The Saint Louisans (2 page)

As a little girl raised in Dubourg, Missouri, the Veiled Prophet Ball might as well have been Cinderella's ball, but still I couldn't stop fantasizing about it. Girls from Dubourg, situated where the fingertips of the Ozarks with their wooded ridges, jutting rocks, and meandering streams stretched into Missouri, didn't go to fancy débutante balls at glamorous hotels, didn't greet their escorts in velvet-voiced whispers perfected by fine educations and elocution lessons, and weren't seated high on pedestals and paraded through city streets while adoring (or not) citizens watched from sidewalks. No, girls from Dubourg held court in the back seats of cars and boasted voices that twanged like banjos. We had the obligatory middle names like Mary Ann, Lindy Lou, and Nancy Jane—or Cindy Lee, in my case—in abundance. We came in as many flavors of Baptists as Darwin had species: First Baptists, Second Baptists, Southern Baptists, Free Will Baptists. We didn't just get washed in the blood of the lamb, we got our choice of rinse cycles.

Dubourg had been a dying town before I'd been born. The lead mines played out in the mid-sixties. What jobs there were existed up in ‘Sant Lewis'. Like a stream of ants going for the goodies, Highway 67 teemed with pickups and vans headed north to the plant … any plant. Lena May Sikes, my mother, had been ahead of that trend. In 1950, she moved to St. Louis from a county nestled by Dubourg and got a job at the counter of Katz's drugstore, whose black feline face revolved on neon signs throughout St. Louis in that era of prosperity, smokestack industries, and sturdy foundation garments for the fairer sex.

One night when Lena May was slinging hash at the fountain, an Air Force captain with Van Johnson looks breezed in and ordered an ice cream soda. One thing led to another, and Ike Taylor married Lena May, and I was begotten. When I was little, we lived on air force bases, and my earliest memories are of shoebox-like officer's quarters, deserts and mountains, vast open skies with the contrails of jets drawing lines in the sky. I remember clapping my hands over my ears as fighters boomed in the blue above me, breaking the sound barrier like celestial cannons.

To this day, memories of my father flash in and out like summer fireflies. In his khaki uniform, he bends down to me as the radio plays “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?” He reads the sports page while the funnies are a carpet of word balloons and exaggerated faces on the floor. He tosses a ball to me. For my fifth birthday, Dad said, “Come on Cindy Lee, let's go see daddy's office.” I wore my white party dress, excited as he drove past the saluting guard and parked his convertible in front of his F-86 Sabre jet.

As Mom pointed the camera and snapped the photos, Dad lifted me out of the car, carried me up, and set me in the cockpit. I remember the smile on his face as I squiggled in his seat. A snug fit for him, but for me a roomy throne smelling of masculinity and machine. Dad took out a dime-store tiara and set it on my head.

“I'm a queen!” I remember cheering.

“You bet, little girl. You're daddy's queen. Queen of the skies.”

“Hey,” Lena May called, “let's get a picture.”

“Sure,” he beamed down at her, “then we'll have cake.”

A month later, he kissed me and Mom before leaving to catch a flight for an overseas assignment. He never came back. Ike Taylor, my handsome,
brave daddy was shot down near the Russian border in one of those tremors in an otherwise cold war. The mourning period was brief. I was sent to my room early while friends of my mother … mostly men … came over. Behind closed doors I heard low conversation, tinkling glasses, then silence, followed by sighs.

Four weeks later I was in St. Louis wearing my gray coat and patent leather shoes as my mother herded me past the bustle of Union Station to catch her train to Los Angeles.

“Why are you leaving me?” I didn't cry, but I was definitely frightened.

“I got to find someplace good for us, sweetie. After I get settled in L.A., I'll send for you.”

She kept looking ahead as we pressed through the crowd.

In that last whisper of the fifties, Union Station seemed like a great cave full of flowing crowds of people. Men and women wore long overcoats while black porters pulled carts of luggage, much like their fathers and grandfathers must have hustled goods on the levee in the previous century. Portraits of rail magnates looked down like mustachioed gods. While the cavern smelled of coal and iron, the intercom's gravel voice heralded destinations that made my heart thump: Chicago, New York, San Francisco. Mom wore the checked coat she had bought at Famous-Barr.

“See,” she said, “you'll stay with the Taylors. Daddy's family. They'll take real good care of you.”

“Yeah, but Mommy—”

“Hey,” she beamed, “there they are.”

