Well, there was something so sweet about the way she said that that even though I was scared to death to touch a crippled person, I went right over and put my hands on her legs. When I did, I felt very strange, as though electricity was going through my body and through my hands and into her.
The whole time I was hoping I wouldn’t catch a crippling disease from Betty. My mother would kill me if I did. Her legs were real skinny and she had on hose. Why in the world would you put hose on a crippled person? I must have stood there for about five minutes before her daddy put her down and stood her on her feet. He said to me, “Angel of the Lord, make her walk.”
I was the Angel of the Lord he was talking about. I didn’t know what else to do, so I said, “You’d better walk now,” and I touched her again for good measure!
Once Mr. Caldwell let go of her, sure enough, she put one foot in front of the other and started to walk, and after she got going good, she was walking and running all over that stage. It was great until her daddy fell on his knees, crying and screaming and praising the Angel of the Lord who had cured his little girl. He was carrying on something fierce, just trying to get attention if you ask me.
When he did that, the people in the audience went crazy and four or five of them began rolling up and down the aisles and a lot of the others stood up and started babbling in the unknown tongue that was very popular with religious people. You should have heard them, “Gobble, gobble, gobble.” I was enjoying that until some old woman threw her hearing aid at the stage and hit me in the head with it, screaming, “I can hear, I can hear, praise God, I can hear.”
No wonder the way everyone was yelling. All of a sudden the whole audience was knocking over Daddy’s rented chairs and was headed right up on the stage after me, hollering, “Heal me, heal me.” Daddy always told me that Christians were dangerous and I believed him, so I picked up my choir robe and started running. Miss Irma Jean Slawson must have gone crazy, too, because at this point she began to play “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’da Baked a Cake” that isn’t even a religious number.
Just as I reached the ladies’ room, they caught me and were jerking at my clothes and pulling my hair so I couldn’t get away. Someone ripped my rhinestone cross right off. I was yelling for my daddy, but he wasn’t there. I swung and hit two or three of them, and I bit a man with a withered arm that I was sorry for later. But I think they had it in their mind to kill me. I was on the floor kicking as many of them as I could when I saw Jimmy Snow socking those Christians left and right with the cast he had on his arm and there was Daddy, swinging the cardboard picture of the Apostle Paul.
Jimmy got to me first and picked me up with his good arm and ran through the crowd with me just like I was a football. Daddy was in front of him swinging what was left of Paul, and Billy Bundy hit one of those Christians in the head with his Bible. Just as we got to the front door, someone grabbed Jimmy by the leg and he fell down. He yelled at me to keep going and get the hell out of there, so I did. It’s a good thing I had on my tennis shoes under my robe because I must have run four miles up that beach as fast as I could. I never even took the time to look behind me until I got to the pier, where I bought me an Orange Crush and a Baby Ruth on credit, and ran in the bathroom and locked the door to wait for my daddy.
I must have waited for two or three hours while some fisherwomen kept banging on the door, trying to get in, but I wouldn’t open up. How did I know that they weren’t Christians in disguise? You should have heard them cuss. Anyway, if they weren’t Christians in disguise, they were fisherwomen and were taking the lives of innocent fish, so they could just use the men’s room. Serves them right.
Finally, Daddy came to get me. He said we had to hurry because the police were after him for disturbing the peace. I didn’t even have time to pack my things. We jumped in the car and were halfway up the road before I noticed that Daddy was all beaten up and only had half of his glasses left. He was driving with one hand and nearly wrecked us about four times. Finally, I had to steer.
We turned off the road and headed towards the airfield where Claude Pistal had been killed and where Jimmy Snow was waiting for us in his plane. Just as we turned off, we heard the sirens. The Highway Patrol was right behind us. That scared Daddy so bad that he lost what was left of his glasses turning around to look.
