The Queen of Palmyra (22 page)

The men tipped their hats to her when we went by the benches and one of them got up and opened the door to the store. “How y’all doing?” she asked and smiled a little.

There was a long moment of quiet. Then they all sighed and nodded carefully as if just a little “All right, how you doing, baby?” would be just too too heavy to drop into the soupy air.

Eva nodded back to them and we swept on through the open door. Usually while Zenie was shutting the door on the men outside, we could hear them starting right back up again, but today there was not even a whisper.

Mr. L was polishing his glass cases with vinegar and newspaper. The place was cool and dark and empty of people except for him and us. It smelled like pickles and tobacco. He was trying to scrape a spot on the glass with his fingernail so that at first he didn’t look up. When he did, he made a noise in his throat and look a step back.

When Eva said “How you doing, Mr. L?” he remembered his manners and said he was fine and how was she? Everybody fit to be tied about her and here she is right in front of his very eyes looking mighty fine. Mighty fine indeed. Mrs. L was going to be greatly relieved, she’d been praying for Eva. All the Heroines of Jericho had. Eva said to tell Mrs. L it worked and she was feeling better and wanted to get her and me and her auntie some ice cream. Could we fix our own cones?

Mr. L threw down his sour wad of newspaper. Not only could we fix our own, but we could have doubles on the house. “Get what you want. All you want.” He made a grand sweep of his hand to the back where the cooler lay. Then he peered over the
shining glass at Eva. The store was dark except for a few dusty pieces of light. The thrown light caught the bottom parts of their faces in the glass below them. It made their mouths seem to tremble. Then Mr. L cocked his head, leaned over the glass case he’d just finished polishing, and said real quiet: “When you leaving?”

Eva frowned. “Leaving? Who says I’m studying leaving? I’m staying right here.”

Mr. L shook his head. “Girl, what you studying if you ain’t studying leaving? You got to get out of this here place. What, you low on cash, baby?” He patted his pocket.

Eva wanted to get on with the ice cream, I could tell. She was moving a step or two back, but she couldn’t just walk away from Mr. L. He was being fatherly. Mr. L’s hair wasn’t gray, but it should have been. You could tell he just wanted to give her the benefit of his experience.

“Just not leaving is all I’m studying.” She said it quietly and pleasantly, but it was as if she were Moses and had carved the words in stone.

He leaned farther out over the glass case and tapped his finger on it, which left more smudges. “Listen up, missy. Nobody want to see you laid out on a board. Getting shipped back home in a box looking like that Till boy. That’s if they ever find what’s left of you.”

That got her goat. She glanced over at me, then leaned over the glass case to meet him head to head, eye to eye. “I’m not letting a bunch of peckerwoods in sheets run me off.” She sounded like a snake hissing. Mr. L pulled himself back.

“You crazy?” He swatted the air with his hand. “Get on out of here while you can do it on two feet. A pretty little lady like you. You can go anywhere. Do anything. You can have a
life
, girl. You can go to Paris France. Zenobia and Rayfield ain’t told you that? What your mama and daddy say about this?”

“They can all tell me to go home till they’re blue in the face, but I’m twenty-three years old. I make my own decisions, and I got other plans.”

I was rooting for Eva in this fight. I didn’t know what a peckerwood was, much less in sheets—I pictured him as a mean Holy Ghost running amuck—but Eva was fast becoming my Queen; she had gumption and I knew she wouldn’t run, I knew she had that thing in her that said No. Nobody was going to push her around without a fight. What she said set me to thinking about my mother and wondering whether she had it too, whatever it was the Queen of Palmyra and Eva had. Seemed to me Mama hopped back and forth like a baby bird on the ground between saying no with a little
n
and saying come on, world, stomp on me.

Of course, it takes gumption to throw your whole self at a train. To think of yourself as a burst of light. Splayed limb from limb like a chicken getting cut up all at once. I know what happens to people who get run over by trains. An arm in the tall grass, a leg a half mile down. Where’s the head? Nobody can find it. Then it turns up in a feedlot in another county.