Ahead of us loomed the Taylor clan, a dour gaggle of kin whose dark features contrasted with my fair skin and blonde hair. They resembled the Seven Dwarfs. Not physically, since they towered over me like annoyed trees, but facially, with large noses, sunken cheeks, jowls, and dumpy frames made for cartoons. There was Aunt Wanda (Sneezy), Uncle Heinie (Grumpy), and I could go on, but you get the picture.

“Don't you be scared honey,” she smiled, “soon as I get settled in I'll send for you, and it'll be hunky-dory.”

Grumpy stepped forward. “Lena,” he nodded.

“Heinie,” my mother said. “Well, here's Cindy Lee.”

“Yeah, hmm.”

Mom and the Dwarfs led me into Harvey's Restaurant, still serviced by the famous Harvey Girls. Mom bought me a hot fudge sundae as a bon voyage treat, and while I ate, the adults made small talk while puffing unfiltered cigarettes. Conversation between Mom and the Seven Dwarfs was short, wary, in Joe Friday style. When the boarding call for Los Angeles came, Mom took a deep breath as if she was ready to spring off a diving board into fresh, new waters. She bent down, make-up thick and provocative.

“It's gonna be okay, Cindy Lee. Wish me luck, sweetie.”

Once on board, she blew us all a kiss from the window of the departing train. This sweetie didn't see her until five years and two husbands later.

I spent the night in Dopey's, I mean Aunt Tillie's, flat. After grumbling about “all the colored” moving in, I was sent to a cold, mildew-scented guest room. Behind a cracked door, low voices warned careful … she might hear you. That Lena May … dumping her on us … Ike never picked 'em right … him a flyboy … always was bad blood … kid don't look like a Taylor … keep it down!

Ideas were tossed out like dull pennies into a fountain. Convent school. Relatives down around Cape. Finally, the telephone rang, and, after more conversation that was hard to follow, I heard the Dwarfs heave a big sigh of collective relief, and the very next day, I was farmed out to Aunt Mary Allbright and her husband, Spud, who lived sixty miles south in Dubourg.

When they arrived next day, Aunt Mary wore a dark blue dress, an imitation Christian Dior model with belt, stand-up collar and flared skirt. White pearls, gloves, and a shell hat set off the blue and complimented an erect posture that said no nonsense, if you please. Spud was rumpled and gruff, his fedora Confederate gray. The Dwarfs didn't so much as greet them as watch them warily. It was a cease-fire of sorts, between enemy camps in the same family.

“So this is Cindy Lee.” Aunt Mary got in the first word, and I could tell she enjoyed it immensely. She looked me over, raising her eyebrow at my cardboard suitcase and Raggedy Ann clutched against my chest.

“When will Mommy come for me?” I asked.

“Not for a while. In the meantime, you're going to have some fun.”

“Fun?”

“Sure. You're leaving this crowd, aren't you?”

The Dwarfs frowned at each other.

Uncle Rudy (Sleepy) nodded knowingly to Spud. “Now, if she gives you any trouble …”

Aunt Mary looked at me as she bent down and smoothed my hair. “Rudy, I'm on my best behavior today.”

“I meant the kid.”

Spud smiled. “We'll take care of it.”

“Sure, Spud … just that you know what Lena May and Ike were like. He was kinda wild, and you know what they say about juvenile delinquents—”

“It's under control, Rudy,” Spud said in a voice so cold the words nearly froze in midair.

Once in the car I looked out the window as the Dwarfs watched with folded arms; no waves, all of them lined up against a row of brick flats. Aunt Mary gave a deep sigh. “Come on, Spud, let's get away from these drips.”

“Rudy,” Spud growled as he shifted gears. “I'm gonna punch his lights out someday.” Aunt Mary looked back at me and rested her chin on the front seat. “Don't mind us, kiddo; you're hearing the sounds of a happy couple.”

“Yeah,” gruffed Spud, “tra-la-la.”

I left the Dwarfs, rescued by Tracy and Hepburn.

There was light chitchat as we headed south on Highway 67, passing its bevy of roadside stops and motels. I stared out the window, hugging Raggedy Ann while Mary leaned over and studied me with lively, thoughtful eyes.

“Kiddo,” she said, “I know you're scared. A little hinky about all this aren't you?”

I nodded. “I miss Daddy.”