We almost rammed Jimmy’s plane because Daddy couldn’t see to find the brake and kept stepping on me instead. I couldn’t move because I was steering. Finally, I found the emergency brake and pulled it, which caused us both to crack our heads. Daddy said, “Get out and run like hell,” which I did. Jimmy had driven the plane over to where we were, but I had to guide Daddy because he couldn’t see. When I got him to the plane, Jimmy grabbed him and pulled him in, and pulled me, but by then a highway patrolman had me by the foot. As Jimmy drove off across the field, my tennis shoe came off right in the policeman’s hand! You should have heard him cuss. He said, “Halt, goddammit it, halt!” I didn’t think officers of the law were supposed to cuss, but they do.
Daddy just kept hollering, “What’s happening, what’s happening?” I was sorry he couldn’t see because Jimmy did a wonderful thing. He pushed a button and all of a sudden DDT came out of the back of the plane and covered the Highway Patrol car. They had to slam on their brakes and when they did, Jimmy turned that plane around, revved up the motor and we took off. We flew all the way to Key West, Florida, dusting crops when we felt like it.
The first thing Daddy did when we got here was to buy himself a pair of glasses and get me a new pair of tennis shoes. I ate so much key lime pie I made myself sick. After Jimmy got back, he called to say Peachy Wigham was keeping Felix for me. So anyway, here I sit in some old, ugly motel in Key West, Florida.
Daddy has a job running the pictures in a theater, but this is the bad news. Momma called up and she is furious. Somebody sent her the Magnolia Springs paper and she read about me drowning and coming back from the dead. I’ll just bet it was Kay Bob Benson’s mother. She said Daddy is crazy to have done such a sacrilegious thing and I can’t stay with him anymore.
If those Christians hadn’t gone crazy, I could have made a lot of money and bought her a silver fox fur and an alligator bag. I’ll bet she wouldn’t have been so mad then.
Anyway, she’s on her way down to put me in a Catholic boarding school in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Now I wonder who is going to write to that little girl in South America. Kay Bob Benson and the shrimpers’ daughters won’t.
1956
June 22, 1956
Momma died a week after my freshman year in high school so I won’t be going to boarding school anymore. Instead, I am back in Shell Beach with Daddy, who has taken her death pretty hard. The thing of it is we didn’t even know she was sick. I hadn’t seen much of her in the past three years because I was staying in school for the summers, too.
The last time I saw Momma was when she came to visit at Christmas and all I did was complain about how much I hated the school. She looked a little thin, but I didn’t imagine she was sick. In June my grandmother called to tell me she was in the hospital, but by the time I got to Virginia she was dead of cancer. I’ll never forgive myself for not going up there and seeing her sooner.
At the funeral I never did go look at her, I just couldn’t. I knew it wasn’t Momma in that coffin. That couldn’t have been my momma in a little box like that.
Every time the phone rings I keep thinking it’s her, or maybe I’ll get a letter from her. I can’t believe she’s gone.
A preacher stood up and said a lot of things about her at the funeral, but he didn’t even know her. I wanted to kill him. I started to scream at him to shut up and to get away from Momma, and they made me leave the church. I didn’t go to the graveyard. I couldn’t have watched them put her in the ground.
A week later, I went to see her grave. There wasn’t even a gravestone there, nothing but a bare plot of land, and I didn’t leave Virginia until she had one. I never did buy her that s
ilver fox fur and her alligator purse. I could have if I had tried harder; I just didn’t. All I have left is her dinner ring and a picture she gave me when I was eleven.
