Mississippi Sissy (4 page)

“Calm down, Benny,” said Erie Johnston, Barnett's ex-press secretary who was the editor and owner of our local newspaper, the
Scott County Times,
in which one of the “human interest” features on the Sessums Orphans had appeared. Under Mr. Erie's own byline, he reported that I was the lone child who had known of his mother's impending death, a bit of personal information I had read over and over wondering why he didn't also report that I had been slapped at the time I was told. Johnston, who, I must confess, always showed my family a generous concern and was the first to encourage my journalistic leanings, was later exposed as the director of a secret agency, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission—sort of a cracker KGB—set up within the state government to rat-out its citizens and intimidate civil rights workers, sometimes violently, in an attempt to safeguard segregation. “Everything's under control, Benny,” Johnston said, getting into his car to back out of the yard, careful not to hit the host of pickups that sat, like a herd, around the driveway next to the gas
pump my grandfather had had installed on the property so he wouldn't have to drive his Buick the five miles into town for a few gallons of Shell.

“You heard Erie,” one of the menfolk told Benny. “Erie's in the know. Nothing to worry about. But it's a sad state of affairs, ain't it, when you can't scare the coloreds no more and get away with it.”

The other men shook their heads grimly. “The mistake they made was killing them two white boys,” said Uncle Benny. “That's what made the mess.”

I stared out at the muffled discussion and wished I could be as oblivious to such words swirling around me as were my little brother and insistent little sister out there tossing pine cones back and forth, frolicking in the pine straw. How had this happened? How had the three of us been born into such a confusing brew of chicanery, malevolence, and kindheartedness? Standing there at that window, I tried to focus on my reflection and not on all those men who did not know what to make of me anyway. I practiced looking sad. But I could not take my eyes off them:
The men. What kind of creatures are these? They are a part of me? Flesh of my flesh?
I listened to the low rumble of their voices discussing the realities of the day (Martin Luther King's numbered hours, LBJ's treachery), a lilt of hatred that, along with organ dirges and the dutiful mourning of the family's tearful womenfolk, furnished the soundtrack of my childhood. Just as my father's sadness changed to fear inside that coaches' lounge when he looked into my eyes, I looked into them now reflected before me, and watched my own practiced sadness, my own disdain, turn to perplexity, to fear. And then it hit me: I
do not belong here.
I
will report back one day on all that I have witnessed. I am a spy.

Yet where exactly should an exotic such as I hang his hat? Where the hell did I belong? The best I could figure was on my favorite television show,
What's My Line?
I breathed on the dining room window and signed in, please, KEVIN SESSUMS, on the misted pane. I closed
my eyes and tried with all my shattered heart to hear the cultured clip of the
What's
My
Line?
host John Daly drown out that low rumble of the men outside and the women in the kitchen, who were carrying on again about Northerners and niggers and how much nutmeg to put in next month's eggnog. I listened as Daly issued his weekly command to enter and sign in, please, on the chalkboard to see if the panel could guess my line of work. I would whisper into his ear, “I am a spy.” The panel would be stumped. I would win my fifty dollars. Dorothy Kilgallen would call me “darling,” and Daly, hearing her, would ask me to join them as a permanent fourth member of the panel. I would get to wear a tuxedo like Bennett Cerf. Or better yet, an evening gown like Arlene Francis and Miss Kilgallen.

I would sneak into the living room to watch Daly and his elegant panel on Sunday nights at 10:30 when everybody else had gone to bed. The show came on after the CBS Late News. I'd lie on my stomach in the dark and watch the images of the warfare up at Ole Miss the year before, when that preppy Negro James Meredith enrolled and insurgent riots erupted. Federal troops invaded. Deaths ensued. I took it all in as I lay there getting ready to practice elongating my vowels in the manner of Arlene and to shade my laughter with the tone that John Daly employed when displaying his jaded bemusement at one of Bennett Cerf's puns. My favorite segment: when a famous mystery guest was about to walk out and all the panelists put on their blindfolds (or “eye masks,” as Miss Francis once called them) in order not to see who was signing in on the chalkboard. I would clasp each little index finger against my thumbs and form an imaginary mask over my own eyes and pretend I could not see. Sometimes, to the consternation of my grandfather who always turned in early, my grandmother would watch the show with me. “Tell you what, sugar. There must have been a run on chins when that Kilgallen gal was born, ‘cause the Lord sho'nuff forgot to give her one,” she would say, putting a hand to her mouth trying to stifle the sound of her laughter
so she wouldn't wake my grandfather. I'd laugh too and describe my imaginary eye mask to her, telling her it was black and velvet and had pearls all around it just like Arlene's did. “Don't you want one like Bennett Cerf's?” she would ask.

