Dollbaby: A Novel (6 page)

“Got some mighty fine redfish for you today.” He looked over in Ibby’s direction. “Who’ve we got here?”

“This here’s Miss Fannie’s grandbaby, Ibby. She’s gone be visiting for a while.” Queenie nodded. “Mr. Graham’s daughter. Can’t you see the resemblance?”

“Sure enough.” He tipped his head. “She got his same eyes. Your daddy, he were a good man, Miss Ibby. Smart as a whip, too.”

“You knew him?” Ibby asked.

“I been coming around this here house ever since your daddy were a little boy,” Mr. Pierce said. “Sorry to hear he’s passed on.”

Queenie followed him out the back door to a battered pickup truck, parked in the driveway, where blocks of ice held fish spread out evenly in rows. She inspected the fish by running her finger down the scales. Mr. Pierce wrapped the three she’d chosen in newspaper, then followed her back into the house with a red mesh sack flung over his shoulder.

“Thank you kindly, Mr. Pierce,” Queenie said.

He set the sack of oysters down onto the picnic table on the back porch, tilted his hat, and left.

Queenie placed a wooden cutting board on the table and unwrapped the fish. “Lookey here. Mr. Pierce done thrown in a little lagniappe, gave me four fish instead of three. Mighty fine of him to do that.” She took a meat cleaver from the drawer and, with a thump, chopped the head off one of the fish. She held the severed head up in front of Ibby. “See the eye of this here fish, it’s clear. That means it’s fresh. My mama had a saying: ‘Dead fish rot from the head.’ You can see it in the eyes, before you can smell it gone bad.” She gouged the eye out with the tip of the knife and popped it into her mouth. “That’s for good luck.”

“Better get used to Mama’s ways, Miss Ibby.” Doll pointed a fork in her mother’s direction as Queenie filleted the fish. “She could have got Mr. Pierce to fillet that fish for her, but Mama’s way too picky. She likes to get every scrap a meat off them bones.”

“No use wasting.” Queenie wrapped the fish fillets in a milk-soaked cloth and put them in the icebox. Then she placed all the bones, including the head, into another piece of cheesecloth and tied the four corners up into a knot. “This here is what gives the stew its flavor.” She tossed the bag into the pot and put the lid on. Then she tilted her head and looked over at Ibby. “Miss Ibby, now you brought it up, I’m curious. Your mama, she say anything else?”

Vidrine had been full of all sorts of directives this morning:
Give the urn to your grandmother. Don’t say
y’all
. Be a good girl and don’t give your grandmother any trouble.

She’d said something else, too, when they got into the car at the airport, but Ibby hadn’t quite understood what she meant. Now she repeated it, just the way her mother had said it: “She said not to listen to anything those two wily niggas tell you about me.”

Queenie and Doll looked at each other. Queenie made a face like she’d eaten something sour, then the meat cleaver came down so hard, Ibby thought the table might split in two.

“How dare that redneck call us wily! Just who she think she is!” Queenie hissed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything wrong. I was just repeating what my mama told me,” Ibby said.

“Ain’t nothing we ain’t heard before,” Doll said, shaking her head, trying not to laugh.

Queenie looked over at Ibby. “Miss Ibby, why don’t you go upstairs for a while, take a little rest? Been a long morning.”

After Ibby left the room, she turned to Doll. “Just curious, after the way you been acting all funny this morning. Miss Fannie, she say anything to you when you were in the room with her earlier?”

Doll shrugged. “Miss Fannie picked up an empty perfume bottle and talked about how she needed to get some more.”

“No, I mean about Miss Ibby. She say anything about her?”

“Well, yeah. She say she want Miss Ibby to come and live with her.”

“You mean for good?”

“Yeah, Mama. That’s what she say.”

“I’d hate to know what Miss Vidrine might think about that.”

A loud voice in the hall startled them. “Yoo-hoo, anybody home?”

“Oh, Lawd.” Doll’s head jerked around. There was no mistaking that voice.

“What she doing here?” Queenie said under her breath.

Doll peeked through the kitchen door to find Vidrine standing in the hall holding a small suitcase.

