The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (15 page)

live over by Butlertown.”

Sissy said that would be no trouble at all, but as they opened the

screen door, Parker pulled Sissy aside. “Don’t do this.”

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 9 7

“Are you worried we’ll talk about you?” She turned to Clara.

“What do you think? Is he worth risking my marriage for?”

Clara hesitated a minute and said, “I don’t think he’s worth any

risk at all.”

“Clara!” But they were gone. Together.

Sid ran after them, only to have the screen door bang shut before

he could get through it. He crouched down against it and howled.

Then he slouched back and nudged Parker into the kitchen.

Parker opened a can for the dog and a can for himself. When his

hash was hot, he took it into the living room and sat down on the

Naugahyde chair Sissy had lain in.

Less than fifteen minutes ago, she had been waiting for him, half

naked, in this very chair waiting for him . . . when he’d walked in

with Clara. But how could a man have resisted Clara when she

called him from that pay phone with tears in her voice? She was so

young and eager to please, with that fresh smell of youth.

He rubbed his hand along the arm where Sissy’s legs had rested.

He thought about her crazy courage, using his key, waiting for him

in her underwear. And her delight at finding she had a Negro

cousin. Most white women would have had a fit of shame and

indignation at the very thought. Not Sissy.

A sweet sadness like an old song swept over him. Was that inde-

scribable something that he’d been searching for, over so many

miles, for so many years, been merely Sissy? Or was she just some

impossible high school dream that wouldn’t stand up to the test of

reality? And if she was what he’d been longing for, then what? She

had a home and children. What did he have to offer her or any

woman?

He set his plate on the floor. Sid slunk into the living room,

sniffed the hash, and then with his foot planted firmly in the plate,

put his head on Parker’s knees and moaned.

Sometimes doing good can be delightfully bad.

Rule Number Seventy-five

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

C h a p t e r 8

Peewee had objected, of course. He didn’t think they needed

a maid this summer. “What are you, the queen? You can’t do a lit-

tle housework?”

That had been so easy, Sissy was ashamed of herself. After a con-

temptuous enumeration of all her duties taking care of their big old

house, cooking and shopping for the family, looking after the chil-

dren, mixed with less than an hour of anguished silence, Peewee

was hers. Besides, everyone in Gentry knew that a man who couldn’t

provide his wife with help wasn’t much of a man. No white lady

should have to perform menial work.

Chip wasn’t so easy. “I don’t need nobody to take care of me.”

“You don’t need anybody,” said his father.

“And I don’t want nobody, neither,” he declared firmly.

“Is that so?” asked his mother. “You planning to spend the rest

of the summer doing the laundry? You all run through a lot of

clothes in hot weather.”

Chip admitted that wasn’t part of his plans.

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 9 9

“You going to mop the floors every time one of you kids tracks

mud into the kitchen?”

Chip admitted that wasn’t how he had planned to spend his sum-

mer vacation either.

“Then you don’t get a vote,” said Sissy.

Chip glared at his mother.

“I’ll talk to Hester Lee,” said Peewee. Hester Lee had been with

Peewee’s mother off and on since he was born.

“That’s okay, sugar, I’ll find somebody.”

“What’s wrong with Hester Lee? She’s real good with children!”

That’s all Sissy needed, a spy carrying tales to Miss Lily. “If I had

that old lady around here telling me about all her aches and pains,

I’d end up working for her. I’ll get me someone a little younger if it’s

all the same with you.”

“You know a girl?” he asked.

Sissy nodded. “I do. And I’ve known her family for years.”

“Well, she’d better be a good worker. I don’t want to squander

my hard-earned money if she’s not willing to work.”

“She’s a lot neater than I am,” Sissy said.

Peewee gave in. He didn’t care anything about housework as

long as somebody else did it.

Sissy woke up at six forty-five and lay in bed enjoying that deli-

cious time between sleep and real life. She was reveling in her coup.

Doing good can be so delightfully bad
. She decided to number that

Rule Number Seventy-five. Parker must be going through the ago-

nies of hell. Serves him right.

Clara was awake too, although she wasn’t hanging around in

bed. She’d set her alarm for five-thirty. Most teenage girls like to

fool with their hair and nails, but for Clara they were an obsession.

Because in spite of having the highest IQ ever tested by the Gentry

school system, white or Negro, her real identity, the one she cared

about, was all tied up with the way she looked. And although she

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L o r a i n e D e s p r e s

always protested when the other kids called her stuck up, she

couldn’t help feeling deep down that her light skin did make her

superior. Her earliest memory was sitting in church with her

mother and having old dark-skinned ladies stroke her silky hair

with envy, telling her mother what a pretty daughter she had.

So she’d set out to look white. She used Sissy as a role model, but

kept herself better pressed. She protected her hands at all times and

wore white gloves whenever she could. And she couldn’t imagine

why her cousin, who could afford to buy shoes, would want to go

around barefooted.

She’d already taken out her curlers, brushed her hair two hun-

dred strokes, taken a bath, and given herself a complete manicure.

Now she was starching and ironing one of her few skirts and

blouses that didn’t match an outfit of Sissy’s. “You always said,

you’ve got to press to impress,” she told her mother, who was lean-

ing against the doorway and eyeing her with disgust.

Anyone seeing Denise Conners Johnson pull her lavender wrap-

per over her big, soft breasts would understand why a man as

obsessed with race as Tibor Thompson would have trouble letting

her go. With her café-au-lait skin and her slow, sensuous smile, she

was his ultimate nightmare of racial mongrelization and his ulti-

mate fantasy in a woman. As had happened with Sissy, Denise’s

beauty had trapped her and kept her locked in a half-life in Gentry.

