Vivian, my disconsolate damsel, if only you … my fair pale sister. Your virgin knees and golden hair in your sepulcher by the sea. Let me creep into your mausoleum, baby. My insatiable Vivian by the sea, remember how we used to go for walks down to the levee and wait for the
Annabel Lee.
You were only fourteen years old, yet ours is a romance of the days that were. You, having difficulty making up your mind whether to “pass” from dismay or despair, me feverishly penning letters tainted with lily oil from my apartment on the Bois de Boulogne. And that night before you died, you were just right. What would I do without our great love, a love as old as Ikhnaton, the royal love, the royal love … the royal.
Swille is walking in the clouds in a great city. Floating toward a castle. He comes to a door with Islamic-type designs on it. Can this be? The door opens, and there before him is a great round table at which is seated a brilliant company. Can this be real? Ethiopian minstrels wearing silver collars, silk and embroidery are playing their instruments. And there Vivian sweeps out toward him and puts her hand in his. She is wearing the negligee she “passed” in, and she’s singing their favorite song. Fairy bells. Fairy bells. And the King … King Arthur says, “Come forth, my children. Baron and Baroness Swille.” And they begin to walk as the knights shout, raising their swords and lifting their crystal goblets, “Baron Swille. Baroness Swille.”
Barracuda enters the room. She rouses him.
“Barracuda, what on earth’s the matter? I’m having my ‘Siesta.’ I …”
“Your ‘Siesta’ gon have to wait. It’s your wife again, Arthur. She looks real Emancipated. Dark circles under the eyes. Peek’d. She say she not going to talk unless she fed intravenous. She say she on strike. All she do now is lay in bed, watch television, read movie books and eat candy. She drinks an awful lot, too, Mr. Swille. She be listening to that Beecher Hour show.”
“Well, Mammy, in that case, you know what to do.”
“That I do,” Barracuda says, rubbing her hands together, “that I do.”
B
ARRACUDA ENTERS THE MISTRESS’
room. Surveys the scene. Puts her hands on her hips. The Mistress flutters her eyes. Turns her head toward the door where Barracuda is standing, tapping her foot.
“Oh, Barracuda, there you are, my dusky companion, my comrade in Sisterhood, my Ethiopian suffragette.”
“Oooomph,” Barracuda says. “Don’t choo be sistering me, you lazy bourgeoise skunk.”
“Barracuda,” the Mistress says, raising up, “what’s come over you?”
“What’s come ovah me? What’s come ovah you, you she-thing? Got a good man. A good man. A powerful good man. And here you is—you won’t arrange flowers when his guests come. You won’t take care of the menu. You won’t do nothing that a belle is raised to do.”
“But, Barracuda, Ms. Stowe says …”
“I don’t care what that old crazy fambly say. They ain’t doin nothin but causing a mess. Now it’s about time you straighten up.”
Barracuda walks over to the bed, takes a box of candy from next to where Ms. Swille is resting, throws it to the floor.
“Barracuda!”
Barracuda ignores her Mistress’ pleas and knocks over the whiskey bottle on the stand next to the bed, then throws back the covers.
“Barracuda, I’ll catch the flu. I’m always catching the flu.”
“Get out dat bed!”
“Why … what? What’s come over you, Barracuda?”
Barracuda goes to the window and raises it. “This room needs to air out. Oooooomph. Whew!” Barracuda pinches her nose. “What kind of wimmen is you?”
“Why, I’m on strike, Barracuda. I refuse to budge from this bed till my husband treats me better than he treats the coloreds around here.”
“Now, I’m gon tell you one mo time. Git out dat bed!”
“Barracuda! This has gone far enough.” The Mistress brings back her frail alabaster arm as if to strike Barracuda. Barracuda grabs it and presses it against the bed. “Barracuda! Barracuda! You’re hurting me. Oooooo.”
Barracuda grabs her by the hair and yanks her to the floor.
“Barracuda, Barracuda, what on earth are you doing to my delicate fragile body. Barracuda!”
Barracuda gives her a kind of football-punt kick to her naked hip, causing an immediate red welt.
“Barracuda, now that’s enough, you … you impertinent, black Raggedy Ann, you.”
Barracuda pulls her razor, bends down and puts it to Ms. Swille’s lily-white neck. “You see that, don’t you? You know what that is now? Now do what I say.”
“Anything you say, Barracuda,” Ms. Swille says, sobbing softly.
“BANGALANG. BANGALLLLAAAANNNNG.
