Dollbaby

by Laura Lane McNeal

  “Can’t explain it, Mama. Just kind of growed on me over the years. Less, a course, you want it, Miss Ibby.”

  Ibby waved her hand. “You’re welcome to it.”

  “Where you gone put that thing? Not in my living room!” Queenie balked. “Nosiree, not in my house.”

  “Don’t worry, Mama, I find a good place for it,” Doll said.

  “It better be a place out a my sight,” Queenie said. “That all I ask. It give me a heart attack just thinking about it.”

  On Thursday morning, a limousine showed up to take them to the church. When they arrived, there was a waiting line to get into the front door.

  “Lawd, look at all them people,” Queenie said as the limo turned the corner. “Think the whole city done showed up.”

  “So much for a small funeral,” Doll added.

  They were escorted through a side door to a private chapel to wait for the service.

  “Look at that,” Ibby said, pointing to a sign over the door. “The Frances Bell Chapel. Fannie donated a chapel to the church. I wonder why she never told anybody about it.”

  It was a beautiful little chapel with stained-glass windows and embroidered cushions on the pews.

  “I bet they is a lot she never told nobody about,” Queenie said. “Could have lived to be a hundred, and we still wouldn’t know what she was all about.”

  At precisely ten-thirty, a deacon led them into the church filled with music being played by a harpist and instructed them to sit in the front row. Fannie’s closed casket, decorated with a mound of white lilies, rested on a cloth-draped gurney at the bottom of steps that led up to the altar.

  “I wish T-Bone could have been here,” Ibby whispered to Queenie. “That’s the one thing missing. Fannie would have loved for him to play at her funeral.”

  “I know, baby. He would have liked that, but there was just no way to get him back in time,” Queenie said.

  As the preacher came down the aisle carrying a cross atop a wooden pole, a soloist in the choir balcony began to sing “Amazing Grace.” When she finished, the preacher took his place behind the pulpit.

  “Please stand.” He raised his arms. “We are here to honor the passing of a very great lady. . . .”

  The rest of his words were a blur, but the first ones stuck with Ibby.

  We are here to honor a very great lady.

  After a sermon, the preacher said, “Fannie’s granddaughter, Ibby, has asked Saphronia Trout to say a few words. Saphronia?”

  Queenie scooted out of the pew and made her way up the steps. The preacher stepped aside, and Queenie came up and stood behind the pulpit.

  “Hello, everybody.” She poked at the microphone, testing it to make sure it was on. “Miss Ibby asked me to say a few words about her grandmother, but I don’t know if just a few would be enough to say what I want to say about Miss Fannie.”

  Queenie’s remark caused a buzz of laughter to erupt in the church.

  “Miss Fannie, she were like no other lady I ever met,” Queenie went on. “I worked for her for over forty years, which is why Miss Ibby asked me to say something about her. I knew her longer than just about anybody here, with a few exceptions.” She nodded at Kennedy and Sister Gertrude. “But I think we can all agree, Fannie lived her life the way she wanted to. She didn’t worry about what other people thought. That’s because she didn’t need to. She was a giving-back kind of person, and each person she touched”—she pointed at the audience—“and you know who you are, will always remember it. That’s why just about everybody in this church is here, she touched all of you in some way.”

  Ibby wept softly as she listened.

  When Queenie finished, she came and sat in the pew next to Ibby. She patted Ibby on the knee. Ibby grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

  Then the organist started playing “Flee as a Bird,” whereupon hundreds of white doves were let out of cages as the casket was wheeled out of the church. It was a beautiful gesture, Ibby thought as she watched the birds circle around overhead, then dart through the front doors over the heads of people leaving the church.

  “Well, you knew she had to do something crazy,” Queenie said as they got in the waiting limousine.

  After the service, they went to the cemetery, where Fannie was buried in the magnificent marble tomb she’d had built for herself. After the final words were said, Queenie threw in some baking powder for good measure, to make sure she rose up on Judgment Day and not the other way around.

