Dollbaby

by Laura Lane McNeal

  Fannie peered over her reading glasses. “What do you have on?”

  Crap, Ibby thought. She’s going to make me go upstairs and change my clothes. “Just a skirt,” she replied.

  “You call that a skirt? Where’s the rest of the fabric? It’s so short, it looks as if your rear end might show if you bend over.”

  “It’s the style, Fannie. Everyone’s wearing them.”

  “Is that what young women wear these days?” She looked Ibby up and down.

  Fannie removed her glasses, and gazed at Ibby with a blank expression. “Looks nice,” she finally said.

  “Can I go?” Ibby fingered her suede shoulder bag nervously.

  “Oh, all right. Don’t be late,” Fannie said.

  Union Hall was an old storage warehouse adjacent to the wharves on the Mississippi River. It was nothing more than a big empty space with a stage at one end and a bar at the other but it was always crowded. When Birdelia and Ibby arrived, they had to stand in line to get in.

  After a fifteen-minute wait, they paid the entrance fee and made their way through the crowd toward the bar, as two large ceiling fans buzzed overhead. There was no air conditioning, and everyone was sweating, but no one seemed to mind.

  Ibby didn’t protest when Birdelia handed her a Cuba libre. She held the plastic cup up in the air, trying not to spill it, as they jockeyed their way toward the stage. When they were about twenty feet away, Birdelia gave up.

  “This the best we can do!” she yelled over the roar of the crowd.

  They spent the next hour sipping drinks, being jostled around, and sweating. It was close to ten-thirty before a heavyset black man in a T-shirt and blue jeans came up to the microphone.

  “How y’all doing?” he said to the audience.

  People in the audience raised their hands and whistled.

  “Thank y’all for coming out tonight. You ready to get down?”

  The audience went ballistic. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” they chanted.

  It was so loud, Ibby tried to cover an ear with her free hand.

  “That won’t do you any good.” The young man next to her raised his cup and smiled.

  It was Wiley Waguespack, Winnie’s older brother, the one she had a crush on until Winnie told her he was only allowed to date Catholic girls.

  “Where’s Marcelle?” Ibby asked. “Aren’t you dating Marcelle?”

  “What?” he asked, cupping his hand to his ear.

  “Never mind,” she said. She didn’t really want to know anyway.

  Then the band came on stage and started playing a new sound called funkadelic and everyone danced in place. Near the back of the stage, T-Bone was swinging his trombone in a practiced rhythm with the rest of the brass section. Clapping and swaying with the people around her, Ibby tried to ignore the fact that Wiley had put his arm around her shoulders.

  When some of the members of the band began to dance like James Brown, Ibby exclaimed, “I know how to do that!”

  She wobbled her knees and shuffled her feet around the way T-Bone had shown her.

  Wiley stepped back and watched. “How’d you learn to dance like that?”

  Birdelia turned to look. “You must got some black in you somewhere ’cause I ain’t never seen no white girl dance like that.”

  Ibby was disappointed when the band stopped playing. She checked her watch. It was one in the morning.

  People were filtering out the front door, but Birdelia pointed the other way, toward the stage. “Let’s go find T-Bone.”

  Wiley tugged on Ibby’s arm. “I’m heading over to Bruno’s Tavern. Want to come along?”

  A part of Ibby wanted to go, but she knew Wiley and she could never be a couple, not according to Winnie. So what was the point? Besides, she’d come with Birdelia, and she didn’t want to disappoint T-Bone.

  “No, I can’t. Thanks for asking, though,” she said.

  She could see Wiley’s confused face when she headed in the other direction with Birdelia. She smiled to herself. Turning Wiley down had given her a certain sense of satisfaction.

  When they got up to the stage, T-Bone jumped down to greet them.

  Ibby tucked her sweat-soaked hair behind her ears. “You were fantastic.”

  He grinned. “Thank you kindly, Miss Ibby. Say listen, I’m gone head over to the Ebony Lounge to watch the chicken drop. You want to come along?”

