Blanche Passes Go

by Barbara Neely

  “You might say that.” Daisy turned to look at Blanche. “I just want to git away from all the…you know, all that’s happened. To Bobby and Maybelle and…and all. So I’m going to the army.” She gave Blanche a snappy salute but her eyes remained sad. “Me and Maybelle useta talk about joining up before her and Bobby, and then…”

  Blanche hesitated. What difference would it really make to Daisy that Jason Morris and not David Palmer had killed Bobby? This whole business was running Daisy out of town. Leave the girl alone, Blanche told herself. By the time the Attorney General got Palmer’s note, if it really existed, Daisy would be living another life. And as far as she knew, Palmer’s message to the Attorney General didn’t say anything about how Bobby had died. From what was being said on the radio and in the papers, Bobby’s crash and David Palmer’s were just two more in a long string of accidents on a curve in the road that had already killed a number of other people. Nobody was likely to be charged with deaths that happened there. Better warning signs, guardrails, and even a straightening of the road were being talked about. So it was probably all over. A let-sleeping-dogs-lie kind of situation as far as Daisy was concerned, Blanche thought. But she couldn’t stop herself from asking: “You heard about David Palmer?”

  Daisy blinked and nodded.

  “He didn’t do it,” Blanche said as if she hadn’t been in on her own thinking. “He wasn’t the man Maybelle was seeing. He didn’t kill her. Or Bobby. Although he did know about…”

  Daisy buckled like a piece of bent cardboard.

  “Daisy, what’s wrong?” Blanche took her arm until she was steady.

  Daisy clutched her chest and stared at Blanche. “Oh my god! Oh sweet Jesus!” She hid her face in her hands.

  “Daisy, what is it?” Blanche pulled on Daisy’s arms, trying to uncover her face.

  Daisy lowered her hands and stared at Blanche. “It’s like Maybelle put a curse on us. First Bobby and now me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Blanche looked around. There was a bench half a block down; she took Daisy’s arm and pulled her along toward it.

  Daisy’s eyes were wide and blurry with tears. “It was a accident, Miz Blanche, I swear! It was a accident! Bobby just pushed her. He didn’t even slap her or…He didn’t mean to really hurt her, but she fell and hit her head. And she…died.” She sank onto the bench.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Blanche was suddenly short of breath. Her bowels grumbled. “You trying to tell me that Bobby…? But what about his alibi?”

  “We didn’t know what to…Bobby put Maybelle in the car and I drove her to where they found her. I carried…I rolled her body down the…so nobody would know she’d been up there in the woods where Bobby and that man was hunting, so…”Daisy was sobbing now.

  Blanche remembered the feeling she’d gotten from Daisy last time they’d talked about Maybelle. There’d been something stiff and strange in Daisy’s attitude that Blanche hadn’t been able to identify. It made sense now. She felt weak and dizzy. “But how did Maybelle get…?”

  “Bobby said he had to talk to Maybelle. He asked me to bring her up to Briarmount to meet him that night. This New York yankee was payin’ Bobby to take him huntin’, so Bobby didn’t want to leave him up there where they was campin’ ’cause he hadn’t been paid yet. But Bobby knew that city man’d be tuckered out early, so he told me to bring Maybelle to…He wanted to talk to her about…”

  “About running around on him,” Blanche said.

  Daisy nodded.

  “What did you mean about Maybelle putting a curse on you?”

  “Oh, Miz Blanche, I feel so awful…I…”

  “Daisy! Tell me what the hell you’re talking about!” Blanche shouted. Two people across the street stopped and stared for half a second before going on.

  “All right, Daisy,” Blanche said in a quieter voice. “Just take a couple of deep breaths. Now tell me.”

  “I told Bobby what you said, and I told them others, too.”

  “What do you mean, what I said? What did you tell Bobby? Them who?” Blanche could feel the last of her patience drying up and blowing away like dust. “What did you tell Bobby, exactly?”

  “I told Bobby what you said!” Daisy hissed. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were angry, and something else Blanche didn’t understand. “About that David Palmer bein’ the man Maybelle was runnin’ around with.”

  Blanche looked at her with surprise. “But, Daisy, you’re the one who said…”

  Daisy shook her head vehemently. “No, no, Miz Blanche, you said. Maybelle told me she had a boyfriend with plenty money, but she wouldn’t tell me who.”

