The Cotton Queen (12 page)

He buried his face in his hands for a moment and then looked over at me, his eyes almost as sad as they were angry.

“And I find out that Pete wouldn’t do that for me.”

“You want him to go to Vietnam, too?”

“No, no, I don’t want him to go,” Renny said. “It’s awful and just...just awful. I don’t want my brother there. He’s my kid brother. I don’t want him to go. But I want him to
want
to go. Does that make sense?”

It didn’t to me, but fortunately, I didn’t have to answer. Janey and Joley returned, each with a cardboard carrier full of coffee and Cokes. They sat down with us, though both seemed wary of the older brother whom they had always loved. Their uncertainty seemed to annoy Renny even further.

“If anything happens to Dad,” he told us ominously. “I’ll never forgive Pete.”

“It wasn’t Pete’s fault,” Joley said. “You’re the one that started it.”

“It doesn’t matter who started it,” Renny said. “There’s right and there’s wrong. I’m right. Pete’s wrong.”

B
ABS

U
NCLE
W
ARREN
’
S
stroke left him unable to walk and barely able to talk. We were all grateful, but I was very worried. About Uncle Warren, of course, but also about Aunt Maxine. Taking care of him was a full-time job and she had plenty of full-time jobs. Uncle Warren still owned and operated the shoe repair, the dry cleaners, the coin laundry and the Dairy Hut.

From my perspective, the only answer was that one of the boys stay home and take care of the businesses.

“They should probably sell out,” I confided to Acee. “But that might make Uncle Warren give up. The only alternative is for Renny or Pete to take over.”

Unfortunately I put it to the boys just that way.

Renny was my first choice. He was the oldest, after all. And he’d already done his duty in Vietnam. I was certain that the Army would let him have an early out.

“You weren’t really planning to have a career in the military,” I pointed out to him as we sat together on the front porch swing outside their house. “And I’d hate to ask Pete to give up college when he’s so close to graduating.”

I knew immediately that I’d made a mistake. His expression, which had indicated thoughtful consideration, suddenly hardened into stubbornness.

“Oh, yeah,” he responded, his tone sarcastic. “Pete’s college is so very important and defending the country, that’s practically like having no job at all.”

“I didn’t say that,” I corrected him quickly. “And I certainly didn’t mean that. You know how proud we all are of you. But you’ve already done your share for the country. Now you’re needed at home.”

Renny’s refusal was adamant.

“I like the Army. What I do is important. I’m not giving that up to make things more convenient for a shirker like Pete.”

Pete was just as difficult when I finally caught up to him with a phone call to his dorm room.

“Babs, I know your heart is in the right place,” he said. “But I think you’re overstepping.”

“I’m not,” I assured him. “Aunt Maxine has far too much to do caring for Uncle Warren. There is no way that she can care for his businesses, as well.”

He nodded. “I agree. But butting in and deciding for them what they should do about it is interference.”

“They are too proud to ask for help,” I said.

“Maybe,” he admitted. “Or maybe they don’t really need any. Either way, it’s their life. They get to decide all the big things and live it as they see fit. Forcing your view of what they should do is the worst kind of selfishness, Babs.”

“Selfishness? Are you nuts, Pete?” I was incensed. “You should want to do the right thing for them.”

“I do,” he said. “But I’m not convinced that throwing away all I’ve worked for, all they’ve worked for, without a specific request from them, is at all what they would want. It may be what you would want. But I’m not sure it’s what they would want.”

“What they want and what is best may not be the same thing,” I said.

“Look,” Pete said. “If Mama asks me to give up college and come home, I’ll do it. But I’m not forcing myself into the situation by volunteering.”

“Yeah, I know,” I told him snidely. “Volunteering is not your big thing, is it.”

He didn’t appreciate my sarcasm.

“G’night, Babs,” he responded, hanging up the phone abruptly.

I was incensed and complained to Acee.

“You know, Pete has a point,” my husband told me. “Aunt Maxine hasn’t asked you to stick your nose into this.”

