The Cotton Queen (3 page)

I giggled and he planted a playful little peck on my nose.

From then on out, I was Tom Hoffman’s girl. I wouldn’t have anyone else.

The night of the senior prom he asked me to marry him. I agreed and we tied the knot that summer in a little ceremony at church, just his family and mine.

“Both my older brothers are farmers,” he told me. “By the time they get my father’s land and split it up, there won’t be enough to support one family.”

I listened and nodded as if I understood.

“I’m good with my hands and with machines,” Tom said. “I thought about working on cars, but if I go into the Army, I can get training for free.”

Ultimately he decided on Air Force and airplane engines. It was a very good plan.

We didn’t plan on having Laney. But, as soon as I held her in my arms, I couldn’t imagine anything in the world that could have made me happier.

L
ANEY

T
HE
ONE
THING
that I know most about myself is that I am nothing like my mother. Nothing. Not anything. We’re completely different.

What I suppose, since I’m pretty sure I wasn’t adopted or accidentally switched in the hospital, is that I’m like my dad.

The first memory I have of him is olive drab fatigues and big, heavy boots. I remember running toward those boots, arms outstretched. I was scooped up into the air and twirled around as I giggled.

Daddy was so tall and he had a deep voice. He smiled all the time and when he laughed, it came from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere that was full and content and extremely at peace with the world.

I was certain then, as I am certain now, that Tom Hoffman, my daddy, loved me.

His years in the Air Force, our years in the Air Force, were brief in retrospect. But at the time it seemed that it was everything. Mama, or Babs as I call her now, stayed home in McKinney for the first couple of years. My father was an infrequent visitor, dependent upon the head of his unit for leave. After he finished mechanics school he was promoted to Airman Second Class. We lived on base in California. I’m not sure where exactly. I have no memory of that, either. But there are lots of photographs, wonderful photographs. Babs in her pedal pushers with me in the stroller. Daddy on his hands and knees as I, apparently shrieking with delight, rode on his shoulders. Me playing in the sand on the beach as Daddy watched, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There is even a whole photo album devoted to what is described as “Our First Trip to Disneyland.” It turned out to be our only trip.

It had been an idyllic childhood, I suppose. It ended too abruptly.

I was playing in the yard. I had a brand-new red tricycle. I hadn’t figured out how to pedal it yet, so I just pushed it to the spot I wanted and then sat down on it. I suppose I’d been pushing when the car with the men drove up. I hadn’t noticed them until they were knocking on our front door. I was accustomed to seeing men in uniform. All my parents’ friends were in service. I didn’t think anything about it until Babs began screaming.

To this day, I can hear that sound in my memory as clearly as I did then. It was a horrible, lost, almost inhuman sound. It frightened me. I jumped off my trike to run to my mother. When I realized that was where the terrible cry emanated I stopped short. I was just there a few feet away from her, frozen to the spot. Babs had nearly sunk to the ground, as if her legs would not hold her. It was the grasp of one of the men that kept her from actually falling. The other airman was closer to me. Somehow I must have mistaken his neatly pressed navy dress slacks for my own father’s leg. I ran up to him and clasped my arms around it, like I always did. And just like always, he bent down and pulled me up into his arms. I felt a moment of pure bliss and complete safety.

Then I looked into his face. This man wasn’t Tom Hoffman at all.

“Daddy?” I questioned him, hoping he was wrong.

“I’m so sorry, little girl,” he said.

That was all he said. That was all anybody said. Without further explanation, my mother began a hurried packing. Everyone we knew, close friends and mere acquaintances, showed up at our house to get everything into boxes and loaded up on a truck. It was a quiet, subdued atmosphere with lots of effort and almost no laughter.

Then we were on an unexplained flight back to Texas. It was a military hop from our air base in California to one near my grandparents.

A sad-looking old man met us as we got off the plane. He seemed a little disappointed that I shied away from him.

“Of course you remember Grandpa Hoffman,” Babs insisted.

So I nodded as if I did.

I didn’t know him at all. And Babs didn’t seem to know him that well, either. Neither he nor my mother had much to say to each other.

We waited as they unloaded a big box covered in a flag. Two lines of airmen saluted it before they put it in a long black station wagon.

We got in my grandfather’s pickup truck and drove the long way to their farm in near silence.

