The Queen of Palmyra Read online

  But I have another story for the lost girl. She was a fine swimmer who could hold her breath for a good long time. She swam underwater to a far island, and she came up on a golden shore where camp went on forever and ever, and there were no parents and no boxes and no headache sticks and no hot hands. She took up her new life like a queenly mantle and lived happily ever after.

  I held my arm close, and I tried to think small. I tried to think about tomorrow. I’d see Zenie and Mimi and maybe Eva too. I could tell Mimi thank you for sending me to camp, which ought to make her day. I figured I could hide my shoulder from Zenie and Mimi, but I ought to avoid Eva because, being left-handed, how could I write or draw diagrams? When I moved, it felt gravelly inside like a little mouse was in there gnawing away. My shoulder felt like it had set in to throb all the night long, but I was betting that out in the daylight I could do almost everything else in a normal-looking way. So I fell into a jittery sleep thinking about how to fool them. Make them think I was all right. I was thinking too that if I pretended enough to be all right, maybe I would get that way. The Power of Positive Thinking, Sherry the counselor would tell us when we were trying to do something that was hard, like hike up a mountain or saddle a biting horse. Her ponytail would bounce when she said it. Maybe I would grow a ponytail.

  The next morning Daddy had to go over to Greenwood for a meeting of Mississippi Assurance agents, so he woke me up at the crack of dawn to drop me off at Zenie’s. It was barely light and he looked like he’d just gotten home. The clothes he’d had on the night before had smudges on them. There were half moons under the arms of his khaki shirt. He smelled like vinegar and smoke and whiskey; and his hair, which had gotten too long, was weighted down with oil, though not Mr. Holcomb’s sweet oil, but the oil of Daddy’s own dirty head.

  He stomped into my room. “Get up, Sister. Come on, let’s go.” That’s all he said. When I turned over in the bed, my shoulder gave out a sickening crunch, which woke me up good and proper. I was so worn out I could barely pull myself out of the sack. I didn’t brush my teeth or wash my face or pull the sheets off the bed the way I’d planned. I was already sleeping in my clothes so I just crawled out of bed, grabbed my sack of dirty clothes with my good hand, and followed Daddy out of the door without a word. He didn’t look at me, nor I at him. As I followed him down the path to the car, my arm and shoulder revved up again, throbbing each time I set foot on one of Mama’s stepping-stones.

  I had gotten Daddy to let me leave my bag on Mimi’s front porch on the way over to Zenie’s. When he dropped me in front of Zenie’s and scratched off, his elbow out the window and a Lucky Strike in his mouth, I hoped he would have a fiery wreck and die so I’d never have to see him again. That is your father, I said to myself. Your father, I said again, just so my murderous self would listen up. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long on the land the Lord Thy God hath given thee. But the man who drove away didn’t seem like anybody’s anything. Much less a father.

  I could tell by looking at the front of the place that Zenie and them weren’t up yet. The new day’s sun was just now creeping out with its heat coming on before it actually broke through. It was too early to knock, so I sat down on the front stoop and waited for some sign of life inside. I held my arm down to my side. I needed some Bayer bad. I hoped Zenie had some. Even Ray, who left early in the mornings to beat the heat while he did yards all over town, seemed to be still in bed.

