Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (13 page)

Nobody could believe it. Aunt Louise was screaming, and the other maid came in and James Junior started crying. He actually started crying, Necie. It’s not like the plate cut him or anything. I mean he wasn’t bleeding or anything.

Then Aunt Louise snatched me up from my seat and shook me so hard I thought my teeth were going to fall out of my mouth and shoot across the floor like someone just threw a hand of jacks. And Necie, the way she shook me, I could tell that she had always
wanted
to shake me like that, that she had just been waiting to do it ever since she laid eyes on me. She had only been holding back because she was in the Junior League.

Then she caught herself and let me go. “You are never welcome in this house again, Viviane Abbott! Nor in any of the homes of my friends here in Atlanta!! After all that I have done for the three of you! I have done my best to expose you all to the way civilized people live. All because my brother asked me to. All because Teensy is being culturally crippled by that tasteless Genevieve! I have bent over backwards trying to
work
with you little bumpkins so you would not be the laughingstock of
Atlanta. Well, I wash my hands! Go back to your tacky little hick town and grow up without a shred of gentility or breeding. The four of you are a quartet of embarrassments! Aimee, I’m wiring your father that I am done with you! You and your little heathen pack of hussies.”

“We are not hussies, Aunt Lou,” Teensy said.
“We’re Ya-Yas.”
Teensy said it with such piss and vinegar that Caro started applauding.

Aunt Louise acted like she hadn’t even heard Teensy, and said, “I told you: my name is
Louise
.”

Your name is asshole, is what I thought. But I didn’t say it because I was her guest.

Aunt Louise had William take us to the station early, just to get us out of her house. Well, Necie, I cried and cried. I felt so bad. Caro and Teensy just held me and held me. As we pulled out of the depot, we were so upset, and when we looked out at Atlanta, all we kept seeing was the way it looked with those dying Confederate soldiers stretched out for miles, and I kept thinking how tired and hungry Scarlett was and how she just wanted her mother. I cried and cried until something came into my mind: Necie, I am like Miss Mitchell who they kicked off the Junior League roster because of her Indian love dance. And I started thinking, Well, maybe Miss Mitchell knew exactly what she was doing when she danced that dance. Maybe she
wanted
to be X-ed out of the club so she could be free to go and write the greatest book of all time.

Yes, I have decided that I am like Scarlett and I am like Miss Mitchell. None of us like pale-faced, mealy-mouthed ninnies, and if that bothers the Junior League, well, that is just too bad.

Love,
Vivian (remember: Drop the “e”!)

Later
12:07 in the morning

Necie-oh,

We are rolling through the state of Alabama. I went back to the colored car to see what Ginger was doing, and bring her a Coca-Cola. And do you know she was having the time of her life. She was back there smoking cigarettes and chewing gum and nipping on a bottle that was being passed around four or five other coloreds while they played cards. She was laughing and laughing, and when she saw me, she smiled and said, “We goin home, baby chile! Ain’t that good news?”

“It’s real good news,” I said, and handed her the Coca-Cola.

“Thank you, baby,” she said, and took a sip of the Coke and then a swig off the bottle.

“Ginger,” I said, “you know a lady doesn’t smoke and drink and chew gum with strangers.”

And Ginger looked at the others, and they all started to laugh like they were old friends.

“Miz Vivi,” she told me, “Old Ginger ain’t got to worry about being no lady. That yo’ problem, baby. That yo’ problem.”

Necie, I have had enough traveling. I can’t wait to get home. I love you. We all love you. We are lonesome for you. Tonight Caro said you were a little like Melanie. Well, I don’t think that’s true, but all I have to say is that I love you, like Scarlett realized she loved Melanie right as Melanie lay in the bed there
dying. You are our blood sister, remember, and blood sisters can never really go away from each other, no matter how lonesome train whistles sound in the night air.

Love forever and ever,
Vivi

11

S
idda carefully folded the letters and slipped them back into their Ziploc bag. As she stood up from the easy chair, she felt disoriented, the way one feels upon emerging from a movie theater in the middle of a sunny day. As she looked around the cabin, with its comfortable furniture, Northwest touches, and photographs on the walls, everything seemed suddenly alien. A wave of homesickness swept over her like she hadn’t experienced in years. She bent down to Hueylene, who was lying on the sofa, and rubbed the dog’s belly. Hueylene moaned and rolled over, wanting more. Sidda moaned in response to Hueylene’s sounds, then rubbed the dog on the ears. How was it that this cocker remained so perpetually cheerful? So willing to love and be loved?

“Come on, Buddy,” Sidda said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

They walked into the forest, thick and old. It was only four in the afternoon, but the day was so overcast it felt like twilight. Sidda marveled that some of the logs she passed by had actually toppled to the forest floor several
centuries
ago.

She paused at one of the National Park Service signs. It read:

Very little light reaches the forest floor in the deep temperate rain forest. The only way young seedlings
can survive until they reach the light of the upper canopy is to grow on the nutrient-rich decaying logs. These logs are called
nurse logs.

People can be nurse logs, too, she thought. Rich, generous, deeply well-mannered.

