Free love or not, what that man ever saw in her, I will never know, Queenie thinks.
“How do I look?” Iris asks, her scowl softened. She joins Queenie with purse and keys in hand and dabs at her hair as though it might actually move.
“You look, uh, stately,” Queenie says. And pissed, she thinks, but she’s not about to say that to Iris.
“I’ve decided to put the morning behind me and go to the market as planned,” Iris says. Her face twitches, the closest she comes to a smile.
Queenie doesn’t voice her skepticism. She’s never known the Temples to keep the past behind them, and they have a house full of ghosts to prove it.
Though she can afford a multitude of chauffeurs, Iris insists on driving herself. Queenie follows Iris out the front door and around the side to the carriage house. Although cutting through the kitchen would make much more sense, Iris refuses to use any door that might be considered a servant’s entrance.
Once inside the car, Queenie buckles up and says a silent prayer that they reach their destination unharmed. Then she kisses the sweet grass bracelet her mother gave Queenie for protection. Between the good lord and her mama’s Gullah magic, she figures she has her bases covered.
Despite the snail-paced speed, a drive with Iris always proves harrowing. As far as Queenie can tell, Iris has never once used the rear-view or side mirrors on her black Lincoln Town Car. Instead, she uses the sidewalks in town as a kind of bumper car railing, to keep track of the edge of the road. All because Iris is so vain she refuses to wear her eyeglasses in public. What Iris lacks in accuracy, she makes up for in spite. Anyone she endangers with her recklessness, she deems somehow deserving. Some days it is all Queenie can do to not hang out the window and scream, “Get out of the way,” to unsuspecting pedestrians on sidewalks up ahead.
In the fire lane near the entrance of the Piggly Wiggly, Iris brings the Town Car to an abrupt stop and ejects herself from the car while leaving the engine running. The persistent alarm from inside the Lincoln does nothing to remind Iris that she may want to turn off the car and take the keys out of the ignition. Queenie completes the task and reminds herself that someday she will have to take the car keys away from Iris on a permanent basis, an action she looks forward to about as much as back-to-back root canals. Iris is not the type to give up control of anything, especially large, life-threatening motor vehicles.
With the sophistication of Savannah royalty, Iris enters the Piggly Wiggly. Queenie follows not far behind as store employees exchange their usual looks, as well as a few new ones. Queenie guesses that word has spread about the Temple Book of Secrets. Although Savannah is not a small town, it has some similarities. Gossip is savored, chewed, swallowed and then digested until it comes out the other end as compost, which is then used to create more secrets.
Iris walks down aisle three toward the meat department in the rear of the store. Despite being eighty years of age, her posture is impeccable, as if a flag pole extends from crown to coccyx. And though she is of normal height, perhaps five feet, seven inches, she seems much taller than everyone else. Even her wrinkles appear to align themselves properly and her solid white hair is coiffed to perfection like she and the Queen of England share hairdressers.
Queenie serves no particular function on this outing except to fulfill her half-sisterly duty as companion and keep her mouth shut. Afterward, she will get her hair washed and relaxed at the Gladys Knight and the Tints Beauty Parlor located in the shopping center adjacent to the Piggly Wiggly, a reward she looks forward to all week.
Iris arrives at the meat counter and gingerly clears her throat to get Spud Grainger’s attention. When this doesn’t work, Iris crescendos her query from pianissimo to forte. He turns around, causing Queenie to think: If there was ever an example of love’s blindness, it is Spud Grainger’s affection for Iris Temple.
Their affair began two years after Iris’s husband, Oscar, died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack while in a compromising position in his office with Queenie. Spud Grainger was a bag boy at the Piggly Wiggly at the time and a part-time jazz musician. The affair ended after six months, at Iris Temple’s insistence. Heartbroken, it is rumored that Spud Grainger never played the saxophone again.
“My dear Iris Temple,” Spud says, his southern accent smooth and lilting. “You get more beautiful every day.”
