The Queen of Palmyra (28 page)

She held a handkerchief with lace around the edge, but she wasn’t crying like Mimi, whose sausage bosoms were syncopating up and down, the brooch between them sinking lower and lower into the cave they made in the middle. The three of us—me, Mama, and Mimi—were lined up on the first row so that we had a sideways view of the packed red clay under the box. The Greats sat directly behind us, their white hair so close to invisible in the bright sun that they looked bald. I was wishing for more family to sit with us, sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins, but we were precious little, and now smaller than ever. Mama stared off into space like she was having peaceful thoughts and please don’t bother her. There was a stillness about her that called attention to itself, though people would have been looking her over anyway, her just taking a break from her nervous breakdown to attend Grandpops’ funeral. She sat old-woman-like, bent over a little, her head just forward from her shoulders. In the short time she’d been gone, a little hump had come up at the back of her neck. Nothing about her moved except those scurrying creature eyes beneath the bangs and her beat-up hands, which were busy busy with the handkerchief. She would pleat it in neat little pleats, then let one end go, holding the other, so that it fanned out and looked like a pretty white bird that had been shot down, and had landed right there in her lap. Alive but broken. Then she would take it up and smooth it out and start to pleat it again.

When I looked at her, I thought
Mother
, not
Mama
, because she didn’t look like anybody’s mama. She looked like she was walking fast on up ahead in her mind, not even caring who fell far behind.

It was getting later and we were facing west. Suddenly, the sun fell forward like it had been spilled out of a cup and lit up one side of her face, the other side made dark by contrast. She looked as though she had been sliced in half by a sharp knife, like her cakes.

The service was going on, but I couldn’t hear. My eyes were everywhere, but my ears weren’t working at all. The preacher’s mouth moved, then the people came up and hugged us and their mouths moved as they leaned over us. Me they petted on the head, Mother they just nodded at and spoke a few words to. Through it all, the petting, the mouths moving up and down as if the words were food to be chewed, I just sat there next to my mother and watched her sideways out of the corner of my eye like an old hang-headed dog who watches the one she follows down the street, not staying too close but not letting the one being followed out of her sight either. The person the dog follows isn’t her owner, who is long gone, but just someone who might have a spare bone, some water in the heat, an easy hand.

While the preacher was talking, I turned around and saw Zenie and Ray standing up under a big ginkgo tree behind the tent where all the white people were sitting. They had been up in the balcony of the First Methodist Church too. It was all right for black people to sit up in the balcony if they were invited to white folks’ funerals or weddings. The women who maided like Zenie wore their holiday serving outfits; the men buttoned their shirts to the top and had on pants and suspenders instead of overalls. The ginkgo’s fan leaves were so paper thin that the sun burned right through them, making them invisible except for their spider-web veins. The leaves were a young creamy green, just barely tipped in the color of the lemon jell Mama used to put in the middle of her cakes. The lemon would wash over the whole tree in October when the ginkgo would upchuck its fruit in splatters all over the ground. The mess stunk to high heaven. For that reason I was glad Grandpops hadn’t died in October, though he’d loved that tree, stink and all, especially in fall. When I was little and we’d walk past the cemetery on the way home from Zenie’s, he’d stop short on the dusty path and take off his hat like he was
in church. The tree would be a lake of yellow, splattered across the sky. He’d stand there long enough for the mosquitoes to start in on my ankles. “Aren’t we the lucky ones?” he would say. His whole face would light up and glow as if the gold from the tree had shaken loose and dusted him.

Now the sun in its brightness made everything it didn’t hit seem blacker than darkest night. In the ginkgo tree’s shadow, Zenie’s and Ray’s faces were lost to me. Only their clothes seemed to stand there, straight up and purposeful. Zenie had on her Christmas uniform without the apron. White and starched enough to stand up by itself. She had food to serve later up at Mimi’s. Ray looked like a going-to-church version of himself. He had on a suit coat in addition to having his shirt all buttoned up. He held a hat in front of his midsection like a shield. I saw it was one of Grandpops’ old felt hats, gray and soft and folded in on itself.

Eva was there too. But she stood a few paces from them, away from the tree and closer to us under the tent. She was in full sun. She wore what the white ladies were wearing. A dark dress, her navy blue outfit it looked like, a little pillbox hat with a snatch of a veil, and some high heels. She had a little clutch purse under one arm. She opened it and took out a handkerchief and blotted her face.

