“I have no idea why I am a bag lady, but I sure like it,” I told her. “The best thing about it, so far—well, besides meeting Wade Tate—is no bills.” I said it in capital letters as in NO BILLS. “You don’t have your electric bills, or your newspaper bills. They don’t send you VISA bills or doctor bills. The mortgage company doesn’t have a thing to send and neither does the telephone company. And don’t get me started on taxes.”
And then I told her the problems of being a bag lady. “Keeping clean is the number-one problem. No, going to the bathroom is first on the list, but I solved them both with one fell stroke.”
I told her about KFC and how I cleaned the restrooms there on the graveyard shift. “They pay me all the coffee I can drink and one free meal a day, and they let me go to the bathroom there. Now, here’s the trick, and don’t you go telling anyone. When I clean the restrooms at night, they make me put up these yellow signs on the floor. Restrooms are not in use during cleaning. This means nobody can come in when you’re cleaning. So you can clean the men’s then go on over to the ladies’ and no one bothers you while you take your bath. You’ve got to have your Lever 2000, a clean washrag, and the yellow rubber daisy to stop up the sink.”
“You’re amazing, Milicent,” Gypsy said.
“I give as good as I get,” I told her. “Nobody in Portsmith cleans restrooms like I do. No pink smell in my restrooms, no sirree.”
“Pink smell?”
“You know. That gag-me-with-a-spoon smell most restaurants have in their restrooms. They call it disinfectant; I call it lazy. All you need is a good bag lady and a Johnny mop and lots of Clorox and Mr. Clean. My restrooms shine and smell like your own mama just cleaned them. I have lots of pride in my work, Gypsy. That’s the key. Pride. And you should see how I yell if I find someone who didn’t flush.”
We talked on for a while like that. Me, remembering to tell her about the homeless who would take your money if you didn’t watch out, and the times you could glory in. “About three in the morning, when you’ve finished your potty cleaning and you go on over to your place—if it’s a warm night—it is so quiet. You can think all your thoughts without sunshine or birds. You can use your green bag for a pillow and lay right down by the left tree and sleep like a baby. Then you can sleep until an angel comes and gives you orange juice in a box. That is, unless she goes and gets killed.”
Gypsy asked me about Angel, and I told her about what I had told Wade Tate. Then I asked her about her life. Real casual-like. It doesn’t pay to ask too many questions when you are on the road. She told mostly about how hard it was to find clothes her size, her being so tall and broad shouldered and all. I agreed that finding one’s fashion sense was a real problem when you were a bag lady but that sweats worked for me, and I loved the new colors Walmart carried.
“Well, I just want to be more—I don’t know—feminine, I guess. Not that you don’t look nice. I want my clothes to make a fashion statement. Define me,” she said.
“That velvet works for me,” I told her.
“Thank you. It’s warm and durable while remaining soft and feminine.”
“I’d get that hair cut, though. Long hair can be awful to wash in a restaurant sink.”
She said she’d consider it, and we talked about how many chickens they cook a day over at KFC and other stuff that eventually made me sleepy.
It started to rain, and I excused myself and got in the car. I guess Gypsy found her own way home, wherever that was. I put my head on Miss Vinnie Ledbetter’s pillow and wrapped Miss Vinnie Ledbetter’s afghan around me and slept. My last thought before I gave it up was that I hoped the rain would wash out the spot on my skirt and that I hoped it would dry before the Angel’s funeral tomorrow.
TWELVE
I hate it when a plan goes awry.
By the time I was sitting on the curb at the cemetery with Wade Tate, it was all over for me, and Tate Wade was no friend of mine.
Oh, the day started well enough, full of sunshine and bright leaves; it ended in dark clouds and more rain.
When I was in the state hospital, a therapist there told me to find something…like a bracelet or a ring…to focus on when I was stressed so I could keep my thoughts in focus. I had bought these curlicue shoestrings in Day-Glo orange in the children’s department at Walmart. It took forever to thread them through my sneakers, but when I finished I could slide my shoes on and off in seconds and just snap the ends of the shoestrings, and they stayed tight all day. When I needed to remember something, I just looked down at my shoes and thought.
