Little Altars Everywhere (3 page)

When we finally finish up eating and head back to camp, M’lain whispers to Sissy and Mimi and me, Yall watch Edythe. Look at how she walks.

And we stare at Edythe the whole way back. She walks all bunched up, like invisible hands are squeez
ing her shoulders together. It gets me embarrassed just to look at her. I want to go over and hit her on the back and say: Edythe, walk right! Quit being such an I-don’t-know-what!

Back at Camp Mary Alice, Mama and Necie get out the Hershey bars and jumbo marshmallows and graham crackers and we make s’mores. I’ve got to have my marshmallows done perfectly light brown all the way around or I will not eat them. I don’t see how anybody can stand to swallow the burnt-up ones. After I get mine just perfect, I slip it off my coat hanger right on top of the Hershey bar. I bite into that crunchy cracker and taste that marshmallow and chocolate down to the tip of my toes.

Mama says, Yall keep rotating those marshmallows constantly and they will roast evenly. When anybody’s—even Edythe’s—marshmallow falls off into the dirt, Mama laughs and hands them another one. One thing about Mama: She is never stingy with food.

This is the fun part. Around the campfire those flames lick up into the black sky and you can see the stars so good. Mama does what she does best—tell stories. She acts out scary stories, like the one about the old-maid sisters in the big house on Evangeline Street right in Thornton who got eaten to death by giant ants. All their skin got chewed off and the only thing left was their bones and shoes.

Mama says, I saw it with my own eyes when I was about yall’s age. Isn’t that true, Necie?

Necie nods her head and says, It’s the gospel truth.

M’lain whispers to me, You can tell your Mama was a New York actress.

That makes me feel the best I’ve felt all day. I walk by Mama’s side on the way back to the cabin and hold her hand for a minute.

Mama and Necie rig up sheets all around their bunks so they can get some privacy. We take sponge baths and put on our nightgowns, and then we’re supposed to go to sleep. M’lain and Sissy and Mimi and I all have our hair rolled up on spoolies, because who knows what kind of things might pop up the next day that will make demands on our hairdos? My legs are twitching they’re so tired, but in that cabin with all the other girls, far away from home, and the smell of the pines and the shadows on the screens—well, you couldn’t go straight to sleep for a million dollars! All the lights are out except a nightlight that Mama has plugged in at our end of the cabin and a little lamp that lights up Mama and Necie behind the sheets like they’re shadow puppets. Moonlight shines down through the trees and you can hear the frogs croaking and the ten-thousand crickets hopping around our cabin like Mexican jumping beans.

I put my head down on the pillow and close my eyes—but then I get that second wind that makes you punchy and giggly and bad. M’lain hits me with her pillow and I’m up in a flash, wonking her over the head, and then Sissy joins in, and Mimi, and we’re
whacking each other and laughing and screaming and jumping on the beds.

I start tickling Sissy, which always gets her going, and she’s yelling, Stop, please! Really, please stop! just like I do when my brother Little Shep or Daddy tickles me.

Cigarette smoke drifts up out of Mama and Necie’s cubbyhole, and you can barely hear a Texas late-night station playing Fats Domino on Mama’s transistor radio.

Mimi says, I know a nasty joke. Yall wanna hear?

Her joke is all about this man who gets his Thing stuck in a hole in the floor, and I laugh and laugh even though I don’t think it’s all that funny. I have seen both of my brothers’ Things and they look like turkey necks to me. Like if you’re not careful they could get slammed in a door and fall right off on the floor. It’s one of the reasons I’m glad I’m a girl with everything tucked up inside where things can’t get at it so easy.

The Almost-Popular Girls are playing Go Fish with Girl Scout playing cards. The Unpopular Girls are reading their own individual books, which for a minute makes me wish I was one of them so I could lay up and finish
Judy’s Journey
.