There was nothing quiet about that evening. We had dinner in the Hoffmans’ kitchen. We were interrupted a hundred times by the telephone and people at the door. The house was full of flowers. So many it was kind of sickening. Who could eat fried chicken when all you could smell was mums and gladiolas.

Babs put me to bed early in the front bedroom. The house was old and creaky and unfamiliar.

“I’m scared,” I admitted to her.

She rubbed a hand across my forehead.

“I’m going to sleep with you in here,” she told me.

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.” She was nodding.

“I have to talk to your grandma and grandpa for a while and then I’m going to come in here and snuggle up beside you. Would you like that?”

“Yeah.”

“So don’t you go hogging all the bed, ’cause there’s got to be some room for me.”

“You can sleep right here,” I told her, indicating the mattress right next to me.

“Okay, that’s where I’ll be,” she said. “But right now, you have to go on to sleep and I have to talk for a while. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She leaned down and kissed me on the end of my nose.

“It’s just Mama and Laney against the world,” she said.

She left me then and went into the kitchen. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t really. It felt so early and I heard every noise in the place. I soon became distracted by the raised voices in the back of the house. I was curious. I listened intently, trying to keep up with what they were saying, but I couldn’t. Some people’s voices carried better than others. I could hear my grandmother pretty well and Mom only when she sounded angry. But there were other people talking and I couldn’t make it all out.

I slipped out of bed and sat down on the floor next to the door. That wasn’t much better. I opened the door. I could hear more. Down at the end of the hallway the light from the kitchen shone in on the floor. As I crawled closer, it became clear that it wasn’t just Babs and my grandparents. Several of my aunts and uncles were in the kitchen, as well. But it’s my mother’s voice that I heard distinctly.

“I know what I’m talking about,” she said. “None of you have ever been a child who’s lost a parent. I have. I know exactly what it means and how it feels.”

“She’ll need to say goodbye,” Grandma said. “No matter how painful it is, she’ll need that for the rest of her life.”

“No.” My mother’s voice was calm, but adamant. “The memory of that body in the coffin will supersede every other memory she has of him. Laney is not going to that funeral, even if I have to stay here with her myself.”

That sounded good to me. My mother and I would stay together, while these other people went to the funeral. It sounded okay, so I made my way back to bed. I snuggled up under the covers and fell asleep waiting for her to join me.

The next day began before I was ready. Babs was sitting at the dresser in her underwear, hooking her hose to her garter belt.

“Is it time to get dressed?” I asked.

She turned to smile at me. Even smiling she looked sad.

“Yeah, you should probably wash up and get dressed,” she said. “I’m going to have to go somewhere this morning.”

“You’re leaving me here?”

She nodded. “I’ll only be gone a few hours,” she said. “You’ll stay with Aunt Grace and Aunt Lurlene. And you’ll have lots of cousins to play with.”

She was right about that.

My Hoffman cousins were, as Grandma would have said, numerous as ticks on a dog. I didn’t actually know any of them. But as things often are with kids, after only a few minutes I was having a very good time.

The Hoffman farm had a very strange yard. It was bigger than any I’d been in in California with lots of small buildings and sheds and fences. There were contraptions made with pipe that you could walk on or hang from like a monkey. There were chickens and guineas running loose everywhere. A big old dog lay bored and unconcerned by the back-door step. There were a half-dozen cats in the barn. And an outside water trough with huge goldfish in it.

Two girls about my age, Cheryl and Nicie, were my immediate playmates. Nicie, Cheryl explained to me, was an “only child,” which meant she had lots more toys than Cheryl. But Cheryl was bossy, so she decided what we would play and which of Nicie’s toys we needed. That seemed okay to me.

The older kids had all gone with the parents in the cars. So the games that were usually mostly theirs, like “kick the can” and “tag,” could be played by us younger kids without the usual fate of always being IT. We were running and shrieking, laughing, having a great time. We took our turns, each of us chased or were being chased.

I was standing against a tree catching my breath when Ned, Cheryl’s brother, came up.

“Do you want to climb that tree?” he asked me.

Ned was two years older than me and being noticed by him felt like a very big deal. I’d never climbed a tree. The ones in our yard in California had been just sticks with leaves.

“It’s too high,” I admitted.

“I can lift you up,” he told me.

I said okay and a minute later I was on the first big bough of the giant catalpa. I found a safe perch where I could see everything and didn’t feel like I was falling. I could see the roof of the house and the cotton fields beyond the barn and the dirt road that went out to the highway.

