much to recommend it. But she couldn’t pass up a chance to take a bath in Sissy’s bathtub and see what kind of soap and powders her white cousin used.
CHIP SAT ON the roof until the noon sun and the smell of fresh corn bread and collard greens lured him down. He slipped in the screen door.
He saw a woman who looked like his mother leaning into the oven. Smelled like his mama, too. But when she stood up, with a pan of corn bread in her carefully mitted hands, he saw she wasn’t his mother at all.
“You the future scientist?”
Chip stared at her and then without a word he backed out the door. It bounced shut.
He was down the stairs when Sissy, who’d spotted him from her bedroom window, caught up to him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Out,” he mumbled.
“You march right back inside this minute and face the music,” Sissy didn’t know what tune she was going to play, but she was a firm believer in inspired improvisation. “First, I want you to apologize to Clara.”
The boy stood in the middle of the kitchen with his head bowed.
“Well, young man, what do you say?”
The young man said nothing.
“We’re waiting.”
“I didn’t do nothing,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“I didn’t do nothing,” he insisted, “but hit a nigger with an apple.” And then he snickered.
Sissy had never hit one of her children before, but she slapped Chip across the face. “I never want to hear a child of mine use that word!” The other kids shuffled into the kitchen to be on hand for the excitement, so Sissy turned to them. “You all hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Billy Joe said. And Marilee echoed him.
“Everybody says nigger,” Chip mumbled, his eyes narrowed in righteous indignation.
And then Sissy knew what she had to do. She grabbed her oldest son by his T-shirt and dragged him over to the sink.
“And you say a lot worse,” protested the boy, trying to pull away.
“There isn’t any worse.” Sissy picked up a bar of Ivory soap. She had used the word once in front of her mother and had gotten her own mouth washed out. To this day, she could swear like a long- shoreman—hell, she enjoyed that—but she couldn’t say the “N” word. And no child of hers was going to use it either!
Clara watched them struggle at the sink and something moved inside her. Just when she’d given up any expectation that something good could come from these people, this white woman was taking up for her against her own child.
“You don’t have to do that,” Clara said as Sissy managed to shove some soap suds into Chip’s mouth before he wrenched away, and knocking his mother in the stomach with his elbow, bolted out of the house.
Sissy turned and leaned on the sink. She blew a ringlet of hair off her forehead. Then both women laughed. And something solidified between the two of them, something even stronger than blood.
PARKER DAVIDSON DROVE by Sissy’s house several times that morning.
He didn’t see the boy on the roof watching him. But Chip saw Parker. The boy watched the telephone truck creep down the street in front of the house and then speed up, turn the corner, go around the block, and creep back. He smiled to himself. Knowledge was power.
It wasn’t that Chip was intentionally malign, he just wanted what he wanted. Just as some people are born color blind, Chip had no ability to empathize with the subtle feelings of others. So although he wished he were popular at school, wanted to have a bunch of guys at his beck and call, making him feel important, he didn’t have a clue how to make friends. All he had was his brother and sister and he’d learned early that Marilee would follow Billy Joe anywhere and Billy Joe loved to please: his mother, his father, his big brother. Chip saw that as a weakness—one that he was happy to exploit.
AFTER LUNCH, PARKER had worked out his strategy. He was going to be open with Sissy, direct and honest. He drove back to the house and saw the red convertible still parked on the street. He straightened his shirt and checked his hair in the mirror.
In his room, Chip was conducting an experiment to find out the effect on inanimate objects of an acid he’d just invented. He discovered two effects: one on the object itself and one on his lungs. It felt as if someone had taken a knife and scraped the inside of his chest. He flung up the window, gulped fresh air, and saw that the telephone truck was back. When he stopped coughing, Chip took out his lab book and noted the results of his experiment. Then he found a clean page, drew a line across the top, and wrote Parker Davidson. He recorded the time and date.
PARKER OPENED THE door of the truck when he saw Sissy come out of the house with a basket of laundry. The rusting hinges mewled. Perfect. He took a deep breath, and saw Clara step out behind her.
Already? They’d gotten together already? The two women were acting like old friends!
“Will you look who the cat dragged in,” said Clara.
Sissy turned and felt a shock to her groin, but she said in her softest, sweetest, most malicious voice, “That two-timing SOB. Which one of us you think he’s after?”
Clara rose to Sissy’s sweet maliciousness with a voice that registered pure disgust. “Both.”
Feeding off the disgust in Clara’s voice, Sissy said, “He deserves to suffer.”
“He sure does,” said Clara.
The two women turned as one and walked back toward the house, swinging their hips and giggling like teenagers.
