The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

by Edward Kelsey Moore

  Where, Clarice wondered, were the aunts, female friends, and cousins who were supposed to descend en masse to cook, clean, and comfort after a tragedy? Even the lowliest, most despised second or third cousin in her family would have merited at least one afternoon of attention on the day of their burial. But no one had bothered to come here.

  The man sat at the table and motioned for them to sit with him. The three girls sat down and stared at each other, not knowing what to say. He turned toward Odette and said, “Tell your mama that me and my stepdaughter sure appreciate her kindness.” He reached out then and patted Barbara Jean’s arm, causing her to flinch and scoot away from him, her chair making a loud scraping noise as the metal feet dug into the scarred floor.

  Clarice wanted to get out worse than ever, but Odette wasn’t doing anything to move the process along. Odette just watched the man and Barbara Jean closely, as if she were trying to decipher a riddle.

  The man poured a shot of whiskey from a bottle of Old Crow that sat in front of him on the table. Then he picked up his smudged glass and drained it in one swallow. Clarice had never seen a man drink straight whiskey and she couldn’t help gawking. When he noticed her staring, he said, “Sorry, girls. Where’s my manners? Barbara Jean, get some glasses for our guests.”

  Barbara Jean put her hand to her forehead and sank a little lower in her chair.

  Odette said, “No, thank you, sir. We just came to drop off the food and get Barbara Jean. My mother said to bring her back to our house for dinner and not to take no for an answer.”

  Barbara Jean looked at Odette and wondered if she was crazy. Clarice kicked Odette hard under the table with the point of her shoe. Odette didn’t yelp or react at all. She just sat there smiling at the man, who was pouring his second drink.

  “Nah, I don’t think she should go anywhere tonight,” he said, his wide mouth twisting into a nasty expression that made Clarice’s stomach tighten up. She got the feeling that something bad was about to happen, and she set her feet beneath her so she could run if she needed to. But the man relaxed his mouth back into his cannibal grin and said, “Barbara Jean’s been through a lot today and she should stay home with her family.” He looked around the room and made an expansive, circular motion with the whiskey bottle as if he were indicating a corps of relatives scampering and fussing around them. Then he put the bottle down and touched Barbara Jean’s arm again. Again, she recoiled from him.

  Odette said, “Please let her come. If we come back without her, Mama’ll have Daddy drive us back over to get her. And I hate riding around town in the back of that police cruiser. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Your daddy’s a cop, huh?”

  “Yes, sir. In Louisville,” Odette said.

  Clarice couldn’t stop her jaw from dropping open at the sound of Odette lying with such conviction.

  The man thought for a few seconds and had a change of heart. He rose from his chair, staggered badly, and stood just behind Barbara Jean. He leaned forward and squeezed her upper arms with his large hands. Then he rested his chin on the top of her head. He said, “No need to put your daddy through the trouble of comin’ by. Your mama’s right. My little girl should be around women tonight. Jus’ don’t stay out too late. I don’t like to worry.”

  He stood there for a while holding on to Barbara Jean’s arms and swaying while she looked straight ahead. Finally, she said, “I’ve got to change,” and she slid sideways out of his grasp. The man was thrown off balance and had to grip the chair to keep from toppling forward onto the table.

  Barbara Jean walked just a few steps away and opened a door off the kitchen. She went into the smallest bedroom Clarice had ever seen. It was really just a pantry with a bed and a battered old dresser in it. And the bed was a child’s bed, far too small for a teenager. Clarice watched through the partially opened door as Barbara Jean pulled off her tacky black blouse. Then she picked up a bottle of perfume from the dresser and repeatedly squeezed the bulb, spraying her arms where the man had touched her as if she were applying an antiseptic. When she caught Clarice’s reflection in the mirror above her dresser, she slammed shut the door.

  The man straightened up and said, “Y’all scuse me. I gotta take a leak.” He shuffled away, but stopped at the kitchen door and turned back to Clarice and Odette. He winked and said, “Be good and don’t drink up all my whiskey while I’m gone.” Then he continued out of the room. A few seconds later, they heard him relieving himself and humming from down the hallway.

