Southern Discomfort

by Tena Clark

  * * *

  After about eight months living above the dry cleaners, Mama couldn’t take life in the same small town with Lamar Clark any longer, and she moved herself, first to Laurel for a few months, then to Mobile, Alabama. While I felt some relief that I didn’t have to keep as close an eye on her, I had a new worry that she was so far away. Every other weekend, I would take the Trailways bus ninety miles south down Highway 45 to visit her. Daddy would drop me at the station and hand me a crisp $100 bill for “spending money.” Mama would tuck the bill away, refusing to use any of it in restaurants. We’d spend the weekend eating frozen TV dinners of stringy Salisbury steak and tasteless chicken potpies and mashed potatoes and green peas. After dinner, I waited for her to pass out on the couch or in bed so I could take her lit cigarette and stub it out in the ashtray before she burned us both to kingdom come.

  It had been hard to watch her self-destruct before my eyes, but that decline became a veritable swan dive off a cliff after she moved to Mobile. She had always dressed to the nines in the latest fashions and, even after four babies, her figure was beautiful and well maintained. She had her hair and nails done once a week without fail, and her shoes and handbag always matched. But after she left Mississippi, it was as if she no longer had to appear before judgmental eyes, and she gained weight and started wearing nondescript cheap and shapeless sundresses with elastic straps that would get all kind of bunched up over her now enormous breasts. She also had four or five muumuus she rotated through that became faded and pocked with cigarette burns, and she looked sad and destitute in them. I don’t know what happened to her pretty clothes, maybe she sold them, maybe she just didn’t fit in them anymore, but she started resembling the run-down, out-of-luck hovels where she lived. All she seemed to care about was drinking.

  * * *

  Whenever I could, I persuaded Virgie to come with me to Mobile, even though I knew she hated to leave the comfort of her small town, where she felt safe and knew where the COLORED bathrooms and drinking fountains were. A misstep in Waynesboro in the mid-1960s could get her verbally reprimanded, maybe slapped, but a misstep outside of Waynesboro could get her beaten, or killed. But even in Waynesboro, when she’d start fiddling and twitching around and I’d ask her if she had to go to the bathroom, she’d shake her head and say no, she’d hold it until we got home, not wanting to use the filthy COLORED bathroom at the Texaco station or the even worse outhouse behind the grocery store. But even knowing her discomfort, I dreaded going to Mobile alone, and I begged her until she gave up and agreed to come with me. Besides, I knew that with Virgie along we’d all have at least one good meal and I would feel safe.

  On one visit, after Mama’s Bible reading, when it came time for bed, Mama headed to the bedroom and pointed Virgie to the couch.

  “No!” I said. “I want Virgie to sleep with us, in the bed. I don’t want her on the couch.”

  Both women looked at me in horror—Mama didn’t want to share the bed with Virgie, and Virgie really didn’t want to share the bed with the two of us. Not only would it be cause for lynching in some parts of Mississippi and Alabama, but both she and Mama were tall, ample women and Mama’s bed was only a double, barely a foot wider than a twin.

  “I’s be fine on the couch,” Virgie said, her eyes pleading with me to stop this nonsense, right now!

  “No, Virgie. I want you to sleep in the real bed, with us.”

  Mama dragged me into the bathroom.

  “You listen to me, Tena Rix. Virgie does not want to sleep in my little bed with the two of us, and besides, if your daddy ever hears that she did, there will be hell to pay and you know that.”

  I knew it. I had seen the people in white hoods walking between the cars in the church parking lot with donation buckets. I had seen how Jack and other black men kept their eyes on the ground when I spoke to them. I knew that if there was a fire and Virgie was found in bed with two white women, she would be the one to be dragged out and put on the end of a rope. I knew all of that, but by that time I had put my foot down and I refused to budge.

  Ever since I had begun having nightmares after Mama’s suicide attempt, and particularly after she left the farm, deep, restful sleep had eluded me—except for this one blessed night in Mobile. While probably neither Mama nor Virgie slept a lick, I fell into a deep-coma sleep of pure peace and safety, nestled between two of the women I loved most in the world, and who loved me right back.

