The Queen of Palmyra Read online

  As June wore on, Daddy started taking me on his policy rounds at least once a week. At night he told me his stories about brave brotherhoods who saved the women and children from terrible harm. He said I was finally getting old enough to be interesting, plus he said I wasn’t as dumb as I looked; he could teach me more than those damn schoolteachers ever could. At night his stories and hot hand pushed back sleep. The forlorn whistle of the midnight Frisco would come and go, and sometimes the one-thirty, when Mama baked late. On the nights Daddy went out, Mama made her night runs to the bootlegger with me riding shotgun. She kept on carrying the little notes from time to time, but most nights she just made a liquor run, no fooling around with milk shakes or beer or little pieces of paper. She stayed with clear stuff—moonshine, gin, vodka—and poured it into her poison bottle when we got home. On Sunday, which was supposed to be a day of rest, I had to get dolled up to go to church with Mimi and Grandpops. I sat between them in the church pew, and they’d take turns pushing me from side to side when I slumped into sleep. My eyes were always grainy and my hair thinned out. My brush filled up with it. I felt like those walking-dead people you see at the picture show who can’t stop moving. Zombies.

  Zenie was the only one who would let me take my rest. That summer I felt better on her couch than any other place in the world. It had a handy washable slipcover Zenie had made out of some velvet-feeling material the color of dark plums and a little folded cloth out of the same material to put over you in case of chills. Plus it had pillows on both ends to put my head on and prop up my feet. The more I slept the better she liked it. Zenie was always busy, either with her sewing or cooking for Ray, Eva, and Miss Josephine, not to speak of her regular job with my grandmother.

  Ray never said much to me, but he didn’t seem to mind me around when Zenie was keeping me. His shed, which he’d built out in the backyard, was a ramshackle-looking thing because it was made from left-over pieces of wood he’d gotten from his handyman work. Sometimes when Zenie would tell me to go out and play, I’d go out back and stand in the door of Ray’s shed and watch him sharpen things with a big file he had. He was careful. He never took his eyes off the blade when he’d say, “How you doing, lady girl?” I’d say, “All right, how you doing today?” He’d say, “Can’t complain too much.” We’d have us a good chuckle and that would be all we’d say. But he let me stay and watch as long as I stood back. Zenie told me he’d rather work at home in his shed than at people’s houses, though he did some of both when things that needed fixing were too heavy to carry home. He wore overalls and blue shirts buttoned all the way up to his chin and heavy black shoes. He usually had on a hat that looked like the ones that Grandpops wore except it was all beat up and the band had a sweat line around it. He wore it at a cocky angle and always put it in the same spot, on a little table in the kitchen, when he came home. Whenever Mimi came out to tell him what to do in the yard, he took it off and held it in his hands. Then he looked like a newborn chick with his hair all pressed down flat. When Mimi was telling him to weed that bed or water that one, he cocked his head a little like he had a crick in his neck. Ray had an artistic streak in the yard. He planted a good bed, making pretty scallops and circles with the daylilies and iris he’d dig up and divide in the fall. I liked to watch his hands working the clay, his knuckles gray with calluses and raw skin, the palms a pearly pink like the inside of a seashell. For a while I thought Ray was shy. Then I realized the Ray I saw wasn’t really Ray, unless he didn’t know I was watching.

  When he was doing something for Mimi, like weeding her big beds of peonies, he’d come to the kitchen door pouring sweat out from under his hat and wiping his face with a handkerchief. He never set foot into the kitchen, much less the rest of the house. Zenie would fix him a tall glass of ice water in a jelly jar and he would take it on the back steps. She’d wipe her hands on her apron and go stand out there with him in the hot sun. They’d put their heads together and talk and talk like they hadn’t seen each other in a hundred years. He’d say something, and Zenie’d throw her head back and laugh out loud. Once, when he hauled off and puppy-bit her shoulder, she laughed and petted his head like he was a pup sure enough. Then she threw back her shoulders in a way I’d never seen, as if she was starting up a dance.