Which is what I was doing while Tate Wade chewed me out at the cemetery following Angel’s funeral. I was trying to remember where it had all gone wrong.
My skirt had been a little damp, but nothing insurmountable. I put on the pantyhose, pulling them to shreds as I tried to get the size A to fit my size B crotch. It was a very uncomfortable feeling, but I had said I would wear pantyhose, so I did. Pulling my gray sweats over them helped keep them up, but I sure couldn’t forget they were there. The sweats kept the damp from the skirt away from my bottom too.
Now there was still this stain on the back of the skirt, but as my grandmother used to say, It’ll never be noticed from a galloping horse.
“She also said, ‘It’ll never be noticed on a dancing girl,’” I told Miss Vinnie Ledbetter as I got into her black Mercedes. “I don’t know which I am today…a galloping horse or a dancing girl.”
“You look fine, Milicent,” Miss Vinnie Ledbetter told me as we drove toward the church. Well, to her, I guess I did. We were wearing matching black cable knit turtleneck sweaters over our long skirts. Her skirt was black, and her shoes were boots, but I thought we looked like twins.
I focused on the twin look as we marched down the aisle of the First Baptist Church in Portsmith. If she nodded to someone, I did too. It tickled me when they nodded right back. It looked like most of them wanted to say something, but Miss Vinnie Ledbetter and I just left them that way, with their eyes wide and their mouths open as we two-stepped to one of the front pews.
There was only one hymnal in our pew, so Miss Vinnie Ledbetter and I shared it, singing a very nice duet of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” on page 42 and “Jesus Loves Me” on page 282. I was surprised to note that she didn’t sing very well, so I sang louder to cover her.
Wouldn’t you know it? Titus Moore sat two pews ahead of us, and after the first look around—when his teeth dropped out—he kept staring back at us. There was this little woman with her hair in a bun sitting next to him. I assumed it was his wife and sent her goodwill thoughts.
It was a sad funeral—all funerals are—but a child’s funeral has got to be the saddest of them all. I blanked out the service and counted the flowers. There were forty-five arrangements: fourteen pink carnation arrangements, two of red roses, five yellow roses, six pink glads, and ten white carnations. The other eight arrangements were mixed.
It took a long time to count them, and Miss Vinnie Ledbetter had to elbow me to stand up ever so often. When we sat down again, I always had to start counting all over again. I finished the count during the closing prayer.
Miss Vinnie Ledbetter and I declined to view the open casket at the end of the services. When the usher stood at the end of our pew, we went the other way and headed toward the door. She nodded to people on the way out, and I nodded after her.
“I think this time is for the family, don’t you, dear?” she whispered as we reached the end of the pews.
“Oh, yes, dear,” I told her.
It was on the way to the cemetery that I began to worry about my plan. Oh, I had time to wave at the people who stood at the curb as the funeral procession went by them, but my thoughts were on Gypsy and what I had told her to do.
Miss Vinnie Ledbetter and I stood a little to the side behind the funeral tent while the graveside services were going on. I kept stretching
my neck to find Gypsy. When I finally saw her, I relaxed. She looked like she had everything under control.
I don’t know why I had such a hard time finding her; she definitely stood head and shoulders above the crowd. I admired her technique.
She would edge her way into a section of the crowd, swoop down on first one man and then another; it almost looked like she was kissing their ear, but I knew she was smelling them. Just when the people would look annoyed, she would edge through and make it to another part of the throng. Ever so often she would gently touch one of the men on the back. When they turned around she would be gone.
The closer Gypsy got to the front of the mourners, the more often she touched the men.
“I do believe that woman is putting something on their backs,” said Miss Vinnie Ledbetter.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “It’s only Post-it notes. Yellow ones.”
“Well, I guess that’s all right then, dear,” she replied unconvincingly.