  When they were alone, Clarice took the opportunity to kick Odette again. This time Odette said, “Ouch, quit it.”

  “Why did you do that? We could’ve been out of here and gone.”

  Odette said, “We can’t just leave her here with him.”

  “Yes, we can. This is her house.”

  “Maybe, but we’re not leaving her alone with him right after she buried her mother.”

  There was no use arguing with Odette once she got a notion stuck in her head, so Clarice said nothing more. It was clear to her that Odette had looked at this cat-eyed, stray girl and set her mind on adoption.

  When Barbara Jean emerged from her cramped cell, she was wearing a glittery red blouse and the same black skirt. Her hair, which had been pulled back and pinned up, now fell around her shoulders in waves, and she had applied lipstick to match her blouse. She may have stunk of cheap perfume, but she looked like a movie star.

  The man came back into the room. He said, “You look just like your sweet mama,” and Barbara Jean looked at him with a hatred so strong that Clarice and Odette felt it like a hot wind sweeping through the room.

  As the man fell into his chair and reached for the bottle, Barbara Jean said, “Bye, Vondell.” She was out of the kitchen and headed down the hallway before Clarice and Odette had begun their farewells to the bleary-eyed man at the table.

  Outside, they stood in front of the house looking at each other. Clarice couldn’t stand the silence. She lied the way she’d been taught to do after meeting someone’s unpleasant relative. “Your stepfather seems nice.”

  Odette rolled her eyes.

  Barbara Jean said, “He’s not my stepfather. He’s my mother’s … He’s nothing is what he is.”

  They walked about a half a block together, quiet again. Barbara Jean spoke after a while. “Listen, I appreciate you getting me out of the house. I really do. But you don’t have to take me anywhere. I can just walk around for a while.” She looked at her watch, a dime-store accessory with yellow rhinestones surrounding its face and a cracked, white patent leather band. “Vondell’s likely to be asleep in another couple hours. I can go back then.” To Odette she said, “Thank your mother for making the chicken. It was real nice of her.”

  Odette hooked an arm under Barbara Jean’s elbow and said, “If you’re gonna walk, you might as well walk with us. You can meet the latest victim Clarice’s boyfriend has dragged over from the college to distract me while he tries to get down her pants.”

  “Odette!” Clarice screamed.

  Odette said, “It’s true and you know it.” Then she tugged Barbara Jean in the direction of the All-You-Can-Eat. “Oh, and Barbara Jean, whatever you do, don’t eat any of my mama’s chicken.”

  When her mother and her cousin later asked Clarice why she had become friendly with Barbara Jean that summer, she would say that it was because she got to know and appreciate Barbara Jean’s sweetness and sense of humor and because she had felt a welling up of Christian sympathy after gaining a deeper understanding of the difficulties of Barbara Jean’s life—her dead mother, her dreadful neighborhood, her sad little hole of a bedroom, that man Vondell. And those things would one day be true. Within months, Clarice’s mother and cousin would learn that any petty criticism or harsh judgment of Barbara Jean would be met with icy silence or an uncharacteristically blunt rebuke from Clarice. And Clarice would eventually confess to Odette that she felt tremendous guilt about having been the source of many of the rumors about Barbara Je
an. Her cousin might have started the rumor about the roach in Barbara Jean’s hair, but Clarice had been the main one spreading it around.

  But at the time, even as she listed in her mind the more noble reasons for making this new friend, she knew that there was more to it. At seventeen, Clarice was unable to see the true extent to which she was ruled by a slavish devotion to her own self-interest, but she understood that her primary reason for becoming friends with Barbara Jean was that it had benefited her. On the night she and Odette dropped off that putrid-smelling chicken, Clarice discovered that Barbara Jean’s presence was surprisingly convenient.

  When Clarice, Odette, and Barbara Jean walked into the All-You-Can-Eat, Little Earl ushered them to the coveted window table for the first time. A group of his pals was sitting there, but he chased them off, saying, “Make way. This table is reserved for the Supremes.” After that, every boy in the place, even those who Clarice knew had told some of the most outlandish lies about Barbara Jean and what she’d supposedly done with them, came to the window table to stutter and stammer through their best adolescent pickup lines.

