Dollbaby: A Novel (30 page)

Ibby helped Doll get her to her room. Queenie came in behind them as Doll stretched Fannie out on the bed. As Queenie took off Fannie’s shoes, the look on Fannie’s face never changed.

She looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

The next morning, as soon as the sun was up, Fannie was up, too, pacing on the front porch in her housedress and slippers. Queenie had to coax her inside to get dressed, but once Mr. Roosevelt arrived, she was back on the porch, watching.

Ibby and Queenie stood in the doorway for a while, watching, too.

“What is it about that tree that has her so uptight?” Ibby asked.

“Who knows?” Queenie said offhandedly.

“How old do you think that tree was anyway?”

“Why you want to know?”

“Just curious.”

“Old enough,” Queenie said under her breath. She appeared irritated by the question.

Fannie stayed out there most of the morning, watching Mr. Roosevelt and his men saw branches from the tree and drag them over to the grinder.

Queenie came out at one point and said, “Miss Fannie, Wimbledon about to come on. Don’t you want to come in and watch it?”

Fannie shook her head. That’s when Ibby knew something was wrong. Fannie never missed Wimbledon. Ibby sat with Fannie on the porch swing for a while, trying to engage her in conversation, but Fannie never spoke a word. She just sat there, watching the tree. After a while, Ibby gave up and went upstairs. She stopped in her father’s room to look for the urn. When she opened the armoire, it still wasn’t there.

Ibby went across the hall to Doll’s sewing room, where she found Birdelia dancing around to an Aretha Franklin song playing on the radio
.
Doll was standing out on the upstairs balcony, watching the goings-on in the front yard.

Doll came inside. “You need something, Miss Ibby?”

“Daddy’s urn isn’t in the armoire. Do you know what happened to it?”

“Oh Lawd, Miss Ibby. I forgot, you know, with everything that’s been going on. A few weeks back, Miss Fannie asked where that urn was, so I brought it down for her and set it on the dining room table, thinking she just wanted to look at it for a spell. Then when I came back downstairs a little while later, Miss Fannie was gone. That urn, it was gone, too.”

“Oh,” Ibby said. “I just thought you’d moved it.”

“No, baby. I didn’t move it. Figured Miss Fannie had taken the urn out for a joyride in that new car of hers, but when she came back, she didn’t have the urn with her. When I asked her where it was, she said next to Balfour.”

“What did she mean, ‘next to Balfour’?” Ibby asked.

“You know, in the cemetery.”

Ibby looked at the floor. “I guess she wanted Daddy to have a proper burial. You know how she’s always talking about proper burials. I just wish she would have told me.”

“Well, yeah, that would have been the best thing, but you know Miss Fannie. She got her own way of doing things.”

“That’s for sure,” Birdelia piped in.

Doll nodded over at Birdelia. “Listen, girls, why don’t you go catch yourselves a movie over at the Prytania Theatre? No use hanging around here.”

Birdelia waved her hand. “Good idea. Come on, Miss Ibby.”

“You run on downstairs, Birdelia. There’s something I want to talk to Miss Ibby about, alone.”

As soon as Birdelia left, Doll shut the door. She had a strange look on her face.

“Come on over here, Miss Ibby.” Doll sat on the settee across from her sewing machine and pulled a yellow piece of paper from her pocket. “This telegram came for you this morning. I been holding on
to it until the right time, but Miss Ibby, there ain’t never a right time.” She handed it to Ibby.

Ibby took it from her and sat next to her on the settee. It was a telegram from an attorney in California. Ibby read it aloud. “‘This is to inform you, as next of kin, that Vidrine Crump Bell’”—Ibby paused—“‘has passed away of natural causes. As per her last request, her body will be cremated and her ashes spread into the Pacific Ocean.’”

Ibby’s hand dropped to her lap and the telegram slipped to the floor. She felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Over the last four years, she’d spent hours thinking of what she might say to her mother if she came back. She’d never expected it to end like this. No last words. No goodbyes. No
I’m sorry
.

“I know you’re upset,” Doll said, touching her hand.

“I hated my mother for leaving me here.”

“I thought you liked it here.”

“That’s not it. I hated my mother for not caring enough to come back for me.” She put her head in her hands.

Doll slipped her arm around Ibby’s shoulders. “Oh, baby. I don’t think it was like that. I think your mother just lost her way. That’s all. I know she loved you.”