Doll whispered to her mother, “Miss Ibby forgot her suitcase in the car this morning. Looks like Miss Vidrine done come back to give it to her. I thought she had a plane to catch. Why she still here?”

“You ever know Miss Vidrine to tell the truth?” Queenie said. “Maybe she planning to drive off into the sunset and join a cult. I don’t know. Never can tell with her. Don’t matter now. She’s here, and you got to go out and get her before Miss Fannie comes out of her room and have a heart attack at the sight of that woman.”

“No, unh-unh. I ain’t going out there. You go.”

Queenie went over to where Doll was standing and peered through the door under Doll’s arm.

“Liberty?” Vidrine yelled up the stairs.

Queenie winced and put her hands to her ears.

Vidrine surveyed her surroundings as if she were taking inventory, bending over to a painting on the wall, rubbing her hand along the hall table.

“Look at her,” Queenie muttered. “She still got those awful eyes that are way too big for her head. Make her look like she stuck her finger in an electric socket.”

Doll never did understand Mr. Graham’s attraction to the woman. Besides the manic eyes, Vidrine had the habit of looking sideways over her nose as if she were constantly smelling poop. Thank goodness Miss Ibby looked more like her father, Doll was thinking.

Queenie nudged her. “Go on out there and get Miss Ibby’s suitcase like I told you.”

“Maybe Miss Vidrine will just leave it in the hall and go,” Doll said, not budging.

Queenie craned her neck. “Don’t look like she going nowhere to me.”

“Liberty Bell, come and get your damn suitcase!” Vidrine screamed.

The door to Miss Fannie’s room opened, and there were footsteps in the hall.

“Now look what you done,” Queenie said. “Miss Fannie’s coming out. Hurry. Go out there and see if you can stop her.”

But it was too late. Fannie was already making her way down the hall toward Vidrine. To Doll’s surprise, Fannie was dressed and had on a bit of makeup.

“Why Miss Fannie smiling? She hates that woman,” Queenie said.

“Oh no,” Doll said.

“What?” Queenie nudged Doll. “What now?”

“Remember what we was just talking about? I believe Miss Fannie’s getting ready to ask Miss Vidrine about Ibby living in this here house with her. Why else would she have a smile on her face? Miss Fannie only smiles real big like that when she wants something from somebody. And she must want it awful bad, from the look of that big grin.”

“Well, Fannie, how long has it been?” Vidrine asked icily.

Doll was expecting Fannie to say something like
not long enough
.

“A pleasure to see you again, Vidrine,” Fannie said cordially, extending her hand.

Vidrine lurched back and raised her hand in the air as if Fannie had just pointed a gun at her. “I just came to drop off Ibby’s suitcase, not to make amends. She forgot it in the car. I have to go.” She started toward the door.

Fannie hurried after her. “Wait a minute. Please. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

“I don’t have time.” Vidrine opened the front door, the suitcase still in her hand.

Fannie grabbed her arm. “Where are you going, anyway?”

Vidrine yanked it away. “None of your business.”

Fannie grabbed her arm again, this time harder. Vidrine struggled against her grip.

“Ohhhh . . . we gone have a catfight,” Queenie said excitedly to Doll.

Fannie let go. “Just hold on a minute. I’m not asking because I care where you’re running off to. You can go to India as far as I’m
concerned. I’m asking because I wondered if you would let Ibby stay here with me.”

Vidrine rubbed her arm. A bruise was beginning to form where Fannie had grabbed it. “Now look what you’ve done!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry all right. What are you prattling on about anyway? Ibby is staying with you, like we agreed. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to go.” Vidrine opened the door wider.

Fannie closed it with her foot.

Vidrine turned toward her. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

“I mean for good. I want Ibby to come live here.”

Vidrine put her hand on her hip. “I asked if Ibby could stay with you for a while. I didn’t mean forever.”

“I know,” Fannie said. “But I think she might be better off here. With me.”

“With you? And just what the hell do you mean by that, better off with you? I’ll be the judge of who Ibby’s better off with, thank you very much. And if you hurl any more insults like that, we’re leaving and Ibby is coming with me.”

“I just thought you might like your freedom now that you’re a widow,” Fannie said. “I can take care of Ibby. You can visit whenever you like.”

