The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel

by Jill Conner Browne

  “I know you’ll do the right thing. You’re a sensible girl.” Sonny kissed me on the cheek. “Just think. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Norman Butts.”

  I winced at the sound of my soon-to-be last name and shooed him out the door.

  After Sonny was gone, I stared at the phone a full fifteen minutes before I got up the courage to even pick up the receiver. The dial tone buzzed in my ear for so long that a recorded voice came on.

  “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again. If you need assistance—”

  Bang! Bang! Someone was knocking on the front door. Tammy must have forgotten her key. She was supposed to meet Dr. Day right after the rehearsal dinner to talk about their “future,” but things must have really blown up for her to be home this early. I dragged myself to the door. I really wasn’t up to listening to her caterwauling the night before my wedding.

  “Keep your panties on,” I said as I swung open the door. Mary Bennett, Gerald, and Patsy stood under the pale yellow glare of the bug light.

  “We need to talk,” Gerald said, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his bell-bottoms. He’d changed into a scruffy Led Zeppelin T-shirt and water buffalo sandals. Mary Bennett still wore the bright orange minidress she had on at the rehearsal dinner. Patsy stood slightly apart from them. Her nose was red, and she was honking into a handkerchief.

  “I agree,” I said, ushering them inside.

  The three of them sat in a stiff row on my sofa. Gerald was the first to speak.

  “I’ve decided—rather we decided—that we won’t be attending your wedding.” His eyes were unreadable behind his glasses.

  “By we, he means Mary Bennett and himself,” Patsy said, breathlessly. “A herd of stampeding elephants couldn’t keep me away.”

  “It’s not personal, hunny,” Mary Bennett said. “We were just getting a nasty vibe at the House of the Dead Cows. Your old man kept staring at us like we were three-headed snakes in a freak show. Gave us the heebie-jeebies.”

  “Yeah, man,” Gerald said with a nod. “It was a paranoia party, and we weren’t even stoned.”

  “I keep telling them they’re being ridiculous,” Patsy said, her voice high and thin as if near the breaking point. “We’re the Sweet Potato Queens and that means we’re family. You’d be devastated if Gerald and Mary Bennett didn’t come to your wedding. Right?”

  I slid down the wall, utterly exhausted. “Maybe we should just—”

  The ringing of the phone caused me to jump. I reached over to the end table to pick it up.

  “Hello?” I said. The line sounded dead. “Hello,” I repeated, this time louder. “Who is this?”

  Seconds of silence ticked by. Ordinarily I would have hung up, but something made me hang on for a little longer. Finally, I heard a sound, faint as a baby’s sigh.

  “Jill?” the voice said.

  “Tammy? Is that you?”

  There was more silence, and then a gasp, as if the caller was summoning the last vestiges of her strength.

  “Jill, I took some…pills. Sleepy,” she slurred.

  “Tammy? Where are you?” I demanded.

  Patsy, Gerald, and Mary Bennett gathered around me in a tight knot, their bodies tensed as they listened to my end of the conversation.

  “I shouldn’t have done…mistake.”

  “Tammy!” I was screaming now. “Where are you?”

  More silence—a deadly quiet that seemed to stretch into forever. Then there was a click and the sound of a dial tone.

  “No!” I said, throwing the receiver to the ground. “Why did you hang up?” Then I lunged for it and quickly replaced it in its cradle. “Ohmigod! She might call back again. Please call back!”

  “What happened?” a white-faced Patsy asked.

  “Tammy took some pills,” I said, bolting to Tammy’s room. The others followed on my heels. “She was supposed to see her boyfriend tonight. He’s married, and it must have gone to shit.” I pawed through the memorabilia on her table, sending matchbooks and play programs flying to the floor.

  “Where did they usually meet?” Mary Bennett asked.

  “Different places. Motels. She was never very specific,” I said, as I pulled open a dresser drawer hoping to find some clue to her whereabouts.

  Gerald put his hands on my shoulders. “Slow down a minute. This isn’t doing any good. Think! Is there anyone who would know where she went tonight?”

