The Cotton Queen

by Pamela Morsi

  There was a low chuckle on the other end of the line.

  “Babs, you haven’t changed, have you,” Acee said. “You’re just dad-blamed determined in whatever you do. You never let other people’s logic gum up what you’re thinking.”

  The way he said that, it was hard to tell if it was a compliment or a criticism.

  “Are you going to help me?” I asked.

  “Are you going to need help?”

  “Well, they sent me this letter,” I said.

  “It’s a letter,” he told me. “It’s meant to put some scare into you. To see if you’ll just come around to their way of thinking.”

  “So they can’t really take her?”

  “Well, they can if...if you’ve been imprudent,” he said.

  “Imprudent?”

  “If you spend your evenings in beer joints or nightclubs,” he said. “Or if you’ve taken up with gentlemen friends who sometimes stay overnight. There’ll be a lot of judges that will snatch a child away at the first suggestion of immorality.”

  “Oh, my goodness! I mean no, no, of course not,” I replied, thoroughly shocked. “I’ve never been inside a beer joint in my life. And men, well I...I mean...Tom just died. I certainly haven’t even thought about...about being with another man.”

  “No, of course not,” Acee agreed reassuring me. “Send me the letter from the lawyer and I’ll respond. That will be the end of it. As long as you avoid any appearance of impropriety you’ll be perfectly safe in keeping your child.”

  Relief swept over me.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said. “Oh, thank you, thank you. Acee, you don’t know how frightened I’ve been.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” he said with certainty.

  “How much do I owe you?” I asked tentatively. “Or are you going to bill me.”

  “No charge,” he said.

  “That doesn’t seem right,” I told him.

  “Can’t I do a favor for an old friend?”

  We weren’t really friends and never had been. But I didn’t have a lot of money to spare. Somehow I hated for Acee to know that, to even suspect it. But I thanked him and kept my mouth shut.

  * * *

  As the days passed Laney and I were going along very well.

  And a lot of that was due to Mary Jane and Burl. Mary Jane insisted that Laney stay with her after school.

  “It’s silly for you to pay somebody to keep her, when I would love to have both the help and the company.”

  I didn’t know how much help a five-year-old could be to a pregnant woman, but Mary Jane walked to Bowie Elementary every afternoon at two and kept Laney with her until I arrived home at five. She was wonderful.

  And Burl was wonderful, too. When the sink got stopped up or a fuse blew out, he was always there getting things back in working order. He even made a special trip to the salvage yard to swap out the water pump on my Ford. It was great. It all seemed great.

  As the birth of Mary Jane’s baby grew nearer, I kept close to the phones at work. It was already decided that I would drive her to the hospital and Burl would meet us there. It was a Friday afternoon when the call came.

  I gave the news to Mr. Donohoe and he shooed me out the door. It all went perfectly. I got Laney from school. I got Mary Jane to the hospital. Her husband was by her side within minutes of arriving.

  Only a few hours later, they were pulling into the driveway of the duplex.

  “False labor,” Mary Jane told me, disappointed.

  “It happens,” I told her shrugging.

  “I hope it doesn’t happen too much,” Burl said. “I missed a whole afternoon of work for nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, honey, I’m really sorry,” Mary Jane apologized over and over.

  I’d cooked a meat loaf for Laney and me. I cut it in half and took it over so she wouldn’t have to worry about dinner.

  “Thanks so much,” she said at the back door. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “Mary Jane, forget it,” I told her. “You can’t tell false labor from real labor until it happens. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  “I just hate being a bother to you and Burl,” she said in a whisper.

  “We don’t mind,” I said. But something in her expression, her demeanor, gave me my first hint that maybe I spoke only for myself.

  Over the next few days I was thrown into the company of my neighbors a lot. For the first time, I began to see that everything was not as it had seemed. Burl was not always smiling and helpful. Sometimes Mary Jane appeared almost afraid of him.

  It was just anxiety over the coming of the new baby, I assured myself.