Edythe just sits on her bed with her hands in her lap and stares at me. I cannot believe it: She is wearing a housecoat and slippers like a little old lady, and an actual hairnet like a cafeteria server. Why is she looking at me? I am not the ringleader over here in the Popu
lar group. I am barely here myself. I wish she would turn her beady eyes away and stare at someone else!

M’lain and Mimi are playing cat’s cradle, and me and Sissy start pretending we’re Gidget in the dorm at college. Then do you know what happens? Edythe gets up and walks right over to us on M’lain’s bed and just stands there. I can see the way her veins are all purple on her hands. Her face is all red in spots, like she has been picking at it. Why doesn’t she say anything? She just stands there looking at me, like she’s waiting for something.

Finally I say, Edythe, what do you want?

I think: Oh God, what if she asks to sit on the bed and play with us?

But she says, It is time to go to sleep now. It’s way past our curfew. Yall are breaking the Girl Scouts of America rules.

Well, that just cracks us all up and M’lain says, Hey Edythe, why don’t you go on back to your bed and pick your zits?

Then Mimi says, Yeah, but don’t aim in our direction!

Edythe looks at me like I’m responsible for the whole world. Then she turns and pads back to her bed and keeps on staring at me. If she doesn’t quit doing that, I am either going to lose my mind or have to get up and clobber her!

We start singing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” which is an extremely stupid song, but that’s how it is when you’re in a group. We get all the way
down to sixty-eight bottles and then here comes Edythe again. And she puts it all to me again, like I am the ambassador to the Popular Girls (which I definitely am not).

She says, Siddalee, I’m giving yall one more chance. If yall don’t go to sleep right now, I’m going to tell your mother.

God, why can’t she leave me alone? Edythe Spevey has been tailing me around since first grade. Just because one single time I smiled at her at the water fountain, she has tried to leech onto me for life. What does she think she is, my shadow or something? Does she think we are blood sisters for life?

I would like to reach out and touch the cuff of that awful bathrobe and tell her: Just relax, Edie, everything’s okay. To show her she’s not really as cootified as we treat her.

But M’lain and Sissy and Mimi are watching me, waiting to see what I’ll do. I know they’ll banish me forever if I am nice to Edythe. I know how close I am to being kicked off the Popular bunk for life. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to have a good personality and I will not let Edythe ruin everything now.

Hey Edythe, I finally say, Why don’t you go on back to your bunk and eat your boogers for a midnight snack like you always do at home?

Well, that comment really sends my friends, and I’m a big hit. But then I see Edythe’s face. It’s like something has fallen on it and crumpled it in. Somehow she
looks so familiar that I can feel her bones inside my own body. And I start to feel sort of sick.

She turns and walks away and M’lain says, Ten points, Sidda, ten points.

Why don’t you shut up, M’lain? I say. Then I laugh like I didn’t really mean it.

Edythe walks the full length of the cabin to Mama and Necie’s cubbyhole. She isn’t kidding. She’s going to tell on us. If she tells Mama what I said to her, Mama will jerk my arm out of its socket right on the spot. One thing Mama will not stand for is deliberate cruelty. Deliberate cruelty is the reason I got belt-whipped last Thanksgiving and couldn’t go to dance class for two weeks because of the marks on my legs.

I tiptoe to the edge of the cubbyhole. My bare feet are cold against the plank floors. I can feel goosebumps on my arms. I pull back one of the sheets just a hair so I can see inside. They’re up on the top bunk smoking; Mama is polishing her toenails. I can see the name on the bottle—“Rich Girl Red.”

Edythe is looking up at my mother. She says, Mrs. Walker, the nine o’clock curfew is a national Girl Scout rule. It is almost twelve o’clock midnight now. Yall should make them go to sleep, and turn out your light, too.

The blue thermos with Mama’s vodka and grapefruit juice sits on the bedspread between her and Necie. I can smell that nail polish in the clean cool air of the woods. The minute Mama opens her mouth I realize
she’s had at least four drinks. Her voice is loose and deep and content and amused, and she says: Edythe, don’t you ever tell me what to do again as long as you live. Now get your little goody-two-shoes butt back into your bunk before I spank the hell out of you!