After her walk, Sidda stepped into the Quinault Mercantile, the general store that served the area. She was surprised to discover that they had a rental videotape of
Gone With the Wind
.

As she pulled cash from the pocket of her jacket, the fellow at the cash register said, “You carry any videos at all, then you got to have old Scarlett and Rhett. Even the Japanese want to see them.”

Back at the cabin, Sidda laid a fire in the fireplace. With rain falling outside, a bowl of popcorn, and a Diet Coke on the table in front of her, she leaned forward from her spot on the sofa, and, with the remote control held tightly in her hand, screened
Gone With the Wind.

As she watched, she rewound the tape again and again, playing certain scenes over and over. She anticipated certain moments and fast forwarded to them, pausing the tape to analyze dialogue, lighting, pacing, scenery. Then, rewinding, she studied the buildup. From there, she’d rewind to find certain touches, details she thought she might have missed; she’d turn off the volume during certain scenes just to observe the visuals.

By the time she was done, almost six hours had passed. Her hand was cramped from her vise grip on the remote control. She flicked off the TV, stretched, and let Hueylene out. Glancing at her watch, Sidda wondered how it could possibly have grown so late. She thought about Connor, and pictured his body the way it looked when he was asleep.
Does he turn in his sleep, she wondered, like I do, here alone, ready to spoon, belly to back?

She lifted Hueylene up onto the sofa with her and the two of them lay staring at the dying fire. Although this was the first time she’d seen
Gone With the Wind
in years, it was as if she had been watching the film every day of her life in some hidden screening room of her own.

Sidda remembered how as a teenager she used to worry constantly whether the boy she was in love with at the time was a Rhett or an Ashley. If he was an Ashley, she’d want a Rhett. If he was a Rhett, she’d long for an Ashley. Every girl she met she’d subject to a “Scarlett/Melanie” rating. If the girl weighed in as a Melanie, she was to be pitied. If the meter leaned toward Scarlett, the girl wasn’t to be trusted.

How different her own first viewing of the movie was from her mother’s experience. She had seen the epic upon its rerelease in 1967. Her date was some boy whose name she now could not recall. Sidda remembered how the boy held her hand, how his sweaty palm had distracted her. How she’d pulled away during the most intense scenes because she’d wanted to concentrate on the drama alone.

As Sidda lay on the sofa, she envisioned Vivi as a girl, holding hands with her girlfriends, enfolded in the dark womb of Loew’s Theater. She imagined Vivi’s reddish-brown eyes grow wide as the Technicolor burst across the screen, ushering in “A time of Ladies and Knights, the last ones.” She felt her mother’s goose bumps when Big Jim opened the movie by reprimanding the other slaves: “I’m de foreman. I says when it’s quittin time.”

Sidda stroked Hueylene’s chin. Vivien Leigh and Victor Fleming and David Selznick and Clark Gable grabbed Mama, she thought. And didn’t let her go for three hours and forty-eight minutes, with the exception of an intermission when she was too dazed to go get refreshments. Mama was thirteen years old and she didn’t know that part of what
she was feeling was the confusion that comes from three, four different male directors biting into Margaret Mitchell’s romance. Mama didn’t know how close the emotional bones of the story were to Miss Mitchell’s own life. Mama didn’t know that she was being fed a regurgitation of the mythic South.

Mama did not think; Mama just felt. Her palms sweated in the palms of her girlfriends. Her eyes moistened, her heart beat fast, her eyes tracked Vivien Leigh. Unconsciously, Mama began to raise her own right eyebrow and believe that every man in the world adored her. Without knowing, Mama stepped into the tiny tight boots of Scarlett O’Hara. And Mama would do anything for the rest of her life to keep that drama going.

I want to live in this movie, Necie! This is the kind of drama I was born for.

There, with Gable’s lips two feet tall, Mama couldn’t pause, rewind, or fast forward. She was at the mercy of the myth.

But not completely. Mama hurled that plate. She might not have been able to explain why, but she hauled off and hurled that plate at James Junior, that bratty little white-racist-society ninny baby.

Oh, Mama, you are the star of your own movie, Sidda thought. You are waving from the back of the convertible. As much as I want to, I cannot direct the scene.

Sidda thought about Ginger. She remembered the birthday parties Buggy gave for Ginger, a tradition started by Delia. When Delia was alive, those parties were something everybody looked forward to. When Delia died, Vivi and Jack, the various cousins, uncles, and aunts, gathered at Buggy’s for the celebration. Ginger was always the only black person present.

Sidda remembered Ginger as a strong-willed woman who
got a kick out of Vivi. Like Delia, Ginger did not care much for Buggy. At the parties, Vivi and Ginger would sit and smoke cigarettes together, and Ginger would tell wild stories about trips she’d taken with Delia all over the country after Sidda’s great-grandfather died.

Sidda remembered how resentful Buggy was about the way Vivi and Ginger carried on. The way Vivi and Ginger would spike their cups of birthday punch with gin and grin and wink, just to drive Buggy crazy.

“Miz Vivi,” Ginger used to say to Sidda, “done got Miz Delia’s high spirits. High spirits done skipped Miz Buggy, gone straight to you mama.”