YOUUUUUU. WHOOOOOO. BANGALANG.” Barracuda, one black foot on Ms. Swille’s chest, calls for her assistant.
Bangalang rushes into the room, her pickaninny curls rising up, her hands thrown out at the red palms, her eyes growing big in their sockets at the sight.
“Don’t just stand there, girl; go draw some bath water.”
Bangalang rushes into the bathroom and begins to draw the water.
“Now get up.”
“Barracuda. Barracuuuudaaaaa.”
The Missus of the household moans, holding on to Barracuda’s skirts. Barracuda knees her in the mouth. She falls back, blood spurting from the wound.
“Now get up, I say!”
She is lying in the middle of the floor, her blondish-streaked orange-grey hair spread out before her, moaning.
“I say get up! Where my poker?” Barracuda goes to the fireplace.
“All right, Barracuda. All right.” Ms. Swille slowly rises to her feet.
Barracuda begins to shove her toward the bathroom, where Bangalang has drawn the water. “Now move, you old mothefukin she-dog. You scarecrow. You douche-bag! You flea-sack drawers! You no-tit mother of a bloodhound. You primary chancre! Get on in there, like Barracuda say.” She keeps shoving her. “Look like shit. On strike. I got your strike, you underbelly of a fifteen-pound gopher rat run ober by a car. Sleep with a dog, he let you. You goat-smelling virago, you gnawing piranha, worrying that man like that.” She shoves her into the bathroom and the woman slips and falls because Bangalang has caused the tub to overflow. “What da matta … Fool!”
“You tole me to turn it on; you didn’t say anything about turning it off,” Bangalang says in her Topsy voice.
“Where my … ?”
But before Barracuda could find an appropriate weapon, Bangalang, the little pickaninny, has dashed from under her skirts and out of the room. Ms. Swille lies in the water on the floor, unconscious. Barracuda picks her up as though she were a child and throws her into the tub. She lies there face down, until she begins to gurgle and bubble. Barracuda grabs her by the hair and turns her over. She rolls up her sleeves. She gets an old hard brush rich with pine soap. Then she starts scrubbing away.
L
ATER. THE ROOM HAS
been cleaned. The cat litter and the cats have been removed. There are new curtains up. The sheets have been changed, and there is a pleasant light in the room instead of the dreary one that had been there for months. Barracuda has changed from her clothes upon which Ms. Swille’s blood had spattered. Bangalang is on one side, combing Ms. Swille’s hair; Barracuda is on the other. They are using long golden combs. Ms. Swille is propped up in the bed. She has a Band-Aid on her skin, here and there. Her skin is a raw red from the scalding hot water. She is drinking a tall glass of milk between sobs.
“Barracuda hates to do what she had to do with her darlin, but her darlin was letting her darlin self go. Barracuda no like that. Barracuda no like. Come from a proud fambly. Good fambly. Remember when you used to help fix waffles for your Daddy and Mr. Jefferson Davis? ‘Can I help, Mammy Barracuda?’ you used to ax. Bless yo little soul. You’d even carry some out back for Mr. Davis’ body servant, Sammy Davis. Round here wearing Levi negligees. No wonder Bossman Swille took to having a separate bedroom. You can’t blame the man for wanting to be away from you, the condition you was in.
“It all started that time you came home from Radcliffe. That Yankee school. I told your Daddy that that school wasn’t doing nothing but bothering your head, but he wouldn’t listen. Then you come home. People glad to see you. Then how you act. How you act! Call them a bunch of antebellum anal retentive assholes. Then we found you reading that book by that old simple Stowe fambly. Old crazy fambly. That wild Harriet one. And her adulteratin brother Henry, ain’t got a bit of sense, and her suffragette sister Isabelle—she crazy too. Jesus tired of them. Jesus tired. That’s why her son got wounded in the war and the other one drownded. That’s Jesus gettin back at them for they lies. And the way she bad-mouth old Simon Legree. He a good man. He always say, ‘Now, anything you need, just ask for it, Mammy Barracuda. Just speak up, you can have it.’ Lorrrrrd.”
Mammy Barracuda is preening and plaiting the Mistress’ hair, looking googly-eyed toward the ceiling. She pauses a minute. “You try to raise them and look what they done done. Marry a rich man like that. Arthur Swille III. Anybody else would be proud. Proud. Like a fairy queen in one of them Princess books. Worrying him so. Now I want you to get your basket of violets together, do you hear me?”
“But—”
“Don’t choo be buttin me! You gon pick some violets; that is, after you have come down and personally looked after the preparing of the breakfast for the men. Then … What else, Bangalang?”