“Somebody is going to have to do this,” I explained. “And if I don’t get the boys involved, it will end up being me. And I don’t have the time.”

Acee looked up from the biography he was reading. That was an unusual occurrence in itself. He prided himself on being able to talk and read at the same time. It was a rare moment in his conversations with me that he lifted his eye from the page.

“Getting out of the house, doing something, that might be good for you,” he said.

I stared at him in shocked disbelief.

“Doing something?” I asked, sarcastically. “For heaven’s sake, Acee, I am so busy now, I’m near to going out of my mind.”

“Yes, of course you’re busy,” he said. “But I think it might be nice for you to get involved in some sort of business. You always worked as a teenager. And you seemed to enjoy it a lot.”

“I am working at the only career I’m interested in,” I told him. “Housewife and mother.”

I saw it in his eyes then. An expression that I did not recognize and couldn’t interpret. It was almost dismissal. He went back to his paper.

“Whatever you want,” he said.

Whatever I wanted? I wanted him to have whatever he wanted. I wanted him to be happy, successful, fulfilled and I was working at it night and day. I was still very involved in serious socializing with the best of the community. And I was making progress. Acee was, of course, already well-known and respected. But I was, slowly but surely, making him the most sought after lawyer in McKinney, at least on the level of entertaining. We were more than simply within the social whirl. We were a prominent cog, fundamental in keeping it turning. We had several parties at the house every month. They were fancy affairs with glamorous dresses and dry martinis. At first I knew that wives dragged their husbands there to see the inside of our house. The beautiful restoration was a natural draw. I made sure that they were never disappointed. I was constantly redecorating, so that there was always something new to see. And I think that it became, for many upwardly mobile McKinney matrons, a point of pride over a lunch at Woolworth to be the one able to describe my new wallpaper.

I was helping my husband. I was creating a happy, healthy homelife, keeping my figure and following fashion. Those things were my job. Of course, I knew that I should be giving him a son. That, it turned out, was not as easy as simply deciding to do so.

I still hated being touched. I hated having sex. Night after night, I would grit my teeth and open my legs, determined to do my duty.

My sessions with Brother Chet became infrequent, as I assured him that everything was now fine. I read my magazines, books, newspaper articles. There was no shortage of information out there. Sex was the topic of the era. Everyone wanted to talk about it. But all that gab was about woman rising up from the ashes of repression and having orgasms.

That didn’t interest me. I wasn’t seeking the pleasure of sex, but the product of it. I needed to have a baby. I was letting my husband do that to me several times a week, but nothing was happening.

I didn’t know who to talk to or even what questions to ask. Aunt Maxine, the closest person I had to an advisor and confidante, had her hands full, and with four children of her own, I suspected that she hadn’t had any problems getting pregnant. Among the ladies in my circle, all the talk was about preventing babies. Discussions of “the pill” took place regularly and all the women claimed it was a miracle drug. I pretended a sophisticated agreement. But I had never tried to prevent anything in my life. Why weren’t they developing an antipill? A little tablet you could take in the morning and be with child by afternoon.

After almost two years of trying to get pregnant, I went for a checkup with the doctor. I couldn’t face the aging family physician, so I made an appointment with the young upstart in town. I was as nervous as if wading in a creek full of crocodiles. The moment he came into the room I blurted out my concern. Thankfully Dr. Mansfield didn’t suddenly turn into Brother Chet and fault me for my lack.

“Let’s have a look,” he said. “We know that you’re capable of conceiving, because you’ve had two live births to your credit. Let’s just make certain that we haven’t developed some problem we’re not aware of.”

I did what I had to do. I put on the ugly cotton gown and climbed up on the table. With my feet in the stirrups, I was completely vulnerable. I hated having to do it. I hated Dr. Mansfield for putting me through it. I closed my eyes and pretended it wasn’t happening. But in my mind I saw that set of salt and pepper shakers. It was that table again and it was all I could do not to throw up.

“All right, Mrs. Clifton,” he said. “You can sit up now.”

