The Cotton Queen

by Pamela Morsi

  Agreeing, I jerked open the white pages of the telephone directory and began leafing through the pages, searching for the number. Unexpectedly my glance was captured by a name at the top of the page: Grimes, Mary Jane.

  And just that quickly, my demons that I’d chased so far from my everyday life returned.

  “What’s wrong?” There was genuine concern in Analisse’s voice.

  “Huh?”

  “You just turned as pale as a sheet,” she said. “What happened?”

  I hesitated only an instant. I’d grown accustomed to being straightforward with people from the Center. I’d learned that in this very safe place keeping secrets was not necessary.

  “This is the wife of the man who raped me,” I said.

  Analisse glanced at her name.

  “Okay,” she said, thoughtful, nodding. “She’s listed by her own name. Must mean she’s divorced. Maybe she figured out what an evil bastard he was. See if he’s listed separately.”

  Slowly, with my heart in my throat, I turned the page back and followed the name Grimes up to the top of the alphabet. Edward. David. Charles. Buddy. Albert.

  I stopped. Stared at the names a moment. Then I looked through the entire Grimes listing. There was no one named Burl. There was no one with initials that included B. There were probably seventy-five listings, but none were him.

  “Maybe he’s moved,” Analisse said.

  “You mean he could live somewhere else.” My heart was suddenly pumping.

  “Don’t panic,” she said. “You’re safe. Just because you don’t know where he is, doesn’t mean that you’re in danger.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Of course you’re right. I’m acting stupid.”

  “It’s a natural reaction,” she said. “You’ve gotten used to thinking he was in one place. Now you’re dealing with the idea that he might be somewhere else. But it might be somewhere else good. Maybe he’s in jail where he belongs.”

  I managed to choke out a small bit of humor on that.

  “That would be all right with me,” I said.

  “Hand me the phone book.”

  I did and she immediately picked up the phone.

  I gasped.

  “It’s okay,” she assured me.

  “Hello, Mary Jane.” She waited, listening to the person on the other end.

  “Oh, hello, Cassie,” she said. “This is Analisse Grey, I’m an old friend of the family. Is your mother home?”

  Another pause.

  “What about your dad? Is he at work?”

  This time the silence from Analisse seemed to go on forever. My heart was in my throat. In my mind’s eye I could see Burl, as he had been that day walking into my kitchen. Now in my imagined fears he was walking toward the phone to talk to Analisse. I couldn’t let even his voice touch her. I reached out to grab the phone. She pulled away and began speaking.

  “Oh, I am so sorry to hear that, Cassie,” she said. “I didn’t know. Listen I won’t take up any more of your time. I’ll call your mother back another day.”

  There were a few more polite words exchanged between the two before Analisse settled the phone into its cradle.

  “He’s dead,” she told me.

  “What?”

  “That was his daughter. She says that he’s dead,” Analisse repeated. “He was killed in a car accident in 1964. He’s been rotting in hell for a quarter of a century.”

  Intellectually I understood what she was saying. But emotionally, I couldn’t quite accept it.

  “He can’t be dead,” I insisted.

  “Babs, this is good news,” she told me.

  I knew that it was. But I couldn’t shake my very unsettled reaction to it. All these years when I’d been afraid, all those miles I’d driven quaking with the idea of happening upon him unexpectedly, all that time he’d been dead. My fear of him had nearly destroyed my life. But he hadn’t been there to fear. He had died the same year that Marley had died. A few months before or a few months after, they’d both been gone for most of my life. It was disturbing that I hadn’t known that. It was frustrating. But it was more. By the end of the day, I’d finally figured out what I was feeling. Anger.

  I’d been cheated. In some deep-seated place in my soul, I’d imagined, against all reasonable possibility, that somehow, someday, someway, I would make Burl Grimes pay for what he did to me. That in the end, I would have justice. I would have vengeance. And the hope of that had somehow kept the hate alive in me.

