The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc

by Loraine Despres

  Finally Clara spoke. “I was only six, Marilee’s age, and I was dying to see what went on in that big brick house with all those white columns. I figured I was half white and I ought to know. I was too young to understand half don’t mean shit around here,” Clara said, falling back into the black vernacular she usually kept out of her conversations with her white cousin. “Anyway, the night before, I’d gone to see this movie with my brothers and they had this detective on a stakeout. So after my mama went to work, I snuck out of Butlertown and climbed up into that big magnolia tree in front of his house and watched them through the leaves. But nothing happened. You know how hours dissolve into seconds in the movies? Well, in real life, seconds turn into hours. Pretty soon I fell asleep and out of the tree.

  “That’s when Miss Ida May came running out of the house with her cook and insisted on bringing me inside. I was so thrilled I could hardly stand it. She sat me down in the living room. I can still remember that big velvet couch, with those maroon cushions. Do they still have it?” Sissy nodded. “I’d never felt anything so soft in my life.

  “Anyway, the cook, Miss Virginia, I knew her from church, put ice on my bruises while Miss Ida May sat down next to me and asked me about my people. Well, I’d been warned not to tell anyone who my father was, but I felt so close to this nice white lady and she was married to him, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to tell her.

  “But then Miss Virginia shook her head and introduced me as ‘Denise Conners’s girl.’ Miss Ida May got all excited about that, because my mama had worked for her.

  “Anyway, after they’d cleaned me up and painted me orange with Mercurochrome, we all went into the kitchen, and Miss Virginia gave me some chocolate ice cream. I’d had a fight with my mama that morning, and I thought I’d go live with my daddy for a while and eat ice cream every day.

  “That night he came to our house and I said, ‘Daddy!’ and ran and hugged his knees, just like I always did. But before I could tell him I wanted to live with him, he’d picked me up and was shaking me and yelling that I was never even to walk down his street again. I was crying and Mama was trying to pull him off and then the last thing I remember was him chucking me against the wall. I was just a little bitty thing. But he smashed me so hard he cracked the plaster.”

  “Good God!” Sissy had never had much use for her uncle, but she’d never imagined the self-proclaimed “protector of the family” had sunk to abusing a six-year-old girl, and his own daughter to boot. “What happened then?”

  “I’m not sure. When I came around my face was all puffed up and throbbing and I’d lost a tooth, but I was afraid to cry. Mama was trying to calm him down, you know, listening and nodding sympathetically, making all those soft little moves she made around him. It took her a real long time. I thought she ought to chase him out of the house with the shotgun. But she said she didn’t know how to do that and stay in Gentry. He was too powerful.”

  Clara stopped for a moment.

  “But now I think, in spite of everything, she kept letting him come back because she was used to him and because she was afraid of being alone.”

  “So he kept coming around?” Sissy asked.

  “Oh, yeah. He even tried to make up with me. Once he brought me a big baby doll, you know with blue eyes that opened and shut and blond hair. ‘Rubinstein’s best,’ he said, smiling that politician smile of his.” Clara grimaced. “And my mama made me walk up to his chair and let him give me one of his wet kisses.”

  And then Clara’s eyes blazed. “But she couldn’t make me thank him. Not then. Not ever. Or call him Daddy. You know what I did after that? When I went to school, we had those hand-me-down readers you all had at the white school. Remember?” Sissy nodded. “Well, I still couldn’t forget that I was half white. So I used to pretend I was living with my white daddy, only I’d pretend he was Dick and Jane’s daddy. We all lived together and had chocolate ice cream every day. I’d play with Dick and Jane and Baby Sally all afternoon after school and then at night Father would come home. And he was always especially nice to me and read me stories. You know, the way fathers are supposed to be.” She paused and then added, “It was my favorite pretend.”

  Sissy thought she understood what Clara saw in Parker, but she didn’t say it. What she said was “I wish we didn’t always have to wait around for handouts from men.”

  “Why do you think I want to go to college? I don’t want to ever have to take nothin’ from nobody.”

