The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc

by Loraine Despres

  TEARS WELLED UP in Clara’s eyes. It wasn’t fair. The white girls always get it all. It’s not a man’s world. It’s a white world. Well, she’d get hers just as soon as she hit Chicago. She’d be as white as any of them.

  Then she saw Parker wave. He still cared about her after all. He wasn’t just sniffing around Sissy. Maybe he’d even come out on the porch to signal her. She turned under the streetlight and waved back. She felt a little bounce return to her step.

  Coming into the living room, Sissy saw them waving and saw Clara’s bounce. She spun back to the kitchen. The fried chicken was crackling in the pan. She was wondering how she could coat Parker’s with ground glass when Billy Joe banged into the kitchen. He gave his mother a squeeze. She kissed the top of his head.

  “Wipe your feet,” his father said, opening another bottle of beer, “and come on into the living room. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Sissy turned back to the chicken. She thought of herself as brave, but not brave enough to be there when Billy Joe saw Parker again, although she didn’t think Billy Joe would betray her. She threw a couple of chicken breasts into the sizzling fat. Splatters of blistering oil popped around her face. She jumped back into Chip, who’d slipped soundlessly through the screen door. Then she knocked the handle of the skillet and splashed boiling grease all over the floor.

  “Oh, my God, Chip, are you all right? I didn’t burn you, did I?” She searched his bare legs.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You shouldn’t sneak up on people. Someone could get hurt.”

  Chip smiled.

  “BILLY JOE, I want you to meet Parker Davidson. He was quite a football player in his day,” Peewee said, stressing in his day. Then he saw his Chip at the door. “Come on in here, boy,” Peewee said, and added with pride, “These are my sons.”

  Billy Joe gave Parker a sullen look and stared down at his shoes. Chip smirked.

  “Where are your manners?” Peewee asked. “Don’t you all know how to shake hands?”

  Chip glanced at his father. He gave Parker his hand and a nasty smile. “I already met Mr. Parker, Daddy,”

  In the kitchen, Sissy was reaching for a dish towel to wipe up the floor.

  “Remember?” Chip asked.

  Sissy had to catch herself before she slipped on the grease.

  “I remember,” said Parker and his tone dared the teenager to say another word.

  He didn’t.

  Billy Joe left the room. His father called after him, threatening, but Parker said, “Let him go. He’s just being a kid. You remember what it was like.”

  Sissy came back in with Marilee, who crawled onto Peewee’s lap.

  Parker looked at Peewee surrounded by his family, surrounded by Sissy’s children. “Thou shalt not covet,” the Bible said, but it didn’t say how that was possible.

  Sissy had hardly sat down when Peewee drunkenly ordered her back into the kitchen for another beer. When she came out with it, he wanted some pickled watermelon rinds.

  “You should taste Sissy’s pickled watermelon rinds,” Peewee said to the benighted bachelor. “They’re the best in the parish.”

  Sissy came back and slammed the jar on the table in front of her husband.

  “She puts them up with her own hands,” Peewee said, taunting him.

  Parker fished out a watermelon rind and sucked on it, looking at Sissy. “Sure is good.”

  Peewee saw her eyes flash in what looked like anger, but it couldn’t be. Then he saw Parker smile. Peewee shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He looked at their glasses. They hadn’t drunk all that much. The truth of their relationship almost penetrated his dulled defenses before he banished it with “How about some dinner, woman?”

  Sissy returned to the kitchen and took the fried chicken out of the skillet. Who does he think he is, ordering me around like that? She threw the chicken toward an old silver platter Clara had spent a good hour rubbing until it shined. I’m his wife, not his servant. She picked a breast off the floor and was brushing it off when the realization hit her. If I were his servant, I could go home. I’m lower than his servant: I’m his wife.

  The silhouette of Parker waving to Clara came back unbidden, along with the memory of Clara caressing his leg. Did they make a date for later? Of course they did. I’ll bet he’s picking her up as soon as he’s finished eating my supper!

