My Mother the Cheerleader (5 page)

She finished with a little piano flourish and Morgan applauded.

“Bravo!” he said. “That was wonderful.”

“Well, I'm no Peggy Lee.”

“Peggy doesn't sing with half the feeling you've got.”

“Oh, please.”

“I mean it.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” my mother said, the seductive purr returning to her voice. Morgan coughed, and there was an uncomfortable beat of silence. At this point I was waiting for my mother to pull out one of her clinchers. If she was trying to seduce a shy man, she had a number of lines she used to snare him. Before she had the chance, Morgan said something completely unexpected.

“Would you allow me to take you to dinner tomorrow night?”

“Dinner?” my mother said.

“Yes,” he said. “I've never been to Commander's Palace, and I've always wanted to try it.”

This took my mother and me completely by surprise. The men she was used to consorting with
almost never invited her to dine. And even if they did, Commander's Palace was way out of their league. Tucked away in the Garden District, Commander's Palace was considered the very finest restaurant in all of New Orleans. The restaurant had played host to everyone from Jefferson Davis to Mark Twain to Elvis Presley. A meal there would cost at least a week's worth of our income. I know my mother had always yearned to go there. After shaking off the shock, she managed to reply.

“I'd be delighted.”

“Great. We'll plan on six thirty?”

“That'd be fine,” she said.

“I'd better hit the sack. I've got an early breakfast. But I want to thank you for a most lovely evening.”

“It was my pleasure.”

I stuck my head back down into the heating duct just in time to see Morgan and my mother rise.

“Good night, Pauline.” He gave her a gentle kiss on the hand, just like the one he gave me.

“Good night, Morgan,” she said.

He turned to walk upstairs. My mother stood in place for a moment, letting it all sink in. I heard Morgan's footsteps on the top of the stairs before I remembered that I needed to replace the grate and get out of there.

N
ow, as I mentioned earlier, the blood tended to rush to my head whenever I'd lower it down into the heating duct. I hurriedly pushed the grate back into place, but as soon as I tried to stand up, I knew something was wrong. The walls seemed to fold down on top of me, and my stomach and head felt like they were twisting in opposite directions. Then my knees turned to jelly and I blacked out, just like that. I'd never fainted before, so I had no idea what was happening at the time.

When I opened my eyes again, I didn't have any sense of how much time had passed. All I knew was
that I was lying on the floor of the second-story bathroom with my mother and Morgan huddled over me.

Then I saw the blood on the front of my dress. Earlier that afternoon I had prayed to the Lord for puberty to overtake me so that I could sprout breasts to rival my mother's. As I lay on the bathroom floor, my heart filled with paralyzing dread: I realized that my desperate prayer had been answered in the most horrible way possible: I had gotten my period.

I didn't know much about menstruation, but what I did know I didn't like one bit. My mother had never had a “birds and the bees” talk with me, so most of what I knew came from Jez Robidoux, who maintained that during your period you peed blood instead of urine. “Why do girls make blood instead of boys?” I asked.

“I don't know,” she replied, and then added: “There's all sorts of stuff that's different between boys and girls, right? If you start asking those questions, why not ask why girls have vaginas in the first place instead of a penis? Did you ever think about
that? Why don't you have a penis, Louise?” It was hard for me to argue with that logic.

Just a few hours earlier I had prayed for puberty to grow breasts; now here I was praying for a miraculous reversal to dam the menstrual river.

As my eyes blinked open, I noticed that Morgan looked concerned. My mother looked concerned too, but also more than slightly annoyed.

“She's coming to,” he said.

“Thank the Lord,” my mother replied.

“I guess she fainted.”

“Louise, honey,” she asked, “are you all right?

My mother helped pull me up to a sitting position.

“Sugar, can you hear me?”

I nodded.

“Are you okay?” Morgan asked.

“I think so,” I said.

“You gave your nose and lips a pretty good whack,” he said. “You must've fainted and hit the edge of the toilet on the way down.”