  By the time the limo pulled into the driveway at the house, people were lined up all the way down the block.

  “Lawd, look at them all.” Queenie got out of the car and fussed at Crow. “Hurry up, old man. We got work to do.”

  Pretty soon, there was a dull roar in the house.

  Ibby didn’t feel much like talking so she made her way back to the kitchen. Queenie came in carrying an empty tray.

  “What you doing in here, having your own pity party? You get on out there and greet them folks. They came ’cause of Miss Fannie,” Queenie said as she loaded up another tray with mushrooms. “You hear me? This ain’t about you.”

  Queenie tugged at Ibby’s arm until she got up from the table, then she pushed Ibby into the dining room. There were so many people hovering around the table, picking at the food, that you would have thought no one had eaten for weeks. Ibby tried to squeeze past them, but a woman Ibby didn’t recognize tapped her on the shoulder and spoke to her as she stuffed boudin balls in her mouth.

  “I’m so sorry about your grandmother,” she said. “She was such a fine lady.”

  “Thank you,” Ibby said, brushing past her.

  Mr. Jeffreys, Commander Kennedy, the Reverend Jeremiah, Sister Gertrude, Mr. Henry, Mr. Pierce—they were all there. The neighbors on Prytania Street came, as did their maids at the special invitation of Queenie. The mayor made an appearance. Even Lucy the duck lady rolled around on her skates, relegated to the front yard because Queenie wouldn’t let her in the house with her ducks.

  When Ibby felt she’d spoken to everyone, she excused herself and went upstairs.

  The stained-glass window looked naked without the bust of Fannie holding court in front of it. Ibby went over to the door just across from the stairs, that one that had remained locked all these years. To her surprise, when she tried the knob, it turned. She opened the door to find a bare room with a large brown stain on the floor not far from the window. Ibby decided to leave the door open.

  She wandered over to the next door, to her father’s old room, and opened the door. She rubbed her hands over her arms. It had been eight years since her father died. It seemed a lifetime ago. So many things had changed since then. She let her hand linger on the knob before heading over to Balfour’s room. When she tried the handle, it was also unlocked. The room appeared to have been left untouched since the day Balfour died. There were bubblegum wrappers crumpled up on the table beside the bed, and a pair of shorts lying on the floor. Except for the spiderweb hanging from the ceiling fan, it looked as if Balfour had just gone down the hall to take a bath. She felt the room was still waiting for him, so she left the door open.

  “You’re all free now,” she said.

  Chapter Forty

  Doll and Queenie were in the kitchen cleaning up after everyone left.

  Queenie was at the sink washing dishes. “Let me ask you something, Doll. Miss Fannie, she say anything to you before she left in her car that day? You know, anything peculiar like?”

  Doll dried the dishes as Queenie handed them to her. “Well, she say she thought I ought to open my own business, a dressmaking shop, but it weren’t the first time she brought that up. Why, Mama, she say something to you?”

  “She said it about time I retire,” Queenie said. “Retire. Can you imagine?”

  “Well, you are getting up in years, Mama. You almost seventy. And yo
u been working since you were eleven years old.”

  “What that got to do with it? How was I gone retire with Miss Fannie around?” Queenie leaned on the counter. “You think she drove off into the lake on purpose?”

  Doll quit drying the dish she was holding and stared at the ground.

  “You know something you ain’t telling me?”

  Doll nodded.

  “Spit it out.” Queenie wiped her hands on her apron.

  “Mama, sit down,” Doll said.

  “Just tell me.”

  “No, Mama. Come sit. You’re not gone believe.”

  She sat down at the table and Doll came and sat next to her. “Doll, you got that look in your eyes. She say something to you that day?”

  Doll pulled Fannie’s pearls from her pocket and held them in the palm of her hand.

  “What you doing with those? I thought they were lost when Miss Fannie went into the lake.”