Then Mama starts laughing. She sticks a piece of cotton between her toes so the polish won’t smear. Edythe does not move.

Honestly, Edythe, Mama says, like she’s going to give her the most important advice in the world, If you continue acting this way, you will be
unpopular
for the rest of your life.

I wish I could go someplace far away from the heart of Louisiana. But I just walk back to M’lain’s bunk and tell them what just happened. And they all laugh like hyenas.

Mimi says, Boy, your mother sure is cool, Siddalee.

Edythe comes back and climbs into her bed without saying a word. I can see the oyster-colored skin of her arms where they stick out of her old-lady bathrobe. I think about getting up and going to her, saying something, doing something, climbing in the bed with her and just breathing with her. I almost do it, too. I almost comfort Edythe. But the sight of her hairnet just stops me cold.

Edythe doesn’t make a peep the rest of the weekend. It rains all day Sunday and even when the Unpopular Girls ask her to sit with them in the lodge, she says no. She just sits by the window and stares out into the
woods like something real interesting might happen out there.

That next meeting, all of Troop 55 presents Mama and Necie with a thank-you collage. Mama lets Necie take it home. She says, Necie, I’m sure you have a better place of honor in your home to display this piece of fine art.

At the end of the school year, the two of them volunteer to lead us for another year. But the Central Louisiana Girl Scout bigwigs tell Mama and Necie they already have a more experienced person lined up. They say Mama and Necie deviated from the Girl Scout program, and that it set a bad example for girls our age to see a flagpole get bent up like that. They say that it bordered on being unpatriotic.

One day after school is out, Mama is sitting on the window seat in the den looking at the bayou—“meditating,” she calls it. I bring her a Coke with crushed ice without her even asking, and she puts her hand on my cheek and kind of cups it there, like she used to when I was little.

I tell her, I’m quitting Scouts next year, Mama. They’re jealous of you. That’s why they didn’t beg you to stay on. The Girl Scouts of America aren’t ready for someone like you.

Mama twists my hair and holds it up off my neck. She studies me, then drops my hair and turns away.

I don’t know, dahling, she sighs. Sometimes it’s hard
to tell what vocation I’m cut out for. Sometimes it’s just real hard to tell.

Sometime during the summer, I have this dream about Edythe Spevey and me. We’re on the swing that hangs from the pecan tree in our backyard. And while we’re swinging, it’s like Edythe’s body is in my body. Her legs kick out from my legs, and her head leans forward out of mine. When I move my arms forward, hers come out of them. We are swinging in this just-right rhythm. We are swinging high, flying way up, higher than in real life. And when I look down, I see all the ordinary stuff—our brick house, the porch, the toolshed, the back windows, the oil-drum barbecue pit, the clothesline, the chinaberry tree. But they are all lit up from inside so their everyday selves have holy sparks in them, and if people could only see those sparks, they’d go and kneel in front of them and pray and just feel good. Somehow the whole world looks like little altars everywhere. And every time Edythe and me fly up into the air and then dive down to earth, it’s like we’re bowing our heads at those altars and we are praying and playing all at the same time. We just keep swinging and swinging, and in my dream we are swinging at the center of the most popular spot in the world.

Siddalee, 1961

I
have fallen in love with my dance teacher. I mean, I really love her. Her name is Charlene Parks, and she came back to Thornton to live with her mama after being a June Taylor Dancer on
The Jackie Gleason Show
. She is tall and slender and pretty, and she used to be Miss Louisiana 1954 before she went off to New York City to be famous. Her long chestnut hair is always up in a dancer’s ponytail and she has thick eyelashes and her body is perfect. No bumps on it or hair in weird places or anything. The way she moves, it’s like her legs are hooked on different at the hip than other ladies’ legs are.

Charlene’s Central Louisiana School of the Dance is in a big old cave-like dance studio at the Garnet Parish Community Center. I take tap lessons from her twice a week and I adore it. Only
I
get to take tap. Not Lulu, not Little Shep, not Baylor. Just me.