With such a large turnout at the graveside, it was hard for me to keep track of the men who had yellow paper stuck between their shoulders. I think this was when the plan began to go wrong.
When she put one on Titus Moore, his little wife reached up and took it off. She showed it to Titus, and he made a grand gesture to Wade Tate, who moved toward the Moores with a purpose. By the time Wade Tate had maneuvered beside Titus and his wife, Gypsy had disappeared.
Tate Wade listened to Titus thunder about it for a few seconds and looked directly over Titus’s head to me.
Which is how come when the service was over I found myself sitting knee to knee with him at the curb. Miss Vinnie Ledbetter waited patiently in her black Mercedes.
“Quit looking at your shoes, Millie, and look at me. Who in the Sam Hill was that woman, and what was she doing with those Post-its?”
“What woman?” I asked.
“Cut it out. Every time she kissed one of those men, she looked right at you,” he insisted.
“She wasn’t kissing them. She was smelling them. And I don’t know her, but if I did, I would say she was smelling for who smelled like T-Y-P-H-O-O-N.”
Wade Tate sighed a deep sigh. “Hello, Millie. I have a problem here. I just got the ME’s report back on Angie Woodburn, and you were right. She was definitely dead, hit by a blunt object of some kind, before the car hit her. Now as I said before, you are my only witness to the murder. I’ve been protecting you, but if you pull another stunt like this, I can’t guarantee either your safety or your freedom. What’s more, there was another problem. The ME’s report said that Angie was four months pregnant. Do you know anything about that?”
I didn’t answer him. I was not into talking to Tate Wade while he was yelling at me. Especially not with him sitting there on the curb at the graveside with a yellow Post-it note between his shoulders.
THIRTEEN
Miss Vinnie Ledbetter and I drove away in her black Mercedes in silence, leaving behind a graveyard full of yellow Post-it notes that looked like stray petals in the grass.
By the time we reached Miss Vinnie Ledbetter’s big brick house, I knew two things. One was that I had a cold. Two was that Wade Tate was a dingleberry.
“I insist that you move in tonight, Milicent. The weather forecast is calling for rain and sleet, and I will not have you out there sleeping under that tree,” said Miss Vinnie Ledbetter in no uncertain terms.
I didn’t argue with her, didn’t tell her that in bad weather I slept in the red Nissan. Instead I let her lead me on in the house, which was colder and draftier than my junkyard bedroom. In no time at all, she had a fire going in the Victorian fireplace and a cup of hot herbal tea in my hand. Then she fed me sixteen dozen cold remedies and vitamins and showed me my very own bedroom.
“It’s not much, I admit,” she told me as she gave me a voluminous flannel gown to wear. “But I moved that space heater in for you, and those quilts should keep you warm no matter how cold it gets.” She paused in her bustling about. “You know, I actually like hearing the rain and sleet on the windows. The wind blowing about the house. But only when I know everyone else is safe and warm. You are doing me a favor, Milicent. I shall sleep well tonight, knowing that I don’t have to worry about you being out in the elements.”
However small it might be, I was glad I could give the good woman peace of mind.
That is not to say that I shared her satisfaction.
After a supper of chicken à la king on toast and more hot tea, I said my good-night early and fell to sleep immediately in my cozy, toasty bedroom off the kitchen. Someday I will personally hand Miss Vinnie Ledbetter her gold star in heaven.
However, somewhere around two thirty in the morning, all the pills must have kicked in. I awoke clear and alert. After all, I was used to roaming in the early hours, and it suddenly seemed stifling in the tiny bedroom. I sniffed a few times, and my head seemed clear. The rawness was gone from my throat. I felt my forehead, and there was no fever.
“Lord amercy, Milicent Le Sueur, what are you doing in bed? There are potties to clean and coffee to be drunk down at the KFC. Get moving, girl,” I told myself.
Now I had warned Miss Vinnie Ledbetter that I might slip out now and then and not to be worried about me when I did. But on this night, with the wind howling and sleet hitting the windows like bullets, I don’t think she would have heard an elephant in the house. I borrowed a parka from her, taking it from the closet at the front door, and a long red knitted muffler and matching cap. There were fur-lined gloves in the pocket of the jacket. I may be stupid, but I’m not dumb. I knew how to bundle up as good as the next one.
