Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (11 page)

School is getting ready to start. Momma doesn’t want me to go to school in Magnolia Springs. It is too country. She wants me in Catholic boarding school and talks about putting me in the Ursuline Academy in New Orleans.

We are going to New Orleans and take a look at the school pretty soon. Momma hired an accountant to go over the books and tell us how much money we made. His name is Mr. Lilly and he has one hand missing, but instead of having a hook, like Harold Russell in
The Best Years of Our Lives
, he’s got a rubber hand that looks just like a baby doll hand.

Momma is mad at me because I keep looking at it, but I can’t help myself. He keeps it in his lap most of the time, though.

I wonder where he got that hand. It must have come off a big doll. The fingers are stuck together and it is yellow. What if someone went to shake hands with him and it came off, or if he left it on a restaurant table by mistake?

Momma is mad at me. I pulled the bathroom mirror off the wall in that cheap motel we stayed at in New Orleans. It wasn’t my fault. It looked like a medicine cabinet to me and I wanted to see if anybody had left anything. Momma’s afraid we are going to have seven years’ bad luck because of it

When we got home, Mr. Lilly told Momma we hadn’t made any money. We are in debt Daddy spent a lot buying that liquor license. We used ice cream in the malts, instead of malt base like we were supposed to, and Daddy hadn’t mixed his hamburger with bread the way everyone else does.

He believes Quality is better than Quantity, but in this case,
we are in a lot of trouble. We have a big payment in November and no money. The minute I broke that mirror, Momma knew everything was going to turn out bad.

She is doubly mad because when we were in New Orleans, she bought my uniforms for the school and now I can’t afford to go. I guess I will have to wear a blue skirt and a white blouse for the rest of my natural life.

I’m glad I’m not going to that school in New Orleans. The mother superior said my roommate would be a nice girl from Colombia, South America. I sure didn’t want to be roommates with a headhunter.

Now I will get to ride the school bus with Michael. Kay Bob Benson’s mother takes her to school. Of course!

When I got back from New Orleans, the first thing I did was go and look for Edna, but she was out with some sailor who wants to marry her. When she came home, she told me that she had decided to accept his offer. She feels she should get married again, so her child can have a father. I don’t want her to marry him. He is a Yankee. I asked her why she couldn’t stay here with us, but she said she couldn’t.

It’s Roy Grimmett’s fault He pushed her into it. Now she is being friendly with Momma. I heard Momma say to her, “Mr. Harper and I did, up until the fifth month.” I came over and said, “Did what?” And Momma said, “Danced.” I know she’s lying. She hates to dance with Daddy. I don’t even want to think about it.

At Jr. Debutantes this week, Mrs. Dot gave a talk, “How to Handle Colored Help.” She says beware of being too familiar and that everyone must know their place for a house to run smoothly and a well-bred colored person doesn’t want to mix. It is only the ill-bred coloreds that try to be friendly. You must always be properly dressed when a colored man is on your property so as not to drive him crazy, and if a colored man is within two blocks of your home and can see in the window, you must put a robe on at once.

It is our Christian duty to see that colored help get all our old clothes and anything else you want to give them, but never
anything new except at Christmas and never, never, under the threat of death, say the word, and she spelled it out, “N-I-G-G-E-R.” Only white trash calls them that. I never said that word but once. It doesn’t count, though, because Velveeta didn’t hear me.

It’s all right to touch or hug a colored woman, but never a colored man. Most important, though, never sit and eat at the same table with them. They don’t like it and you must give them their own jelly glass to drink out of. Colored people don’t respect you unless you respect their right to privacy.

I wish Momma could have heard that talk. Velveeta drinks out of any glass she wants to and sits down at the table with Momma and everything. Momma better watch out. Velveeta won’t respect her if she keeps this up. I never knew that white people weren’t supposed to drink out of a jelly glass. I have a Welch’s grape jelly glass I drink out of all the time.

Mrs. Dot’s thought for the day was: “Good manners are your round-trip ticket to the world.”