  “No, Mama. She done give them to me that morning.”

  “Why she do that?”

  “She called me into her room while she was getting dressed. Said she wanted to talk to me.”

  The day started like any other. Miss Fannie was in her room getting dressed before Mr. Henry came by to take her bets. Doll was passing in the hall when Miss Fannie called out to her.

  “Doll, that you?”

  “Yes, Miss Fannie.”

  “Come in here a moment, will you?”

  Doll stopped, wondering why Miss Fannie was being so polite. She usually just yelled Doll’s name out as loud as she could so Doll would come running.

  Doll stuck her head in the door. “You need something?”

  Fannie was at her dressing table, staring at herself in the mirror. She motioned for Doll to come over.

  “What you want?” Doll stood just inside the door. She wasn’t in the mood to listen to any of Fannie’s foolishness this morning.

  “I just want to talk to you,” Fannie said.

  “Well, hurry up ’cause I got lots of things to do.”

  “Please, Doll. Come over here.”

  Doll’s eyes grew wide. Miss Fannie never said “please.”

  Fannie was holding her pearls.

  “You need me to help you put your pearls on? That it?” Doll asked.

  “You know how much these pearls mean to me,” Fannie was saying.

  “’Course I do. Mr. Norwood give them to you on your wedding day. Not a day you ain’t had them on since.”

  Doll was afraid Fannie was about to launch into the story of how Mr. Norwood had given her the pearls. But Fannie just sat there, staring at the string of pearls in her hand.

  “Miss Fannie, something wrong? You thinking about Mr. Norwood?”

  Fannie looked up at her with steely eyes. There was something funny about those eyes today.

  “No, Doll, I was thinking about you,” she said.

  “Me? Why you thinking about me?”

  “Kneel down.”

  “What? Why?” Doll thought it was an odd request, even coming from Miss Fannie.

  “I want to talk to you face-to-face,” Fannie said.

  “Well, okay, but you could stand up, you know,” Doll said as she dropped to her knees.

  “I know how much you’ve always admired these pearls,” Fannie said.

  “Well, yeah. So?”

  “Give me your hand.”

  Miss Fannie is acting mighty strange this morning, Doll thought as she held out her palm.

  Fannie placed the pearls in her hand. “I want you to have them.”

  “What? No!” She tried to give them back. “You love them pearls.”

  “That’s why I want you to have them.” Fannie closed Doll’s fingers around them and placed her hand on top of hers. “Because I love you.”

  “Miss Fannie, you just feeling all sentimental this morning,” Doll said, trying to put the pearls back on the dresser.

  Fannie waved her off. “Doll, I mean it. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I want you to have them.”

  “Well, okay.” She stuck them in her pocket, sure Miss Fannie was going to change her mind later in the day. “I’ll just keep them for you until you want them back.”

  “You do that,” Fannie said as she put on some lipstick. “And I want you to start thinking about that dress shop you’ve been wanting to open. Now is as good a time as any, don’t you think?”

  Queenie shook her head. “Why didn’t you say nothing?”

  “What I’m gone say, Mama? If I had told you, you would have thought the same thing I did, that she was just having one of her moments and was gone ask for them pearls back when she returned.”

  “And she never came back,” Queenie mumbled.

  “No, she didn’t,” Doll said, looking down at the pearls in her hand.

  Queenie stood up and kissed her on the head. “I’m glad she gave them to you. You deserve them.”

  “Yeah, but Mama, what’s Miss Ibby gone say? Miss Fannie should have given them to her.”

  “We’ll let her know when the time is right. But not today. Just keep it to yourself until we can figure out how to tell her.”

  “Think I should just give them to her, pretend Miss Fannie never gave them to me?” Doll asked.

  “No, baby. Miss Fannie wanted you to have them. Miss Ibby will understand, once we tell her.”

  “Okay, if you say so.” Doll put the pearls back in her pocket.

