“Sure,” he said. But he didn’t move.
Sissy knew he didn’t want to leave them alone together. “If you don’t have beer, Coke will be fine. Or Dr Pepper. Even Nehi.”
“I have beer,” he said grimly as he got up.
Sissy waited until he’d gone into the kitchen; then she perched on the arm of the couch next to Clara and asked, “How’d you know who I was?”
“Seen you …I mean, I’ve seen you and your kids around town. I’ve got lots of white relatives. More than colored,” Clara said with a certain pride.
“And none of us ever knew.” Sissy was so tickled. She had never heard a white person boast, “Got more colored relatives than white,” but it must be true a lot of the time. It might even be true for her. It amazed her how invisible the children living in Butler-town were to all white people living on the other side of the tracks. Colored people in general were invisible, unless of course they worked for you. I’ve been passing this girl in Rubinstein’s and at the drugstore for years and never really looked at her. Her delight turned to shame. “You’re the spitting image of me when I was in high school,” she said. Except, Sissy reflected, she’d never managed to look quite that neat.
Just then Parker came back into the room with three mismatched glasses full of beer. “Look, Clara, I’ve been thinking,” he said, offering the beer around. “I know you need money for books and warm clothes and things. So why don’t you let me handle the bus fare?”
The two women stared at him.
A philanthropist, Sissy decided. Her heart warmed.
Clara shook her head. “I can’t take money from a man I’ve been sleeping with. Especially not a white man.”
Parker, the philanthropist, crumbled right in front of Sissy’s eyes and the dirty old man returned. She should have known. When he was in my kitchen trying to get into my pants, he was already getting into hers. Son of a bitch! He’d only been in town, what? A week, two?
Parker looked shaken. He turned to Sissy and saw her disgust. He turned back to Clara. “I’m not trying to pay for…”
Clara cut him off. “I know, but that’s how my mama got started.” Her voice softened. “When the time comes, I want to be able to say good-bye, clean, okay?”
As Sissy listened to them talk, a jumble of emotions and thoughts assaulted her. She’d believed that the real reason Parker had come back was to see her. Why else? He’d always loved her, hadn’t he? Was he turned off by her vow to be faithful to her husband, or was he just catting around? He still wants to be wild and free, she thought. Maybe all that happened to them that afternoon in the kitchen was opportunity. A wave of terrible sadness broke over her. What did she care anyway? His peccadillo with this girl saved her from sin. Not that she’d been overly worried about sin when she took off her clothes and lounged about in black lace underwear. She looked at Clara with her soft young skin and tiny waist and wondered, Does he like her better than me? Am I too old for him now?
And then a thoroughly wicked idea occurred to her. It would put her right in the center of this triangle, help Clara get into that Yankee college and at the same time drive this two-timer crazy. “I could sure use some help with the kids this summer, I mean if that wouldn’t be too much of a comedown for a University of Chicago coed.”
“That would be terrific. I mean after washing corpses, nothing’s a comedown.”
“Then it’s settled?” Sissy asked, excited. She loved getting in the middle of things and stirring them up.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Parker said, trying to sound like the voice of reason. “What’ll Peewee say? Won’t you have to talk this over with him?”
Sissy smiled a slow smile and said in an intimate voice, “Why, sugar, you didn’t seem all that concerned about my husband when you were all over me in my kitchen last Wednesday. But I know he’ll appreciate the thought.”
“You SOB,” hissed Clara. “What do you do, just use me when your little housewife can’t get out of the house?” Then she turned to Sissy. “I didn’t mean…”
“That’s okay,” said Sissy, enjoying the fight.
“Clara…” Parker put his hand on her arm. She jerked back.
Sissy tried to hide her grin. Serves him right, she thought. She wondered if Clara would go for his throat, but she couldn’t stick around. “That husband you’re so concerned about must be wondering what’s become of me,” said the young matron in the navy blue and white dress. Then Sissy made up Rule Number Thirty: Never leave any man you are even slightly interested in alone with the Other Woman. “Can I give you a lift?” she asked Clara.
