The Cotton Queen

by Pamela Morsi

  I wondered at times, as I sat in my quiet retreat and watched the fish gracefully moving through their lives, if I had spoken up earlier might my life have been different?

  I tried to imagine it. Mentally I put myself back on Aunt Maxine’s front porch explaining to Acee why I needed his help. He probably wouldn’t have married me. My pregnancy would have been a local scandal and Freddie and LaVeida would have taken Laney away.

  No, I couldn’t have done that.

  Perhaps later, when Marley was born. Acee and I had been so close then. Maybe I could have unburdened myself and he would have understood. Maybe I could have told him then, but our focus was so much on the baby.

  There had been happy times in our marriage. No couple could stay together as long as we had without some good laughs and some shared fun. But was I supposed to interject into one of those rare islands of good feeling the sordid humiliation and evil of being raped?

  Merry Christmas, darling husband. For your special gift this year I want to share with you the single most horrible and degrading experience of my life.

  Surely during twelve years of marriage there should have been one moment when it would have been exactly right to tell him.

  Or I could have told someone else. The relationship between a husband and wife is already so complicated. If I’d spoken of it with another person, it might have given me the courage to share it with him.

  Who could I have told? Aunt Maxine. Yes, I was absolutely sure that my aunt would have stood by me, loved me, helped me all she could. But it would have hurt her so much. It would have been like selfishly giving her my pain so that I could find relief.

  What I should have done, all those long years ago, was confess the truth to one of those therapists. Not Brother Chet, of course. I couldn’t tell him anything. It would get all over town. But one of those strangers I saw in Dallas.

  Of course that was the reason that I hadn’t. They were strangers and I couldn’t trust them. They might have been familiar with every mental illness on earth. But that didn’t mean that they would understand. Among all of those framed diplomas on their walls, there was no guarantee of compassion or even benignity.

  Dr. Hallenbeck had known, he’d wanted me to get it out, to say it aloud. He said it was the only way to start healing. But I hadn’t been ready. That was the point, wasn’t it?

  Maybe I should have told somebody. Or maybe there had been no one to tell. Either way, it was done. That part of my life was behind me. I needed to find a way to make what was ahead work better.

  It was probably sheer boredom that had me taking an early-morning stroll downtown in the middle of the week. I’d put on a cheery outfit in honor of the day. Pink slacks with a beautiful pink-and-turquoise top that had a fancy beadwork design. The collar extended into a draping scarflike attachment that was tied in a bow at the neckline. I felt good and looked good. It was the only way to face the world these days.

  I turned the corner onto Pennsylvania Street when I spotted some activity in front of the Coin-Op Laundromat. A big truck was blocking most of the street as they unloaded brand-new machines. As I got closer I could see Renny, observing.

  I called out a greeting. He turned and smiled, pleased to see me.

  “What are you doing out this early?” he asked me.

  “Oh, you know us old ladies,” I said. “We don’t sleep much.”

  He bent his head down and eyed me critically over the top of his glasses. “You’re only nine years older than me,” he said. “And I’m just now hitting the prime of life.”

  “Well, don’t hit it too hard,” I teased him. “It’s been known to fight back.”

  He chuckled.

  We looked at the new washers as they were being installed.

  “In the fall, I’m replacing the dryers,” he told me. “It’s too much capital outlay at one time, but if I spread it out over six months, it’s less of a crunch on my finances.”

  “You know, Renny, if you need money, you can always come to me.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “One thing about my family, you can’t accuse them of being stingy. My mom, Pete, the twins and now you. Dad is probably rolling in his grave over all the money that’s been offered up to me.”

  “We all know you’re good for it,” I said.

  “I am good for it, that’s why I’ll just take it slow, pay for things as they make money,” he said. “Besides, how could I borrow from a woman with no visible means of support.”

  I shrugged and laughed. “I’m still living off my ex,” I said. “I haven’t brought home a paycheck in twenty years.”

  “How long can that go on?” he asked.

  I was surprised at the question.

  “Acee’s agreed to support me,” I said. “It was in the divorce decree.”

  Renny nodded. “Yeah, and I’m sure he’ll do it, though I’d imagine it’s already pretty tight supporting two households. What will it be like when he starts paying to send Doris’s boys to college.”

  His words made me feel bad, ashamed, like somehow I was underhandedly getting something I didn’t deserve. I never handle criticism well and I didn’t appreciate his.

  “I don’t believe that my financial affairs or those of my ex-husband are any of your concern,” I told him flatly.

  He nodded. “You are absolutely right,” he said.

  “You are obviously thinking of your own challenges in scraping together enough cash to meet your child-support obligations.” My tone was as sharp and dangerous as broken glass.

  “Actually I wasn’t,” he said, still not reacting to my obvious anger. “I was only thinking about you. You did me a good deed once, you know. You told me I had to come back here. You said that sometimes we have to do the thing that scares us. You’re scared to be responsible for yourself, but it’s time that you do that. Acee’s support was offered in the spirit of fairness. You’ve managed to turn it into a crutch.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Probably not,” he answered. “But I do know that my widowed mother, will be sixty-five next week. And how is she celebrating? By opening a brand-new business. All of the money that went into that, she made on her own, after my dad died. She didn’t have to do that. She could have just hunkered down at home and piddled in her garden the way you do.”