  All I wanted was to crawl onto Zenie’s couch. What sleep I had gotten the night before seemed snatched by the hardest from the heat and the trains and the agitated night outside the screen of my window. I kept thinking I needed to pay attention to something out there in the dark, but whatever it was, it seemed to be hiding itself Bomba-style in thickets of nandinas and crape myrtle, which were now blooming their hearts out, it being well into July. I couldn’t depart from the feeling that I needed to listen harder and be more watchful for what was coming. I wondered if Mary and them felt like this while they were hanging around Jesus’ tomb waiting for him to make good on his promise to come back to them. One thing I’d gotten to be an expert in by this time was waiting, like right now what I was waiting for was just a flick of the curtain at Zenie’s front window. You had to wait with your heart and eyes and ears all open. Otherwise you might miss The One when it tiptoed in, and it might tiptoe right back out. You were supposed to be ready with a smile and a glass of iced tea with mint. You needed to be ready to help it come on in, if it needed help. In one of the Clarion-Ledgers Daddy had stacked up in our living room I’d read about how Medgar Evers’s wife and little children had waited up for him the night he came home and got shot in his own driveway. When Mrs. Evers and the children heard the shot and came running out, they found their dear one in a pool of his own blood. But what if they had listened so hard for his car that they would have heard it driving up the street? What if they had opened their side door to the carport just a second sooner, right at the very moment their beloved drove up, would the murderer have said calf rope, called it off, for worry of hitting two boys and a girl and their mother? Just a second can be life or death. Off and on I worried that my mother would try to come back for me and if I didn’t wait with enough care, I would miss her tapping oh so lightly on the window screen for me. Then she would leave and I would miss her forever.

  I walked out into Zenie’s yard and folded myself up under Miss Josephine’s mimosa tree, which had new green shoots of leaves coming on strong to replace the ones she’d pulled off to count. I lay down under it, my head on my elbow, and watched Zenie’s front window. Then I must have dropped off because I began to dream that Medgar Evers’s black blood and my white blood had gotten mixed together. Now that he was gone, it was his blood I carried inside of me. I felt it move, slow and sure, heart to legs to belly. That’s what Daddy and his friends thought: that Medgar Evers had to die so my white-girl blood could flow easeful. Top to bottom, in and out. But why and to what end?

  Now, the flick of the curtain. Such a little thing that I almost missed it. Zenie opened the door a crack. She was still wearing her nightgown, her face in shadow. Then she moved forward into the dim morning light. She had a frown on her face, then a half smile. “What it doing out here?” she demanded. “Sleeping under my tree like a tramp.” When I got up from the ground and went over to her, she actually gave me a big hug, which sent a jolt through my shoulder. I didn’t want her to see me wince, so I burrowed my face into the front of her nightgown. Once I got in between her bosoms, I didn’t want to leave. She smelled like Alba lotion and sleep. “Whoa, horse!” she said in an aggravated whisper. “Get off of me, girl!” She pushed me away and frowned. “Weren’t expecting you this early in the morning. We got company. Now be careful and don’t wake nobody up. They all dead to the world.”

  That’s when I got a good look at her. I’d gotten a vacation at camp, but it looked like she’d been wallowing in hell headfirst. There was a big exclamation point between her eyebrows, a long up and down line with a hole under it, right between the eyes. There were two parentheses that ran down the sides of her mouth to her chin line, and dark smudges under her eyes. Now, with the sootiness around her eyes and the creamy brown of her cheeks, her face had turned into two different colors. In the two weeks I’d been gone, she looked as if she’d grown a permanent mask.

  When I tiptoed through the front room to the kitchen, I could see in the dim light that people were sleeping every which way around and about on Zenie’s living-room floor. I almost tripped over them. Young people. Eva had sure gathered a lot of friends in the time I’d been gone. Then it hit me. Maybe they were here to learn the trade of selling encyclopedias in Millwood before hitting the big cities, like Greenwood and Jackson and Meridian. Eva had a knack. She’d won bonuses for selling. She must be teaching them the trade.

  Zenie came in right behind me. “Don’t worry about them there. They just visiting.”

  I sat down at the kitchen table and she started boilin
g the coffee. “They selling encyclopedias too?” I whispered the question.

  Zenie’s back was to me. She finished setting up the percolator on the front eye of the stove and came over to the other side of the table and sat down. The water under the coffeepot started to hiss. “They just visiting is all. One thing you got to promise. Don’t tell your daddy we got all this company up here.”

  “Why not?” She didn’t have to worry, but I was curious.

  “He think too many folks in this house he might not let you come up and see me no more.” Her face slammed shut, and I saw how the lines had come about. “He might not like you being in the house around so much black.”

  She was right, I’d gotten wise to Daddy’s ways. He would hate me stepping over Negroes scattered about on the floor like branches cut from a tree. He might decide they were outside agitators and would just love the excuse to come riding up on his white horse and save me from them. Which would cause Zenie and them no end of grief. That much I knew.