I didn’t see Daddy. Back at Mimi’s house later, with people shoveling in the hams and roasts and asparagus and green-bean casseroles and cheese straws and Mrs. Polk’s pies, he sat by himself at the round oak table in the breakfast room, drinking coffee. He spent time fixing each cup, just this much milk from the pitcher, no, a bit more, one teaspoon of sugar, then two, maybe a half more. He kept looking down at his cup as if it was a hard puzzle he was trying to find the right pieces to finish. After he’d drunk the first cup and poured himself another out of Mimi’s silver coffee pot, he went through the whole thing all over again. He sat
in the midst of everyone, not speaking, his head down, his eye on the cup. Sometimes he picked up his spoon and stirred the sugar that had settled to the bottom. A greasy lock of dark hair had separated from the rest. It hung a bit down and to the right side of his forehead. It gleamed with Mr. Holcomb’s oil. One of Mimi’s revolving fans was on the buffet, and each time it turned his way, the lock of hair shuddered in the disturbed air. When I went over and stood beside him, he reached out and grabbed me around the waist and held on. I leaned into his side, staked out and claimed.

Mother had betaken herself onto the back screen porch to get away from the crowd, but her cake ladies had followed her out there and fidgeted her into a corner. When I went to the back door, she was standing in the middle of them in her gray suit looking like a single dove in a covey of blackbirds. They fluttered around her, patted her and tried to fluff up the flatness in her hair. While they made over her, she just looked down at the wood floor like she was counting the boards and wrapped her own arms around herself as though she was chilly. The late afternoon sun bore down on her head, and I could see the dandruff on the surface of her hair. There was no shine to it, just dullness and weight. It looked a couple of weeks’ worth of dirty. Moreover, she didn’t smell right. She didn’t stink, but she smelled heavy like oil or metal, not breezy and sugary and sweet.

Navis stepped toward Mama and touched her elbow. “Martha, we’re so sorry about your father. We just want you to feel better. I’m going to take you to the beauty shop on Monday. Get you a nice permanent wave.”

Mama brightened up a little and touched her hair. “I need fixing up,” she said.

“Yes, you do,” Navis said softly. “I’m going to take you to the beauty shop on Monday. Get you a haircut and a nice permanent wave and buy you a sandwich. I’m going to take the day off. Then
we can go over to your house and sit on the front stoop under the clematis and have some coffee like we used to.”

“Get her a manicure too, Navis,” another lady said. “Get her nails done. Always gives me a perk to get my nails done. Poor little thing, losing your daddy who you loved so dearly.”

Navis frowned at the lady.

At that point, Mama turned around to them. She started backing up toward the screen door to the back porch steps. She put her arms straight out in front of her. You could tell she just wanted to fly away from the cluster of ladies and their pushy ways. “Now you-all listen to me.” Her words seemed to come not from her mouth but from somewhere behind her head. She looked like a puppet whose voice belonged to somebody behind the curtain. “I’m going to go on home and make some of my cakes now. Just go on back inside and I’m going to make you some good cakes. Going home right now. See you in the morning. Pickup between nine and ten.”

Navis reached for Mama’s arm again, and Mama flinched like Navis’s touch burned and jerked her arm away. She rubbed her arm.

“Martha,” whispered Navis. “You don’t need to make us anything. You just need to rest and get well. You’re going to be just fine. You are.”

“Don’t I know it,” Mama said, and put her arms behind her so Navis couldn’t get hold of her again. Now the voice that wasn’t hers but came out of her mouth sounded like a little girl’s. Whiney and fretful. “Now you-all just give me a little bit of time. Everything’s going to work out. All right now, you-all do me a favor and go on back inside and talk to my mama. Go on now. Go, go.” She clapped her hands in front of her, and they flew. All except for Navis.

“Martha.”

Mama was on her way out the screen door. She stopped when Navis said her name and turned around and said in her regular voice, “Navis, I just need to get on home right now. I just need to have some peace and quiet.”

When she said that, Navis stood looking at Mama for a while. Mama looked back, her chin up. Then Navis sighed, touched Mama’s dirty hair, and turned around and went inside with the others.