  Birdelia shook her head. “I got to get the car back. Mama don’t know I took it.”

  “Miss Ibby can come with me. We’ll swing by, pick you up,” he said as he placed his trombone in a leather case and snapped it shut.

  “Naw. You go ahead,” Birdelia said.

  Ibby whispered to Birdelia, “I’m not going without you.”

  “Why? He ain’t gonna bite,” Birdelia said loud enough for T-Bone to hear.

  Ibby was embarrassed. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Her pulse quickened when T-Bone came and stood next to her. His T-shirt was soaked through, leaving a V-shaped spot in the middle of his chest.

  Birdelia cocked her head. “Okay, then. Better hurry. Chicken drop gone start in twenty minutes.”

  As T-Bone was helping Ibby into his black Camaro, she saw Wiley Waguespack drive by and give her a double take. She gave Wiley a big wave, which caused him to almost swerve into another car.

  As T-Bone started the car, Ibby asked, “What exactly is a chicken drop?”

  “Oh, it’s just a silly betting game they invented over in Tremé,” he explained. “They throw a hen in a cage with a bunch of numbers painted in circles on the floor of the coop. If the chicken poops on your number, you win.”

  When they drove up to the Trout residence, all the lights were off and the street was dark. Ibby didn’t see Birdelia sitting on the stoop until she jumped up and ran over to the car. T-Bone drove a few blocks before stopping in front of a white stucco one-story building with a metal awning. There were hordes of people of all ages milling about on the sidewalk.

  T-Bone dropped Birdelia and Ibby off by the front door. “Y’all go on in while I park.”

  Ibby and Birdelia went inside the lounge, where music from a jukebox sifted through the smoke-filled room. When Birdelia held up three fingers at the bar, an older woman wearing a flowered dress and a white apron handed her three plastic cups.

  Ibby followed Birdelia over to a table in the corner.

  T-Bone came in shortly. “Placed your bets yet?”

  “We waitin’ on you.” Birdelia slid one of the cups toward T-Bone.

  He picked it up. “It’s almost time. Let’s go out back.”

  A side door led to an outdoor courtyard, where the main attraction was a cage made of chicken wire perched on wooden legs. A stout man in a T-shirt and suspenders with a cigar dangling from his mouth was collecting money from patrons eager to place bets. T-Bone handed Ibby and Birdelia a slip of paper.

  “Just put your name and a number on the betting slip,” he said. “Don’t worry about the fee. My treat.”

  “Five minutes!” the man called out.

  When all the bets were in, the man with the cigar plucked a fat hen from a pen in the corner of the yard and put it inside the cage.

  “Chicken, do your shit!” he shouted loud enough for everyone in the courtyard to hear.

  The bird sat in the same spot for several minutes despite people sticking their fingers through the wire mesh trying to prod it. It cocked its head a few times, then moved three steps and sat down again. Each time the chicken moved, there was hollering and jeering. This went on for a good twenty minutes until finally the chicken scrambled over to the corner of the cage and pooped.

  “Number four! Right on the edge!” the man yelled through his stubby cigar.

  “Did you win?” Ibby asked T-Bone.

  “Naw. I ain’t never won
. Just for fun,” he said.

  When they went back inside, a white girl about Ibby’s age was sitting at the bar, leaning on her elbow as she took a drag from a cigarette.

  The girl was watching Ibby in the mirror behind the bar. She turned around. “Why, Ibby Bell. That you?”

  “What are you doing here, Annabelle?” Ibby asked.

  Annabelle smiled in a sickly way that let Ibby know she was drunk out of her mind. She almost fell off the stool when she pointed at T-Bone. “You with that stableboy? And that little nigger girl you always hang out with.” Annabelle put her hand over her mouth, realizing her faux pas at using the word nigger in a black bar. She lowered her eyes toward T-Bone’s crotch, then looked back up toward his face. “You know what they say.”

  T-Bone took a step back. “Miss Annabelle, this ain’t a good place for you. You want us to take you home?”