“Are you out of your mind? Look at you. What’s that bump on your head? You fall down drunk again? You been drinking this morning? Is that it? Is that where all this is coming from? You think that’s the sort of environment to raise a child?”

“No, I haven’t been drinking. I’m perfectly sober.”

“Then that just proves you’re even crazier than I thought,” Vidrine said. “Graham always said so, you know. He hated you from the time you sent him away to boarding school. Why do you think he moved so far away after we were married?”

“That was your doing,” Fannie said. “Not Graham’s. He was perfectly happy to stay here in New Orleans.”

“Then why did he never come back to visit?” Vidrine put her hand on her hip. “He hated you. You think he’d want his daughter to live with a mother he hated? I don’t think so.”

“Why don’t we let Ibby decide?”

Vidrine glared at her. “This was a mistake. I should never have brought Ibby here in the first place. Liberty Bell, come on down here! We’re leaving!” Vidrine screamed so loudly, the chandelier tinkled above her head.

Ibby appeared at the top of the steps. “What is it, Mama?”

“Oh, no. Miss Ibby’s coming down,” Doll said to her mother.

“How long you think she been listening? Poor thing,” Queenie said. “We got to do something.”

Doll shook her head. “Nothing we can do now but watch and see what happens.”

“Come on. We’re leaving.” Vidrine picked up Ibby’s suitcase from the floor.

“But I just got here,” Ibby protested.

“I’m sorry, Vidrine,” Fannie pleaded. “We can talk about this later. Let Ibby stay.”

“Did you hear me, Ibby? Get down here. Now!” Vidrine yanked at the doorknob and kicked the door open with her foot.

Ibby came bounding down the steps.

Fannie grabbed Ibby and pulled her toward her. “Let her stay.”

Vidrine looked from Fannie to Ibby, then at her watch. She threw the suitcase at them. It landed just in front of Ibby’s feet. Then the front door slammed. Doll could see Vidrine rushing toward the car. She never looked back once.

Queenie came away from the kitchen door. “I hope that’s the last time I ever see that woman.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Doll said.

After Vidrine left, Fannie grabbed Ibby’s arm. “Come on. We’re going for a ride.”

D
oll and Queenie stood by the back window and watched Fannie back the car out of the driveway.

“Now where in the heck you think they going? Miss Fannie ain’t driven that car in years. Think they gone be okay?” Queenie fretted.

Doll put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “How I know? Besides, it wouldn’t do no good to try and stop her on account she never listens to what two wily niggers have to say.”

Queenie swatted Doll’s arm. “I ain’t laughing. Had enough of that joke for one day.”

Queenie went over to the counter and turned the radio to the gospel station. She swung her head from side to side as she washed some dishes. After a while, Doll reached over and turned the dial to a different station.

Queenie looked at her. “Now why you go and do that? You know I like to listen to my gospel music while I do the dishes.”

A deep voice resonated from the radio. “This is WBOK, the one and only rhythm and blues station in New Orleans, and I’m Chubby Buddy, bringing you the sound of our very own queen of soul, Irma Thomas. Her new song, ‘Wish Someone Would Care,’ is making it up the charts. And the rest, they say, is history. Come on down to La Ray’s Village Room on Dryades Street to hear Miss Irma tonight.”

Doll turned up the volume just as Irma Thomas let out a soulful cry.

Queenie reached over and turned the volume back down. “Don’t know why all you young folks think you got to turn the music up so loud. Give me a headache.”

Doll ignored her mother’s comment and began dancing around, waving her arms in the air and swinging her hips to the beat of the music. “Be all right if I leave a little early?”

“Now listen here. You got plenty a time to go hear Irma later. What you got up your sleeve?”

Doll went over to the counter near the back window, picked up a fork, and started singing into it as if it were a microphone. She paused to answer her mother. “Oh, nothing.”

“Don’t you ‘oh nothing’ me.” Queenie switched the radio back to the gospel station. “What you not telling me?”

Doll leaned against the counter. “Me and some folks, we might head on down to the five-and-dime on Canal Street in a little while.”

“Who? What folks you talking about?”

“You know, Doretha, Slim, maybe Lola Mae . . .”

