’Course she did. She saw me comin’. I realize she is the local saint of all mercies, Jackson, but not much of it ever extended to me, did it? Missy Fine Sassaport dropped her handbag into the walker basket and pushed the mechanism forward, keeping her head down so she could be on the lookout for obstacles in her path. There’s a step there, Jackson warned, earning only irritation for his thoughtfulness. I can see that, son. I might be stove up, but I’m not blind yet. He tried flattery: That’s a lovely dress you have on, Mama. It would be silk, no? Such a pretty color on you ... It new?
New? When did I last have a new dress your wife didn’t get me? And if she did, wouldn’t you’ve been the first one to hear about it and more than once? No, no. Bubba Ray found this in the back of my closet. He ironed it for me too. Such a good boy your brother is, Jackson. So good to me. I cannot understand why he’s not invited to this affair. Family’s family. Didn’t I teach you that?
Because he loved his mother, Jackson tried never to bad-mouth Bubba Ray in her presence despite plenty of provocation. He knew Bubba Ray had no such reciprocal sensitivities and bad-mouthed him at every opportunity, real or imagined. Never mind the miserable history between the brothers, why did Mama think he could easily forgive him just for that or that Stella might? The answer was she didn’t. She knew the bad blood between them was old and thick. That didn’t stop her from trying to make him feel guilty about it. There were many times he wanted to tell her the whys and wherefores, just blurt it out and devil take the hindmost. But he didn’t.
Yes, Mama, but—
Don’t even try, Jackson. Obviously, I did not. Must’ve forgot that lesson somewhere between your ABCs and my labor pains.
She rattled on in this vein until Jackson had her settled in her seat next to Aunt Beadie at a table just beneath the dais with its wildly flowered head table. Her other tablemates were an assortment of black and white women her age, including his two remaining aunts. Everyone knew one another and exchanged warm greetings, asking after the welfare of whatever spouses yet lived, the children, the grandchildren, the greats. As he quit their company to deposit Mama’s and his own coat in the cloakroom, he watched his mother’s eyes search the room as she chatted and smiled and nodded to her companions. He knew who she was looking for: Mildred Godwin. He shuddered at the thought of those two knocking heads, Mama with her list of ancient grudges and Mildred with her fractured memory. There was a reason why Stella’s family sat way the hell over the other side of the ballroom.
Meanwhile, he’d lost his wife. Striking as she was, he couldn’t see her. There were a good two hundred people in the room and another thirty or so at the bar and at least fifteen servers bustled about. The noise around him deafened: shouted conversations, shrieks of laughter, howls of surprise, music from a five-piece orchestra the chair of the board herself had insisted upon and of which only every twelfth note could be discerned, providing it was struck ensemble and in a high enough register. He might not have worried about her whereabouts at all—Stella was more than at home in a crowd—except that he’d noticed something else in his search. Katherine Marie was nowhere to be found either.
Then he saw them. Together. They were next to a corridor that led to the kitchen and the restrooms. They faced each other, each with a grim expression on her face. Their mouths moved, but not, he judged, particularly passionately. For the longest time, neither moved a muscle. Dear God, he thought, this is terrible. Stella is never without something to say. Yet she stood there, motionless. Gotta defuse that, gotta defuse that, he muttered, and rushed through the crowd to separate the women before something awful, something shameful happened. His last sight of them was Katherine Marie speaking, then Stella speaking too and the two of them walking off together down that corridor. A loose and ugly heat swam around at the pit of his stomach. The crowd joined up, separated, cut off his view. He lost track of them completely.
Visions of the two women tearing out each other’s hair in the ladies’ room afflicted him. He reached that place and loitered by the door until he was certain nothing amiss was going on within. He poked his head in the kitchen and found only cooks and waiters hard at work. Perplexed, he returned to the ballroom, searched some more. After stopping by Mama’s table, which he was constitutionally unable to pass without inquiring if she needed anything, he mounted the dais for an eagle-eye view of the room and searched again, glancing only briefly at the corner where Mildred Godwin and the brothers sat, as he figured this was the last spot where Stella might linger. Stuart Cahill was at his shoulder whispering thoughts that might be Jackson’s own: Where is she? We’ve got to start. These are her rules, remember. We’ve planned accordingly. Where is she? Where is she? Jackson ceased his vigil to turn and look at the vice chairman of the town council. The man sweat from the crown of his head, rivulets of sweat dripped down the sides of his great red face. Jackson found himself in the familiar position of calming another over the thing he feared himself. Stu, it’s alright. She’ll be here any minute.