This is the last letter I got from her:
Dear Daisy,
I am sorry I was not able to be with you on your birthday. I can’t believe my little girl is fifteen. Hope the things fit. Wish it could have been more. I hope this is the best birthday ever. Did your daddy send you anything? Wanted to get you a coat, but this job just barely pays the rent. Daisy, I hope you will learn from me and not be foolish. Get an education. As you grow older, I hope you understand that your daddy and I just couldn’t ever go back together and it has nothing to do with you. We both love you very much. We didn’t mean for it to happen. I married your daddy because I thought he would take care of me, but he couldn’t. Now I find I can barely take care of myself. Try to be more like Grandmother. Don’t depend on anyone. I learned too late for me. But it isn’t too late for you. Momma has always thought I was stupid and I guess she’s right. I believed if you loved a man and was a good wife, things would work out, but that isn’t always the case. About all I can give you right now is love. Miss you every day. Sorry you broke your glasses. How did you sit on them? If the tape doesn’t hold them, tell your daddy. Remember you are the best thing that ever happened to me. I am so proud of you. If I didn’t have you, I couldn’t go on. Try not to be so disappointed about your daddy and me, honey. No matter what, you are the best part of both of us. Sorry to be so serious, but it is hard to believe my little girl is growing up so fast. I love you.
Your Mother
I’ve been home about a week now and today is the first time I felt like going out.
Michael and his mother came to see me. He looks great and has grown up a lot. He said how sorry he was about Momma. He is going to become a priest. We had a laugh about Tawney the Tassel Woman, and I told him when he gets to be a bishop or something, I will come and blackmail him. He won’t be going to the Magnolia Springs High School with me but to Spring Hill Seminary in Mobile, Alabama. I’ll miss him.
Of course, I always have Kay Bob Benson to look forward to.
I went up to Peachy Wigham’s this afternoon. She and Ula Sour were very glad to see me and I sure was glad to see them. They said that I hadn’t changed a bit, just a little taller, that’s all. My old cat, Felix, is fat as a pig and didn’t even know who I was. They asked me if I wanted her back, but I told them, no, they could keep her. It would break their hearts if I took her back. Felix sleeps on the bar and is spoiled rotten.
Daddy lost the land he had, so he is running the Flamingo Motel for a man who moved back to Tupelo. I have my own motel room. It’s OK except it’s right by the bar, which gets pretty noisy.
Guess who the motel maid is? Velveeta Pritchard! She finds it hard to look at me without crying because of Momma. I’ve been nice to her, which is the least I can do because Momma loved her so much. I told her that Momma had asked about her all the time.
Nobody has been able to do anything with Daddy and his drinking. He’s trying, but it’s hard for him, especially since he’s the bartender in the motel. Almost every morning when I get up, someone is taking him back to his room. It seems Daddy can’t make anyone a drink without having one himself.
Crazy old Jimmy Snow is living in the motel with Daddy. He’s having a hard time getting crop-dusting jobs because he’s had three more accidents. I don’t guess he’ll ever change, and he’s drinking as bad as ever. He and Daddy make a fine pair. Daddy heard from Mr. Wentzel that Betty Caldwell had married a nice boy who’s a dentist. They live in Meridian and have a little girl. Guess what her name is? DAISY FAY! Why in the world would someone name their child Daisy Fay if they didn’t have to?
Thank heavens, the police never did find out who shot Claude Pistal. I have worried myself sick over it. Every day I half expected to hear the police had taken Daddy and Jimmy to jail. Rayette Walker moved to Pell City, Mississippi. I hope she never talks. Daddy and Jimmy Snow never say anything about the murder even when they are drunk, and I have never said a word either. Mrs. Dot is still in the hospital. Other than that, Shell Beach is about the same. They’ve built a few more motels and cottages, but not very many. Everyone still wants to go to Florida. Daddy believes that the people who built up Florida are going to come to Shell Beach and then we will all be rich. They better hurry up.
I don’t know how I feel about going to the Magnolia Springs High School this year. I’d really gotten to like the boarding school, now that I think about it. I don’t know what made me tell Momma I didn’t. It’s called Mother of Mary Academy. I was the oldest boarder there. There were only twelve others; the rest were day students. I didn’t like not being able to go home at night, but it was quiet and I never had to do homework because my teacher was in charge of my dormitory and said I didn’t have to because she knew I could do the work. Her name was Sister Jude. I am convinced she is really the movie star June Haver. I read where June Haver went into a convent, and I kept asking her if she had been June Haver, but she told me she wasn’t. I still think she is, though.