“I tell you one thing,” I heard her voice now rise above the windowed radio's din and awaken me from my latest daydream of a
What's
My Line? life. “I sure hope there ain't no kitchens in heaven.”

“Hush, Joycie Otis. Don't you want to hear who all they caught?” asked Aunt Vena Mae, turning up the radio. “If you ask me—we were discussing this in my women's sixty and over Sunday-school class—those civil rights boys were just looking for trouble coming down here like that where they don't belong. Got what they deserved. This is a sign from God that they should mind their own business. I know Cecil Price. I know Sheriff Rainey,” she said, mentioning the two Neshoba County law enforcement officers who everybody was saying either covered up the crime or helped commit it. “They're hicks but they're not murderers. A'course, according to everybody else in this day-and-age no-count country, we're all hicks in Mississippi. Some of us just dress better than others.”

“Vena Mae, will you hush up about civil rights! I've had it up to here with civil rights!” said my grandmother, who was starting to cry yet again. She was a small woman, barely five feet tall, but had the lungs of a larger one. I once found hidden in my grandfather's closet an old 1920s photo of Vena Mae and my grandmother in all their bobbed-hair-and-bangs, flapper glory. If Vena Mae—always more voluptuous than her little sister—had a Theda Bara bearing about her as she posed for the camera, my tiny grandmother was more Gloria Swanson: all kohled eyes and boney allure. “I buried Nan today,” she said, her voice gurgling for air up through her tears. “I buried my baby.”

“I'm sorry, Joycie. I know you did,” said Vena Mae. “Where's Lyle?”
she asked, mentioning my grandfather's name. “He should be here tending to you. I'm running out of hankies.”

“He got mad at me for getting on him for eating that cold clabber and crumbled-up corn bread he loves so much instead of all this food everybody has brought over. I told him it was rude. He was insulting the women. He just started to cry and headed out back yonder. He's been crying today more than me.”

I put down my Carnation milk on the window sill and stuck my new rabbit's foot in my pocket. I pinched each of my index fingers against my thumbs and formed my imaginary
What's
My
Line?
mask atop my eyes. I pranced through the dining room and into the kitchen.

“Where's that Carnation, Kevin? I just poured myself some more coffee,” said Vena Mae. I ignored her and headed for the kitchen door. “Don't you know to speak when spoken to, boy? You and Lyle are going to have some trouble with this one,” she told my grandmother, who now was sniffling.

“He don't see you, Vena Mae. He's got his highfalutin mask on,” said my grandmother. “Call him Arlene and you might get an answer out of him.” Aunt Vena Mae cocked an eyebrow. “He's playin' Arlene,” my grandmother explained. “If you want that Carnation, you got to call him Arlene.”

“I won't do no such thing,” said Vena Mae. “I think I've seen it all now. I swuny. Who the Sam Hill is Arlene?”

“That ugly woman that makes herself pretty on Sunday nights after all them lies on the late CBS news,” said my grandmother, wiping her nose.

“Arlene Francis?” asked Vena Mae. She put her hand to her chunky necklace. “She's a Jew! Least, that's what I hear tell.”