  “I won’t tell him.”

  “You be sorry if you do. We all be sorry. You not supposed to be up here this early in the morning no how.” She glared at me for a minute.

  “I won’t tell him. I swear on the B-i-b-l-e.” I spelled it firm and clear and stared deep into Zenie’s penny eyes. Grandpops had told me to only make promises you could keep. I could keep this one until hell froze over.

  She could see that. She stood up from the table. “All right now, what sound good to eat? You get any supper out of that daddy of yours yesterday evening?” She kept her voice low.

  “What do you think?” At camp, I’d discovered that the smarty-pants voice I heard in my head was starting to come out of my mouth more and more often, in little punctuated puffs blown out like cigarette smoke.

  “Shhh. Don’t wake up the world. Guess you good and hungry then. Let’s see what I can find to tide you over. Want to get some sewing done before we go on up the street to you-know-who’s.”

  She left me sitting at the table while she went back into her and Ray’s room. A few minutes later, she was back in her regular white outfit and the white elastic hose she wore to work. The ringlets were gone from her hair. It was slicked back with oil. She smelled like fresh Alba. She set about warming some cold biscuits from the night before and stirring up a batch of milk gravy she made from lard and milk and flour in her iron skillet.

  The gravy was bubbling when Eva glided into the kitchen without a sound. She was wearing a seersucker robe and had big blue rollers all over her head. Her face was scrubbed and shiny, no lipstick or rouge. She looked like a high-school girl.

  “Look here what the cat dragged in.” She whapped me on top of my bad shoulder. It was a friendly whap, but it sent sparks flying through my shoulder and I flinched from the hurt of it.

  She peered at me through her cat-eye glasses. “What’s wrong with you? You jumpy, girl.”

  “Shhh,” Zenie said.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me.” I pulled my elbow into my side and grabbed it to hold back the throbbing. “How you doing?”

  “Staying alive, girl, that’s about it. Worn out though, I’ll tell you, worn out sure enough.” She pulled out a chair and plopped down.

  Zenie looked down at Eva and made a sound in her throat.

  When Eva sat down at the table, I didn’t get up to go to the living room the way I usually did to let her eat her breakfast in peace. Usually, if I were sitting at the table, Zenie looked at me a certain way when Eva came in for her breakfast, which meant I was supposed to go sit in the front room and not bother them while Eva ate fast and Zenie sat with her and drank coffee. But that morning there were so many people on the floor I couldn’t even get to the couch. I hoped she and Zenie wouldn’t notice I was still there and keep on talking. I didn’t want to go out on the front stoop again, and there was no place else to go, unless they wanted me to go hop in the bed with Miss J or Ray, which, to tell the truth, I wouldn’t have minded doing. My old tiredness had come back in spades, and my stomach was doing flip-flops. I felt dismal.

  Eva eyed me. “So, Flo, don’t guess you did any studying at that fancy camp of yours?”

  I grinned. After two weeks at camp where it was “Flo” this and “Flo” that, it was homelike to hear Eva speak the new name she alone had christened me with. To my mind it was snappy and smart and sounded like the heroine of a story. Zenie never called me anything but you or it. I said, “I read some books.”

  “You lying.”

  I was too tired to lie a second time so I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, get your pencils sharp, girl. Your vacation is over,” Eva said with relish. “We start back to work this afternoon when I get home. Hope you didn’t let everything I taught you fly right out of your head.”

  My arm throbbed as if the very idea of writing pained it. “Let’s start tomorrow. I’m worn out today.”

  Eva’s eyebrows went up. “What time you get in last night? You look like roadkill. Smell like it too.”

  “Late,” I lied for the second time.

  Eva shook her head no. “Flo, we got to get the move on, girl. It’s now or never. You’re behind schedule and I’ve got to catch you up. It’s already July.” With that, she put her head down on the table and in a second was back asleep.

