Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (24 page)

Patula was so crazy she asked the nuns if they wore brassieres. Do you know what Sister Jude said when she asked her? She said they do if they need one.

The thing about Sister Jude is, I don’t think she really wanted to be a nun. I’m not sure, though. She came from a very poor
family, and they more or less made her go into the convent. I don’t know if that is true, or if she is really June Haver and made that story up to confuse me. She showed me a picture of her as a young girl, and she looked exactly like June Haver with brown hair.

The first week I was in school I had to clean the chapel and I put the mops and brooms in the confessional by mistake, thinking it was the broom closet. The next day, when Father O’Connell went in to hear confessions, he stepped in a bucket and fell over the mops. Sister Jude took up for me right away and said that I wasn’t Catholic and what could you expect.

The other kids were nice, but they were dating and going to dances that I wasn’t invited to, so I really didn’t get to know them well. I was glad Sister Jude was my friend. Every time there was a party, all the girls wanted to do was to go on the football field and make out. The priest was no better. One little girl came running out of the church one day and told me that he put his hands on her bosoms. When I repeated that to the mother superior, she said for me not to say anything about it because he was from Ireland. They do things differently over there. Remind me not to go to Ireland!

I hate the way the priests act. They think they are so smart. Did you know they don’t allow women on the altar except to clean because they don’t think they are good enough? Sister Jude nearly genuflected herself to death at the altar. Watching her made me so mad I had to leave. The next day I went in and walked all over that altar and didn’t genuflect once. Who says that priests are better than nuns?

School started. Pickle Watkins will be my best friend as long as I live. The first day of school this girl named Dixie Nash called me a dirty mackerel snapper because I came from a Catholic school. I called her a Baptist baboon. After school, when she and a friend of hers started to push me around, Pickle came over and told them to lay off. Nash called Pickle a redneck. Pickle kicked the shit out of her and said, “You date sailors and are nothing but white trash.” I kicked the other girl. We had them both down on the ground when some teachers broke it up. Those girls were pretty tough. The thing that saved Pickle and me was that I had on saddle oxfords and Pickle had on white loafers, with taps, while both the other girls had on cardboard ballet slippers that didn’t hurt at all.

Dixie Nash scratched my face a little with her nails. Pickle made me come home with her because I might get hydrophobia or even a venereal disease from that girl. She put some Mercurochrome on my face.

Pickle has red, curly hair and freckles, and is the same height as I am. We can wear the same clothes! Her family moved her from Opp, Alabama, three years ago. When I told her my name, she said she had heard about me coming back from the dead and always wanted to meet me. She has a brother, Lemuel, and a little sister, Judy, who they call Baby Sister. They live on a farm about four miles from town. She plays in the band and wants me to be in it, too. I don’t have to read music. They just need good marchers to make the band look bigger. Most of the others can’t play either. Pickle is first chair trombone.

She is never getting married, just like me. Maybe we can go to the same college and get an apartment together in New York City. I spent the night with her. Her mother is very nice and her father is OK, but he makes them say grace at the table. He’s a deacon at the church. They seem afraid of him. Today Pickle
let me wear her new pearl collar. I turned my sweater around so the buttons would be in the back.

We went to see Miss Philpot, the band director, who’ll be glad to have me; all that was left was a saxophone, so I had to take it. I wanted a tuba. I’ll have to wear an old blue uniform from the forties because the band can only afford twelve new gold ones, and those go to the people who can read music. Pickle wears a gold one. I hate my uniform. I look like a bus driver. Pickle is a big deal in school and is going to try out for cheerleader and wants me to try out with her. I had to change my sixth-period study hall to go with her to the Future Homemakers of America. I told her I didn’t want to be a Future Homemaker. She doesn’t want to either, but her daddy makes her. She says we can have a lot of fun because the teacher is real old, and we can sneak out a lot.

I saw Vernon Mooseburger and Patsy Ruth Coggins, and Amy Jo Snipes is in love. How boring! All she talks about is her boyfriend, Nathan Willy, and how she is wearing his gold football that is just as good as an engagement ring. You should see Nathan. Pickle says he’s so dumb he couldn’t pour pee out of a boot.