I did not wear my pantyhose.
It was a night made for glorying in. The wind blew, and the sleet was like driving needles against my face. I felt good and danced my away down the street to my place with my main concern being the bags I had left under the right tree before going to the funeral with Miss Vinnie Ledbetter. I had taken my green bag with me to the service because you should never leave your money bag just lying around, but I had buried the others under the leaves near the tree. I was sure they were safe, but I needed to have them with me.
The property was strangely quiet in the midst of the hullabaloo of the storm. I think it was the tall trees that muffled the falling ice, but I could hear my own footsteps and the scrabbling sounds my gloved fingers made as I dug through the wet leaves for my bags.
I couldn’t find them.
Maybe I had left them under the left tree. If you’re turned the wrong way, the left tree becomes the right tree.
But they weren’t there either.
I knelt in the cold and tried to focus. It was too dark to see my shoelaces, but I thought with something as simple as this, I could do it on my own.
Focusing helped. I came up with two thoughts. One was someone had stolen my bags. The second was that I was not alone.
Somewhere behind the icy edges of the retaining wall surrounding my property, someone was watching me.
“Dear me,” I said aloud. “Whoop-de-do. What a dingleberry I am. I’ve misplaced my bags.” I got louder. “Well, it’s no big loss. Nothing in those bags. No medicine or clean panties. No scissors or knitting needles,” I lied. I sure hope that whoever finds them gets some pleasure out of the little there is in them. I hope some homeless person is enjoying my bags.”
Then I got to my feet and ran like hell toward the KFC.
I couldn’t take it to the bank that I was followed, but I sure was watched.
I didn’t leave KFC until what light there was going to be for the day was in full strength. Even then I avoided going to the property. Instead, I headed for Compassionate Friends.
Was I surprised that Dick was sitting on the back steps smoking? Not on your life. He was a person truly dedicated to his nicotine. Didn’t matter a fig to him that now that the sleet had iced down the streets, and snow
was falling to beat the band. After hours of worrying about homeless people stealing from me and watching me, it was good to see a normal sight.
“Good morning, Dick.”
He looked up from the book he was reading. “Why, good morning, Milicent. What are you doing out? Figured you’d be snug with Miss Vinnie this morning. Weather ain’t fit for man or beast. You hungry? Can I get you something?”
“Thank you, no. I’m up to here with coffee and biscuits. Just got off work at the KFC.”
Dick didn’t reply, just sat there waiting for me to go on.
“I was wondering…”
“Yes?”
“Have you by any chance seen Gypsy whose name is K-A-R-E-N around?”
Dick had a black knit cap pulled way down on his forehead almost to his eyes. Over that he was wearing a khaki parka from the GI Joe shop. His gray gloves had the fingers cut out so he could get a good hold on his cigarettes. He stomped a little snow off the top of his boots as he answered, “Nope, haven’t seen him around in several days.”
“Her,” I corrected.
“Him,” he insisted.
I thought long and hard, raising the hem of my sweat pants to look at my shoelaces. I thought of Gypsy’s long blond hair, her beautiful skin, and sashaying hips. Then I remembered her height, her big boots and hands. Lord love a duck. How stupid Dick must think I am.
“I meant him,” I agreed.
FOURTEEN
“Gypsy? You’re looking for a gypsy? Sweetheart, we’re all gypsies here.”
There’s one in every homeless camp. A guru. King of the campfire.
I vaguely knew the one at Portsmith. He was tall and bony with mats of ratty hair hanging around his head. His face was comparatively clean, with short white bristles that glistened in the light. His eyes were dark and deep and had a manic sheen to them, but it was his hands that always fascinated me. They were long and bony—and besides being dirty, he had the habit of pointing one finger directly at a person, like God in the Sistine Chapel.
Milicent Le Sueur Page 5
