No Daughter of the South (21 page)

I climbed up the steps and out of the pool, not looking back at him. Walked a careful distance away, in case he should seek revenge.

He was over at the ladder, hanging on tight and coughing. And laughing. And cursing. “You could have at least let me take off my watch!”

I smiled sweetly, waved good-bye and went in the back door to the house. The air conditioning brought immediate goose pimples to my flesh.

Momma was back home, unpacking groceries in the kitchen. She looked up at me, surprised. “What are you up to?” she asked.

“Oh, Johnny and I just had a nice swim. I think I’ll go take a shower now, Momma.”

I walked on down the hall, Momma watched in disapproval at the wet footprints following me down the hall.

Over the sound of my hair dryer, I heard someone knocking on the door. I opened it and Momma said I had a phone call. “Lovely girl,” she said. “Her name is Sammy? We had a nice talk.”

I dashed down the hall to the phone. “I want to talk to you later about what you did to Johnny Berry, Baby Sister,” she called after me.

Sammy was there, on the other end of the line, in the city, in the universe, in my life. Sammy, the center, the heart of my quest. The moment I heard her voice, I felt it in my heart. She was her patients’ Sammy, and her own Sammy, and the girls’ Sammy, but she was my Sammy, too. And there was something different about the way I was thinking about Annie and Rachel and Sarah. The girls, I thought. Sammy’s girls, and their own girls... and my girls, too.

We talked for a long time. She had spoken to her mother, she knew some of what had happened. She was afraid for me, and didn’t try to hide it. I told her that the Chief of Police had given the matter some serious thought, and he didn’t believe I was in danger, but he was taking steps on my behalf anyway. That seemed to make her feel better. I didn’t tell her about the idea Etta Mae had given me, about what I planned to do. I knew she would only try to stop me, because she believed it was still her errand I was on. But it wasn’t anymore. It had gone on far beyond that now, and this was something I had to do for me.

I asked about Annie, and I listened to what Sammy said, then asked for Sarah and Rachel the same way. I even asked about Elena. I cared, she could tell that, and, as a result, I think, there was something lighter and more serious in her voice, in the way she talked to me. When she talked about her children before there was this little note of apology, of saying she knew that I was humoring her by listening, that this wasn’t really my thing. Sammy seemed to sense the difference in me. We had a talk as warm and intimate as any we had ever had in bed. But just as Sammy said something about coming to get me if I didn’t come back soon, I knew I must be hearing wrong. I knew she couldn’t leave her patients or her daughters, and I was going to be back soon anyway. Then I saw the trap. If Sammy and the girls were a part of me, that meant I was going to get torn apart when the relationship ended, right? I couldn’t quite listen anymore, and Sammy had to go anyway, so I managed to hang up pretty fast. Shit, I thought, there’s always a catch.

I walked into the kitchen, stood leaning against the sink, and stared out the kitchen window. A nice enough little street. Small, neat houses, and little concrete driveways with cars parked out front. Just like a small-town anywhere. Except, because this was Florida something was contradicted by the lush vegetation, by the fierce heat, and even the tiny lizards darting everywhere. Go ahead and pretend, it all seemed to say, go ahead. But right here is the evidence that things are stranger and more fertile than you can imagine. There is more going on here than you know.

The phone rang, startling me. It was Susan. She sounded too cheery. She spoke quickly, said she couldn’t talk then, but there was something important she had to tell me. She said she’d see me tomorrow at the parade.

“Parade?” I asked, stupidly, still thinking about traps, and me always wary about the wrong things.

“The Fiesta Parade,” she said, explaining how she and her family would watch from the mayor’s front yard. I should meet her there. Afterwards, she said, the pageant would be in the park, down by the river. The first day of the fiesta, how could I forget?

Suddenly my mind shifted into gear. I asked about her father’s plans. I could tell from her voice that she was surprised, and suspicious. But she told me. He was going to the Big Game Cookout. Tomorrow he’d be a judge for the parade. And then he had a part in the pageant. And, of course, there was a party after the pageant.

