The Queen of Palmyra

by Minrose Gwin

  Grandpops gave me a quick look. “Florence, get on up to the front of the store and wait for me there.”

  I backed up five steps. The one banana scoop was running down the side of the cone, so I started in on it, listening hard. My arm pained me and the tape on my bandage pinched when I bent my elbow to eat, but I suffered gladly. Mr. L was back to his polishing. He poured his vinegar onto the newspaper and squeaked across the glass. There were several shelves between me and Grandpops and Eva, so I couldn’t see them anymore. All I could do was listen.

  Grandpops was fussing at Eva. “Everybody knows why you brought her out, we’re not fools, and I’m sympathetic, but what you doing using her for cover against those hoods? I’m surprised at you, Eva. I thought you had better sense.”

  “Nobody’s going to hurt her down here.” Eva had the same tone with Grandpops that she’d gotten with Mr. L. “What’s so bad about taking her for an ice cream?”

  “Who you think you fooling with that talk?” Grandpops was a quiet talker. But now his way of speaking took on something I’d never heard from him. It wasn’t loud, but there was a warning behind it. Behave yourself, don’t go burning down the house. The story he was making up in his head was that Eva was the dumbbell native and he was Bomba saving me from the fire the cannibals had set. If she wanted to stay in that tree and get herself burnt up, that was her own business.

  I’d forgotten to lick and my ice cream cone was turning into sludge. It had dripped down my hand. I didn’t want to be saved from ice cream or Eva, but she was melting too. I heard it.

  “Yessir.” She put the squeeze on the word, clamped it shut at both ends.

  Mr. L had stopped with his squeaking. He had his back turned and was messing with his shelves, but I could tell he was all ears. I was still trying to get control of my ice cream. I was sucking on the bottom of the cone. No napkin. Time passed without anybody saying anything. Then Grandpops sighed. It was a long sigh that said listen to me, listen hard.

  “All right, look, I told Zenie and now I’ll tell you. I don’t want her going out on the street with you anymore while you’re still in town. You hear me? It’s too dangerous.”

  “Yessir.”

  “When you going back?”

  “I haven’t decided.” I knew the way Eva sounded, and the voice that came from the back of the store didn’t sound like it belonged to her. Her voice had hills and valleys, pretty little streams flowing through. This voice was flat; it went straight on out to where the sky met the land. This voice was a desert.

  “What you mean you haven’t decided? It’s time, Eva, past time. Have you thought what kind of briar patch you’re getting Zenie and Ray and Aunt Josie into? You’re putting your own people in danger persisting here.”

  “Born and bred in the briar patch,” Eva said, dragging out each word. “We’re all born and bred in the briar patch.”

  Grandpops glared at her. “Have you lost your mind? Shake Rag’s got one policy company, and we all know who works for it…and what he is. You got to stop all this foolishness. Can’t nobody buy from you. Don’t you know that? You think those Carolina people in their big fancy offices going to care one flip when you come back in a box? For heaven’s sake, think about somebody besides yourself. Think about your own mama and daddy. Don’t be such a dadgum fool.”

  There was a long silence; then Eva said in her desert voice, “Yessir,” and there was something in it that was spiked and sharp. A cactus with needle points.

  There was another silence. Then Grandpops sighed a big sigh. “All right, then.”

  He walked over to Mr. L’s gleaming glass case, nodded at Mr. L, reached into his pocket and pulled out a nickel. He put it down on the counter. Clank. Mr. L just looked down at it. He didn’t pick it up.

  Grandpops headed toward me and then stopped. He looked back at Mr. L, who was a statue. “Is that enough?”

  Mr. L didn’t answer. He pushed the nickel back across the counter and looked at Grandpops.

  “All right, then. Thank you kindly.” Grandpops picked up the nickel and pointed me to the door. When we got outside, the benches were dead empty.

  He’d been on foot like always when he came by Zenie’s to get me and had to track me down at Lafitte’s. So we set off for home walking right past the cemetery and the Daddy Gone Home grave, where Eva had been stretched out on the ground. We tried to make our path under the overhung shade of the big oaks and pecan trees, keeping out of the drilling line of the late sun as much as we could. The resurrection fern on the big oaks was dead brown. The nandinas bent over. Even the bees were quiet. Still everywhere, except for a little round wren that seemed to be following us through the tree limbs singing. A singing fool, he was, with his little brush of a tail. Singing his beating heart out in the dust. Nary a care in the world.

