Queen of October

by Mickle, Shelley Fraser

  Miss Pankhurst wore the pumpkin-colored cloche she had bought in Memphis and had shown me during our bus ride. She smiled and laughed at everything, even the discussion about Halloween and the Mexicans’ unsanitary habits. When my grandmother pshawed at her behavior, Miss Pankhurst apologized and blamed her uncontrollable joy on the important announcement that she would make at the end of the meeting.

  Waiting until the last minute, and with great drama, Miss Pankhurst pulled off her gloves and held up her hand. A diamond ring was on her finger. “This is my official announcement,” she said. “Mr. Foster Collins and I shall be married on Thanksgiving Day in the First Methodist Church.” And with that, all the ladies stood up clapping and smiling, while expressing their surprise and happiness. For once their reaction totally drowned out my roosters. Shortly after that, lunch was served; afterward my grandmother escorted everyone to the front door and went to bed.

  “It was sure some meeting!” Louella glanced at me. She was washing dishes while I sat listening to her and eating leftover petit fours. “And then Miss Pankhurst come into the kitchen here and asked your grandmother would she mind if you was the flower girl?”

  “And what’d she say?”

  “Said fine.” Louella smiled and poured a glass of milk for me. “They going to get you some real pretty dress made up by Miss Leona.” Leona Sutton was the best seamstress in town.

  I sat and thought about that. Being in a wedding would be exactly right. I would learn how my own and Sam’s would be.

  By the time Sam had divorced Ellen, I figured I’d be about sixteen. Nobody but country girls or somebody who was pregnant got married that early, but I didn’t care what anybody would say about it. Nothing mattered but that I would be with Sam forever. The only part that gave me trouble was the thought of being the Coldwater Homecoming Queen’s stepmother. But I’d send Julie off to school and get her a job up North. Lord! it was wonderful how you could get life to behave. I didn’t need friends at school or a normal family together in one place. I was a tap dancer passing as a ballerina with a pet chicken. I was loved and in love with someone who would keep me and care for me, no matter what. I sat looking at Louella, with a stack of little cakes in front of me, feeling that sweet strong secret, stuck deep, setting me apart. I was like some quiz show contestant who’d rehearsed the questions before I went on the air. I knew how everything was going to come out. When I married Sam we’d be happy and safe and together. Nothing in the whole world would bother us.

  The air turned cooler and the fall rains began. The sidewalks and rooftops were washed free of dust. Milky tan puddles lay in the gravel roads, splashing up on everybody’s hubcaps. On Thanksgiving Day at four o’clock, after a big turkey dinner, my grandparents and I were going to the First Methodist Church.

  For once, wool would have felt good. But I was dressed in a taffeta getup with something called “cap sleeves.” Leona Sutton had made it for me, and its skirt was full enough to hide thieves. I was a little too old to be a flower girl, but Miss Pankhurst needed somebody. At her age there wasn’t even anyone to give her away. My grandmother had declined the offer to be matron of honor; she didn’t think she could get down the aisle in cold weather without a cane. Mrs. Barber, the soda jerk, had accepted the honor. And of course Sam was the best man.

  Just as I’d gotten dressed, I remembered that I’d wanted to take a corn muffin from Thanksgiving dinner to Elizabeth Taylor. I figured being a healthy chicken on Thanksgiving was something she’d want to celebrate. When nobody was watching me, I hurried out to the chicken yard in my wedding gear and gave it to her.

  We decided to walk to church to help digest our dinner. I was carrying a basket with rose petals in it that I was supposed to sprinkle down the church aisle. The basket was decorated with yellow mums tied onto it, with something called baby’s breath mixed in with the mums. But the breath was dried out, and it shed all the way there.

  We passed the front of the newspaper office and the jewelry store. The church doors were propped open to let in the wonderful cool air. The wedding party had rehearsed everything the night before. And as we drew closer, I heard Mrs. Emiloo Harris already at work on her second organ piece.

  The church was full. While my grandparents found a seat on the fourth pew, I hurried into a Sunday school room. There Miss Pankhurst hugged me. “Oh, sweet thing,” she said, crushing me and my basket, making a few more stems of baby’s breath go bald. “You look gorgeous.” She examined my dress, which was blue, supposedly the color of sky. Mrs. Barber had on something made out of the same material.

