The Queen of Palmyra (21 page)

It seemed like a blessed relief to her too because right after she said it, she reached down and lifted the sheet off herself. It slipped over to one side as she rose up and put her feet on the floor. Her feet looked strong, even if the rest of her didn’t. She had wiry toes, which seemed longer against the light linoleum floor. They were brown right down to the tips, which were pinkish. Her feet were long and flat to the ground. No arch to speak of. She sat for a while on the side of the bed looking down at those feet stretched out in front of her on the floor. She seemed to be thinking about them. Where they could go. What they could do.

“Dizzy,” she said, with a little shake of the head.

Behind me Zenie said, real quiet and easy, “Take it slow. Just sit for a little bit and let it pass on.” I don’t know how long she’d been standing there.

Eva kept on sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at her feet stretched out. She touched the scab on her face, then started picking it.

Zenie came over and took her hand. “Don’t fool with that thing,” she said, “you’ll make it worser. You’ll raise the scar.”

All of a sudden Eva bent her head over and started laughing. “I’ll be scary-fied, sure enough,” she said. “Yes siree. I got myself good and scary-fied!” Then she stomped one foot, then the other. “
Peckerwoods
.” She said the word like she was upchucking something nasty.

Then all of a sudden, her eyes caught mine and lit a fire between us. “You out there walking around,” she said. “Guess if you can do it, so can I. You got to
live
with him.”

Then she rose up in her blue nightgown, and the ripe bed
smells rose with her. “Whooee, got to clean this self up,” she whispered to herself, and she swept past us in a cloud of blue.

I got a good whiff of her as she went by. “Eva, you need some Mum.” That’s what Mama always said to me when I was dirty and smelly. “A little Mum never hurt anybody,” she would say, handing me the jar of cream to dab under my arms. Not too much or it would glob up, particularly if you used baby powder on top of it.

“Need more than Mum,” Zenie said. “Need a good scrubbing.”

Zenie and I stepped back and watched Eva pass. She whipped back the green leaf curtain to the bathroom and disappeared. Then under the curtain we saw the blue gown drop to the floor. We looked at each other for a minute. The water in the bathtub had started up. Then Zenie put her hand on my head. “All right,” she said, and I knew she meant the sheets. They smelled to high heaven. I reached for the top one. “Don’t hurt its arms,” Zenie sang out to me, and walked over to the other side of the bed. The words sounded like music sure enough when they came out of her mouth. I was grateful for them beyond measure.

“I won’t.” I sung it back to her across the bed. A mockingbird song, changed but the same. When I sang it, I all at once saw my mother’s face from the midpoint of a long dark burrow, the kind rabbits make. Turn one way and I see her young with round eyes that ate up the rest of her face. Turn the other, she’s old as dust with puckers and whiskers. That’s when I knew my own mother would live; she’d tunnel out. Eva had risen from the dead and come back to us. Mama would too.

What I didn’t know was how many ways there are to be dead.

People say dead’s dead, but that isn’t exactly it. There’s the buried dead, but there’s also the walking talking dead. Later on, I’d come to think that what Mama really wanted was the first thing. Walking talking was what she had to settle for.

While Eva was fixing herself up, Zenie poured a glass of tea out of the pitcher in the icebox and eased herself down on the couch with a groan. I came and sat down beside her. She had the sheets soaking in Clorox in the sink. Miss Josephine had nodded off in the easy chair.

“Want some tea? There’s more where this come from.” Zenie held up her glass.

“That’s all right.”

“Some cold biscuit on the stove.”

I patted my stomach. “Still full.”

“Want to lie down?” She patted the couch, so I laid myself down, thanking my lucky stars that I was back in Zenie’s good graces. I had to lie flat on my back on account of my arms. It hurt to bend them. I couldn’t lie on my sides at all. I curled my legs up so I wouldn’t be putting my dirty feet up next to her. But that wasn’t good enough.