Roy Grimmett is a liar and I hate his guts. I hope he shoots himself in the heart with his own bow and arrow and if he asked me to pull the arrow out and save him, I wouldn’t I hope he gets locked in his trailer and freezes to death, or it falls off a cliff with him in it. I wish I had that machine gun that the Mississippi Maidens have. I would shoot him full of holes and pour acid on them.

He and Mava were taking Edna to Pensacola to get her married today. She started to cry and I know she didn’t want to go.

Roy came back from the wedding about six o’clock and was laughing his head off. He threw Edna’s old wedding ring on the counter and asked if anybody wanted to buy it. He said he bought her that ring himself. She never did have a husband in the first place; she was just some dumb old country gal that got herself in trouble and he was glad he finally got her married off.

I threw my cheeseburger and fries at him and told him he was a dirty liar and lower than snake shit.

Momma said how dare he say something like that in front of me and took me in the back room. She also said she was shocked at my language. Daddy came and put a cold rag on my head and said I might as well know the truth. Edna never was married. They had known it all along. Momma started shaking her head and said no that Daddy was wrong. She had been married. Then they got into an argument. Daddy was stupid enough to believe Roy against Edna. Men always stick together.

They went outside and screamed at each other for a while and then Daddy brought me some orange juice, which I threw up. I don’t know why he always brings me orange juice when I’m upset. I hate orange juice. I would rather have a malt. Daddy told me he had talked it over with Mother and she was right. Roy Grimmett was a liar. Roy said those things just to be a big shot. I knew it.

C
REEP …
C
REEP …
C
REEP …
S
NAKE
S
HIT …
C
REEP
.

I got a letter from Roy Grimmett today, telling me he was sorry he lied to me and that Edna had too been married. As a matter of fact, her dead husband was a war hero, like Jimmy
Snow. So there. I’ll bet it killed him to have to write that letter. I still hate him and on top of that, he writes just like my mother, real little with curlycues. I write exactly like my daddy. We have the same color of blue eyes and the same color hair. We could be identical twins if we were the same age.

Momma says I am beginning to act more and more like him every day in every way. I was sweet when I was little, but when Daddy came home from the war, he played too rough with me and turned me into a tomboy. What’s so bad about that? I can’t stand sissy girls for nothing. The initials K.B.B. come to my mind.

School doesn’t start until the middle of September because most of the kids that go to school at Magnolia Springs live on potato farms and have to help pick potatoes. Just think, I’ll be socializing with shrimpers’ daughters and potato farmers.

Mr. Romeo said Shell Beach is deserted after Labor Day. I can’t wait. I am tired of tourists with mean children. Speaking of mean, I am so mad at Felix I don’t know what to do. She chewed all the yellow fringe off the sweetheart pillow that Jessie LeGore left me. My one and only inheritance is ruined. I guess she is just bored.

Daddy and I are excited because the Big Speckled Trout Rodeo Contest is next week and he and I are going to enter and we are going to win. I know that for a fact.

Daddy already bought the winning fish off of Harvey Underwood a month ago and put it in the freezer. He told Momma it was a fish, he was going to stuff later on this year. It weighs twelve pounds and two ounces. I don’t see how anybody could catch a fish bigger than that. The all-time record holder weighed thirteen pounds and that was six years ago. Our chances are excellent!

The person, us, who catches the biggest speckled trout during three days of fishing wins first prize and first prize is an Evinrude outboard motor, valued at $146.90 and second prize is a Ply-Flex fishing rod valued at $36. Now all we need is a boat to go with it!

Boy, wait till you hear this. I have some top-secret information about Kay Bob Benson. Momma and Mrs. Romeo get together every day for coffee and talk, talk, talk. Today I just happened to be under the window when Mrs. Romeo told Momma that the reason Kay Bob Benson’s mother spoils her so bad is because she is a special-order child.

When Mrs. Benson was forty years old and hadn’t had a baby yet, she went to the doctor and found out she was fine and that something was the matter with Mr. Benson. She didn’t have the nerve to tell him so, Mrs. Romeo said, Kay Bob Benson is an artificial incinerator child that Mrs. Benson got from a doctor in New Orleans! Since Mr. Benson has prostate trouble and she can’t get another one without Mr. Benson being suspicious, Kay Bob is the only child she will ever have.