  Miss Pankhurst nervously picked up her own bouquet and then looked at my flower basket. “It’s got problems, doesn’t it?” She was in an ivory-colored lace dress with a hat and veil she had designed to match. She pulled down her veil and said, “But nothing can bother me today, not even a flower basket with stale flowers.” She smiled.

  Mrs. Barber said I looked like a doll out of a storybook, and that not a soul in the whole church would notice that my flower decorations were half-dead. All three of us peeked out the Sunday school room door as Mrs. Harris started on the fifth organ piece.

  Foster Collins came out of the preacher’s study with Sam, and they stood at the altar, smiling, but both looking a little under the weather from the bachelor party that Sam had thrown the night before. Behind Foster’s glasses, his eyes were red. Sam’s face was a little pale, and his eyes looked blurry.

  By then Mrs. Harris had turned the organ-pumping over to Mr. Harris, who sat closely beside her, and he blew the organ up so that a very loud “Wedding March” began coming out of it. Miss Pankhurst sucked in her breath. “Well, here goes,” she said, pushing me out.

  I walked down the aisle, smiling, strewing rose petals on the carpet, just as I’d rehearsed; and as I did, Sam kept his eyes on me and I looked back. All the love and certainty of our secret were spraying from me to him. For us, this was also a rehearsal. I let him see my love and our secret promise in the way that I walked, and in my eyes, and in the way that, when I got to the altar, I stood opposite him, looking over with so much feeling. He winked.

  Looking back down the aisle I saw that along with all the rose petals, I’d also left a trail of baby’s breath. Then, to a great swell on the organ, Miss Pankhurst began her entry.

  Standing so that I faced the guests, I could see B.J. and Ron in the last pew. Miss Pankhurst hadn’t wanted to invite them, but B.J. had been in charge of Miss Pankhurst’s wedding gifts, and at the last minute Miss Pankhurst had included B.J.—and Ron. B.J. was craning her neck now around the people in front of her to smile at me, so tickled at seeing me dressed up—and she looked so proud. I could see her love for me floating over the heads of everybody like blown clear bubbles that I could reach up to, touch and pop. And still they’d keep coming.

  The preacher, who didn’t have a D.D., was looked down upon by my grandmother. Still, he was good at things like marriages, communion, and funerals; it was his sermons that my grandmother said were flimsy and half-illiterate.

  He had just started giving the vows to Miss Pankhurst and Foster Collins when, following the trail of my baby’s breath, Elizabeth Taylor came pecking down the aisle. I heard her soft clucking around the hem of my enormous skirt. At first, no one laughed. I looked down and saw her and I felt sick.

  I ignored her. Everyone ignored her. The whole congregation was holding its breath.

  For a while Elizabeth pecked at the fallen baby’s breath and seemed content. Miss Pankhurst gave her bouquet to me, while Foster Collins prepared to put the wedding ring on her. Then, just as Sam took the ring out of his pocket and handed it to Foster, Elizabeth Taylor flapped up to the banister of the altar and sat. Behind me, I distinctly heard my grandmother’s famous pshaw, and then a spattering of giggles.

  I had to get my hands on Elizabeth or else she would ruin Miss Pankhurst’s wedding. I moved behind the preacher and grabbed for her, but she clucked and flapped to the top of the organ, where Mrs. Har
ris sucked in her breath at the keyboard below Elizabeth and tried her best to look dignified. Mr. Harris was looking down at his feet as though studying the foot pedals that he was going to pump, trying to pretend that Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t even there.

  I went back to my place while Mrs. Barber gave the ring to Miss Pankhurst to put on Foster Collins; and then, thank goodness, the whole thing was over! “You may kiss the bride now,” the preacher said. Mrs. Barber lifted Miss Pankhurst’s veil. Foster pecked Miss Pankhurst’s cheek with his lips, which is what they’d rehearsed, since Miss Pankhurst said she wasn’t about to make a public display of passion. Mr. Harris began pumping air into the organ, and as Mrs. Harris played the opening chords for our march out, Elizabeth Taylor squawked in terror and flew to the podium. In the most athletic maneuver I’d ever made, I scooped her up and regained my place in the march up the aisle. Everybody was laughing. I hurried out, terribly embarrassed, with Elizabeth tucked under my arm like a football. I covered her face with my flower basket to help hold her. I wasn’t exactly sure where her dern ear was, but I chose a place and whispered into it about like a cheerleader with laryngitis: “Soon as I get you home, I’m gonna wring your damn neck.”