Where was Mama now? Was she glad to find herself still attached to herself or did she feel like she’d lost some part just by thinking it? Was she sitting up in the hospital studying coming home to her sweet good daughter? Did they clean her up? Was she wearing the pretty nightgown with the puckered top? Did her bangs rest straight and smooth, or was she a bloody mess? Did Daddy tell her I almost burned down the place? The one who tells the story gets to say who’s bad and who’s good. Then the story rises up and puts on its clothes and goes out into the world. He’d made me out the bad one and him the good one. Saving the day. Keeping me from burning down the house.

Eva tossed her head and leaned back from the glass. Her eyes caught a torch of light. “That ice cream still on the house?”

Mr. L narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, but you better enjoy it, it may be your last.”

“Maybe not,” Eva said. “A change going to come. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but a change going to come. Look at Harmony, over in Leake County. They brought in Medgar Evers and the NAACP and the Justice Department people, and they’re finally starting to get registered. Look at Winson and Cleo Hudson down there. Things are changing.”

“Blood be shed first. You plumb foolish, you don’t know that.”

Eva looked hard at him. “I may be foolish, but at least I don’t run scared. That’s more than I can say for some people in this podunk town. Present company excepted.”

“Better scared than dead.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Some say scared
is
dead.”

“Dead’s dead. There ain’t
nothing
worse than dead.”

Eva made herself taller. “Yes there is.”

The two of them locked eyes. In the glass case their faces had iced over. They looked like people felled dead in battle. Killed, but still standing with eyes wide open.

Mr. L started up again. “You one hardheaded girl. Where’d you get such a hard head?”

“Maybe from beating it up against a wall all my life.”

“There such a thing as too far too fast.”

“There such a thing as going nowhere no time.”

I touched Eva’s hand. “Come on, let’s get the ice cream.” I tried to say it the way it was bound to taste. Sweet, cold, kind to the tongue. I wanted her to want it too. Want it more than she wanted to tell Mr. L a thing or two. She was stepping out of line. I could see it in the way Mr. L had tucked in his mouth and the way he talked to her like she was the one about to burn down the house. Here he’d been thinking his good fatherly advice would
be respected. That Eva’d nod her pretty head with the little-girl barrettes and say yes sir, meek and mild, but here she was giving lip to a man old enough to be her grandfather. When she wasn’t even from around here. It was disrespectful, she’d be sorry when word got back to Zenie and Ray. He was only giving her the best advice possible. The benefit of his experience. I could see he was thinking all that and more.

The minute I said ice cream, Eva unfroze herself, only too glad to break away from Mr. L. She reined in her stubbornness and put on a fake smile. Armor. “Thank you, sir, I appreciate it,” she said in a molasses voice, and squeezed my hand tight. What “it” meant she didn’t say. She looked down at me and pulled another fake smile out of her boundless supply. “Come on, Flo. Let’s take Mr. L up on his kind offer.” We walked hand in hand till we got to the ice cream at the back of the store.

We escaped into the dark cave of the back. She seemed to forget she was holding my hand so it just butter-slid out of hers. Her voice changed back to normal. “What kind you want?” When she took the scoop out, her hand was agitating like she was ready to swat a fly.

“Chocolate ripple.”

“A double? Dumb question, right?”

“I guess. No, wait, one dip chocolate ripple and one dip banana.” Which took some thought.

She gave me a real smile. “Girl, you know how to live. Think I’ll have that too. Now, here, take these two cones and hold them. I’ll put in the banana first for the chocolate to run on.” She leaned over the freezer to scoop out of the cartons of ice cream open in the bottom. She reached her arm down. In the light from the cooler I could see the chill bumps rise up on her arm when she put it down in the freezer. I wanted to rub her arm, warm her up. I decided then and there I had to love her whether she loved me
back or not. I especially loved the way she bent over the freezer, herself so warm and it so cold. She took my breath away.

Then the front door of the store opened. It had a little bell on the doorknob, which is what I heard. Then I heard talking. A white man’s voice. Mr. L answering. More talking between them. I heard the white man say what’s she doing down here and Mr. L say back I done already told her. Then I realized who the white man was. It was Grandpops. When I turned around, I was holding one cone and Eva had the other one. She had gotten us the two banana scoops and was digging in the chocolate ripple, which was frozen harder. She was having trouble getting it out.