  “When the time comes, we’ll tell her,” Queenie said. “I just got to figure out when that might be.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ibby was sound asleep at her apartment when the phone rang the next morning.

  “Mama wants you to come by our house,” Doll said. “And she wants you to bring one of them dolls.”

  “What? Why?” Ibby asked.

  “She just do. Don’t matter which one,” Doll said.

  “Okay, but I have to go over to Fannie’s house to pick one up. They’re up in my room where I left them when I moved out.”

  “No hurry, just come when you can,” Doll said.

  When Ibby pulled up in front of the house on Prytania Street, the weathervane on the roof was spinning around so fast the horse looked as if it were chasing its own tail.

  “Well, I guess you’re free too,” Ibby said as she got out of the car.

  She went in through the front door and stood in the hall. It was strange being in this house, all alone, the only sound coming from the swaying of the pendulum of the grandfather clock. The dining room table where Fannie usually sat in the mornings was empty, not even a place setting. Ibby caught her reflection in the gold-leaf mirror over the fireplace, just the way she had that first day when her mother dropped her off. She’d been a scared little girl who thought her life was ending. She was staring back as a grown woman now who knew that her life hadn’t ended that day—it had just started.

  Ibby went upstairs to her old room. She hadn’t been up here in two years, not since she’d moved out to go to college. Her record player was still sitting on the dresser, an album still in it. There had always been a funny smell to the room. Doll called it “that old house smell” that lingered no matter how much she tried to disguise it with Pine-Sol or room fresheners.

  Ibby went into the turret room, where all the dolls Fannie had given her were sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall, staring back at her with unblinking eyes. There were seven of them, one for each birthday up until she started college. Ibby couldn’t imagine what Queenie wanted with the dolls. Maybe she was just feeling sentimental about Fannie this morning and wanted something else to remember her by.

  When Ibby got to the Trouts’ home, Birdelia was waiting for her on the porch. She ushered Ibby inside with a sleepy half-smile. Crow was having coffee at a small dinette table
.

  “Morning, Miss Ibby,” he said wearily as he got up to greet her.

  Ibby motioned for him to sit back down. “How is everybody?”

  “All tuckered out,” he said. “But in one piece. That’s what counts.”

  “Look, Miss Ibby.” Birdelia pointed at something on a table next to Fannie’s old television that had found a home near the far wall. “You like it?”

  Ibby let out a small laugh when she realized she was looking at the bust of Fannie, adorned with a felt fedora and Mardi Gras beads.

  Doll came toward them, dressed in a pair of slacks and a sleeveless green turtleneck. “Don’t tell Mama. She ain’t noticed.”

  “Not yet, but she gonna soon enough,” Birdelia chuckled.

  “Mama’s back in her room lying down. She still a little worn out from yesterday.”

  “I can come back,” Ibby offered.

  “No, no. She has something she wants to say.” Doll motioned for Ibby to follow her. When they got to the back of the house, Doll stuck her head in the door. “Mama, Miss Ibby’s here.”

  Queenie waved Ibby inside. “Come over here, baby. Please excuse me for not getting up.”

  The room smelled of lilac and mothballs. Queenie was still in her nightgown, her gray hair hanging loosely around her neck. Ibby cautiously sat on the edge of the bed, holding the doll that she’d asked her to bring.

  “I remember that first time you came to visit Miss Fannie. You were a shy little thing. Had that Captain Kangaroo haircut, just like your grandmother. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember. I was terrified,” Ibby said. “Mama had convinced me that Fannie was a witch.”

  “Fannie was many things, but a witch wasn’t one of them,” Queenie chuckled. Then she grew serious. “Speaking of your mama. Listen, child, I know your mama passed a few years ago. I’m sorry.”

  “Doll told you?”

  “Sure she did. Miss Fannie knew, too. Mr. Rainold told her not too long after you found out. But Miss Fannie, she never said nothing on account you told Doll not to say anything. Maybe that’s why she never told you.”