  “With you?” She closed one of her eyes and tried to wink.

  “You with anyone?” he asked, looking around.

  “No, man,” a man smoking a joint at a table nearby said to T-Bone. “That skank drove up, parked out front, and came in all by herself about an hour ago.”

  “Why she here?”

  He squinted in her direction. “Why you think, brother? She been here before, lots a times.”

  “You messing with me, Shorty?” T-Bone said.

  “No, man. You want some, you stick around.” Shorty cocked his head in the direction of the door. “All you got to do is take her out to her car. She do it right in the backseat. She don’t care.”

  Annabelle grabbed T-Bone by the shirt and pulled him toward her. “What was your name again, stableboy?”

  He tried to move away, but she was clenching his arm.

  “Let’s go.” Birdelia tugged on T-Bone’s sleeve. “I don’t want nothing to do with that piece a white trash. Come on, T-Bone. She’s nothing but trouble.”

  Annabelle pointed at T-Bone. “You’ll be back.”

  When they were about halfway down the block, Ibby heard a shriek. Annabelle was laughing hysterically as she fumbled with her keys, trying to open the door to her car.

  Then another man came up from behind and helped her into the car and slipped into the backseat beside her.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  T-Bone didn’t say a word as they drove along Louisiana Avenue and Birdelia snoozed in the backseat.

  “That ain’t the first time,” T-Bone said after a while, breaking the uneasy silence.

  “What do you mean?” Ibby asked.

  “That Miss Annabelle. It ain’t the first time she done something like that.” He gave her a quick glance. “She come up to all the guys at the Audubon Stables flaunting her chubby white ass. She wasn’t picky, do it right there in the barn. Then up by the river, behind the trees down in the batture—saw her there once or twice too.”

  Ibby looked away, not sure she really wanted to know if Annabelle’s escapades included him.

  T-Bone shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking, but I never did nothing.”

  She kept her gaze on the window. “I wasn’t thinking that at all.”

  “Miss Ibby?” He touched her hand.

  When Ibby turned around, he was leaning toward her. She thought he was about to kiss her, so she leaned in and closed her eyes.

  “You know I like you, but—” T-Bone started to say.

  Ibby opened her eyes to find T-Bone sitting about as far away from her as he could, leaning against the door.

  “But you’re black and I’m white,” she finished for him, “and I’m only supposed to kiss white boys. At least that’s what Doll told me.”

  “She said that?”

  “Yes, after I kissed you at my party. I got a lecture.”

  “She gave me a lecture too. Said we’re like—”

  “Family. I know,” Ibby said.

  They sat there for a moment, not quite knowing what else to say.

  “Miss Ibby, there was something else I was trying to tell you just now. . . . The band I played with tonight is going on a tour of Europe, and they asked me to go with them.”

  “I’m really happy for you.” After a few moments, she said, “T-Bone?”

  “Yes, Miss Ibby?”

  She wanted to say I still like you, but she knew that would be selfish on her part, so she said, “Don’t forget to send me a postcard.”

  By now it was three in the morning. The roads were deserted. As T-Bone turned the car onto Prytania Street, Ibby suddenly felt exhausted. It had been a long, trying day. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed. Ibby hoped Fannie was asleep because she was probably going to be in trouble for coming home so late.

  Birdelia was just waking up when they pulled up in front of Fannie’s house. She stretched her arms and looked around.

  “What’s Poppy’s Cadillac doing in front of Fannie’s house?” She pointed to the car parked in front of them.

  “Can’t be his car—you took it home not too long ago. Weren’t everybody asleep?”

  Birdelia put her nose up against the glass, trying to get a better look. “That’s it. Recognize the dent in the back bumper.”

  No lights were on in Fannie’s house, the only illumination coming from a single streetlamp that cast a paltry haze over the street.

  “Sure is quiet,” Birdelia said as she got out of the car.

  T-Bone glanced over his shoulder at the old Cadillac. “Something’s not right. I better walk you to the door, make sure everything’s okay.”