I brought myself to an upright position, my legs together tightly. I held back the nausea in my throat. I didn’t look at him.

“You can get dressed now and we’ll talk in my office.”

As I put on my clothes, I pulled my scattered emotions together. It had all been so long ago. I couldn’t let it still be there for me. I must just forget it. Too much had happened. It was well past time to put it all behind me.

With my makeup freshened and my lipstick reapplied, I was ready to face the man from across the width of his mahogany desk.

Dr. Mansfield was smiling at me.

“Everything looks normal,” he said.

That news both relieved and frustrated me. In my secret heart I think I was hoping that my womb might be full of cancer, a giant abscess or a withering disease that rendered me sterile as only the first step on a ladder to death. I could gracefully exit my world with no one the wiser and everyone believing that I’d done my best.

“You have minimal scarring from childbirth and all the tissues are rosy pink and the picture of health.”

“What wonderful news,” I lied.

“I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to carry a half-dozen more children if that’s your wish.”

I nodded.

“Could it be Acee’s fault?” I asked him. “I read in
Cosmo
that sometimes men don’t have enough of those sperm things.”

Dr. Mansfield shrugged off that concern. “Don’t believe everything you read in those silly women’s magazines,” he said with a laugh. “You two didn’t have any problem getting in the family way before. I don’t see any problem coming up in the future.”

I didn’t even consider telling him the truth. Doctor-patient confidentiality might seem sacrosanct, but in small towns some truths are
always
too dangerous to reveal.

“I’m sure that it’s not physical,” he continued. “It’s emotional. You need to just stop worrying about it. Relax and let it happen.”

That was much easier said than done.

“That’s not a bad prescription, now is it,” he said. “Build a nice hot fire in the bedroom and don’t let the flames go out.”

His little suggestive laugh was maddening. I wanted to scream, pull my hair out, rail against God.

Instead I smiled.

“Thank you, Dr. Mansfield,” I said sweetly. “You have certainly relieved my mind about that. Oh, and I was wondering, I’m giving a little dinner party a week from Friday. I’d love to have you and your lovely wife join us.”

He blushed and his chest puffed out. The Mansfields were new in town, but not so new that they didn’t know the social strata.

“We would like that very much,” the doctor assured me.

“Fine, I’ll give your wife a call and give her the details.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

It was better if the Mansfields were in my debt, I decided. It was never good if rumors about me got started. Cultivating his wife as a friend should insure that nothing untoward was ever said.

That’s what my life was about. Being beautiful and warding off the prospect of unkind words.

My face to the world was that everything was wonderful and that Acee, Laney and I were the happiest, most perfect little family in Collin County. It was an image I struggled mightily to maintain.

If Acee approved of my efforts, he never said so. The harder I worked to make him a leader in the community, the less he had to say to me personally.

It’s not that we were ships that passed in the night. That analogy just wouldn’t hold up for us. We saw each other constantly. We ate breakfast together every morning and dinner every evening. We attended all our social functions together. He and Laney had become great friends and were inseparable on weekends. And I was always there. We had multiple conversations on any day of the week. Still, he and I had very little of substance to say to each other.

I believed that to be because I was not his intellectual equal. I was just an ordinary woman with a high school education and limited experience in the world. Perhaps I could have tried harder to think deep thoughts. I could have read more substantive magazines. I could have attended night classes or reached out to embrace culture. But I have to admit that truthfully, I didn’t long for more serious discussions. I didn’t mind living a life more superficial and less examined. I knew the world could be a darker, deeper place. That little bit of knowledge had been enough to choke out any desire for further examination. I chose to step away from a serious world.

Unfortunately the world has a way of coming crashing into one’s door.

L
ANEY

I
GOT
MY
FIRST
paying job when I was twelve years old. However, you shouldn’t be picturing me in some child-labor sweatshop hunched over a sewing machine. Aunt Maxine hired me to help out Uncle Warren at the shoe shop. Two years after his stroke, he was still not completely recovered. He leaned heavily on a cane and dragged his right foot wherever he went. He didn’t go that many places. Aunt Maxine drove him to the shoe shop in the morning and he stayed there all day. In these last years of his life, he lived as he had early on, all by himself, repairing shoes in a tiny shop.