Zenie pushed on my leg. “What’s all that sticking to the bottom of those feet of yours? When was the last time
you
had a bath?”

I did a U-turn of myself. All the better to see Eva’s bare feet under the curtain. First she stood on one foot then the other.
Clatter slam bang
was all we could hear. She was busy. First I smelled Alba lotion, then rosewater and glycerin, then something sweet like jasmine, something new I’d never smelled on Eva or anybody. She was piling it on, I could tell. Maybe she’d been saving it to rescue herself.

A few minutes before, Eva had whipped out the curtain and sailed out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Her hair was dripping, making little dabs on the linoleum. She glistened all over. I looked at her and thought, shine little glowworm, glitter, glitter. Then she disappeared behind the curtain to Miss Josephine’s room.

She made such a ruckus behind the bedroom curtain, opening and slamming drawers, talking to herself about where this or that was, that she sounded a little mental. In a minute or two, here she came sailing out again in a pair of shorts and a hot pink halter top that bordered on being too loud. She had her little red makeup case in her hand and right back behind the bathroom curtain she went.

Used to be Zenie and Eva would call out to each other back and forth through the curtain while Eva was getting herself beautified, but Zenie didn’t say anything. She just sat with her tea glass wrapped in a little cloth. Eva was the picture show she was waiting to see. The smells were the previews. Every now and then Zenie took a sip and let out a long hopeful breath.

After a while, Eva stepped out from behind the curtain. She turned herself in a determined circle that ended in a little flourish. “Do I look all right?” The question was schoolteacherish: there was only one right answer.

“
Sure
you do, honey,” Zenie broke into the question before it was over.

“You do,” I piped in. “You look real nice, Eva.”

Eva did look just fine. In fact she looked fine from every angle. Her hair was still slicked back, but now it looked shiny and clean. She’d put a couple of pink bow barrettes in it, which neatened up the loose ends. She had on lipstick and rouge and powder. She’d covered the place on her face with makeup so the circle from the cigarette lighter was barely noticeable. She looked brand-new.

“I’m going down to Lafitte’s to get us some ice cream. What kind y’all want?” Now she was digging through her billfold.

“Chocolate ripple! Let me go too.” I loved going to Lafitte’s Grocery in Shake Rag. It was more a dark cool alleyway than a store, with cigars and pickles and salt pork and candy all stuffed in behind glass counters you could make a breath on. The ice-cream freezer was at the back of the store, where it was so dim you could barely make out the flavors. It was the coolest place in town this time of day. Plus I was hungry for the sight of other people going about their business in an everyday sort of way, and there was always somebody hanging around Lafitte’s.

Zenie pushed herself up off the couch and smoothed back her hair. “We all go.”

“No ma’am. You sit yourself right back down. You been working your fingers to the bone. I’ll bring you back whatever you want.” Eva had her hands on her hips looking up at Zenie. “Just tell me what it is.”

“You doing no such thing. You go, we all going. Everybody in the house going, and that includes yours truly.” Zenie drew herself up. Her lips got tight over her teeth. She was keeping her voice low, but there was a don’t-mess-with-me look in her eye. I knew that look from way back.

Eva put her hands on her hips. Zenie towered over her, but she stood her ground. “I’m going on my own, Auntie.” There was something in the quietness of her voice that outmatched Zenie’s will and her bigness. Plus you could tell Zenie was dog tired and
would a whole lot rather be sitting in her cool dark living room than trudging through the heat of the afternoon on some fool errand.

“Take this one then,” Zenie said, and pointed to me.

Eva looked down at me smushed down on the couch with my head in the hole Zenie left. She threw back her head and laughed out loud. “What good
she
going to do me?”

