Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (12 page)

Eadie looked from one to the other. She grinned slowly and stuck her hand out. “Hi, Joe,” she said in a sleepy voice, giving him the full effect of her eyes. This was usually the point where the man in question fell instantly and irrevocably in love with Eadie. Lavonne tensed, waiting for this to happen.

He quickly let go of Eadie's hand. Behind his head, a box kite climbed slowly up the sky, trailing its tail like a broken limb. “I forgot the deli wasn't open today,” he said, smiling at Lavonne. His eyes were green with flecks of gold around the iris.

“What?” she said.

“I went by the deli but it was closed. I needed a cream cheese muffin fix.”

Lavonne held up the sack. “You're in luck,” she said. He seemed pretty relaxed. Maybe he hadn't heard anything after all.

“You're kidding me,” he said, looking down into the bag. “You mean you read my mind?”

“She's a mind reader,” Eadie said. “Ask her what I'm thinking right now.”

“There's only one left,” he said.

“Go ahead, take it. There's plenty more where that came from.”

He grinned and took the sack from her. He zipped it into a small pouch on the back of his seat. “I'll eat it later,” he said.

“That's a nice bike,” Lavonne said.

“Thanks. I built it.”

“Really?”

“It's a prototype. It's a carbon composite that's lighter than titanium. Do you ride?”

“No.”
Conversation
101.
Avoid dead-end statements if at all possible
.

“She's thinking about learning to ride,” Eadie said innocently.

“Really?” Other than his first glance at Eadie, he hadn't looked at her at
all. He wiped his forehead with the back of one of his racing gloves. His biking shorts left little to the imagination. “Do you have a bike?” he asked Lavonne.

“She's thinking about ordering one off the Internet,” Eadie said coolly. “We were just talking about that.”

“You need to do it, Lavonne,” he said, putting his helmet back on. “Then we could ride together.”

Eadie lifted one eyebrow and looked at her. “Did you hear that, Lavonne? Then you could ride together.”

Lavonne ignored her. She glanced at Joe, trying to think of something clever to say. Something smart and flirtatious. “Wednesday is half-price cookie day,” she said. It was the best she could do, given the circumstances.

“Really? Half-price cookie day? I guess I'll have to check that out.” He put his foot on the pedal. “Nice to meet you, Eadie.”

“ 'Bye, Joe,” Eadie said.

“I'll see you Wednesday,” he said to Lavonne.

“Okay.”

He pedaled a few paces and then stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “Fleshy Delights doesn't sound like much of a bike site,” he said. “You might want to try Biker's World.” He grinned.

Lavonne tried to hold his gaze, but could not, naturally. “I'll remember that,” she said. She looked at her feet, listening to the clicking of his bike getting farther and farther away.

“Damn,” Eadie said. “He's cute.”

T
HE WEEK FOLLOWING HER WEDDING
, N
ITA WENT OUT TO THE
Suck Creek Retirement Home to visit Leota Quarles. She had found Leota quite by accident, several months after she began her women in servitude project. Caught up in the excitement of trying to finish the paper, Nita had almost decided not to visit Leota. But then one of the other ladies had said, “Oh, you have to talk to Miz Quarles. Her people come from over on the island and she worked for your mama-in-law's people, the Kellys. Miz Broad- well was a Kelly before she was a Broadwell.” It had taken Nita a minute to realize she was talking about Virginia. Her curiosity aroused, she had decided to keep the appointment with Leota Quarles. Virginia had never said much about her childhood. It was hard to imagine her as anything other than a strong-willed, self-assured woman. It was hard to imagine her as anything
other than an adult, hatched from an egg, fully formed, like a Greek goddess of old, or some alien life-form.

The home was crowded today with visitors. Nita smiled at the young nurse who showed her into Leota's room. The old woman was sitting in a rocking chair, facing a window that looked out over the parking lot. Leota was ninety-four years old and she was hard of hearing.

“Look, Miss Leota, you have a visitor,” the young nurse said. The elderly woman continued to gaze out the window, a pensive look on her face. Nita smiled at the nurse who went out, closing the door behind her. Nita took out her notepad and tape recorder, and pulled a chair closer to the window. She touched Leota's arm and the old woman turned her head and smiled, showing a set of large white dentures.

“Are you Miz Broadwell?” she said.

“Yes.” Nita smiled apologetically. “I hope I didn't startle you.” The room smelled of disinfectant and mothballs. “We talked a little bit on the phone, Mrs. Quarles, about Virginia Broadwell. Do you remember?”

“Virginia Kelly?”

“Yes. Virginia Kelly.”

“Of course I remember.” Leota looked out the window. A high-flying jet left a thin vapor trail across the blue sky. Nita had learned from interviewing the other elderly women that it was best to just let them talk. If she asked too many questions, their minds might wander and they might drop off to sleep. Talking to them was like panning for gold: you had to sift through a lot of dirt and rough stones to get to those gleaming bits of information, but what you came up with was pure gold.

After a while Leota cleared her throat and began.

“
Miss Virginia always was a pretty girl. She had long gold ringlets and big blue eyes. She had a bad temper but her papa thought it was cute, I guess, because he seemed to encourage her. Her mama couldn't do nothing with her. She'd walk around the island carrying a peach switch like she was carrying a riding crop and anybody that crossed her got the stinging end of that switch, I tell you. She was something. Tiny as a china doll and just as pretty. Spoiled and pampered her whole life, I guess, on account of the fact she come so late in her mama and papa's life
.”

Leota smiled and closed her eyes. Her lids were nearly transparent, heavily veined and wrinkled like damp parchment. They fluttered for a moment and then flew open again.