  Just then she smelled smoke. Opening the oven she pulled out Clara’s biscuits, black and hard. She threw them into the garbage.

  She could see the men sitting under the ceiling fan, telling jokes. The testosterone was so thick in the air they could hardly see or hear one another now. They were flying on the autopilot of their hormones.

  Sissy walked toward her bedroom thinking about lesbians and wondering where she could find herself one.

  “There she is,” said the long-suffering husband. “Dinner finally ready?”

  “It’s on the kitchen table. Dish it up yourself.”

  “Hold it,” ordered Peewee. He took her arm and pulled her aside. His breath was sour. “What the hell’s going on with this family tonight?” he whispered. “Can’t you even bestir yourself to serve up some dinner?”

  “I have a splitting headache.” She waved away his sour breath and said in a loud, firm voice, “I am going to lie down.”

  “Wait a minute…” Peewee said. “Now you wait just one dad-blamed minute, woman. Don’t you start getting headaches on me.”

  But Sissy wrenched away from him, slammed into the bedroom, and locked the door on both of them.

  Peewee stepped toward the door and rattled the knob. She’d locked him out! Son of a bitch!

  He returned to the living room, put a drunken arm on Parker’s shoulder, and slurred, “Come on, boy, let’s get us something to eat.”

  Parker watched him stumble toward the kitchen. Now that he had seen them together, he was resolved. He had to rescue his princess from this toad.

  Chapter 10

  You have to take your life into your own hands; otherwise you can be damned sure someone else will take it in theirs.

  —Belle Cantrell, Sissy’s grandmother

  Rule Number Thirty-two

  THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK

  THE NEXT MORNING, Sissy didn’t get up for breakfast. After their fight the night before, she had unlocked the door for Peewee. Gentry wisdom stated, “Any girl who locks her husband out of the bedroom is asking for it.” But she refused to talk to him. He circled and sniffed at her like a strange dog, and then slunk off, leaving her in possession of the bed. He slept on the living room couch.

  She pretended to be asleep when he came for his clothes in the morning and then she stayed in bed smoking. Marilee crawled into the bed and snuggled up next to her until they heard Peewee leave for work.

  “Clara,” Sissy called when she emerged barefooted from the bedroom, her arm around her daughter’s shoulder.

  Sissy wanted to find out if Clara had met Parker for a late date. If not, they’d go over in rich and sarcastic detail all the horrors of the dinner party from The Black Lagoon. But Clara wasn’t there. And to make matters worse the dining room looked like a prime candidate for International Disaster Relief.

  “Clara!” Sissy yelled again. It was after nine. She sent Marilee into her bedroom to get dressed and went into the boys’ room. They hadn’t seen Clara all morning.

  Damn. Did she and Parker have such a wild night that she couldn’t make it to work? Sissy felt betrayed by the first girlfriend she’d had since high school. An emptiness opened in the pit of her stomach. She thought they’d shared something.

  She dialed Clara’s number, drumming her fingers on the table next to the couch. Nobody answered. Damn her!

  Sissy went back into her room and slipped into her shorts and halter. Was Clara still at Parker’s? Maybe they were going at it right now. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to lower herself by calling him.

  Furious at both of them, Sissy began stacking dishes
and silverware together with a great clatter. I don’t know why you’re so surprised, the nagging voice in her head chided her. That’s how you met her. You found them together.

  Part of her couldn’t believe Clara would be any real competition. She’s just a teenager, a colored teenager. And she’ll be gone soon. All I have to do is give Parker a chance.

  Clara’s available now, the nagging voice reminded her, and she has a tiny waist just like you used to have. And she has beautiful smooth young skin.

  Sissy grabbed up a load of dirty dishes. Maybe Clara was so pissed at the way we treated her last night, she’s not coming back at all, she thought. Or maybe after her night of passion, she can’t face me.

  Sissy slammed through the swinging door, dirty dishes teetering in her arms, and found the kitchen was under a siege of cockroaches.

