Louisiana Bigshot

by Julie Smith

  “I’m Talba Wallis, ma’am. My mama calls me Sandra.” The old woman turned off her hose and stepped forward to the sidewalk. “Oh, law. Sandra Wallis. Ya ever find the Reverend Scruggs that time?”

  Nothing wrong with the woman’s memory, either. Several months ago, she’d rifled the church records to find the former minister’s address.

  “I did. Have you seen him lately? His wife’s about to die.”

  “Ella? I’m sorry to hear that. I always liked Ella. I better take ’em over some food.”

  “I’m sure they’d appreciate that,” Talba said, wondering if this meant she was off the hook and figuring it probably didn’t. “He sent me back to see you.”

  “Oh?” Miz Lura might have cataracts, but her eyes were hawklike.

  “He says he baptized my baby sister—the girl my daddy had with—uh…” Her throat closed on the words; Miz Lura didn’t make her say them.

  “I know who you mean, child. I know who you mean. You come in, won’t you? I’ll pour us a nice glass of iced tea.” Miz Lura lived in a funny, countrified section of the Ninth Ward, where the houses, unlike Miz Clara’s, had little pockets of dirt where you could grow flowers. They were as small as hers, though, and this was a Victorian-era shotgun that dolls could have lived in. It was painted plain white, rather out of keeping with its gingerbread. Miz Lura probably had a no-nonsense son or grandson who helped her keep it up. Talba would have been shocked if it hadn’t been neat as the lady herself, and she wasn’t disappointed.

  There wasn’t much furniture, and what there was looked like items the son or grandson had passed on when his family could afford something better. The plaid sofa just didn’t seem like the kind of thing Miz Lura would pick—particularly to go with the fake Oriental rug and gold brocade chair she’d probably inherited from her own mother; or maybe from a lady she’d worked for.

  A nice picture of Dr. King hung over a table with a little Virgin Mary statue on it, though to Talba’s knowledge, Baptists didn’t go in much for Mary. Perhaps somebody’d given it to her. There were votive candles on the table, too, set on an embroidered white starched cloth—something you’d never see in Miz Clara’s house.

  Miz Lura saw Talba looking at her altar. She said, “My friend down the street’s a Catholic—says when she asks the blessed Virgin for something, she gets results. She give me that when my grandson was sick last year—nearly died of the sugar.”

  Diabetes.

  Talba smiled. “Bet he got better, didn’t he?” If he hadn’t, she figured Mary’d have gotten the boot.

  “He’s as fine today as this fine weather. I promised Miz Mary I’d keep her in candles long as I lived if she’d do me that favor. I’m going to keep my promise, and I don’t care if you tell ya mama.”

  Talba had to smile again. Miz Clara probably would be scandalized. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “How is Miz Clara?”

  Talba said she was mean as ever and they went on like that for awhile, till finally Talba said, “Reverend Scruggs says I ought to go find out whatever happened to my baby sister.” Miz Lura squeezed some lemon in her tea and stirred it, trying to decide what to make of that. Finally, she said, “That sounds like a mighty Christian notion.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.” Statements like that made Talba distinctly uncomfortable. “But he did make me curious.”

  “I should think so.”

  “He couldn’t remember her name, though. Or her mama’s.”

  “Don’t tell me he thought I would!”

  “Well, no, ma’am, I don’t think so. I think he thought you know where the baptismal records were.”

  Ms. Lura pursed her lips and sucked a little bit. “Let me see. Let me see—1983, was it?”

  “Somewhere around there.”

  “Well, you know, we had that fire in ’eighty-nine.”

  “Fire?” Talba asked. Ever since her mama stopped making her go to Sunday school and church every week, she hadn’t kept up with church history.

  “Lightning struck our steeple—wasn’t the first time, either.”

  Don’t giggle, Talba said to herself. Wrong audience for any of your jokes.

  But Miz Lura collapsed laughing herself, her body folding, her small brown hand slapping her skinny leg, which she simultaneously used to stomp the floor. (In ladylike fashion, of course.) “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Yes, Lord, we must have had some sinners among us that year. Not much damage, but it did destroy the storeroom.”