“What for?” Queenie crossed her arms and gave Doll her oh-no-you’re-not-doing-that look.

“Just, you know, to hang out.” Doll cast her eyes out the back window. She wished she hadn’t said anything. She wasn’t a very good liar and her mother could always see right through her.

“You not trying that lunch counter stuff again, is you?” Queenie picked up a knife from the sink and pointed it at her. “Last time your friends tried sitting at the counter down at the Woolworth’s, they got arrested. Remember? Every one of them lost they jobs or got kicked out a school. Earline Murray had to make her son move out of their house ’cause they started getting bomb threats. And Jerome Smith? He almost got beat to death.”

“That’s ’cause Jerome went on one of them freedom rides, Mama, not ’cause he sat at the Woolworth counter.”

Doll knew her mother was about to start in on the plight of all the
poor folks who had gotten the short end of the stick, which according to her mother was just about everybody in the St. Roch neighborhood, where they lived. She slumped down on the stool, pretending to listen to her mother’s little speech that she’d already heard a hundred times before.

“Why, just yesterday, Virgie Mae Jefferson’s son was beaten up real bad, just for sitting at the counter at the state capitol cafeteria up in Baton Rouge. And who they haul off to jail? Not the white men that do the beating. What you think gone happen if you go down to the Woolworth’s today?”

“Calm down, Mama.”

Queenie came over and pounded her fist on the table. “Why can’t you leave well enough alone?”

There was nothing Doll could do but let her mother ramble. Queenie was a strong believer in the status quo. Separate but equal was just fine with her as long as nobody gave her any trouble. But Doll had other ideas. Her daughter, Birdelia, wasn’t much older than Ruby Bridges, the little colored girl who’d been escorted by armed guards to the Frantz Elementary School for Whites in the Ninth Ward in 1960 in an effort to integrate the school. It made national headlines, started white flight from the city, and riled up the Ku Klux Klan. Here it was four years later, and what good did it do? As far as Doll was concerned, nothing much had changed. She wanted something better for her daughter. She wanted Birdelia to be able to decide what she wanted out of life, not have it dictated to her, the way her own life had been. And she was willing to fight for it. She just wasn’t sure how.

“That’s the problem,” Queenie muttered. “Most people living in fool’s garden don’t even know it.”

“I heard that,” Doll said.

“Well, it’s true, baby. You a seeker.”

“What you mean, a seeker?” Doll peered over at her mother. She’d never heard her use that word before. She wondered if it was a “word of the day” from Miss Fannie’s newspaper.

Queenie jabbed the knife in Doll’s direction. “A seeker, baby, a seeker. You looking for something you ain’t never gone find.”

“I ain’t no seeker, Mama. You just ain’t been paying attention to the world around you. Things are changing.”

“Uh-huh. Ain’t you heard nothing I just said? People going to jail, getting killed. That much ain’t changed. Now you set on down here and help me shuck them oysters.”

“I’m almost twenty-three years old. About time you quit telling me what to do.”

“I’m your mama. I don’t care how old you are. You’re my daughter, and I’m gonna keep you out of trouble the best way I know how.”

“Like how you kept Ewell out of trouble?” Doll said.

Queenie put her hand to her chest and let her eyes fall to the floor. Doll’s brother Ewell had died from a gunshot wound to the chest several years ago in a senseless shooting that left four young black men dead and the neighborhood paralyzed with fear.

“I’m sorry, Mama. I shouldn’t have said that.” Doll touched her mother’s shoulder, knowing she’d gone too far, had brought up the one thing that could bring her mother down—the fear she carried inside, wondering which one of her children might be next. The only reason Doll hadn’t been hauled off to jail or been beaten like her other friends at the last sit-in was because Lieutenant Kennedy, a longtime police officer friend of Miss Fannie’s, recognized her and sent her on home before all the trouble started. She might not be so lucky the next time. That’s what all the fussing was about. But Doll couldn’t help the way she felt, like a seed buried in the wrong kind of soil. Maybe her mother was right. But that seed inside her was ripe, and it was ready to burst open any minute, no matter what her mother said.

Queenie raised her eyes. “I see you over there thinking, like I don’t know what I’m talking about. But you’re wrong, baby. I’m just trying to save you all the trouble. Now go on and fetch that sack of oysters Mr. Pierce left out on the back porch.”