Grandpops took his time getting to the back of the store. He didn’t say boo to me, he just looked hard at Eva’s back and said to it, “What you doing bringing her out on the street with you for? I come to pick her up at Zenie’s and Zenie says she’s off gallivanting with you.” He didn’t even say afternoon, how you doing, Eva? which he normally would have done.

Eva jumped and spun around. She looked scared and lost for a minute, then she got cocky again. “She wanted an ice cream so I took her. Don’t see harm in that.” She held up the scoop. Evidence.

Grandpops gave me a quick look. “Florence, get on up to the front of the store and wait for me there.”

I backed up five steps. The one banana scoop was running down the side of the cone, so I started in on it, listening hard. My arm pained me and the tape on my bandage pinched when I bent my elbow to eat, but I suffered gladly. Mr. L was back to his polishing. He poured his vinegar onto the newspaper and squeaked across the glass. There were several shelves between me and Grandpops and Eva, so I couldn’t see them anymore. All I could do was listen.

Grandpops was fussing at Eva. “Everybody knows why you brought her out, we’re not fools, and I’m sympathetic, but what
you doing using her for cover against those hoods? I’m surprised at you, Eva. I thought you had better sense.”

“Nobody’s going to hurt her down here.” Eva had the same tone with Grandpops that she’d gotten with Mr. L. “What’s so bad about taking her for an ice cream?”

“Who you think you fooling with that talk?” Grandpops was a quiet talker. But now his way of speaking took on something I’d never heard from him. It wasn’t loud, but there was a warning behind it. Behave yourself, don’t go burning down the house. The story he was making up in his head was that Eva was the dumbbell native and he was Bomba saving me from the fire the cannibals had set. If she wanted to stay in that tree and get herself burnt up, that was her own business.

I’d forgotten to lick and my ice cream cone was turning into sludge. It had dripped down my hand. I didn’t want to be saved from ice cream or Eva, but she was melting too. I heard it.

“Yessir.” She put the squeeze on the word, clamped it shut at both ends.

Mr. L had stopped with his squeaking. He had his back turned and was messing with his shelves, but I could tell he was all ears. I was still trying to get control of my ice cream. I was sucking on the bottom of the cone. No napkin. Time passed without anybody saying anything. Then Grandpops sighed. It was a long sigh that said listen to me, listen hard.

“All right, look, I told Zenie and now I’ll tell you. I don’t want her going out on the street with you anymore while you’re still in town. You hear me? It’s too dangerous.”

“Yessir.”

“When you going back?”

“I haven’t decided.” I knew the way Eva sounded, and the voice that came from the back of the store didn’t sound like it belonged to her. Her voice had hills and valleys, pretty little streams
flowing through. This voice was flat; it went straight on out to where the sky met the land. This voice was a desert.

“What you mean you haven’t decided? It’s time, Eva, past time. Have you thought what kind of briar patch you’re getting Zenie and Ray and Aunt Josie into? You’re putting your own people in danger persisting here.”

“Born and bred in the briar patch,” Eva said, dragging out each word. “We’re all born and bred in the briar patch.”

Grandpops glared at her. “Have you lost your mind? Shake Rag’s got one policy company, and we all know who works for it…and what he is. You got to stop all this foolishness. Can’t nobody buy from you. Don’t you know that? You think those Carolina people in their big fancy offices going to care one flip when you come back in a box? For heaven’s sake, think about somebody besides yourself. Think about your own mama and daddy. Don’t be such a dadgum fool.”

There was a long silence; then Eva said in her desert voice, “Yessir,” and there was something in it that was spiked and sharp. A cactus with needle points.

There was another silence. Then Grandpops sighed a big sigh. “All right, then.”

He walked over to Mr. L’s gleaming glass case, nodded at Mr. L, reached into his pocket and pulled out a nickel. He put it down on the counter.
Clank.
Mr. L just looked down at it. He didn’t pick it up.

Grandpops headed toward me and then stopped. He looked back at Mr. L, who was a statue. “Is that enough?”

Mr. L didn’t answer. He pushed the nickel back across the counter and looked at Grandpops.

“All right, then. Thank you kindly.” Grandpops picked up the nickel and pointed me to the door. When we got outside, the benches were dead empty.