by Bev Marshall
I stole a glance at Papaw. Grandma had forbidden gambling in her house. The only cards we owned was a pack of Old Maid, which she grudgingly allowed me to play when I was younger. Papaw smiled. “What stakes are we playing for?” he asked, taking his seat at the head of the table.
“Two-penny ante.”
“I don’t know how to play,” I muttered. “And I didn’t bring my purse.”
Papaw laughed. “She’s a fast learner,” he told Louise. “I’ll stake you, Layla Jay.”
As it turned out I had a real knack for poker. I won with ace high, a pair of threes, a straight, and a flush. As I raked in the pennies, Louise and Papaw wore twin looks of disgust on their faces. “Can’t catch a thing,” Papaw said, throwing his card down. “Time to get on home, Layla Jay.”
It occurred to me that maybe Papaw and Miss Louise let me win on purpose, but I wasn’t sure of that. When we counted our pennies, I had won one dollar and thirty-three cents. “You brought in a ringer,” Miss Louise said to Papaw, showing nearly all of her big teeth. She flipped her curly hair around her face. “Poor me. I’m the big loser.”
She was, but when I saw Papaw lean over and kiss her just before he got into the truck, I suspected that she had won much more than a poker pot.
On the drive home the next day I told Mama about our evening at Miss Louise’s house, thinking she would be happy we had fun. But I was wrong; she was furious. Which surprised me. She and Papaw were so much alike, I had thought that she would be all for his having a “lady friend” as he called her. “You’ve had plenty of boyfriends since Daddy died,” I said.“And Miss Louise is nice. She said she’s going to start wearing Elizabeth Arden makeup just so she can visit with you at Salloum’s. She thinks you’re beautiful.”
Mama swerved into the driveway and slammed on the brakes, nearly throwing me into the windshield.“All the makeup in the world couldn’t improve her looks,” she said. “And she’s at least twenty years younger than Pop. He’s an old fool.That’s what.”
Mama stayed in a bad mood the entire month. When she wasn’t storming around the kitchen cussing the leaky faucet or the loud humming of the refrigerator, she was in her room, lying on her bed with the blinds closed. I could tell by her puffy eyes that she was crying a lot, but she told me she’d developed allergies and to stop looking at her like she was some goddamned bug under a microscope. She didn’t even notice when one of her nails chipped, and when I pointed it out, she just shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t care. Mama still went out to Skinnys, and she had plenty of dates, but her laughter sounded like false notes on my flute, and her pink rouge looked too bright on her pale face. I wanted to help her, talk to her like a best friend since she’d lost Cybil to Ned Pottle, but I didn’t know what advice a daughter is supposed to give a mother. I gave up and asked God to counsel her. I didn’t know that I was the one who was going to need His advice soon.
Chapter 9
GOD FINALLY ANSWERED ONE OF MY PRAYERS. SOMETIME BETWEEN New Year’s and Easter, I grew real breasts, and just as I had thought, having big boobs changes your life. But not always for the better. I was still in love with Jehu, but he and Lyn had gotten back together and were going steady again. June double-dated with them several times, and she told me that Jehu and Lyn made out in the backseat of Red Pittman’s car when the four of them went to the drive-in movies. Red had gotten his license before anyone else because he’d failed eighth grade twice. June said she was only dating Red until someone smarter got their license. She acted like she was Miss Goody Two-shoes on those dates, but I knew she let him French kiss her because she told me exactly how to do it. She even offered a demonstration, but I refused her when she wiggled her tongue too close to my face.
Ever since Mama’s birthday party, I had been getting plenty of phone calls from boys I hardly knew, but none of them had asked me for a date as they didn’t have driver’s licenses. Then one Friday night when Mama was out on a date, Henry Quitman, a boy in my English class, borrowed his brother’s motor scooter and drove over to my house. I invited him in for a Coke, but he said he would rather have a beer. “How ’bout it, Layla Jay? You got any beer in the house?” he asked as he plopped down on the couch and propped his feet on the northernmost corner of Mississippi.
“We’re out,” I lied.There was a six-pack of Buds in the refrigerator, but I didn’t feel like giving him one, and I hadn’t drunk one since Mama’s party.
