The Cotton Queen (14 page)

“You won’t call?”

I shook my head.

“Then I will,” he said.

L
ANEY

P
UBERTY
was probably the worst thing that ever happened to my relationship with my mother. One minute she was virtually ignoring me. I was living my life as I thought best. The next she was trying to control every moment of my existence. By the time I turned sixteen, I was near drowning in her words of her wisdom.

“It’s better to be out of fashion than caught wearing a fad.”

“If you must listen to music, it should be something lovely played on a piano.”

“Pierced earrings are only worn by Catholic girls.”

“When you’re eating in public, no matter what you want, always order salad.”

The recitation of these commandments was punctuated by her personal criticisms veiled as questions.

“You’re not wearing that?”

“Are you putting on weight?”

“Can you do something with your hair?”

She also maintained complete control of where I went, who I saw and what I did.

“I know you’ve been close with your cousin Nicie since childhood, but you should really cultivate different friends.”

“Other teenagers may congregate in big groups, but you should make a point of being exclusive.”

“Traveling to away games isn’t necessary. You get plenty of school sports here at home.”

Babs wanted me to be popular, to have an active social life. She just wanted it to suit her notion of what teenage life should be like.

“Some people say these are the best years of your life,” she told me. “I don’t believe that. But these years are the foundation for everything that comes after them.”

That statement just sounded like gibberish to me. Of course, all of a person’s life is built day by day. But that doesn’t mean that if you wear the wrong blouse to class, your reputation will never recover.

“You must think about your future every day,” she said. “So many young women just drift through this time with no understanding of their own direction.”

I had a complete and total understanding of where I was headed. I was on my way out of town.

The spring of my sophomore year, Uncle Warren passed away. Aunt Maxine was awakened in the middle of the night and thought she heard something in the house. She got up and checked out every room before deciding that she’d been wrong and then headed back to bed. It was when she returned to the bedroom that she realized that what woke her up was not a sound, but the silence of Uncle Warren beside her.

Everybody came home for the funeral. Renny and Pete and their wives, the twins and their husbands. I think it was the first time everybody was together since Uncle Warren’s stroke six years earlier. But it wasn’t exactly a peaceful family gathering.

I really liked Sadie, Pete’s wife. She was pretty and funny. She worked as a pediatrician and their little toddler, Dylan, was a delight. Renny’s wife was named Vickie. She was his second wife, but since no one had met the first wife, it was all the same to us. Mostly she just sat out on the porch and smoked.

That was how the first argument got started. Vickie was six months pregnant and Sadie, in her role as physician, suggested that cigarettes might not be the best thing for the baby.

Within minutes everybody was screaming at everybody else.

I didn’t know whose side to be on. Renny was still my favorite. I had missed him a lot and I wanted him to be right. But I knew that Sadie was only trying to be helpful to Vickie and that she wasn’t the “meddling bitch!” that Renny had called her.

My mother stepped in and stopped the argument.

“I don’t care how mad you are at each other,” she told the boys. “You both love Aunt Maxine and when you fight like this, you hurt her. Now swallow your pride until we get through this funeral. Then you can go back to hating on a grand scale. But for the next three days, I don’t want to hear one angry word.”

Maybe it was because Babs was kind of like their older sister, or maybe they just realized that she was right, but they tried to get along. Mostly by keeping a good distance between each other.

I hung out with Renny as much as I could. I’d missed him. The day of the funeral, he had me meet him at four-thirty in the morning. We went out to Lavon Lake where he’d borrowed a boat so we could go fishing.

“It’s pretty out here,” I told him in a whisper as we sat in the quiet of half light, the sunrise just blinking on the horizon.

“Pretty?” He chuckled. “Sometimes I wonder at pretty.”

“What about it?”

“I’m not sure what it means.”

I laughed. “It means something nice to look at,” I told him.

He nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “A pretty sky, a pretty day, a pretty girl. Do you know what was the prettiest sight I ever saw?”

I shook my head.

“Bombing of the free fire zone from a night flight helicopter.”