Parker slammed the truck door. What was he doing in this two-bit town anyway? He didn’t come all this way to be made a fool of. He ought to leave tomorrow. Except then he’d never see Sissy again. No, this time he had to go the whole nine yards. Hell, he could do that. It was just a question of developing the right strategy. He gunn
ed the motor and shot away from the curb.
“WHO WAS THAT!” asked Rowena Weaver as she and Amy Lou Hopper came out of the Methodist church. Rowena was tall and thin and favored print dresses with small flowers. Her brown hair was short and straight.
Amy Lou compressed her lips. She was carrying a round church fan with a smeared picture of a rosy-cheeked young Jesus, surrounded by rosy-cheeked angels. She fanned herself vigorously and carefully placed one high-heeled pump in front of the other as she made her way down the stairs. “Parker Davidson, I expect. He’s been catting around Sissy when poor Peewee’s at work.”
Rowena looked at her friend. “What are you up to, Amy Lou?”
“Why, I don’t know whatever you mean. I just feel sorry for Peewee, that’s all.”
MEANWHILE, SISSY AND Clara had forgotten all about the laundry slowly collecting spots of mold in the yard. With the venetian blinds shut tight against the blazing sun, they’d just found out that they both followed the same soap opera. Sissy was sitting on the couch and Clara was leaning against the wall behind her. They shared an ashtray.
The curly-haired heroine, suffering from amnesia, had wandered away from the safety of her small town, into the unknown perils of the big city, where she was beginning to fall in love with a dangerous man. You could tell he was dangerous, because he always wore T-shirts under his black leather jacket and drove a big, shiny motorcycle. His long dark hair was combed back into a duck’s ass.
“What I wouldn’t give to lose my memory and wake up with a stud like that.” Sissy ground out her cigarette. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’d never go back to sleep.”
Clara leaned over and flicked an ash into the big ceramic ashtray. “If I see one like him in Chicago, I’ll give you a call.”
Sissy tried to picture herself roaring down the streets of Chicago on the back of a motorcycle. “Come on over here and sit down next to me.”
Clara hesitated. She knew the rules.
“Come on.” Sissy patted the pillow next to her. She’d never been comfortable with servants hovering over her. It was so unnatural. “Sit down. We’re family.”
PARKER KICKED THE truck into second, but he wasn’t thinking about the ruts and bumps he was bouncing over, he was mapping out his strategy. He couldn’t see Sissy at night when Peewee was there, of course. And he couldn’t drop over during the day with the children and the Methodists on the lookout. And Clara.
Dammit, he’d really dropped the ball this time. He’d first seen Clara at a memorial service for his old high school coach, the day he hit town. She was serving coffee. For a moment he thought he’d found Sissy again. Sissy at eighteen. He couldn’t take his eyes off her: the way her auburn hair bounced when she moved. He hadn’t planned to take up with any other women in Gentry, but after the service the sky opened up and Clara was on foot. At first she didn’t want to get into the car with a strange man, especially a strange white man. But as she told him later, she had on new shoes, which were getting ruined in the mud. So in the struggle between new shoes and safety, the shoes won. Besides, she said she had a good feeling about Parker.
They talked on the way home and Parker was impressed with her intelligence and drive. But what touched him was her voice, Sissy’s voice.
The next evening, after trying in vain to reach Sissy, he stopped by the funeral home again. They drove to the gravel pit and parked in the moonlight. He told her he’d lived in Asia.
“I’d like to see that,” she said.
Her eyes opened wide when he described riding elephants through the mountains during a monsoon, and wider still when he told her about vacationing in Hong Kong and getting caught in the Kowloon riots. He felt glamorous and powerful again.
He didn’t tell her about his business in Bangkok and his humiliating failure. He hadn’t told anyone in Gentry about that. Instead he asked about her plans for college. As she spun out her dreams and fears, Parker remembered what it felt like to be young with the whole world spread out in front of you, before the defeats of real life bludgeoned you into submission.
He slid his hand into hers, but he didn’t make a move on her. It didn’t seem right. She was just eighteen, for God’s sake. He was thirty-two and only in town temporarily. He didn’t want her to get hurt. But he needed the company of women. He felt more relaxed with them, less on guard. And he was constantly fascinated by the way they smelled, the way they played with their hair, crossed their legs.
He picked her up the next night and the next, until Clara got tired of his gentleman routine and made her move on him. Parker didn’t say no. How could he, when that lovely young body was climbing into his lap, straddling him?
But after that, he stayed home nights or went to the Paradise. Until she called.
Now, even if he wanted to, he couldn’t get at her, either. Not at work. Not at home, where her brother wouldn’t let her to go out with a white man. He’d really screwed himself.