I slammed the door in Vena Mae's face and went looking for my grandfather. He was in the backyard by himself sitting under a pine
tree eating his clabber and crumbled-up corn bread with a soup spoon out of a giant glass goblet. I walked up to him—my imaginary mask still fingered in place—and sat by his side. The needles all around the pine's trunk softened the ground. A few of the tree's huge gnarled roots jutted into view and I snuggled into the crevice created by the two largest ones. My grandfather eyed me with a mouthful of clabber-soaked bread. “What's up, Arlene?” he asked. “You couldn't take it in there anymore, either, hon?” I dropped my hands and dug into my pocket to show him my rabbit's foot. “Who gave you that?” he asked. I shrugged. “That's a fine-lookin' thing,” he said as I watched him grapple with some final soggy crumbs of corn bread down at the bottom of the goblet. “Want this last bit?” he asked me. I shook my head. The concoction looked like what I had once vomited on that Winston-smoking coach's shoes. My grandfather started to cry some more but quickly fought back the tears. He surveyed the yard with his brimming eyes. “Look at all this space we got back here,” he said, burping up some clabber. “Don't this look like a nice place for a pony?” I shrugged. Somewhere out there in the pastures surrounding us was a flock of throaty birds that must have taken a wrong turn out of Alabama, for they were now sounding as deeply flummoxed as I was feeling. “Listen to them damn crows,” said my grandfather. “I hate crows. They remind me of all these civil-righters crawling all over the state—black and complaining and always making the most of a bad situation. But I guess that's what we gotta do, too, hon. Make the best of a bad situation. I know you miss yo' mama and daddy something awful. God knows, I do. I know you probably don't know what to make of your old Pop and Mom,” he said, using the names that Kim and Karole and I called him and our grandmother. “But I promise you sitting right here on this day under this tree—I want you to remember this the rest of your life—that nobody will ever love you more than Mom and me. We ain't got much but love to give you. But
you can rest assured, hon, that we're gonna give you that.” His old eyes filled with tears again, his sorrow magnified behind his thick-lensed glasses. I looked up and saw the long gray hairs in his nostrils clot with snot. He pulled out a handkerchief from his back pocket and haphazardly wiped his big nose. He looked a lot like LBJ. “Oh, Lord,” he said and pointed toward the house. I heard the clunk of Vena Mae's jewelry in the distance and turned to see her leading my grandmother toward us. “Better batten down the hatches,” my grandfather whispered. “Here comes Veeny. And Jake don't look too happy neither,” he said, using the nickname my grandmother was called by those closest to her. I put my rabbit's foot back in my pocket and formed my highfalutin mask with my fingers. “You might have the right idea there, Arlene,” my grandfather said, chuckling and making sure that there was nothing left in either the goblet or his nose. He put his handkerchief back in his pocket.

“Lyle, you should be tending to Joycie. I had to find her asthma spray before her grief plumb near smothered her. Here!” Vena Mae said, handing off my grandmother, who sat gingerly on the ground on the other side of me, careful not to snag her funeral dress on any of the tree's exposed roots. My grandfather took off his suit jacket and handed it across my masked face to her so she could wrap it around her thin shoulders in the November chill.

“I better not ruin my dress sitting here like this. It's the first time I've ever worn it. Took me near ‘bout one whole hour to find this
McCall
's pattern up at the Thomas Great M last month,” my grandmother said, referring to the department store on Main Street in Forest. “Nan had taken her final turn toward the worst and I knew I'd be needing a dress like this soon enough. Thought I should be planning ahead for this day. Practical to a fault—that's me. How I kept all my seams straight with me crying at my sewing machine like I done, I'll never know.”

Vena Mae stood over the three of us and frowned at the sight. She rearranged her bracelets. “Y'all seen Doots anywhere? It's about time we started driving back. I told him not to sneak off,” she complained, mentioning her husband who so seldom spoke after years of marriage to her that one could be forgiven for thinking the woman had purposefully wedded a mute. He owned Moore's Hardware up in Philadelphia and would sit in his proprietor's chair in the front of the store and keep the daily tab inside his silent head. “Our car is blocked in out in the front yard. Who's in charge of moving cars in and out? I heard tell Dickie and Bill was doing that,” she said, naming the husbands, respectively, of my mother's two sisters, Jo Ann and Peg. A chorus of laughter erupted inside the house. Confused, we turned toward the sound—all of us as mute as Uncle Doots—and waited for it to subside. “You know, Joycie,” Vena Mae said, “if we hadn't had a funeral today, this would have been a
right nice
party. Wouldn't it, Lyle? Wouldn't it . . .” She stopped herself when she saw me staring up at her through my fingered-together mask. “Look at you,” she said. “I got news for you, boy. You're more Dorothy Kilgallen than Arlene Francis.” She turned on her high heels and headed for the house. “Doots!” she called. “Doots! Where are you? We gotta make Neshoba before nightfall!”