I was taken aback.

“It was so beautiful,” he said. “Like the biggest Fourth of July fireworks you ever saw. We were awed. We were laughing. We were happy. And down below us, people were dying.”

He chuckled. “It makes you think about what’s really behind all that. Is a pretty sky just light reflected through dangerous clouds? Is a pretty day just the beginning of a deadly drought? Is a pretty girl just a lying, cheating bitch who hasn’t gotten caught yet?”

“Renny, why do you say things like that?”

He shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Do you think about the war all the time?” I asked.

“No, not anymore,” he answered. “It comes to mind sometimes and I still have dreams. But it’s more or less behind me.”

“You always talk about it.”

“Only when I’m here,” he said. “When I’m here, it’s front and center in my thoughts all the time. The whole time I was in Vietnam, I was thinking about McKinney. Now, when I’m in McKinney, I can’t help but think about Vietnam.”

“But you’re always so angry,” I said. “It’s like you’re angry at us. Tell me why you’re like this, you never used to be like this.”

“I’ve grown up, Laney,” he said. “You’ll get here, too. Grown-up, cynical and angry at the world, eager to shock.”

“Is that what you’re trying to do?” I asked him. “Make me angry at the world.”

His expression changed. He suddenly looked more like the Renny I remembered. “I guess I am,” he said.

“Why?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I missed you. I wanted to come out here and be with you. But, when I am with you...” Renny hesitated, trying to put his thoughts together. “Laney, you’re so young and sweet, just like you’ve always been. In some weird way it sort of pisses me off. I want you to be as angry and cynical as I feel.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“I don’t think I do, either,” he said. “I’m just mad at the world and being home, among people who go on living as if there is justice and that things make sense, that just makes me madder.”

“Maybe you should move back permanently,” I told him. “You could get used to us again.”

He shook his head. “Can’t,” he answered simply. But I knew it wasn’t true. He’d mustered out of the Army because of some kind of medical problem and was now working at the shipyard in Norfolk. It was probably a good job. But there were lots of good jobs in Texas, as well.

“You might think about it,” I suggested. “I’m sure it would mean a lot to Aunt Maxine to have you close by again.”

Renny chuckled. “You’re getting more like your mother every day,” he told me.

I was incredibly insulted.

“I’m not like my mother,” I told him. “How can you even think something like that.”

“Oh, Laney,” he said. “You’re just like her. Talking so sweet like you really care when what you’re really doing is trying to bully me around.”

“I wasn’t bullying,” I assured him.

He smiled at me, humoring me. “I can’t live around here, Laney,” he said. “Because Pete lives around here.”

“You’re still mad at Pete because he didn’t go into the Army?”

“No, I’m mad at Pete because...because he’s ungrateful. Pete’s made a big success of his life and he thinks he did that all on his own. It never occurs to him that he’d never have had a chance at the life he has now if it weren’t for me and guys like me.”

I nodded slowly, accepting, feeling the rise of that anger myself. I’d always liked Pete. I liked his family. But I was angry at him now, for Renny’s sake, I was angry. If I was to be forced to choose between the two, I’d made my choice.

It was only a few days later, after Renny had gone back to Virginia that my conviction faltered.

Aunt Maxine had asked me to meet Pete at the Shoe Shop after school to go over the books. I went in with a chip set firmly on my shoulder. It didn’t help that he was already seated at my desk, going through my paperwork without waiting for me to show up.

I sat down and he smiled at me.

“This is really good,” he said. “When my mother told me that you’d been keeping the books for Dad since his stroke, I really thought they’d be a mess.”

“Oh, did you?”

“Yeah, and I was very wrong,” Pete admitted. “You’ve done a great job with this. We’ve got accounting clerks on salary at the company who couldn’t have done it as well.”

I knew I should thank him for the compliment, but I deliberately held it back.

“So what do you think?” he asked me.

“About what?”

“About the shop,” he said. “We’ve got to decide whether to close the shop, try to sell it, or find a shoemaker to employ. Your aunt Maxine said it was up to us.”