“And how do you know that?” Ibby said flatly.

“’Cause she told me so herself,” Doll said.

Ibby looked at Doll. “What? When would she have told you?”

Doll drew in a deep breath. “Miss Vidrine came by the house a few weeks ago.”

Ibby jumped up. “Why didn’t you tell me? My mother came back, and you didn’t tell me?”

“Listen to me. Your mama came by to tell you she was sorry.”

“I bet,” Ibby said, trying hard to hold back tears.

“I think she meant it, Miss Ibby. She say she didn’t mean for it to happen this way. She didn’t mean to get sick. She thought you’d be
better off here, with Miss Fannie. She was destitute, Miss Ibby. She had no place to go.”

“Then why didn’t she come here? Why didn’t she ask Fannie if she could stay here?”

“’Cause I think she was too proud. I think she wanted you to remember her the way she was. She asked me to give you this.” Doll pulled the ring from her pocket.

Ibby wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and took the ring from Doll. “It’s her wedding ring. The one Daddy gave her.”

“She told me to be sure and tell you she loved you.”

Ibby slipped the ring onto her finger and toyed with it. “Did she really say that, or are you just making that up to make me feel better?”

“Your mama asked me not to say anything until she passed. It’s been on my mind ever since she came by, a few days before your party.”

“So she
was
here.” Ibby twisted the ring on her finger.

“Yes, Miss Ibby.”

“Does Fannie know?”

“No, baby. I was afraid if I let on to Miss Fannie, she might go riding around trying to find Miss Vidrine. I didn’t tell no one, not even Queenie.”

“I went looking for my mother, you know. That day I came home in the rain, I had gone looking for her.”

“I figured as much,” Doll said.

“She didn’t want me to find her.”

“No, Miss Ibby. I feel for sure she wanted to see you, but she was very sickly. I don’t think she wanted you to see her that way.”

“I just wanted to see her one last time.”

“Miss Ibby, I’m sorry if I done wrong, but I handled it the best way I knew how.”

Ibby wiped another tear from her cheek. “Don’t say anything to Fannie. I don’t think she could handle the news right now. That tree
had her all worked up for some reason. I’ll tell her in my own good time.”

“If that’s the way you want it.” Doll grabbed Ibby’s hand. “I know it’s a shock.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Not now. Not ever.” Ibby yanked her hand away and hurried toward the door.

She found Birdelia standing in the driveway, waiting for her.

“What my mama want with you?”

“Nothing,” Ibby sniffled.

“You mad about something?”

“No.”

“You look mad,” Birdelia said.

“Forget about it.”

“What my mama say got you so upset?” Birdelia asked. “You been crying?”

Ibby ignored her questions. “Let’s go.”

When they got to the end of the driveway, they could see Fannie sitting idly on the porch swing with her feet dangling and her head hung low, as if she were thinking about something that had happened a long time ago.

T-Bone was out in the yard, helping his father clean up after the tree men. He put down his rake and came over to speak to them.

“I got a gig over at the Union Hall on Tchoupitoulas tomorrow night. Why don’t you and Birdelia come catch me play?”

Ibby didn’t answer. She was looking past him, at Fannie.

Please don’t leave me, Fannie.
You’re all the family I have, now that Mama’s gone
.

“Miss Ibby, did you hear me?” T-Bone asked.

Birdelia poked Ibby. “Ain’t you gone answer T-Bone?”

Ibby drew her eyes away from her grandmother and looked at T-Bone. “I’m sorry. I’ve just got something on my mind. I’d love to hear you play tomorrow night.”

“Awright then.” T-Bone lifted his hand in a kind of backward wave and sauntered off.

When they got back from the movie, Mr. Roosevelt and his men were wrapping up for the day. From the looks of it, they’d gotten only about half the tree.

Fannie was back to pacing on the porch. Queenie was waddling along next to her, but she wasn’t consoling Fannie, as she’d done the day before, and the day before that.

This time Queenie had a worrisome look on her face too.

That night Ibby had trouble falling asleep. She couldn’t get her mother out of her mind. She remembered what Doll had told her not too long ago, that it hurt to love sometimes. Ibby wondered if there was ever a time when love didn’t hurt.