  When the coffee was ready, Zenie poured herself a cup and finished the gravy and poured it over the biscuits. She made two plates. Over in the corner of the kitchen was her sewing-machine table and beside it the card table she kept for her sewing paraphernalia. The card table was piled high with braid and rickrack and blue serge. I knew she was up early making some Carver High School band uniforms because she did it every July about this time for the new children in the band. I wondered what it would be like to wear the scratchy material buttoned up to your chin and blow on a big instrument, maybe a tuba, and jive march around a football field in a perfect formation. For me, it was like trying to imagine flying.

  Zenie took one chair from the kitchen table and pulled it over to the card table and pushed her stack of stuff off to the side. She got one plate, steam rising, and put it in the bare spot. Then, wiping her hands on a dish towel, she cut an eye at me and whispered, “You. Come on over here and eat this before it gets cold. Don’t spill anything on my stuff.” I got up and went over.

  Then she plopped the other plate down on the kitchen table in front of Eva and thumped her on the head. Eva rose up bleary eyed and looked at her plate on the kitchen table and mine next to it on the card table. Our chairs were so close they were almost touching, but we were back to back and eating at different tables. She looked back and forth between them. “If this doesn’t beat all,” she snorted. Then she hit the top of the table. “If this isn’t ridiculous, I don’t know what is!” She glared at Zenie and rolled her eyes.

  Zenie ignored her and sat down at the sewing machine. “Five down, five to go,” she said, and started in on another uniform she had pinned up and laid out on top of the sewing machine. It wasn’t even seven o’clock, but already so hot I could see sweat bead up in the creases around her mouth.

  Eva put a bite of biscuit in her mouth and got up and poured herself some coffee and sat back down. She looked over her shoulder at me. “You’re not much company this morning.”

  I had biscuit in my mouth and was chewing fast because it was too hot. Otherwise I would have mentioned the fact that you can’t very well talk to somebody who’s asleep.

  “What kind of fancy camping things did you do? Have yourself a bonfire and cook up some weenies on a stick? Tell ghost stories? You sleep on the cold ground? What they feed you camping?” She gave me the once over. “Look like plenty, whatever it was.”

  Zenie stopped sewing and gave Eva the evil eye. I looked down. Below my dirty shorts my legs were spread out and lumping over the sides of the chair like blobs of bread dough. Between them was the now-sweaty lump of Kotex, which I needed to get rid of now that it was morning. I shoved another mouthful of biscuit and gravy i
n my mouth and chewed.

  “Gone to camp a chatting fool, come back the Sphinx. You too full of yourself to tell some camping stories? Man alive, must be nice to get out of this place here. Got yourself a nice change of scenery.”

  The questions were darts and I was the board. “It was nice,” I said. “It was better than nice. I wished I could have stayed there forever. I didn’t ever want to come back here. I hate this place.”

  Eva and Zenie both looked hard at me and blinked.

  “Well, it’s delightful knowing you too, girlfriend,” Eva hissed. “And I expect that’s your way of saying thank you so much, Zenie, for the delicious breakfast.”

  Zenie looked hard at Eva. “She tired. Leave her be.”

  “She’s tired. She doesn’t know the name of tired. Walk in my shoes all day trying to sell knowledge door to door in this heat and you know tired.”

  “Maybe tired folks ought to stay home nights and get some rest for their tiredness.” Zenie’s mouth went thin and tight. “Maybe then they not get out of bed on the wrong side.”

  Eva took a big slurp of coffee. “Maybe those ones that got some backbone need to get out at night and work for them that don’t. Maybe that’s what’s making the working ones so tired. They’re carrying all of the rest of y’all on their shoulders.”

  “Nobody carrying me. Nobody carrying me no place. Truth be told, if anybody’s getting carried around here, it sure ain’t me.” Zenie stood up straight and tall from the sewing machine, knocking over the stool she was sitting on and leaving part of a half-sewn uniform hanging by a thread on the needle. She turned to me. “Come on, you.” Then she stormed out of the kitchen, stepped over a couple of pairs of legs on the living-room floor, opened the front door, and looked back at me. “Come on.”