  We all stood outside on the church steps. “I’m sorry,” I said to Miss Pankhurst.

  She put her arm through Foster Collins’s and said, “Sugar, you couldn’t help it.”

  Foster reached over and patted Elizabeth Taylor’s head. “Shoot,” he said, “the whole town of Coldwater was invited.”

  Sam handed me a small package of rice which was meant to be thrown at Miss Pankhurst and Foster. “No harm done,” he said, then poured the rice into my hand. “Bet your chicken’ll like this.”

  I held my hand open for Elizabeth, and while she was pecking it, my grandparents came out.

  “I told you the chickens were a bad idea!” My grandmother was blaming my grandfather.

  “Of course they were.” My grandfather looked at her and then laughed. “The girl needs a poodle.”

  “I’m sorry, Colleen.” Looking mortified, my grandmother began apologizing to Miss Pankhurst. But the new Mrs. Foster Collins touched my grandmother’s arm and told her what she’d told me earlier: nothing could spoil this day.

  B.J. and Ron came out, and they offered to walk Elizabeth Taylor home for me. “You got to stay for the reception,” B.J. told me while Ron took Elizabeth out of my arms.

  Ron laughed. “Bet this is the first chicken ever to go to a church wedding in Coldwater. Good thing you don’t have a turkey for a pet!” Then he and B.J. walked quietly across the street and started home.

  The rest of us went into the basement and drank punch in honor of the new Mr. and Mrs. Foster Collins. When they were ready to leave for their honeymoon in Hot Springs, we showered them with rice all the way to Miss Pankhurst’s car. It was parked in front of the church, and all of its windows had been soaped with the words “Just Hitched.” Some old shoes of Sam’s and Gill’s were tied onto the back bumper. Foster climbed in behind the wheel, started the engine and they drove off. We all stood on the church steps waving as both of them waved back, all the way down Main and over the railroad tracks.

  17.

  The Death of My Chickens and the Addition of Toulouse

  I don’t think any of us, not even my grandmother, felt that Elizabeth Taylor’s days should be numbered. It was as unintentional as the dancing school windows smashing down on B.J.’s thumbs. We had all agreed that the roosters ought to be sold. I didn’t especially want to get rid of them, but I didn’t object. Their crowing really had made them pests.

  My grandparents arranged for a chicken farmer to buy them. I thought of it as like taking a dog who tore up things at home and placing him out on a big piece of land where he could run. I pictured my chickens pecking around on a farm, crowing their lungs out and not bothering anybody.

  On the day we knew the chicken farmer was to come, I put Elizabeth in the hen house by herself and shut the door. My grandmother was in charge of seeing that the roosters were taken off. I went to school, and didn’t think much more about it until I came home and went out into the backyard to let Elizabeth out of the hen house. When I couldn’t find her, my grandmother and Louella came to help me look.

  “Lord, honey,” Louella said. “Nobody meant for this to happen.”

  I stared at the empty hen house.

  My grandmother went inside to her bedroom to telephone the farmer. Louella and I couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening. I got on the phone in the hall and Louella got on the one in the kitchen.

  “Where’s the hen?”

  “What hen?”

  “The hen my granddaughter shut up in the hen house!”

  “I didn’t see no hen.”

  Either Elizabeth had somehow gotten out, or else one of the farmer’s helpers had thought she belonged with the group. Probably my grandmother hadn’t been too clear about the men taking only the roosters. “Well, we’re coming out to look for my granddaughter’s pet hen,” she told the farmer.

