Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (20 page)

I got the biggest hand of anybody, even bigger than Saint Joseph’s. Momma and Daddy were careful to take turns praising me after the play so they wouldn’t have to talk to each other. I was hoping they would get together, it being Christmas and all and having a child in common, but they didn’t. All Momma said to Daddy was: “How’s your new friend?” What new friend?????

Don’t ever shop at Elwood’s Variety Store. They employ a group of mean and evil people who torture young children. Last night Mrs. Hilda Jinx called Daddy on the phone and told him I had dressed myself up as Mother Goose and stolen a wig off a dummy’s head in the children’s ready-to-wear department while some poor little boy was having an epileptic fit. The terrible thing was there was not one part of her story I could deny. She said that if Daddy brought me to the store and I returned the wig, she wouldn’t press charges. She didn’t want to have a bald dummy in the children’s ready-to-wear department during the after Christmas sale. Daddy had to take me over to Vernon’s house to get the wig back. So now Vernon is bald again.

This morning at seven-thirty Daddy had me out in front of Elwood’s Variety Store and I had to stand there until eight
o’clock when they opened. Finally, Mrs. Jinx came. I tried to hand her the wig, but she made me put it back right where I had gotten it in the first place. It was terrible. There wasn’t a customer in the place and all the salespeople were standing behind their counters staring at me. You could have heard a pin drop. I had to walk by notions and paper supplies, and when I walked by the Butterick’s sewing pattern counter, the old woman who works there said, “Shame on you, and so close to Christmas, too.” That store must be a mile long, and the children’s ready-to-wear department was all the way in the back. After I put the stupid wig on the stupid dummy, I had to walk past all those people again, and that woman in sewing patterns said, “Shame, shame.” I was never so glad to get out of anywhere in my life. And I will tell you this, the Elwood’s Variety Store has lost my business forever, and I have always been a good customer. Imagine them ruining a poor bald boy’s Christmas like that.

Today I went to the Big B Drugstore and bought Peachy Wigham and Ula Sour Christmas presents with my Christmas money. I got Peachy some Royal Crown hairdressing and some Tangee rouge and Ula Sour a pair of beautiful white plastic sunglasses with mirror lens in them that you can see out of but nobody can see your eyes. I bought myself a pair to wear to Jr. Debutantes next month. We are going to have a talk on “How to Set a Party Table,” and now I can sleep through it if I want.

When I got back to school, after Christmas, there was a new boy in our class, Flicka Hicks. He’s been at military school and hated it, so he came back here. You wouldn’t believe it. He looks
just like Johnny Sheffield and has curly hair and everything.

Some people may have thought I was bragging about me getting the biggest hand at the Christmas play, but this is what Mrs. Dot said in her “Dashes from Dot” column, word for word:

I’ll bet Kay Bob Benson is kicking herself. She looked so stupid with a beard. I hope Flicka Hicks reads the “Dashes from Dot” column. Maybe I’ll send it to him anonymously.

Saturday, Michael and I went up to the Magnolia Springs Theater to see the double feature
Superman and the Mole Men
with Georges Reeves and Phyllis Coates and
Bandit Queen
,
“EVERY MAN WAS A TARGET FOR HER LASH, HER BULLETS, HER KISSES
” with Barbara Britton and Willard Parker. As we were buying our candy, in walked Flicka Hicks in his military school uniform. Guess who he was with! Kay Bob Benson! Going to military school must have made him stupid if he thinks Kay Bob Benson is good-looking. He bought her popcorn and everything. I was so disgusted I left Michael right in the middle of
Bandit Queen
and went down to the colored quarters to give Peachy Wigham and Ula Sour their presents. Peachy liked hers a lot. Ula was at the mortuary. When I told Peachy I needed a drink, she gave me an Orange Crush. I wanted Wild Turkey, so I had some and chased it with Orange Crush. I sure wouldn’t want to go to the movies with some boy named after a horse.

Yesterday Daddy and I were watching the
Mickey Mouse Club
and when we looked up, two FBI men were at the door. I knew they were from the FBI because they dressed just like Mr. Kilgore, real neat, like the men on
Gang Busters
.

The short one said, “Mr. Harper, we’d like to know your whereabouts on the night of November fifth.”

Daddy had an answer right away. He said he had spent the night with Rayette Walker, who lived at 212 Division Avenue, and that Jimmy Snow had been with him.

The men wrote it down and said, “Well, Mr. Harper, that coincides with Miss Walker and Mr. Snow’s story.” They said they were sorry to have bothered us, but they had to do some routine checking.

Boy, was I mad. Daddy had told me that Rayette Walker was nobody and now I find out he spent the night with her! I’ll bet all the times he was spending the night with Jimmy Snow, he’s been with her. And Daddy said he never lied to me. Ha!

Today when I went over to the high school and got my Almond Joy from Marvin Thrasher, I asked him if he had ever heard of a woman named Rayette Walker. He asked me how in the world did I know her. I told him she was not an acquaintance of mine, but of Daddy’s and Jimmy Snow’s. He just laughed and said he didn’t doubt it, because Rayette never met a man she didn’t like. He said for me to stay away from her because she would ruin my reputation. Rayette Walker must be the woman Momma and Daddy were fighting over and the one Kay Bob Benson’s mother saw Daddy with at a beer joint. I am going to call on her tomorrow and tell her she has broken up my mother and daddy.

I took that picture of Momma she gave me for Christmas and the colored Bible to school today. After school I walked over to Division Avenue and found 212. It is a little white house with a front porch that looks like it is getting ready to fall down. Real low-rent, as Momma would say. I went up on the porch and knocked on the door. Nobody was home but a toy chihuahua that barked its head off.