“Oh, Mr. Grainger. How very kind of you.” Iris radiates a smile that has received very little exercise over the years and her bottom lip quivers with the effort. Once weekly, Queenie marvels at her half-sister’s transformation into a somewhat pleasant human being while in Spud Grainger’s presence. Not to mention it is extra impressive that Iris can do this amidst the hullaballoo around the Book of Secrets.
Spud Grainger is not a day over sixty and has aged well. A solid white mustache hides his slightly crooked front teeth. He also has an affinity for bow ties. Today’s tie is lime green, with thin red stripes that match the beef tips on special, displayed in the glass case in front of him.
At least he doesn’t mind a little color, Queenie thinks.
The elegant butcher wipes his hands on his perfectly clean white apron and steps into the aisle to kiss Iris’s extended hand. A girlish giggle escapes her octogenarian lips.
When Queenie is unsuccessful in hiding her smile, Iris shoots her a look that could stop a wildebeest in a dead run. No matter how many times she gets these looks from Iris, they always shock her. Iris returns her attention to Spud and her face colors slightly from Spud’s attention. She tilts her head upward as if this regal gesture might command the color to recede. They speak affectionately of the weather.
Damn, y’all, how many different ways can you describe hot? Queenie wonders, for Savannah is as hot as a furnace in Hades for six months out of the year.
Iris hands Queenie her leather handbag, heavy enough to contain the wildebeest. As instructed, she reaches inside the bag for a linen envelope containing an order written neatly on Temple stationery. She hands it to Spud Grainger, who thanks her kindly.
Exotic meats, Iris Temple will tell anyone who has the misfortune to ask, are the only thing her delicate, voodoo cursed constitution can tolerate. Whether the strong medicine of these exotic animals is meant to counteract the spell she is at the mercy of remains a mystery.
Antelope, alligator, buffalo, elk, kangaroo and ostrich are flown in from all over the world at great expense. Not to mention iguana, llama, rattlesnake and yak. Exotic animals associated with nursery rhymes or the stars of animated Disney movies Queenie watched with Violet’s daughters. Animals that would have fought harder if they knew their capture would result in ending up in Iris Temple’s gullet.
Spud Grainger studies the list. He smiles and pets his mustache, as if Iris’s exotic orders, as well as her exotic nature, have captivated him.
“The caribou may take a while,” he says thoughtfully. “But I’ll give Violet a call as soon as it comes in.”
A line of Savannah housewives forms behind Iris. Queenie overhears at least one mention of secrets and that Iris should be ashamed of herself. Luckily, Iris doesn’t hear them but that doesn’t stop her from eyeing their khaki shorts and New Balance sneakers before inclining her chin heavenward like she’s on the trail of an unacceptable scent. She wrinkles her nose and furrows her brow. Though the 4th of July is three months away, Queenie anticipates the upcoming fireworks.
“Chanel,” Iris says to Queenie in a whisper that can be heard from the front of the store. The look on Iris’s face reveals her complete and utter disgust.
Chanel no. 5, as Queenie has been told countless times, is the fragrance of the terminally middle class. Iris abhors the wannabe rich or any other kind of rich that doesn’t involve money that has been around since the Confederacy.
Spud Grainger gives Iris an apologetic look and motions to the line forming behind her. Iris stops mid-sniff and thanks Spud, another kindness reserved only for him. Before leaving, she turns to the gaggle of Savannah hous
ewives and gives them a parting hiss, like the rattlesnake she had for dinner the night before. Queenie offers the women a quick apology, but the final word comes from Iris as she departs. Meanwhile, two children holding a box of Lucky Charms cover their noses and run in search of their mother.
Back at the car, Queenie gives Iris the keys to the Lincoln and Iris drives—at the speed of a handicapped snail—the 500 yards to drop Queenie off at the hairdressers.
“I’ll be back in two hours,” Iris says. “You’d better be finished.”
Queenie nods as the grand matriarch drives off to conduct another errand, running over the curb and missing by inches a stop sign at the end of the parking lot. Queenie never questions the nature of Iris’s other errands, but just last week when returning to the car to retrieve her crime novel, she found a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken bones crammed under the back seat, the bones picked clean, like an exotic jungle animal had feasted on them while lying on the plush leather seats.