I raised my head. “Take me,” I whined. I could act the baby. I goldfished my lips into a pout and stretched out my arms. Then I got into the spirit of it and threw back my head and pretended to cry like a baby. “Whaaa. Ice-cream cone, ice-cream cone, I got to have ice-cream cone.” Which was true, I wanted it bad. Lafitte’s had some open cartons and a scoop and some cones. You could get yourself the biggest scoop you could make stick on a cone. Mr. L always let me do it myself. I must have been special in his eyes because he scooped everybody else regular dips. What I wanted even more was going to Lafitte’s with Eva. I was proud of her rising from the dead like that, and I wanted to see her walk in the world, queen that she was, and have people say how lucky I was to get to trail behind her.

“Hush,” Zenie said. “You’re going to wake her up.” Meaning Miss Josephine in her chair, though there was a fat chance of that, I thought. Her mouth was open, and her fingers were twitching like they had more leaves to count.

Eva looked down at me and I could tell she saw something more than just me, but something I might become. Not a stray dog the way I thought of myself most of the time, but something valuable and secret, the way Daddy thought of his box and the stuff in it. Something that gave her that Queen of Palmyra feeling. When I had that thought, about the Queen of Palmyra, suddenly it came to me who I could be to her. I could be her own lady slave. I couldn’t make cobblers, but I could bake cakes. I could be
her girl sidekick. And I wasn’t a dumb native like Bomba’s friend Gibo. I had good sense. I could be a succor in time of trouble. If she needed to go bouncing into battle, I would rip my shirt off too and get on my horse and follow to the death. It would be better than having long flowing locks and being rescued like a drooping lily.

I hopped up off the couch. “Take me,” I said, “and I’ll be your lady slave.”

When the words popped out, everything stopped short. I looked up at both of them. Their mouths had dropped open, the way they did when I said the thing about being colored. There was dead quiet for a minute; then Eva started giggling little-girl giggles. On the couch Zenie bent over double, slapped her thigh and started sputtering.

“What in the world is she talking about?” Eva’s question sounded like a horse whinny.

“Remember that old story I used to tell you about Queenie and the lady slave?”

“The one with the cobblers? That’s what she’s talking about?”

“Um hum.” Zenie sounded on the verge of being disgusted with me again. I looked down at the floor. I was still worried I’d gone and spoiled the whole thing, the way I’d done before when Eva made me so brown and pretty. I had a picture in my mind like a picture in a storybook. Me and Eva making a beautiful parade to Lafitte’s. I would get a palm branch to wave next to her face to keep her nice and cool.

Zenie pointed a finger at me. “You. Go brush your hair and wash your face.” Zenie never told me to use the bathroom like Mama did, but I knew that’s what she meant.

I ran for the bathroom. I made it fast. They could change their minds on a dime. Then a thought hit me. I didn’t have a red cent, and ice-cream cones were a nickel.

I came back through the curtain. “I don’t have money for an ice-cream cone.”

Eva was already at the door. “I got money. Not much respect, but enough money for ice cream. That’s one thing I got. Come on, girl, if you’re coming.”

Zenie walked over to the door just as Eva’s hand was on the knob. “Tell me you not going in
that
.” She pointed at Eva’s front. The hot pink halter top brought out the copper in Eva’s face and arms. It tied around the neck and at the back. It didn’t show any navel because of a little skirt that hung off it, but the skirt didn’t go all the way around the back. Plus there was a plunge in front that showed a softness where Eva’s bosoms gathered strength. I had on a crop top that Zenie had made me last summer. It showed more flesh than Eva’s halter, but my flesh was paltry.

Eva looked down at herself. Her face puckered for a minute. Was she going to disrespect Zenie? Tell her it was hot as fire and she was wearing the pink top? She was thinking about it, I could tell, because she had squinched up her mouth and was chewing hard on one side of it. Then she looked up at Zenie. She opened her mouth to say something, then looked down at me, then shut it. “Hold up,” she said to me, and went back into Miss Josephine’s room. In another second she whipped back the curtain. She was wearing a regular button-up shirt with little cap sleeves. It had little blue and green flowers on it and a little round collar. It was buttoned up to the next to last button to the neck.

“This good enough? It’s sure hot enough.”