  “Well, Dr. Day,” I said, tears coursing down my cheeks. “But he won’t tell us anything, he’s—”

  “The fuck he won’t!” Mary Bennett shouted. “Come on. We’ve got to get to his house, pronto! He’ll by God tell us where she is. Do you know where he lives?”

  “North of Yazoo Road. A couple of streets from your old house,” I said.

  A few minutes later, the tires of Mary Bennett’s convertible screeched as we slid to a stop in front of Dr. Day’s darkened Victorian mansion.

  “It’s ten o’clock. He’s probably in bed. What if he won’t answer the door?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you say he’s an ob/gyn?” Mary Bennett said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  She grabbed a sweater that was lying in the backseat and wadded it up into a ball. “So how could he possibly turn away a pregnant woman who’s in the last stages of labor?” She handed it to Patsy. “Swiss Miss, you’ve got the most innocent face. Stuff this under your shirt and make like you’re preggers. Knock at the door while we hide in the bushes.”

  Patsy obediently tucked the sweater under her shirt and headed toward the front porch. We followed.

  She mashed the doorbell several times, and after a few moments a light illuminated the entryway.

  “Who is it?” said a gruff voice from behind the door.

  “Please help me,” Patsy shouted helplessly. “My baby’s coming right now! I can feel the head! I can feel the head!”

  “What?” Dr. Day said, swinging open the door and surveying Patsy. He was wearing a plush burgundy bathrobe and matching slippers. “You’re not one of my patients.”

  “The baby’s coming, Dr. Day. Ooooh! The pain.” Patsy was so into her role she dramatically clutched at her stomach, causing the sweater to fall onto the porch. “Oh my God! It’s here,” she said, reaching down to pick it up. “Congratulations to me. It’s a cardigan!”

  Dr. Day narrowed his eyes. “What the hell is going on!?”

  At that, the rest of us scrambled out of the hedges.

  “We need to talk with you, Deke,” Mary Bennett said with an edge, arms planted on her almost nonexistent hips.

  “What do you want?” Dr. Day said, fear flitting across his face as he eyed us. His glance rested on Gerald. “I’m calling the police.”

  “Not so fast, Buckwheat.” Mary Bennett took a step forward. “We’ll be on our way just as soon as you tell us where Tammy is.”

  “Tammy who?” Dr. Day said. He took a quick peek over his shoulder. “How dare you come here this late at night—?”

  “Tammy Myers,” I said, edging closer to the door. “Your nurse’s aide. The one you fucked tonight. I don’t know what you said or did, but it must have been horrible, because she just called saying she’d taken a lot of pills. She was so disoriented she couldn’t tell me where she was.”

  A brief look of alarm flashed in Dr. Day’s eyes, but it was replaced with hard-jawed denial. “This is ridiculous! Of course I know Tammy Myers, but our relationship is strictly professional, and—”

  “Honey? Is everything all right?” A female voice floated down from a long, curving staircase behind Dr. Day.

  “Everything’s fine, Linda,” he shouted up. “It’s just someone who’s lost. I’m giving them directions.” He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “If you don’t leave this very second, I’m going to—”

  “You’re not going to do a goddamn thing except tell us where Tammy is right this second,” I said through gritted teeth. I held up a photograph of him and Tammy kissin
g. “I’m sure Linda would be very interested to see this photo of you acting professional with one of your employees. If you don’t tell me where the hell Tammy is NOW, I swear to God, I’ll run this straight up those stairs to your wife and then I will personally see that it’s published in the society page of the Northside Sun.”

  Dr. Day’s complexion, which had previously been a motley purplish-red, was now the hue of curdled milk.

  “She’s in room 107 at the Sleepy Time Motel on Fifth Street,” he said. “Are you satisfied?”

  “Not entirely,” Gerald snapped. “Call an ambulance to meet us at the motel. If you don’t, I’m sure your wife will just love looking at that picture while she counts her alimony.”

  “There’s plenty more,” I said. “Do you understand?”

  “Suck my dick, you bitch,” Dr. Day said through gritted teeth.

  “DICK? Hunny, PLEEZE, you ain’t got a dick—all you got’s a little dust flap to keep the dirt outta your pussy! Now you back up from us and call that ambulance before I start screeching LINDA!” Gerald hissed with uncharacteristic venom.

