The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (16 page)

Amy Lou continued, “As you know, I would never speak ill of any

of God’s creatures, but in Sissy’s case”—she paused to pant—“I’ll

make an exception. Trash is trash.”

“That’s real Christian of you, Amy Lou,” the relief organist said

as she unlocked the big, church doors.

* * *

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

“Marilee,” Sissy called. “Marilee, come on over to the

edge of the roof, honey.”

A face, bursting with giggles, peeked down at her.

“How’d your brother get you up there?”

“We climbed,” said the little girl, pointing to an old magnolia

tree shading the master bedroom.

“Well, you just climb on down. You, too, Billy Joe.” There was

no further acknowledgment. “I know you’re up there. If your

brother and Marilee are there, you are, too. Now come on down.”

As the two children crawled across the roof to the magnolia tree,

Sissy apologized to Clara. “They’re not always like this. They were

just having fun.”

Clara nodded. “What’s it like when they’re having a real bad

day?”

Sissy looked at the younger woman and looked up toward the

roof where Chip was hiding. “You have every right to ask that

question.”

When Billy Joe and Marilee stood in front of her, Sissy intro-

duced them to Clara and asked if they weren’t ashamed of them-

selves.

Billy Joe hung his head and muttered. Sissy couldn’t hear him.

But when he saw his mother brush watermelon pulp from her cut-

offs and pick a seed from between her toes, he said in a rush, “I

didn’t mean to hurt you, Mama.”

“Me, neither,” said Marilee, staring up at Clara.

“You all can’t keep following after Chip. One of these days he’s

going to get you in real trouble, bad trouble,” Sissy said, putting

her arm around the little girl’s shoulder.

“We was learning about science,” Marilee said as if that explained

it. “It was an experiment just like Icing . . . Fig Newton, or . . .

something.” She lapsed into confusion. “The one who hit people on

the head with apples!” Marilee grinned, proud to get it right. Sissy

shook her head and tried to bite back a smile. “That’s what Chip

said,” the little girl insisted.

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 5

“My brother’s gonna be a scientist,” Billy Joe said.

“What’s he studying, atomic bombs?” Clara asked.

Sissy made the two younger children clean up the sidewalk and

then sent them to their rooms with orders to clean them up, too.

“No reading comics until you’re done.”

“What about Chip?” Billy Joe wanted to know.

“I’ll take care of him. You just worry about Billy Joe, you hear?”

Then turning to Clara she said, “Come on, I’ve got coffee on the

stove.”

“Can’t. I gotta go home and take me a bath. I mean I have to go

home and take a bath,” Clara said.

“No you don’t,” said Sissy.

Clara picked a chunk of watermelon out of her ponytail.

Sissy saw her point. “You can take one here.”

“Where?”

“In the bathroom. Where do you think?”

“Your bathroom?”

Sissy had never shared her bathtub with a colored girl and she

knew Peewee would have a fit. But my God, she thought, the girl’s

cleaner than any of us. “Of course,” she said nonchalantly as if this

were something she did all the time. “Where else?”

Clara entered the house warily. So far this white family didn’t

have much to recommend it. But she couldn’t pass up a chance to

take a bath in Sissy’s bathtub and see what kind of soap and pow-

ders her white cousin used.

Chip sat on the roof until the noon sun and the smell of fresh

corn bread and collard greens lured him down. He slipped in the

screen door.

He saw a woman who looked like his mother leaning into the

oven. Smelled like his mama, too. But when she stood up, with a

pan of corn bread in her carefully mitted hands, he saw she wasn’t

his mother at all.

1 0 6

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

“You the future scientist?”

Chip stared at her and then without a word he backed out the

door. It bounced shut.

He was down the stairs when Sissy, who’d spotted him from her

bedroom window, caught up to him. “Where do you think you’re

going?”

“Out,” he mumbled.

“You march right back inside this minute and face the music,”

Sissy didn’t know what tune she was going to play, but she was a

firm believer in inspired improvisation. “First, I want you to apolo-

gize to Clara.”

The boy stood in the middle of the kitchen with his head bowed.

“Well, young man, what do you say?”

The young man said nothing.

“We’re waiting.”

“I didn’t do nothing,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“I didn’t do nothing,” he insisted, “but hit a nigger with an

apple.” And then he snickered.

Sissy had never hit one of her children before, but she slapped

Chip across the face. “I never want to hear a child of mine use that

word!” The other kids shuffled into the kitchen to be on hand for

the excitement, so Sissy turned to them. “You all hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Billy Joe said. And Marilee echoed him.

“Everybody says nigger,” Chip mumbled, his eyes narrowed in

righteous indignation.

And then Sissy knew what she had to do. She grabbed her oldest

son by his T-shirt and dragged him over to the sink.

“And you say a lot worse,” protested the boy, trying to pull away.

“There isn’t any worse.” Sissy picked up a bar of Ivory soap. She

had used the word once in front of her mother and had gotten her

own mouth washed out. To this day, she could swear like a long-

shoreman—hell, she enjoyed that—but she couldn’t say the “N”

word. And no child of hers was going to use it either!

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 7

Clara watched them struggle at the sink and something moved

inside her. Just when she’d given up any expectation that something

good could come from these people, this white woman was taking

up for her against her own child.

“You don’t have to do that,” Clara said as Sissy managed to

shove some soap suds into Chip’s mouth before he wrenched away,

and knocking his mother in the stomach with his elbow, bolted out

of the house.

Sissy turned and leaned on the sink. She blew a ringlet of hair off

her forehead. Then both women laughed. And something solidified

between the two of them, something even stronger than blood.