  The following Tuesday, Laney and I spent a quiet evening together. I read her favorite bedtime story until she fell asleep and then sat up alone to watch Perry Mason on the TV. I was just thinking to turn the light off and go to bed when I heard a tap on the back door. It was certainly Burl or Mary Jane and I thought it might be real labor this time. I hurried through the kitchen. I peeked through the curtain and saw Burl. Immediately I tightened the sash on my bathrobe and slid back the bolt.

  “Are you going to the hospital again?” I asked.

  Before he even answered, he sort of slid past me stepping inside as casually as if he owned the place.

  “No,” he said. “Mary Jane’s resting. I thought I’d come over and see how you’re doing.”

  “Oh.” I was caught off guard. What was he doing coming to my place so late?

  “I want to thank you for all you’ve done for Mary Jane lately.”

  His words were ordinary and he had a big smile on his face, but there was something about them that felt strange.

  “Well, you’re welcome. Mary Jane has been wonderful to me. She’s my closest friend,” I managed to mumble.

  He shut the door behind him.

  “Laney’s asleep, I guess.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, I was just getting ready to go to bed myself,” I admitted.

  Burl sort of tilted his head and made a tutting sound. “So sad,” he told me. “The beautiful young widow sleeps all alone.”

  He said it lightly, friendly, jokingly. Still, I was suddenly very conscious of my bare feet and the thin nightgown beneath my chenille robe.

  Burl crossed the room and began opening the cabinets. “What have you got to drink in this place?” he asked.

  “I...uh...milk,” I answered. “And orange juice, I think.”

  I moved to the fridge to check.

  “I never took you for a teetotaler,” he said.

  “I’m not. I mean, I don’t really drink, but it’s just because I was a teenager and now I’m a mother. Tom would sometimes have a beer on a hot summer day. But I don’t have anything here, now.”

  Burl nodded, yet he was clearly annoyed.

  “Would you like some orange juice?”

  “No.”

  His reply was sharp.

  “Sorry,” he said almost immediately. “I just wanted us to have a little drink together, try to get to know each other a little better.”

  “That would be nice,” I said. “Maybe after the baby is born we can have a little welcome home party or something. It would give Mary Jane a nice break and it would be fun for Laney, too.”

  He chuckled. The sound was somehow unpleasant.

  “The party I have in mind wouldn’t need my wife or your daughter.” He moved to stand right in front of me. “I’m thinking of a little private party for two.”

  I stepped back.

  “Burl, I don’t know what you’re thinking but...”

  “I’m thinking about you,” he said, his voice velvet soft. “I’m lying in that room over there, and there’s just a wall between your bed and mine. It’s just a wall and I’m thinking I can almost hear you breathing.”

  He was so close I could feel his words against my skin. I stepped away again, this time finding my back flat against the refrigerator. I k
new what was going on now, I thought. He was making a pass. I could slap his face, but that would ruin any friendship we might have forever. So I pretended not to understand.

  “These walls are thin, but I doubt you can hear me breathing.”

  I tried to edge away from him. He grasped me around the waist.

  “I need you, baby,” he growled out. “I’m aching, aching for you. And I know you’re over here, all empty and needing a man.”

  “Let me go, Burl.”

  “You don’t want me to,” he said. “You’ve been telling me every way except plain English. Shaking your butt at me night and day. I’m here now, baby, and I’m going to give it to you real good.”

  “Let me go!” I insisted. “I’m telling you in plain English now, let me go.”

  “You want to fight a little bit? Okay, that’s fun. I like a woman who’s a little sassy.”

  I was annoyed. Burl was disgusting and obtuse. It was clear to me that our friendship was irrevocably spoiled. That disappointed and aggravated me. Unfortunately my sheltered, safe life made me unprepared for anything worse.

  “Stop it!”

  He grabbed my breast as he pressed me against the refrigerator. I slapped at his hands. He just laughed and ground his pelvis against mine.

  “You love it, baby,” he said.