My nose and lips! That's when I first felt the
hotness running over my lips and down my chin. It wasn't my period! The blood had splattered the front of my dress from my nose! Rejoice! I felt my mind rush to thank the Lord but then stopped myself short, not wishing to risk bringing God into my personal life any more that day. I ran my tongue over my lips and felt a small opening oozing blood.

“It doesn't look like your nose is broken,” Morgan said.

I slowly stood up and discovered my knees were solid again.

“I'll get her cleaned up,” my mother said to Morgan. “Please go to bed—you've been more than kind.”

“All right,” he said. “Good night, ladies.”

He exited as my mother wet a washcloth and began to wipe down my face and neck. She let a moment pass to make sure Morgan was out of earshot, and then she interrogated me in a hushed rasp.

“And what were you doing in here at such a late hour?” she asked.

“Going to the bathroom,” I said.

“Still wearing your dinner dress? You should've been in your nightgown and asleep an hour ago.”

I didn't respond.

She rubbed the bottom of my neck hard with the washcloth, all pretense of tenderness gone.

“I can't have you running around the house like a wild animal at all hours of the night. What do you think our guests think of that?”

“I don't know.”

“I'll tell you what they think, that I'm a bad mother who raised a disrespectful swamp rat of a child. I will not have you making me look bad in front of guests, Louise, do you understand? I want you to be in bed at a proper hour. You hear?”

I nodded.

She tossed the bloody washcloth into the sink.

“Sometimes I don't know how I put up with you,” she said. “And will you look at that dress? You probably ruined it.”

She tugged the dress off over my head.

“Go downstairs and soak this in some water and
Ivory flakes before the blood dries.”

I looked down at myself, naked save for a pair of old panties.

“Go on,” she said. “I paid good money for that thing.”

My mother flung the dress at me and walked out. I grabbed my pink cotton robe from a hook on the back of the door, slipped it on, and then went downstairs to wash the dress.

T
he next morning I slept until seven thirty and cursed myself. I had fully intended to follow Morgan to his morning rendezvous, but I was so tired from my late night of surveillance, fainting, bleeding, and washing that I just couldn't wake myself up. I finally stirred at the sound of Mr. Landroux's bell ringing for breakfast, a bedpan change, or both.

My mother had the enviable ability to sleep through nearly any noise. Part of this skill must be attributed to the lime juleps, which nicely dulled most of her senses when she slept. Yet that morning she was
already awake when Mr. Landroux started ringing. She added a shrill vocal to accompany the bell.

“Louise! Louise!” she called. “Can't you hear the bell?”

I got up and pulled on some clothes. As I trudged out into the hallway toward the stairs, my mother emerged from her room. To my surprise she was already dressed in her powder-blue dress with the heart print, and her hair was neatly arranged with a matching blue bow. She leaned one hand on the railing of the stairwell and pulled on a blue patent leather pump.

“After you're done with Mr. Landroux, make sure you make a fresh pitcher of lemonade,” she said. “And sweep out the front hall before Mr. Miller returns in the afternoon.”

“Why are you going so early?” I asked.

“Don't you remember? It's Monday.”

“Yeah, but you don't usually go until eight thirty…”

“I've got three letters for you, Louise: C-B-S.”

A rumor had circulated at the end of the previous
week that CBS News was sending down a television crew to do a story about the Cheerleaders. All the ladies were hoping to get on TV. My mother planned to arrive extra early to insure that she had the best position for the camera.

She pulled on her other pump and headed downstairs. She called back to me as she rushed out the front door.

“If Mr. Miller comes back, you just be sure to tend to him properly.”

The bell rang again, more insistently.

A
fter cleaning Mr. Landroux's bedpan and serving him a breakfast of oatmeal, coffee, and tomato juice, I went back downstairs to clean Morgan's room. I took great care making up his room. I made sure his hospital corners were extra tight on the bed, and I puffed up his pillow so it looked just right. I laid out fresh towels, careful to choose the ones with the fewest rips and stains. I polished the mirror over the dresser, making sure not to leave any stray fingerprints along the way.