  Chapter Seventeen

  * * *

  With Mama in Mobile, Daddy was now fully in charge. Well, “in charge” might be a bit of an exaggeration. Except for his signature T-bone steak or corn bread with blackberry jam and butter, he didn’t do much in the way of cooking. Occasionally he’d crumble a handful of saltine crackers into a glass and add milk, which I thought was just about as good a snack as the Good Lord could drum up. On really special occasions he’d make my favorite treat, one his mother had taught him how to make. He’d put a few handfuls of peanuts in an old white T-shirt, twist it into a ball, then smash the peanuts with a hammer. Then he’d mix the crushed peanuts with molasses, pour the whole concoction onto a cookie sheet, and bake it into an out-of-this-world, gooey taffy. That was just about the limits of Daddy’s kitchen prowess. But I didn’t go hungry: We ate out three meals a day, nearly every day.

  Daddy also didn’t have the first notion of how to tend to the various grooming demands of a pubescent girl, beginning with my thick mane of hair. His solution was to drop me at Bobbie’s Beauty Parlor to have it chopped off. While I was actually thrilled to be rid of its cumbersome upkeep and tendency to get caught in my bicycle tires and the bars of the jungle gym or swing set, Mama took one look at my bob cut to just under my ears and started to cry.

  During the week, Daddy dropped me off at school. I’d hop out of the car and quickly slam the door shut because he didn’t like to linger at the curb. Actually, he didn’t even like to bring the car to a complete stop before tearing off again, so it was best to jump out and away from the car door to avoid being dragged off with it.

  “Now you do g-g-g-good, Tena Rix, and I’ll see ya for dinner,” he’d yell out the window, his hand reaching down to push in the cigarette lighter.

  I liked school. Well, at least I liked having a roomful of other kids around. I could have taken or left the lessons, if not some of our teachers.

  Mrs. Geraldine Gardner, our sixth- and seventh-grade homeroom and math teacher, had an unfortunate resemblance to the witch in The Wizard of Oz, with buckteeth; a long, pinched face; and a sour expression. She also was either dirt poor or just cheap as could be, I never knew which. She’d get her hair cut at the barber because it only cost ten cents, and every day she took home leftover cartons of milk and rolls from the school cafeteria. She was also hell-bent on finding reasons to punish us. She never had children of her own, and I don’t even think she cared much for kids. She sure didn’t care much for us. Every day at least one of us would be hauled to the front of the class and either paddled on our butts, or forced to put our hands over the edge of her desk so she could rap our knuckles hard with a wooden ruler. One of the worst and most painful indignities was when she forced us to stand in the front of the class with our palms faceup and bent back so she could snap them hard with rubber bands. These were the days before corporal punishment was outlawed in public schools.

  While Burke will tell you that Mrs. Gardner was a hell of a math teacher, making it as fun as any subject he ever studied, I don’t remember anything positive about her. What I remember is that she always seemed to have a beef with me and would routinely call me out for being fidgety. Like every teacher I had before her, she hated my habit of tapping my pencil on the desk. One day I forgot my pencil case entirely and she made the mistake of teasing me about it.

  “What’s this? The richest girl in Wayne County can’t even afford a pencil!” she taunted. “Look, children, the poor little rich girl doesn’t have a pencil!”

  I didn’t tell Daddy what happen
ed, knowing he was likely to explode and embarrass me. But a few days later, I was home playing with my best friend, Ginger, and before I could stop her she told him, “Mister Lamar, did Tena tell you what Mrs. Gardner said to her the other day?”

  Daddy turned to me with a fearsome look. “Tell me now, Tena.”

  So I did.

  He turned to Georgia and said, “If Mrs. Gardner ever does another thing to her, you better tell me, Georgia, ’cause Tena won’t.” Georgia nodded dutifully. “Yes, sir. I will.”

  Wouldn’t you know it, not three days later Mrs. Gardner caught me tapping my pencil during a test and marched me to the front of the classroom. Our school was designed so that each room had a door that opened to the outside. That day, as a thunder and lightning storm tore through town, Mrs. Gardner took me to that outside door, opened it, and made me stand in the open door’s crack for the rest of the class while a hard rain pelted my face and clothes. When I got home, soaked, Daddy’d had enough. A few days later, he was standing in the door of our classroom asking Mrs. Gardner to “step outside, ma’am,” so he could have a word.