  There was a little room in the back of Mimi and Pops’ garage that was usually kept locked. I always thought it was for sharp tools, but once, when the door was ajar, I looked in. There was nothing at all in it except the nastiest-looking commode you ever saw. It didn’t have a place to sit on, much less a lid, and it was pitchy with grime. No toilet paper. No lavatory to wash in. When I asked Zenie what it was for, she said it was for folks who worked in the yard and had to use the bathroom. She was frying corn in a skillet on the stove when I ran into the house after my discovery.

  “You mean like Ray?” I asked.

  She didn’t turn around. “Um hum.”

  The thought of Ray, who was the neatest man alive, who even cleaned off his tools and lined them up just so, having to use that nasty bathroom made me feel sick and ashamed of Mimi and Grandpops for even having it in the first place.

  “Why can’t he come inside and use the bathroom?”

  She kept stirring the corn, her back to me. “Dirt on his feet. Might track it in.”

  “You could clean up that bathroom out there.” I wanted to be helpful.

  “You think I’m messing with that nasty thing out there, you crazy, girl. If he got to go, he can go in back of the garage. Good clean ground.” She turned around and looked down at me. “Ray don’t mind dirt, but he do hate nasty. He wouldn’t have me clean that thing out there even if I wanted to.”

  When I’d wake up from my naps on Zenie’s couch and hear Ray and Zenie talking, I liked to keep my eyes shut and just listen. When my Mama and Daddy talked, it was like little hummingbirds fighting over a piece of the yard. Fast and hungry. Where’s supper and how long and are you going out tonight and who called and what kind of cake did they want.

  The way Zenie and Ray talked when they thought I was asleep made me see butterflies in my head. It wasn’t the words, it was the way they had of flitting back and forth and finally lining up just so. Touch and then touch again. Melting the lines Zenie’s and Ray’s sentences made.

  The back door would creak and creak again. Then there’d be a click.

  “Where you at, baby?”

  “Right here, right in front of you. You blind?” Zenie would come around the corner from somewhere else in the house.

  A chuckle. “Glad I ain’t. How’d I be able to see your pretty little face?

  “Little? What you talking about little? Nothing on me little.”

  Another soft chuckle. “Well, now, I wouldn’t say nothing’s little.”

  “Hush that mouth, you going to wake up the girl. Ain’t you got nothing better to do than come in here bothering me when I’m busy working? What you so full of yourself for all of a sudden?”

  “Man can’t all the time be studying work. Got to get some pleasure in this world.”

  “Whoa horse. Got a peeping-tom girl on the couch and a restless old one in the back. What you think going to happen here, mister? You and your pleasure just going to have to hold up.”

  “Me and my pleasure willing to hold up a good long time for a pretty lady. But is the lady willing to wait for her pleasure? That’s what I’m wondering. Sometimes ladies don’t want to wait.”

  “This here lady can wait till doomsday if she has to, mister. Want some tea?”

  “I sure will take some sugar with that tea.”

  My mother didn’t talk sugar; she poured sugar into bowls and mixed it with shortening until you couldn’t tell which was which. When Daddy came home, he gave her a peck on the cheek and then hollered out, “Give me some sugar, sister,” and started up nibbling on me like I was a bowl full of left-over icing, which made Mama turn away and start rattling the pans.

  A week or so after Eva had come, my mother was baking her ca
kes and my father and I were tucked in. He was telling me his favorite book in the whole world, Bomba the Jungle Boy and the Swamp of Death. Daddy loved Bomba, and he knew the stories by heart. Though I was getting sick of Uncle Wiggily, I was sicker still of Bomba, despite the fact that he was an actual boy instead of an animal. Even though Uncle Wiggily had the rheumatism, the old gentleman rabbit still managed to fly around in his airship with his crutch and valise. Grandpops, who walked with a cane when his own rheumatism acted up, said Uncle Wiggily overcame adversity. Despite the fact that he was so crippled he could hardly walk, he had adventures galore. Plus he was lucky as he could be. He got stuck in mud holes and trees but there was always somebody to pull him out. Everybody loved him and loved his catnip tea, which could cure the epizootic. His ant friends fed baked beans to a hungry giant so the giant didn’t eat up Uncle Wiggily. He laughed along with the black cricket when they got loose from the skillery-scalery-tailery alligator, who was laughing too.

