Doll gave a little laugh. “No, Mama, The Moody Blues, they a new band from England.”
“England? You don’t need no band from England when we got the likes of Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, and Irma Thomas right here. Ain’t that so, Doll?”
“I guess.” Doll shrugged.
“Girl, what’s wrong with you this morning?” Queenie waved the dishrag in Doll’s direction. “You love Miss Irma.”
Doll began plucking at her hairpiece as if she had a vendetta against it.
“I think maybe Doll’s upset that I’m here,” Ibby interjected.
“Now, Miss Ibby,” Doll said. “Where’d you get such an idea?”
“Because I know Fannie didn’t invite me to visit. My mama just dropped me off here because she didn’t have anywhere else for me to go.”
“You take that sorry look off your face and listen to me, little girl,” Queenie said as she pulled up a chair and sat next to Ibby. “Miss Fannie, she was beside herself when she found out you were coming.”
Ibby shook her head. “Fannie doesn’t seem to be very happy that I’m here.”
“That’s just Miss Fannie.” Queenie reached over and grabbed a brown egg from the counter, then placed it on the table in front of Ibby. She gave it a slight twirl. “Look at it this way. Your grandmother, she’s kind a like this here egg. If the egg wobbles, means it’s raw, so I throw it into the batter and make a cake. If it spins kind of even, like this one here, means it’s cooked, so I make egg salad instead.”
“Maybe you should get a cracked egg, Mama. Be more to the point,” Doll quipped.
Queenie glared at Doll. “Point is, you got to know whether the egg is cooked or raw before you know what to do with it.”
“Was she always like that egg?” Ibby asked.
Queenie got up and went over to the counter. “No, Miss Ibby. She didn’t start out that way. She start out fresh and new, like we all do. Did you see that big tree out in the front yard?”
“Yeah,” Ibby said. “Why?”
“Well, you see how big the trunk is and how those limbs kind of fall down all over the place? That tree didn’t start out that big. It grew over the years until it got so tall that it start to lean. Sometimes we got to prop it back up so it don’t topple over. Same as we do with Miss Fannie.” She put her hand on her back and winced.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” Doll asked.
“Got ninety-five-year-old legs on a sixty-year-old body,” Queenie said as she leaned back against the counter and nodded over at Ibby. “See what I’m telling you? Kind of like that tree in the front yard. My legs, they just don’t want to hold me up no more.”
“Now your mama, she another story,” Doll said to Ibby. “Put Miss Fannie and Miss Vidrine in the same room, be hard to tell which one come out standing.”
Queenie frowned at Doll. “Now why’d you go and bring that up? Miss Fannie wouldn’t like it if she knew we were talking about her. It ain’t our place.”
“Okay then, if you won’t tell me, I’ll just have to ask her myself,” Ibby said.
Queenie and Doll looked at each other.
“No, baby, don’t do that.” Queenie sat down at the table next to Ibby. She pointed a finger. “Rule Number One in this house. Don’t ever go asking Miss Fannie about her past. Gets her all emotional. Rule Number Two. She starts talking about her past, let her talk but don’t go asking no questions. Rule Number Three. You see her hand start twitching, you better change the subject or she gone have one of her spells. Rule Number Four. You got something you want to know, you come ask one of us.”
“But you said it wasn’t your place to say anything,” Ibby said.
“You did just say that, Mama,” Doll added.
“So I changed my mind. Just remember them rules, and we won’t have no trouble.”
“Then tell me. Why do they hate each other?” Ibby said.
“All right, I’ll tell you what I know, but don’t never let on to Miss Fannie that I said nothing. That’s Rule Number Six.”
“That’s Rule Number Five, Mama. There ain’t no Rule Number Six,” Doll said.
“Doll, shut your mouth. Miss Ibby knows what I’m getting at.”
Doll rolled her eyes. “Maybe Rule Number Six should be, don’t argue with Mama.”