Sidda roused herself from the sofa. Was there a photo of Ginger anywhere in the scrapbook?

She combed the album, but could not locate one. What she did find was a photo of herself as an infant. Sidda knew it was herself because underneath was written “Baby Sidda w/ Melinda.” Melinda, a heavy black woman dressed in the starched uniform of a practical nurse, held Sidda in the crook of her arm. Melinda did not smile, but stared straight into the camera as though on watch.

Black women, Sidda thought. They changed my diapers, fed me, bathed me, and dressed me. They helped me learn to crawl, talk, walk, and get out of harm’s way, even when the harm was my mother. They hand-washed my underwear, and in turn were given my old dresses to take home to their daughters. They did the same for Mama, and now they’re doing the same thing for my nieces.

Sidda thought of Willetta, the black woman who helped raise her during most of her childhood. Willetta, over six feet tall, a face that looked part Choctaw, a smile that revealed crooked teeth and a forgiving heart.

Willetta, you risked your job and the roof over your head to come to the big house and protect us from Mama that Sunday afternoon. You are the one who put salve on my body where the belt had struck.
When
Mama went beyond control. Did Mama, in some secret place, hate the four of us?

Willetta, now almost eighty, still cleaned Vivi and Shep’s house. Sidda and Willetta still exchanged letters. Vivi’s jealousy of their affection did not keep Willetta and Sidda from loving each other.

Is jealousy a gene passed down like blonde hair or brown eyes?

Sidda cannot think about her mother without thinking about Willetta. And yet she can barely unravel her relationship with her white mother, let alone her black one.

What is my civil war about? Is it the fear of being held in the warmth of familiar love versus the fear of running through the fog, searching for love? Each holds its own terrors, extracts its own pound of flesh.

Flesh. Now we draw closer. The question is: can I love Connor, who will die someday, any day, the smell of his shoulders becoming only a memory. Can I soften to love, with full knowledge of the suffering I welcome in? Thomas Merton said the love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones.

But I want to stage the setting;I want to direct all scenes.

Sidda crawled back onto the sofa, lay back, and invited Hueylene to curl up close. As she drifted off, she imagined the Ya-Yas in the Coca-Cola Palace. Teensy commands them to climb into the big claw-footed bathtub filled with hot water. She extravagantly pours in French bath salts that rich Aunt Louise (“Do Not Call Me Lou”) has left for guests. Their bodies are young and smooth, buds of breasts scarcely announcing themselves, pubic hair barely filling in. Their legs remain unshaved, not yet enveloped in the brand-new nylon stockings introduced only months before. One girl is propped against the back of the tub. Another leans into her, her body fitting between the first one’s legs. And yet another girl leans against that girl, and they float in a tub in a neutral
nation while Hitler penetrates countries in a world far away. They soak in a country newly pulled out of depression by the European orders for guns and tanks and weapons of war that the Ya-Yas do not yet know about. The war they are concerned about happened eighty years before. And they agree with Scarlett that all this talk of war can ruin a party.

This is my mother in the bath with her sister-friends. Her skin is pink from the hot water. Her hair is wet in curls around her forehead. Long before her body held mine inside. When her pelvic bones stuck out and her belly was still concave. Before her body, in its search for peace, discovered bourbon and its comfort and its prison.

Sidda wants some of that Ya-Ya innocence. She wants girlfriends to hold her hands.

At four o’clock in the morning, Sidda woke up on the sofa. She lay there and remembered how, throughout her childhood, Vivi made fun of the term Junior League. Until Sidda was eight years old, she thought the name Junior League was one word: “juneyaleeg.” And she thought it meant the same thing as “idiotic” or “disgusting.”

This belief was not challenged until one night at her girlfriend M’lain Chauvin’s house. They were sitting at the dining-room table when one of the young Chauvin boys pulled a garter snake out of his shirt pocket and upset the whole room. Everyone was shocked, and to express her repugnance, Sidda loudly exclaimed, “Oh, how juneyaleeg!”

Their maid immediately removed the critter, and Mrs. Chauvin nailed Sidda with a frown.

“What in the world did you just say, Siddalee?”

“Juneyaleeg,” Sidda explained. “It means something terrible.”

Mrs. Chauvin raised an eyebrow and shot her husband a look.

Later, after Sidda’s own breasts bloomed, and boys pinned
orchids on her prom gowns and what to wear to Cotillion became a pressing concern, she came to realize just what power the Junior League had in the social world of Thornton, Louisiana—and precisely where Mrs. Abby Chauvin,
née
Barbour, fit in.

Tonight, though, in a cabin twenty-five hundred miles from Thornton, Sidda decided to return to her original understanding of the term.

Def.
juneyaleeg:Ya-Ya term for phonus-balonus.
or.
1939.

Sidda got up off the sofa, brushed her teeth, and got into bed.

I must sleep now, she told herself. I must climb into my berth and dream while the train rolls on. Angels of the Southern Crescent, fluff my pillows, please. Let moonlight bathe me in my slumber. I’m a second-generation Ya-Ya on a long, long trip.