  “Good riddance!” she yelled, depositing the dishes in the sink and smashing a little brown sucker with a gym shoe Billy Joe had left under the round kitchen table. But the disgusting creatures were everywhere, swarming over the stove, feeding on the congealed egg yolks and setting up camp in the spilled grits.

  It was Peewee’s revenge. Ever since hiring Clara, Peewee seemed to delight in leaving every room as if it had been in the direct path of a cyclone. And when Sissy complained, he’d say, “Let the girl do it, that’s why I’m paying her.”

  “Gotcha!” A flying cockroach dropped from the wall onto the University of Chicago catalog. Sissy leaned down and blew off the crumpled body and with it the Chicago Fantasy. A deep sense of loss, almost mourning, overcame her. She reached into her pocket for a cigarette, but she had trouble getting it out of the pack and even more trouble lighting it.

  You’re really pathetic, Sissy told herself, living vicariously through that girl. But a competing voice reminded her, living vicariously is better than not living at all.

  It didn’t matter anyway, pretty soon Clara would be off having a real life, having adventures with Yankees.

  And then Sissy pictured what passed for her own life in Gentry, as it stretched into the future, gnawed on by the maggots of minutiae until she was hobbling on a cane like her grandmother. “What am I going to do?” she asked out loud. “What am I going to do?” At that moment a cockroach ran over her bare foot and Sissy screamed.

  She staged a massive assault to still her grieving. Wielding the sneaker of death, she slashed through the roach infantry, decimating their numbers and forcing the rest into a desperate retreat. Then she hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter to attack their air force with chemical weapons. Balanced on one bare foot, she searched the top shelf for the insect spray, when she heard the screen door slam. Sissy froze. How should she handle this? She ought to give Clara unadulterated hell for being so late and not even calling. In her mind, Peewee’s voice came in loud and clear. “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. You watch, once she knows she can bamboozle you, she’ll come in later and later. Pretty soon you’ll be working for her.”

  Yes, she had to give Clara a piece of her mind, but before Sissy could turn around on the narrow counter, she heard a sharp pounding. She slid right down to the linoleum and onto a cockroach making his last foray.

  “I did not chain myself to lampposts to see my granddaughter dusting the top of her kitchen cabinets. Don’t you have anything more important to do?”

  Sissy’s grandmother, Belle Cantrell, had arrived.

  As far as Sissy knew, Belle had never actually chained herself to a lamppost or anything else. She remembered her mother telling her about the time, in 1916, when Belle had taken her to Baton Rouge to attend a women’s suffrage rally. Although her grandmother loved politics, Sissy suspected she’d really gone to that rally to stir things up at home. Sissy’s grandfather, Claude Cantrell, a big, melancholy dairy farmer, had expressly forbidden his wife to go. He claimed she became impossible after associating with those uppity suffragettes. They put all kinds of ideas into her head. He was right about the ideas, but Sissy believed her grandmother had always been impossible.

  Sissy had grown up hearing about Belle’s impassioned letters to public officials and how she’d tried to organize the Gentry Women’s Suffrage Committee before the good people of the town put an end to it. Still, they did get the vote. For all the good it did them, Belle would sniff. They never got around to voting for each other. The only thing women today are interested in is how to get rid of old wax buildup.

  Sissy knew her grandmother yearned for the days before they’d won the right to vote. Days of optimism and enthusiasm, when their slogan was “Failure is impossible.” They genuinely believed the world was about to open up for them. Belle was able to stir things up and do good at the same time.

  So what if she’d begun to exaggerate her own role in the movement into one of civil insurrection. Belle was fond of saying, “Dammit, when you get to be my age you should be able to remember your life the way you want to, even if it didn’t unfurl quite that way.”

  Scraping the squashed cockroach off her bare foot and being careful not to step on any more, Sissy crossed the kitchen and kissed her grandmother.

  “I brought the children some figs,” the septuagenarian said, setting down a large paper bag and shaking a cigarette out of the open pack she found on the counter. A cockroach jumped out. Belle brushed it away with an imperial sweep of the pack and said sanguinely, “You know, dear, you ought to hire some help.”