Doll came back in and plunked the sack of oysters down on the
kitchen table. “Your arthritis acting up again?” she asked when she saw her mother rubbing mustard powder on her elbows.

Queenie nodded. “Shucking oysters do a number on me.”

“Why’d you get oysters anyhow?” Doll slit the small sack open with a knife. “You know oysters best only in months with an
r
in them. They gone be mighty puny this time a year.”

“Thought Miss Ibby might like to get her first taste of an oyster while she here,” Queenie said. “Can’t help that she’s here in the middle of summer.”

Queenie stuck the tip of the knife in the joint in the back of the oyster. With a few twists, the shell popped open. She held the oyster up with the tip and examined it before tossing it into the bowl she’d set on the table.

“Let me tell you something else I noticed,” she went on. “You acting like you scared a that little girl.”

“What you mean scared? Why would I be scared a Miss Ibby?” Doll balked.

“I hear the way you been talking to that child. You afraid Miss Ibby gone march right in and take Miss Fannie’s attention for herself.”

Doll threw a shucked oyster into the bowl and pointed her knife at her mother. “What you mean, the way I been talking? I talk to Miss Ibby just the same way I talk to you.”

“That’s what I mean. Don’t go shooting your mouth off like you do with Miss Fannie. You can’t talk to Miss Ibby that way. She ain’t used to it.”

Doll sat back, exasperated. “Mama, why you pounding on me like I’m some of your bread dough?”

“Don’t mean to, baby. It’s just . . . I can’t ever seem to make you understand how lucky you are, to be here in this house.” She twisted the knife into another oyster shell, then looked over at Doll. “How many times I got to tell you, baby? You can’t change the way things are. It were God’s choice you here. And ain’t nobody or nothing can change that.”

That was her mother’s answer to everything. Doll tightened her mouth but said nothing. What her mother didn’t understand was that no matter how much she tried to douse Doll with common sense, her unrest just kept smoldering.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, each in her own thoughts, until Queenie shook her head and said, “I shouldn’t have told that child the truth about her mama. She too young.”

“You didn’t say nothing that weren’t true.”

“Yeah, but God help me, I didn’t tell her the whole truth neither.” Queenie flicked an oyster into the bowl. “You remember Miss Vidrine. Can’t imagine she’s changed a lick in the last ten years.”

Doll had been around twelve years old when Mr. Graham brought Miss Vidrine to have dinner at the house. She’d never forget that first visit. It still made her seethe. During dinner, Miss Vidrine had called Doll over. She told Doll how much she hated liver and told her never to serve it when she came to visit. Then, in front of everyone, she proceeded to spit the chewed-up liver out into Doll’s hand. She did it right there in front of Miss Fannie and Mr. Graham. Everybody saw it. And nobody did anything about it.

“Sure I remember, Mama, but why does it matter?”

“I’ll tell you why. That Vidrine, she saw this big house, thought Mr. Graham was rich. Then she come around, put some kind a spell on Mr. Graham, the only way I know how to explain it.”

“It weren’t no spell. Way I remember it, she announced to Miss Fannie over dinner one night that she was having Mr. Graham’s baby.”

Queenie wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and gave Doll an intent stare. “We got bigger problems, now that Mr. Graham’s gone. All Vidrine got to do now is wait for Miss Fannie to pass on. Then she can move in here and take over, become mistress of this here house.”

Doll dropped an oyster onto the table and looked up. “I know, Mama. I been thinking the same thing.”

“Don’t you go running your mouth to Miss Ibby about all this.
Don’t want her to get no wrong ideas, think we meddling. You understand? Not a word.” She shucked a few more oysters, then looked up at Doll. “Where you think Miss Vidrine go off to anyway?”

Doll shrugged. “Don’t think she had the right mind to tell nobody.”

Queenie was silent for a moment. “We got to come up with a plan to make sure she never gets her hands on any a Miss Fannie’s money. And we got to come up with something right quick.”

Her mama had a fierce, determined look on her face. Doll knew that look. It meant by the time that sack of oysters was empty, Queenie was going to have a plan all hatched and ready to go.