Flicka Hicks is a big football player. He doesn’t even remember me. The worst news of all: Kay Bob Benson is head majorette! When she saw me, she said, “Daisy Fay Harper, you haven’t changed a bit,” which is an insult because I am older and have new glasses. She is giving a “back to school, cement mixer, putty, putty party.” Naturally I am not invited, so Pickle is not going either. Kay Bob goes home for lunch every day and irons her clothes for the afternoon classes and she and Flicka are in the school paper all the time as a current walk-to-class couple. Double Barf!

I went over to the grammar school to see Mrs. Underwood, who sent me a note about my mother. I love Mrs. Underwood, but I didn’t want to talk about Momma. I don’t even talk about her to Pickle. I still think about her and miss her and wish there was some way I could tell her how much I loved her. I don’t know if she knew it or not.

If I ever thought for a minute there was a God, I sure don’t now. My Daddy was right about that one. Pickle wishes her father had died instead of my mother. She hates him, and so do Lemuel and Baby Sister.

Lemuel is crazy about me and wants to date me. He’s tall and skinny and has a flattop, and is not bad-looking. Pickle said I could go out with him until we find someone better, but if he tries anything funny, she will kill him because we are going to college together. Whenever I spend the night with Pickle, he drives us crazy, trying to see me in my pajamas. Pickle thinks he is a degenerate. Her father doesn’t like Pickle to come to the Flamingo Motel. He is very strict and hates my daddy because Daddy won’t join the White Citizens’ Council, which is just another name for the Ku Klux Klan.

Michael Romeo has decided he doesn’t want to be a priest after all and is back home. He said the food was terrible. His mother is mad, but I’m glad. Besides, I need his vote for Pickle and me to be cheerleaders. The football team decides. We already have Vernon Mooseburger’s vote and Pickle’s brother, Lemuel’s, and all his friends’, and Amy Jo Snipes, who is also trying out, assures us her precious Nathan will vote for us because if he doesn’t, she won’t do “you know what,” whatever “you know what” is. If “you know what” is what Pickle and I think it is, we are sure that Nathan will get us elected.

We try out tomorrow. Here is our cheer:

Pickle lied to me. Mrs. McWinney, the Future Homemakers of America teacher, is not that old. You couldn’t get out of her room dead in a paper sack. So far she’s lectured on “How to Use Starch to Your Best Advantage,” “How to Freeze Eggs,” “How to Dust Using Both Hands.” Today we had to look at colored slides of different cuts of meat. Pickle has gone crazy. She wants to win the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow pin they are going to award in home economics, and I have to help her. In exchange she is teaching me the saxophone. It is hard. My chipped tooth keeps splitting the reed. She says I’m going to learn to play “Lady of Spain” if it kills her.

And we are cheerleaders. Yeaaaaa! Pickle found out that every one of the boys voted for us, including Flicka Hicks. Amy Jo Snipes was right. “You know what” was powerful enough to get us elected. Nathan looks happier, and our first game is coming up soon. Every day when the band marches downtown at band period, all the people close their doors and shut their windows because we sound so bad. I’m playing “Lady of Spain” to all the marches, and it fits pretty well into “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Semper Fidelis.”

Miss Philpot is a nervous wreck and chain-smokes. Since she is sensitive to loud noises, you wonder why she ever became
a band director. She is in love with Mr. Narney, the football coach, but he looks like a gorilla to me. He told the boys not to have anything to do with girls during football season because they will lose their strength. The boys also are not to play with themselves, but according to Pickle, Lemuel breaks training all the time. That is really gross. I’m never going to let Lemuel even hold my hand. What’s the matter with boys? Pickle knows all about them, and she will never let any one of them do anything to her. They’ll say anything to you to get you to do it, but afterwards they tell everybody and won’t respect you. You should hear how they talk about Dixie Nash, that girl we kicked so bad.