“
When she was real small, before she went to school, she'd play with all
the little colored children on the other end of the island. She was the Queen Bee, that's what her papa called her and it stuck, and she'd boss everybody around and make them do whatever she said. The colored folk were left over from the olden times, from slave days, back when the island had been a cotton plantation and the Kellys owned everybody. Back then there was a natural bridge from the mainland, it weren't really an island but more like a fist at the end of a long arm stretching out into the river. And the old Kelly house was a showplace, they say. But then the earthquake happened, right before the silver war, and the river swallowed up the land bridge and after that you had to take a rowboat over. All that was long after the first Kellys come down and settled the island, long after the Old People had gone
.”

Nita looked puzzled. She wrote down “Old People” and put a question mark next to it.

“
We had no electricity back then, back before the
PWA
workers brought it to the island. Nineteen forty-two it was, not too long before the war ended. Miss Virginia was just a little girl then, about seven years old, but she'd started school in town and was ashamed we didn't have electricity or plumbing on the island. The kids at school used to tease her about that— about no lights or indoor plumbing and us all using outhouses still. She'd come home crying about us being a bunch of ignorant swamp hicks and I'd have to lay her down in her little bed and put cold washcloths on her head to quiet her down
.”

The old woman put her head back against the rocking chair. Her slippered feet tapped the floor softly as she rocked.

“
If you stand on the shore and look, there's this hump in the middle of the island. That's the Big Ridge. That's left over from the Old People, and my grandmother and the other grandmothers would tell us not to play up there when we was kids. They said the Hungry Spirits would get you
.”

She laughed, seeing Nita's face.

“A
Hungry Spirit is kind of like a ghost
.”

Nita got up and went to the bureau and poured them both a glass of water. Then she sat back down, handing a glass to Leota.

The old woman smiled and sipped her water, and then set the glass down on the small table beside the bed. She stretched her hands along the arms of the rocking chair, her filmy eyes fixed on the shimmering green fields beyond the parking lot.

“
The Quarles were always house servants. Our cabin was up close to the Big House. All the rest were field hands and their cabins were at the other
end of the island, past the Big Ridge and closest to the fields. The land was rich, on account of the river, and we grew cotton and corn and potatoes. But once every twenty years or so the river would rise and flood us out and then everything would be ruined. Then the starving times would come. In the old days, the colored folk would go to the beach and hail the passing steamboats for food. That's why all the houses are built up on stilts, even the Big House. 'Cause of the floods
.”

Nita was quiet a moment, imagining how it must have been. Somehow she'd pictured a more aristocratic background for Virginia. Her mother-inlaw had always been careful to imply, without actually coming right out and saying it, that the Kellys were gentry. “Were Virginia's parents educated?”

Leota clasped the neckline of her flowered robe with an arthritic hand and pulled it tighter around her throat.

“
Maybe at one time the Kellys were sent off to school, but after the silver war they fell on hard times just like everybody else. The war and the floods took a toll on the Kellys. The Grandpapa Kelly rode away on his fine-blooded horse with his little servant boy, but after the war he come back without the boy or the horse or his right arm. The Big House was in ruins then. Some renegades from Sherman's army had camped out on the island and built a campfire right in the middle of the dining room floor. They took whatever they could carry away in a rowboat and burned most of the rest
.”

She blinked her eyes several times. Her face relaxed into a dreamy, faraway expression.

“
After that the Kellys were dirt poor just like everybody else. Old Jennings Kelly, Miss Virginia's papa, worked for the railroad. Her mama's people come from somewhere over by Moultrie. They were small farmers
.”

Her head drooped. She lifted it again, fighting sleep.

“
Everybody always said Miss Virginia was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but Miz Kelly said she didn't know how that came to be since the Kellys had been living on tin for generations. Old Mr. Kelly said Virginia was a throwback to better times. He named her after his grandmother Virginia, whose people had been big landowners over by Valdosta before the silver war
.”

Leota's head dropped on her chest. She began to snore softly.

Nita turned off the tape recorder and quietly gathered her purse.

A
FTER WEEKS OF TRYING
, V
IRGINIA FINALLY DISCOVERED
what made Redmon weak in the knees. Herself, dressed as a debutante and wearing a sequined tiara. She had been cleaning out her closet a few days after Nita's wedding and had stumbled on the box, yellowed with age, by accident. Unable to help herself, she had opened it and put on the dress to see if it still fit. It did. Perfectly. She turned to find Redmon standing in the doorway looking much the way a steer in the slaughterhouse must look as the stun gun is dropped between its eyes. It seems Redmon had always had a thing for Homecoming Queens, and Virginia, dressed in her gown and tiara, was close enough to the real thing to get his heart rate up. If she had known how easy it would be, she could have forgone the French maid outfit, the cheerleading costume, and all the other humiliating getups she wore trying to pry the truth about the hunting trip out of him. One look at her dressed as a debutante and Redmon told her everything she needed to know.

She lost no time calling Charles. He was sitting on the balcony of his condominium watching the river and trying not to think about Nita and Jimmy Lee on their honeymoon. The caller ID showed the call was from
his mother, and for a moment, he was tempted not to take it. But if he didn't answer she would continue to call, or worse, show up in person. He sighed. “Hello,” he said despondently.

“Charles, this is Mother.” Her voice shook. There was a sound in her head like an engine at full throttle. Virginia prided herself on her ability to control her temper, but today there was no containing her rage.

“Yes?” Charles sounded nervous.

“I went to the wedding. It was every bit as tacky as I expected it to be. I didn't see a soul we know except for Lee Anne Bales and the Zibolsky woman, of course. And Eadie Boone.”

“Did Nita look happy?”