“I’d appreciate that,” said Clara, moving away from Parker. “I live over by Butlertown.”
Sissy said that would be no trouble at all, but as they opened the screen door, Parker pulled Sissy aside. “Don’t do this.”
“Are you worried we’ll talk about you?” She turned to Clara. “What do you think? Is he worth risking my marriage for?”
Clara hesitated a minute and said, “I don’t think he’s worth any risk at all.”
“Clara!” But they were gone. Together.
Sid ran after them, only to have the screen door bang shut before he could get through it. He crouched down against it and howled. Then he slouched back and nudged Parker into the kitchen.
Parker opened a can for the dog and a can for himself. When his hash was hot, he took it into the living room and sat down on the Naugahyde chair Sissy had lain in.
Less than fifteen minutes ago, she had been waiting for him, half naked, in this very chair waiting for him …when he’d walked in with Clara. But how could a man have resisted Clara when she called him from that pay phone with tears in her voice? She was so young and eager to please, with that fresh smell of youth.
He rubbed his hand along the arm where Sissy’s legs had rested. He thought about her crazy courage, using his key, waiting for him in her underwear. And her delight at finding she had a Negro cousin. Most white women would have had a fit of shame and indignation at the very thought. Not Sissy.
A sweet sadness like an old song swept over him. Was that indescribable something that he’d been searching for, over so many miles, for so many years, been merely Sissy? Or was she just some impossible high school dream that wouldn’t stand up to the test of reality? And if she was what he’d been longing for, then what? She had a home and children. What did he have to offer her or any woman?
He set his plate on the floor. Sid slunk into the living room, sniffed the hash, and then with his foot planted firmly in the plate, put his head on Parker’s knees and moaned.
Chapter 8
Sometimes doing good can be delightfully bad.
Rule Number Seventy-five
THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK
PEEWEE HAD OBJECTED, of course. He didn’t think they needed a maid this summer. “What are you, the queen? You can’t do a little housework?”
That had been so easy, Sissy was ashamed of herself. After a contemptuous enumeration of all her duties taking care of their big old house, cooking and shopping for the family, looking after the children, mixed with less than an hour of anguished silence, Peewee was hers. Besides, everyone in Gentry knew that a man who couldn’t provide his wife with help wasn’t much of a man. No white lady should have to perform menial work.
Chip wasn’t so easy. “I don’t need nobody to take care of me.”
“You don’t need anybody,” said his father.
“And I don’t want nobody, neither,” he declared firmly.
“Is that so?” asked his mother. “You planning to spend the rest of the summer doing the laundry? You all run through a lot of clothes in hot weather.”
Chip admitted that wasn’t part of his plans.
“You going to mop the floors every time one of you kids tracks mud into the kitchen?”
Chip admitted that wasn’t how he had planned to spend his summer vacation either.
“Then you don’t get a vote,” sai
d Sissy.
Chip glared at his mother.
“I’ll talk to Hester Lee,” said Peewee. Hester Lee had been with Peewee’s mother off and on since he was born.
“That’s okay, sugar, I’ll find somebody.”
“What’s wrong with Hester Lee? She’s real good with children!”
That’s all Sissy needed, a spy carrying tales to Miss Lily. “If I had that old lady around here telling me about all her aches and pains, I’d end up working for her. I’ll get me someone a little younger if it’s all the same with you.”
“You know a girl?” he asked.
Sissy nodded. “I do. And I’ve known her family for years.”
“Well, she’d better be a good worker. I don’t want to squander my hard-earned money if she’s not willing to work.”
“She’s a lot neater than I am,” Sissy said.
Peewee gave in. He didn’t care anything about housework as long as somebody else did it.
SISSY WOKE UP at six forty-five and lay in bed enjoying that delicious time between sleep and real life. She was reveling in her coup. Doing good can be so delightfully bad. She decided to number that Rule Number Seventy-five. Parker must be going through the agonies of hell. Serves him right.