She said she really had to go. There was noise in the background. Tom was asking her impatiently when she’d be off the phone, and the kids were making kid racket. She’d see me tomorrow, she said. She was ready to hang up, so I had to talk quick. I told her what I needed. Just a key. Just for a little while. I had to take it on faith she’d do this for me, without an explanation, and without betraying me. It wasn’t like with Johnny. I hadn’t made a decision to trust her. But I asked her this anyway, and she could be the one to decide whether she would be trustworthy. She waited a while before answering, and when she did, her voice was so still, so composed, that I knew she had made her decision. “Okay. At the parade then.”

I folded some laundry, and then kept pouring wine while Momma kept cooking. After the dishes, I spent the evening with Momma watching all her shows. Momma was careful not to say anything, not to act too pleased. But I could tell she was. This was the best thing we could do together, better even than getting our hair done or going shopping. The nice, normal kind of stuff. The stuff families do together. She didn’t criticize me or make a suggestion once during the evening, unless you count the time she said, “Don’t you love the way Loni wears her hair? And it’s just about your color.”

TV was worse than I remembered. Not that I had ever watched much of it. Anyway, somehow, we got through that evening, even though it seemed to me to take longer than the last twenty years of my life. I asked her once if she was hurt that her husband and sons were off on the Big Game Cookout where no women where allowed. She looked at me like I was crazy. “I don’t have to cook dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow. And why on earth would I want to be out there in the woods with a bunch of men drinking too much and eating that foul stuff they call cooking? No thank you very much just the same!”

Organized by the most respected businessmen in town, the Big Game Cookout was the first event of the Tashimee Fiesta, always on the Friday night before the opening parade. The men went out in the woods somewhere, and cooked copious amounts of venison, gator, wild boar, and rattlesnake—any creature that had lived free and they had managed to assassinate. Not my idea of a good time. As a kid, I wouldn’t even eat ice cream if it was in the freezer next to what I thought of as Bambi’s mother. Johnny had confessed to me once, back when we were married, that when the exotic stuff ran out, plates of barbecued pork were handed out, called boar, and no one was the wiser. The women in town disapproved of the extremely liberal use of alcohol at the event, but, I tell you, that’s the one part of it I understood. If I was going to eat that disgusting mess, you better believe I’d want to wash it down with something alcoholic.

The men stayed out all night, then stumbled back into town just in time to get the parade going the next morning. Sitting there with Momma, a thought occurred to me. No women at all? Why did we believe that? How did we know that they didn’t bring in strippers, dancers, whores? I could ask Johnny, but I wasn’t sure he’d tell me the truth. For a moment I thought about sneaking out after Momma went to bed, to check it out for myself. But I rejected that pretty quickly. There are some things I really don’t want to know.

A little later Daniel and Paul dropped by, on their way to the cookout. After they left, I asked Momma something I’d been wondering about. I couldn’t believe the boys came by the house so often just to see me. Did she see them this often when I wasn’t in town? She said she was sure they were coming by to see me, but then she did see a good bit of them. Most weekdays, she said, at least one of them showed up for lunch. That’s why she always kept something ready. Most week nights they showed up for dinner too. And on the weekends, of course, all of them were there for big dinners, and to watch the games.

I was amazed—not that Momma spent all that time cooking for five grown men nor that they enjoyed being catered to. But that those grown men could visit their parents that often and still lead their own lives. This was my first extended visit in more than a dozen years, and it was taking everything I had to keep from losing myself.

When Momma went to bed, I was too keyed up to sleep. I drank some bourbon, but I still wasn’t sleepy. I prowled the house, edgy to get ahold of that key and wishing I had it tonight while Forrest Miller was off with the men, and no one around his place but timid Mrs. Miller. This was the night for action and all I could do was wait.

Finally the bourbon hit its mark and I fell into bed.

In the morning, I wandered into the kitchen thinking that, for once, Momma and I could just sit and eat Cheerios. She wouldn’t be jumping up to make eggs and grits and buttering the toast. But Momma was already waiting for me. Sitting at the table, dressed in her parade outfit, a magenta nylon running outfit, with matching shoes and earrings. Her gigantic gold handbag was on her lap.

I stared at her magenta rhinestone earrings for a moment, and then turned around, considering going back to bed until I was strong enough to face this day.

“Hurry up and get dressed, honey. I’ll take you out for breakfast.”

Quickly I did, dressed in jeans, tank top and sneakers, ready for action, and went back into the kitchen.