Bangalang picks up an in-Castle memo from the night-stand top. “Then there will be a garden poetry reading of Edgar Poe.”
“I think for dat occasion you shall wear a bonnet and a cloak and some jewelry … some of dat nice golden jewelry. Maybe your goldbug pin.”
“I gave that to Mr. Poe to pawn. He’s always seeking ‘loans,’ as he calls them. Says he can’t figure out royalty reports.”
“Then after that I want you to come to my office, and I’ll have you fill out the details for the rest of the day, which will include a tea for some of the neighborhood belles, an outdoor cookie sale to help the po ’Federate hospital …”
“But, Barracuda, don’t you see that that’s exploitin—”
“You shush about the ‘sploitin.’ Now I want you to roll over.”
“What are you doing now?”
Barracuda, one eye shut, one eye open, is preparing a long hypodermic needle filled with cc’s of Valium.
“What … what are you doing, Barracuda?”
“This ain’t gon take but a little time. And don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit. Just a little pinch.”
“But, Barracuda …”
“Barracuda wants her darlin to turn over now. Cooperate, I don’t have all day. A famous military man is coming for dinner tomorrow, and I have to prepare the menu. Tomorrow night while they’re dining I want you to make an appearance. When the men is lighting up the cigars, you will enter the room and make a few courtesies and stay until they have recited the ‘Ode to the Southern Belle.’ Tomorrow
A.M.
you will return to watering flowers, selling cookies, fanning yourself, fluttering your eyebrows and blushing at the flirtatious remarks of the Southern gen’mens. I want that drawl back, too. You sound too Yankee, that’s part of your problem. But tomorrow you goin to look fine. Like nothing ever happened. You gon look chaste—not too chaste, though, a wee bit coquettish, refined. Now turn over. You will be quality people again and quit yo old tomcat ways. Hrmph! Grumph!”
“But, Barracuda …”
Barracuda gives the signal to Bangalang, who grabs one of her Mistress’ arms and one leg while Barracuda catches the others. They turn her over. Barracuda squats atop her and slowly gives the injection. Ms. Swille emits a low moan and passes out.
Barracuda turns out the lights.
Ms. Swille comes to, momentarily. “Barracuda, when is my son coming back from Africa?”
Barracuda and Bangalang look at each other.
“He’ll be back soon, now you go to sleep.” But Ms. Swille is already asleep, snoring. Barracuda rips out the radio cord. She carries the radio under her arm and walks out of the room, followed by Bangalang, her aide.
Mammy Barracuda stands in the center of the room, her arms folded. She gives orders with her head. Pointing in this direction, that direction. Tapping her foot when annoyed. Giving some eye-dagger when mad. Not smiling but showing a wee twinkle when pleased. Bangalang is second in command, following through, taking inventory of every detail.
Ms. Swille sits in the chair facing the huge mirror. The slave girls and the pickaninnys are applying makeup, combing, brushing, manicuring; others are bringing out the wardrobe, preparing to put Ms. Swille in it. She sits at the dressing table, in her slip.
“I feel like … like I’m in a dollhouse.”
“Now, don’t get smart. We doin this for your own good. You remember what happened the other night when you was acting reckless. Now don’t be acting reckless. When we finish with you, you gon put Jeanette MacDonald to shame.”
“Yes, Mammy.”
“That’s mo like it.”
Bangalang drops a pincushion. Mammy Barracuda rushes over and shakes her a little. “Be careful with dat. What’s wrong wit choo? If you don’t shape up, I’m gon take away this good job you got and send you to the fields. You don’t want to go to the fields, now do you?”
“No, Mammy Barracuda.”
“Who da boss?”
“You are, Mammy Barracuda.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“Let me hear it from all of you,” she said, her hand cupping an ear.
The girls say, “You are, Barracuda. You the boss. Our leader …”
“I didn’t hear one person say it.”
The girls stop. They stare at Ms. Swille.
“Barracuda, please don’t … don’t humiliate me before the girls …”
“You’ve given up your respect. Listening to that old Beecher woman. Talking about taking up whoring …”
“Free love, Barracuda. That’s different …”
“I don’t care what you call it, you syphilitic muskrat …”
The girls oooo and awwwww.
“Now I give you one more chance. Who the boss?”
“You are, Barracuda.”
The girls giggle. They are standing before the mirror, and Ms. Swille is blushing.
“Don’t she look beautiful.”
“OOOOOO. So preeeeeety.”
“Don’t look like the same person, look quality again.”