  But now, that hope was gone. Burl had escaped my wrath, my revenge. He had done what he had done. And now there never was nor would there ever be any opportunity for me to make it right.

  I chuckled to myself as that thought went through my head. Did I actually think that anything could have made it right? If I had tied him down and done exactly to him as he had done to me, would I have felt better about it? Impossible.

  Nothing could unring the bell. Nothing could return the woman that I’d become to that trusting place I’d been before he walked into my kitchen. But the woman that he’d broken all those years ago, could that woman be mended?

  Without even the slightest consideration or weighing of risks, I drove over to the duplex as soon as I got off work. I had not been in that neighborhood since the day I’d scrambled out of there with my daughter and my secondhand dishes. But I found the place without so much as one wrong turn. If it hadn’t set on the corner, I’m not sure I would have recognized it. The house was so much smaller, drabber, than I remembered. The yard was unkempt, as was much of the neighborhood. The screen door sagged miserably. Next to the street was a homemade sign that read: Duplex For Rent with a phone number below it. I parked at the curb and walked up to the back porch. There was no curtain in the door. I put my face up to the window and peered inside. The empty kitchen looked much the same. I reached down to turn the knob. It was locked, just as it should have been.

  I just stood there. Remembering the first day I’d seen the place. Recalling when we’d moved in and how thrilled, anxious, excited, I’d been to have my own place. This place had been the first spark of life in me after Tom died. It had been like the Good Shepherd window. A way to get on in the world without thinking about what I’d lost. It had been me and Laney against the world. That was how hopeful it had begun. All of that had been overshadowed by how it had ended.

  The back door on the adjacent porch, Mary Jane’s porch, opened. An aging black man stepped out.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asked me.

  I didn’t know quite what to say.

  “You looking for a place to rent?” he tried again.

  I manage to shake my head. “I used to live here,” I explained.

  A smile brightened his expression. “Is that right?” he said, assuming incorrectly that good memories had brought me back. “I’ve got the key, you want to look inside.”

  “Oh, no...”

  “It’s no trouble,” he said, turning back in the house he called out to someone. “Shandra, bring that key by the front door, the one with the tassel on it.” He turned back to me. “My granddaughter will show you inside.”

  The girl, about fourteen, opened the door for me and we walked around for a few minutes. The rooms were empty now. The furniture that had been part of the place had gone to some landfill years ago. The rooms were open, the walls were scarred, the floors were dirty. I kept waiting for some feeling to envelop me. Waiting for fear or flashback or relief or something. There was nothing. This was just an old house in an old neighborhood. It had nothing to do with what existed inside of me. Just as Burl had nothing to do with the fear that had held me prisoner in McKinney for so many years. He was already dead. He had been beyond the ability to hurt me. All that fear, I’d managed on my own.

  “Thank you,” I told the young girl and handed her a five-dollar bill. “Buy yourself a popcorn and soda next time you’re at the movies.”

  “Thanks,” she answered.

  I walked out to my c
ar, unlocked it and got inside. I tried to take stock of what I was feeling. After a few moments I realized that I didn’t feel anything at all.

  That was good.

  LANEY

  I HAD SEx with Stan Kuhl on our first date. I don’t say that with any pride of accomplishment. I had every intention of behaving like a proper and somewhat priggish McKinney matron. Especially after I found out that according to Nicie, every single woman in town was after him and half the married ones would dump their current husbands in a heartbeat if he looked in their direction. It’s amazing how attractive money can make a man. With that in mind, my plan, if I had any kind of plan at all, was to simply be interested, but not that interested.

  Unfortunately things got a bit out of hand.

  My mother was home for once and eagerly agreed to babysit. It was a freebie, but I would have paid a lot not to hear her talk.

  “Stan Kuhl,” she said. Then a few moments later. “Stan Kuhl.” Again. She kept repeating his name. What she didn’t say, of course, was, wasn’t Stan Kuhl the guy I wanted you to hook up with, but he was way too far beneath you to even be considered.