Zenie nodded. “Bring me back some vanilla to put my peaches on, and make haste with it or it’ll melt. If you not back in half an hour, I be sending Ray after you.”

Eva made a mock bow and opened the door. “Let’s go, lady slave,” she said, and I hopped to.

So here we go down Moses Street, which was the main drag
of Shake Rag, like Main Street was the main one for Millwood. Eva had her parasol to keep the sun off the tops of our heads so we wouldn’t get sunstroke in the heat of the afternoon. It was the parasol that made it seem like a parade. I gave up staying under it. The sun didn’t bother me as much as it did Eva, though the heat from it made my arms itch under the bandages, which weren’t covered by the umbrella anyway. So it’s Eva with her parasol and me bringing up the rear, thinking I wished I had one of those big palm leaves to fan her with or at least a long stem of mimosa. Both of us barefooted. Her putting one strong flat foot in front of the other like that was the most important move in the whole parade. Not looking down, though, but holding her head high, not looking right or left either, just moving through the world like a queen going to do battle with a terrible foe. And I didn’t feel like her pet dog either or even her lady slave. I felt like her own brave-hearted sidekick. All I needed was a sword and a white horse.

The sun beat down. I tried to walk in Eva’s foot path, but her stride was too long. I could hit every other one, but not keep the pace. People were watching. I couldn’t see their faces in the windows, but I saw their outlines behind screen doors and at windows. I could almost feel their breath blowing us along, they were watching so hard. Then, as we got on down the street, they started coming out from behind. They came onto their porches and their stoops, even though it was the heat of the day. They brought out their peas to shell or their watering cans to water or the newspaper.

Some just nodded and smiled. Some said, “How y’all doing?” Some just gave a little wave. Eva replied in kind but she didn’t stop or even slow down. We kept on moving like we were being unraveled from a tight knot of thread. There was no giant hand to stop us. We had to go our limit before we could stop unwinding. Then all we’d be was a thin line of thread stretched across a long distance. Easy to break.

When we got to Lafitte’s, there was a bunch of old men sitting
outside on rickety benches that backed up to the front wall of the store. Their arms poking out of their shirtsleeves looked wasted away, the way old people’s get if they live long enough. Some of them were smoking pretty little wood-carved pipes and some were chawing. On trips to the store with Zenie, I’d seen them get up and spit brown juice out to the side of the store. It made a puddle line in the dust. They were always in front of Lafitte’s. They weren’t pink-eyed with meanness like the gun toters outside the sheriff’s office, or dozy like the ones under Nathan Bedford Forrest’s horse’s butt. They looked satisfied with themselves. They had done their life’s work. Now they were taking a good long rest. One man liked to whittle little pieces of wood and once he gave me a little dog with a bobtail. It had had a pretty yellow tone, and he said it was cut from pecan.

Sometimes Mr. Lafitte, a little man with marcels, would be sitting out with them, and sometimes his grown son L Junior would be standing in front of them, one foot up on the bench talking loud and making grand moves with his hands. They’d all be laughing and beating their legs. People said L Junior could tell a good story, but I never got to hear one because Zenie always made me come on inside the store with her and not listen to the men’s goings-on. She’d push me through them and their guffawing. L Junior would nod and tip his straw hat and stop his telling till we got through. I always felt like I had come upon a picnic. A whole lot of people eating potato salad and sweet pickle and me not even getting a single bite.

When we rounded the curve in Moses Street, the store and the sitting men were square ahead. They eyeballed us like we were ghosts risen up from the grave. I’d seen men old, young, and in between cast their eyes on Eva. They all looked the same, bees on a flower, wanting to burrow in deeper and deeper. But this wasn’t that kind of look. It was a look that said they couldn’t believe their eyes. Even L Junior in the middle of his story looked taken
aback. Eva just raised her head up higher and cut her eyes back to me. “Come on, don’t drag behind,” she said, and I came up and walked beside her. I tried to bring my head up tall too. I wanted my neck to be long like hers. Everything felt momentous.