“This is great!” I told Ned.

He nodded. “It used to be a good place to hide,” he told me. “But now Grandma always looks here first.”

I didn’t know why anyone would want to hide from Grandma, but I made no comment.

“Look what I brought,” he said.

He held out a shiny silver tool.

“Take it.”

I did. It was very heavy, a long piece of shiny metal with what looked like open mouths on each end. My daddy had a big box of tools that he carried with him to work. I was never allowed to play with them. But Ned was older than me, I thought maybe it was okay for him to have tools.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a wrench.”

“Wrench,” I repeated.

“They use it to tighten up screws,” he said. “You just fit the head of the screw in here.” He showed me with his finger. “And then you turn it.”

I nodded.

“My daddy has some like this,” I told him.

Ned nodded sagely. “I know,” he said. “It’s what killed him.”

I glanced up at him sharply. I don’t remember one person saying to me, “Your father has died.” Nobody had told me, I’m sure of that. I’m not sure when my mother had been planning to. But Ned had beaten her to it.

“My daddy’s not killed,” I told him.

“Of course he is,” Ned said. “Why else would we all be here? Why else would your mama come to the farm without him? All the grown-ups are at his funeral right now. That’s what they do for dead people. They have a funeral. He’s dead all right. And this is what killed him. Uncle Carl told my dad. Just a common wrench.”

I tried to hand it back to him.

“It’s not true!”

“Is so,” Ned insisted. “Somebody left it in the plane’s engine. When they revved it up, the thing went flying out and killed your dad just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“You’re lying!” I screamed.

He grabbed the wrench out of my hand and stuck it in his back pocket.

“Am not.”

I grabbed hold of the branch beside me and began wildly trying to kick Ned out of the tree.

“Liar! Liar! Liar!” I screamed.

My aunts heard the commotion and came running over.

“What are you doing?” Aunt Grace scolded me. “Stop that right now, you’ll make him fall out of the tree.”

I was crying by then. Crying because I was angry. Crying because I was scared.

“What’s going on here?”

Aunt Lurlene’s question was directed at Ned.

“She’s...she’s just afraid to fall out of the tree,” he said. “I didn’t do nothing, she’s just a scaredy-cat.”

“I’m not! I’m not!”

I kicked him again and this time I caught him off guard and he did fall out of the tree. Fortunately we weren’t that high and Aunt Lurlene was right beneath us and caught him easily.

When she did the wrench fell out of his back pocket and landed on the ground beside them. Both women gasped, as did the older children standing around.

Aunt Lurlene grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck.

“Ned Hoffman, when your father gets home, he’s going to wear you out!”

It was that instant that I knew it was true. It all made sense. Ned may have meant meanness, but he’d spoken in honesty. My father was dead.

Suddenly I heard that terrible howl again. That awful sound that my mother had made. It had frightened me so much the day the men had come to the door. I could hear it again, only closer, louder, more intense than before.

It was years later, looking back, before I realized that it must have been coming from my very own throat.

B
ABS

T
HOSE
MONTHS
after I moved back home to McKinney are vague and unclear in my mind. Tom. I still cannot think of him without the sense of anger and injustice I felt at his happy, optimistic life being cut so cruelly short. He had all the hopes and dreams and aspirations that buoy the rest of us. But he saw almost none of them come to pass. It was so unfair. When so many, to my mind, utterly useless people continue to live and thrive in the world, it was unconscionable for a higher power to strike Tom down. It made me furious.

But I couldn’t think about that.

Having lost my mother at an early age, I knew that I didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on what had happened or what might happen. I had to concentrate on the moment that was presenting itself and live through it in the best way that I could. Then there would be another moment and another. It was the only way to keep going.

It wasn’t easy.

Tom’s family was in conflict with me, I felt, about everything. The Hoffmans held strong opinions about proper behavior. They thought they knew what and how things should be done and felt no hesitation in doing them their way. The Air Force had taken Tom away from home. They had seen him only rarely in the last four years. But they still considered him to be
their
son, to be just like them. And somehow Laney and I were relegated to the position of latecomers. We were related to the family only by marriage. The concept that Tom belonged to me and my daughter, perhaps more than he belonged to them, never crossed anyone’s mind.

When I arrived in McKinney, all the arrangements had been taken care of, the funeral had already been planned. The only thing my mother-in-law asked me was whether I had an appropriate dress for the service.