His chin dropped. “Well, I guess I’ll take a Coke then.”
When I brought the bottle to him, he took it with one hand and pulled me down beside him with his free hand. His eyes were on my chest. Mine were on his bangs. I assumed they were supposed to make him look like one of the Beatles, but they weren’t even, dipping upward on his right temple. I longed to get the scissors and fix them for him. As I listened to him talk about his ride over, how fast he went, the route he took, the feel of the night wind on his skin, I counted the pimples on his face. Eight. His thin lips disappeared into his mouth when he fell silent. Where was Jehu tonight? Was he kissing Lyn, telling her that she was beautiful and that he couldn’t believe he’d actually sunk so low as to go out with Layla Jay Andrews? Was Henry all I deserved in this life? I decided I would be an old maid. I wasn’t going to spend my life straightening bangs and popping zits. I stood up. “You have to go,” I said. “My mother will be home soon, and I’m not allowed to have boys in the house when she’s not here.”
Henry set his Coke down. “How ’bout a little kiss first?”
I shook my head sideways.“No way,” I said. But he had risen and his arm went around my waist, pressing me against him. He slid his hand around to the side of my left boob. “You like this, don’t you?” he whispered. “You let Don Perkins go all the way with you, didn’t you?”
I punched him hard and he fell backward onto the couch. “I did not!” I yelled. “I never even went out with him.Who told you that?”
Henry rubbed his chest where I had punched him.“I don’t remember. I’ve heard stories about you from lots of guys. Don, Jerry, Bruce, I don’t know. The ones who come over here and get drunk with you. I heard you go all the way, let them do anything to you they want.”
My legs turned to rubber, and I sank down on the couch beside him. How did all this get started? “It’s all lies,” I said. “Why would anyone make up these ugly lies?” I could barely get out the words, my throat constricted and I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly my head was on his chest and my tears were making dark spots on his madras shirt.
Henry patted the back of my head. “I’m sorry. Real sorry, Layla Jay. I swear I thought what they were saying was the truth. Even June said some things, and she’s your best friend, isn’t she?”
I closed my eyes. June. June, my best friend. My only friend. Judas in a wraparound skirt. “What’d she say?” I whispered.
“She said that at that party your mother had, for her birthday I think it was. June said you told her you got drunk and went all the way with some old guy. She said you and your mother were just alike, wild women.”
I guess something inside me broke then. Maybe it was my brain that came apart. I sat up.Wild women. Mama and me were wild women, and I imagined us running down the street, shrieking and beating our chests with our hair flying out in all directions. I laughed. Wasn’t it all a joke? “Ha ha ha ha ha.” I was screaming louder and louder. And then I was crying again.
Henry was so scared his bangs quivered across his forehead. “Uh, Layla Jay. Uh, I said I was sorry. I got to go. I need to get on home.” He was easing away from me as if I might pounce on him like the wild animal I supposedly was. “I’ll see you,” he said, and then he was gone. I waited until the sound of the motor scooter died in the night before I cried until my eyes were swollen shut. I thought of the old saying “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you.”What a lie.Words were more lethal than bullets from a machine gun.Th
ere was no escaping them, no way to return fire that I could see.
Remembering the vow I had made the night of my birthday party, I wasn’t going to tell Mama what Henry had said, but like always, she wormed it out of me. When she got home that night, I was still on the couch with swollen eyes, and it was a sure bet that Mama was going to know everything that had happened while she was gone.
Mama wanted revenge. After I told her about June’s betrayal, she said, “That little bitch has always been jealous of you.” She stood with her hands on her hips, her back against the kitchen sink, where the pile of stacked dirty dishes was listing precariously to her left. “We’re going to make her life so miserable she’ll wish she’d never spoken your name.”
I was sitting at the table with a cold washcloth pressed against my eyes. It was three o’clock in the morning, and Mama had to be at work at eight-thirty.“But how? No one will believe me over her. She’s a cheerleader.”
“So what! All that means is that she’s got a big mouth that needs shutting up.”
As much as I, too, wanted revenge, I was more afraid of what Mama might do, and I wished I had at least left out June’s name when I wailed out the entire story to her just an hour past. “I don’t know, Mama. She’s the president of Y-teens, reads the daily devotional over the intercom at school every Monday.The teachers like her.”