“That’s an unwritten rule. Don’t need no number.” Queenie paused for a moment. “You want to know about your mama and your daddy? I’ll tell you. Miss Fannie had Mr. Graham’s life all planned out for him. She figured as soon as he finished law school at Tulane, he’d take a job in town, get married, and move into this here house and start a family. Miss Fannie always wanted this house to be full of life, full of children running around. That all changed the night Mr. Graham went out with some of his law school buddies over to a restaurant on Carrollton Avenue, where he met a waitress named Vidrine Crump. Miss Fannie thought it was just a passing crush. There were plenty of other girls chasing after Mr. Graham. But somehow Miss Vidrine caught his eye. She weren’t the kind of girl . . .” Queenie cast her eyes down.
“Not the kind of girl Mr. Graham was used to going with. That’s what Mama’s trying to say,” Doll interjected.
Queenie narrowed her eyes at Doll before turning back to Ibby. “Fannie weren’t too happy about Mr. Graham seeing Miss Vidrine, and she made her feelings known. She wanted Mr. Graham to marry someone, someone—”
“Someone better,” Doll chimed in. “Miss Fannie used to call her that good-for-nothing, big-busted, loudmouthed redneck from Dry Prong, Mississippi. Remember?”
Queenie pinched up her face. “Girl, hush your mouth. That’s her mama we talking about.” She put her hands on her knees and let out a big sigh. “Your daddy, he comes home one day and announces that he gone marry Miss Vidrine whether Miss Fannie likes it or not. Miss Fannie told Mr. Graham that if he did that, he weren’t to step foot in this house again. So what does Mr. Graham do? He elopes with your mama. Now, whose idea it was to move so far away? I think that was your mama’s doing on account I think your daddy loved living here, thorns and all. Been a good twelve years, and Miss Fannie ain’t seen Mr. Graham since. Miss Fannie didn’t even know she had a grandbaby until your daddy broke down and sent a picture few years back.”
All three looked up when the screened door off the back porch creaked open and a dark-skinned man dressed in overalls and a white T-shirt came into the kitchen. He took off his hat, scrunched it up in his weathered hands.
He nodded his gray head toward the ladies. “How do, Queenie? How do, Doll?”
“How do, Mr. Pierce,” Queenie said as she pushed herself away from the table.
“Got some mighty fine redfish for you today.” He looked over in Ibby’s direction. “Who’ve we got here?”
“This here’s Miss Fannie’s grandbaby, Ibby. She’s gone be visiting for a while.” Queenie nodded. “Mr. Graham’s daughter. Can’t you see the resemblance?”
“Sure enough.” He tipped his head. “She got his same eyes. Your daddy, he were a good man, Miss Ibby. Smart as a whip, too.”
“You knew him?” Ibby asked.
“I been coming around this here house ever since your daddy were a little boy,” Mr. Pierce said. “Sorry to hear he’s passed on.”
Queenie followed him out the back door to a battered pickup truck, parked in the driveway, where blocks of ice held fish spread out evenly in rows. She inspected the fish by running her finger down the scales. Mr. Pierce wrapped the three she’d chosen in newspaper, then followed her back into the house with a red mesh sack flung over his shoulder.
“Thank you kindly, Mr. Pierce,” Queenie said.
He set the sack of oysters down onto the picnic table on the back porch, tilted his hat, and left.
Queenie placed a wooden cutting board on the table and unwrapped the fish. “Lookey here. Mr. Pierce done thrown in a little lagni
appe, gave me four fish instead of three. Mighty fine of him to do that.” She took a meat cleaver from the drawer and, with a thump, chopped the head off one of the fish. She held the severed head up in front of Ibby. “See the eye of this here fish, it’s clear. That means it’s fresh. My mama had a saying: ‘Dead fish rot from the head.’ You can see it in the eyes, before you can smell it gone bad.” She gouged the eye out with the tip of the knife and popped it into her mouth. “That’s for good luck.”
“Better get used to Mama’s ways, Miss Ibby.” Doll pointed a fork in her mother’s direction as Queenie filleted the fish. “She could have got Mr. Pierce to fillet that fish for her, but Mama’s way too picky. She likes to get every scrap a meat off them bones.”