  “Where the files were,” Talba said. She’d already figured it out. “You wouldn’t remember…”

  Miz Lura was already shaking her head. “I never even knew that baby name. The mama, though. I remember her name.”

  “You do? How on earth can you remember something like that?”

  Miz Lura nearly died laughing again. “I’m ninety-two years old, Sandra. Some folks say I’m losing my memory, but I can sho’ tell you one thing—Miz Lura Blanchard know her own name. Yes, ma’aaaam. Sho’ do.”

  “Miz Lura, you were not my daddy’s paramour—I know that for a fact.”

  “No, ma’am. I shore wasn’t. But that don’t mean I don’t know my own name.” She fell to cackling again, really enjoying this, whatever it was. “That woman name was Lura. Just as sho’ as you’re born. Mmmm-hmmm. Lura. You can take that to the bank.”

  “Really? Lura like you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Lura like me. Mmmm-hmmmm.” She fanned herself with a round cardboard fan attached to a tongue depressor and sporting a picture of Jesus as a white man.

  “And what was her last name?”

  “Well, now, that I don’t know. Never did, probably. But one thing I can tell you—she was a Methodist. Went to that church over by Claiborne. You know the one?”

  A Methodist. What a thing to remember after all those years.

  She left Miz Lura with promises to come again, thinking that if the woman had gone to the trouble of living ninety-two years, she at least deserved a visitor now and then.

  That afternoon she phoned Darryl and reported her progress, feeling more peaceful and in tune with him than she had for a long time. Then she went in the kitchen and started cooking again, for Corey and his wife Michelle.

  Corey had fulfilled the Wallis family destiny. He’d actually embraced one of Miz Clara’s chosen careers for her children, though the lowliest of them. Corey was a mere doctor, but Miz Clara was happy to take what she could get. She was tickled pink in fact, and Talba resented him for making her look bad. But as Talba said in her own defense, in a democratic country, a baroness wasn’t going to get elected president, or even to Congress, and Miz Clara would just have to live with it.

  It was bad enough Corey was the favorite child—at any rate, the one most often bragged on—but Talba didn’t like his wife, either. Why, she wasn’t sure—a kind of reverse snobbery, perhaps. Michelle came from a prominent Creole family, Creole in the sense of light-skinned black. Michelle’s skin was very light indeed, her hair very nearly straight. Was this what bugged Talba, the simple fact that she was so different? Sometimes she thought so. But it wasn’t nearly so simple—it was more that she sensed a deep snobbery and disapproval coming out of Michelle, which in itself wasn’t so bad. But the phoniness surrounding that made Talba plain tired—stuff like trying to compliment Talba on her taste when she clearly hated her showy baroness clothes.

  Or maybe it was nothing deep and psychological at all. Maybe Michelle really was the narrow-minded little airhead Talba thought she was.

  Miz Clara was frying the chicken and making cornbread to go with that and the greens. Talba was supposed to do the rest of the meal, and though she knew Michelle would prefer something like brown rice and a fruit salad, she took a perverse pleasure in mashing the potatoes with a ton of butter and milk and whipping up the peach pie. Well, the pie was for Corey—he dearly loved peach pie.

  “Be sure and make plenty,” Miz Clara said. “Remember, she eating for two.”
>
  Hope she gains a ton of weight, Talba thought. The one thing she could identify about Michelle that really did make her jealous was the woman’s snaky body. Formerly snaky—she was about to have the first Wallis grandchild, a fact about which Talba felt deeply ambivalent. (Of course Michelle’s family—the high-and-mighty Tircuits—were probably highly embarrassed about it, which was the irony of it all.) But to Talba, though the Wallises had neither name nor social position, their greater intelligence made them superior.

  “There the doorbell now.”

  Talba was just pulling her pie out. “Go get on your shoes, Mama. I’ll let them in.”

  Miz Clara already had her wig on, but she hated getting out of her blue slippers before she had to. She cleaned white people’s houses for a living; she liked to give her feet a rest when she could.

