Southern Discomfort

by Tena Clark

  “Don’t you EVER hold hands with a nigger again.”

  “Who, Mama? That little girl?” I didn’t know who she was talking about, but I knew my playdate was over.

  “You don’t ever touch a nigger. Ever. Do you understand me?”

  That’s when I made my first mistake.

  “No, Mama.”

  “What do you mean, No, Mama? Don’t you No, Mama me! I don’t ever want to see you touching one again.”

  I looked into her eyes and there was something wild about her anger. I had heard the word “nigger” often, but mostly from Daddy and men like him. They talked about the black men and women workers on our farm and around town as if they were chattel, still owned and ruled and assessed like animals by their white overseers. I didn’t know why, but unlike “Negro” or “colored,” the word “nigger” was mean and full of hate. Nonetheless, it was used as routinely and casually as someone’s name. But I had never before heard Mama use it. Until that day with the little girl in the pecan orchard.

  “They are nasty,” she went on.

  I looked into her eyes and thought, Mama’s done lost her mind. How am I not supposed to touch a colored person ever again? What about Virgie and Beulah Mae and Mayfield? My second mistake was asking her just that.

  Without a word, and without loosening her grip, Mama pulled me through the kitchen, my toes skimming the floor as she half dragged, half carried me over to the sink. I saw Virgie standing in the corner, her eyes huge with worry. She’d seen enough of Mama drunk and mad to know it was only going to get worse. Mama grabbed a Brillo Pad from its saucer and, barely pausing to run it under the faucet, began scrubbing my hand, the one that had held the little girl’s, all the way from my fingertips to my elbow.

  “Niggers have germs,” she said, scrubbing so hard I was sure I would see blood start to seep from beneath the Brillo Pad. “They are nasty. They’ll make you sick.”

  “Mama, STOP.” I sobbed, trying to wiggle away from the burning pain of the steel wool and her body crushing mine into the hard edge of the tile counter. “What about Virgie?”

  Mama’s hand slowed.

  “Virgie’s different.”

  “But how? She takes care of me, she hugs me and kisses me. Why is she different, Mama?”

  My mother stopped, stepped back from the counter, and looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. Her hair was falling into her eyes and she was out of breath. She looked over at Virgie, her eyes resting on the cracked cup in Virgie’s hands. It was Virgie’s cup and kept very separate from ours, just as Viola’s had been, along with her one fork and one plate.

  Mama finally dropped the steel wool in the sink and released her grip on my arm, but her fingers lingered on my skin and they trembled as she gently stroked me, soothing the raw redness she’d just put there. She slowly shook her head.

  “I don’t know why, baby.” Her voice was a ragged whisper. She looked over at Virgie again and then lowered her eyes. “It’s just the way it is.”

  Maybe so, but I never heard Mama use the word “nigger” again.

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  Through all her torment on the farm, there were moments—perhaps not entire days, but moments—when Mama was happy. Even though she raged against Daddy’s adultery and despaired about her stalled musical career, she still gave me glimpses of the carefree, pretty young girl Daddy had once vowed to love, honor, and obey. When she was in one of her really good moods, she’d put on a record, flash her trademark impish grin, and pull me across the floor to dance with her. As we slid back and forth across the linoleum in our large kitchen-den, we’d beg Virgie to come join us, but she never would.

  “No, ma’am. Y’all go ahead. I’s got my work to do,” she’d say, but I could see a little smile lifting the corners of her mouth as she bent over the mop bucket or sink and resumed her scrubbing.

  Mama would nod in Virgie’s direction and continue dancing and then sing along with the record in her rich voice. Mama was an alto, with a deep, smoky, even masculine tone, so much so that when she answered the phone, the person on the other end would often say, “Hello, sir.” One of her favorite songs was “C’est Si Bon,” which she sang with a throaty lustiness—think Rosemary Clooney meets Ella Fitzgerald, with a little Tallulah Bankhead thrown in for good measure:

  C’est si bon,

  Et si nous nous aimons . . .