“Us? You and me?”

He nodded. “She wants me to take a look at her businesses, consult with the managers and come up with plans for the future. She considers you the manager of the Shoe Shop.”

“I just helped out around here,” I assured him. “Uncle Warren managed the business.”

Pete looked at me closely. “You’re a very smart girl, Laney,” he said. “And a kind and loyal one, too, I think. I know my dad’s handwriting. He hasn’t done so much as a ledger entry in these books since you started working here.”

I refused to comment. He didn’t press me.

“Let’s not talk about the past, let’s talk about the future,” he said.

“All right,” I agreed.

I found the discussion interesting and Pete’s obvious respect for my experience and my opinion was amazingly refreshing. I suppose that, as a teenager, I’d just become accustomed to being dismissed. I was routinely being told what to think, how to behave, what to value. Now, unexpectedly, my cousin Pete was asking me questions, listening to answers and considering my judgments. It was heady stuff.

“There’s still quite a bit of business,” I told him. “But I don’t know if it’s enough to pay someone else to do it.”

“If we did pay someone?” he asked. “Who could it be?”

I shook my head.

“Well, let’s think, if someone got a hole in their shoe this afternoon, where would they have to go to fix it. Lewisville? Allen?”

“Caswell Sargent does shoe repair at his house. Uncle Warren always said he did good work,” I told him. “But I don’t know how many whites would go to him.”

“Do you think white people wouldn’t want black people to fix their shoes?”

I considered that. “No, I just think most of them wouldn’t make a special trip to that part of town, unless they just had to.”

“What if Caswell were here?” Pete asked.

“He’d probably get as much business as Uncle Warren.”

In the end, Pete approached Mr. Sargent and he paid cash to buy us out. I remember his nephew, Randall, came that very day to paint the name Sargent’s above the Shoe Shop sign.

“What is Pete thinking!” my mother complained over dinner. “This is not Dallas. Black men don’t own businesses on the downtown streets.”

“They do now,” Acee said. He seemed not nearly as bothered.

“Well, it’s incredibly foolish,” Babs stated. “Sometimes I wonder if all the money Aunt Maxine and Uncle Warren paid for that boy’s college was even worth it.”

Acee replied without looking up from his book. “Pete’s a terrific success, a credit to his family. And a college education is always worth it.”

“Well, I suppose so,” Babs said. “But selling Uncle Warren’s business to a black man. Even you, Acee, have got to admit that’s probably not the brightest idea the boy has ever had.”

“Actually it was kind of my idea,” I said.

“What?” My mother’s question was incredulous.

Acee looked up at me. His expression indicated he was both surprised and pleased.

“Nonsense,” my mother said, dismissingly. “You didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

“I did,” I insisted. “Pete wanted my opinion and I gave it to him.”

Babs gave a little huff of disbelief and reached over and patted me on the hand.

“Honey, that’s really sweet, I’m sure,” she told me. “But you have to remember that sometimes the gentlemen allow us to believe that they’re asking our opinions.”

I shook my head, refusing to let it go.

“Pete asked me what I thought, we talked it over and we made the decision together. I was the one who knew about Mr. Sargent. I’m the one who suggested that it would be worth his while to move his business downtown.”

“Where would you get an idea like that?”

“I got it out of my head, Mom,” I told her. “That’s where ideas come from. People just think them up.”

“Well, a young girl on the brink of womanhood has a great deal more important things to think about than some old black man running a shoe shop. For heaven’s sake, Laney. And what is that you’re wearing? Are you putting on weight? If you are, these sloppy clothes aren’t going to hide it. And remember, at sixteen we can’t excuse extra pounds as baby fat. You’ve probably had enough dinner already. Maybe you should stop eating.”

Deliberately I spooned up a huge bite of scalloped potatoes and looked her right in the eye as I stuffed it in my mouth.

B
ABS

T
HERE
IS
NOTHING
in the world quite as complicated as a mother’s relationship with her teenage daughter. I suppose I had never understood that, because my mother never lived to really see me grow through those years. And although Aunt Maxine mothered me as lovingly as any real mother, I suspect that our congeniality together was based, at least in part, on the fact that she was not my mother.