  And then Sissy had an idea. She’d always hated do-gooders. They smacked of Amy Lou Hopper and her Christmas baskets for the poor. But this was something else. This girl ought to have a chance. “What you need is a scholarship fund.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Clara. “Who’s gonna give me one of those?”

  “You wait here,” said Sissy. “In fact, you can clean up the kitchen while I’m gone.” She didn’t want to ruin her reputation by doing something completely unselfish. So she opened the door to the disaster area.

  AN HOUR LATER, Clara had finally gotten the kitchen cleaned up and the children fed when Sissy emerged from her bath, smelling all sweet and flowery. She had pulled on her most ladylike dress, the one she’d bought for her rare appearances at the Episcopal church.

  “Keep an eye on the children, will you?”

  “Where in the world are you going?” Clara asked.

  “To see about your scholarship fund.”

  Clara watched her pull away from the curb and the words of her grandmother, Beulah May Conners, echoed in her head: “Some white womens just loves to pretend they is the savior of the colored. It gives them something high-minded to do, but the truth is they don’t have the attention span of a gnat. Soon as it gets a little bothersome, or somebody calls her a nigger lover, she’s gonna become the savior to the puppies and the kitties. You just watch.”

  SISSY PULLED UP in front of the converted cottage that housed The Weekly Avenger downstairs and where her father, Hugh Thompson, lived upstairs. He had chosen this name for his newspaper in the days of his youth, before his passions had been ground down by the endless compromises he had to make to support his family and to keep his business solvent in a town that had stopped growing at twenty-five hundred opinionated souls.

  It was still called The Weekly Avenger, but The Weekly Absolver would be more like it, at least in the opinion of some of the town’s darker-complexioned citizens. But they didn’t subscribe. And his subscribers felt that, with its extensive high school football coverage and weekly recipes, The Avenger was all that a small-town newspaper should be.

  “Let me get this straight,” said Hugh. “You want me to take up a collection for your maid?”

  “Not a collection, Daddy, a scholarship fund! My goodness, considering the education they get up at the colored high school, it’s amazing she can write her own name, let alone get some Yankee college to give her tuition. I think it’s a very worthy cause.”

  Hugh looked searchingly at his daughter perched on the edge of his desk. “What do you think, Sam?”

  Sam Carter, the Avenger’s advertising manager and space salesman, mopped up the sweat from the creases on his neck with his big white handkerchief. He’d been intent on watching Sissy uncross her legs under her tight blue skirt. “Hell, yes, it’s a worthy cause.” He jumped up from his desk and lit her cigarette.

  Sissy awarded him a dazzling smile. “I’m so glad you think so, Sam.”

  Rita Sue Mullins, The Weekly Avenger’s sole reporter, looked up from the file cabinet she was searching through and shook her head. Twenty-five years before, she’d pioneered as the first female to study journalism at LSU and dreamed of a career as a foreign correspondent. Now her beat was the high school awards dinners, wedding receptions, and choosing the cook of the week.

  “I remember you raised, I don’t know how much, last year when May Cuttler’s baby needed that operation and Daddy said you increased circulation to boot.” Sissy was on a roll.

  “We sure did,” Sam said. �
�And it made us real proud to help that little boy. Of course, we can’t lose sight of the fact that our advertisers may hold to a different opinion about this here, er… scholarship fund.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He means May and her baby were white,” said Rita Sue from the file cabinet.

  Sam glared at Rita Sue. “Now, don’t get me wrong, Sissy,” Sam said. “I mean, I’m all for it. But you know since the Supreme Court decision and all that agitation over in Montgomery about who sits where on the buses, the white trash around here have got themselves all worked up. Some fools have even organized a Klan chapter again, not that any of us would get involved with it, of course, but I don’t think this is exactly the time to be taking up a collection to send some nigra to a white college. Even a worthy nigra,” Sam hastened to add, mopping his forehead. “You understand?”

  “Didn’t her father go to jail for drugs?” asked Rita Sue.

  “Her father…” Sissy began, but Hugh cut her off.

