Fannie grabbed Ibby and pulled her toward her. “Let her stay.”
Vidrine looked from Fannie to Ibby, then at her watch. She threw the suitcase at them. It landed just in front of Ibby’s feet. Then the front door slammed. Doll could see Vidrine rushing toward the car. She never looked back once.
Queenie came away from the kitchen door. “I hope that’s the last time I ever see that woman.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Doll said.
After Vidrine left, Fannie grabbed Ibby’s arm. “Come on. We’re going for a ride.”
Chapter Seven
Doll and Queenie stood by the back window and watched Fannie back the car out of the driveway.
“Now where in the heck you think they going? Miss Fannie ain’t driven that car in years. Think they gone be okay?” Queenie fretted.
Doll put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “How I know? Besides, it wouldn’t do no good to try and stop her on account she never listens to what two wily niggers have to say.”
Queenie swatted Doll’s arm. “I ain’t laughing. Had enough of that joke for one day.”
Queenie went over to the counter and turned the radio to the gospel station. She swung her head from side to side as she washed some dishes. After a while, Doll reached over and turned the dial to a different station.
Queenie looked at her. “Now why you go and do that? You know I like to listen to my gospel music while I do the dishes.”
A deep voice resonated from the radio. “This is WBOK, the one and only rhythm and blues station in New Orleans, and I’m Chubby Buddy, bringing you the sound of our very own queen of soul, Irma Thomas. Her new song, ‘Wish Someone Would Care,’ is making it up the charts. And the rest, they say, is history. Come on down to La Ray’s Village Room on Dryades Street to hear Miss Irma tonight.”
Doll turned up the volume just as Irma Thomas let out a soulful cry.
Queenie reached over and turned the volume back down. “Don’t know why all you young folks think you got to turn the music up so loud. Give me a headache.”
Doll ignored her mother’s comment and began dancing around, waving her arms in the air and swinging her hips to the beat of the music. “Be all right if I leave a little early?”
“Now listen here. You got plenty a time to go hear Irma later. What you got up your sleeve?”
Doll went over to the counter near the back window, picked up a fork, and started singing into it as if it were a microphone. She paused to answer her mother. “Oh, nothing.”
“Don’t you ‘oh nothing’ me.” Queenie switched the radio back to the gospel station. “What you not telling me?”
Doll leaned against the counter. “Me and some folks, we might head on down to the five-and-dime on Canal Street in a little while.”
“Who? What folks you talking about?”
“You know, Doretha, Slim, maybe Lola Mae . . .”
“What for?” Queenie crossed her arms and gave Doll her oh-no-you’re-not-doing-that look.
“Just, you know, to hang out.” Doll cast her eyes out the back window. She wished she hadn’t said anything. She wasn’t a very good liar and her mother could always see right through her.
“You not trying that lunch counter stuff again, is you?” Queenie picked up a knife from the sink and pointed it at her. “Last time your friends tried sitting at the counter down at the Woolworth’s, they got arrested. Remember? Every one of them lost they jobs or got kicked out a school. Earline Murray had to make her son move out of their house ’cause they started getting bomb threats. And Jerome Smith? He almost got beat to death.”
“That’s ’cause Jerome went on one of them freedom rides, Mama, not ’cause he sat at the Woolworth counter.”
Doll knew her mother was about to start in on the plight of all the poor folks who had gotten the short end of the stick, which according to her mother was just about everybody in the St. Roch neighborhood, where they lived. She slumped down on the stool, pretending to listen to her mother’s little speech that she’d already heard a hundred times before.
“Why, just yesterday, Virgie Mae Jefferson’s son was beaten up real bad, just for sitting at the counter at the state capitol cafeteria up in Baton Rouge. And who they haul off to jail? Not the white men that do the beating. What you think gone happen if you go down to the Woolworth’s today?”
“Calm down, Mama.”
Queenie came over and pounded her fist on the table. “Why can’t you leave well enough alone?”