Clara was awake too, although she wasn’t hanging around in bed. She’d set her alarm for five-thirty. Most teenage girls like to fool with their hair and nails, but for Clara they were an obsession. Because in spite of having the highest IQ ever tested by the Gentry school system, white or Negro, her real identity, the one she cared about, was all tied up with the way she looked. And although she always protested when the other kids called her stuck up, she couldn’t help feeling deep down that her light skin did make her superior. Her earliest memory was sitting in church with her mother and having old dark-skinned ladies stroke her silky hair with envy, telling her mother what a pretty daughter she had.
So she’d set out to look white. She used Sissy as a role model, but kept herself better pressed. She protected her hands at all times and wore white gloves whenever she could. And she couldn’t imagine why her cousin, who could afford to buy shoes, would want to go around barefooted.
She’d already taken out her curlers, brushed her hair two hundred strokes, taken a bath, and given herself a complete manicure. Now she was starching and ironing one of her few skirts and blouses that didn’t match an outfit of Sissy’s. “You always said, you’ve got to press to impress,” she told her mother, who was leaning against the doorway and eyeing her with disgust.
Anyone seeing Denise Conners Johnson pull her lavender wrapper over her big, soft breasts would understand why a man as obsessed with race as Tibor Thompson would have trouble letting her go. With her café-au-lait skin and her slow, sensuous smile, she was his ultimate nightmare of racial mongrelization and his ultimate fantasy in a woman. As had happened with Sissy, Denise’s beauty had trapped her and kept her locked in a half-life in Gentry.
“I didn’t bring you up to work in no white folks’ kitchen. Especially those white folks.”
“Oh, Mama, don’t get all shook up.” Clara slipped into her freshly ironed outfit.
“Don’t you sass me, neither!”
“I’m not sassing you, Mama,” the girl said innocently. She knew how her mother hated to hear white slang coming from her mouth. She pulled her hair into a ponytail. She didn’t want to look too much like Sissy today. What if Mr. LeBlanc noticed? She saw her mother shake her head and look out the window. Clara knew ever since she’d cut her hair, her mother couldn’t stand to see her working it. Her long, wavy hair was her mother’s pride and joy. Clara had had the longest hair of any little girl in the colored school.
But her mother didn’t say anything about her hair today. “What you gonna do if your daddy comes over for a visit?”
Clara shrugged and tied a ribbon around her ponytail. She’d watched her white family for years. That’s our cousin in her new car, she’d said to her brother when they first saw Sissy drive by in her red convertible. And they’d ponder on just what it was that entitled white folks to live so much better than they did. And now finally, she’d have a chance to observe them close up, and ferret out their secrets.
It was just in time too, because Clara had an agonizing and thrilling secret of her own. What nobody knew—not her mother, who’d been so proud of her for getting into the University of Chicago, not her teacher, who said they’d all be looking up to her, not her principal, who admonished her to apply herself and become a credit to her race—was that when Clara filled out her scholarship application, she’d decided not to check the box that said Negro. She’d checked the box that said Caucasian instead. Once she got there, she planned to say she was Creole. Nobody agreed on exactly what that was anyway.
SHORTLY BEFORE CLARA was due to arrive, Chip assembled his brother and sister on the roof of the house for a science lesson. Military science. From their sunny height, they surveyed the area and stood watch, straining with excitement. Finally they spotted Clara walking up to the back door, fastidious in her freshly starched skirt and blouse. Then they saw the white gloves and had to hold their giggles. They waited until she knocked on the screen door.
PLOP! Clara felt a dull blow to the top of her head. She reached up and to her horror came away with something wet, and colorless, tacky between her white cotton fingers. What had happened to her? She heard the whispers. Looking up, she knocked what was left of an apple onto the sidewalk. Somebody was throwing fruit at her! As she bent over to inspect it, a green-and-white-striped watermelon was rolled to the edge of the roof. Six little hands held it poised in the rain gutter. They took careful aim.
