Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (7 page)

Well, the whole theater just busts its seams! They start laughing and hooting, and a whole gang of them up front—led by my brother, I bet—starts making poot noises with their hands. And pretty soon other sections of the theater join in making the same noise until it sounds like we’re in one giant theater full of pooters! The few that aren’t making poot sounds are screaming out things like “Yay! Teensy!”

All the other contestants have clumped together at the back of the stage. I am laughing so hard I can hardly breathe.

Mr. Hollywood shakes his clipboard in Caro’s face and booms into the microphone. “What are your names, little girls? Girls Number 39, 40, 41, 61, give me your names immediately!”

We just stare back at him. It is so much fun to see a grown-up get this mad.

“I said: Tell me your Christian names!”

I am still dying to talk into the microphone all by myself, so I take a step forward. I take a deep breath and give a big smile to the audience. “My name,” I announce, “is Pooty Pootwell.”

The whole audience breaks into applause! For me. Waves of applause just wash up on the stage and crash against my new shoes. I knew they would love me if I had half a chance!

Old Mr. Hollyrot pushes me away and leans into the microphone. “All four of you are disqualified! Do you hear me? Disqualified!”

His hands are shaking so hard he can hardly hold his clipboard. His mouth is all pinched together, and the veins in his face are about to pop! All because of me!

The place is going completely wild. Popcorn flying all over the place, JuJuBes landing on the stage, and a group of boys standing up yelling, “Go Pooty!” Ushers are running up
and down the aisles trying to make kids stop throwing their Coca-Cola cups in the air. They’re yelling, “We want Pooty! We want Pooty!” and climbing over seats and stomping on the floor! It’s wonderful!

The other little girls are crying and calling for their mothers. Some of the mothers rush up to the stage. You can hear them saying to us, “You should be ashamed of yourselves!”

But I am not ashamed at all. The whole theater is going mad and
it’s all because of me.

“Bring down the curtains!” Mr. Hollyrot says into the microphone.

And then Mr. Bob is at the microphone saying, “All right now, boys and girls, pipe down. I know you’re a little stirred up, but I’ve got a special treat for you. Listen up now. Who wants to see an extra installment of
Flash Gordon
? If you all will settle back down, I’ll show a special, unplanned screening of next week’s installment,
Flash Gordon and the Planet of Mongo.
” He signals to the piano player, who starts playing something soothing. The popcorn stops flying and kids start back to their seats. When you mention
Planet Mongo
around here, people shut up and listen.

Then Mrs. Bob steps up to the microphone and says, “Mothers, would you please come out and get your daughters? And those of you girls whose mothers aren’t here, please come on back to the dressing room with me. Everything is just fine.”

Teensy and Caro and Necie and I start to walk off the stage, but Teensy cannot stand it. She runs back to the center of the stage, turns and sticks her little booty out at the audience, and wiggles it for all she’s worth.

Well, Mr. Lance Toothrot Lacey storms over to Teensy and yanks her arm so hard he just about pulls it off. And there he is, leaning Teensy over his knee with his hand in the air, about to give her a spanking right on her tiny little behind!

But Mr. Bob stops him. “Son, I think you better watch your manners. This child doesn’t belong to you.”

“I don’t care who the hell she belongs to,” Mr. Rottenteeth says. “She has ruined the official Shirley Temple Look-Alike Contest! This has never happened to me before!”

Old Hollywood’s voice has changed. He doesn’t sound like a movie star with a velvet-curtain voice anymore, but like one of those fellows who come to town with the circus and spit out of the sides of their mouth.

“Well, that might be true, son,” Mr. Bob says, “but you still don’t take a hand to one of our daughters. Her own father can spank her if he sees fit.”

Mr. Hollywood straightens his ascot and pulls down the cuffs of his sleeves. “Well, I’m glad
you’re
the one who runs a hick movie house in this hick town with that bunch of under-age hick vixens. I’m on the next train out of here.”

And then he turns to leave, but not before Mr. Bob says, “I’ll be sure and call your Twentieth Century Fox pals and let them know you’re on your way. When they ask me who won the contest, I’ll just tell em our gals were too pretty to pick just one.”