She slept in my dormitory right by my bed. We all had curtains on steel rods that we were supposed to pull around our beds at night. Nobody but the nuns ever did. I looked in Sister Jude’s curtains. All she had was a bed and a dresser without a mirror. Nuns aren’t supposed to look at themselves in the mirror. It’s a sin or something. I asked her how she put her habit on in the morning and she said she learned to feel how to do it. There was this Greek girl, Patula, in the seventh grade, who claimed nuns take a bath with their clothes on. Do you believe that? She also told me that the nuns shave their heads. I tried every which way to see Sister Jude without her habit on to find out if her head was shaved.
Patula was so crazy she asked the nuns if they wore brassieres. Do you know what Sister Jude said when she asked her? She said they do if they need one.
The thing about Sister Jude is, I don’t think she really wanted to be a nun. I’m not sure, though. She came from a very poor family, and they more or less made her go into the convent. I don’t know if that is true, or if she is really June Haver and made that story up to confuse me. She showed me a picture of her as a young girl, and she looked exactly like June Haver with brown hair.
The first week I was in school I had to clean the chapel and I put the mops and brooms in the confessional by mistake, thinking it was the broom closet. The next day, when Father O’Connell went in to hear confessions, he stepped in a bucket and fell over the mops. Sister Jude took up for me right away and said that I wasn’t Catholic and what could you expect.
The other kids were nice, but they were dating and going to dances that I wasn’t invited to, so I really didn’t get to know them well. I was glad Sister Jude was my friend. Every time there was a party, all the girls wanted to do was to go on the football field and make out. The priest was no better. One little girl came running out of the church one day and told me that he put his hands on her bosoms. When I repeated that to the mother superior, she said for me not to say anything about it because he was from Ireland. They do things differently over there. Remind me not to go to Ireland!
I hate the way the priests act. They think they are so smart. Did you know they don’t allow women on the altar except to clean because they don’t think they are good enough? Sister Jude nearly genuflected herself to death at the altar. Watching her made me so mad I had to leave. The next day I went in and walked all over that altar and didn’t genuflect once. Who says that priests are better than nuns?
September 21, 1956
School started. Pickle Watkins will be my best friend as long as I live. The first day of school this girl named Dixie Nash called me a dirty mackerel snapper because I came from a Catholic school. I called her a Baptist baboon. After school, when she and a friend of hers started to push me around, Pickle came over and told them to lay off. Nash called Pickle a redneck. Pickle kicked the shit out of her and said, “You date s
ailors and are nothing but white trash.” I kicked the other girl. We had them both down on the ground when some teachers broke it up. Those girls were pretty tough. The thing that saved Pickle and me was that I had on saddle oxfords and Pickle had on white loafers, with taps, while both the other girls had on cardboard ballet slippers that didn’t hurt at all.
Dixie Nash scratched my face a little with her nails. Pickle made me come home with her because I might get hydrophobia or even a venereal disease from that girl. She put some Mercurochrome on my face.
Pickle has red, curly hair and freckles, and is the same height as I am. We can wear the same clothes! Her family moved her from Opp, Alabama, three years ago. When I told her my name, she said she had heard about me coming back from the dead and always wanted to meet me. She has a brother, Lemuel, and a little sister, Judy, who they call Baby Sister. They live on a farm about four miles from town. She plays in the band and wants me to be in it, too. I don’t have to read music. They just need good marchers to make the band look bigger. Most of the others can’t play either. Pickle is first chair trombone.
She is never getting married, just like me. Maybe we can go to the same college and get an apartment together in New York City. I spent the night with her. Her mother is very nice and her father is OK, but he makes them say grace at the table. He’s a deacon at the church. They seem afraid of him. Today Pickle let me wear her new pearl collar. I turned my sweater around so the buttons would be in the back.