There was nothing Doll could do but let her mother ramble. Queenie was a strong believer in the status quo. Separate but equal was just fine with her as long as nobody gave her any trouble. But Doll had other ideas. Her daughter, Birdelia, wasn’t much older than Ruby Bridges, the little colored girl who’d been escorted by armed guards to the Frantz Elementary School for Whites in the Ninth Ward in 1960 in an effort to integrate the school. It made national headlines, started white flight from the city, and riled up the Ku Klux Klan. Here it was four years later, and what good did it do? As far as Doll was concerned, nothing much had changed. She wanted something better for her daughter. She wanted Birdelia to be able to decide what she wanted out of life, not have it dictated to her, the way her own life had been. And she was willing to fight for it. She just wasn’t sure how.
“That’s the problem,” Queenie muttered. “Most people living in fool’s garden don’t even know it.”
“I heard that,” Doll said.
“Well, it’s true, baby. You a seeker.”
“What you mean, a seeker?” Doll peered over at her mother. She’d never heard her use that word before. She wondered if it was a “word of the day” from Miss Fannie’s newspaper.
Queenie jabbed the knife in Doll’s direction. “A seeker, baby, a seeker. You looking for something you ain’t never gone find.”
“I ain’t no seeker, Mama. You just ain’t been paying attention to the world around you. Things are changing.”
“Uh-huh. Ain’t you heard nothing I just said? People going to jail, getting killed. That much ain’t changed. Now you set on down here and help me shuck them oysters.”
“I’m almost twenty-three years old. About time you quit telling me what to do.”
“I’m your mama. I don’t care how old you are. You’re my daughter, and I’m gonna keep you out of trouble the best way I know how.”
“Like how you kept Ewell out of trouble?” Doll said.
Queenie put her hand to her chest and let her eyes fall to the floor. Doll’s brother Ewell had died from a gunshot wound to the chest several years ago in a senseless shooting that left four young black men dead and the neighborhood paralyzed with fear.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I shouldn’t have said that.” Doll touched her mother’s shoulder, knowing she’d gone too far, had brought up the one thing that could bring her mother down—the fear she carried inside, wondering which one of her children might be next. The only reason Doll hadn’t been hauled off to jail or been beaten like her other friends at the last sit-in was because Lieutenant Kennedy, a longtime police officer friend of Miss Fannie’s, recognized her and sent her on home before all the trouble started. She might not be so lucky the next time. That’s what all the fussing was about. But Doll couldn’t help the way she felt, like a seed buried in the wrong kind of soil. Maybe her mother was right. But that seed inside her was ripe, and it was ready to burst open any minute, no matter what her mother said.
Queenie raised her eyes. “I see you over there thinking, like I don’t know what I’m talking about. But you’re wrong, baby. I’m just trying to save you all the trouble. Now go on and fetch that sack of oysters Mr. Pierce left out on the back porch.”
Doll came back in and plunked the sack of oysters down on the kitchen table. “Your arthritis acting up again?” she asked when she saw her mother rubbing mustard powder on her elb
ows.
Queenie nodded. “Shucking oysters do a number on me.”
“Why’d you get oysters anyhow?” Doll slit the small sack open with a knife. “You know oysters best only in months with an r in them. They gone be mighty puny this time a year.”
“Thought Miss Ibby might like to get her first taste of an oyster while she here,” Queenie said. “Can’t help that she’s here in the middle of summer.”
Queenie stuck the tip of the knife in the joint in the back of the oyster. With a few twists, the shell popped open. She held the oyster up with the tip and examined it before tossing it into the bowl she’d set on the table.
“Let me tell you something else I noticed,” she went on. “You acting like you scared a that little girl.”
“What you mean scared? Why would I be scared a Miss Ibby?” Doll balked.
“I hear the way you been talking to that child. You afraid Miss Ibby gone march right in and take Miss Fannie’s attention for herself.”