With my chores complete, I slipped back into spy mode and very carefully searched through
Morgan's possessions. Typically, I'd just start rifling through everything without giving it a thought, but with Morgan I hesitated. I almost never felt any pangs of guilt about violating the privacy of our guests. Oh, I knew I was doing something wrong. But I never felt as if it was seriously wrong, just a little bit wrong. It's not as if I was going to tell anyone if I found anything interesting. Of course, my mother or Charlotte would have severely punished me if they knew about my searches. And I didn't have any friends I trusted enough to share vital information like that with, even Jez.

Over the years I did make some notable discoveries. All were dutifully recorded in my Spy Log with the following information: date, guest's name, a brief description of the guest, and a description of the key object.

My affection and respect for Morgan gave me a moment's pause before I completely violated his privacy. But it was really only a moment. I took my surveillance of Morgan so seriously that I retrieved
my Spy Log to record everything I found, not wanting to risk any detail to faulty memory. He had unpacked his suitcase and put his clothes in the dresser. I went through each item, recorded it in my log, and carefully put everything back exactly how I found it.

Nothing out of the ordinary there. His toilet kit also yielded very little of interest. Although he did use some very pleasant-smelling brand of aftershave and talc called Pinaud Clubman. The label read “World Famous Since 1810.” I unscrewed the cap of the aftershave and took a deep sniff—it was the
source of the faintly sweet but masculine scent that I had noticed at dinner.

Although I was usually disappointed to find nothing of interest in a guest's room, with Morgan I was relieved. I didn't want to have my image of him dimmed by some hidden vice tucked away in his underwear drawer. In truth I was searching in the hopes of not finding anything incriminating.

I completed my accounting of his possessions and was returning everything to exactly where it was when I noticed a small leather briefcase beside the door. Of course I couldn't let something like that elude my investigation. The first thing I pulled out of the case was an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes. Next I retrieved a 257-page manuscript of a book called
Landing the Job: Tips for Recent Graduates
, by Alice Timmons. I flipped through the pages and read through some of what I assumed were Morgan's comments written in blue ink along the margins.

None of the notes made much sense without really knowing the context, but I assumed they were all brilliant and helpful. Insane jealousy swept over me at the thought of Alice Timmons getting to work with Morgan. Did this girl realize how lucky she was?

The next item I retrieved was a small newspaper. I was just going to put it aside when the name flashed before my eyes and I froze. A chill ran through my entire body as the words sank in.

DAILY WORKER

I instinctively dropped the paper like a hot coal and stared in horror. This was the paper of record of
Communist conspirators and enemies of all things good. Pornography, guns, moonshine—none of those hit me with the same shock of revulsion as was caused by Morgan's copy of the
Daily Worker
. For a moment I was afraid to touch it. In my universe Communists ranked neck and neck with Satan on the chart of evildoers. Was Morgan one of
them
?

I dumped out the rest of the briefcase, fearful I'd find a cache of microfilm, a dagger with the Soviet hammer and sickle emblazoned on the handle, or a secret transmitting device to communicate with the Kremlin. But there was nothing else in the bag save a Zippo lighter and a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. My mind raced in the opposite direction, hoping to absolve Morgan of this ugly suspicion. He must work for the FBI, I assured myself, and he was merely researching the enemy. Yes…he must be some sort of government agent. That must be it.

I turned my full attention to the paper. The front-page headline read “Garment Strike Looms.” I flipped through the entire contents, scanning the articles, all of which concerned the oppression of
workers and other abuses by bosses and corporations. Nothing really penetrated until I got to the very last page, the sports section, where Morgan's name jumped out at me from the byline of an editorial column.

My heart sank. M. I. Miller was a Giants fan. Morgan did not work for the FBI. He was one of them. Worse still, he wasn't just one of them: He was an editor, a person of authority on the
Daily Worker
.

Some tiny alarm bell went off in my head, telling me that I should go to William Frantz Elementary School right away. At the Citizens' Council meetings the speakers blamed the Communists for inciting the Negroes. Would I find Morgan holding a sign or passing out pamphlets or just generally inciting civil unrest? I stuffed everything back into the bag and ran to find out.