That dance studio is hot as hell in the summer, even though two huge industrial-sized fans blow like crazy all the time. Mirrors line the walls and ballet barres run the length of the room. The floor is smooth and there’s a table at one end with Charlene’s record player and piles and piles of popular records and show tunes. At the start of each class, Charlene performs a dazzling show-stopper while we sit on the floor with our mouths hanging open, pulling at our leotards, which are always crawling up our crotches. (What I wish I knew is how real dancers on stage keep from having to pull at their crotches all the time.) As hot and sweaty as it gets in there, Charlene always looks fresh.

She dances in
high-heeled tap shoes
, and I think they are the jazziest things in the world. I would give anything for a pair of my own, but we only get to wear low heels. Charlene uses a lot of George M. Cohan music because it’s easy for us to count out. But we also learn numbers to “High Hopes,” and “Itsy Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini”—a song that my Grandmother Buggy turns off whenever it comes on the radio, because she says it’s a sin for such impurity to be on the airwaves.

Charlene’s record player has a little knob on the side of it so she can slow the music down to a crawl for us to get the rhythm, while she calls out, Hop-shuffle-slap, hop-shuffle-slap! or whatever the step is. Once we start to catch on, she brings the music real slow-like back up to speed, and we try to actually put the steps
to time. That always throws me. Just when I think I have the steps down, the music speeds up, and I forget everything I’ve learned. I try and try, but I never can dance fast enough and still get it right. But Charlene never fusses, she never pushes. She gives a lot of praise, and I work hard so I can be exactly like her. My riffs and toe-tips and touches are always a little off, though. I just cannot seem to make my left foot cooperate with my right one. It’s like there are two separate people on the different sides of my body.

I’ve worshipped Charlene for months and I have prayed to God for her to notice me. And finally I get to be her pet, which is the best thing I could hope for in this whole town!

This is how lucky I am: Charlene lets me visit her at her mother’s house on St. Gerard Street. They live in a big pink stucco Spanish house, the only one like it in the city of Thornton. Charlene’s room is the closest you can get to Hollywood without leaving Louisiana. It has a round bed that her mother ordered from Dallas. It’s covered with a pink satin comforter, and dozens of little pink and green satin pillows are thrown all over the place. These heavy pink and green flowered curtains hang over all the windows so they can block out the morning sun. Even so, Charlene sleeps with a sleep mask on to block out whatever sunlight peeks through.

On the days when I get to visit Charlene’s, I wake up at six
A.M
.! But Mama won’t take me over there until
after nine. And then Charlene is still asleep! I can’t believe she sleeps
so long
. I have to sit in the kitchen with their maid, Jewel, and wait and wait and wait. Then, when Jewel says it’s time, she lets me trail along while she brings Charlene her café au lait in bed. When we get to the edge of the bed, Jewel lets me hold the coffee tray. Charlene turns over and I’m standing there looking at her, making sure I don’t spill a drop.

I say, Rise and shine, Miss Sleepyhead! like Mama does.

Jewel walks over to the curtains, and then Charlene always says, Oh Jewel, will you please just sneak those drapes open real slow-like?

And Jewel pulls those curtains open little by little, keeping an eye on Charlene to make sure she isn’t doing it too fast. (Jewel told me one time that there was too much light for Miss Charlene in New York, and that was why she had to come back home. Jewel said she was not fixing to add any more to Miss Charlene’s heartache if she could help it.)

Finally, Charlene sits up and lifts that sleep mask up off her eyes and uses it like a headband to push back her hair. (I have been begging Mama for weeks to buy me a sleep mask, but she says, Absolutely not! You’re too damn dramatic as it is.) Then Charlene looks over at me and smiles her big lazy just-waking-up smile and asks me, Want to climb in, Sidda?

I hand her the coffee-milk and let myself up on the bed very gently so I won’t disturb her. The air condi
tioner is always pumped up to high all night long, so it is freezing in that room.