  My grandfather’s wingtips were brown from the dust. Usually he could put up a fast pace, but this afternoon he was dragging. There was a catch in his breath as he walked along. His skinniness made him look old. His neck hung between his chin and his chest like a turkey wattle. I was mad at him for taking me away from Eva and for getting ugly with her just when she had made it to rise and shine and let me go with her down to Lafitte’s for an ice cream. (What a crime!) I wanted to take up for her. So I started in on how sick she’d been and how she’d finally risen up out from her sickbed. When we passed the Daddy Gone Home tombstone, I showed him where she had been stretched out when Zenie and I found her all hurt and burnt. I gave myself some credit for getting her out of her sickbed. In my private mind I had the notion that she was Lazarus and I was Jesus, but of course didn’t say so. If I just had a chance at Mama, I bet I could chat her up out of bed too.

  Grandpops petted me on the head and pushed his hat back on his head a little. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his face off. “Don’t get too attached. Eva’ll be going on home soon I expect.” He said it quiet and sad, like he would personally miss her, which I didn’t much believe since he seemed to want her to leave so bad.

  Then I had an idea. I got the notion that there couldn’t be more policy men but Eva was a girl. So there could be policy men, my daddy and the others at Mississippi Assurance, and a policy lady, Eva. Why not?

  I told it to Grandpops. He stopped in the dust all of a sudden, like he just couldn’t take another step. What he said, he said carefully. “Honey,” he said, “man or woman, it doesn’t matter. There’s only just so much business. It’s a simple case of economics. Plus, Eva’s ruint herself in this town. She’s always going to have trouble. Some places can turn into a briar patch. That’s what Eva said about herself.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Br’er Rabbit was born and bred in the briar patch. He loved the briar patch. That’s what Eva said about herself.”

  Grandpops sighed. “Unfortunately Eva isn’t Br’er Rabbit.” He started walking again, this time picking up the pace with his long legs, he breezed by the rest of the cemetery like a bent-over crane eyeing the tombstones like fish he wasn’t hungry for. We were at the last of the graves. I could see my grandparents’ house up the block on the corner. “Let’s just get on home, honey. It’s been a long day. Don’t worry about Eva. She’ll be all right. She’ll go on back up to Carolina and get herself another job and have a fine time. She’ll have a fine life up there. Raleigh’s a city where she can make her own way.”

  The way he told it, Raleigh sounded like heaven. I remembered the dream I had of Mama and Eva cha-cha-ing their way up to the pearly gates. I wanted to go up to Raleigh too. We could get on the northbound M & O, take the Frisco east. Mama, Eva, and me. We could get a Pullman sleeping car, though I knew we couldn’t all sleep together. Eva would have to go in the colored diner car to eat and she’d have to sit up to sleep, but it was only one day and one night, and then we’d all be together when we got there. People lived in apartments in Raleigh. We could get a high-up one so we could see the whole dadgum town light up at night. Eva could sell her policies like gangbusters, and Mam
a could be the cake lady of Raleigh. Days I’d go along with Eva knocking on doors and offering protection. I could show her a thing or two. I knew how to smile and be sweet when the door opened a crack and somebody said, “Yeah?” I’d done it with Daddy. Nights we’d have a nice cool supper of potato salad and cake. After supper, Eva would go dancing at the juke joint down the street and I’d help Mama in a big shiny kitchen with a new stove and two sinks and dozens of pots and pans. We’d bake hundreds of cakes, and the word would spread. We’d have to turn orders down because Mama wouldn’t want any helpers except me. I would be careful to use a pot holder and the three of us would live happily ever after.

  11

  My arms scabbed up after a week of burning and stinging. Then the scabs fell off, and each arm had a little wavy line going down the inside, following the long blue veins up and down as if it was one of them too, though not with the true red blood running through, but with white from the scars. When I bent my elbows, the insides of my arms felt scratchy, as if someone was trying to strike a match on them.

