by Fannie Flagg
Birmingham, which at one time had the highest illiteracy rate, more venereal disease than any other city in America, and at the same time proudly held the record for having the highest number of Sunday School students of any city in the U.S.… where Imperial Laundry trucks had once driven around town with WE WASH FOR WHITE PEOPLE ONLY written on the side, and where darker citizens still sat behind wooden boards on streetcars that said COLORED and rode freight elevators in department stores.
Birmingham, Murder Capital of the South, where 131 people had been killed in 1931 alone …
All this, and yet Artis loved his Birmingham with an insatiable passion, from the south side to the north side, in the freezing-cold rainy winter, when the red clay would slide down the sides of hills and run into the streets, and in the lush green summers, when the green kudzu vine covered the sides of the mountains and grew up trees and telephone poles and the air was moist and heavy with the smell of gardenias and barbecue. He had traveled all over the country, from Chicago to Detroit, from Savannah to Charleston and on up to New York, but there was never a time when he wasn’t happy to get back to Birmingham. If there is such a thing as complete happiness, it is knowing that you are in the right place, and Artis had been completely happy from the moment he hit Birmingham.
So today he made up his mind to head on home, because he knew he would rather be dead than be away any longer. He missed Birmingham like most men miss their wives.
And that’s just what Miss Electra Greene intended to become … if she let him live, that is.
As he walked by the Fife and Drum Bar, somebody played a song on the jukebox:
Way down South, in Birmingham, I mean South, in Alabam’,
An old place where people go to dance the night away,
They all drive or walk for miles to jive
That Southern style, slow jive, that makes you want
To dance ’til break of day.
At each junction where the town folks meet
At each function, in their tux they greet you.
Come on down, forget your care. Come on down
You’ll find me there. So long town!
I’m headin’ for Tuxedo Junction now.
NOVEMBER 25, 1950
Popular Birmingham Bachelor Marries
Miss Electra Greene, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Greene, became the charming bride of Mr. Artis O. Peavey, son of Mr. and Mrs. George Peavey, of Whistle Stop, Alabama.
Officiating at the colorful wedding rites was Dr. John W. Nixon, pastor of the First Congressional Church, while nuptial music was provided by the accomplished Mr. Lewis Jones.
Radiant Bride
The lovely bride was fetching in a forest-green ensemble, with amber accessories, mink trimmed off the face. She wore a brown felt hat, gloves and shoes to match, with a corsage of valley lillies.
Miss Naughty Bird Peavey, sister of the groom, was arresting in a grape-colored woolen crepe with draped front, multicolored beaded necklace, and cerise gloves and shoes.
Colorful Reception
Immediately following the nuptials, a colorful wedding reception took place at the home of Mrs. Lulu Butterfork, who is prominent in the city’s leading beauticians’ circles, being both a beautician and a hairpiece specialist.
Several well-known Birminghamians who attended the colorful reception were served punch, ice cream, and individual cakes, and were busy registering awe at the brilliant display of countless bridal gifts.
Monday night, October 5, at 11 o’clock, the bridal party was honored at a spicy after-supper dance, with Mrs. Toncille Robinson as hostess.
Glamour marked the occasion, which saw the Little Savoy Cafe, scene of the select occasion, given a festive appearance by brilliantly embellished yuletide effects and a long, heavily laden table of choice foods and viands. A hot seven-course chicken supper was served, featuring wine as an appetizer and topped off with hot coffee and dessert.
The couple will reside in the bride’s home on Fountain Avenue.
MAY 19, 1986
It had been nine long, hard days since Evelyn Couch had been on her diet, and today she woke up with a feeling of euphoria. She seemed in complete control of her life, tall and thin, and when she moved, she felt willowy and graceful. Those nine days had been like climbing a mountain, and now she knew she had reached the top. Somehow, today, she knew in her heart that she would never eat anything as long as she lived unless it was crisp and fresh; just like she was at this very moment.
When she went into the supermarket, she sprinted past the cookies and cakes and white breads and aisle three, canned goods, where she had spent most of her shopping life, and went straight to the meat department, where she ordered chicken breasts without the skin. Then she headed over to the produce section, a place she had only visited on occasions to buy potatoes for mashing, and bought fresh broccoli and lemons and limes to cut up in her Perrier water. She stopped briefly at the magazine section to buy a Town and Country magazine, featuring an article on Palm Beach, and then went to the express checkout counter, where the checkout girl greeted her.
“Hey, Miz Couch, how are you doing today?”
“Just great, Mozell, how are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Is this gonna be all for you today, hon?”
“That’s it.”
Mozell punched up the amount.
“You look awful pretty today, Miz Couch.”
“Well, thank you, I feel good.”
“Well, bye-bye, now. You have a nice day.”
“Thank you. You too.”
As Evelyn was going out, a beady-eyed, mean-mouthed boy in greasy pants and a T-shirt slammed through the EXIT ONLY door and knocked Evelyn back. He brushed past and, Evelyn, still in a good mood, mumbled to herself, “Well, there’s a nice gentleman.”
The boy turned and with a surly look said, “Fuck you, bitch!” and went on.