Genevieve is standing backstage, holding our coats, and oh, she looks mad! “
Que méchante
, Teensy!” she says. “You went too far with that last little butt shake!
Que faiseur d’embarras!
”

Genevieve pushes open the stage door and we step outside into the cold fresh air. Jack is there to meet us, blowing on his fingers, stomping his feet, and laughing.

“Go, Pooties,” he says, “Garnet Parish Pooties are the best!”

“We are Temples of the Holy Spirit,” I say. And we all crack up again.

“That is enough,” Genevieve says. “I am taking you girls home. Jack, please go find Mr. Bob and Mrs. Bob and let them know that we’ll be over at their house later.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jack says, and turns to go. But not before he gives me a wink and hands me a box of JuJuBes. Oh, I like that Jack.

Our curls are gone.

All 168 of them.

Genevieve brushed them out. Hard.

At Caro’s house, the four of us are standing in the living room. Mr. Bob is in his easy chair, Mrs. Bob is sitting in her rocker.

“Bob,” Genevieve says, “I want you to give these girls their punishment.”

For the first time I get scared.

“Girls,” Mr. Bob says, “I have thought about this long and hard. The four of you—well, the four of you behaved simply terribly in my public theater. You ruined the day for a lot of little girls, and their mothers too. I am not going to hear the end of it. They’ve already been ringing my phone off the hook.”

Genevieve says, “Think of
les petites pauvres
. Yall ruined it for the poor children. Nothing to eat but onions and turnips in months,
non
? Some of them,
pères
haven’t had a job in two, three years. Sharecropper
enfants
coming to town once a week for to see
Flash Gordon
. They don’t want to see your
derrière, filles. Comprendez-vous?
You show those poor little girls the respect.”

I look at Genevieve because she always makes me think things I want to forget about.

“Genevieve is right,” Mr. Bob says. “There is a depression going on in this country, even if you four princesses don’t see it.”

“One of these days you girls have got to start behaving like ladies,” Mrs. Bob says. “You’re not babies anymore. You are young ladies. And there is a right way and a wrong way to act. What you did today was definitely wrong. You don’t want to get reputations for being bad girls, do you?”

“But, Mrs. Bob,” I say, before I can stop myself, “it’s so much
fun
being a bad girl.”

“Vivi,” she says, “do you want me to call your mother and father and have them talk to you instead of me?”

No, I don’t want her to call my mother, and definitely not my father, because he doesn’t
talk
. He just takes off his belt and lets it do his talking for him.

“No, ma’am,” I say.

“You all have got to start acting like ladies if you expect to get along in this town,” Mrs. Bob says. “How can I get that through your head, Caro?”

“But, Mama,” Caro says, “we can’t
help
it if Teensy pooted.”

“I know, I know,” Mrs. Bob says, “you can’t fight Mother Nature. But the four of you couldn’t just leave it at that.”

I drop my head, but I am secretly thinking about how very
original
the name Pooty Pootwell is.

“Thought I was going to have to call out for help,” Mr. Bob says. “Never in my life have I had that much trouble trying to calm a theater down. Yall are not going to get away with this scot-free. For the next month—that is four straight Saturdays—you bad little girls are going to clean up The Bob after the Saturday matinee. Yall are going to sweep up every single piece of popcorn and pick up every candy wrapper that’s left on the floor. Furthermore, you will not be allowed into The Bob except to clean. No movies during the whole time of your punishment. And I’m going to talk to Mr. Hyde over at the Paramount too, ask him to give his ticket people and his ushers strict instructions not to let the four of you into his theater either. Not until the month is up.”

Back home in my bedroom, I sit down and think about what all has happened. And the more I think about it, the madder I get. It is all so unfair! I get so mad that my brain squeezes together and pushes out the most brilliant idea of my life to date! I will start my very own newspaper where I
can print NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH! The name of my newspaper comes to me in a flash! It will be called
“Vivi’s Very Important News!”
V.V.I.N. for short. Pronounced “Va-Vinn.” I sharpen a pencil, get out my Big Chief tablet, and just start writing. I must reveal the news of this terrible injustice.

8

I
n spite of the light drizzle that evening, Sidda was possessed with the idea of building a fire at the edge of the lake. She hadn’t built an outdoor fire since she was a nine-year-old Girl Scout—the year Vivi and Necie had led Troop 55 and backed into the flagpole with Necie’s County Squire station wagon.