  It just made me crazy the way Babs could imply an “I told you so” without even bothering with the words.

  She also didn’t say anything about my dress. It was several years old, from my prebaby days. It was red, short and clung to me like skin. I expected her to either comment on the age of the garment, the changes in my body since last I’d worn it, or to tell me, truthfully, that I looked like a slut.

  When she didn’t say anything, I was forced to goad her.

  “Do I look like a slut in this dress?”

  “You’re not a slut, sweetie,” she said. “You’re a lovely young woman in the prime of her life.”

  “I didn’t say I was a slut, I asked if I looked like one.”

  No comment.

  “You think I look like a slut?”

  “Laney, if you feel like you look like a slut,” she said. “Then go change.”

  “I like this dress,” I insisted.

  “Then wear it,” she said. “If you’re comfortable with how you look, that’s all that’s important.”

  The woman was positively maddening.

  Stan arrived exactly on time. He looked good. Not GQ good, more like Parents magazine good, but good nonetheless. I wanted to just run out the door with him. That would probably have been the smartest thing to do. But it’s not what I did.

  “Would you like to meet my daughter?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  Rachel was already a little beauty. Her dark blond hair was thick and long, hanging down past her waist. She had a bright smile and chubby cheeks, very squeezable. She and Babs, along with Rachel’s favorite stuffed animal Boogie Bear were having a lovely little tea. Stan and Babs exchanged polite greetings.

  “This is Rachel,” I told him. “Sweetheart, come and meet this nice gentleman.”

  My daughter didn’t seem in any way eager to do so. Instead she clung to my leg and peered out at him from the safety of my skirt.

  He squatted down to her level and offered his hand. “Hi, I’m Stan,” he said.

  Rachel didn’t make any move toward him. But she did blush and giggle.

  Stan looked up at me. “She’s a flirt, just like her mother,” he said.

  “I’m not a flirt.”

  He looked back at Rachel. “Your mother claims to be a changed woman,” he said.

  She didn’t understand him, but she was obviously pleased with the attention.

  “I’m going to take your mom out,” he said. “Feed her some dinner and talk to her a while. And I’ll have her back here before you even miss her.”

  Rachel obviously believed him, because she didn’t cry, scream, or throw a tantrum, all of which she was perfectly capable of doing. I got my jacket and we headed out into the night.

  “Have a good time,” Babs told us.

  I was surprised at his car. It was nice, clean and new, but it was an ordinary sedan. A man with his money and position should have been cruising about town in a Mercedes or a Porsche. Even Robert’s old BMW was flashier.

  “I thought we’d drive into the city,” he said.

  “Not any restaurants good enough in McKinney?” I asked.

  He hesitated before he answered. “Everybody in McKinney knows us,” he said. “If we’re seen together at any restaurant downtown the gossips will have us hooked up in twenty minutes. Poor Cindy Gilbert, I ran into her on Virginia Street one noon and bought her lunch. It was just a half hour of do-you-remember-old-what’s-his-name and they’re still talking about how I never called her back, dumped her after one date.”

  “So you’re a heartbreaker these days.”

  “No,” he said, firmly. “I’m not a heartbreaker. I’m not a player looking to score. I’m not a rich jerk out to buy some pretty arm candy. I’m not ‘local nerd makes good’ looking for revenge on the girls who scorned him in high school. I am ordinary Stanley Kuhl who’d like to take an attractive woman to dinner without becoming breaking news for bored McKinneyites.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  “I suspect you discovered that I’m not a computer salesman.”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “I got the whole scoop, I guess. You married a college professor and it lasted about a semester. No kids, no ties, certifiably the most eligible guy in town.”

  He snorted skeptically at that. “I got the lowdown on you, too,” he said. “Eight years with the same guy. Two of them married. The oil bust busted you up.”

  I chuckled. “Who’d you hear that from?”

  “Pete,” he answered.