  “Gardening is hard work,” I insisted.

  Renny nodded. “It is. And it’s important. But it’s not enough to make up a life. Both my parents believed in the healing power of work. It helped my mother. It’s helping me. You’re going to be around here for a very long time, Babs. Figure out something to do from here on out.”

  I was still mad when I stormed out of the place. How dare that little weasel, who’d been handed the family business on a silver plate, criticize me. This women’s lib thing was going to everybody’s head. What was I supposed to do to make a living?

  I maintained my anger for the better part of the day. But eventually I had to look at what Renny had said.

  Acee made a good living. He always had. The house had been signed over into my name, but he still paid the mortgage on it. He paid the electric bill and the heating, my beloved cable TV, he made sure I had gas and groceries. I got a generous allowance of spending money.

  Acee and Dorrie lived in a nice house, but it was significantly smaller than mine. Acee’s car was the one he had when we divorced. The one Doris drove was even older than that. They lived nicely and dressed well, but she was no longer working. It couldn’t be easy for Acee to support all these people. I began to feel guilty about what everything cost.

  Still, it was no easy task coming up with some scheme where I might make some money. There wasn’t exactly an abundance of job opportunities in McKinney. Every divorcée in town was running a little dress shop on the square. Virtually all the other businesses had moved out to shopping centers near the highway. If I was going to drive as far as the highway, well I was practically in the next town anyway.
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  Ultimately my guilt drove me to an employment service. Dressed in a lemon-colored silk suit with a long mandarin jacket and shoulder pads that might have appealed to Bette Davis, I drove out to an office in Plano. I didn’t want to see anyone I might know. I couldn’t bear for people in McKinney to know that I was looking for work, at least until I could actually find some.

  I’m sure it was the vivid yellow suit, set among the boring black and gray of the younger women around me, that captured the eye of the older, more experienced manager of the place.

  I was invited into her semiprivate cubicle, framed by two bright corner windows at the far end of the building.

  “Please have a seat, Mrs. Clifton,” she said, not looking up from my paperwork in her hands. “I’m Katherine Garnett and I’ll be happy to help you find work.”

  She was dressed, very chicly I thought, in a sweater dress. The vivid teal color was charming and the huge cowl neck drew attention to a very lovely face, a few years older than my own.

  “What job skills do you have?” she asked me as she seated herself on the other side of the desk.

  “Well, I can type, I suppose, though I haven’t done it since high school. I knew shorthand back then, too, though that’s been twenty-five years, as well.”

  The woman smiled at me, a little too patiently, I thought.

  “We don’t say ‘typing’ anymore, we say ‘keyboarding skills,’” she told me. “And shorthand, well there’s not much call for that since they invented the dictaphone.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “With all the new personal computers around, companies are closing down the typing pools and foregoing secretaries for executive assistants. There’s not a lot of opportunity there right now anyway.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She was reading the papers I’d filled out. She turned over one sheet and then glanced up at me.

  “Is this your complete work record?”

  “Yes,” I admitted, embarrassed.

  The only job I’d ever had that wasn’t part of Uncle Warren’s family business was working for Big D Cement. I was pretty sure that even if Mr. Donohoe wasn’t dead, he probably still wouldn’t rehire me.

  She took a deep breath and sat back in her chair. I expected her to say something like, “thanks for coming in, we’ll keep your name on file.” Instead she said, “Tell me about yourself.”

  I was startled.

  “Ah...well there’s not much to tell,” I said. “I’ve just been a housewife and mother.”

  “I’m sure that there is something exceptional about you, something you’ve done that’s, in its way, extraordinary.”

  I smiled. “I was runner-up for McKinney Cotton Queen in 1956,” I blurted out.

  We both laughed.

  “It’s pretty embarrassing to have that as the only bright spot on my résumé,” I admitted.

  “At least you were runner-up,” she said. “I came in third place for Miss Luling Watermelon Thump.”

  She and I both nearly howled. People from other desks were glancing our way.

  “So sorry,” I said. “Mrs....” I glanced down at her desk looking for her nameplate.

  “Call me Kathy,” she said. “I think we former gems of Texas had better stick together.”

  We talked for several minutes about my life. She was interested in my volunteer work and encouraged me to put that on my résumé. But when I began to talk about how much I enjoyed Acee’s campaign, she perked up. She asked a number of questions about what kind of things we did and how they were run.

  “The bottom line, of course,” I told her, “is that we didn’t win.”

  “I wouldn’t call it the bottom line,” she said. “It’s more like a starting point.” She was flipping through her card file. “I want to send you on an interview. There’s no posted opening right now,” she said. “But I just want these people to meet you and talk to you. Do you want me to set it up?”

  Within twenty minutes I was out in my car with a scheduled appointment, map and directions to a place called Ardith Eden Events. It was located in HiLo Park Shopping Center in Dallas.