Evelyn was stunned. The hatred in his eyes took her breath away. She felt herself getting all shaky and started to cry. It was as if someone had hit her. She closed her eyes and told herself not to lose control. He was just a stranger. It didn’t matter. Don’t let it upset you.
But the more she thought about it, she knew she had to make it all right. She would go on outside and wait for him and tell him that she had just been trying to make light of the situation and had not meant to hurt his feelings and that she was sure he had come in the wrong door by mistake and hadn’t realized that he had run into her.
She was sure, as soon as she explained it to him, he would probably feel bad and the whole thing would be over and she could go home feeling better.
The boy burst out of the door carrying his six-pack and walked past her. She walked faster and caught up with him.
“Excuse me. I just wanted you to know that there was no reason for you to be so mad at me in there. I was only trying to …”
He shot a disgusted look at her. “Get the hell away from me, you stupid cow!”
Evelyn was breathless.
“Excuse me. What did you call me?”
He continued on, ignoring her. Now she was running after him, in tears.
“What did you call me? Why are you being so mean to me? What did I ever do to you? You don’t even know me!”
He opened the door to his truck, and Evelyn, hysterical, grabbed his arm.
“Why? Why are you being so mean to me?”
He slammed her arm away from him and stuck his fist in her face, his eyes and face twisted with rage. “Don’t fool with me, bitch, or I’ll knock your fucking head off—you fat, stupid cunt!”
And with that, he pushed her in the chest and knocked her down.
Evelyn couldn’t believe what was happening. Her groceries spilled everywhere.
The stringy-haired girl with the elastic halter top who had been waiting for the boy looked down at Evelyn and laughed. He got in the truck, threw it in reverse, and squealed out of the parking lot, yelling names back at Evelyn.
; She sat there on the ground, her elbow bleeding, old and fat and worthless all over again.
DECEMBER 12, 1941
War Starts
Grady Kilgore is in charge of the Whistle Stop draft board, and he says for all you boys to come on in and sign up and get it over with.
It seems like lately there’s nothing but troop trains and tanks passing through. It makes you wonder where they are all from and where they are going.
Wilbur says the war won’t last more than six months. I hope he’s right for once.
The Jolly Belles Ladies’ Barber Shop Quartet has been invited to attend the National Convention of Ladies’ Barber Shop Quartets in Memphis, Tennessee, this spring, to perform their most popular rendition of “Dip Your Brush in Sunshine and Keep On Painting Away.”
Reverend Scroggins asks, would the individual or individuals who are giving out his address and phone number to people looking for whiskey please stop, as his wife, Arna, is in the middle of a nervous condition and has broken out several times this week. Bobby Lee Scroggins joined the navy. By the way, that service star in the window over at the cafe is for Willie Boy Peavey, Onzell’s and Big George’s boy, who is the first colored soldier in Troutville to join up.
… Dot Weems …
P.S. Everybody is getting ready for the annual Christmas pageant and because of the shortage of men in our town, Opal, myself and Ninny Threadgoode have been cast as the three wise men.
AUGUST 8, 1986
After the boy at the supermarket had called her those names, Evelyn Couch had felt violated. Raped by words. Stripped of everything. She had always tried to keep this from happening to her, always been terrified of displeasing men, terrified of the names she would be called if she did. She had spent her life tiptoeing around them like someone lifting her skirt stepping through a cow pasture. She had always suspected that if provoked, those names were always close to the surface, ready to lash out and destroy her.
It had finally happened. But she was still alive. So she began to wonder. It was as if that boy’s act of violence toward her had shocked her into finally looking at herself and asking the questions she had avoided for fear of the answers.
What was this power, this insidious threat, this invisible gun to her head that controlled her life … this terror of being called names?
She had stayed a virgin so she wouldn’t be called a tramp or a slut; had married so she wouldn’t be called an old maid; faked orgasms so she wouldn’t be called frigid; had children so she wouldn’t be called barren; had not been a feminist because she didn’t want to be called queer and a man hater; never nagged or raised her voice so she wouldn’t be called a bitch …
She had done all that and yet, still, this stranger had dragged her into the gutter with the names that men call women when they are angry.
Evelyn wondered; why always sexual names? And why, when men wanted to degrade other men, did they call them pussies? As if that was the worst thing in the world. What have we done to be thought of that way? To be called cunt? People didn’t call blacks names anymore, at least not to their faces. Italians weren’t wops or dagos, and there were no more kikes, Japs, chinks, or spics in polite conversation. Everybody had a group to protest and stick up for them. But women were still being called names by men. Why? Where was our group? It’s not fair. She was getting more upset by the minute. Evelyn thought, I wish Idgie had been with me. She would not have let that boy call her names. I’ll bet she would have knocked him down.
Then she made herself stop thinking because, all of a sudden, she was experiencing a feeling that she had never felt before, and it scared her. And so, twenty years later than most women, Evelyn Couch was angry.
She was angry at herself for being so scared. Soon, all that belated anger began to express itself in a strange and peculiar way.