  He tried to kiss me. I turned my head away.

  I was struggling now. I was desperately trying to push him away. He grabbed my hands and held them both in one as he got the other inside my robe, pawing me. I was surprised at how strong he was, how easily he could control me. I began fighting back in earnest. Unable to move my arms, I clawed at him. I aimed a kick at his groin. He brought up his own knee to block my attack. Left with nothing else, his face was close to my own, I sunk my teeth into his cheek.

  That made him mad. He cursed vividly and then hauled back and slapped me so hard I saw stars.

  “Stupid bitch! This could have been fun for you, but I’m having you either way.”

  He picked me up as if I were nothing more than a rag doll and slammed me facedown on the kitchen table. I was momentarily stunned as he pushed my nightgown up around my neck. But when he began jerking down my underpants, I grabbed for them. He held my wrists together at the small of my back. I kicked, I struggled, I fought. He parted my legs with his own. He controlled me easily and he laughed at my powerlessness.

  “I’ll scream,” I threatened. “I’ll scream, Burl, and it’s like you said. These walls are thin. Mary Jane will hear me.”

  “Yeah, and what’s Mary Jane going to do?” he asked me. “I’ll tell you what happens if you scream. If you scream your little girl comes running in here to see Mommy getting fucked on the kitchen table. She’ll remember it every day of her life. Go ahead, scream your head off, bitch.”

  I didn’t. I thought of Laney. I bit down on my lip. I held my scream. I held my breath. I had only had sex with Tom. It had been sweet and tender, thrilling and satisfying. This was not that. This was mean and ugly and frightening. I laid my cheek against the yellow Formica and I stared across the table. Willing my mind to another place, I focused my attention on the salt and pepper shakers, two little ceramic kids, the smiling icons of a canned soup company. Two happy silent children who watched as he forced himself inside my body again and again and again, greedy, abusive, debasing, until he spilled his seed inside, making me filthy for all time.

  LANEY

  I KNEW THE minute that Babs woke me up that something was wrong. Maybe it was the sight of her bruised cheek and swollen lip. Or maybe it was the urgency in her voice.

  “Get dressed,” she said. “Get dressed as quick as you can.”

  “Okay.”

  Normally I got at least a couple of “time to wake up” announcements before I went in and sat at the table, leisurely coming to life over cornflakes and juice. Never was I rousted out of bed to put clothes on immediately. Probably out of sheer novelty I obeyed without question.

  “What happened to your face?” I asked.

  She reached up and touched it, almost surprised, as if she hadn’t noticed.

  “I fell,” she said and then added slowly, “I was carrying some boxes and I fell.” It was weird the way she said it, as if she’d just thought of it. But I didn’t comment. She’d walked out of the room and I had more immediate concerns to distract me.

  Babs had laid out my clothes at the foot of my bed, a madras plaid button-down shirt and dungarees. Why was I wearing dungarees? I always wore dresses to my kindergarten class. All the girls did. What kind of day was it going to be in dungarees? I went out to ask my mother.

  The question disappeared from my lips. The whole house was in chaos. Everything we owned was stacked up, packed up or stashed in brown paper sacks.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’re moving.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re moving out,” Babs said. “I don’t like this place anymore.”

  “Are we going back to Uncle Warren and Aunt Maxine’s?”

  “No.”

  “Am I going to school today?”

  “No.”

  “What about breakfast?”

  “I’ll get you something later,” she said. “Now you have to help me carry all of this stuff out and get it into the car.”

  “Why don’t we get someone to help us.”

  “We don’t need anyone to help us.” Her words were stern, almost angry.

  “Okay, Mama,” I responded meekly.

  Her voice softened, too. “Get your shoes and socks on while I pack up the things in your room.”

  There was no place to sit, every chair was covered with stuff. I sank down to the floor and did as I was told. I could hear her packing in my room. It was not the careful, thoughtful sorting of our things that she’d done at Uncle Warren and Aunt Maxine’s. She was just throwing things into grocery sacks as fast as she could. She had my entire room emptied by the time I’d tied my Keds.