“No use wasting.” Queenie wrapped the fish fillets in a milk-soaked cloth and put them in the icebox. Then she placed all the bones, including the head, into another piece of cheesecloth and tied the four corners up into a knot. “This here is what gives the stew its flavor.” She tossed the bag into the pot and put the lid on. Then she tilted her head and looked over at Ibby. “Miss Ibby, now you brought it up, I’m curious. Your mama, she say anything else?”
Vidrine had been full of all sorts of directives this morning: Give the urn to your grandmother. Don’t say y’all. Be a good girl and don’t give your grandmother any trouble.
She’d said something else, too, when they got into the car at the airport, but Ibby hadn’t quite understood what she meant. Now she repeated it, just the way her mother had said it: “She said not to listen to anything those two wily niggas tell you about me.”
Queenie and Doll looked at each other. Queenie made a face like she’d eaten something sour, then the meat cleaver came down so hard, Ibby thought the table might split in two.
“How dare that redneck call us wily! Just who she think she is!” Queenie hissed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything wrong. I was just repeating what my mama told me,” Ibby said.
“Ain’t nothing we ain’t heard before,” Doll said, shaking her head, trying not to laugh.
Queenie looked over at Ibby. “Miss Ibby, why don’t you go upstairs for a while, take a little rest? Been a long morning.”
After Ibby left the room, she turned to Doll. “Just curious, after the way you been acting all funny this morning. Miss Fannie, she say anything to you when you were in the room with her earlier?”
Doll shrugged. “Miss Fannie picked up an empty perfume bottle and talked about how she needed to get some more.”
“No, I mean about Miss Ibby. She say anything about her?”
“Well, yeah. She say she want Miss Ibby to come and live with her.”
“You mean for good?”
“Yeah, Mama. That’s what she say.”
“I’d hate to know what Miss Vidrine might think about that.”
A loud voice in the hall startled them. “Yoo-hoo, anybody home?”
“Oh, Lawd.” Doll’s head jerked around. There was no mistaking that voice.
“What she doing here?” Queenie said under her breath.
Doll peeked through the kitchen door to find Vidrine standing in the hall holding a small suitcase.
Doll whispered to her mother, “Miss Ibby forgot her suitcase in the car this morning. Looks like Miss Vidrine done come back to give it to her. I thought she had a plane to catch. Why she still here?”
“You ever know Miss Vidrine to tell the truth?” Queenie said. “Maybe she planning to drive off into the sunset and join a cult. I don’t know. Never can tell with her. Don’t matter now. She’s here, and you got to go out and get her before Miss Fannie comes out of her room and have a heart attack at the sight of that woman.”
“No, unh-unh. I ain’t going out there. You go.”
Queenie went over to where Doll was standing and peered through the door under Doll’s arm.
“Liberty?” Vidrine yelled up the stairs.
Queenie winced and put her hands to her ears.
Vidrine surveyed her surroundings as if she were taking inventory, bending over to a painting on the wall, rubbing her hand along the hall table.
“Look at her,” Queenie muttered. “She still got those awful eyes that are way too big for her head. Make her look like she stuck her finger in an electric socket.”
Doll never did understand Mr. Graham’s attraction to the woman. Besides the manic eyes, Vidrine had the habit of looking sideways over her nose as if she were constantly smelling poop. Thank goodness Miss Ibby looked more like her father, Doll was thinking.
Queenie nudged her. “Go on out there and get Miss Ibby’s suitcase like I told you.”
“Maybe Miss Vidrine will just leave it in the hall and go,” Doll said, not budging.
Queenie craned her neck. “Don’t look like she going nowhere to me.”
“Liberty Bell, come and get your damn suitcase!” Vidrine screamed.
The door to Miss Fannie’s room opened, and there were footsteps in the hall.
“Now look what you done,” Queenie said. “Miss Fannie’s coming out. Hurry. Go out there and see if you can stop her.”
But it was too late. Fannie was already making her way down the hall toward Vidrine. To Doll’s surprise, Fannie was dressed and had on a bit of makeup.