Parker Davidson drov e by Sissy’s house several times that

morning.

He didn’t see the boy on the roof watching him. But Chip saw

Parker. The boy watched the telephone truck creep down the street

in front of the house and then speed up, turn the corner, go around

the block, and creep back. He smiled to himself. Knowledge was

power.

It wasn’t that Chip was intentionally malign, he just wanted what

he wanted. Just as some people are born color blind, Chip had no

ability to empathize with the subtle feelings of others. So although

he wished he were popular at school, wanted to have a bunch of

guys at his beck and call, making him feel important, he didn’t have

a clue how to make friends. All he had was his brother and sister

and he’d learned early that Marilee would follow Billy Joe any-

where and Billy Joe loved to please: his mother, his father, his big

brother. Chip saw that as a weakness—one that he was happy to

exploit.

After lunch, Parker had worked out his strategy. He was

going to be open with Sissy, direct and honest. He drove back to the

1 0 8

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

house and saw the red convertible still parked on the street. He

straightened his shirt and checked his hair in the mirror.

In his room, Chip was conducting an experiment to find out the

effect on inanimate objects of an acid he’d just invented. He discov-

ered two effects: one on the object itself and one on his lungs. It felt

as if someone had taken a knife and scraped the inside of his chest.

He flung up the window, gulped fresh air, and saw that the tele-

phone truck was back. When he stopped coughing, Chip took out

his lab book and noted the results of his experiment. Then he found

a clean page, drew a line across the top, and wrote Parker David-

son. He recorded the time and date.

Parker opened the door of the truck when he saw Sissy come

out of the house with a basket of laundry. The rusting hinges

mewled. Perfect. He took a deep breath, and saw Clara step out

behind her.

Already? They’d gotten together already? The two women were

acting like old friends!

“Will you look who the cat dragged in,” said Clara.

Sissy turned and felt a shock to her groin, but she said in her soft-

est, sweetest, most malicious voice, “That two-timing SOB. Which

one of us you think he’s after?”

Clara rose to Sissy’s sweet maliciousness with a voice that regis-

tered pure disgust. “Both.”

Feeding off the disgust in Clara’s voice, Sissy said, “He deserves

to suffer.”

“He sure does,” said Clara.

The two women turned as one and walked back toward the

house, swinging their hips and giggling like teenagers.

Parker slammed the truck door. What was he doing in this two-

bit town anyway? He didn’t come all this way to be made a fool of.

He ought to leave tomorrow. Except then he’d never see Sissy

again. No, this time he had to go the whole nine yards. Hell, he

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 9

could do that. It was just a question of developing the right strategy.

He gunned the motor and shot away from the curb.

“Who was that!” asked Rowena Weaver as she and Amy Lou

Hopper came out of the Methodist church. Rowena was tall and

thin and favored print dresses with small flowers. Her brown hair

was short and straight.

Amy Lou compressed her lips. She was carrying a round church

fan with a smeared picture of a rosy-cheeked young Jesus, sur-

rounded by rosy-cheeked angels. She fanned herself vigorously and

carefully placed one high-heeled pump in front of the other as she

made her way down the stairs. “Parker Davidson, I expect. He’s

been catting around Sissy when poor Peewee’s at work.”

Rowena looked at her friend. “What are you up to, Amy Lou?”

“Why, I don’t know whatever you mean. I just feel sorry for Pee-

wee, that’s all.”

Meanwhile, Sissy and Clara had forgotten all about the

laundry slowly collecting spots of mold in the yard. With the vene-

tian blinds shut tight against the blazing sun, they’d just found out

that they both followed the same soap opera. Sissy was sitting on

the couch and Clara was leaning against the wall behind her. They

shared an ashtray.

The curly-haired heroine, suffering from amnesia, had wandered

away from the safety of her small town, into the unknown perils of

the big city, where she was beginning to fall in love with a danger-

ous man. You could tell he was dangerous, because he always wore

T-shirts under his black leather jacket and drove a big, shiny motor-

cycle. His long dark hair was combed back into a duck’s ass.

“What I wouldn’t give to lose my memory and wake up with a

stud like that.” Sissy ground out her cigarette. “I’ll tell you one

thing, I’d never go back to sleep.”

1 1 0

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

Clara leaned over and flicked an ash into the big ceramic ashtray.

“If I see one like him in Chicago, I’ll give you a call.”

Sissy tried to picture herself roaring down the streets of Chicago

on the back of a motorcycle. “Come on over here and sit down next

to me.”

Clara hesitated. She knew the rules.

“Come on.” Sissy patted the pillow next to her. She’d never been

comfortable with servants hovering over her. It was so unnatural.

“Sit down. We’re family.”

Parker kicked the truck into second, but he wasn’t thinking

about the ruts and bumps he was bouncing over, he was mapping

out his strategy. He couldn’t see Sissy at night when Peewee was

there, of course. And he couldn’t drop over during the day with the

children and the Methodists on the lookout. And Clara.

Dammit, he’d really dropped the ball this time. He’d first seen

Clara at a memorial service for his old high school coach, the day

he hit town. She was serving coffee. For a moment he thought he’d

found Sissy again. Sissy at eighteen. He couldn’t take his eyes off

her: the way her auburn hair bounced when she moved. He hadn’t

planned to take up with any other women in Gentry, but after the

service the sky opened up and Clara was on foot. At first she

didn’t want to get into the car with a strange man, especially a

strange white man. But as she told him later, she had on new shoes,

which were getting ruined in the mud. So in the struggle between

new shoes and safety, the shoes won. Besides, she said she had a

good feeling about Parker.

They talked on the way home and Parker was impressed with her