  When he told her the chickens were already sitting in a cooler down at Thompson’s Grocery Store, marked Super Fresh, my grandmother let out a little cry. I sucked in a big breath, and I could hear Louella moaning into the phone in the kitchen. We all hung up. In a few minutes my grandmother came out of her bedroom and looked at me. She of course probably knew I’d been listening, but none of us wanted to talk about that. “Your chicken’s just run off,” she said. “I told that man not to take the hen, and he said as far as he knew, he didn’t. She’ll turn up. If she can get through the fence to walk around town and even attend church, then she’s here somewhere. Maybe she’s hiding.”

  Louella and I went into the back yard to look again for Elizabeth. “She was just a chicken,” Louella said quietly. “That’s not like a real pet—what you can get attached to. Chickens is food.”

  Later when I was on the sun porch trying to do homework, I heard Louella whispering to my grandmother: “I think that hen really did get in with the roosters.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “That hen ain’t anywhere around and I got a feeling about it.”

  My grandmother looked at Louella in silence. “As long as we’re not sure, let’s not speculate.”

  My desire for chicken that was baked, barbecued, or made any other way from the recipes my grandmother handed Louella every week, died with Elizabeth Taylor. Louella always served chicken several times a week and every Sunday, but now I just pushed it around on my plate with a polished silver fork until it looked messy and unfit to eat. Every chicken served, no matter how, looked to me small, feminine, and familiar.

  “She’s not eating. Something’s got to be the matter with her. Test her blood,” my grandmother said to my grandfather.

  “She’s not anemic. She’s depressed.”

  “So now you agree with me! This divorce business is ruining her.”

  “Probably not.”

  I was filling up on bread and Louella’s homemade preserves.

  My grandfather leaned back in his chair. “I think she’s afraid she’s eating her pet.”

  My grandmother pshawed. But then she got quiet.

  Bless my grandfather. Most of the time he never seemed to see me, and yet when I had trouble he usually knew what the trouble was. No wonder his patients loved him.

  But the seed had been planted, and if doubt can spur imagination, then my grandmother’s was at least starting off at a slow trot. She lay down her fork. “I just don’t think we can go on like this. We’ll have to stop serving chicken.”

  My grandfather cut up a fried thigh. “Doesn’t bother me,” he said. “Just fix something else for her to eat.”

  “Well, it’s starting to affect me!” Rolling up her napkin and stuffing it into its silver ring, my grandmother looked across the table at me. “I feel responsible. I didn’t like the chicken. Chickens as pets are not normal. But.…” She pushed her plate away and drank some water, st
ill looking at me. “I can’t sit here day after day thinking you’re not eating because of some mistake I allowed to happen. It’s ruining my stomach. We’ll just have to quit eating chickens. I don’t ever want to even see another chicken!”

  My grandfather reached across the table and chose a fat breast from the meat plate. Taking a bite, he studied her. “Economically that’s not good—chickens are cheap. But overall I think you’re right.” He reached into the center of the table and took a cream pitcher that he’d filled with his Inside Medicine and poured a little into all of our tall crystal glasses. It was many months before chicken was served again.

  Considering the guilt that my grandmother felt for having been indirectly responsible for Elizabeth Taylor’s death, you would think that for Christmas she would have given me a dog. Not that I especially wanted a dog. But the thought that I might want one had long been a point of argument between my grandparents. But even if I had, I don’t think that would have mattered, for I was always given what was thought to be good for me. And for the Christmas of 1959, what my grandmother decided would be good for both of us was a fat green parrot named Toulouse.

  I think my grandmother had ideas of a refined bird sitting on a perch in her living room, similar to the peacocks strutting about plantations. He was purchased through a bird dealer in Little Rock who had connections in Texas, and no one was certain how long Toulouse had been out of the jungles of South America. But my grandmother had been told that he was already at least forty-five years old, which meant he was in my parents’ generation, so he’d had a long time to learn a little from a lot of different people. Also, my grandmother was assured that he had a sweet disposition, was disease-free, and was already in command of fifteen words.

  What she didn’t know was that eight of the fifteen words Toulouse was in command of were the kind that were likely to be written on the walls of bathrooms in honky-tonks and bus stations. And even though Toulouse was capable of speaking them clearly, he wasn’t particular about when he used them. So on Christmas morning, totally unprovoked, Toulouse let loose a string of filthy language under the Christmas tree in my grandmother’s living room.