It took three. Three long, anxious minutes during which the rest of the head table assembled and questioned him: Where’s Stella? Where’s Stella? At last he saw her coming through the service entrance of the kitchen in the company of Katherine Marie. What had they done, he wondered, hide from him behind the pots? They put their lips to each other’s ears and whispered. They smiled or frowned in unison, as in the old days, assessing whatever it was they discussed so intimately with complete agreement. They were holding hands. Will wonders never cease, thought Jackson as he nearly shuddered with the relief of it, whereupon a great warmth spread throughout his chest. He longed to wrap Stella up there, and he wanted to wrap Katherine Marie up there, too, realizing in that instant how much he’d missed her, how very much. Yes, there they were: the two women he’d loved most in the world, under the same roof again, nearly in each other’s arms. Then he remembered Mama. Her head was turned in Katherine Marie’s and Stella’s direction, a look of skeptical amusement on her face. Poor Mama. Poor Mama. Alright, he thought, the three women he’d loved most in the world under the same roof if not exactly conjoined in a triad of appreciation, at least not killing each other. That was worth a word or two of praise and thanksgiving, which he promptly offered the heavens.
A flash of red, green, yellow, and black burst into the left-hand corner of his field of vision, startling him. It was the head wrap of the board’s chair, Adella Thompkins, a mountain of a woman who, thanks to her bulging eyes and dusky skin, looked not so much the African queen her gear intended but more the psychic swami of some renegade carnival out of Mumbai. Get her up here right quick, Jackson. Everybody’s hungry and on the verge of drunkenness. We’ve got to feed these people. Like his wife, Adella Thompkins was a woman accustomed to immediate compliance from the men around her. A lifetime of matrimonial conditioning to her very tone of voice compelled Jackson to mutter yes, ma’am, yes while he rushed to the end of the dais, ready to trot on down through the ballroom’s length and herd his wife to her seat. Stella saw him just then and gestured that he wait, she’d be right there. He stopped short. She and Katherine Marie bussed each other and parted. Stella took a proud, straight-backed walk toward him in that determined, self-possessed way she had. As for Katherine Marie, she hesitated briefly at Mama’s table to extend courtesies, after which, just as Stella had predicted, she made a beeline to Mrs. Godwin and the brothers and settled herself in.
Jackson shook himself and met Stella on the floor. He put his arm around her and whispered: What happened? His wife radiated her public smile. Through her teeth, she said: She apologized.
No.
Yes.
I can’t believe it.
Neither can I.
What did you do?
What could I do, I forgave her.
Stella was mounting the steps of the dais now, still talking through her teeth while smiling and waving to the crowd: And then I apologized too.
Adella Thompkins embraced Stella on her arrival to the head ta
ble, then pushed her into her seat, glaring at Jackson as if daring him to dillydally before parking his own ass in the chair next to. Stuart Cahill, who still sweat buckets, thoughtfully mopped his face with a handkerchief before leaning over to kiss Stella on her proffered cheek. Adella coughed. He hurried to his seat. The chair rapped a gavel on the podium to still the crowd. She began her speech. Half of it, Jackson couldn’t hear. The words that echoed through his brain were the ones he couldn’t believe he heard: And then I apologized too.
He shook himself. Tried to pay attention.
Ladies, Gentlemen, Adella said. I am so very happy to see you all here tonight. Are you all havin’ a good time?
Women applauded lightly, forks hit the sides of wineglasses, a handful of men standing by the bar shouted: Hell, yes! And everyone laughed. Adella continued.