  Blanche’s head was beginning to throb. “But, Daisy, don’t you remember? You told me Bobby found Palmer’s Sons of Farleigh key and that Bobby…”

  Daisy shook her head again. “No! You said.”

  Blanche tried to dredge up all the times she’d talked with Daisy. Had she been so intent on nailing Palmer, so intent on finding some part of his life that matched what he’d done to her instead of the good-guy crap she’d been hearing about him, that she’d heard more in Daisy’s words than had actually been said? All the time that she’d thought Daisy was giving her information, was it really the other way round? She couldn’t make herself remember. She did remember what Palmer had said at the Teahouse, about Bobby’s coming to see him and saying he had something of Palmer’s.

  “But Maybelle did have the key!”

  Daisy frowned at her.

  “The key from Palmer’s key chain,” Blanche said.

  Daisy shrugged. “Bobby didn’t know nothin’ ’bout no key.” Her face got even redder. “He didn’t find nothin’! I was just saying that ’cause I was tired of Bobby being bad-mouthed. He didn’t know nothin’ until I tole him what you tole me.”

  “So you told Bobby that Palmer was Maybelle’s other man and that Palmer was missing something from his key chain.” Rocks had settled in Blanche’s stomach by the time she finished speaking.

  Daisy bowed her head. “I begged Bobby not to go near that Palmer, but Bobby wouldn’t listen. He said the least Palmer could do was pay for taking Maybelle away from him. So Bobby went to see him, and…”

  Blanche heard Jason Morris telling Palmer that he’d taken care of Bobby.

  Daisy was still talking. “…then Bobby was dead, and I was so mad and so hurt, I didn’t know what to do. When you told me how Bobby’s accident wasn’t no accident at all, well, all I could think about was that dog Palmer walkin’ around free, actin’ like he was somebody when he…So I tole Maybelle’s daddy and her brothers and Bobby’s brothers and uncles about Maybelle and Palmer and the key Bobby was supposed to have.”

  “But you didn’t tell them that Bobby pushed Maybelle, and that you moved her body, did you?” Blanche didn’t know why she asked, since she already knew the answer.

  Daisy looked up and down the street as though searching for a place to hide. “I didn’t tell ’em about what happened to Maybelle. Or about Bobby tryin’ to get money from…”

  “So you told Bobby’s and Maybelle’s people that Bobby found Palmer’s key when he found Maybelle’s body.”

  Daisy nodded.

  Blanche waited for her mind to stop spinning. “Well, that doesn’t mean the families…You don’t think…Maybe it was just a…” There was no way of really knowing. Maybe Bobby’s and Maybelle’s families had gotten revenge. Maybe Palmer had really had a car accident before the families had time to do anything to him.

  “Oh, Daisy, Pm so sorry. I was so sure Palmer was the one who killed Maybelle and Bobby that I…”

  “It don’t matter how sorry you are! I still got the wrong man killed.” Daisy’s voice was thick with tears.

  Blanche had no intention of telling her that Bobby would likely still be alive if he hadn’t tried to get money out of
Palmer. She’d already made enough grief for poor Daisy. “You don’t know that for sure, Daisy. Palmer could have just had an accident.”

  Daisy wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Like Bobby,” she said.

  Blanche couldn’t look at her. If she was going to tell Daisy who had really killed Bobby, this was the time. But she couldn’t do it. What good would it do Daisy to know? She couldn’t go back to Bobby’s people and tell them she’d made a mistake about Palmer and she now knew who’d really killed Bobby. She couldn’t go to the Sheriff, because then she would have to tell the truth about Maybelle. So why tell her? Why should both of them carry it around? “Right,” Blanche said. “Like Bobby.”

  The two women stared at each other. Blanche could see misery circling around Daisy like buzzards around roadkill.

  “Oh, Miz Blanche, I feel so bad about telling Bobby about that Palmer.”

  “I know you feel bad, Daisy, honey, and I feel bad for getting you involved in all this. But I want you to remember, Bobby didn’t have to push Maybelle. Bobby didn’t have to try to get money out of David Palmer just because you told him Palmer killed Maybelle. We all played a part in this mess, but we ain’t all equally responsible. You understand?”

  Daisy looked uncertain, but she’d stopped crying. “I guess.”