“Clara!” Sissy said, opening the screen door.
SPLAT. The large green-and-white biotic projectile crashed into the top of the door, knocking it cockeyed on its hinges.
The watermelon split into irregular pieces, bombarding the women with wet pink pulp. It finished with a salvo to their open sandals, covering them with vegetable matter and wedging tough black seeds under their straps and between their bare toes.
“I quit,” Clara said.
“You haven’t even started.”
“That’s right,” Clara said, picking a chunk of watermelon pulp out of her auburn hair. “And I’m still alive. If it’s all the same with you, I’d like to keep it that way.” She turned and headed for the street, away from the war zone.
“Hold on.” Sissy stepped out onto the pavement and called, “Chip! Chip! You get your butt down here. I know you’re up there.” Then to Clara, “You said you needed a job.”
“Not this bad.” And for the first time Clara wondered what in heaven’s name she was getting herself into, going up north to a white college. Maybe they were all insane when you saw them up close. That would explain why the world was in such a mess. “At least at the funeral home, they drew a line between the living and the dead. They didn’t try to bury the ones walking and talking.” But Clara knew she couldn’t go back to the funeral home. Not after what had happened with old man Fletcher. She hadn’t been able to banish the memory of the undertaker’s stinking breath when he grabbed her as she was dusting a table near the big walnut casket with Miss Mardee laid out in it. Clara could still see the glint of his gold tooth next to those rotting brown ones when he’d tried to stick his nasty old tongue into her mouth. She’d brought her knee up hard and fast, like her brother had taught her. Fletcher howled, stumbled back, and knocked Miss Mardee right out of her casket. She lay spread-eagled on the floor, formaldehyde running out of her mouth, smelling up the family viewing room something awful. That was the moment the old lady’s grandson chose to walk in the door.
Fletcher fired Clara.
But she’d taken it personally. She hadn’t held what happened to her against the whole white race. On second thought, maybe she should have.
“Nobody’s trying to bury you, Clara.”
“You could have fooled me,” the teenager said, ignoring Sissy’s attempt at Southern char
m.
Sissy turned to the roof with a yell worthy of a long distance trucker. “Chip, if you don’t get your butt down here by the time I count to three, you’re not gonna be able to sit on it for a week. One…” She saw a flash of red overalls. “Marilee? Chip, if you’ve got your baby sister on the roof, you are in deep shit, boy.”
AMY LOU HOPPER and Rowena Weaver, the relief organist and supervisor at the telephone company, were climbing the steps to the church across the street when they heard a four-letter word that never would have crossed the lips of any lady worthy of that name.
Amy Lou turned her ankle in her high-heeled blue-and-white spectator pumps. She was sweating and out of breath from the heat and the climb. However, she managed to say, “Can you imagine, in front of her children.”
Rowena reached into her large basket purse and said nothing. Amy Lou continued, “As you know, I would never speak ill of any of God’s creatures, but in Sissy’s case”—she paused to pant—“I’ll make an exception. Trash is trash.”
“That’s real Christian of you, Amy Lou,” the relief organist said as she unlocked the big, church doors.
“MARILEE,” SISSY CALLED. “Marilee, come on over to the edge of the roof, honey.”
A face, bursting with giggles, peeked down at her.
“How’d your brother get you up there?”
“We climbed,” said the little girl, pointing to an old magnolia tree shading the master bedroom.
“Well, you just climb on down. You, too, Billy Joe.” There was no further acknowledgment. “I know you’re up there. If your brother and Marilee are there, you are, too. Now come on down.”
As the two children crawled across the roof to the magnolia tree, Sissy apologized to Clara. “They’re not always like this. They were just having fun.”
Clara nodded. “What’s it like when they’re having a real bad day?”
Sissy looked at the younger woman and looked up toward the roof where Chip was hiding. “You have every right to ask that question.”
The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc Page 10