Doll threw a shucked oyster into the bowl and pointed her knife at her mother. “What you mean, the way I been talking? I talk to Miss Ibby just the same way I talk to you.”
“That’s what I mean. Don’t go shooting your mouth off like you do with Miss Fannie. You can’t talk to Miss Ibby that way. She ain’t used to it.”
Doll sat back, exasperated. “Mama, why you pounding on me like I’m some of your bread dough?”
“Don’t mean to, baby. It’s just . . . I can’t ever seem to make you understand how lucky you are, to be here in this house.” She twisted the knife into another oyster shell, then looked over at Doll. “How many times I got to tell you, baby? You can’t change the way things are. It were God’s choice you here. And ain’t nobody or nothing can change that.”
That was her mother’s answer to everything. Doll tightened her mouth but said nothing. What her mother didn’t understand was that no matter how much she tried to douse Doll with common sense, her unrest just kept smoldering.
They sat quietly for a few minutes, each in her own thoughts, until Queenie shook her head and said, “I shouldn’t have told that child the truth about her mama. She too young.”
“You didn’t say nothing that weren’t true.”
“Yeah, but God help me, I didn’t tell her the whole truth neither.” Queenie flicked an oyster into the bowl. “You remember Miss Vidrine. Can’t imagine she’s changed a lick in the last ten years.”
Doll had been around twelve years old when Mr. Graham brought Miss Vidrine to have dinner at the house. She’d never forget that first visit. It still made her seethe. During dinner, Miss Vidrine had called Doll over. She told Doll how much she hated liver and told her never to serve it when she came to visit. Then, in front of everyone, she proceeded to spit the chewed-up liver out into Doll’s hand. She did it right there in front of Miss Fannie and Mr. Graham. Everybody saw it. And nobody did anything about it.
“Sure I remember, Mama, but why does it matter?”
“I’ll tell you why. That Vidrine, she saw this big house, thought Mr. Graham was rich. Then she come around, put some kind a spell on Mr. Graham, the only way I know how to explain it.”
“It weren’t no spell. Way I remember it, she announced to Miss Fannie over dinner one night that she was having Mr. Graham’s baby.”
Queenie wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and gave Doll an intent stare. “We got bigger problems, now that Mr. Graham’s gone. All Vidrine got to do now is wait for Miss Fannie to pass on. Then she can move in here and take over, become mistress of this here house.”
Doll dropped an oyster onto the table and looked up. “I know, Mama. I been thinking the same thing.”
“Don’t you go running your mouth to Miss Ibby about all this. Don’t want her to get no wrong ideas, think we meddling. You understand? Not a word.” She shucked a few more oysters, then looked up at Doll. “Where you think Miss Vidrine go off to anyway?”
Doll shrugged. “Don’t think she had the right mind to tell nobody.”
Queenie was silent for a moment. “We got to come up with a plan to make sure she never gets her hands on any a Miss Fannie’s money. And we got to come up with something right quick.”
Her mama had a fierce, determined look on her face. Doll knew that look. It meant by the time that sack of oysters was empty, Queenie was going to have a plan all hatched and ready to go.
Chapter Eight
Queenie was so riled up trying to come up with a plan to keep Miss Vidrine out of the house that it only took about twenty minutes to finish the oyster shucking. All the while, Doll was conjuring her own plan so she could join her friends on Canal Street. She decided to use the same ploy she often did, by pretending to be upstairs in her sewing room working on a new dress for Miss Fannie. Her mother never came upstairs anyway, so if she planned it right, she could sneak away while her mother was watching her stories on the television as she did the ironing.
“My, look a the time,” Queenie said as she wiped her hands on her apron. “Almost eleven-thirty. Better hurry up so I can watch my stories.”
Queenie pulled the ironing board from the utility closet in the kitchen and dragged it into the parlor. Doll hurried down the hall toward the stairs.
“I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” Doll said.