  But Daddy was dead set on Bomba. What I’d found out the hard way by that time was that people will get their own story like people get a dog and no other dog will do, no other dog is sweet and good like their dog. Zenie had her Queen of Palmyra stories, Grandpops favored Uncle Wiggily and Uncle Remus, Daddy thought Bomba hung the moon. Grandpops read a few pages of Daddy’s book and said to forget Bomba, it was nothing but poisonous trash. I knew Zenie wouldn’t take to Bomba in a million years, so I never bothered to tell her about him. When I told Daddy the Zenobia story, he said Queenie should go back to Egypt where she’d come from. He thought Uncle Wiggily was an old fool.

  Daddy told me I’d come to appreciate Bomba when I knew more. Knew more about what, I asked. The world, he said, the world. World or no world, that night I was feeling too tired to listen to Daddy talk about Mr. Smarty Pants Bomba. Besides, I knew the story.

  Bomba is a white boy who got left in the Amazon jungle. He’s smart and strong and brave beyond compare when he’s in deadly danger, which is nearly always. The man who wrote Bomba the Jungle Boy and the Swamp of Death says Bomba has the simple dignity that is the end and aim of good breeding. One minute he’s saving folks from the slimy, evil-smelling dismal swamp of death. Or the hideous painted-up cannibal savages. Or stinky anacondas and monster boa constrictors. All of which are hungry as all get out. Everything bad in the Bomba story is colored black. There are black streams of sluggish water, black mud that catches your feet and drags you down to death. The boa is a huge black rope whose red blood gushes out when Bomba skillfully kills it with an arrow. Not to speak of the savages who are so black you can only see their paint.

  Bomba talks about himself like he was somebody else. Plus he’s long-winded. When his native sidekick Gibo, who’s dumb as a stump, yelps like a sick puppy, “Oh help me, Master, this black swamp’s demon slime is sucking me down,” Bomba hollers back, “Let Gibo be of good heart. Bomba will help Gibo.” When Daddy would read this part, I couldn’t help but think that by the time you got all those words out, Gibo would have been long gone.

  So great is Bomba that Gibo plumb worships him. “Great is Bomba,” Gibo says, but what Gibo doesn’t know is that Bomba just used his white brain to get out of this mess. He found some vines, and pulled himself and Gibo out. Gibo thinks it’s a miracle, but that’s because he’s a stupid native. In Daddy’s Bomba book there are natives, who are like Gibo, nice but witless, and there are savages, who are cannibals with war paint and big appetites for white-boy flesh.

  Bomba’s problem is that he wants to come home to his whiteness, but he can’t find it. His blond-haired parents are long gone, and he doesn’t know how in the world he got dropped like a hot potato down in the jungle with all the savages. When he accidentally rescues a bunch of smart scientists, he’s so happy to see their white faces he can hardly stand it. They tell him he’s the whitest boy they ever met, by which they mean he’s the smartest and nicest. Then they shake his hand, which is the biggest thrill of all since only equal white men shake hands. Natives don’t, and certainly cannibal savages don’t. They eat hands, plus every other part. So now he’s being admitted to the white brotherhood. His whiteness is complete. Glory be and Hallelujah!

  The white scientists tell Bomba about the world of white people. Great cities with real houses, human voices coming from boxes, real fathers and mothers who love their children and take care of them, men who slap each other on the back and laugh together. No wild beasts or black mud holes or monster snakes. No black savages.

  When I opened Daddy’s Bomba book, it had the smell of an old house that had collected dust for a hundred years. It made my chest seize up and sometimes set off an asthma attack so that Mama would have to take me into the bathroom and run the water in the tub to get some steam. There was a single sheet of notebook paper inside. I’d folded and unfolded it so much that the creases had torn. This was Daddy’s book report from when he was in the fourth grade, which was the grade I’d just missed this past year. It read:

  Winburn L. Forrest September 12, 1936

  My favorite book is Bomba the Jungel Boy and the Swamp of Death. It is real good. Poor Bomba! Hes a nice white boy, but here he is in a jungle with all these black stinky cannibal sauvages who want to eat him up. Then he gets suck up in that black swamp. But he will escape the black swamp of death because he is white and smart.