For the first time in her life, she wished she were a man. Not for the privilege of having the particular set of equipment that men hold so dear. No. She wanted a man’s strength, so at the supermarket she could have beaten that name-calling punk to a pulp. Of course, she realized, had she been a man, she would not have been called those names in the first place. In her fantasies, she began to look like herself but with the strength of ten men. She became Superwoman. And in her mind, she beat that bad-mouthed boy over and over again, until he lay in the parking lot, broken and bleeding, begging for mercy. Ha!
Thus, in her forty-eighth year, the incredible secret life of Mrs. Evelyn Couch of Birmingham, Alabama, began.
• • •
Few people who saw this plump, pleasant-looking middle-aged, middle-class housewife out shopping or doing other menial everyday chores could guess that, in her imagination, she was machine-gunning the genitals of rapers and stomping abusive husbands to death in her specially designed wife-beater boots.
Evelyn had even made up a secret code name for herself … a name feared around the world: TOWANDA THE AVENGER!
And while Evelyn went about her business with a smile, Towanda was busy poking child molesters with electric cattle prods until their hair stood on end. She placed tiny bombs inside Playboy and Penthouse magazines that would explode when they were opened. She gave dope dealers overdoses and left them in the streets to die; forced that doctor, who had told her mother she had cancer, to walk down the street naked while the entire medical profession, including dentists and oral hygienists, jeered and threw rocks. A merciful avenger, she always waited until he finished his walk and then beat his brains out with a sledgehammer.
Towanda was able to do anything she wanted. She went back in time and punched out Paul for writing that women should remain silent. Towanda went to Rome and kicked the pope off the throne and put a nun there, with the priests cooking and cleaning for her, for a change.
Towanda appeared on Meet the Press, and with a calm voice, a cool eye, and a wry smile, debated everyone who disagreed with her until they became so defeated by her brilliance that they burst into tears and ran off the show She went to Hollywood and ordered all the leading men to act opposite women of their own age, not twenty-year-old girls with perfect bodies. She allowed rats to chew all slumlords to death, and sent food and birth control methods, for men as well as women, to the poor people of the world.
And because of her vision and insight, she became known the world over as Towanda the Magnanimous, Righter of Wrongs and Queen without Compare.
Towanda ordained that: an equal number of men and women would be in the government and sit in on peace talks; she and her staff of crack chemical scientists would find a cure for cancer and invent a pill that would let you eat all you want and not gain weight; people would be forced to get a license to have children and must be found fit, financially and emotionally—no more starving or battered children. Jerry Falwell would be responsible for the raising of all illegitimate children who had no homes; no kittens or puppies would be put to sleep, and they would be given a state of their own, maybe New Mexico or Wyoming; teachers and nurses would receive the same salary as professional football players.
She would stop the construction of all condos, especially ones with red tile roofs; and Van Johnson would be given a show of his own … he was one of Towanda’s favorites.
Graffiti offenders were to be dipped in a vat of indelible ink. No more children of famous parents could write books. And she’d personally see to it that all the sweet men and daddies, who had worked so hard, would each receive a trip to Hawaii and an outboard motor to go with it.
Towanda went to Madison Avenue and took control of all the fashion magazines; all models weighing under 135 were fired, and wrinkles suddenly became sexually desirable. Low-fat cottage cheese was banned from the land forever. Ditto, carrot sticks.
Why, just yesterday, Towanda had marched into the Pentagon, taken all the bombs and missiles away, and had given them toys to play with instead, while her sisters in Russia were doing the same thing. Then she went on the six o’clock nightly news and gave the entire military budget to all the peo
ple in the United States over sixty-five. Towanda would be so busy all day that Evelyn was exhausted by bedtime.
No wonder. Tonight, while Evelyn was cooking dinner, Towanda had just put a roomful of porno and child exploitation film producers to death. And later, as Evelyn was washing the dishes, Towanda was in the process of single-handedly blowing up the entire Middle East to prevent the Third World War. And so, when Ed yelled from the den for another beer, somehow, before Evelyn could stop her, Towanda yelled back, “SCREW YOU, ED!”
He very quietly got up from his recliner and came into the kitchen.
“Evelyn, are you all right?”
FEBRUARY 9, 1943
War Speeds Up
My other half is working two shifts, along with just about everyone else over at the railroad, since the iron and steel industry is working overtime, and I’m one lonesome gal these days. But if he’s helping out Uncle Sam and our boys, I guess I can take it.
Tommy Glass and Ray Limeway write from camp to say hello.
By the way, has anybody seen Idgie’s and Ruth’s victory garden, by the old Threadgood place? Idgie said that Sipsey grew butterbeans the size of silver dollars. I can’t get anything but a few sweet potatoes, over at my place.
Three of the members of the Jolly Belles Ladies’ Barber Shop Quartet, me and Biddie Louise Otis and Ninny Threadgoode, went to Birmingham and had dinner at Brittling’s Cafeteria, and then went to see our own Essie Rue Limeway. The picture playing was not half as good as the show in between. We are mighty proud. We wanted to tell everyone in the theater that she was our friend. Ninny did turn to the person next to her and inform him that Essie Rue was her sister-in-law. By the way, don’t forget to save rubber.