  “I thought guys didn’t gossip.”

  “We only share the facts, ma’am,” he said. “Where’d you get your information?”

  “My cousin, Nicie, filled me in.”

  “Ah, Nicie, how’s she doing?”

  “She’s hanging in there,” I said. “It’s not easy, three kids and Brian acting like a jerk.”

  “Brian’s not acting,” he said. “He’s always been a jerk.”

  “I heard he’s running his father’s business into the ground.”

  “He’s just got it set on automatic pilot,” Stan said. “Unfortunately that doesn’t work well for long periods of time.”

  Our conversation continued like that. People we knew. Old times. We discussed the changes in McKinney, the efforts to make downtown flourish again and the pros and cons of its current fashion mall concept. We had already exhausted most of the inconsequential conversation topics by the time we parked in Dallas’s Deep Ellum district. The formerly industrial area on the east side of downtown was the latest new hot spot in the city. Rapidly filling up with art galleries and nightclubs. It was not the kind of neighborhood I would have expected a prosperous yuppie to take a first date to impress her. We went down an alley and he directed me up a narrow flight of stairs.

  “I’ve heard the ribs in this place are fabulous.”

  I nearly stopped dead in my tracks. Apparently Mr. Eligible Bachelor of McKinney had never heard that you don’t feed a woman barbecue on the first date.

  The place was dark and noisy and crowded. Stan got us a table in a corner next to a window that overlooked the brightly lit and busy pedestrian-only street below.

  I have to admit it was fabulous. The food was, I believe, the best I’d ever consumed in my life. The taste was smoky and spicy, tender and juicy. And extremely messy. The few pitiful paper napkins they gave us couldn’t begin to do justice to the amount of sauce I managed to get on my hands, my face.

  As soon as I’d finished my dinner, I hurried to the bathroom to try to clean up. I felt sticky all over. I washed away virtually all my carefully applied makeup and had to scrub my arms practically all the way to my armpits.

  Feeling at least clean and with nothing in my teeth, I returned to the table. The restaurant was now filled to the brim and I could hardly weave my way through to Stan in the corner. I arrived t
o find my chair had disappeared.

  “I’ve moved you over here for safekeeping,” he said, indicating the chair that now sat right next to his.

  I scooted in, finding myself all too close to him. I felt jittery, nervous, somehow exposed.

  “Do you have any idea how attractive you are?” he whispered close to my neck.

  I suddenly had this strange vision of myself. I imagined myself sitting in this crowded place, right beside him, but my little red dress had magically disappeared. I was casual, legs crossed sitting unnoticed in this noisy room wearing only my bra and panties, my thigh-highs and four-inch heels. Only Stan was looking at me. Only Stan could see me.

  I tried to shake off the suggestive fantasy. My mouth was as dry as cotton. I was wet everywhere else.

  “I think we’d better get this over with,” he said. “I know you’re as anxious about it as I am.”

  “What?” I managed to get out in one soft breath before his mouth came down on mine. The touch jolted me like a high-voltage wire. His mouth was on mine and I was on fire. We were kissing and kissing. I felt him trying to draw back, and dug my fingers into his lapels and pulled him tighter against me. In my mind’s eye, I was down to just the stockings and heels and I couldn’t get him close enough. I squeezed my thighs together tightly against the ache there that was getting out of control.

  He wrenched himself away.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  He threw some bills on the table and grabbed my arm. I was barely able to retrieve my purse before he dragged me out of the building. Out on the staircase, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me again. This time I could press my whole body against his. And I did.

  “Oh, my God!” he kept saying. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe this. I told myself it wouldn’t be so good. Not like I remembered. I was just a kid. I imagined your kiss better than it could be. But I didn’t and it isn’t.”

  His words meant nothing to me. I wanted his lips. I wanted his hands. I was on fire. I was in heaven.

  “For Christsake, get a room!” somebody complained as they squeezed by us, trying to enter the restaurant.