  Talba had to hug the damn woman; there was no way around it. Michelle’s eyes flicked over her. Talba had on orange jeans and a lime-green T-shirt—not her performance clothes, which Michelle plain didn’t get, but still chosen more or less to irritate her sister-in-law, who wore black slacks and a crisp white blouse.

  Talba said, “You look nice,” and watched Michelle struggle to think of a way to return the compliment.

  “Big as a house,” Corey said, but she wasn’t. She looked like a snake that had recently eaten. “Nice pants, Little Bird.”

  “You mean that ironically, of course.”

  “Of course.” He grinned.

  For a long time, there’d been tension between them; lately, they were feeling easier with one another, and Talba felt she shouldn’t blow it by being mean to his wife. She resolved to be good.

  “Well, come on in and sit down. Mama went to get her shoes.”

  She got out some wine and Perrier (for Michelle), and they sat for awhile, talking of the Saints and the weather; when Miz Clara joined them, they got serious about baby names and due dates. They were well into dinner before Michelle asked Talba about her work.

  “We seem to have a lot of domestic cases these days. You know—sitting in a car waiting for some guy to come out of a motel with his sweetie.”

  “How sordid! You mean you really do that?”

  Talba picked up an entire breast and bit into it. (She’d have cut it if Michelle hadn’t been there.) “Somebody’s got to,” she said. Michelle’s delight in her own unworldliness rankled Talba, who tended to respond by baiting. “Anyway, I enjoy it. I love nailing the cheating bastards.”

  “Ah! Language.” Miz Clara still acted as if Talba were a child. Everyone ignored her.

  “It’s a part of life I wouldn’t care to know about,” Michelle said.

  “Well, I hope to God you never do. I caught the fiancé of a good friend the other night—it could happen to anybody.” Corey spoke up. “Talba, that’s enough.”

  “Oh, well.” She turned to Michelle with a raised eyebrow. “Anybody not married to my brother, I mean.”

  But the damage was done, and the evening never completely recovered from it. Nobody who was pregnant wanted to think about infidelity.

  Why do I do stuff like that? Talba asked herself when they had gone. She started noodling at the keyboard.

  The first thing that came out was a parody of an old song:

  Who’s the worst person I know?

  Sister-in-law—sister-in-law!

  Damn, she thought, Ernie K-Doe beat me to it.

  The next thing wasn’t her usual style at all, which tended to be more narrative than didactic. It was a kind of admonitory rap:

  Woman born of money

  Woman born of pride

  Woman born of Daddy King

  And spawned of Mama Queen

  Woman born of everything

  Gets sold on the TV screen—

  Woman, you no woman—

  Woman, you a girl!

  You think abortion shouldn’t be

  ’Cause people ought to be smart

  You think you too good to be taxed

  ’Cause the poor such lazy bums.

  Well, let me ask you somethin’ big—

  What you do, ’cept for your nails?

  What you do, whitey-pants?

  What’s smart about bein’ so dumb?

  You get a little piece of luck,

  You think you queen of the sky

  Anything bad ever happens—

  You run to your daddy and cry.

  Listen, woman born of money,

  Woman born of pride

  You ain’t nobody special

  ’Cause you had a nice smooth ride.

  Listen, woman born of money,

  Listen, smooth life-rider,

  You still a girl, but

  You still be ridin’.

  Your nails ain’t done,

  Your show ain’t over—

  What happens in the next two acts?

  What if the fat lady sings off-key?

  What if the curtain falls down on your ass?

  You ready for any of that?

  It wasn’t a poem she could ever read in public—might not even be a poem at all, but it was a start. And for now it was good enough. It got to the heart of what bugged her about Michelle—and about certain white people, and anybody at all who thought they were better than anybody else. They weren’t really complete people. Maybe that was okay if they weren’t in your family; but when they were about to become your niece or nephew’s mother, it tried your patience. Or so she told herself. Miz Clara would probably say she ought to go to church and leave the judgin’ to God.