Aunt Maxine had taken on all the other businesses. With the help of the twins and what seemed to be a natural gift for organization, she had taken up the challenge of being the breadwinner and run with it. She hired competent people, paid them a little more than they’d get elsewhere and expected a lot from them. Surprisingly she usually got it.

She never asked her boys to come home and help. Pete graduated from North Texas and got a job at Texas Instruments in Sherman. He was engaged to a very nice girl. She wasn’t as pretty as some he’d brought home, but she was out of medical school and working to become a pediatrician.

Renny had become a training instructor in Georgia. He’d also married and had a little baby. We’d only seen them in photographs. He’d never brought his wife back to Texas to meet anybody. They certainly looked happy. And they seemed settled, but inexplicably Renny volunteered for another tour of duty in Vietnam. So Aunt Maxine was back to worrying about him all the time.

The twins were freshmen roommates at Texas Women’s University. They had both made enough money from helping run their parents’ businesses to afford to send themselves.

I have to admit that I was surprised when Aunt Maxine asked me to work for her. But I was also delighted. I’d started my period. I was wearing a bra. I was becoming a woman. My mother had not noticed. I was so glad that Aunt Maxine had.

The agreement was that I would ride over on my bicycle after school and work until closing adding up the day’s receipts and making the charge tickets match what was in the money drawer. It required some math skills, but I was good at that. And it was less than two hours a day.

My mother didn’t like it.

“She’s a little girl,” Babs complained. “She should be doing homework or out playing after school.”

Aunt Maxine waved away her concerns. “You weren’t much older when we put you to work,” she said. “And Laney will have plenty of time to keep Warren’s accounts and do homework, as well. And she’ll certainly be safer employed on the downtown square than hanging out at the playground with those wild hooligans who spend their time there.”

Aunt Maxine was sure right about that. The wild hooligans included my cousin Ned. Now a fourteen-year-old chain-smoker and frequent truant from McKinney High School’s freshman class, he’d never liked me and often sought me out for some type of mean trick. I avoided him like the plague. That was easier now that we weren’t in the same school.

Babs couldn’t really go against Aunt Maxine. And she was so busy with all her clubs and parties, it was probably a relief to have me out of her hair in the afternoons.

I had my own desk that I decorated, as working people do, with memorabilia and personal treasures. There was the five-by-seven framed photo of Acee, Babs and me that had been sent in the family Christmas card. Beside it was a smaller photo of my dog, Bowser, a white Scottie that lived and barked in our backyard. My second place trophy from the Rural Electric Cooperatives public speaking competition was draped with my Fourth Place ribbon for Cornbread Muffins at the County Fair. The only other personal items were my SoupKids salt shakers, Alana and Marley. I felt weird for having kept them hidden in my treasure drawer. My mother, I was certain, would never remember that she’d thrown them away and forbidden me to rescue them from the trash. But I still felt guilty about disobeying her. Here in the shoe shop I could see them every day.

Aunt Maxine noticed.

“You still have those things,” she said, surprised. “I remember when we collected the labels from the cans.”

“I’ve always kept them,” I told her. “Though the boy got his hat broken.”

I didn’t say how.

Aunt Maxine and I had become very close. I felt closer to her, in fact, than I did Babs. But that often happens when people share a secret. By necessity, Aunt Maxine had shared hers with me.

It was the first afternoon of my first day on the job. Aunt Maxine took me for a treat at Miss Lettie’s Tea Room and gave me a serious talk.

“I’m very glad that you are going to work at the shoe shop. And I know that you’ll be perfectly able to take care of things there,” she said.

“Thanks, Aunt Maxine,” I answered. “I promise to really try my best.”

“I’m sure you will,” she said. “What I want you to keep in mind is that your job is to help your uncle Warren.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Whatever he asks me to do, I’ll do it.”