“Tom wouldn’t want a funeral,” I explained to them. “He never liked them himself and he knew how hurtful they had been to me.”

My protestation was whisked away as if I’d never made it.

“There has to be a funeral,” Papa Hoffman said. “Everybody has a funeral.”

“No, everybody doesn’t,” I told him. “I’m sure a graveside service would be plenty. A military guard and a few nice words from the pastor would be quite sufficient.”

“Every Hoffman who has ever died in McKinney has had their funeral at the Lutheran church,” Mama Hoffman informed me. “We can’t do less for our Tom.”

“I’m not asking you to do less,” I insisted. “I’m asking you to do different.”

“It would look like we were ashamed of Tom,” his brother Carl said.

“Anyone who would think something like that is beneath the notice of this family,” I told him.

My words were useless. They wouldn’t hear of it.

“Well, at least we don’t have to bury him in some anonymous nondescript cemetery in town,” I said.

“What?”

“You have your own cemetery, here on the farm,” I pointed out. “Tom took me out there, where your grandparents are buried.”

“That place is full,” Papa Hoffman said. “We’re not burying anyone else out there.”

“Why not?”

“That little top of the hill with the tree was perfect for a graveyard,” Alfred, another brother, said. “But it’s full of graves. There’s no room for more.”

“You could expand it,” I said. “There’s miles of cotton fields all around it.”

“That’s good cotton ground,” Papa Hoffman said. “We don’t waste good ground for burials. He can be buried in town.”

“No one ever goes to that old plot,” Mama Hoffman said.

“I would,” I assured her.

They held their ground, literally.

But there was one point where I got my way. One detail that I wouldn’t give way on.

“Laney will not be at this funeral.” I stated it unequivocally. There was no room for argument, but argue they did.

“The child has to be at her father’s funeral,” Mama Hoffman said.

“Why?” I asked.

The entire Hoffman clan was staring at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“Because Tom’s her father,” Skipper, the youngest of the Hoffmans answered. “I’d want to be there for my father.”

“And you are an adult,” I pointed out. “Funerals can be traumatic for children. I don’t want Laney to have to go through that.”

“Well, of course you don’t,” Mama Hoffman said. “None of us want that for her. None of us want it for ourselves. Do you think I get any pleasure out of burying my own son? I’d love to just pretend that this funeral is not happening, that my boy is not gone, that his future has not been wiped out. I could just go on about my life, like I didn’t know. That would be a whole lot easier. But I’ll go there and I’ll publicly mourn my son. It’s my duty out of respect for his life. Laney must do her duty, as well.”

“Laney is four years old!” I told her.

“But she’s a Hoffman,” Papa said. “Hoffmans aren’t sniveling whiners. We face what we’ve got to face.”

“You don’t know what she’s facing,” I insisted. “None of you buried your parents when you were children.”

The argument went on and on. But, I was not giving in. I began wearing them down.

“Lurlene and I were going to keep the youngers home with us anyway,” Carl’s wife, Grace, said finally. “She’s about the same age and one more won’t be any trouble.”

Neither of the elder Hoffmans liked the solution very much, but they were exhausted and could fight me no longer. I didn’t feel particularly victorious.

“I don’t know how you could put Mama and Papa through that,” Tom’s sister Jean Anne whispered to me angrily as she was leaving. “They are burying their son tomorrow. Did you forget that? You’re always just thinking about yourself.”

I believe that up until that moment I’d thought myself welcomed into the Hoffman family. But right there, I felt the welcome mat being rudely snatched from under me. If a family doesn’t allow the widow to think about herself and her child, then I’m not sure I know why anyone would even want a family.

Clearly it was, “me and Laney against the world.”

The funeral was everything that I hate. The family seated in the front row to be observed by all. Extended passages about fleeting life and eternal glory. Long mournful hymns by trembling sopranos. And, at the end, the procession of mourners to view the open casket. Thankfully the family went last.

The corpse lay stiff and silent, his dress blues, stark against the white satin. There was not so much as a scratch on his cheek to mar his tan complexion. His face was in uncharacteristic repose, the laugh lines wiped away. He looked like my Tom, but not so much. I felt a strong sense of relief that he only resembled the man that I loved.

It’s just a shell, I thought to myself. It’s the place where Tom lived, but it’s not Tom.

That seemed good. It seemed like something positive that I could take away from the moment. Something that I could live with over the long run.