She toyed with the twigs and newspapers, used up eight kitchen matches, and blew until she was hyperventilating. Then she gave up, sat back on her feet, and felt foolish. She only required a small fire. She wasn’t cold, it’s not that she needed heat. She had no plans to cook anything over the flames. She simply wanted to build a little fire outdoors and watch it burn. Her incompetence made her feel out of place in the great Northwest. She missed the screeching urban comfort of Manhattan.

If her
mother
were here, she’d have built a fabulous fire. Mama
or
Caro. Nights at Spring Creek, they’d build fires for hot dogs, s’mores, maybe toss in a firecracker or two. They’d sing, tell ghost stories, host talent shows, and compete in limbo contests, that broom lowering till it all but touched the pine needles. Later, their skin coated with 6—12, the kids would lean back against their mothers’ bodies and watch the flames of the fire and the citronella candles burning, and the smoke curling up from the mosquito coils.

“Piney pitch is the secret to starting a fire,” Vivi used to say. “Unless you have kerosene, of course.”

Sidda hadn’t thought she even remembered that instruction.

“Get hard pitchwood from the center of a loblolly pine stump if you can find it, Sidda, and you can’t go wrong.”

Well, Mama, there aren’t any loblolly pines around this place.

She stood up and looked around her. All around her were Sitka spruce, Western red cedar, and hemlock, but she didn’t know which was which. She’d never thought much about trees before. Except for the old live oak tree at Pecan Grove, with its hundred-and-twenty-foot-branch spread. That tree could make any member of her family weep when they talked about it. When Sidda was a girl, she believed if she ever got married it would be under that tree.

Pitch, Sidda thought. I’m looking for pitch. Perfect pitch.

There was no perfect pitch, but Sidda did find a rotting stump. Not five feet from where she had been squatting. She looked into the center of it, and there was the resiny part, the last part to rot. Reaching into the trunk, she broke off several pieces and returned to her erstwhile fire site.

“Separate your sticks, Siddalee,” she heard her mother (or Caro) say. “Start with a tiny teepee, with the littlest twigs over some shavings. Good. Now use some slightly larger sticks for your next layer. Just keep building it like that, easy does it, while your fire builds.”

Sidda did exactly as her mother had taught her. But the fire would not catch. Everything was simply too wet. It was dark, only the tiny lights on the other side of the lake were visible. Still a thick cloud cover, no stars visible. And this was supposed to be the time of meteors. May had told her the Olympic Peninsula was known for shooting stars in late summer. Just Sidda’s luck to show up the one summer when
clouds refused to budge. All this quiet dampness was somewhat spiritual. And somewhat depressing.

Returning to the cabin, Sidda slipped into a pair of dry, warm sweatpants, and lit a fire in the fireplace. She put on a Rickie Lee Jones CD of songs from the forties, poured herself a glass of brandy, sat down, and tried to make herself read a Jungian book on marriage. Three pages in, she closed the book.

Lying down in front of the fire, she stroked Hueylene. She could smell the alder logs as their burning warmed the room. Through the glass doors she could see nothing but gray and rain. This is cozy, all right, Sidda thought, but if it’s like this in August, I hate to think what December looks like.

She pulled Hueylene’s travel bed in front of the fireplace. She stared into the flames for a moment, then reached for the book of “Divine Secrets.” It fell open to a florist card that read, “Happy Anniversary, Ya-Yas! Love from the Ya-Ya Husbands.” Wild. But that’s the way it was: every year the Ya-Yas threw themselves a party to celebrate another anniversary of their friendship. And the husbands actually brought gifts! Sidda remembered more about Ya-Ya anniversaries than she did about Vivi and Shep’s.

A flier from the grand opening of the Southgate Shopping Center in Thornton was tucked in next to a handwritten recipe for a cheese soufflé. The recipe had been crossed out, and a note to the side read: “Forget it! Fix a drink and go out for hamburgers!”

Next she ran across a photo of a younger Caro holding an infant in her arms. Caro was making the A-OK sign with her fingers, and wore a jaunty little beret. The infant was tucked in the crook of her arms, and they seemed to be standing in front of a statue. Which one of us wild children was that? Sidda wondered.