You know, it’s never been our custom to deliver the speeches before you all have had your meal, but our honoree tonight demanded that we get the speeches over with at the beginning of our supper so, as she put it, when you all start nodding off during the tributes she can take her rightful blame tomorrow rather than puttin’ it down to bellies bustin’ with fried chicken. I pointed out to her that the noise of you all eatin’ and clatterin’ your silverware might drown out the speeches and she said: Well, thank God then.
Adella paused and waited for chuckles from the assembled to come and go. Then she sighed, dramatically, for effect.
That’s just like our Stella Sassaport, isn’t it? Always dodging the spotlight. Doing all her good work behind the scenes. Never pausing to rest for accolades, just on to the next worthy cause. Those of you who have worked with her know that she is a fiery spirit. She is not one you want to cross. I’ve been at meetings where grown men twice her size— here she glanced pointedly at Stuart Cahill, earning herself another round of titters from the audience—have trembled in their seats at the thought of doing battle with her. Yes, we are grateful that spirit has been on the side of fairness and justice, as it has served us well. Stella Sassaport’s commitment to the welfare of our poor and downtrodden has never wavered since the day she arrived here in our fair state on the arm of her brand-new husband, our own Attorney Jackson Sassaport, and I know you all are aware that in those days and in that time the reception of her ilk was often neither gentle nor kind. She came to us at a pivotal point in our history, when her work was both difficult and perilous, but she did it and continued it long after others abandoned us, thinking the job done when it had only just begun. I’ll let some of the other speakers enumerate her achievements. For now, to get the ball rolling, I just want to say to you all: Welcome, welcome to Hinds County, Mississippi’s Unsung Civic Hero Award Dinner of 1995, honoring at long last our own Stella Sassaport, MSW, LCSW.
The applause was vigorous. People all over the room, people from the Rotary Club, people from the State Department of Human Services, a coterie of local philanthropists, all of them clapped away, but the people Stella had helped locate grants for their education or their surgery, keep their children, find shelter, enter rehab, get a job worth working at stood up and clapped the loudest, the longest. Though their affection brought a certain damp to Jackson’s eyes, Stella herself kept her head down as she turned a deep, self-conscious red. She gripped Jackson’s knee under the table. Her fingernails dug in. He tried not to wince. The first speaker was a former inmate of Parchman Prison during the Freedom Rider days who spoke more about Perry than Stella, but that was alright, Stella didn’t mind that at all. The next was a middle-aged black woman, a Vietnam War widow, whose three sons won scholarships to Morehouse in the early ‘80s thanks to Stella’s tutelage during her nights and weekends off. The last was a young white man infected with HIV for whom Stella had spent the last year lobbying Pfizer to provide him the drug cocktail that kept him alive. When he was through, Adella presented her with the traditional framed award, hand calligraphed, adorned with a gold seal and blue ribbon glinting under glass. It was Stella’s turn to stand up and speak. With some reluctance, Jackson felt, she released his knee and stood while the room exploded with applause. This time everyone got up, even Mama, even Mrs. Godwin, although neither of those two clapped with the rest but stood there nodding like queens of England with twin expressions of modesty plastered on their features as if they and not Stella were the cause of all this boisterous appreciation. Stella gestured that everybody please sit, which they did, and the room quieted waiting for her to speak.
Thank you, Adella, Jim, Althea, Bobby for those gracious remarks. You all are too kind. She unfolded the sheets of paper she’d carried in a white-knuckled grip to the podium. I mean that. I did not fight these fights alone. However I may have facilitated your accomplishments, they belong to you, not to me. She gave a sweeping look around the room, pausing pointedly at her mother’s table, where Seth and Aaron had sandwiched Katherine Marie between them, each leaning over and murmuring into her closest delicate ear remarks one might surmise were bitingly witty for the way she rolled her twinkling eyes and grimaced in reaction. Oh Lordy, thought Jackson, following his wife’s gaze and knowing too well what the prompt folding-up of her speech meant. Lordy, she’s going to wing it. She’s going to wing it on wings of fire.
I am frankly stunned to see so many old friends and associates here, Stella continued. In fact, there are those here I would have sworn would attend a party in my honor only if it occurred directly after my burial. Oh yes, that includes a certain someone tryin’ to hide behind his napkin over there.