Mama took a drag on her Lucky Strike. “Remember the golden rule. Do unto others what they’ve done to you.”
Miserable as I was, I smiled.“Wallace would be surprised that you’re quoting scripture.”
Mama grinned. “Wallace would be surprised about a lot of things he’ll never find out about.”When she threw her arms out from her sides, her elbow struck the tower of dishes behind her.They teetered, but they didn’t fall.
I dreaded going to school on Monday and begged Mama to let me stay home. “I’ll clean the house,” I promised. “I’ll cook a nice dinner for you. I’ll even iron some of your blouses.”
“No sale.You’re going to school with your head held high. We Andrews women don’t allow people to dictate our behavior.You’re not a coward; don’t act like one.Think how Jackie would handle it.Would she let Lady Bird keep her from appearing in public? Of course not. C’est la vie. That’s French for live it up, or something like that.”
On Monday when the bell rang after homeroom, I spotted June sashaying down the hall with Cassie Greenberg, and when my Judas friend smiled at me, I burst into tears and ran to the girls’ room where I locked myself in the first stall.
After the bell rang for first period, I left school and wandered around Zebulon for a while, trying to get up the courage to face Mama. She would find out that I had cut my classes when Mrs.Tremont, the school’s secretary, called to report an absence, a new school policy that every kid I knew hated. I figured it was better that Mama hear the news from me than from the school’s tattler, so I turned down State Street and headed for Salloum’s. As I pushed open the glass door and turned left toward the cosmetics counter, I told myself that Mama would just have to accept the fact that I wasn’t capable of c’est la vie.
I STOOD AT THE END of the counter watching Mama in profile as she held up a mirror in front of Mrs. Randolph’s frowning face. Her voice was seductive and yet cheerful. “You see how that color brings out the blue in your eyes?”
Mrs. Randolph kept on frowning.“I don’t know. It doesn’t cover my liver spots all that well.” Mrs. Randolph’s husband owned the Palace Theater, State Street Drugs, and the new women’s clothing store named Ruby’s for his wife, so I knew Mama was hoping for a big sale. When Mama lowered the mirror, Mrs. Randolph opened her big tapestry purse and drew out a red wallet.“I guess I’ll try it.” She drew back the twenty-dollar bill just as Mama reached for it. “But if I don’t like it, I’ll expect my money back when I return it.”
“Naturally,” Mama said, as Mrs. Randolph finally let go of the twenty. “But you’re going to get so many compliments you won’t want to.Those spots are really beauty marks; everyone knows that.”
I waited until Mrs. Randolph had walked across the aisle to the lingerie before I slid my hand down the glass counter to where Mama stood with a sad look on her face. “Hey,” I said. “Even you can’t make that ugly face pretty,” I whispered.
Mama’s eyes crinkled with laughter that was genuine, and I felt better already.“What are you doing here and why, Miss Layla Jay, aren’t you in school where you belong?”
I spread my fingers wide on the smooth glass cool to my touch. “Don’t be mad. I just couldn’t stand seeing June smiling at me like she hadn’t done a thing. It was too much to take.”
Mama lifted my hands from the counter and kissed the knuckles on each hand. “Poor baby.You’ve got a lot to learn. Well, at least you tried. That’s the important thing. To try.” She glanced at the clock. “Tell you what. I get a break in about thirty minutes.Why don’t you hang around and we’ll go to the Tastee-Freez and order the large-size hot fudge sundae.”
Mama was right! I had a case of the hot fudge sundae blues, and maybe, I thought, maybe Mama did, too. “I’ll wait outside,” I said and blew her a kiss before I turned and walked toward the sunlight streaming in through the open door.
I can’t say the sundae cured the blues, but by the time Mama got home from work, I was feeling better than I had in days. Mama had just suggested that we go out for hamburgers when the phone rang. I sat on the couch listening to Mama talking in the tone she reserved for flirting, and disappointment wrapped around me tight as a straitjacket. She was saying, “Mervin Stevens, I can’t possibly get there before seven.” She laughed. “Well, you’ll just have to tell your racing heart to slow down. You go ahead; I’ll meet you there, and I promise I’ll be worth the wait.” I thought back to Mama’s birthday party while I listened to more of Mama’s bantering. I remembered how Mervin and I had sat at the kitchen table drinking beer and his face had gotten so fuzzy and then I’d seen two of him. Both of him were good-looking men with curly black hair, olive skin, the darkest eyes I’d ever seen. And he had been as drunk as I, laughing and spilling beer, staggering over to the washtub each time he got another bottle.