So much for voodoo and special diets, Queenie thought at the time, as she held the bucket of bones and smiled back at Colonel Sanders’ emblazoned image. If Iris keeps this up, hardening of the arteries may take her out, but Queenie’s not so sure she has the fortitude to wait for natural causes. Although violence isn’t really in her nature.
Her hair relaxed and styled and all the latest gossip discussed—most of which has to do with the Temple Book of Secrets—Queenie puts the charge on Iris’s bill and waits outside, fanning herself with a real estate flyer pulled from the box in front of the beauty shop. Queenie has only seen the Temple Book of Secrets twice, both times while in Oscar’s office before the ledger was moved to the safety deposit box. No matter how much Queenie begged, Oscar refused to let her look at it, saying Iris would kill him, which she probably would have. The book was kept in the bottom left hand desk drawer that locked with a key Oscar kept on his key chain. It was moved to the bank vault a few years after his death.
Within minutes, the shiny black Lincoln rounds the corner, rolls over the sidewalk and hits a green trash can that bounces off a silver Toyota wagon before coming to rest at the north end of the parking lot.
“Good lord, this woman is an accident waiting to happen,” Queenie mutters.
Queenie is a very good driver herself. Oscar, Iris’s husband, taught her when she was sixteen in an equally big Lincoln Continental. In exchange for the driving lessons, she agreed to climb into the back seat with him and show him her breasts. At the time, this gesture seemed a small price to pay for use of the Temple cars. Of course this is a secret I doubt ever made it into Iris’s precious book. But there are others that might have. She wishes now she had caught a glimpse of that secret book, but Iris keeps the key to the deposit box locked up, too.
If Queenie’s own secrets are revealed in the classifieds she might be looking for a new place to live. She gulps with the thought. While some southerners follow the motto: What would Jesus do?—seen on car bumper stickers as W.W.J.D?—Queenie is more prone to ask W.W.O.D.? What would Oprah do? Having watched nearly every episode of Oprah since the early 90s, Queenie’s best guess is that her hero would put a team of lawyers to work on it. Unfortunately, Queenie doesn’t have that kind of money.
The Town Car rounds the final corner and veers in Queenie’s direction as if Iris is playing a game of geriatric “chicken.” Queenie debates whether to jump aside, but decides to hold her ground.
“Just try it, old lady,” Queenie says, her teeth gritted in determination. She locks her ample knees in place, grateful she has some substance to her. “If it’s my fate to go to the Great Beyond at the hand of that smelly bitch, then so be it,” she adds. “But I refuse to be the first one to flinch.”
The Lincoln lurches twice before screeching to a halt, and then stops only inches away from Queenie. So close that heat drifts from the engine and further relaxes her hair. Queenie gets inside and slams the door while Iris’s wrinkled lips glisten in the sunlight from her latest rendezvous with the Colonel. The grease relaxes her face like a kind of Botox injection while the smell of his secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices permeates the closed car.
After several attempts, Iris coerces the Town Car into drive and hits the curb three times before reaching the main road, causing a family of four to frantically scatter into the good hands of an Allstate Insurance office.
“God in heaven!” Queenie shrieks. “Watch where you’re going.”
“Keep your commandments to yourself,” Iris says with a sneer, as she gracefully raises one hip to expel another one for the record books.
On the slow ride home, instead of worrying what secrets of hers might end up in the newspaper—a legitimate concern—Queenie entertains herself by daydreaming of Iris Temple’s accidental death while choking on one of the Colonel’s chicken bones.
CHAPTER FOUR
Violet
Violet rubs her left shoulder that has ached all morning. The day before her daughter Tia broke her leg in 4th grade, this same shoulder predicted it. It happened before Mister Oscar—Miss Temple’s husband—died, too. Since she was a girl, Violet has known her arm is hooked into a higher level of consciousness. As a result, the minute it begins to ache, she automatically breaks into a sweat.