  She knew it would make me and Virgie laugh and it always did. Even though she didn’t read or speak French, someone in New Orleans must have translated the lyrics, because she knew them by heart too.

  It’s so good,

  And if we are in love . . .

  As I watched her in those moments when music made her come alive, I began to understand the power of every song and its ability to transform the prisoner to the free, the wretched to the joyous, the crippled to the agile. The notes and words and phrases entered my mother’s body like an electric current, filling the emptiness in her as nothing and no one else could. Music replaced her tortured loneliness with company, her dead dreams with a child’s optimism for the future, and her scoundrel husband with her own passionate lover, a lover who never lied, cheated, disappointed, or abandoned. I watched the magical transformation and I understood, and I remembered, for I too would need its solace in time.

  Her other comfort was the Bible, and she read it as faithfully as a pilgrim heading to the Holy Land. Drunk or sober, every night she read at least one passage, Psalms being her favorite. I think the 25th Psalm had particular resonance, given her life with Daddy:

  To you, O Lord, I pray. Don’t fail me, Lord, for I am trusting you. Don’t let my enemies succeed. Don’t give them victory over me. None who have faith in God will ever be disgraced for trusting him. But all who harm the innocent shall be defeated.

  She had a Bible by her bed and a gun under her pillow her entire life. I once asked her why she needed both.

  “Well, honey, I gotta have the gun in case Jesus is taking the night off!”

  * * *

  On good days she and I would often sing “King of the Road,” really belting out “I’m a MAAAAAN of means by no means, king of the ROOOOOOOAD!” until we were so hoarse we couldn’t speak. When she was having a bad day and moving slow and sad, we’d sometimes sit on the couch and put on one of her jazz albums—Billie Holiday was a favorite—and we’d harmonize to “Good mornin’, heartache, what’s new?”

  There were even some happy family moments, many of them spent at the Roosevelt hotel in New Orleans, where we celebrated several Christmases when I was very little. For us, New Orleans was the big city, and we loved its elaborate decorations: Christmas trees on every corner, green garlands on each lamppost, and a canopy of white lights strung above Bourbon Street that stretched for blocks. Walking beneath the lights made us feel like we were in a magical kingdom. We all dressed in our holiday best—crinoline skirts and patent leather shoes and white gloves for us girls, Daddy in his white dinner jacket and black flannel pants—and spent our evenings in the Roosevelt’s Blue Room for dinner and dancing.

  When I close my eyes I can still picture Mama and Daddy on the dance floor, Mama towering over him while his head nestled on her bosom. I thought they were the most glamorous parents on Earth. Daddy would return to the table and with rare exuberance say, “Girls, my favorite activity in the world is to dance with your mama!” as he reached out and gave Mama’s fanny a little pat as she sat down. After he danced with Mama, he would take my hand for his next dance. Still less than three feet tall, I would stand on his shoes and hold on to his waist tightly as he glided us around the floor. I was sure every eye was on us.

  Sometimes all my sisters would come out to the farm and we’d go hunting for squirrels and rabbits, not for dinner or anything, just for “sport.” Daddy adored the spectacle of it all: Lamar Clark and his five lovely girls walking through the woods of Mississippi, each loaded for bear. Daddy would hand Mama and my three sisters a rifle each from his gun r
ack, and me my BB gun. He’d walk ahead, king cock on the farm, strutting and preening for an invisible audience, and we’d march behind, our eyes peeled to the trees for prey. As much as I hated the thought of killing an animal, I surely didn’t want to miss out on any Wild West action. I could have been Calamity Jane’s alter ego, right down to my dusty overalls and cowboy boots, always looking for an excuse to shoot my gun. Eventually some poor squirrel would flip its bushy tail or start chattering in a tree, and the shooting would begin.

  After five rifles and one BB gun had emptied their chambers into the two-pound rodent, the bloody remnants would filter down from the tree like furry confetti. Daddy would pick up the biggest piece as if it were a lion he had killed on safari and throw it into the underbrush, then we’d head back to the house, triumphant.