  “There’s not going to be room to take everything,” she said to me. “We’ll load up as much as we can in the car and the rest we’ll just leave.”

  That didn’t concern me very much. I assumed that the stuff we’d be leaving would be her stuff. Towels or dishes or things like that, things that weren’t that important. When I saw some of my toys were in the throwaway pile, I didn’t go along uncomplaining.

  “This is mine, Mom,” I pointed out, as I dragged my big plastic shape sorter out of the discards.

  “It’s a baby toy,” Babs told me. “You don’t play with baby toys. You’re a big girl now.”

  She was right. Somehow it didn’t make any difference.

  “I like all my toys,” I said. “Why should I leave them here? We brought them from California. We kept them at Aunt Maxine’s.”

  “There’s no room for them in the car,” she answered.

  “We should borrow Uncle Warren’s trailer,” I told her.

  “You don’t need them. We’re only taking what we need,” she said. “We’re leaving them here. And that’s final.”

  “But Mama...”

  “Don’t argue.”

  Her tone was firm, harsher than necessary. So I kept further complaints to myself, but I wasn’t happy about it. I continued to sulk even as Babs readied the last of the boxes near the kitchen door.

  “Now I want you to be very quiet,” she said.

  “Quiet? Why?”

  “We don’t want to wake Mary Jane,” she said. “She’s probably still asleep and we don’t want to wake her.”

  That seemed a little strange. I thought adults were always up early in the morning. But I figured it had something to do with having a baby and going to the hospital.

  Babs opened the door slowly and propped it with the trash can. She glanced at me and put a finger to her lips as a reminder. We began carrying boxes out to the car.

  After the novelty of the first load, it wasn’t all that much fun. It was hard and boring and my mother insisted that we do it
all as if we were walking on tiptoes. I couldn’t carry very much. Babs had to do most of the work. It took a half-dozen trips at least. We filled the trunk up first and then the backseat. She crammed the last of it into the floorboard of the front seat passenger side.

  “Go shut the door,” she told me. “The rest we’re going to leave. Hurry! And be quiet!”

  Those two commands seemed contradictory to me, but I tried. I made one quiet walk through the home that I was just beginning to feel was my own. I grieved for the things we were leaving behind. The floor lamp that we’d had in the house in California. The rocking horse that had been in my room since babyhood. All my summer clothes, including my swimsuit with the yellow daisies on it. I felt sad and a little lost as I wandered among my now discarded possessions.

  Suddenly my mom was there.

  “Laney, what are you doing? Come on, get in the car now!” she growled at me through clenched teeth.

  I hurried to obey.

  I raced through the house and into the kitchen. Babs was right behind me. She moved the trash can to shut the door. I glanced inside it and saw my SoupKids, salt and pepper shakers. Aunt Maxine and I had collected twenty-five can labels to get them. When we mailed them in, I’d licked the envelope. I wasn’t leaving them behind.

  “Don’t touch those!” Babs actually yelled.

  I was so startled I dropped the salt one on top of the pepper, chipping the little hat.

  “Oh, Mama, it broke,” I whined.

  “Leave it, it’s trash,” my mom said, her voice adamant.

  Just then we heard noise outside. It wasn’t a scary noise or an unusual noise, simply the sound of someone moving around outside. Babs paled visibly, her eyes wide in fear.

  “Babs? What’s going on?” I heard Mary Jane’s voice from the yard.

  My mother immediately stepped out onto the back porch.

  “I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Wake me? What are you talking about, I’ve been up for hours.”

  I was alone for only one short moment in the duplex kitchen. I glanced down into the trash again at my salt and pepper shakers. They were mine. Mine! Babs had no right to throw them away like they were hers. I jerked them out of the trash and stuffed each into a front jeans pocket only an instant before my mother stepped back into the kitchen and grabbed me by the arm.