I was watching and thinking not me. You not flushing me that easy, missy. I’m sticking to you like glue. Something clicks into place in my mind. I pull a big stiff bow out of a pot of mums on the porch table, twirl it on its sharp little pointed stake.

She shoots me a look. “You too. Get on back in there and help Mimi.”

I eye her back. I’m not a bit scared of her, she’s done to me the worst she can do, at least so I think at the time. I’m that old stray dog. I’m not about to let her out of my sight, even if she kicks me in the ribs. I hunker down beside the big table on the screen porch that has the red-and-white-checked oilcloth on it. I’m half under it, the oilcloth drapes my head. For a second the weight of it reminds me of the outfit Miss Kay Linda made me. I’m thinking all this and humming “Lead on, O King Eternal.” It’s the song in my mind because they just sang it in church when the preacher said Go forth in peace, and Daddy’s friends took Grandpops back down the aisle and out the door. I hummed on, waiting for Mama to make her move. In my mind I made it Queen Eternal, as in Zenobia Eternal Queen of Palmyra. Where my Queenie leads I will follow. Lead on, O Queen Eternal, the day of dark’s at hand.

“I want to go on home with you.” The sweat that’s been rolling out of my hair all afternoon has finally found its way into my eyes. It burns like fire, but I’m not crying, no ma’am.

Then Mama looks behind and above me. I turn around and
there’s Zenie standing in the doorway. Her uniform has long half-moons under her arms, and her apron, a lace one she only wears at Christmas and Easter, looks droopy and stained. She props her arm up on the doorjamb, looks at Mama for a minute, and then says, “Hey.” That’s all, just that.

Mama stops in her tracks. “Hey.”

Zenie ignores me, and walks toward Mama. “How you doing?”

When Zenie asks the question that is really a question, Mama’s face starts to crumble like the bone has given way. “He was right, you know, about Win. My daddy was right all along.”

Zenie looks at her steady and sad, but doesn’t say a word. Then she pats her side pocket and takes Mama’s arm, like she was a little child.

They walk out the screen door to the back stoop and then down the back stairs. Zenie looming large and moving slow, swaying a bit from side to side. Mama, looking like a frowzy baby bird on stick legs next to her, letting herself be led forward into the yard for a tidbit of worm or bug, down toward the back of an old peony bed, to the speckled shade under the pecan trees on the back lot.

They stand there for a while with their backs to the house. Zenie takes a little brown paper sack out of her pocket. She passes it to Mama, who tips it to her mouth. They stand side by side. Mama’s head the level of Zenie’s shoulder. Mama passes the sack back to Zenie and Zenie takes a sip and passes it back. They stand there for a while, just passing the sack every now and then. Then Zenie takes a cigarette out of the pack she keeps in the breast pocket of her uniform and hands it to Mama with a pack of kitchen matches. Mama lights a cigarette, takes a few long drags and then hands it back to Zenie, who smokes the rest of it. Then, after a while, they turn around together and come on back to the house.

Zenie looks at me standing there waiting. Then she looks over at Mama. “Take her on home,” Zenie says to my mother. “Take her on home now.” Zenie goes on through the back porch and into the kitchen.

Mama comes onto the porch after her, but doesn’t follow her back into the house. When Mama climbs the steps toward me and stands in the open screen door, her back is to the late afternoon sun. I can’t see her face and greasy old hair anymore. They’re dark as a swamp. I can’t see her mouth move when she says, “Come on then.” I wonder if I hear the words at all or if I just thought them up in my head. They don’t seem to be coming from anybody or anything, even when she sighs down deep and says them again. They just appear to me heavy and hard, like Moses had brought them down the mountain from God carved in stone. There they were. I could put my fingers inside them and feel the cut of the knife that made them. Stone words. One commandment: Come On Then.

I shut my eyes and rub them to get the sting out. When I open them, she’s back out the door. I can hear the gravel crunch in the driveway as she walks away. I leap up and run through the door just in time to see the back of her turn the corner by the big bush at the side of the driveway. I start to run, thinking that if I let her out of my sight, I’ll never see her again. When I round the corner by the bush, I see her gray shape moving on down the sidewalk, walking as fast as it’s possible for a person to walk without running. I start running.