  That Friday night, when he told me the Bomba story, Daddy was lying on his back and rubbing my stomach. I was about to melt from the heat of his hand. We were both sweating. He moved restlessly in the bed, like he was about to get up.

  When he took a breath in his Bomba story, I snuggled in closer, wanting to keep him interested. “Daddy, guess what.”

  “What.” He sounded preoccupied. He kept on moving around and rubbing my stomach.

  “Zenie has a niece who’s trying to sell policies in Shake Rag.”

  His hand paused in mid-rub, and he stopped moving. “What you say, girl? What niece? Selling insurance? A nigger selling insurance? For crying out loud. Whoever heard of a nigger girl selling policies? What kind of policies she selling?”

  I lay very still. His hand, still heavy on me, had clinched up so that his fingernails raked my skin. “I don’t know. The kind to bury people, I guess. Maybe some other kinds. For doctors and medicines and stuff like that.”

  “I’ll be goddamned.”

  “She’s a nice girl,” I said quickly. “She’s just working her way through that college in Jackson.”

  “What college in Jackson? That Tougaloo place?”

  “I think that’s what she said. Started with a T. Sounded Indian.”

  He sat straight up in the bed. “I’ll be goddamned. That girl’s an outside agitator! All them people down at that Tougaloo. Conspiring. Nothing but troublemakers and agitators. N-double-A-C-P and them Evers brothers. They’re over in Harmony now. Guess they’ve made their way to us. Got to vote and eat at Woolworths and taking over the library and taking over the schools. Taking over everything. Goddamn.”

  I sat up fast. “No, no, she’s just a regular girl, Daddy. She’s not agitating anything. She’s just trying to make money for her last year so she can go teach grammar and stuff. She’s not trying to cause any trouble. Daddy, she’s nice.”

  He stayed a while longer but didn’t go on with the Bomba story. He just lay there quietly, stroking my leg. Then he patted my stomach nice and easy. One, two quick businesslike pats. Then kissed the top of my head like always and got up. He put his shoes and socks back on and his shirt too, which he’d hung on the doorknob.

  After a while I heard him talking on the phone and clumping down to the basement to get his box. Then I heard Mama say in a slurred voice, “Win, where you going to at this hour?” and the front door shut without him saying a word back.

  I lay there for a long time. First I was burning up and threw off the sheet. Then I shivered like I had a fever and pulled the sheet up around my neck. When the midnight Frisco came through and let out its no no no no, it seemed to b
e saying something urgent. Then whatever its message was fell away and dissolved like a web, or the fragile beginnings of one, leaving me uneasy and restless, as if there were something I’d forgotten to do.

  I thought about getting up to talk to Mama for the company, but I knew from the way she called out to Daddy that she’d been into the poison, which now seemed to follow her around the house. Empty but still strong smelling glasses turned up in odd places, like on the back of the commode after she’d cleaned the bathroom or the top of my dresser along with bottles of Windex and the furniture polish. Plus I was too tired to get out of bed. Daddy and his stories and his hand never rested me; they gathered me into a knot. I just wanted to lie there and untie myself. Let myself go.

  It had started to rain outside. First it was a soft wistful sound, then it began to pour. I heard thunder in the distance. When I’d interrupted Daddy, he was just coming to his favorite part, where Bomba’s about to be eaten by bloodthirsty cannibals. They’ve got him cornered up a tree. Now I’m just minding my own business trying to get a little rest and it’s me getting chased up the tree. Now it’s my white flesh they want, my blood they want to drink. Naturally, Bomba’s long gone.

  They’re circling the tree I’m parroted away in. They’re wearing paint and headdresses of wild feathers and they’re carrying spears and bows and arrows and knives. I’m about to wet my pants I’m so scared. Then here comes one of them with a torch and I can smell the gas and he pours some on a rag and puts the rag on a broom and starts firing up the leaves and branches like Ray does the pecan trees to get rid of the caterpillars.

  In fact, he looks like Ray.

  “Ray, is that you down there?” In my dream I’m choking and coughing up here in this burning-up tree. I’m counting on Ray to save me, carry me off on his white steed.