  “I’ll phone right away,” Dr. Day said, in a defeated voice.

  Moments later the four of us pulled into the parking lot at the Sleepy Time Motel.

  “What a dive,” Mary Bennett said as we took in the string of decrepit cinder-block buildings with peeling paint, the drained and mildewed pool, and the yellowed grass littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts. “If there’s anything worse than a lying jerk, it’s a cheap lying jerk.”

  “I’m going to find Tammy’s room,” I said, bounding out of the car as soon as it came to a stop. I heard the whine of a siren getting closer. “Y’all go to the office, and see if you can get a key.”

  I didn’t wait for a response, but instead ran around until I saw a faded “107” painted on a rusty metal door. It was slightly ajar.

  “Tammy?” I said, pushing it open. The only light in the room came from an orange-shaded floor lamp in the corner. Tammy was stretched out on the bed, wearing her wedding dress. There was a foul odor and a bib-shaped vomit stain down the front of the dress.

  “Tammy,” I said again, shaking her shoulders. Her nostrils flared as she took quick, shallow breaths. Panic fluttered in my belly when I saw that her lips and fingernails were a deep shade of blue. “Come on, Tammy! Wake up.”

  I heard footfalls behind me. Two male paramedics rushed into the small, dank room.

  “Do you know what she took?” asked one. He had to shout to be heard over the wheeze and rattle of the air conditioner.

  “Some kind of pills.” I spotted a small brown vial on the nightstand table, and pointed. “I bet this.”

  I stepped outside to let the paramedics do their work. The rest of the Queens approached me, accompanied by a scowling man with a basketball midsection.

  “Damn-it-to-hell,” he said, breathless from the short walk. “This ain’t good for business. Why’d your friend choose my motel to off herself?”

  “Maybe she got depressed staying in such a rat hole,” Mary Bennett said.

  “He’s not worth the energy,” I said to her just as the paramedics were rushing out of the room with Tammy strapped to a gurney.

  “How is she?” I asked as they passed.

  “Her vital signs are weak, but she’s alive,” the paramedic said briskly, as he and his partner loaded Tammy into the ambulance.

  A couple of other sleepy-eyed motel guests had come out of their rooms to see what the fuss was about.

  “The lady fainted,” the owner said to them. His pockmarked skin was the color of Swiss cheese under the neon glow of the Vacancy sign. “Go back to your rooms. There’s nothing to see.”

  “Can I ride along?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the spinning red lights on top of the ambulance.

  “Not enough room,” said the same mustached paramedic who’d answered all my other questions. “But you can follow us to University Med Center.”

  The Queens and I perched on the plastic chairs under the overly bright fluorescent lights of the emergency room waiting area. The pungent smell of rubbing alcohol and anesthetics made my nose run. I kept glancing at the entrance to the examining rooms, waiting for Tammy’s doctor to appear.

  “I’ve been reading the first paragraph of this article, ‘I Am Joe’s Prostate,’ for the last hour,” Mary Bennett said, tossing aside a year-old copy of Reader’s Digest.

  I nodded. None of us had been able to do much but stare into space.

  Two seats down, a baby with an arm wrapped in gauze shrieked while his mother tried to soothe him. He’d been crying on and off since they’d arrived.

  “I need to get out of here for a minute,” Gerald said, abruptly standing up. “I saw a vending machine in the hall. Can I get anybody anything?”

  “Not unless they have Scotch and water,” Mary Bennett said with a yawn. An unshaven, gin-doused old man who’d been dozing startled to attention at Mary Bennett’s comment.

  “Go back to sleep, old-timer,” Mary Bennett said. “They ain’t selling anything stronger than stale Cheetos ’round here.”

  Just as Gerald was about to leave, a thin-faced doctor with five o’clock shadow trudged into the waiting room clutching a battered clipboard.

  “Who is here for Tamara Myers?” he asked.

  “We are,” the Queens said in unison.

  “She’ll be okay, except for a little soreness in the throat,” he said, approaching us. “We pumped her stomach, and now she’s sleeping it off.”