Queenie didn’t answer. She was too busy tuning into Search for Tomorrow to care. Once her stories came on, she was in a different world. That’s one thing Doll could count on. Doll stood at the top of the stairs, waiting for her moment. When she heard Queenie talking back to the television, she knew her chance had come. She tiptoed down the hall past her. Not that it really mattered. Queenie had the volume on the TV turned up so loud the whole neighborhood could probably hear, even with the windows closed.
Doll made her way out the back door and to the garage, where she’d stashed a set of clothes for such occasions when she wanted to get away from the house. She changed out of her maid’s uniform into a pair of slacks, a white cotton shirt, and some loafers. When she got to the front of the house, she peeked through the window, where she could see her mother leaning on the ironing board with her chin in her hands, staring at the television. She hurried down the street toward the bus stop, aware that she was garnering suspicious stares from some of Miss Fannie’s neighbors because to them, a black person out of uniform scurrying down the street only meant trouble.
When she reached the corner, she found a few maids in uniform huddled together at the bus stop on their way to run errands for the mistresses of the house. She checked her watch. It was eleven-forty. She was supposed to meet her friends at the corner of Canal Street and St. Charles at noon. She felt a sense of relief when she spotted the bus only a few blocks away.
She paid her fare and followed the rest of the maids toward the rear of the bus, nodding at a few people she knew. She wasn’t much in the mood to talk so she found an empty seat next to a window and gazed out. Every couple of blocks, the bus stopped to pick up a few more colored women in uniforms who shuffled wearily down the aisle and slumped into a seat near Doll with exhausted expressions on their faces, all of them wishing they were somewhere else, doing something different. Just as she did.
About thirty blocks later, the bus line ended at Canal Street near the Mississippi River. Doll started toward the five-and-dime where she was supposed to meet her friends. She passed an empty storefront with a “For Lease” sign, in a small redbrick building with plate-glass windows that used to be a shoe repair. Doll thought it would be the perfect spot to open a dress shop.
She cupped her hands over her eyes and looked in. She pictured herself with a sewing room in the back, designing gowns for all the Negro balls, displaying one or two of her favorites in the front window. She reached into her pocketbook to jot down the information when she noticed some writing beneath the phone number on the sign.
“No N
egroes Need Apply.”
Doll stood there blinking hard, the “For Lease” sign reflecting back against her chest, leaving a dark rectangular shadow. She felt her blood boiling up inside her, and at that moment, all she wanted to do was punch the window until it shattered into small pieces. Instead, she walked away, her head hung low with disappointment.
It wasn’t until a few blocks down, when she spotted her friends near the corner of St. Charles Avenue, that she brightened up, remembering why she’d come in the first place.
“Where you been, Dollbaby?” a young man in a cloth hat rimmed with blue ribbon called out as she approached. “We thought you might be bagging us.”
“Sorry, Slim,” she said. “Got caught up. Where’s Lola Mae?”
“I’m right here,” a young woman in a checkered shift said as she walked up behind Doll.
“Where’s everybody else at?” Doll asked.
Slim nodded toward the other side of the street, where a few of their friends were milling around, trying hard not to look as if they were up to anything.
“Don’t want too many of us hanging together,” he said. “Might draw attention.”
Doll stole a glance across the street, trying to figure out how many of them had shown up for the sit-in. “Doretha here?”
“Yeah. She standing behind Jerome on the other side of Canal Street,” Slim said. “Now that you showed up, we all here. Follow me, and remember what I told you.”
When Slim tipped his hat to Jerome, Jerome did the same. It was the signal for them to begin their approach to the store. They followed one another, keeping a good distance, going into the Woolworth in five-minute intervals. Doll stood on the corner, pretending to wait for a bus. One came and left. Then another. She was beginning to get a little uneasy as the third bus approached, but then Jerome gave her the signal. She opened the door to Woolworth and looked around the store with the pretense of searching for hairspray. After a few minutes, she made it up to the lunch counter, where five other colored folks, including Jerome, Doretha, and Lola Mae, were already seated.
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