Aunt Maxine nodded. “I know that,” she said. “The thing is, he may not remember to ask you.”

I frowned, uncertain.

“Uncle Warren is about as recovered from the stroke as he’s going to get,” she said. “He’s come a very long way and we are all so grateful and blessed. But his is not a full recovery. He is not the same man he was before.”

I nodded solemnly. “He drags his leg when he walks,” I said.

Aunt Maxine smiled sadly.

“That’s what everyone notices,” she said. “It’s obvious and everyone sees it. But what is less obvious is that he’s having to drag a part of his brain along, too.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

“Your uncle Warren’s thinking is not quite up to what it used to be,” she said. “He can’t count the money accurately or keep sums in his head. He has trouble doing more than one thing at a time.”

She smiled at me and patted my hand.

“That’s why I want you to help him. I want you to add up the figures that are so hard for him now and keep the books accurate.”

“Sure, I think I can do that.”

“But there is more to it,” Aunt Maxine said. “You must do it without anyone realizing that you’re doing it for him.”

“Huh?”

“He’s a proud man,” she told me. “I don’t think he’s allowed himself to admit his limitations. If people began to treat him differently, and they would, I don’t think he could bear it.”

I nodded thoughtfully.

“So you must quietly go behind him, fix his errors, cover for his mistakes, remind him of what he’s forgotten and never let him know that you’re doing it.”

“How do I do that?” I asked.

“It’s not easy,” Aunt Maxine said. “I’d be the first to tell you. It takes patience, it takes practice and it takes humility. But it’s a skill that if you learn it and learn it well, it will suit you admirably on life’s long road.”

So I made a point of figuring out how to help without seeming to and put that knowledge into practice. As it turned out, it wasn’t really so difficult. Maybe because I am reticent by nature or because I’d lived my whole life in the shadow of my mother, I found that I could easily correct things and not take credit for it. I took joy in my successes, without needing to take a bow or get a pat on the back. I felt an inordinate amount of pride in how well I could hide my own usefulness. And the only time I was even tempted to tell was at a slumber party.

It was a Saturday night and Nicie’s thirteenth birthday. Uncle Freddie and Aunt LaVeida treated her and seven of her closest friends, which included me, to a slumber party. The evening started out at the new Pizza Inn out at Westgate Shopping Center. We sat together at the big corner booth.

It was lots of fun and I was feeling great. I’d just had my hair done that morning. I’d kept it long, much to my mother’s distress because she thought it looked unkempt, but since I paid for it myself, she had no say at all. I’d had the hairdresser frost it a light ash blond. It looked really good. And I felt really attractive and a lot more grown-up as male heads turned my way.

Unfortunately I wasn’t the only one to notice.

My cousin Cheryl took offense.

“Twelve is too young to bleach your hair,” she stated adamantly.

“I’m almost thirteen and it’s not bleach,” I told her. “It’s just frost.”

“There’s bleach in the frost,” she said. “You can’t turn brown hair to blond without bleach.”

All the other girls agreed.

“It really looks nice,” Nicie told me. “I wish I could do that, but my mom would never let me.”

“Your hair looks great just like it is,” Cheryl assured her. “And your mother is right. We are too young to color our hair and Laney’s mother shouldn’t have let her do it.”

“She didn’t have any say in it,” I pointed out. “I make my own money, so I do what I want.”

That was an exaggeration, but it was meant to shut Cheryl up. It didn’t work.

“Oh, yeah, your family gives you a few little chores to do and they pay you for it instead of giving you an allowance,” she said.

“No, it’s not like that at all.”

“Sure it is,” Cheryl insisted. “Your mom just wants to keep you busy after school so she won’t have to worry about you getting into trouble at the park. Paying you is cheaper than hiring a babysitter.”

Her dismissal of my responsibility and the silent agreement around the table tempted me to tell them all. To explain how ill and confused my uncle Warren still was. To point out the level of confidence my aunt Maxine had in me and my abilities. I wanted them to know it all. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them all.