  With my whole class watching through the classroom door, he walked her to the large plate glass at the front of the school. In a voice that echoed down the empty linoleum hallway, he said, “If you ever s-s-say or do another G-G-G-GODdamn thing to my daughter that’s hurtful or embarrassing, I will p-p-pick you up and throw your ass through that G-G-G-GODdamn window. Do you hear me?” Daddy always emphasized the “GOD” in his “GODdamns” when he was mad. And he was fire-spitting mad that day. No one was going to ridicule Lamar Clark’s little girl. Least of all a witchy-looking woman with a cheap barbershop haircut.

  She was dabbing at her eyes when she returned to our classroom. After that, she left me alone, and Burke will tell you I got a bit sassy with her. Yes, I suppose I gave her some lip because I knew she’d never bother me again. Lamar Clark wouldn’t have stood for it.

  * * *

  With Mama gone, Virgie was tasked with taking me shopping. But as soon as we entered Bedsole’s, Waynesboro’s only department store, Virgie froze. Staring at her were four sets of scornful eyes from the clerks on the floor, as if all were demanding, What do you think you’re doing? You can’t afford to buy a single thing in here.

  So Daddy took me shopping, usually to Marks Rothenberg, a very upscale department store in Meridian. We’d go to the girls’ department and he’d tell me to “pick out whatever you want,” and he’d hand a wad of cash to the woman behind the counter.

  “Whatever she wants,” he told the clerk, “we’ll take one in every color. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  That was shopping with Daddy. Christmastime was no better. He’d drop me on the corner of Azalea and Mississippi Drives in downtown Waynesboro, hand me his trademark $100 bill, and say, “Go buy presents for your sisters and your mama, and a fruit basket for Virgie. I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up.” I stood on the curb, looking at that $100 bill, and thinking, Some merry Christmas. And there was something particularly insulting and impersonal about a fruit basket for Virgie, given all that she did for me, and for Mama, and for him. To me, she was family, and family shouldn’t get a ridiculous fruit basket at Christmas.

  While Daddy and I didn’t do much shopping together, I did love going with him to run his errands. My girlfriends were playing with Barbie dolls and dressing up in their mothers’ old gowns, but I played Daddy’s sidekick. Most mornings we were up before the sun, and Daddy would go out and start the car to get it cool on hot days and warm on cold days before I got in, and then we’d ride into town to have breakfast at Blaine’s Cafe. He’d have eggs, sausage, grits and gravy, and coffee, and I’d have a Coca-Cola and doughnuts. From there he’d drop me at school or, on the weekends, we’d walk across the street to the post office, and I would jump up on the long table by the mailboxes while he opened his mail, tipping his hat and shaking hands with folks as they came through to get their mail.

  Daddy’s mind went at a fever pitch. Driving around town with him was like being in an episode of Looney Tunes, as he’d mumble to himself in a low, incessant hum, sounding like one solid word of mush: “that-som-bitch-better-not-think-he-can-git-away-hmhmhmhm-better-call-Joe-down-at-the-mill-hmhmhmhmhm-gotta-git-that-price-down-before-hmhmhmhmhm . . .” And when he wasn’t incoherently mumbling, he’d go into some sort of trance and turn the volume on the car radio all the way up and then back down: “Today IN JACKSON, the Texaco station on HIGHWAY EIGHTY-FOUR reported THAT A MAN was found asleep IN THE STOREROOM . . .” Up and down, up and down, until I’d yell at him to stop.

  “Daddy! I can’t take it!” I’d shout, and only then would he take his hand away, without apology or acknowledgment that he’d been doing anything out of the ordinary.

  “On to it,” he’d say, and those three words would somehow clear his head and reset his clock. Then he’d tell me about his latest deal, always bragging that he’d gotten the better end of it because “that sorry sonofabitch doesn’t know who he’s dealin’ with.”

  Some afternoons, after his errands, we’d go to his office in Waynesboro’s only strip mall, which he had built. When we drove up, there’d usually be a line of folks, men and women, black and white, all of them poor, waiting. When they saw his car drive into the parking lot, they’d take off their hats and bow slightly in greeting. When I saw their faces, most of them looked scared and nervous, some even desperate.

  “Daddy,” I asked him once, “why do those men look so afraid?”

  “Cuz it’s Friday, and Friday is p-p-payday, and they still don’t have enough money to pay the rent and feed their family. I’m their last s-s-stop.”