He stopped his truck out in the country. The telephone pole was planted away from the trees, standing alone at the side of the road, under the blazing sun. The iron grips would be too hot to touch with his bare hands. He pulled on his creosote-soaked gloves. They made his hands sweat and slip as he swung to the top of the truck. Then he grabbed the iron grips and climbed hand over slippery hand into the stifling air. By the time he reached the top, his shirt was covered with sweat. He unstrapped his headset and hooked onto a line. And dialed.
The two women sat side by side in the cool dark room, their eyes on the television. The leather-jacketed stud had found the heroine alone in her apartment, dressed for bed. He threw open the door. “I’ve been waiting all my life for this night.” And then the telephone rang.
Clara picked it up, her eyes fixed on the screen, “LeBlanc residence.”
Parker hung up. What was he doing? He was a grown man. He dialed again.
Clara turned to Sissy and without even bothering to put her hand over the mouthpiece said, “It’s Parker. He wants to talk to you.” Her voice sounded hurt.
Sissy reached for the phone, but one look at her cousin made her back off. She silently repeated Rule Number Thirteen: A smart girl makes a man sweat.
“There’s nobody home…” Clara said into the mouthpiece. “I said there’s nobody home, Parker, that means white or colored.” She hung up.
As the pictures of the bare-chested stud taking the heroine into his arms flickered in front of them, each woman sank back into her own private world—and thought about Parker.
PARKER CLIMBED DOWN off the blistering telephone pole and kicked it.
Chapter 9
It’s okay for a woman to know her place. She just shouldn’t stay there.
Rule Number Fifty-nine
THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK
PEEWEE HAD THE windows of the truck rolled down, but he still felt stifled. He’d been working in the sun, with half a crew, when he wasn’t supposed to be on the roads at all. And to make matters worse, they’d had trouble with some of the equipment, so he’d had to stay and work overtime. He’d been on the roads most of the month of June. If Norbert would kindly get over his damn summer flu, Peewee could go back to the office where he belonged. The smell of the tar was thick in his nostrils. A steel band of a headache was stretched around his forehead.
On the radio, Tennessee Ernie Ford was singing “Sixteen Tons.” About getting older with nothing to show for it. The steel band tightened a good inch.
Peewee was headed for home when the song came to an end and a moronically cheerful chorus burst into the “Hadacol Boogie.” He swung the truck around and headed down Grand Avenue for Hopper’s Drugs. A tonic was just what he needed.
Amy Lou Hopper was standing in front of the prescription counter with Rowena Weaver, talking about what had become her favorite topic. “She had a bad reputation back in high school, you remember?”
“I remember she was real pretty,” said Rowena.
“I feel sorry for her daddy, trying to run a newspaper wi
th a daughter like that,” Amy Lou said. “Her poor mother, you remember Miss Cady, don’t you? Well, she’d turn over in her grave. I swear, somebody ought to tell Peewee.”
Lester Hopper, Amy Lou’s father, looked up from behind the counter and shook his head. He was heavyset like his daughter, with a florid complexion and dark brown hair that had refused to turn gray.
Rowena said, “I don’t think Peewee would take real kindly to the news.”
Just then sleigh bells chimed over the front door. “Well, what do you know,” said Amy Lou, whisking off her blue pointy glasses. Peewee LeBlanc had come for his tonic.
“Amy Lou, you keep your big mouth shut,” warned her father.
Amy Lou tossed her head, pocketed her glasses and swept down the aisle.
In her white cotton blouse, she looked like a ship in full sail. Peewee watched her. He always did admire a woman with an ample prow, and for his money, Amy Lou had the best prow in the parish. He had to inhale sharply as it heaved to in front of him, all squeezed together under the prim white blouse, with a single drop of sweat shining like a diamond in the cleavage.
“Hey, Peewee.” Amy Lou slipped behind the counter and smiled, looking really glad to see him, “What can I do for you?”
Peewee could think of a lot of things, but he asked for a bottle of Hadacol.
“Feeling a little peaked?”
Peewee nodded. “Must be the heat.”
“I’ll bet you want the king size, right?” she asked as she pulled a rolling stool over to her.
“Sounds right to me,” said Peewee, feeling king-sized, watching her flanks as she mounted the step stool. Her tight navy blue skirt cupped her broad behind with each step. Peewee’s hands began to sweat. He marveled at how she could balance all that weight on those little bitty high-heeled shoes. When she reached up to the top shelf for the bottle, he could see the outline of her big brassiere squeeze her back into mounds of flesh and he had to rub his hands on his pants to dry them off.
The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc Page 11