My Laney, whom I’d loved and cherished every moment of her life, whose best interests had always been my first concern, whose future happiness was my highest goal, began treating me as if I was hated. My offers of help and advice were scorned and spurned on every occasion.

She’d get up and dress in the morning, wearing clothes that would embarrass hoboes, her hair stringy and styleless and without so much as a smear of makeup on her face. Blue jeans might be the current fashion, but they were a fad, I was certain. I didn’t want Laney to look back at her high school yearbook and cringe at her photographs.

I tried to explain, as kindly as I could, that she looked simply awful and that when it came to choosing brides, young men always appreciated a more traditional kind of girl.

“Babs,” she said. She’d begun calling me by my first name. “The last thing I’m interested in is some creep who’s choosing a bride.”

“Well, of course you don’t want to think of it quite that way,” I agreed. “But a woman only gets to be choosy when she has a number of fellows who want to choose her.”

“There is not one guy in McKinney that I’d waste ten minutes of my time on,” Laney said.

“Well, I have to admit, most of them don’t seem like much,” I told her. “But you have to squint a bit to see their potential. Some don’t have much, like your cousin Ned and his friends. But there are some that will do well. Brian Wellman will undoubtedly take over his father’s business. And a grocer’s wife always knows that she’ll eat. Larry Mendal is from a nice family and his mother says he wants to be a doctor. And, of course there’s Stanley Kuhl, you can never go wrong with settling upon the top student in the class.”

“Babs, you’re out of your mind,” Laney answered. “Larry Mendal is a jock. We’d have nothing in common. Brian Wellman likes Nicie, I’m not getting in the middle of that. And Stanley? He’s the biggest dork in school, dating him would be social suicide.”

“Well, all right then, but you have to date somebody.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” I was puzzled at her question. “You have to date so that you’ll find someone to marry.”

“No, I’m not going to do that,” she said.

“You’re not going to marry?”

“I might,” she conceded. “But not because I have to. I’m going to have my own life and do the things that I want to do. I’ll only date to have fun and only marry when I get old.”

“That’s just silly,” I told her. “How will you live? Are you planning to stay in your bedroom until you’re forty? By then all the young men in town will be taken. There will be no one in McKinney to make a match with.”

“I’m not interested in boys from McKinney,” she said. “I’ll meet guys in college.”

I shrugged. “There might be some you haven’t met from Lewisville or Plano, but most of the fellows at the Community College will be boys you know.”

“Community College? I’m not going to Community College.”

“Of course you are,” I told her. “You can live at home and attend classes for a couple of years until you settle on a husband.”

“No,” she stated so adamantly I was taken aback. “I am going to a real college, a good college, one that’s as far away from this town as I can get.”

That began an ongoing argument that really highlighted the growing rift between us. I realized that somehow Laney had become selfish and spoiled. She wanted what she wanted and my views on the matter meant nothing to her at all.

That was especially true when, in the summer of her junior year, I managed to get her named Cotton Queen.

It wasn’t easy. In any year there are a number of highly eligible and likely young girls...1975 was no different. Candidates were nominated by different social and civic groups in town and then the Parade Committee picked the queen and her court from those applicants. As chairwoman of the Parade Committee, of course, I could not vote. And chose to remain completely silent. Which, of course, always speaks more loudly than a chorus of shouts.

I had Laney nominated by the Owls. I contacted Acee’s mother. We both knew that she owed me plenty. She’d deliberately kept me out of the organization for fifteen years, while she lamented to her friends that I wouldn’t join.

“Laney must be Cotton Queen,” I told her. “It’s as important for Laney as for her family.”

“The girl’s a Hoffman,” the woman replied. “I’d be much more interested in putting forward the Clifton name.”

The dig was meant to shame me for not giving Acee an heir. I’d long since decided that it must be his own fault. Two men had gotten me pregnant. If my husband couldn’t, then there was nothing that I could do about it.