  One year, a panther attacked our neighbor’s chicken coop, killing many of its flock, then prowled the banks of the Chickasawhay every night for weeks, terrorizing us with its howling. A panther’s cry is still one of the most frightening sounds I’ve ever heard. Its high-pitched screams sound like a woman being murdered in a dark alley. Everyone within fifty miles of Waynesboro kept their loaded shotguns a few inches closer than normal, never leaving the house without it, and no one more so than Daddy. Driving home from a church supper one night, we spotted two eyes illuminated by our headlights in a pecan tree near the house.

  “That’s him! That’s the goddamn panther!” Daddy yelled, slamming on the brakes. “Stay in the car! That sonofabitch is gonna g-g-g-git what he’s got comin’!” He grabbed his pistol from under the front seat and jumped out of the car before it had come to a stop.

  BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM! He peppered the tree with bullets, emptying the gun’s chamber. At last we heard the poor creature fall out of the tree with a ker-plunk. Daddy walked over to examine the carcass, tilted his hat back, scratched his head, then slowly walked back to the car.

  Daddy hadn’t killed the panther. He’d killed my sister’s beloved cat. He never quite lived that one down. In fact, it was one of the few stories about him in which he was the butt of the joke that he allowed us to tell and retell. Maybe the only one.

  But most days, the family wasn’t hunting or laughing at Daddy’s mistaking a house cat for a killer panther. And most days, Mama wasn’t dancing and singing to her music, even the sad songs. Most days, she was in her room with her other lover: booze. And living with an unhappiness that was slowly gnawing away at her.

  Chapter Eight

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Daddy was having the time of his life.

  Before I was aware of what to call it, I knew my father had a way with women. Or at least his money did. But honestly, it was more than his money. Lamar Clark had the sort of self-assurance that drew others to him like deer to a salt lick, even while it masked his profound insecurities, beginning with his short stature. My father had the ultimate Napoleon complex. Here was a man who owned most of Waynesboro and yet wore two-inch lifts in his shoes. Here was a man who had a handful of governors, senators, and congressmen in his pocket, and yet shaved his armpits smooth, had regular manicures, and was never seen with a hair on his head out of place. I’d stand next to him at the bathroom counter, fascinated by how he combed thick gobs of Brylcreem through his hair—practically placing each strand one by one until he had it perfectly patterned. Hell, perhaps my daddy was just a metrosexual before his time. Who knows? My daddy’s life had doors that I will never be able to open. But what I did know, even then, was that making money and chasing women were everything to him. In that order. They defined who he was. I don’t even know if he particularly enjoyed the women or the material possessions all that much once he acquired them. The thrill was all in the chase, and in the control and power that his winning represented.

  Having been born dirt poor and without the land-owning pedigree of the true Southern gentleman, Daddy nonetheless carried himself like a tycoon or a Hollywood film star, and he dressed like one too—impeccably, even in the wilting summer heat. He was Waynesboro’s Jay Gatsby, and he hosted some of the town’s most lavish parties, all the women in gowns with pinched waists and yards of thick petticoats, the men in white jackets and ties. And of course, by the time I was born, he was a millionaire—and he made sure everyone in town knew it, from the multiple new cars he bought every six months for himself, his wife, and all of his daughters, to building our flashy “farm” with its long semicircle driveway rimmed in roses and willow trees, to plastering his name on everything he owned: buildings, companies, streets.

  On any given day, Daddy would cruise around town, admiring his own image in his Cadillac’s rearview mirror, his left arm dangling out the window, a cigarette between his fingers. When he wasn’t entertaining some woman in his car, he and I would tool around town, making his daily rounds. We were a team of two: breakfast at Blaine’s Cafe, lunch at Petty’s, the post office for the mail, a stop by the bank president’s office for a chat, then the teller’s window to make a deposit—always a deposit, never a withdrawal—the feed and grain store for supplies and to chat up the salesclerks about the latest news about “them commies up North, bringin’ their trouble down heah where it ain’t wanted.” I didn’t know what trouble they were talking about, but I guessed it had something to do with the “colored” folks. Just by the looks on their faces when they talked about it, I could see they were both disgusted and angry. And that usually meant they were talking about race or politics. And they were, and that summer of 1961 it was about busloads of Freedom Riders driving through the South protesting for civil rights. But I didn’t know about that then. All I knew was that the men talking with Daddy were plenty upset that anyone would dare tell them they were wrong about something, wrong about anything actually.