Momma took one look at me and said, “Oh, Baby...” The disappointment in her voice cut me deep. She had worked hard all her life, so hard, for no appreciation, and why would her only daughter, out of pure spite, dress that way, with a deliberate lack of attractiveness? That’s what I knew she was thinking. But for once she didn’t say, “Why don’t you put on something nice?” Neither did she ask me if it would kill me to dress in a way to please her, just this once. I appreciated her silence; she really was trying.

She took out me out to breakfast, to one of those franchise Southern, country-cooking places, with the plastic-coated menu and colored photographs of the various breakfasts. I ate the Farmer’s Breakfast, country-fresh scrambled eggs with home style buttermilk biscuits smothered with old-fashioned sausage gravy, designed to evoke some kind of security, something implicit in a traditional family. But the food tasted only of fat and sugar and salt. Afterwards, I felt heavy and slow, all my perceptions, responses and functions dulled but satisfied—not quite the same thing as unconditional family love, but hey, it was pretty close.

Then we went to the parade. Momma parked the car on a side street a few blocks from Main. She didn’t lock it. We walked the few blocks to the mayor’s house.

The front yard was filled with people in lawn chairs, drinking iced drinks. Momma knew everyone of course, and everyone knew Momma, and they thought they knew me. I recognized a few people here and there, but, for the most part, I was lost.

A chair was pulled up for Momma right up front, where she would have a good view. I opted to sit on the curb. It dawned on me slowly, that I did know a lot of the women, the young matrons in pressed white shorts, with tidy belts and sherbet-colored blouses. They had trim figures, and their legs and arms and faces were deeply tanned. They all smiled that bright, cheerful, optimistic smile they had practiced since the days when they were cheerleaders, majorettes, or pretty girls in pastel dresses being escorted to a dance. These were the girls I’d gone to school with, my old classmates.

A group of them started to move in my direction. I felt a moment of panic, then out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone coming towards me from the other direction. It was Susan. She sat right down on the curb next to me, heedless of her nice white shorts. She gave me a big hug, and started in with “How good to see you!” and “Don’t you look nice!” The others, seeing me occupied, regrouped.

She put her hand on my thigh, just briefly, when she leaned over to kiss my cheek. When she lifted her hand, I pocketed the key she’d placed there. She turned and said something nice to my mother, then, “Oh look, here comes the parade!”

I hate parades. The Port Mullet High marching band was headed towards us, with the majorettes out front. My Momma had been a majorette in her day, and she had hoped I’d be one too. Just one more way I’d disappointed her. I remember her telling me once, when I was, I don’t know, ten or so, that the majorette with the biggest smile was the one that would go farthest in life.

There they were, in front of us, in the feathered, sequined costumes that remind me of Las Vegas show girls costumed by a Baptist preacher. The way they kept twisting and twirling their shiny metal batons depressed me. Behind them came the band members, marching in wool uniforms with plastic overlays, designed for a cooler climate. They had red faces, and sweat poured down their cheeks. The band was playing “When You Wish Upon A Star,” in honor of King Philip and Queen Tashimee in the float behind. A pretty blond high school senior, in an equally fluffy hair-do and dress, waved and smiled.

Momma and Susan admired her dress. While I had been on my road trip, both of them had attended the beauty pageant, sponsored by the Rotary Club and the Port Mullet Council of Churches, where the current Queen Tashimee had been selected.

“Oh, you should have seen her in the talent competition,” said Momma. “She just stole the show. It was so sophisticated. She wore a long black dress and gave a dramatic presentation of The Raven. You really should have seen it.”

The captain of the football team was her King Philip, Susan said. The king and queen were surrounded by other girls dressed as Indian maidens. Their hair was in braids, and their faces reddened with make-up provided and applied free of charge by the local Merle Norman shop. They wore fringed dresses of brown cotton, meant to look like deer skin, with red rickrack around the neck and hem. The football team was standing around topless, wearing pants of the same brown cotton with the same red rickrack and fringe.

There were plenty of floats still to come. Momma and Susan were discussing each one and who was on them. When I thought they were absorbed enough to miss my exit, I bolted.

I slipped between two houses, ran two blocks to Main Street, and ducked into the Golden Nugget for a quick beer to facilitate my thinking. While I waited at the counter, I felt a big, hot hand on my shoulder and turned. It was Josh.

“Hey. You scared me. Buy you a beer?” I asked.

“So where the hell were you?” he snarled.