She leaned over and opened the window. The smell of sawdust hung in the air as a passing cloud draped the tree in an eerie shadow, making the roots look like bony fingers reaching up from the depths of the earth. There was something sad about the tree, the way it was sprawled on its side with its outer branches cut off. Ibby rubbed her arms, thinking about her mother, feeling alone and exposed, just like the tree down below.

She heard a rustling noise. She didn’t think much of it at first—probably just a wandering raccoon scurrying down the alley on the left side of the house. Then she heard it again, a scuffle below the window. She turned the light off in her room and peered down, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. She could just make out some sort of shadow hovering near the edge of the hole left by the tree. Was it an animal? Whatever it was seemed to be looking for a way to get down into the hole.

“Who’s there?” Ibby called out.

There was no answer.

“Anyone there?” she said again.

She hurried down the stairs and out the back door, hoping to catch
whatever it was that might be down there, but when she got to the front of the house, all she saw was a stray cat skidding across the yard.

Perhaps I’m just spooked by what Doll told me today, about my mother,
Ibby thought.

When she peeked over the edge of the hole, she felt the earth move beneath her feet. She jumped back.
I’m a fool,
Ibby thought.
There’s no one here.

Ibby made her way to the back of the house and went inside. When she started up the stairs, she was startled by a noise coming from the landing. She froze. Was there someone in the house? She was trying to decide if she should run next door for help when she heard a small voice.

“Let me in.”

Ibby was surprised to find Fannie on the landing in her bare feet and white nightie, trying to open the door at the top of the stairs. She kept twisting the knob and pushing her shoulder against the door, repeating the same words.

“Little Mama. Little Mama.”

From the look in Fannie’s eyes, Ibby thought she might be sleepwalking.

“What’s wrong, Fannie?” Ibby came a little closer.

“The room. It’s locked.” Fannie pointed at the door.

“I know.”

“Open it.”

“I can’t. I don’t have the key.” She put her hand on her grandmother’s back, trying to calm her.

Fannie tussled with the knob. “Open it.”

“I told you, Fannie. I don’t have the key.”

Fannie tried the knob once more, then looked over at Ibby with exasperation. “Little Mama is in there.”

“Who’s Little Mama?”

Fannie shook her head.

“Come on, Fannie, let’s go back down to your room.”

“No!” she cried. “I need to get Little Mama out!”

Her outburst startled Ibby, but she tried to remain calm for fear she might upset Fannie more. As it was, Fannie was wringing her hands and looked as if she were about to cry.

Ibby gently coaxed Fannie away from the door, trying to think of a way to get her back down the stairs. “Let’s come back tomorrow, okay? I think Little Mama is asleep. We don’t want to disturb Little Mama when she’s asleep, do we?” She kept talking as she led Fannie down the stairs, Fannie’s dirty feet leaving marks on each step as they went along.

After Ibby managed to get Fannie settled in her bed, she closed the door and took a deep breath. Had something happened in that room? And who was Little Mama? No one had ever mentioned her.

She went back to the top of the stairs, to the locked room that Fannie had been trying to get into. All the rooms on the second floor were accounted for except this one. She shook her head. There was so much about her family she still didn’t know.

After four years of living in this house, it was still holding secrets from her.

T
he next evening, after Mr. Roosevelt and his men left, Ibby went up to her room to get ready for her rendezvous with Birdelia to watch T-Bone play at Union Hall. She slipped on a skirt and a top, and at the last minute, she added an extra dab of Wild Orchid No. 7 perfume. She tried to sneak past Fannie, who was watching the Steeplechase horse races on the television. She’d almost made it to the kitchen when she heard Fannie call after her.

“You going somewhere, young lady?”

“Oh, um, yes ma’am. Just out for a little while.”

“With whom?”

Ibby knew Fannie probably wouldn’t approve of her going out to meet T-Bone at a dance club. She hesitated. “With some friends,” she said.

“What friends?”

“You, know, just some friends from school. And I might meet up with Birdelia.”

“Where are you going?”

“Over to Union Hall to hear some music.”

Fannie peered over her reading glasses. “What do you have on?”

Crap,
Ibby thought.
She’s going to make me go upstairs and change my clothes
. “Just a skirt,” she replied.

“You call that a skirt? Where’s the rest of the fabric? It’s so short, it looks as if your rear end might show if you bend over.”

“It’s the style, Fannie. Everyone’s wearing them.”