  Sissy started to say something, but Belle cut her off. “I know, I know, you’re going to tell me that Peewee can’t afford it, but don’t you let him chain you to your kitchen. A woman’s freedom is more important than money.” Sissy knew she’d have said more, much more, but Marilee came running into the house. “Mama, Mama! Come look! Hey, Gram, you gotta come too!”

  “Marilee,” her mother protested.

  “You gotta! You gotta!” the little girl said as she flew out to the front porch.

  The two women followed. Belle majestically pushed the scampering cockroaches out of the way with her ebony cane.

  She’d been a great beauty in her youth and Sissy knew she’d used her looks to get what she wanted. Now she used her age and its privileges. She wore her gray hair swept up around her head. Her body was stout and imposing, and she always dressed in somber colors and old-fashioned dresses, as befitted a woman her age. But there was a twinkle in her eye and an eagerness for life that belonged to a teenager.

  Out on the front porch a large brown puppy with enormous paws was tied to one of the posts. Billy Joe was scratching its head and Marilee lay on her stomach letting it lick her face. The children were in love.

  Sissy knelt down next to her daughter. “Honey, I wouldn’t get my heart set on this puppy. We don’t know who it belongs to.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Billy Joe, grinning. He held up a note tied to its collar. The note was made out to Marilee: “A dog of your own.” There was no signature.

  “Who left it here?” Sissy asked.

  “Who do you think?” said Chip, standing under a tree.

  In spite of herself, Sissy was overcome with a feeling of relief. Maybe Parker hadn’t come to see Clara after all. At least he wasn’t still in bed with her. He’d had to get out early to find this puppy for Marilee. Things were looking up.

  “We’ve got to get him some water,” said Billy Joe, untying the dog and opening the door. The puppy sprinted in ahead of him into the living room.

  “You going to let them keep it?” Belle asked.

  “Of course she is, Gram!” Billy Joe was appalled at the very idea. “It was given to Marilee. It’s hers, right, Mama?” When Sissy didn’t say anything, he became upset. “Right?”

  Sissy looked at the puppy, looked at its paws. It was going to be enormous. She slapped her pockets, but her cigarettes were still in the kitchen collecting roaches. If she let them keep the dog, Peewee would have a fit. If she didn’t, she’d be the ogre. “We’ll see what your father says.” But her words were drowned out by Marilee’s d
elighted yelps.

  “Look, Mama, look!” The puppy rolled over on the oriental rug and became entangled in the phone cord. Billy Joe knelt down and disentangled it. Marilee knelt down with her big brother. Chip observed the scene from the doorway. He was keeping a scientific distance.

  The puppy rolled to its feet, ran around in a circle, sniffed, and clearly delighted to have found the toilet at last, squatted on the rug.

  “Oh my God,” said Sissy, leaping for the animal, knocking the phone off the table just as it began to ring.

  “No, no, bad dog!” cried Billy Joe and Marilee in a cheerful chorus.

  Belle grabbed the still squatting puppy and rushed it out to the yard, followed by the screaming, giggling children. Sissy picked up the phone.

  “Sissy?”

  “Listen, you SOB, where do you get off giving my children a dog without asking me?”

  “Cute little thing, isn’t he?”

  “I should hang up on you, right now.” But she didn’t. She could feel his voice resonate in her chest and it made her weak. She leaned against the couch as pictures of him in his shrink-to-fit jeans filled her head.

  When Belle came back into the house, she found Sissy with the phone pressed to her ear, straddling the soft arm of the couch, swinging one bare foot back and forth. A small, happy laugh bubbled out of her. And then she saw her grandmother. “I have to go.”

  Belle stood in the door, her hands crossed over her cane.

  “Have you taken a lover?”

  “Grandma!”

  “Oh, don’t use that tone of voice to me. What else is there for a woman to do around here on a hot summer afternoon, except clerk in the dime store?”