When Mama hung up the phone, she turned to me and said,“Imagine Mervin Stevens asking me to a party up at Dixie Springs Lake this late. I shouldn’t go.”
I brightened up right away. “Then don’t. Let’s get hamburgers.”
She frowned. “The party is going to be at Dave Turner’s cabin. I heard it’s really something to see. Stone fireplace, bear rugs, rustic stuff. I’ve always wanted to go there. Bonita Garza goes up there all the time, always bragging to me about it. She’ll be real surprised to see me there with Mervin, even if he does have white powder in his ears.”
Before I could think of something persuasive to say, she left the room and headed for her closet. “I’ll find something to eat,” I yelled. “Maybe some arsenic is left in the fridge.”
Mama didn’t hear or she didn’t think that merited a response.When I heard bath water running, I lay down on the couch and turned on the TV. My Favorite Martian was on. It wasn’t my favorite, but I watched it anyway.
I woke up on the couch where I had fallen asleep. The TV screen was filled with snow and I switched it off. In the kitchen I glanced up at the white plastic wall clock and saw that it was 3:35 in the morning. Then I went to Mama’s room and saw that she wasn’t in her bed. I felt cold fingers gripping my arms, and I shivered with terror. My heart was beating so fast I could hardly breathe as I flew to Mama’s unmade bed. Grabbing the sheet and spread, I huddled beneath them, pushing my nose into her pillow. As I breathed in the scent of Mama’s Elizabeth Arden perfume, I suddenly knew something was terribly wrong. I sat up. Something had happened to Mama. I was sure of it. I looked around the dark room. No one was there, but I could feel Grandma’s spirit all around me, telling me to get up, go, hurry. But go where?
I
don’t know how long I sat, frozen with fear and worry, in Mama’s bed before I heard pounding on the door. After I ran down the hall and flung it open, Papaw reached for me and held me against his chest. “There’s been an accident,” he said. “Frieda. She’s in the emergency room. Get your shoes. Let’s go.”
The nurse at the emergency room desk at the Zebulon Infirmary told us she didn’t know anything about Mama’s condition and directed us to the waiting room. As we came into the room, I saw two policemen and a fireman standing in front of three men seated on the gray plastic chairs lined against the wall. I recognized one of the policemen, Darryl Thomas, the man who had nearly been my stepfather but didn’t have enough money to buy us a house. I also knew one of the men in the plastic chairs and I walked over closer so that I could hear what Mervin was saying. “I told her she shouldn’t drive herself home, but she wouldn’t let me have her keys. She said she didn’t need a man to look after her, that she could take care of herself.” He looked down at his folded hands hanging between his knees. “I was drunk myself. We all were. I don’t know how in the hell we didn’t get in that wreck.We were right behind her. I remember seeing her taillights and then she pulled out into the left lane and we saw the headlights coming, and Buddy slammed on the brakes hard and threw me into the dashboard.”
Darryl had a pad in his hand, but he hadn’t written anything on it. While Mervin talked, he kept nodding his head up and down like he was a teacher listening to a pupil give the right answers. He turned and saw me. “Layla Jay, you’re here.Your mother’s gone up to surgery.”
Papaw was squeezing my hand so hard I cried out. I hadn’t realized he was beside me until then.“How is she? Has anyone spoken to a doctor?” Papaw asked the group of men.
Mervin stood up. “Mr. Whittington, you know me. I’m the one who called you. I bought a Jersey from you last year.” He stuck out his hand but Papaw ignored it.“All we know is Dr. Martin said she had a head injury, internal bleeding. She was on the pavement when I got there, so bloody it was hard to tell. That little Volkswagen crumpled up like a smashed beer can.” He looked down at me. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all that. I just, I just, well, I just feel terrible about it.”