As she turned to the next page, what looked like pieces of
walnut shell fell out of the book. Sidda imagined her mother years ago snacking on the nuts while pasting things into the scrapbook. Sidda thought about throwing the remnants away, but changed her mind. Gathering the shards up off the floor, she tucked them back into the book where they had been for God knows how long.

Sidda thought about nuts, how they are food and seed at once. How they hold fertility magic in one tight, tiny space. Her mind ran to rich symbolic imaginings, but still she could not guess the enchantment those particular walnut shells contained.

As the smells of sweet woodruff and alder burning and lake water wafted about her, so did the essences of her mother’s stories. Not in the way Sidda wanted, but in the way of hidden things that mysteriously reveal worlds unsuspected and longed for.

Vivi, 1937

Mother won’t let Caro and me play in the new hammock until we rub the face off the Blessed Virgin statue Father brought back from the island of Cuba.

“This turpentine stinks,” Caro says. “I don’t see why we have to do this.”

“Rub hard,” I say. “Then Mama will let us try out the hammock.”

The statue is sitting on our front porch, right where it got delivered in a wooden box, alongside Father’s luggage. Father is just back from Cuba, where he went to the Tennessee walking-horse show with his rich friends. He stayed in a big hacienda with servants. Cuba is paradise, Father says, with white beaches and orange flowers growing everywhere and wild parrots and all the people happy. His rich friends run the whole island, and Father said he will take me with him
next time. He said Mother dresses too much like hired help to take her. If Mother would take the kerchief off her head and the dust rags out of her pockets, I just know she’d be beautiful.

Father bought the Cuban Blessed Virgin for Mother. The statue was gorgeous, with brown skin! She had earrings and a necklace, and the brightest colors of any Mother Mary I had ever seen. Big red lips and a violet color on her eyelids like she was ready for a fiesta. Mother just hated her.

The first thing Mother did after Father left for the office this morning was to unscrew the gold hoop earrings and take all those pretty red and yellow necklaces off the Virgin’s neck and drop them in a pile over by the hen-and-chicken planter. The whole time she was doing it, she shook her head like that statue had gone and done something bad.

“The Blessed Virgin is not a Negro,” Mother said. “It is just like foreigners to try to turn the Mother of God into a gaudy tart. That statue needs to be cleaned up! Imagine what Father Coughlin would say if he could see this statue.”

Mother listens to Father Coughlin on the radio. If Father Coughlin says something, then it’s like Moses brought it down from the mountain.

“You listen to that radio priest more than you do your own husband,” Father tells her.

She says, “If Demon Rum wasn’t stalking your soul, then I might listen to you more.”

Mother says that Father spends too much time with his horse friends, and he has turned his back on God. Mother will not go to any horse shows with him, so I get to take her place. I love all the ladies in their jodhpurs and boots, and the picnics with vodka gimlets for the grown-ups and pink lemonade for me, and everyone all dressed up. Father’s Tennessee walking horses, Passing Fancy and Rabelais’s Dream, take prizes right and left. Every time those horse people get together, it’s a party.

“Take your fingers and rub every bit of that color off the Virgin’s cheeks,” Mother says.

I pour a little more turpentine on my rag and rub in circles to get the rouge off the Virgin’s cheeks.

After Mama goes inside, we can finally talk about our secret plans. Today is the day leading up to the night of our Divine Ritual Ceremony, which Caro and Teensy and Necie and I have been planning and planning.

“Do you think Necie will chicken out?” I ask Caro.

“She thinks we’ll get kidnapped like the Lindbergh baby,” Caro says. “She is scared to go out in the woods at night.”

“I go out in the woods by myself at night all the time.”

“You do not!”

“Oh, yes I do. I go out there all the time. I’m brave as Amelia Earhart. Sometimes I sleep out there by myself.”

“Vivi, you lie lie lie,” Caro tells me.

I just smile.

Mother comes out to inspect our work on the Virgin. “Now,” Mother says, “now she looks more like Mary Most Pure. Well done, girls, the Blessed Virgin is proud of you.”

“We’ve turned her into a white lady,” Caro says, examining the statue.

Mother smiles. “The Blessed Virgin is not a colored person. She is the Mother of God. She is above even white people.”