  Wherever we went, men patted my head and women pinched my cheek and made a point of complimenting me or my clothes or my hair. Their fussing struck me as rather ridiculous, because I was always dressed in a simple cotton school dress or shorts, with my hair in a long braid down my back and—in the summer—fresh red dirt on my white Keds. But that didn’t stop them from admiring me like I was the next Shirley Temple, even as I fidgeted and twisted away from their pats and pinches.

  “Why, I swear, Lamar, this little girl of yours looks more and more like you every day. Lord have mercy, but she’s your spittin’ image—right down to her pretty, little, stubborn chin!”

  “Don’t be sullin’ up like a girl, M-M-M-Monkey Joe. C-C-C-Come on now and smile for the nice lady,” he’d say, and I’d oblige, sometimes even throwing in a curtsy just to play the game. I found that, like Daddy, I also loved the attention and felt a strange power under their admiring eyes. I liked being Lamar Clark’s little girl, even if I felt more like his “spittin’ image” little boy.

  My father also lit up when he was around a pretty woman; he would flash his rare killer smile, push his fedora back on his head, and offer her a cigarette before lighting one for himself.

  * * *

  By the time I was six or seven, Mama would often take a bottle of whiskey and disappear into her bedroom after supper, unwilling and most likely unable to remain on her feet. But on those rare evenings when she was sober, or maybe only a little sauced, I’d sit with her as she took off her makeup, and then we’d get in bed and watch The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis on the black-and-white TV. Well, I’d watch while she did her puzzle or read from the Bible, her free hand reaching over and lightly scratching my back with her long fingernails. It was a simple gesture, but one that always soothed me to the point of putting me to sleep.

  Watching Mama remove her makeup was a ritual I cherished. I sat on the edge of the tub, playing a balancing game with myself, seeing how far I could lean back without falling in, and she’d begin. After tucking her hair into a hairnet, she’d scoop up a big dollop of Pond’s Cold Cream with two fingers and expertly spread it all over her face and throat. It was a sort of art in motion, as if she were glazing a fine piece of porcelain with an artist’s brush. Sh
e’d let it sit on her skin while she filed her nails.

  One night, as I watched her, I remembered one of Daddy’s admirers from our errands around town.

  “Why doesn’t Daddy ever say nice things to me or compliment my hair, or tell me I have his pretty, little, stubborn chin?”

  She looked over at me, her dark eyes even darker in their sea of white cream. They softened as she took her finger and traced a line of cold cream down my cheek.

  “Oh baby, your daddy’s a complicated man,” she said. She knew that better than most, and even though she often got drunk and waved a threatening gun in his “cheatin’, sonofabitch” face, it was plain she still loved him, and somehow still held a fondness deep in her heart.

  “But he doesn’t kiss or hug on me. He ain’t never said, ‘I love you,’ or nothing.”

  “Or anything, and of course he loves you,” she said. Even though she’d quit school at fifteen, she had never stopped reading and her grammar and vocabulary were better than most college grads’ in the town. Her lifelong love of crossword puzzles also helped, I think.

  “Didn’t he buy you that new BB gun you’ve been eyein’ at the store?” she asked, pushing up the sleeves to her dressing gown and reaching for her jar of Jergens lotion.

  I told her I didn’t want another present. “Why can’t he say nice things, or hug me, like he loves me?” Like you and Virgie and Georgia do, I wanted to say. In fact, when I did try to hug and kiss him, he stiffened up like a mannequin in the store window, giving me a dismissive pat on the back as he pushed away from the hug.