“Because she doesn’t carry Acee’s name, it’s even more vital that we show her off. She deserves it. Our family deserves it and I just will not see her relegated to runner-up.”

“That’s what you were, weren’t you?”

I was sure the woman knew exactly where I’d come in.

“I was first runner-up,” I said, calmly and without regret. “But I was basically an orphan, taken in by hardworking family members. I did well for that social position. But Laney is Acee Clifton’s stepdaughter. Anything less than queen would indicate that our social position has declined since Acee lost the election for judgeship.”

That was such a direct hit, I could almost see Mrs. Clifton flinch. If there was anything that she and I completely agreed upon, it was that Acee had not gotten what he deserved.

“I can’t nominate her myself,” Mrs. Clifton said, thoughtfully. “In fact, I can’t even show up. I haven’t attended a meeting in over a year. If I show up, it would look like I’m there to suggest her. I’ll get Florence to do it. She owes me several small favors that no one knows about. But that will only get her name in contention.”

“I’ll take care of everything else,” I assured her. “I’ve got it all under control.”

I wasn’t bragging. I’d realized that this day was coming for ten years. And since the election, I had been able to refocus all my campaigning energies into getting supporters on board. And it all worked well, except for one slight problem, a reluctant candidate.

“I’m not interested in being Cotton Queen,” Laney told me. “What I am interested in is a summer job. If I can’t have that. I’d rather have nothing.”

My daughter was still angry at me for putting my foot down. Without even consulting me first, Pete had offered Laney a summer job working in the company in Dallas.

She was thrilled. I supposed any young girl would be.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” Acee had said.

“It’s good experience,” Pete insisted.

I shook my head.

“Dallas is a very dangerous place,” I told them. “A young girl shouldn’t be there on her own.”

“She’s not on her own,” Pete said. “Laney will be living in my house with my family. I’ll drive her to work and see that she gets home. She’ll be perfectly safe.”

I wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t be convinced. I knew about the world outside McKinney and I was determined to protect my daughter from it.

“Laney is staying here in town this summer,” I insisted. “If she wants a job, Aunt Maxine will find her something to do. If she prefers not to work, there will be plenty of sewing and gardening to keep her busy.”

“I don’t want to sew or garden,” Laney said, angrily. “Pete said I could learn keypunch and work with his company’s computer.”

“Oh, darling,” I told her. “You’re much too pretty to need to learn keypunch.”

The argument went on for weeks, but I refused to budge.

Laney was furious.

Even Acee was unhappy with me.

“You can’t keep her a prisoner in this town forever,” he told me. “She has to grow up and leave home sometime.”

“She is not a prisoner,” I insisted. “But there is no reason that she has to go anywhere.”

“Maybe because she wants to is reason enough.”

“Acee, she is not your daughter,” I stated harshly. “You have no say in what she does or doesn’t do. These are my decisions and I’d appreciate it if you’d remember that this doesn’t concern you.”

His eyes narrowed but he never mentioned it again.

We had plenty of other things to argue about.

Our weekly trip to Dr. Hallenbeck was punctuated by sarcasm and unkind words. Or rather the return was, on the way to the doctor’s office in north Dallas, we rarely spoke a word. The drive itself was upsetting enough, but it was followed by those awful sessions. I hated those visits, the probing questions, Dr. Hallenbeck’s ludicrous suggestions for “homework.” I was, under no circumstances, doing any of it.

I put up with it as long as I could. The subject matter was not all that unfamiliar. I still read the magazines from the drugstore. What was so annoying was how the doctor thought it was all so important.

“I just don’t see why we must speak in such descriptive terms,” I told him.

“Prudishness hinders,” he said.

“I am not prudish,” I assured him. “I am merely formal.”

The doctor’s typically indecipherable expression faltered and he gave a slight laugh. He was laughing at me.

It was at that moment that Acee broke his promise to me.

“Back before we were married,” he said, casually. “A man forced himself on Babs.”