  Richmond showed up with James Henry in tow a few minutes after the girls had been seated. Clarice made a mental note to give Richmond hell later for bringing him. James was the worst of all the regular guys Richmond had scrounged up for Odette. He was nice enough, and he’d had a fondness for Odette ever since she’d beaten two teenage boys bloody when she was ten after they’d called him “Frankenstein” because of that ugly knife scar on his face. But he was, Clarice thought, the most boring boy on the face of the earth. He barely made conversation at all. And when he did, it was pathetic.

  The only topic James talked with Odette about at any length was her mother’s garden. He worked for Lester Maxberry’s lawn care business and he came to their dates armed with helpful hints for Odette to pass along to Mrs. Jackson. James was the only boy Clarice knew who could sit in the back of a car parked on the side of a dark road with a girl and talk to her about nothing but composted manure.

  Worst of all, James was always exhausted. He had to be at work early in the mornings, and he took classes at the university in the afternoons. So just when the evening got going, James would start nodding off. Odette would see his head droop and she would announce, “My date’s asleep. Time to go home.” It was intolerable.

  Odette had a slightly different view of James Henry. He might have been the worst double-date choice for Clarice’s purposes, but Odette was content with him. She thought it was kind of sweet how he dropped off to sleep during their dates. How many other boys would let themselves be that vulnerable in front of a girl—mouth open and snoring? And he had excellent manners. James had become a frequent visitor, never failing to come by and personally convey his thanks to Dora Jackson for the food she regularly brought to his home after his mother became housebound with emphysema. This in spite of the fact that Odette had witnessed James wisely burying her mother’s half-raw, half-burned pork chops beside his house one day. She assumed, hoped, that all of the meals her mother gave the Henrys ended up underground as well. Still, each inedible bundle was greeted with undeserved gratitude from James.

  Odette knew just enough about men to have her guard up at all times. So she hadn’t eliminated the possibility that, underneath it all, James might be as horny and stupid as his friend Richmond. But she was willing to tolerate his head falling onto her shoulder occasionally while she figured him out.

  Richmond and James wound through the crowd of boys gathered around the window table. James behaved the same way he always did. He sat next to Odette, complimented her homemade dress, inquired about her mother’s garden, and then yawned. Richmond was another story. To Clarice’s surprise and enjoyment, Richmond, by then a college football hero, felt threatened by all of the testosterone-dizzy boys surrounding his girl, even though they were really there for Barbara Jean. Ordinarily, he was content to sit in the center of the throng, entertaining the boys who came by the table to laugh at his jokes and to hear tales of his record-breaking freshman year on the team. Clarice felt that she had his full attention only in those brief moments when they found themselves alone. That night, though, Richmond spent the entire evening with his arm draped around her shoulders, whispering in her ear and being extra attentive to her in order to clearly stake out his claim.

  Barbara Jean was like magic, Clarice thought. The more boys came by to get a close look at her, the more territorial Richmond became. That night was a wonderful evening of flirting, dancing, and nonstop free malts and Coca-Colas from admirers. When James drifted off to sleep and it came time to leave, Big Earl had to intercede to forestall a fistfight over who would see the Supremes home.

  As they left the All-You-Can-Eat and headed for Richmond’s car, Clarice whispered to Odette, “Barbara Jean is our new best friend, okay?”

  Odette said, “Okay.” And by the end of the summer, that’s the way it was.

  Chapter 11

  Six weeks after Big Earl’s funeral, my summer break ended and I returned to my job. I was food services manager at James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School, which was a fancy way of saying “head lunch lady.” Normally, I enjoyed getting back to work and starting the new school year. But that fall was a tough one.