  Eva watched the progress of my arms, and I watched the progress of her face. Our burns closed up about the same time, but both left their scars. We shared a jar of Alba lotion, which she’d lightly touch to the scar on her face, which was still tender, and I’d dab up and down the lines on my arms.

  “When’s your school starting up?” she asked one morning. I was doctoring my scars on Zenie and Ray’s front stoop when she came outside.

  “Not till September.”

  Eva sat down next to me. “You ready?”

  When I told Eva how unready I was, she shook her head and pointed to the Alba. “Your hands clean?”

  I nodded.

  “Put some of that on my place too. Don’t rub it.”

  As I put a bit of the lotion on her circle, she cut her eyes at me. “Do you know how to diagram?”

  “Diagram what?”

  “Sentences, stupid. Boy, you’re in big trouble if you never heard of diagramming sentences. What grade you say you going into?”

  My heart sank. “Fifth.”

  Eva’s mouth dropped open. “Lord, girl, what they teaching you in that white fourth grade? If they aren’t teaching you to diagram, I’m going to have to rethink this integration thing. You white folks do better coming to our schools.”

  When I explained about Daddy going on the lam and taking us with him, she touched the circle on her face and looked thoughtful. “And now your mama’s gone and flown the coop too. And no wonder about why.”

  I glared at her. “Mama’ll be back.”

  Eva leaned over and touched her shoulder to mine. “Sure she will.”

  Time passed. A week? A month? Three days? Time was a wheel spinning in the open air. It didn’t move anything forward. It got hotter than ever and Mama wasn’t home yet, but soon, Daddy said, soon she’d be coming home. She was getting her brain shocked, and it was supposed to make her feel better, which I guess meant she’d be less inclined to run herself into trains. I thought of the shocks as little tickles. I pictured her laughing, saying aw, quit it now, no fair.

  She wrote me little hen-scratched notes, but they didn’t say what she meant. “Dear Martha,” one said, though I knew she meant to write “Dear Florence.” (Why would a person write to herself?) “I miss you so much. See you soon. Love, Mama.” Once she sent just an envelope that said on the back: “Florence girl, how could you put me in this place. Your own mother. Come get me now. Martha Irene Riley.” Daddy had crumpled that one up and put it into the wastebasket, but I found it. I told Daddy we had to go over to Jackson and get her out of that place, but he said not yet. In a little while. Soon. He’d thrown out her big poison bottle, the one under the kitchen sink, and had torn up the house looking for other bottles, which he found stashed mostly in her shoeboxes on the top of her closet. Half pints of Old Crow tucked in under tissue paper like sleepy babes put down for a nap between high-heel pumps size 5 ½. Wickeder by far than Mimi’s too-loud hats.

  Every morning I climbed on time’s wheel. My father would drag me out. Rise and shine, Sister. Up and at ’em. Make hay while the sun shines. In the night I became the dough he was pushing into shape. You have to love the dough you work, and I knew he loved me. Why else would he tell me about the dangers that could befall good decent white girls? Why else would he want to protect what was deep inside me, true and pure and beautiful, soon to be born? I woke up with the smell of his hair oil on my skin. I soaked it up and it became my smell too, so that I couldn’t even smell him coming into my room anymore.

  The heat never left me in the cool early morning hours the way it had before, when Mama had come in and taken him back. Now if I turned over and woke him up just a little, he wouldn’t know me. He would jump out at me like a hungry cannibal and grab me by the shoulders and hold me down until I screamed, “Daddy!” to wake him up all the way. So I lay still as death. If I had to go to the bathroom, I slid out so careful careful that nobody would know. It seemed that, even when I got up, a part of me stayed behind with him. Only the inside left, the shell of me stayed.