  Blanche rose from the bench; Daisy followed her.

  “Well, good-bye, Miz Bl—”

  “Daisy, I gotta ask you something else. Somebody in a truck tried to run me down. Do you know…”

  Daisy hid her face again, sighed, then looked at Blanche. “I wasn’t really tryin’ to hurt you, Miz Blanche, I just wanted to scare you off. You was talkin’ about goin’ to the Sheriff and tellin’ him Bobby had something when he didn’t. I was hopin’ you’d think that Palmer knew you…I thought…I was just tryin’ to make everything work out for Bobby and me. I’m real sorry.” She put out her hand for Blanche to shake, then changed her mind and hugged Blanche instead.

  “Look out for yourself, Daisy.”

  Daisy stepped back. “I’ll try, Miz Blanche, I will.” She turned and walked quickly down the street, her pink floral dress waving like a flag around her substantial thighs.

  Blanche watched Daisy until she turned the corner, then sank down on the bench again. She thought about what Miz Cora had said about David Palmer’s death and the pleasure Blanche should and, to some degree, did take in it. But at the very, very center of herself she knew that she’d rather Palmer were still alive. She didn’t want him alive so that his life could go merrily along, or even so that she’d have another chance to try to bring him down. She wanted him alive so that she wouldn’t have to carry the weight of knowing she was partly responsible for his death, no matter how light the load.

  THIRTY-THREE

  NO MORE

  Blanche lived so deeply within herself for the next few days that she felt as though a Plexiglas wall stood between her and everyone else. She sleepwalked through her work. When she wasn’t working she was either sleeping—much more than usual—or doing what she could only call sitting with herself: in a chair by the window or on the stoop, letting herself be, unattached from everything that had happened. Thoughts of Palmer and Bobby and Daisy and Jason attempted to take center stage in her mind; she didn’t let them hold her attention but, rather, pass through her mind like balloons sailing slowly across a meadow and then up and up until they disappeared.

  She’d had a long talk with Ardell about how she was feeling, but it hadn’t changed anything. She was still locked in some outer room of herself, waiting for the time when it would be okay for her to take up her life again. Before this could happen, she knew that she needed something she couldn’t name but would know when it came to her.

  There’d been no story in the newspaper or on the radio about Jason’s involvement with Maybelle or about the Palmer note. But Clarice brought the scuttlebutt to their last bicentennial catering job:

  “Yeah, child. Mr. Henry say Attorney General over there in Durham got a letter from the dead man saying his best friend was messin’ round with Maybelle Jenkins. Well, they looked into it and seem like the dead man was messin’ with her hisself. Mr. Henry say Sheriff figure to let sleepin’ dogs be.”

  Blanche nearly dropped a plate when Clarice used the same phrase Blanche had used in thinking about telling Daisy the truth about Bobby’s death. Blanche didn’t have room for any more disappointment, so the news from Clarice hadn’t rocked her. Her attempt to hurt David Palmer was truly over. Summer was passing on. She decided that tomorrow she would clean the entire Miz Alice and give both of them a fresh start. Thelvin was gone for another couple of days; she needed to do something with all of her unused sexual energy.

  Mid-afternoon the next day, she stepped out onto her front stoop to give the floors inside time to dry. Gwennie, her neighbor, and another woman were standing down the street. They were facing the girls’ house, talking and shaking their heads. Blanche sat down on the stoop.

  “Bitch! I’ll make you wish you was dead!” a man’s voice boomed from the house across the street. Blanche could feel that house’s distress like a hot wind on her face.

  She looked up and down the street, hoping the girls were outside and safe, but they were nowhere around. Something crashed against a wall in their house, and a woman shrieked like a kicked dog.

  Blanche hurried back inside and slammed the door. She leaned against it as though this could block out sound, then covered her ears and moved to the corner of the room farthest from the door.

  “Why don’t you run, you stupid cow?” she thought, as though she had direct access to the woman’s inner ear. She lowered her hands and stood up straight, shocked by the stupidity of her own question. How could she not have seen that this woman was under the knife, just as she’d been, just as Ardell and Mama had tried to explain to her? They were all the same, those raping, kicking, punching, killing motherfuckers. This was what they wanted: a woman cringing in a corner, a woman begging, begging him to be careful with that knife, that gun, that rope around her neck, that threat to destroy her face, hurt her kids, or whatever else the rotten shit used to scare her out of herself, to keep her from running. Sweet Ancestors! Even in death, how she hated that man. She pushed herself away from the wall.