“Is that what young women wear these days?” She looked Ibby up and down.

Fannie removed her glasses, and gazed at Ibby with a blank expression. “Looks nice,” she finally said.

“Can I go?” Ibby fingered her suede shoulder bag nervously.

“Oh, all right. Don’t be late,” Fannie said.

Union Hall was an old storage warehouse adjacent to the wharves on the Mississippi River. It was nothing more than a big empty space with a stage at one end and a bar at the other but it was always crowded. When Birdelia and Ibby arrived, they had to stand in line to get in.

After a fifteen-minute wait, they paid the entrance fee and made their way through the crowd toward the bar, as two large ceiling fans buzzed overhead. There was no air conditioning, and everyone was sweating, but no one seemed to mind.

Ibby didn’t protest when Birdelia handed her a Cuba libre. She held the plastic cup up in the air, trying not to spill it, as they jockeyed their way toward the stage. When they were about twenty feet away, Birdelia gave up.

“This the best we can do!” she yelled over the roar of the crowd.

They spent the next hour sipping drinks, being jostled around, and sweating. It was close to ten-thirty before a heavyset black man in a T-shirt and blue jeans came up to the microphone.

“How y’all doing?” he said to the audience.

People in the audience raised their hands and whistled.

“Thank y’all for coming out tonight. You ready to get down?”

The audience went ballistic. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” they chanted.

It was so loud, Ibby tried to cover an ear with her free hand.

“That won’t do you any good.” The young man next to her raised his cup and smiled.

It was Wiley Waguespack, Winnie’s older brother, the one she had a crush on until Winnie told her he was only allowed to date Catholic girls.

“Where’s Marcelle?” Ibby asked. “Aren’t you dating Marcelle?”

“What?” he asked, cupping his hand to his ear.

“Never mind,” she said. She didn’t really want to know anyway.

Then the band came on stage and started playing a new sound called funkadelic and everyone danced in place. Near the back of the stage, T-Bone was swinging his trombone in a practiced rhythm with the rest of the brass section. Clapping and swaying with the people around her, Ibby tried to ignore the fact that Wiley had put his arm around her shoulders.

When some of the members of the band began to dance like James Brown, Ibby exclaimed, “I know how to do that!”

She wobbled her knees and shuffled her feet around the way T-Bone had shown her.

Wiley stepped back and watched. “How’d you learn to dance like
that
?”

Birdelia turned to look. “You must got some black in you somewhere ’cause I ain’t never seen no white girl dance like that.”

Ibby was disappointed when the band stopped playing. She checked her watch. It was one in the morning.

People were filtering out the front door, but Birdelia pointed the other way, toward the stage. “Let’s go find T-Bone.”

Wiley tugged on Ibby’s arm. “I’m heading over to Bruno’s Tavern. Want to come along?”

A part of Ibby wanted to go, but she knew Wiley and she could never be a couple, not according to Winnie. So what was the point? Besides, she’d come with Birdelia, and she didn’t want to disappoint T-Bone.

“No, I can’t. Thanks for asking, though,” she said.

She could see Wiley’s confused face when she headed in the other direction with Birdelia. She smiled to herself. Turning Wiley down had given her a certain sense of satisfaction.

When they got up to the stage, T-Bone jumped down to greet them.

Ibby tucked her sweat-soaked hair behind her ears. “You were fantastic.”

He grinned. “Thank you kindly, Miss Ibby. Say listen, I’m gone head over to the Ebony Lounge to watch the chicken drop. You want to come along?”

Birdelia shook her head. “I got to get the car back. Mama don’t know I took it.”

“Miss Ibby can come with me. We’ll swing by, pick you up,” he said as he placed his trombone in a leather case and snapped it shut.

“Naw. You go ahead,” Birdelia said.

Ibby whispered to Birdelia, “I’m not going without you.”

“Why? He ain’t gonna bite,” Birdelia said loud enough for T-Bone to hear.

Ibby was embarrassed. “That’s not what I meant.”

Her pulse quickened when T-Bone came and stood next to her. His T-shirt was soaked through, leaving a V-shaped spot in the middle of his chest.

Birdelia cocked her head. “Okay, then. Better hurry. Chicken drop gone start in twenty minutes.”