  My muscles, which had been knotted up like old, sun-dried fishing lines, now slowly untangled with the doctor’s good news.

  “Can we see her?” I asked.

  The doctor shook his head. “She’s on the psych floor. No visitors until noon tomorrow.”

  Psych floor. The two words hung in the air. Of course, I knew that Tammy had tried to kill herself, but it was awful to think of her being locked up.

  “Thanks, Doctor,” I said. Various manifestations of the same followed from the rest.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Mary Bennett said, brushing off the back of her skirt as if she’d picked up something nasty from the chair.

  “I’m too wired to sleep,” Gerald said. “Is there anywhere we can go this time of night?”

  “I know the perfect place.” I said. “But it ain’t exactly vegetarian-friendly.”

  “Screw that,” Mary Bennett said, with a flick of her hand. “Every cell in my body is crying out for grease and plenty of it.”

  “Little squares of pure heaven,” Gerald said, a bulge of Krystal burger in his cheek. We were hunkered down in a booth eating from a tray stacked high with fragrant undersized hamburgers. “Nothing better on this continent.”

  “Even better than hooch?” I asked, trying to be hip.

  Mary Bennett and Gerald swapped a guilty look and grinned.

  “We’re sorry, Jill,” Mary Bennett said, her smile a squiggly line of embarrassment. “While you were in the ladies’ room, Gerald and I were discussing it, and…we may have acted a bit shitty when we first got here.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Are you referring to the way you treated me and Tammy like a pair of backwater hicks who don’t know their asses from their elbows?”

  “Yeah,” she said sheepishly as Gerald nodded. “That’s pretty much what we were referring to.”

  I let out a deep sigh, and contemplated the crisp French fry in my hand.

  “Well,” I said, swabbing it in gobs of ketchup. “If you can forgive me for thinking the two of you were a couple of drugged-out hippie freaks with questionable fashion taste, then I guess I can forgive you. And of course, we ARE backwater hicks who don’t know their asses from their elbows, so there’s that…”

  Gerald laughed so hard he had a near-nasal Coke experience but swallowed just in time. “That’s the Jill I know and love. Get over here! We haven’t had us a real hug since I arrived.”

  I stood and held
out my arms to Gerald, and we locked our bodies into the most breath-squeezing bear hug in the entire world. I caught a strong whiff of patchouli, but also smelled another more familiar scent that transported me straight back to high school.

  “Brylcreem!” I shouted, stepping back from him. “I can’t believe you’re still using that stuff!”

  Gerald dropped his chin and smiled in the bashful way I’d remembered. “I buy it by the case. Even free-flowing hippie hair needs that ‘little dab’ll do ya.’”

  I laughed and flung my arms around him, burying my face in his neck.

  “Hey, y’all,” Mary Bennett said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Think I might be able to sneak into this love fest?”

  “And what about me?” Patsy demanded. “Don’t leave me out.”

  Gerald and I dropped our arms to let them in, and all of the Queens huddled together into one big, weepy, lopsided, groping embrace.

  “Geeze,” Mary Bennett said, breaking free from the group. “I love y’all to pieces but the smell of onions is getting mighty thick in here—or was that you, Poot?”

  “You better hush about that right now, missy—she just had ten Krystals—you know she’s working up a paint-peeler!” Gerald laughed.

  Patsy glanced at her watch. “Shit! Jill, it’s one o’clock! We gotta get your ass home. You need your beauty sleep for the wedding.”

  “The what?” I said. I’d been so involved with Tammy and the Queens, it was as if the last few years of my life had been erased from memory. “Oh, yeah. I’m supposed to get married tomorrow—uh, today.”

  Suddenly Norman “Sonny” Butts seemed like a remote acquaintance from somebody else’s life. Who was this man who folded his tighty-whities before sex? Who’d planned an extremely detailed itinerary of our upcoming honeymoon in Biloxi, going as far as to pencil in the times for sex? Who’d barred dear, sweet Gerald from the wedding because he didn’t fit in with the other guests? More important—who the fuck was the woman who had so readily agreed to marry that man?

  “The wedding,” Mary Bennett said, glancing uncomfortably at Gerald. “We’ll come if really you want us to.”