A sense of urgency accompanies her drive to the Temple house as she wipes a thin layer of perspiration from her upper lip. She has taken this route through Savannah hundreds of times, yet something about this morning feels different. Nearing the house, a blast of pain radiates up her arm. She rubs it and sighs her anguish.
“What are you trying to tell me?” she asks.
Anyone who heard her talking to a body part would assume she was crazy. But I guess I’m only crazy if I hear it talk back. Violet smiles despite the pain, as the throbbing continues. Meanwhile, she catches every traffic light and is still five minutes away from the Temple mansion.
When Violet pulls her car into the carriage house, the throbbing intensifies and her blouse is soaked straight through. Her deodorant works overtime as she turns off the car and gets out. Even though she grew up in Savannah and has never lived anywhere else, to go from air-conditioning to the sweltering Georgia heat is shocking at first, like stepping into a pre-heated oven.
After she walks into the kitchen, she stands still and listens, purse still in hand. The house seems quieter than usual. Violet has the family sensitivity, as her grandmother calls it, a sense of invisible things, like the different entities in the Temple house. Now that the Temple Book of Secrets has been in the news, the ghostly presences have seemed especially strong. Violet can usually tell where the spirits are that live in the house, by the energy they give off. It’s like tuning into a distant radio station. Violet turns her head to intuit her next move while the entire house appears to be holding its breath.
“What’s going on?” she asks any spirits listening. She’s never known them to answer back. But there’s a first time for everything, she tells herself.
Having read once that so-called sensitives often come from tragic backgrounds, Violet wonders if her psychic ability has anything to do with her being an orphan. She has no memory of her mother, who died in an automobile accident when Violet was a baby, and she never met her father, who left town when he found out her mother was pregnant with Violet. For whatever reason, her grandmother never speaks of either of her parents. And even though her grandmother and her Aunt Queenie raised her, at times Violet feels all alone in the world.
Now that she thinks about it, her Aunt Queenie seems worked up about that secret book, too. While Violet used to always retrieve the newspaper from the front porch, it is now Queenie who gets it before she even arrives.
Mysteries are everywhere, she thinks. But this is nothing new.
Out of habit, she checks the kitchen counter for the note Miss Temple always leaves. In the two decades Violet has worked there, her employer has critiqued every meal, leaving detailed feedback on Temple stationery for Violet every morning. In all that time, she’s
never been told she did a good job. If something is prepared well it simply isn’t mentioned. To Violet’s credit, Miss Temple’s communications have become shorter over the years, but she doesn’t know what to think about there not being a note at all. She looks around the floor to see if it might have dropped. Sometimes if the Temple ghosts get rowdy in the middle of the night, things get moved. But nothing is there.
After retrieving two aspirin from the cabinet, she fills a glass with water, takes the pain reliever and then glances at the clock. Queenie is usually already downstairs by the time Violet gets here, but not this morning. Her shoulder tells her again that something isn’t right.
Violet leaves the kitchen and walks into the dining room. With every step her shoulder tells her she is getting closer to whatever she needs to find, like in a childhood game of hot and cold. She steps into the grand foyer which could use a touch up with the dust mop.
“Queenie?” she calls. “Miss Temple?” She waits and listens again. The only sound is her old friend, the large grandfather clock ticking in the entryway that smells of the lemon oil she rubbed into the wood yesterday.
Upstairs, Queenie’s bedroom door opens and then slams. “Is that you, Queenie?” Violet calls.
Queenie steps to the railing wiping her eyes. “My heavens, that’s the deepest I’ve slept in years,” Queenie says. “You would have thought I took one of mama’s elixirs.”
Violet exhales her relief. “With all these nuts worked up about those secrets, I was worried,” she says.
“There’s still plenty to worry about,” Queenie says. “For one thing, Iris is going to give me hell for sleeping so late. Is she in the sun room yet?”
Temple Secrets: Southern Humorous Fiction: (New for 2015) For Lovers of Southern Authors and Southern Novels Page 3