  “She means her stepfather, honey. Reuben Johnson. I believe he’s in the state penitentiary, serving five to life. I can’t remember, was it heroin or marijuana he had in his possession?”

  Rita Sue shrugged. “Whichever.”

  “She never told me.” Sissy felt betrayed.

  “The family’s a real upstanding representative of their race,” said Rita Sue, lighting her own cigarette.

  Defeated, Sissy slid off the edge of the desk. And she really hated defeat. She flicked an ash over the paste-up Sam had been working on most of the afternoon. “Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry.”

  She would have bumped into Rita Sue, accidentally of course, pushing her headfirst into that file drawer, if her father hadn’t taken her elbow and walked her to the door. “She didn’t tell you about her stepfather?”

  “I think she mentioned him.”

  “But not his current address?”

  “No.”

  “Well, don’t let it throw you. I’m sure she’s a fine young woman.” Sissy nodded abstractedly as her father opened the door and a wave of heat hit her in the face from the shimmering sidewalk. “If you want to put your public spirit to use, I suggest you join the garden club,” he said in a loud voice. Then he closed the door behind them and spoke softly, “Sissy, I can’t take up a collection for my niece!”

  “You knew?” she asked. What other family secrets was he keeping from her?

  “Tibor’s my brother. He’s been catting around Butlertown since we were kids.”

  The candidate’s face smiled benignly down at them from a billboard covering the side of the building. “Tibor Thompson, Protecting the American Family.”

  “But he’s claiming to be the Great White Hope!”

  “That’s a laugh, isn’t it?” Hugh said.

  Sissy nodded and glanced at the huge photograph, but when she turned back to her father she saw him looking startled as if there were something he thought she already knew. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Sissy let it pass. “How does he get away with it?”

  “Politicians and preachers can get away with damn near anything as long as they say what the riffraff wants to hear.”

  “But if they find out, won’t they turn against him?”

  “How’re they going do that?” Hugh asked.

  Sissy smiled a slow, rebellious smile. “I’d think the newspapers would be in hog heaven to get a scandal like this.”

  “Sissy, look at me. If you have any notions of using this against your uncle, forget it. Besides, he’s too smart. He knows nobody’d print it.”

  “But…”

  “It’s not news who a man sleeps with. Hell, if we wanted to dig up that kind of dirt on our politicians, every journalist in the country would have black fingernails.”

  “Wouldn’t it sell newspapers?”

  “Maybe. But you can’t invade a man’s private life. Who’d run for public office? Now of course, if he comes to the attention of the readers some other way, a divorce or an inheritance, then his peccadillos are fair game. But the first paper to print this kind of unsubstantiated rumor would be hit with a million-dollar libel suit. No reputable paper wants that kind of trouble for some cheap gossip.”

  “It’s not right. He’s her father! Can you imagine what it was like for her all these years?” Sissy was working herself up. “The least he can do is pay for her education. He’s got plenty of money—you told me yourself he takes bribes from half the parish.”

  “Sissy, now listen to me, don’t you mess with Tibor.” She didn’t say anything. She was staring up at the Protector of the American Family. Hugh took her chin and turned her face toward him. “I mean it. He’s crazy when it comes to revenge. Clara’s stepfather wasn’t on drugs. I knew Reuben. He was hardworking and sober.”

  “So why’s he in the jail?”

  “He had the audacity to marry Tibor’s woman.”

  “But Uncle Tibor couldn’t marry her.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’d allow someone else to. Don’t mess with him.”

  “Oh, Daddy, what can he do to me?”

  Hugh was silent for a long moment and then said softly, “You don’t want to find out.”

  SISSY WASN’T READY to give up. Before she went home she drove across the tracks and turned up Grand and parked in front of Hopper’s drugstore. She cornered Amy Lou, who was consuming a Baby Ruth with quick little bites like a rabbit gnawing away on a carrot.

  “Are you talking about that piece of high yeller trash I saw hanging around your yard?” Amy Lou asked, delicately wiping her mouth on a Kleenex.

  “She won a scholarship to the University of Chicago, which is more than I can say for either of us!” Sissy said.