Heads swiveled all around the room, looking for the object of Stella’s attention.
Yes, you, Doctor, she said. I’ve not forgotten the time you had your nurse sweep me out the door with the rest of the dust under your feet. Bobby here remembers too. It wasn’t so long ago. And let’s see, ah yes, my girlfriend over there lookin’ all febrile, or is that a blush, dear? You’re the one stopped your daddy from giving Althea’s second boy the books we needed, don’t think I don’t know about that ...
Mouths dropped open all around the room as she continued calling out in veiled fashion those who’d crossed her.
And you, you with the green thumb who thought your wife’s white roses were a more important crop for the community garden than vegetables for a mess of hungry, ill-fed children. I was so amused when they got the blight, especially when I heard you blamed me personally.
Stella went on. Although she chose to speak in pronouns, careful not to identify anyone outright, several of the guilty parties huffed and puffed and betrayed themselves immediately, to the great entertainment of their enemies. Others plastered frozen smiles on their faces to avoid detection. When she paused, shielding her eyes with her hand to study the assembled more carefully, picking out victims with the studied patience of a hunter huddled up all night in a blind, one prominent couple in the back left their dinner half-eaten and made tracks for the cloakroom before she could get to them. At her wits’ end, Adella Thompkins reached up from her seat next to the podium and put a hand on her arm as if to arrest her scandalous litany, but Stella shook it off.
Oh, I know, Adella, these are the people whose ass we need to kiss every day of the week just to get poor little children places to sleep at night, but they need shaming. They’ve needed it a long time. Don’t worry, I’m almost done. I’m moving on from Hypocrites I Have to Grovel Before to Secrets I Want to Share.
She paused to take a long drink of water while the room waited with all the dread fascination of rubberneckers at a traffic pile up. Jackson, do something! Adella whispered fiercely. She’s bidin’ her time, she’ll use given names any second! Jackson whispered fiercely back: What can I do? and Adella said well, you could put your arms around her and squeeze so tight she has to shut up or suffocate.
What secrets do I know? Oh, they are legion, my friends. I know who’s battered their child, who’s diddled the maid, who’s cheated some poor man of his pay because he assumed his victim was as stupid as he was powerless. I know who those greedy bullies are. I
know about this one’s drug problem and that one’s gambling. I know who’s dipped in the public till. I know who the takers are, the scammers, the ingrates.
She looked straight at Katherine Marie then. Katherine Marie tensed her neck and threw her shoulders back so that the yet hovering Seth and Aaron went off balance and swayed in their seats. Oh, Lordy, Jackson thought, here it comes. Only it didn’t. In the next breath, Stella launched her summation.
I’ve heard it all in my day from sources none of you would suspect. Well, maybe some of you would. Those who have suffered the fallout from all that battering, diddling, drugging, and theft. The ones I’ve tried to lend a helping hand to in my career. The ones who weren’t too proud or too far gone to take it. And I would like to say that it’s you all who deserve this award, not me. A hero. Me. I was just doing my job. But you all. You survivors. You whose song has not been sung and likely never will be. You who demand so little from the world and so much from yourselves. I’m going to take this lovely little award and put it in the bottom drawer of my desk, the one I put my bag in in the morning and the one I take it out of when I leave. Every time I do that, I’m going to make you all a blessing. Because it belongs to all you all, not me. And I thank you, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the gift you’ve given me. The gift of pride, of hope in my fellow man. Because those other bastards nearly killed it.
Stella sat. There was a second or two of silence and then the assembled burst into long, sustained applause, up on their feet again, beaming more, Jackson thought, with relief that they’d not been explicitly exposed than with appreciation of the fortitude of Stella’s most successful clientele. He reached over to embrace her in congratulations but also for the opportunity to mutter in her ear: I thought for a minute there you were going to do it. That you were going to tell on Katherine Marie. And she replied: Maybe they’ll let me speak again after coffee. I could squeeze it in then if you’d like. Not a chance, he said, I definitely would not like, not at all.
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