But part of the trust that had been placed in me was discretion. Revealing the truth might make me look good, but it would make Uncle Warren look bad. For the first time in my life, I suppose, I was forced to truly be a grown-up, to swallow my own pride for the sake of someone else. I managed to do it, but pizza hasn’t tasted the same to me since.

After dinner, we all packed into Aunt LaVeida’s Oldsmobile station wagon and rode to her house. We were laughing and screaming and hollering at people out the windows. She took the long route through town, which included three complete circles of the downtown square. We were in high spirits by the time we reached the Hoffmans’ brick suburban two-story house.

I could never visit Nicie’s room without remembering that I could have been her sister. I could have shared the life that was hers. Of course, her room wasn’t as nice as the one I had with Babs and Acee. But there was always something about it, something that said she was special, an individual, loved and appreciated for exactly whom she happened to be. My room was a stereotype of what thirteen-year-old girls are supposed to want. It could have been any girl’s room. Everything that was out of the ordinary and unique to me I carefully kept packed away in a box in my closet. Once in Nicie’s bedroom we changed into our pajamas and began the festivities that passed for entertainment among preteens.

We used Nicie’s pink princess phone to call up old people, who were always a little less quick than our parents, and ask them, “Is your refrigerator running?”

If they answered yes, the punch line was, “You’d better go out and catch it!” Followed by a quick hang up and a riot of giggles.

Later we all opened our backpacks, overnight bags and pink duffels to retrieve all our cosmetics and hair paraphernalia. I lay across the bed with my head hanging off the edge, while Trixie Bryan and Cindy Gilbert painted my eyes to look like Cleopatra. Nicie and Charlene Wilkinson were painting each other’s toenails. April Harmon and Kathy Cox were giving Cheryl a new hairdo. Even watching upside down, I could see that their outcome was not going to be good.

“I thought ratting was out,” I said, hoping to discourage the two from the extensive back-combing that had Cheryl’s mousy brown locks standing straight out from her head.

“I don’t think it’s totally out,” April said.

“Yeah,” Kathy agreed. “All of the beauty shops still do it.”

“They do it for, like, our moms or someone,” I said. “I think it’s totally out if you want to look cool.”

“Oh, it’ll never go totally out,” April assured me. “I mean if your hair doesn’t have shape or body you’ll, like, have to give it some.”

“No,” I disagreed. “All the college girls wear their hair stringy.”

“Since when are you the expert on hair fashion!” Cheryl asked, clearly angry. “You have one day when you think your hair looks pretty and suddenly you’re telling the rest of us how to live our lives. Well, you’re not telling me nothing.”

Nicie gave me a wide-eyed caution and I shut up immediately.

As the night wore on, more makeup was applied, more hair was sprayed stiff and more nails were buffed and polished. The more tired we got, the less we did. The less we did, the more serious the gossip became.

We sat, heavy-eyed and painted like harlots among the stuffed teddy bears and ballet slippers.

Cheryl explained the mechanics of sexual intercourse.

“Yuk! That’s disgusting,” was the universal response.

“That’s how it’s done,” Cheryl said. “It’s totally disgusting, but that’s the way it is.”

“I can’t believe my parents did that,” Nicie said with a horrified whisper.

“At least you’re an only child,” Trixie pointed out. “I’ve got five brothers and sisters. My parents must have done it six times!”

“Eeeewwww,”
we all agreed.

“I think if you’re married it’s different,” Cindy said. “I don’t know how, but obviously that’s the reason that parents are always cautioning teenagers against it.”

“I’m sure no one would do it if they didn’t have to,” April said.

“They say boys always want to do it,” Nicie pointed out.

“Why?” Kathy asked.

“Why do some kids eat boogers?” Charlene asked rhetorically.

We all shuddered with disgust.

“It’s hard to believe that anyone does that ever,” I said.

Cheryl’s eyes narrowed. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No,” I assured her. “I’m just...just grossed out.”

“It’s all true,” she said. “And people do it before they get married. There are even people that we know who did it before they got married.”