Then my gaze drifted down to his hands. Hands do not have expression. They’re not susceptible to decoration. They are simply what they are, completely honest and without deception. Laying on his chest, the left atop the right, these were Tom’s hands. Those long fingers, callused and scarred, were too familiar to be denied away. I couldn’t maintain my distance from what was happening. This was my husband, the man that I loved, the father of my child. And he was lying in this box. In five more minutes they were going to close it up and I was never going to see him again.

A great abyss of loss and longing and regret opened up before me, threatening the very ground I stood on. It would have been so easy, comforting, to simply cast myself in that pit. I knew I could not. Deliberately I stepped away from the casket, determined to keep myself composed and in control.

I was apparently the only person who felt that way.

The Hoffman family, most particularly the women, did not hold back at all. Mama threw herself across her son’s body wailing with such plaintive grief, I was forced to look away. I focused my attention on a stained-glass window. It was beautiful, all reds and blues and greens. The Good Shepherd descended a rocky landscape with the lost lamb slung around his shoulders.

Tom’s sisters began to cry loudly along with their mother. My eyes narrowed as I carefully memorized every detail of the shepherd in stained glass. Noting how each tiny leaded piece worked together to create the total picture. I decided that it would be the image to remember. The window would be the memory of that day that I would keep closely. My Tom, not lifeless in a box, but carried away on the shoulders of a great protector.

Whether it was two minutes or twenty minutes that passed, I truly will never know. But eventually the anguish of family mourning began to quiet. I glanced back to see each of the Hoffman women being held and comforted by husbands or brothers or sisters. None of them faced the closing of the box alone.

Only me.

“We’re ready,” I told the funeral director.

The howling commenced again. Once more I turned my attention to the Good Shepherd window, until it was time to head to the black limousines parked outside.

Tom’s brothers and brothers-in-law were all pallbearers. They rode together in a car that followed the hearse. I rode with Tom’s parents and his two sisters. They carried on a running conversation all the way to the cemetery.

The new Memorial Gardens had only a few graves near the entrance. The area Tom was taken to was completely empty.

“I went ahead and bought a whole section out here,” Papa Hoffman told me as we walked from the car. “Mama and I can be buried near Tom. And there’ll be room here beside him for you, too, of course.”

“Ah...thank you,” I answered, a little uncertainly.

“Of course, you might not want to be,” he admitted. “As young and pretty as you are, you’ll probably marry someone else.”

I couldn’t think of any kind of response to that, so I simply ignored it.

We gathered under a green awning, the flag-draped casket in front of us. Flowers in every color and description were crowded around. I couldn’t look at it. I fixed my gaze beyond the scene to the long row of cars parking along the driveway.

I felt a hand slip into mine. I glanced over. It was Aunt Maxine. I almost shouted with joy as I hugged her. Uncle Warren was beside her. They were strong and solid and dear. I’m not sure I would have made it all the way to the end without them.

When they handed me the folded flag and the minister had spoken the “amen” I feared that they might leave me alone with the Hoffmans again. Uncle Warren did manage to get away, but I grasped Aunt Maxine’s arm.

“Can Laney and I stay with you,” I said.

“What?”

The question clearly surprised her and caught her off guard.

“We’ll need a place to stay for a few days,” I explained. “I was hoping that we could stay with you.”

“Well...ah...I...” She fumbled around for a long minute.

“Just for a few days,” I pleaded. “Just until I figure out where to go and what to do.”

“Well I... The Hoffmans have so much more room than we have, Babs,” she said. “We’ve got the boys doubled up in one bedroom and the twins in the other.”

“Laney and I can sleep on a pallet in the living room,” I assured her.

“I don’t know if that would be good,” Maxine said.

“It’s just for a few days,” I assured her again. I leaned closer, whispering so that I wouldn’t be overheard. “I can’t go back to that house. Please Aunt Maxine. Don’t make me go back to that house.”

Of course she didn’t.

Neither she nor Uncle Warren could understand why I couldn’t just stay out at the farm, but they wouldn’t force me. I drove from the cemetery with them. We picked up Laney and our suitcases and drove to their house. They put a camping cot in the twins’ room for Laney and suggested that I sleep on the living room couch.

“This is just a temporary arrangement,” Uncle Warren said sternly.

I nodded.

“I know I need to get out on my own and I will,” I promised him.

There is nothing like desperation to push people into unexpected choices.