Charlene pulls the comforter up over me and says—like it’s something tragic: Oh, Sidda! You’ve got goosebumps!

Then Jewel goes over to Charlene’s big console stereo and says, Miss Charlene, what tunes you want to start your day with?

And Charlene says, Oh I don’t know, Jewel, why don’t you ask our guest?

And I blurt out,
South Pacific!
No, no, no, play
Carousel
, yeah,
Carousel!
Let’s listen to Julie Jordan!

Charlene yawns and starts humming, and when Jewel has the volume just right, Charlene says, Jewel, how come you’re so good to me?

Every single time Jewel says back: Cause your Mama gonna take care of Jewel in her old age.

Everything in that world is pure heaven. I just get lightheaded with all the attention I get from Charlene. But then I start to worry that she’ll notice how dumb I am and not like me anymore. I just have to hold myself back from dancing and singing and turning backflips to show Charlene what a fantastic child I am so she will love me forever.

Then my Aunt Jezie comes home from college for the summer. She moves into her old room at my Grandma Buggy’s house and immediately she starts making fun of everything Buggy does. When Buggy tells me it’s time to wash my hair, Aunt Jezie will say: Mother, the word is
“wash” not “warsh.” And while we’re at it, the word is “rinse” not “rinch.” Say it, Mother:
wash
and
rinse
.

And Buggy repeats it after Aunt Jezie, but then she goes right back to her old ways of talking.

Aunt Jezie also thinks Buggy’s shoulders are too rounded. She will go over and slap her hand between my grandmother’s shoulder blades, and Buggy will stand perfectly straight for a minute. And Aunt Jezie will turn around and say to us, There, doesn’t Buggy look less countrified?

It is thrilling to have Aunt Jezie home because she lets me show her all my dance routines. Mama never wants to hear anything about my lessons. When I try to show her Charlene’s numbers from
The Pajama Game
, Mama just says, God, I’ll be relieved when you get off this Charlene Parks jag.

One time me and Mama got in this gigantic fight because she wouldn’t let me wear the rhinestone tiara that Charlene sent me home with because I was Queen for the Week. All of Charlene’s students get to take turns being Queen and it is a very big deal. But Mama said, That tiara is the tackiest little thing I’ve ever laid my eyes on. You will
not
wear that piece of trash on your head!

Well, I am not about to let anything connected with Charlene get criticized, so I said, Mama, you’re just jealous because you can’t dance like Charlene.

Mama said, Shut your filthy mouth.

Then I said, Shut
your
filthy mouth.

Which was not like me to say, but I just was not about to let Mama put down Charlene right in front of me. Even though it meant I couldn’t go to dance class for a week because of the marks on my legs where Mama hit me with Daddy’s cowboy belt. I simply had to defend Charlene.

Aunt Jezie just wants to hear everything. When I get back from class, I show all my routines to her. If she has the record, she’ll stand me in front of her full-length mirror and teach me to sing the words to the dance tunes. Of course Aunt Jezie already knows about Charlene being ex–Miss Louisiana, but
I
am the one to tell her about
The Jackie Gleason Show
. I am also the one who tells her about Charlene’s sleep mask and her pink comforter and her little dotted-swiss babydoll pajamas.

When she’s home for the summer, Aunt Jezie and I always do lots of fun things. Sometimes she’ll decide at ten o’clock at night that she absolutely has to have a root beer float. And we jump into Buggy’s Ford Fairlane and putt on over to the A&W, wearing nothing but our cotton piqué nightgowns. We order from the carhop and Aunt Jezie just dares anyone to say a word about how we’re dressed. And we ride horses early in the mornings before the sun gets scorching hot. Aunt Jezie is a great horsewoman. She teaches me dressage and grooming and how to feel what a horse is saying to you. She says, You’ve always got to be the boss. Once
you let the horse take over, then you just might as well forget the whole thing.