Dr. Hallenbeck immediately showed interest. I was stunned into silence. Acee had said that we would never discuss what had happened, the circumstances of Marley’s conception. Then, right in front of me, he’d told it, all of it, to Dr. Hallenbeck.

I was so sickened and hurt, I could not respond.

The doctor began explaining in his calm, matter-of-fact manner how for some victims the traumatic event can translate its long-term effect into an aversion to sex.

I tried not to hear him. I tried to ignore what was being said. He droned on and on. I remembered the stained-glass window with the Good Shepherd and determinedly focused my attention on those details, not the clinical facts, which the good doctor was trying to acquaint me with.

“Why don’t you tell me, in your own words, what happened,” he asked finally.

“No,” I said firmly.

“I think you need to share it,” he said. “You’ll feel better if you do.”

“I won’t feel better remembering,” I informed him tartly. “It was a long time ago. I hardly even remember. And I prefer it that way.”

“Well, your subconscious hasn’t forgotten,” he told me. “It’s keeping you from experiencing the kind of normal pleasure and satisfaction that you deserve.”

“Pleasure? Satisfaction? What is wrong with all of you people?” I asked them both angrily. “Why is the whole world obsessed with sexuality? It permeates the TV and movies, the music. It’s all the talk shows chatter about. Have we become animals that this rubbing up against each other is now the meaning of life? It’s sick.”

“No,” he corrected me. “It’s not sick. Being able to maintain a loving, physical relationship with your husband is the definition of marital wellness.”

I refused to go back after that. Acee pleaded with me. I wouldn’t budge.

“You say I betrayed you all those years ago,” I told him. “And now you’ve betrayed me. It seems that we’re even.”

He tried to get me to talk about it more, but I was finished with talking about sex and I told him so.

“If I never have to do it again as long as I live, that would be fine with me.”

That shut him up.

Which freed me up to concentrate on the other giant argument in my home. After no small effort on my part, Laney was chosen for Cotton Queen.

I was thrilled.

Laney was dismayed.

She continued to argue and complain long after it was too late to change anything. I’d assumed that her reluctance to be Cotton Queen was based on some misguided stubbornness.

“You can only be Cotton Queen once in a lifetime, Laney,” I told her. “And even then, most girls are never chosen.”

“Yes, and they get along just fine,” she answered me. “I don’t need this or want it. It’s a stupid custom, it demeans women.”

“Demeans women? It glorifies women. It makes them royalty, to be admired and worshiped.”

“I don’t want to be worshiped,” Laney argued. “Look, this is something that Gussie Goodwife has in her memory book to remind her that she once had a life of her own. I’m going to be an independent woman, a woman with a purpose, a woman of value.”

“Of course you are, sweetheart,” I assured her. “And Cotton Queen is the perfect place to start. It gets you the attention of the community. When you’re in the back of that convertible, you are front and center in the heart of McKinney and every eye is upon you.”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” she said. “The world has changed. Beauty queens are passé. They’re a joke, a stereotype. Wearing that silly rhinestone crown will be an unforgettable embarrassment.”

I thought that was probably the most absurd comment that she’d ever made. I repeated it, in jest, at Aunt Maxine’s house. We were putting up summer pickles. The twins were there, helping. Or at least Jolie was. Janey had a new baby, fat as a sausage, that clung to her teat constantly.

She was sitting on a kitchen chair next to the yellow table of chrome and Formica. The little fellow she’d named Jeremy was sucking noisily.

“You’re going to ruin your figure,” I warned her. “Once you’ve nursed a baby, your bosom is saggy for a lifetime.”

Janey chuckled and shook her head. “I’ll worry about that later,” she said. “Right now I’ve got all this milk coming in. It seems a shame to let it go to waste.”

Aunt Maxine agreed. “If a woman keeps working, she always keeps her figure, more or less. And it’s certainly more thrifty to feed with what nature provides than buying that expensive formula.”

“The formulas are all scientifically designed to provide the right nutrients,” I told her. “You have to keep up with scientific advances, Aunt Maxine.”