“Then how come we had to rub all her brown skin off?” Caro asks. Caro doesn’t believe everything grown-ups tell her. Caro makes up her own thoughts.

“Little girls shouldn’t ask so many questions, Carolina,” my mother tells my friend.

“
Bonjour!
” Teensy calls out, walking up our path, wearing a little sunsuit Genevieve’s cousin on the bayou made her, all out of dishcloths. Necie is with her, and they’re holding hands, coming to play.

“Hey! Pals!” Caro calls out.

“Hello, girls,” Mother says when they reach the porch. She reaches out to pat Teensy’s pretty black curls, but Teensy pulls away. She doesn’t like my mother ever since Mother spanked Teensy’s bottom for taking all her clothes off at my sixth birthday party and dancing around buck naked singing to me.

“Ooh, who is she?” Teensy asks, pointing to the statue.

“That is the Blessed Virgin that these good little daughters of Mary have reclaimed. She was a tacky colored Cuban with rouge like a harpy, but we took care of that, didn’t we, girls?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Caro and I say.

“She used to be a gorgeous brown lady,” I say.

“Well, she sure looks like a spook now,” Teensy says. “How come yall rub off her mouth?”

“What do you think, Denise?” Mother asks Necie.

“Did yall use an eraser?” Necie asks.

My mother laughs. “No, dear. We started with Clorox and switched to turpentine.”

“Can we go play in the hammock now, please, ma’am?” I ask.

“Yes, you may,” Mother answers, “but first come and genuflect in front of Our Holy Mother.”

And so we all genuflect in front of the statue that looks like she saw something scary and lost all her color. Then Teensy spots the jewelry Mother took off the Virgin. She snatches it up so fast that Mother doesn’t see her do it. That Teensy has quick hands, and she loves jewels.

So now it is me and Caro and Teensy and Necie out on the side porch. Harrison, who works for us, just hung the big hammock Father brought me. It’s hanging from the blue ceiling of the porch, just outside the windows of Father’s study.

“None of yall have a hammock like this. This one is
Cuban
.” I climb into the hammock and lay back facing the street.

Caro says, “Okay, you ready for me?”

“I most certainly am,” I tell her, and she scrambles into the hammock.

“Okay, Necie, now you.”

Necie starts to climb in. She holds her dress so we can’t see her panties.

“Necie, who do you think is going to look up your dress?” Teensy says.

“I don’t know,” she says, and rolls her eyes.

Then Teensy turns away from us, and lifts up her dress so we can all see her underwear. She shakes her butt in the direction of the street; she doesn’t care who sees her.

“Panties on the porch!” Teensy sings. “Panties on the porch!” And Necie is blushing. We love to embarrass her.

She’s squinched in between Caro and me with her head at my end. I give her a little kiss on the cheek.

“Good Necie, perfect fit,” I tell her.

“Now, Teensy, you climb in and just get wherever you can fit.”

Teensy gets in the hammock and just lays on top of us like we are her pillows.

“Hey! Get off me!” I yell.

“Well, you said ‘wherever,’ ” she laughs, and I push her and she pushes back. Teensy always pushes back. If you push Necie, she just says, I’m sorry. She is a relief sometimes after the rest of us.

“Yall cut it out,” Necie says.

“Teensy,” Caro says, “scooch up here by my arm and put your legs over the side.”

Teensy obeys her, snuggling in, and we are lying there like sardines in a mesh can. Through the spaces in hammock netting you can see the porch floor, and through the porch floor you can see slats of sunlight hitting the ground
underneath the porch. I pull on the rope that Harrison has rigged so we can swing ourselves without getting up.

“Oh, this is great!” Caro says.

And it is great, like we are in a big cradle together.

“I want a hammock like this,” Teensy says.

“Well, then tell your daddy to go to Cuba and get you one,” I say.

“I will, I’ll tell him this evening. I’ll tell him to get me a Cuban Blessed Virgin too. And I won’t rub her face off either. I’ll glue a pair of
Maman
’s false eyelashes on her.”

It is around ten in the morning and things are already hot. You can smell the morning sun hitting the grass and bringing up smells like lemon. I lean my head back and smell things, wherever I am. To me, smells are like an invisible person that a lot of people forget is even there. I would rather lose my eyes than my sense of smell.