One time after dance class, Aunt Jezie comes to pick me up as a surprise. Instead of waiting in the car like Mama does, she walks right up to the door of the dance studio. We are just finishing up our
Yankee Doodle Dandy
routine with all the slaps and toe-tips, and from the corner of my eye I can see Aunt Jezie leaning against the door in her khaki pants and loafers with no socks. I pretend I don’t notice her, but I start kicking and hopping furiously to impress her with my talent.

As soon as we finish, I run over to Aunt Jezie and grab her hand. I am panting like a dog, I’m so out of breath. I say, Come on! Come and meet Charlene!

I pull her over to the record player where Charlene is putting stuff away. Charlene looks especially gorgeous. She has on her black leotard with a pink sash around the waist and a matching scarf in her hair. Just the way she stands with her feet kind of splayed out is a wonder to me. (I try to stand like that, so people will think I’m a professional dancer, but Mama always comes along and says, Stop standing duck-footed. You look ridiculous.)

I say, Charlene, this is my Aunt Jezie. She goes to Ole Miss.

Aunt Jezie says, Thrilled to finally meet. The child adores you.

Then she holds out her hand to shake hands with Charlene, although ladies in Thornton never do that.
It doesn’t faze Charlene though. She has probably seen
every
thing in New York. She shakes Aunt Jezie’s hand and they look each other right in the eyes.

Good to meet you, Charlene says, and she reaches her other hand up to touch her hair. Then she does a
tendu
and smiles.

Aunt Jezie says, I want to thank you for the special attention you’ve been giving Siddalee. She’s my protégée, you know.

I chime in, Aunt Jezie teaches me how to sing!

Oh, do
you
sing? Charlene asks Aunt Jezie.

Aunt Jezie laughs and says, I sing passionately to horses, dogs, and children. The general public I avoid.

Charlene laughs back, and Aunt Jezie says, I’ve enjoyed seeing you on television. How lucky we are to have you back in Thornton.

Charlene does a
plié
and says, It’s nice to be back. I
think
.

Aunt Jezie is the one smiling now, and she says, Maybe we should get together sometime and have a laugh or two about this armpit of a town.

Charlene says, I’d like that. God knows there’s enough to laugh about.

I want to ask, There
is?
Then I think, Are yall going to laugh about
me?

But before I can even open my mouth, Aunt Jezie says,
Ciao!
and she leads me down to the car.

She drives straight out to Pearl’s Plunge, a concrete pool with spring water, where they have a dance pavil
ion and all. We swim and lie in the sun all day and eat corn dogs from the concession stand. Every once in a while she reads out loud to me from this book,
The Fountainhead
, all about this architect who everyone misunderstands. I completely forget to ask what she and Charlene are going to laugh about.

One evening Mama takes Baylor and Little Shep and Lulu and me to Fred’s Hamburger Drive-In where we eat at least twice a week. She pulls the Thunderbird into our regular spot facing the wooden fence painted with a hobo eating a huge po’boy. And before Mama even turns off the motor, I spot Aunt Jezie and Charlene across the parking lot. They are sitting in Charlene’s mother’s Buick Skylark convertible with the top down. I’m so surprised to see them there together. But mainly, I can’t believe how lucky it is that we’re all here at the same time! I jump out of the car and bolt across the parking lot in their direction, my flip-flops nearly flying off my feet with each step.

When I reach the convertible I stand by the driver’s door and say, Hey yall! We’re here having hamburgers too!

I think, They’ll ask me to eat with them, then take me riding around afterward!

But they just sit there looking all tan, with a basket of curly-Q fries on the seat between them. Charlene smiles and says, Hello there, Miss Sidda.

But the way she says it, I can tell she is just being
polite. You can tell she isn’t really glad to see me. Even so, I can’t stop staring at how pretty she looks in her pink short-shorts and white ruffly blouse. Mama never wears ruffles. Aunt Jezie sits in the passenger seat acting like I’m nowhere in sight. She just stares in the opposite direction from me and lets out this big sigh.