“Sure,” her voice lowered. “I miss him, too. He was my brother, and pulled my pigtails more than once. We all miss him. Did he ever talk to you about Lindbergh?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.” I shifted. “Daddy called him ‘Lucky Lindy.'”

“That's why Ike became a pilot. We grew up loving Lucky Lindy.”

Spud rounded a curve. “Also Ike joined up to get the hell out of Dubourg. Figured the Air Force was the ticket to punch.”

“Okay.” Aunt Mary shrugged. “That, too. But, Cindy Lee, know you've
got a home now. With us. Dubourg needs an Air Force kid. Badly. Show these bumpkins what the world's like.” She touched my shoulder. “You up to it?”

I nodded and tried to be brave. Like Daddy.

Aunt Mary taught at Dubourg High School. She was an English teacher (always said with a capital E). She had miscarried six years earlier and couldn't have children, but there was never a hint of gloom in their house.

I liked to read, was precocious, and Aunt Mary became a willing mentor. I lived in the world of books. I imitated her. My conversation, with its intonations, purging of dialect, and direct manner is pure Aunt Mary.

Spud was the type of man who smiled at meat loaf and winced at broccoli. He was dull but dear, working as an engineer for the mining company. He always called his job ‘the salt mines' and occasionally returned in working clothes and miner's helmet when underground inspections were held. At times, he was so cantankerous about “kids these days,” that I thought he must've been the man who taught W.C. Fields about kids, but I was exempt from his criticisms.

Dubourg was safe, quiet, and all-American. We went on family vacations, visiting Civil War battlefields, scenic fishing rivers, quaint college towns, and places with pillars. I don't know what it was with pillars, but Aunt Mary was always snapping photos of them in their Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian glory.

In those last blinks of the fifties and early sixties, there were also trips to St. Louis when the city was ‘first in shoes, booze, and the American league.' We made it a point to go to St. Louis twice a year.

First was Christmas. We'd drive up in Spud's big Chrysler—he was a Chrysler man, which he and Aunt Mary saw as Motown's equivalent of Presbyterianism—and he'd park it carefully before we boarded one of the cavernous city buses that hissed and sighed at every stop. The streets smelled of gasoline, coal, and a whiff of the malodorous hops from the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Our major target was Famous-Barr department store at Seventh and Olive, and I was always fascinated by storefront windows filled with Christmas scenes replete with robotic figures of elves at work, moving left-right-left in their toy shop; Christmas carolers in Dickensian costume, heads swaying to and fro as they sang; a family at their Christmas tree, picking up gifts and pointing, picking up gifts and pointing.

The storefront machinery was countered by a forest of humanity rushing past me in their coats and hats doing the Christmas bebop. Policemen at the corner pipped their whistles to herd crowds across the streets. I saw all kinds of people unimaginable in Dubourg, especially blacks. Foreign tongues gabbled above me. Beautiful, un-Baptist women clopped down the street in spike heels and fur coats. No trip home would be complete without a visit to Famous-Barr's bakery and a white cardboard box filled with their jelly doughnuts. I craved their rich, almost black jelly and powdered sugar on top of a dark, moist, bun. It was the most artful jelly doughnut ever made. I still mourn its passing.

The second time was in summer. We'd visit the Muny Opera in Forest Park. We braved the outdoor theater and the spongy humidity of St. Louis summers to hear musicals. Huge, propeller-like fans roared before the performance to circulate the air, reminding me of airplanes and Dad in his jet. The musicals bonded me to Aunt Mary and Spud, because they were our music, that of an era I call B.A., before the assassination. Our favorite was
South Pacific
. Its tunes flowed out like juice from a squeezed orange, and I loved Nellie Forbush, the wisecracking nurse who fell in love with the French guy. The kernel that made me become a nurse was planted when she scrubbed her head and sang about washing that man right out of her hair.

And then, my favorite trip of all was camping out on the floor before the TV set when it broadcast the Veiled Prophet Ball and its yearly convocation when the Prophet held his court of love and beauty. It was magical.

The Veiled Prophet Association (or the Krewe of the Mystic Order of the Veiled Prophet of the Enchanted Realm, if you take the scenic route) was formed in 1878 by wealthy St. Louisans who wanted to imitate their more raucous cousins down the river and throw a Mardi Gras cum débutante ball for their daughters. I delighted in watching its pageantry absorbed in its black and white splendor while Aunt Mary graded papers and Spud cleaned his shotgun (it was during hunting season).