Mrs. Romeo was getting ready to tell Momma about some woman that Mrs. Dot’s husband was running around with, but she slammed the window down before I could hear any more. Ha! I knew there was something funny about Kay Bob Benson!

Tomorrow is the last day of the Speckled Trout Rodeo and everything is going just as Daddy and I planned. We went down to the Speckled Trout Rodeo Headquarters the first day and registered early in the morning and headed on up to our spot on
the river. Daddy made a big show of how he didn’t expect to win, but thought it would be fun for his little girl since he had been so busy all summer and hadn’t had a chance to spend any time with her. He made me paddle up and down the river for a while every day so people could see us fishing.

Then every day we went and napped and didn’t even fish at all. I took my Red Ryder BB gun and shot at snakes. I ate candy and Daddy drank his beer and told me war stories. At five o’clock we would go back to the Speckled Trout Rodeo Headquarters at the live bait shop. Daddy would say, “Well, no luck today. Those fish just aren’t biting,” and act real disappointed to throw them off the track.

I got to wave at the crippled girl, Betty Caldwell, the first day we were there. She said, “Hey, Fay, how are you?”

I said, “Fine.” Then her mother marched down to where we were and handed me the oyster ashtray that I’d sent Betty and told me she’d thank me not to send any more ashtrays because they don’t drink or smoke and turned around and left. She could have used it for bobby pins or something. Bette Davis smokes. I don’t see anything wrong with it.

While I was shooting my BB gun killing time, Daddy told me all about when he met Momma and how they would go out to the roadhouses and have fun. They went to one called the Silver Slipper and one called the Casa Loma and one called the Dew Drop Inn. Daddy’s story of their romance is different than Momma’s. He made it sound like she was after him to get married, but I know better. Daddy said he could have had any girl in Jackson, but he chose Momma because she was so shy. He went to pick her up one afternoon to take her on a date in his blue DeSoto convertible and didn’t know she had burned her legs on the seat until she started to cry. She was too much of a lady to say anything. I know my momma is a lady. Everybody says so, but I don’t think she is shy anymore.

We are going to take the winning speckled trout out of the freezer tonight before we go to bed so it will be good and thawed for tomorrow.

That trout was still frozen stiff as a board when we took it out of the freezer. So Daddy put it in a pan of boiling water and locked it in the trunk of the car. When we got up to the Speckled Trout Rodeo Headquarters, Daddy carried on some more how he had not caught one fish and how he hoped he caught something today. What kind of fisherman would his little girl think he was? We rowed up and down the river long enough for everyone to see us, just as we always did. Then we went back up to our spot and waited for that trout to thaw out. Daddy sure got his money’s worth when he bought those freezers. About two o’clock in the afternoon the trout finally thawed, but putting it in the hot water had turned his eyes all cloudy. It didn’t look like a fresh fish to me. Daddy didn’t think so either and started cussing. Then he got an idea.

He said, “Don’t move from this spot. If anybody comes up here, tell them I have gone to the bathroom.” I sat there and waited and I tell you nothing smells worse than a dead trout.

About an hour later he came sneaking through the bushes and nearly scared me half to death. He had me drag the fish up to the bushes where he’d brought his whole taxidermy kit, right down to the artificial eyes, and some airplane glue. It took us forever, but we found some trout eyes. They were a little too big and the wrong color, but he said he didn’t think the judges would notice. He cut the real eyes out of that trout and glued those plastic eyes in their place. We sat there and blew on them so they’d dry and at about four o’clock that fish started to look pretty good. The glue had dried funny, but Daddy said it made it appear like the trout had died terrified. I told you my daddy likes to see the bright side of things.

We were just getting ready to go when some old country man came by in a boat and saw us and yelled out, “I heard Emmet Weaverly caught a thirteen-pounder this morning.” Our trout was only twelve pounds and two ounces. I thought Daddy was
going to be sick. But he’s a quick thinker. He grabbed my box of BBs and stuffed every one of them down that trout’s throat. By the time we got to the headquarters, everyone had weighed in but us.