As T-Bone was helping Ibby into his black Camaro, she saw Wiley Waguespack drive by and give her a double take. She gave Wiley a big wave, which caused him to almost swerve into another car.

As T-Bone started the car, Ibby asked, “What exactly is a chicken drop?”

“Oh, it’s just a silly betting game they invented over in Tremé,” he explained. “They throw a hen in a cage with a bunch of numbers painted in circles on the floor of the coop. If the chicken poops on your number, you win.”

When they drove up to the Trout residence, all the lights were off and the street was dark. Ibby didn’t see Birdelia sitting on the stoop until she jumped up and ran over to the car. T-Bone drove a few blocks before stopping in front of a white stucco one-story building with a metal awning. There were hordes of people of all ages milling about on the sidewalk.

T-Bone dropped Birdelia and Ibby off by the front door. “Y’all go on in while I park.”

Ibby and Birdelia went inside the lounge, where music from a jukebox sifted through the smoke-filled room. When Birdelia held up three fingers at the bar, an older woman wearing a flowered dress and a white apron handed her three plastic cups.

Ibby followed Birdelia over to a table in the corner.

T-Bone came in shortly. “Placed your bets yet?”

“We waitin’ on you.” Birdelia slid one of the cups toward T-Bone.

He picked it up. “It’s almost time. Let’s go out back.”

A side door led to an outdoor courtyard, where the main attraction was a cage made of chicken wire perched on wooden legs. A stout man in a T-shirt and suspenders with a cigar dangling from his mouth was collecting money from patrons eager to place bets. T-Bone handed Ibby and Birdelia a slip of paper.

“Just put your name and a number on the betting slip,” he said. “Don’t worry about the fee. My treat.”

“Five minutes!” the man called out.

When all the bets were in, the man with the cigar plucked a fat hen from a pen in the corner of the yard and put it inside the cage.

“Chicken, do your shit!” he shouted loud enough for everyone in the courtyard to hear.

The bird sat in the same spot for several minutes despite people sticking their fingers through the wire mesh trying to prod it. It cocked its head a few times, then moved three steps and sat down again. Each time the chicken moved, there was hollering and jeering. This went
on for a good twenty minutes until finally the chicken scrambled over to the corner of the cage and pooped.

“Number four! Right on the edge!” the man yelled through his stubby cigar.

“Did you win?” Ibby asked T-Bone.

“Naw. I ain’t never won. Just for fun,” he said.

When they went back inside, a white girl about Ibby’s age was sitting at the bar, leaning on her elbow as she took a drag from a cigarette.

The girl was watching Ibby in the mirror behind the bar. She turned around. “Why, Ibby Bell. That you?”

“What are you doing here, Annabelle?” Ibby asked.

Annabelle smiled in a sickly way that let Ibby know she was drunk out of her mind. She almost fell off the stool when she pointed at T-Bone. “You with that stableboy? And that little nigger girl you always hang out with.” Annabelle put her hand over her mouth, realizing her faux pas at using the word
nigger
in a black bar. She lowered her eyes toward T-Bone’s crotch, then looked back up toward his face. “You know what they say.”

T-Bone took a step back. “Miss Annabelle, this ain’t a good place for you. You want us to take you home?”

“With you?” She closed one of her eyes and tried to wink.

“You with anyone?” he asked, looking around.

“No, man,” a man smoking a joint at a table nearby said to T-Bone. “That skank drove up, parked out front, and came in all by herself about an hour ago.”

“Why she here?”

He squinted in her direction. “Why you think, brother? She been here before, lots a times.”

“You messing with me, Shorty?” T-Bone said.

“No, man. You want some, you stick around.” Shorty cocked his head in the direction of the door. “All you got to do is take her out to her car. She do it right in the backseat. She don’t care.”

Annabelle grabbed T-Bone by the shirt and pulled him toward her. “What was your name again, stableboy?”

He tried to move away, but she was clenching his arm.

“Let’s go.” Birdelia tugged on T-Bone’s sleeve. “I don’t want nothing to do with that piece a white trash. Come on, T-Bone. She’s nothing but trouble.”

Annabelle pointed at T-Bone. “You’ll be back.”

When they were about halfway down the block, Ibby heard a shriek. Annabelle was laughing hysterically as she fumbled with her keys, trying to open the door to her car.

Then another man came up from behind and helped her into the car and slipped into the backseat beside her.