  James was still adjusting to life without Big Earl being there for him. I often caught him reaching for the phone, only to set it back down again as a brief shadow of pain traveled across his face. Whenever that happened, I knew who he’d been thinking of calling. I’d done the same thing for months after losing Mama so suddenly. James’s mother had died relatively young, but she had wasted away for years and James had learned to live without her long before she passed. Losing a parent, and that’s what Big Earl had been to James, in the blink of an eye was a new kind of loss for James and it was going to take him some time to work it through.

  Barbara Jean was bad off, too. She tried to put up a good front. She wasn’t hysterical or even teary-eyed, and she looked as perfectly put together as ever. But it was easy to see that Lester and Big Earl passing right up on top of each other like they’d done had laid her low. She was living deep in her own thoughts and pulling herself further away from Clarice and me every day.

  Clarice had her hands full with Richmond. He was back to his cheating ways with a vengeance. It was like the old days. Richmond catted around, not caring who knew. People barely acquainted with him and Clarice openly gossiped about it. Clarice pretended not to notice, but she burned so hot with anger at him some days that I hoped, for both of their sakes, that Richmond was sleeping with one eye open.

  And me. After slacking off for a while, my hot flashes were back big time. More nights than not, the early hours of the day found me cooling myself in the kitchen and shooting the breeze with Mama, instead of sleeping. I loved Mama’s company, but the lack of sleep was taking a toll on me. I felt run-down and I looked, as my mother bluntly put it, “like shit on a cracker.”

  By the middle of October, I’d had my fill of feeling bad, so I went to my doctor and rattled off a long list of symptoms. I told him about my hot flashes and my fatigue. I complained that I was getting forgetful and, James claimed, irritable. I wasn’t willing to tell him the main reason I had decided to see him. I had no desire whatsoever to explain to my doctor that I’d made my appointment because former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt had been showing an awful lot of interest in me lately. I remembered, all too well, how she’d orbited around Lester right before he electrocuted himself, and it had me feeling antsy.

  At first Mrs. Roosevelt had only visited me along with Mama, but then she started turning up by herself. Some mornings I would walk into my cramped office off of the cafeteria at Riley Elementary and there she’d be, asleep in one of the rusty metal folding chairs or stretched out on the floor. Occasionally she’d pop up out of nowhere and lean over my shoulder as I did the food orders over the phone. I made up my mind to see the doctor after Mrs. Roosevelt greeted me every morning for a solid week, grinning wi
de and offering me a swig from her flask. (Mama had been right about Mrs. Roosevelt and the drinking. That woman was at her flask morning, noon, and night.)

  Mrs. Roosevelt and Mama sat in the corner of the examining room during my checkup and during the tests that came afterwards. They came with me again a week after that first appointment and listened in as my doctor, Dr. Alex Soo, told me that I had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

  Alex was my friend. He was a chubby Korean man, about a year younger than my son Jimmy. When he took over my old doctor’s practice several years back, I had been his very first patient.

  Alex came to town just after my Denise left the house, and as soon as I laid eyes on Alex’s round, smooth face I decided to mother the hell out of him, whether he wanted it or not. When I found out that he lived alone and had no relatives nearby, I badgered him into spending the holidays with me and my family. It was an annual tradition now. Sometimes, if Alex wasn’t careful, he’d slip and call me “Ma.”

  Now this kind young man sat twisting his fingers behind a mahogany desk that seemed too large for him. He worked hard at not looking me in the eye while he rattled off the details of what was happening within my body and what needed to be done to stop it. The next step, he said, was to get a second opinion. He’d already made an appointment for me with an oncologist at University Hospital who was “one of the most highly regarded in his field.” He used terms like “five-year survival rate” and “well-tolerated chemotherapy cycles.” I felt sorry for him. He was trying so hard to remain calm that his voice came out robotic and full of bottled-up emotion at the same time, like a bad actor playing a soap opera doctor.

  After he got done with his speech, he let out a long sigh of relief. The corners of his mouth curled up slightly, like he was proud of himself for making it over a big hurdle. When he was able to look at me again, he started in offering his most optimistic prognosis. He said, “Your general level of health is very good. And we know a lot about this kind of cancer.” He went on to say that I might be lucky. I might be one of those rare people who sailed on through chemotherapy with hardly any side effects.