  She looked wildly around, finally flinging open the kitchen cabinet. She grabbed a large pot and searched the drawer for a wooden spoon, rushed out of the house and across the street, and stopped directly in front of the little girls’ porch. Big things, like chairs, were being thrown around inside, punctuated by slaps and groans. Blanche raised her pot and banged its bottom with the spoon as hard as she could, over and over and over.

  With each bang, Blanche felt something loosening inside—like she’d felt when she’d told Bunnie she’d been raped—something opening up and letting her breathe more deeply, be more present than she’d felt in a while. Her questions about whether Palmer would have raped her if she hadn’t been taking a forbidden bath on the job, if she’d remembered to lock the bathroom door, if she had tried to fight despite his knife—all her secret worry that it was these mistakes, her mistakes, that had caused her rape—were revealed to her as utter and total bullshit. If she’d been strutting down the street buck-naked, he didn’t have a right to touch her. No. If that woman across the street told her husband he was the worst fuck in history and gave him dog food for dinner, he didn’t have a right to hit her. No. Just because women were blamed for everything but good luck didn’t give nobody a right to do them wrong. And it didn’t mean they were supposed to take it when they were done wrong. All this woman-hurting shit had to stop.

  “Stop!” she shouted for herself as she banged her pot. “Stop!” she shouted for Mama. “Stop!” she shouted for poor, lovesick Daisy. “Stop!” she shouted for dead Maybelle.

  Maybe the only way to end this mess was for every woman to stand up for every other woman, even if she c
ouldn’t stand up for herself.

  “Stopstopstopstopstop!” she shouted as she banged on her pot.

  A short, wiry, red-brown man rushed out of the house and glared at her. His fingers formed and unformed fists; sweat marked the armpits of his shirt.

  “Bitch! Is you crazy?!”

  Blanche kept banging and shouting.

  “Get the fuck away from here before I…”

  “Kiss my big black ass!” she screamed at him, ready to run if she had to—after she gave him a shot of the pepper spray in her pocket—but he didn’t move toward her.

  “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!” Gwennie and the other woman across the street began shouting, clapping their hands in time.

  The man stood on the porch breathing hard as the women from across the street came to stand beside Blanche. She watched his eyes shifting from woman to woman.

  “All you bitches is crazy!” he screamed and brushed past them. He jumped into his car and sped off down the street as though he expected as well as deserved to be chased.

  Blanche was glad Gwennie said she’d go inside and check on the girls and their mother. Blanche didn’t want to see. One more bit of rage would surely burn her alive. But she did go home and call information. She wrote down the name and the number of the new women’s shelter, then slipped the piece of paper with the number on it under the woman’s screen door.

  Later that evening, Blanche once again went out and sat on her stoop. There was no one else around, and everything was quiet, not a lingering vibe from that afternoon. Even the house across the street felt less miserable. Blanche watched the night chase the day away and wondered what would come next for her, in a year or so, when the kids were gone.

  She liked catering work, but she didn’t think Ardell really needed a partner. Anyway, after all that had happened since she’d been back, she didn’t know if she could stand living in Farleigh again. Maybe the town was once again giving her a “Get out!” message, as it had when she rushed away from here for Boston. She just didn’t know. She also wasn’t sure Carolina Catering could support them both without the bicentennial business. She didn’t want to have to do day work to support herself as a caterer. And there were the kids’ school needs to consider. Even with scholarships, loans, and jobs to go along with her education insurance policy, they still might need her help. Ardell had started catering lunches for business meetings, but how much could you make on sandwiches? And if business was strong enough to support them both, Blanche didn’t know if she was ready to give up city life—or to work with Ardell. She didn’t doubt they still loved each other, but she wasn’t sure it was a love that could take daily in-person contact around a business that Ardell expected to change her whole life. Only one thing was sure: once the kids were in college, she’d be out of that racist Boston in a heartbeat. But then what? The idea of trying to establish herself in New York again made Boston look good. The problem was that she had no idea what would be better. The question of Thelvin hung in the back of her mind, but she didn’t feel she had to answer it now. One thing about a railroad man, he could get to her pretty much wherever she was—if she wanted him to.