“I didn’t bring you up to work in no white folks’ kitchen. Espe-

cially those white folks.”

“Oh, Mama, don’t get all shook up.” Clara slipped into her

freshly ironed outfit.

“Don’t you sass me, neither!”

“I’m not sassing you, Mama,” the girl said innocently. She knew

how her mother hated to hear white slang coming from her mouth.

She pulled her hair into a ponytail. She didn’t want to look too

much like Sissy today. What if Mr. LeBlanc noticed? She saw her

mother shake her head and look out the window. Clara knew ever

since she’d cut her hair, her mother couldn’t stand to see her work-

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 1 0 1

ing it. Her long, wavy hair was her mother’s pride and joy. Clara

had had the longest hair of any little girl in the colored school.

But her mother didn’t say anything about her hair today. “What

you gonna do if your daddy comes over for a visit?”

Clara shrugged and tied a ribbon around her ponytail. She’d

watched her white family for years. That’s our cousin in her new

car, she’d said to her brother when they first saw Sissy drive by in

her red convertible. And they’d ponder on just what it was that

entitled white folks to live so much better than they did. And now

finally, she’d have a chance to observe them close up, and ferret out

their secrets.

It was just in time too, because Clara had an agonizing and

thrilling secret of her own. What nobody knew—not her mother,

who’d been so proud of her for getting into the University of

Chicago, not her teacher, who said they’d all be looking up to her,

not her principal, who admonished her to apply herself and become

a credit to her race—was that when Clara filled out her scholarship

application, she’d decided not to check the box that said Negro.

She’d checked the box that said Caucasian instead. Once she got

there, she planned to say she was Creole. Nobody agreed on exactly

what that was anyway.

Shortly before Clara was due to arrive, Chip assembled his

brother and sister on the roof of the house for a science lesson. Mil-

itary science. From their sunny height, they surveyed the area and

stood watch, straining with excitement. Finally they spotted Clara

walking up to the back door, fastidious in her freshly starched skirt

and blouse. Then they saw the white gloves and had to hold their

giggles. They waited until she knocked on the screen door.

PLOP! Clara felt a dull blow to the top of her head. She reached

up and to her horror came away with something wet, and colorless,

tacky between her white cotton fingers. What had happened to her?

She heard the whispers. Looking up, she knocked what was left of

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an apple onto the sidewalk. Somebody was throwing fruit at her!

As she bent over to inspect it, a green-and-white-striped water-

melon was rolled to the edge of the roof. Six little hands held it

poised in the rain gutter. They took careful aim.

“Clara!” Sissy said, opening the screen door.

SPLAT. The large green-and-white biotic projectile crashed into

the top of the door, knocking it cockeyed on its hinges.

The watermelon split into irregular pieces, bombarding the

women with wet pink pulp. It finished with a salvo to their open

sandals, covering them with vegetable matter and wedging tough

black seeds under their straps and between their bare toes.

“I quit,” Clara said.

“You haven’t even started.”

“That’s right,” Clara said, picking a chunk of watermelon pulp

out of her auburn hair. “And I’m still alive. If it’s all the same with

you, I’d like to keep it that way.” She turned and headed for the

street, away from the war zone.

“Hold on.” Sissy stepped out onto the pavement and called,

“Chip! Chip! You get your butt down here. I know you’re up

there.” Then to Clara, “You said you needed a job.”

“Not this bad.” And for the first time Clara wondered what in

heaven’s name she was getting herself into, going up north to a

white college. Maybe they were all insane when you saw them up

close. That would explain why the world was in such a mess. “At

least at the funeral home, they drew a line between the living and

the dead. They didn’t try to bury the ones walking and talking.”

But Clara knew she couldn’t go back to the funeral home. Not after

what had happened with old man Fletcher. She hadn’t been able to

banish the memory of the undertaker’s stinking breath when he

grabbed her as she was dusting a table near the big walnut casket

with Miss Mardee laid out in it. Clara could still see the glint of his

gold tooth next to those rotting brown ones when he’d tried to stick

his nasty old tongue into her mouth. She’d brought her knee up

hard and fast, like her brother had taught her. Fletcher howled,

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 1 0 3

stumbled back, and knocked Miss Mardee right out of her casket.

She lay spread-eagled on the floor, formaldehyde running out of her

mouth, smelling up the family viewing room something awful. That

was the moment the old lady’s grandson chose to walk in the door.

Fletcher fired Clara.

But she’d taken it personally. She hadn’t held what happened to

her against the whole white race. On second thought, maybe she

should have.

“Nobody’s trying to bury you, Clara.”

“You could have fooled me,” the teenager said, ignoring Sissy’s

attempt at Southern charm.

Sissy turned to the roof with a yell worthy of a long distance

trucker. “Chip, if you don’t get your butt down here by the time I

count to three, you’re not gonna be able to sit on it for a week.

One . . .” She saw a flash of red overalls. “Marilee? Chip, if you’ve

got your baby sister on the roof, you are in deep shit, boy.”

Amy Lou Hopper and Rowena Weaver, the relief organist and

supervisor at the telephone company, were climbing the steps to the

church across the street when they heard a four-letter word that

never would have crossed the lips of any lady worthy of that name.

Amy Lou turned her ankle in her high-heeled blue-and-white

spectator pumps. She was sweating and out of breath from the heat

and the climb. However, she managed to say, “Can you imagine, in

front of her children.”

Rowena reached into her large basket purse and said nothing.