  My palms were sweating. I was nauseous. I’d driven through Dallas several times since coming out of my self-imposed exile. But I’d never driven to Dallas. Never walked around in a shopping center where people of Dallas might see me.

  I managed the impetus to pull out of the parking lot. But every foot of the rest of the drive was a battle.

  They didn’t even have a job posted.

  I could never take a job in Dallas, the commute is too far.

  I don’t want to do this.

  Kathy’s directions were impeccable. Although I had driven as slowly as I possibly could, I arrived in front of the building exactly on time. I scurried inside.

  I met Ardith herself and her assistant, Geoffrey. They were surprisingly down-to-earth considering the pricey chic events that they put together.

  I didn’t make any attempt to impress them. I knew I was a small-town girl in a very trendy, expensive part of the city. I already knew they didn’t have a job. And if they did, I didn’t want it.

  I talked about the campaign. Things that I liked. Things that went wrong, problems that I had.

  “Most of the women we talk to,” she told me, “only have experience with weddings. We don’t do a lot of weddings and we feel that they are a much more proscribed event than what we do. Anyone working with us would have to be flexible, creative and capable, as comfortable dealing with the waitstaff as with Ladybird Johnson.”

  “And hopefully when they’re not being forced to share the same fish fork.”

  Everyone laughed. Ardith gave a meaningful look to Geoffrey, who nodded.

  “We are planning, perhaps early next year, to open a second store site in Plano. The north area is just booming and we think we could get in there early and establish a good base.”

  I nodded. “I would certainly like to be considered for your staff if you make that move,” I said. “Although I’m not sure that I can wait until next year to go to work.”

  “Of course not,” Ardith said. “Besides, you need to learn the business from Geoffrey and myself. We’ll put you on staff here. I know it’s a long way from McKinney and with the Expressway eternally under construction the commute is horrid. So you’ll come in two or three days a week, learn a few things, make a tad of money. If nothing else, it will perk up your résumé.”

  As I walked back out to my car, I felt a strange disconnect from reality. I’d found a job, doing something I might actually like and be good at. And I’d just agreed to come into Dallas two or three days a week indefinitely.

  That couldn’t be good.

  LANEY

  GETTING MY first job was so exciting, it was like anticipating a great romance. I had all the thrill, butterflies, angst and enthusiasm of any love at first sight. And I felt just as certain about the prospect of a happy ending. You would have thought by my eager jitters that I’d never put in a workday in my life, when I’d actually had a longer and more varied work experience than most of my bosses. And you would have thought that all those years would have taught me to be wary of guys who seemed too good to be true.

  That was my boss. Mr. Thrushing, or Larry, as he preferred me to call him, was looking for a smart, ambitious young woman to put on the fast track to executive status. He thought I was just what he was looking for. And my lack of a corporate résumé just meant, he told me, that I hadn’t learned any bad habits in what he termed “Willie Loman’s world.” Of course he was mistaking the character from Death of a Salesman for one in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, but I knew what he meant. I also knew that his actual reading was limited to Baron’s and the Wall Street Journal.

  It was all so great. I dressed in my basic black suit, carrying my Day-Timer in my briefcase as I went to my own tiny postage stamp of an office with a little window that looked out into the branches of a big tree. My name was on the door wi
th my fabulous title, Assistant Director For Special Projects.

  Larry was the director for Special Projects. I figured out pretty quickly that was a euphemism for stuff-nobody-else-in-the-organization-wants-to-do. My boss was the cleanup man. Every situation that was prickly, icky or sticky got dumped on his desk.

  I found him generally unsuited for the job. Larry was a glad-hander. He could remember people’s names and their wives’ names and whether they played golf or racquetball. He spent a great deal of company time both on the course and on the court. You could mention the latest news on some obscure business or market phenomena and he always had the low-down scoop, the most up-to-date gossip and the grimy details. I’m certain he was a true asset to the company team.

  But he didn’t like his job very much, nor did he seem to appreciate its value. Almost from my first day at my desk, he delegated most of it to me.

  In the beginning I felt swamped, nearly overwhelmed as dozens and dozens of tedious, thankless tasks were piled in my In-box. But I worked through that. I took each wrinkle that came my way and, one by one, I carefully ironed its problems and set them aside. I discovered that I was getting a fast and thorough education on how the actual operations of the corporation worked and where they didn’t work.

  Larry was very pleased with my efforts. He heaped tons of praise on me and even got me a very quick raise in salary. I felt very safe in confiding my thoughts on how the guys in the computer center, ever bogged down and understaffed, might be able to hand off much of their in-house application education through a tandem training system.

  He listened intently and encouraged me.

  “Write it up,” he told me. “Write it up as a proposal and get it to me on a floppy and I’ll see what I can do.”

  I spent almost two weeks putting together my research and my speculations. I was worried about my numbers, simply because they were so good. But after reworking them a dozen times in every possible mode, I felt that I’d pinned them down.

  “What’s this?” Larry asked as I handed it to him one morning.