  Chapter Five

  Matter of fact, Miz Clara didn’t say a word; just grumped around the next morning, making Talba feel duly reprimanded.

  Sandra, ya just jealous, she might have said. She’d said it before. Or, Why can’t ya just accept ya brother’s choice? Which was more to the point.

  This time Talba had an answer: You never know, Mama. Maybe I will. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet.

  Poetry was very clarifying, she found. She wished she’d written the poem before the dinner.

  She went off to work as grumpy as Miz Clara, and when she got a call from Jason Wheelock, she was in no mood. She gave him her frosty baroness voice: “What can I do for you?” He paused a long time before he spoke. Good, she thought. He’s properly intimidated. “I need to see you.” His voice was low and serious. “It’s about—”

  She cut him off. “I know what it’s about. I don’t think we have anything to say to each other.”

  “Look, we really need to talk. Please…” He sounded as if he were about to cry. When he paused to compose himself, she dived in.

  “I really wouldn’t be interested.” She hung up with a momentary flash of satisfaction. Let him suffer, she thought. I’m not going to put up with him coming over here and telling me there really was a perfectly plausible explanation. Uh-uh. Not in this life.

  She went back to the day’s supply of background checks—Eddie loved giving her these, because he hated anything you did with a computer, and she quite enjoyed doing them. She’d hardly gotten her teeth into the first one when she heard the outer door open and close, then a man’s voice talking to the receptionist, Eileen Fisher. In a moment, Eileen came in, her plain, round face strained and worried.

  “Talba. Jason Wheelock to see you. He says it’s urgent.”

  “Damn!”

  “I could say you’re in a meeting with a client.”

  But it was too late for that. Talba heard a man’s footsteps coming down the short hall, and then Jason was looming behind Eileen. Talba had never seen him up close, but her impression was of a happy-go-lucky guy, someone who didn’t really want the responsibilities of adulthood. The man she was looking at looked like he’d just lost his grandmother.

  Did I do that? she thought.

  She really enjoyed domestic cases. She liked catching the lying bastards and rubbing their noses in their own muck. If it broke up their romances, fine—they should damn well have thought of it before they cheat
ed. She wasn’t about to get sympathetic at this late date.

  She said, “Jason, I really don’t have time to see you today,” and was in the act of rising to show him out when he said, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Babalu passed away Tuesday night.”

  Passed away. It was such a mild phrase and told you so little, designed to buy time till you could handle the details. To Talba, it sounded like some kind of peaceful escape, as if the person had simply gone to bed and never awakened. But it was almost never that. There was always a story. And the story usually involved words that weren’t nearly so soft.

  The news was so shocking Talba paused, bent with her butt in the air, for way too long. Eileen looked like she was about to push the panic button. Her head kept swiveling toward Eddie’s office. Talba really couldn’t deal with her right now. She straightened up. “What happened?”

  “I’d like to come in and tell you.” He spoke calmly, sounding like the adult she hadn’t pegged him for.

  “Of course. Eileen, it’s all right.” The receptionist fled. “Sit down.” They both sat, and Talba waited, searching her memory for any hint of poor health from Babalu.

  Suicide! she thought, and the thought was like a blow. What if she couldn’t handle Jason’s betrayal?

  “She died of an overdose,” he said.

  “Overdose? Of prescription drugs?” But Babalu never took drugs.

  “Of heroin.”

  “Heroin! She’s the last person…”

  He nodded. “That’s right. She was murdered.”

  Talba shook her head. “I don’t know if I’m ready for all this. Why are you so sure?”

  “Because she didn’t use heroin.”

  “She did once, if that’s what killed her.”

  Now he shook his head, “She didn’t. She was a healer. I knew her. She. Didn’t. Do. Heroin.” Each word separate, jaw clenched, as if he’d been having an argument about it.

  “What do the police think?”

  “They think she committed suicide.” His delivery was sullen, that of a child harangued by authorities. “They found your report.”

  “Suicide occurred to me, too.”

  His head was virtually flapping in the breeze again. “No way. She. Didn’t. Do. Heroin. Therefore she couldn’t have committed suicide.”