“Why Miss Fannie smiling? She hates that woman,” Queenie said.
“Oh no,” Doll said.
“What?” Queenie nudged Doll. “What now?”
“Remember what we was just talking about? I believe Miss Fannie’s getting ready to ask Miss Vidrine about Ibby living in this here house with her. Why else would she have a smile on her face? Miss Fannie only smiles real big like that when she wants something from somebody. And she must want it awful bad, from the look of that big grin.”
“Well, Fannie, how long has it been?” Vidrine asked icily.
Doll was expecting Fannie to say something like not long enough.
“A pleasure to see you again, Vidrine,” Fannie said cordially, extending her hand.
Vidrine lurched back and raised her hand in the air as if Fannie had just pointed a gun at her. “I just came to drop off Ibby’s suitcase, not to make amends. She forgot it in the car. I have to go.” She started toward the door.
Fannie hurried after her. “Wait a minute. Please. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
“I don’t have time.” Vidrine opened the front door, the suitcase still in her hand.
Fannie grabbed her arm. “Where are you going, anyway?”
Vidrine yanked it away. “None of your business.”
Fannie grabbed her arm again, this time harder. Vidrine struggled against her grip.
“Ohhhh . . . we gone have a catfight,” Queenie said excitedly to Doll.
Fannie let go. “Just hold on a minute. I’m not asking because I care where you’re running off to. You can go to India as far as I’m concerned. I’m asking because I wondered if you would let Ibby stay here with me.”
Vidrine rubbed her arm. A bruise was beginning to form where Fannie had grabbed it. “Now look what you’ve done!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You’re sorry all right. What are you prattling on about anyway? Ibby is staying with you, like we agreed. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to go.” Vidrine opened the door wider.
Fannie closed it with her foot.
Vidrine turned toward her. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
“I mean for good. I want Ibby to come live here.”
Vidrine put her hand on her hip. “I asked if Ibby could stay with you for a while. I didn’t mean forever.”
“I know,” Fannie said. “But I think she might be better off here. With me.”
“With you? And just what the hell do you mean by that, better off with you? I’ll be the judge of who Ibb
y’s better off with, thank you very much. And if you hurl any more insults like that, we’re leaving and Ibby is coming with me.”
“I just thought you might like your freedom now that you’re a widow,” Fannie said. “I can take care of Ibby. You can visit whenever you like.”
“Are you out of your mind? Look at you. What’s that bump on your head? You fall down drunk again? You been drinking this morning? Is that it? Is that where all this is coming from? You think that’s the sort of environment to raise a child?”
“No, I haven’t been drinking. I’m perfectly sober.”
“Then that just proves you’re even crazier than I thought,” Vidrine said. “Graham always said so, you know. He hated you from the time you sent him away to boarding school. Why do you think he moved so far away after we were married?”
“That was your doing,” Fannie said. “Not Graham’s. He was perfectly happy to stay here in New Orleans.”
“Then why did he never come back to visit?” Vidrine put her hand on her hip. “He hated you. You think he’d want his daughter to live with a mother he hated? I don’t think so.”
“Why don’t we let Ibby decide?”
Vidrine glared at her. “This was a mistake. I should never have brought Ibby here in the first place. Liberty Bell, come on down here! We’re leaving!” Vidrine screamed so loudly, the chandelier tinkled above her head.
Ibby appeared at the top of the steps. “What is it, Mama?”
“Oh, no. Miss Ibby’s coming down,” Doll said to her mother.
“How long you think she been listening? Poor thing,” Queenie said. “We got to do something.”
Doll shook her head. “Nothing we can do now but watch and see what happens.”
“Come on. We’re leaving.” Vidrine picked up Ibby’s suitcase from the floor.
“But I just got here,” Ibby protested.
“I’m sorry, Vidrine,” Fannie pleaded. “We can talk about this later. Let Ibby stay.”
“Did you hear me, Ibby? Get down here. Now!” Vidrine yanked at the doorknob and kicked the door open with her foot.
Ibby came bounding down the steps.
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