  Amy Lou threw her Kleenex into a wastebasket beneath the counter and said, “The Ladies Auxiliary of the Methodist Church has about as much charitable work as we can handle. But if you love the negras so much, why don’t you help with our Christmas baskets for the poor? You’ll find it so gratifying to do the Lord’s work.”

  Sissy slammed out of the drugstore, furious at herself for giving Amy Lou such pleasure.

  She switched on the ignition. What had started as a unpremeditated effort to get Clara away from Parker had become Sissy’s personal quest. Rule Number Twenty-six had taken over. She had picked this fight. And she was going to win it come hell or high water.

  In the weeks to come she prodded Peewee into talking to the Kiwanis and sicced Belle on various organizations that performed “good works.” But regardless of how their views differed, in the matter of their charitable enterprises they all agreed that sending Clara to the University of Chicago was not going to be one of them.

  PARKER DAVIDSON, HIS arms filled with groceries, kicked at the screen door until it bounced. He hooked his foot around it and knocked it open. From inside the kitchen he heard Sid barking with excitement. Shifting the groceries to the crook of his arm, he freed his right hand and turned the key in the lock. Tonight was going to be different. The grocery bags were full of real food, lettuce, tomatoes, milk, eggs, and a man-sized sirloin steak. He was going to start taking care of himself.

  Sid hunkered down as he watched the door open and, then with an explosion of pure animal joy, leaped up to lick his master’s face. His tail wagged in full circles behind him and his sharp claws slashed right through the brown-paper grocery bags. Parker yelled as eggs, milk, meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and cans of dog food crashed to the kitchen floor.

  The dog cowered in confusion. Why the yelling and the noise? He was just trying to be a good dog, just trying to show his master how much he loved him. Then he smelled the delicious aromas wafting up around him and Sid knew he was a good dog after all. His master was giving him a treat.

  He skidded through the broken eggs and pushed the lettuce into the spilled milk. Man and dog raced for the steak. Dog won. Stepping on a tomato for leverage, Sid sunk his teeth through the butcher paper into the meat. He tore the package apart, covering steak, paper
, and string with dog drool. This was the very first time his food had ever come gift-wrapped.

  Parker watched his dinner turn into doggy delight and seriously considered killing the beast. Instead he slowly bent his large frame over and picked through what was now garbage to retrieve the fucking cans of dog food. He threw them into the sink, where they dripped a dirty mixture of eggs, milk, and tomato. He opened the kitchen cabinet. He still had to make dinner for himself and the grocery store had closed. He found two cans of corned-beef hash.

  He slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. The setting sun beamed its last rays through the screen and the beveled-glass door straight at him. The dog was making gleeful noises on the floor. Parker covered his eyes with his hands.

  At first he thought the knocking was just more of the dog’s enthusiasm. But when he looked up, dazzled by the glare, he saw Sissy silhouetted against the glass. Her shape glowed against the red sky.

  Parker jumped up. The puppy did it. She’d come back to him. Barreling into Sid, who made a low threatening sound over his food, Parker opened the door.

  But Clara was standing on the welcome mat. Parker’s smile wavered a little and then widened. He stepped aside for her. “Hey, girl, come on in.”

  “Something wrong with your front doorbell?”

  “I don’t think anyone’s ever used it.”

  Sid’s low, threatening sound turned into a bona fide growl at the entrance of the interloper. When she stepped near his food, the dog hunched back ready to spring. “Sid!” Parker yelled.

  Clara shrank back.

  Parker pushed Sid aside, so instead of lunging, the dog slid through the slippery mix of egg and squashed tomatoes into the kitchen cabinets. “I was just making supper.”

  “And it looks delicious,” Clara said, carefully picking her way to the other side of the kitchen, as far from the big dog as possible.

  “I guess that means you don’t want any.”

  “You white folks sure do know how to make a mess.”

  “We sure do,” Parker said as he tracked through his ruined supper. He grabbed a couple of Dixies out of the icebox and, with one arm around the girl, propelled her into the living room.