  So I was glad if the phone rang and he had to go be the Nighthawk. He still let me get his box, though I could tell he was not over being mad about the way I had disrespected his things. I would bring it to him like before, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was older and wiser. You could tell by the way I carried it, with one hand, balancing it on my hip. Now I knew that all he had in it was a Halloween outfit and not much else. Common everyday things, not jewels of the crown, like I’d once thought. Somewhere he’d gotten a bat that he kept in a corner of the basement next to the box. One night when he got the call and I went down to the basement for his box, there it was, propped up. At first I didn’t know to get it too, but then he sent me back down for it. After that, it was part of the deal. The box and the bat. When I brought it up, I asked him if there was a ball and he could teach me to hit. He said it wasn’t that kind of bat.

  “It’s a stick, not a bat, Sister,” he said. “See, it’s thinner than a bat.”

  He was right. It was as long as a bat and curved round like a bat, but not as wide.

  “What’s it for, then?”

  “It’s for being the Nighthawk. It’s a headache stick.” Daddy picked it up and took a one-armed swing with it. He grinned and rubbed his chin. “You don’t want to get in its way, or it’ll give you one bad-assed headache. You think twice about sassing somebody coming at you with a headache stick. This thing’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.”

  Before he left at night, he tucked me in. He made me get into the bed and pulled the sheet up over me. Then he turned out the light. He thought that would make me stay put.

  After he got washed up to go out, he stood in the doorway to my room. “All right now, I’ll be back after a while. Don’t get up for nothing or nobody. I’ll tan your hide if you get near that kitchen, you hear me?”

  I said what I was supposed to say, which was “yes sir.” Then he went clunking out the door. I waited until I heard the Chevy roar off. It was a trash car from Big Dan like the green Ford, but I appreciated the firecracker noises it made. On foot or on wheels, Daddy made noise coming and going. He could no more sneak up on you than a train barreling down the tracks. When the sound of the car finally died out, I turned the light back on to read. Somehow, in the month of May, Grandpops reading to me had turned into me reading to him, even parts of the Saturday Evening Post. If I didn’t know a word, I’d sound it out, and if that didn’t work, I’d just be a playful kitten and scamper right on over it. No one word is that important. Semicolons stopped me dead, but I learned to hop over them like Uncle Wiggily hopped over the railroad tracks on his way to big adventures.

  But I’d gotten to be a reading fool. When Mimi took me to the county library one afternoon and I saw all those books just sitting up on the shelves waiting for someone to read them, I felt like I’d just walked through the pearly gates.

  If I got tired of reading at night
, I’d get up and go sit in Mama’s closet and smell her clothes. When I first opened the closet, they looked forlorn in the shadows of moon glow. Her sugar smell had faded, but if I grabbed a bunch of her everyday dresses and pressed my face up to them hard, I could still get a whiff of it. Sometimes, most times, I’d cry into them, leaving them wet and bedraggled and worn out with my tears.

  Late into the night, after the one-thirty M & O but before the three-o’clock Frisco, Daddy’d come back, dragging behind a smell that was sharp and mustardy. Sometimes on top of that he’d smell like gas and woodsmoke, the way people smell at a barbeque. I’d have my back turned when he got in the bed. I breathed long and slow, playing dead until he started to snore.

  When he wasn’t gone at night, he was on the phone. Big Dan or Mr. Jenkins or some of the other misters. “Honey,” they’d breathe into the phone, “run get your daddy. Tell him it’s Mister So-and-so.” I never remembered the names. After I told Daddy, I lost track. Now that Mama was gone, Daddy was talking ugly into the phone. N_____ this and n______ that. The word buzzed around his mouth like a biting horsefly. If Mama’d been there, she wouldn’t have stood for the word in her house. She wouldn’t have swatted at it either. She would have just walked out the front door and left it buzzing. Let it have the whole place. She’d have been long gone, which, of course, she already was.

  One morning when we were standing out in the yard with Big Dan, Daddy said right out of the blue, “They going to take us over, take our women, pollute the race. And them pinko communists are in league with them. They want to take us all down the toilet with this civil rights crap. Did you hear about them starting things up over in Clinton?” He said it like he was saying nice day, how you doing, or some such.

  Big Dan’s mouth hardened up. He slapped his straw hat on his leg. His raw head turned even pinker around the curl he’d drawn up from behind and plastered on top. “Got to stop it now. Nip it in the bud. Good thing we got a firm hand in this town. A firm hand is sorely needed these days. Sorely needed.”