I waited there until six o’clock. Finally, some woman came. When she saw me sitting on the porch, she looked scared and said, “Daisy Fay, what are you doing here” She knew my name. I asked could I come inside, and she let me. By that time I remembered I had seen her working up at Nita’s Beauty Box. She looks a lot like Yvonne De Carlo, only a little heavier.

When we got inside, she asked me if I wanted to sit down, but I wasn’t sitting in anybody’s house that was a home wrecker. I showed her my mother’s picture and told her my daddy was married to this woman and I was their child. I told her I knew she and Daddy had been fooling around. It was all over town and my mother knew it, too. What’s more, my reputation was ruined forever because I was a Jr. Debutante and needed a good reputation. And my school is having a mother-daughter supper, and now I have to go by myself all because of her.

She looked real sad and said, “Daisy, your daddy has told me everything about you since you were born. I even saw you in the Christmas play.”

I said, “You did?”

And she said, “Yes, you were wonderful.”

I asked if she had noticed that I had forgotten my lines, and she hadn’t noticed it at all.

To get back on the track, I said, “If you know all about me, how come you stole my daddy away from a perfectly good wife and made her leave?”

She didn’t have an answer for that one. She just said for me
not to be mad at Daddy because he loved me very much, and they had never meant to hurt me or Momma. Then she added, “When you grow up, maybe you will understand,” the old famous line that they always give you.

I told her I was in the sixth grade and read at ninth-grade level and I understood a lot, and I hated her guts for hurting my momma, and I was never going to Nita’s Beauty Box again, and for her to stay away from my daddy and leave him alone and to go out with single men, all in one sentence. She asked me if I wanted a Coca-Cola. When we went in the kitchen, she had Mrs. Dot’s review of the Christmas play stuck on her refrigerator. I’ll bet she wasn’t there at all but just read the review.

I made her swear on the colored Bible she would leave my daddy alone. She said if I hated her so bad, she would. I said I did. Then I gave her back her Coca-Cola bottle and left.

Oh, brother, am I in trouble again. When I got home from Rayette’s last night, Daddy wasn’t here, so I just made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watched a little television and went to sleep. But today after school, he was home, drunk as a skunk.

Daddy was so mad at me for going up to Rayette’s and making her swear not to ever see him again I think he would have killed me if Jimmy Snow hadn’t been there. He was crying and carrying on and saying I didn’t know what I had done and why didn’t I just stay out of things I didn’t understand. I told him I had a patriotic duty to protect Momma and he wasn’t going to hurt my mother over any beauty operator. He just sat there and cried
in his beer. I sure thought it was funny, him acting like that over somebody he told me was nobody.

He and Jimmy Snow talked for a while and then Jimmy came in my room and said for me to go for a walk with him on the beach. I told him it wouldn’t do any good because I was mad at him, too, for going up to Rayette’s house with Daddy in the first place when he knew Daddy was a married man. After we got to the beach, Jimmy said, “Daisy, your mother and daddy are going to get a divorce.”

I said, “They are not!” Even if they said it, it didn’t mean a thing. They have been getting a divorce since before I was born. Momma will get over being mad at Daddy and come home any day now.

Jimmy said, “I know you want to believe your momma’s coming back, but it’s just not going to happen.”

I said, “Even if it is true, which it isn’t, Daddy doesn’t have any business running around with some old beauty operator that is trash, and everyone says so, too.”

Then Jimmy said, “Now, Daisy, Rayette Walker has been a good friend to you, me and your daddy.”

I almost had a fit on that one. I said, “She isn’t any friend of mine, breaking up my home and making Momma leave home. I hate her and I wish she was dead in the grave with maggots eating her stomach.”

Jimmy didn’t answer me for a long time. Then he said, “Daisy, sit down. I have something to tell you.” I didn’t want to sit down because of the sand fleas, but he took off his jacket and put it on the beach. It was a bright clear night and I could see his face in the moonlight. He’d been drinking, but I don’t think he was drunk. He looked at me. “Daisy, can I trust you?”

“Yes, of course, you can. I am capable of keeping life-and-death secrets to the grave. I even have some information about Michael Romeo and a certain exotic dancer that I have kept from his momma.”

“You’re a pretty smart girl, Daisy, and you’re old enough to understand what I am going to say.”

I agreed with him about the smart part and told him to get on with it.

He said, “I hate to see you make a mistake about Rayette you will regret. Now I’m only going to tell you this once, and I want your word of honor that you will never ask me or anybody about it again.”

I said, “Yes, now tell me.”

He said, “Are you sure?”

And I said, “Yes.”

By this time I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes and sand fleas. I thought if he didn’t say what he had to say, I was going to itch to death. Besides, the suspense was worse than
Nancy Drew
.

“Well, Daisy, if the police ever trace some of the bullets they found in Claude Pistal’s liver to a certain woman’s gun, then maybe you’ll understand what a good friend she was to you and your daddy.”

I just sat there. I forgot about the sand fleas and mosquitoes. I had suspected it, but now I knew for sure what had been in those paper sacks Peachy Wigham gave Daddy the night before Claude was murdered. Rayette, Daddy and Jimmy Snow had killed Claude Pistal trying to protect me! Rayette had lied to the police, a crime in itself, about Daddy being there all night. Not to mention hurting her reputation. I didn’t say a word. Pretty soon we went back in the house and found that Daddy had already passed out. After Jimmy left, I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. All these people in trouble, even Peachy, because of me. And Claude hadn’t even been trying to kill me!