  “I’ll come too. Not sitting out here all by my lonesome,” Birdelia chimed in.

  As they started up the front walk, a flash of light spooked them. All three stopped short.

  “What was that?” Birdelia whispered anxiously.

  “Came from the tree,” T-Bone whispered back.

  “What you mean?” Birdelia grabbed his shirt and held on.

  Then there was another flash. This time it was pointed at them.

  “What you doing here, boy?” came Crow’s voice, his head just visible above the hole in the ground. He was shining a flashlight at T-Bone.

  “Daddy, what’s going on?” T-Bone asked.

  Another head popped up. “Birdelia, why you all here?”

  “Doll?” Ibby inched closer. “That you?”

  “Oh Lawd, Miss Ibby. What y’all doing out this time a night?” Doll said.

  “Who’s there?” came another hushed voice from below.

  Doll looked down. “Shhhh, Mama—you gone wake Miss Fannie.”

  “Queenie’s down there?” Ibby asked as Crow disappeared back into the hole, taking the flashlight with him, leaving them once again in the shadows.

  “Shhhh,” Doll said again. “Why y’all up?”

  “Been to the chicken drop,” Birdelia said. “What you doing in that hole?”

  “I found it,” Crow said.

  “You remember where you put it?” Queenie asked.

  “Yes, woman. I found part of it. Lookey here.”

  “Found what?” T-Bone put his hands on his hips.

  Doll was standing on a ladder peeking out from the hole as Queenie and Crow searched with the flashlight for something down below.

  “Long story, brother,” Doll said before turning her head. “Mama, you get on out and let T-Bone come down. He got better eyes.”

  Soon Queenie’s head appeared. “Help your mama out, boy.”

  T-Bone took Queenie’s arm and led her out, then backed down the ladder and disappeared into the hole.

  “Birdelia, you skinny, go on down there,” Queenie said, “see if you can lend a hand, and take this garbage bag down with you.”

  “What the heck is going on?” Ibby peeped over the edge.

  Queenie took Ibby’s arm and led her to the front steps, away from
all the commotion. “Come have a seat next to me.”

  As Ibby sat, she could just make out Queenie’s profile in the dark. She was brushing off her dress. When she finished, she took Ibby’s hand in hers.

  “I didn’t think Miss Fannie knew, but the way she’s been pacing on this porch makes me think she must have seen me and Crow out here that night all those years ago.” Queenie rocked herself as she always did when she was thinking about something that upset her. “For a long time now, you been wanting to know about that room upstairs, the one at the top of the stairs. Well, child, I’ll tell you about that night. It weren’t too long after Master Balfour died and your father got sent off to boarding school. Miss Fannie, she’d only been home a couple of weeks after going to the hospital with a nervous breakdown. She was still fragile. I kept an eye on her, especially when Mr. Norwood would go off on his stints on the river. When I look back on it, I shouldn’t have gone off to the market that day. Things might have been different.”

  When no one was around, Fannie liked to listen to music. She’d go upstairs, open the windows, and turn up the phonograph until music filled the room. Occasionally a neighbor complained, but most of them had gotten used to the sounds of Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey in the late afternoon. On this particular day, Fannie was standing in the middle of her and Norwood’s bedroom in her bare feet, listening to “In the Mood” by Glenn Miller. She turned the phonograph up as loud as it would go, so loud the glass in the windows rattled, and danced around waving a silk scarf, letting it float around her. Then she’d stop and go the other way, spinning slowly with her eyes closed until she grew dizzy. It was her way of chasing away the loneliness when Norwood was away on the river. She’d been up in their room for several hours now, pretending she was with him in front of a big stage in New York. She’d never been to New York, but he’d promised he’d take her there one day.

  She was so wrapped up in her dreams that it took her several minutes to notice there was someone at the door to the bedroom. It was one of Queenie’s cousins, named Muddy, who came around every so often looking for money.

  “You have no business up here, Muddy. You know better.” She waved him away, annoyed that she’d been disturbed in the middle of a song.