  I didn’t ask if he would help them; I guess I didn’t want to hear that he might not.

  “You just remember, Tena Rix, everybody has their p-p-price. Ain’t a sonofabitch out there that cain’t be bought. Not a one.”

  Along with “Don’t you go thinkin’ like a girl” and “Never trust a woman,” these were his pearls of wisdom.

  On Sunday evenings, after the weekend’s football games on which Daddy had bet tens of thousands of dollars, our rides took us to his bookie’s home outside of town. The house fascinated me, mostly because it was like a castle deep in the woods, with a ten-foot wrought iron fence surrounding it, a massive gate that had to be opened by remote control, bars on all the windows, and security cameras mounted everywhere you looked. Some days, Daddy would bring the man a bag of cash in a brown paper bag, but most days he’d arrive empty-handed and leave the house with a bag stuffed full of $100 bills, some of which poked out the top of the bag. On the drives to and from the house, he’d tell me why he was such a good gambler.

  “Your daddy’s the luckiest s-s-sonofabitch there is, Tena Rix,” as if it were that easy. “Most guys walk out with n-n-nothing. I walk out with bags full of money.”

  One Saturday afternoon, Burke, Daddy, and I were at home watching a football game, and after any major play on the field, Daddy would pick up the phone and bark a few orders to “put another thousand” on this team or that team. He said it without an ounce of doubt, hesitation, or second thoughts. He knew he’d picked the winner. The world, it seemed, did Lamar Clark’s bidding, even the football teams and the horses and the greyhound dogs and the boxers in the ring. And indeed, luck seemed to follow him, given the number of stuffed brown paper bags coming into the house. But his bookie didn’t share his luck. I learned that on the same night as one of our trips to the walled-in fortress, the bookie was shot execution-style with his hands tied behind his back and a bullet in his forehead, while his girlfriend was pistol-whipped, tied to a tree, and forced to watch his murder. I’m sure Daddy found another bookie, but I never met the man.

  Mama always told me she thought Daddy was part of the Dixie Mafia, and maybe she was right. Mister James loved to tell the story of hearing that somebody tried to screw Lamar Clark out of his share of some earnings, so Lamar got in his Cadillac and drove straight to the seediest part o
f New Orleans to collect it. That time, at least, he had the sense to leave me at home. He parked in front of a windowless storefront, knocked on the battered steel door, and told someone through a little window in the door that he wanted to see the boss. He was taken into a dark room, lit only by one overhead bulb, where some oily character was sitting behind a desk smoking a cigarette. The man was expecting him. Lamar was handed the money in the standard-issue brown paper bag.

  “You got your goddamn money, now git your goddamn ass outta heah,” the man growled from behind his desk.

  According to my cousin’s version of the story, Daddy was so scared he drove the entire 170 miles back to Waynesboro in less than ninety minutes, his loaded pistol on the seat next to him.

  And when he wasn’t demanding payment from hoodlums, he was doing so with his own relatives. My older cousin Bubba will tell you that all of Wayne County knew never, ever to mess with one of Lamar Clark’s daughters, and if you did, to expect to pay a hefty price. Elizabeth’s first husband, Hank, evidently forgot the rules one day and gave Elizabeth a shove that sent her falling against the refrigerator in their kitchen. She ran home, crying up a storm, to tell Daddy.

  Daddy listened for less than a minute.

  “Tena! Get in the car, we’re going to have a little t-t-talk with Hank.”

  Now, at this point in the story, you’d be right to ask why in the world he’d want to have his young daughter along for the ride, a ride he knew damn well was going to involve a righteous father’s rage. I didn’t question it at the time, but now I realize it was all part of his grooming me, his showing me that “this is how powerful people take care of folks who mess with them or their family,” and that I should take notes. But at the time I just hopped in the car, happy as always to be his sidekick.

  Daddy drove up to Hank’s office on two wheels, and honked the horn. Funny how he always honked for others, but when anyone honked at him or one of his daughters, there was hell to pay. I once heard that the term “honky” was coined by black Americans because of the arrogance with which whites summon people to their cars, as if they are just too damn important, or lazy, or both, to walk up to the door and knock. Daddy earned the name, and as always, he sat there honking until Hank came out of the building.