Your reputation is worth everything. Pickle and I have real good ones. Her brother would tell us if we didn’t. The boys looked in Mr. Narney’s billfold one time and found rubbers! Nobody says anything much about Amy Jo Snipes and Nathan, who are doing it because they are in love. Besides, Nathan will kill anyone who does.

Pickle told me there was a car parked somewhere and this boy and girl were petting and when a car hit them from behind, the girl’s nipple was bitten off and she had to go through life with only one nipple.

Pickle won’t take a drink from a boy because they put Spanish fly in it, which will make you go crazy and go all the way. Her story about a girl at the drive-in and a gearshift is just too gross to repeat.

I moved to a double room down at the end of the motel. I can’t stay by the bar because of all the screaming and hollering. I got so mad I went in and swiped a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey to help put me to sleep. Last night some drunk drove around the motel in a convertible playing a trumpet.

When Jimmy Snow’s here, he tries to keep it quiet. He got a crop-dusting job in Macon County. If he makes enough money, he’ll buy me some new clothes, not a minute too soon. It’s important how you look. I can’t go on wearing Pickle’s things all the time.

We hang around with the seniors, and if we want to stay in good, we have to look neat. Pickle says we should only date senior boys. She has one on the string named Mustard Smoot. She’s not in love, though. She just needs a senior to be seen with. Marion Eugene, Mustard’s friend, is going to ask me out so we can double-date.

Our first football game was a disaster. During the first quarter Vernon Mooseburger’s helmet flew off when he was tackled. It hit Mudge Faircloth, our best cheerleader, in the right knee, and she had to be carried off the field. Vernon should wear cotton in his helmet to help keep it on his head.

Five minutes before half time, when Pickle and I ran to the band room to change from our cheerleading costumes into our band uniforms, some idiot had locked the door. We ran around the outside and I had to break the window so we could get in. Pickle is one of the few players who can read music, plus we were both important parts of our band formations, particularly when we formed the word “GO.” Anyhow, we changed clothes as fast as we could and got back just as the band was entering the field. Miss Philpot was nervous and gave the “enter the field” command too early. We marched out before the game was over and messed up a field goal for our side. The bass drummer lost his drumsticks trying to get out of the way, and he had to hit his drum with his fist.

We formed a bell and played “School Days” and “Ring, Ring, Goes the Bell.” It went all right. Then we played “Teacher’s Pet” and formed a big apple.

Just as I marched by, Edwina Weeks, who plays the cymbals, screamed at me, “Look at your hand.” It was all bloody from breaking the window and the blood was dripping on my saxophone. I hoped I wouldn’t die while forming an apple on the Magnolia Springs Football Field. What a way to go.

I didn’t have time to think because we had to form the word “GO” while they played “Mr. Touchdown U.S.A.” and I played “Lady of Spain.” Then we had to form a big football with the majorettes in the center simulating the laces. Every time Edwina Weeks passed by, she screamed, “Look at your hand!” and pretty soon she started screaming for everyone to look at my hand. We had to stand there for what seemed like forever while Kay Bob Benson in her trashy blue sequined majorette outfit did her tricks, twirling two batons at one time, throwing up her baton and catching it behind her back. She didn’t miss once.

By this time my whole arm was bloody. I thought, if I have to die, let it be during Kay Bob Benson’s baton number so I can ruin it. When we got off the field, Edwina Weeks threw up, and Pickle tied my arm with my sock to keep the bleeding down. It ruined the look of my cheerleader outfit, just having on one sock, but we didn’t know what else to do. We got through the game and won.

Afterward all the cheerleaders are supposed to run up to the football players and hug them and tell them how great they did. Boy, did they smell! No one ever told me how stinky and sweaty they would be. I guess I don’t have much school spirit.

Today my wrist is taped and it looks great, just like I tried to commit suicide. I wore sunglasses to school and Pickle told everyone that I had experienced a great personal tragedy and not to ask me about it. You should have seen those people looking at me. We are going to make up a great personal tragedy to spread around tomorrow. I think it will have something to do with Tony Curtis and his recent marriage.