News of the Spirit (18 page)

“Are you lost, Miss?” a tall black man at my elbow asked.

“I just came in for a drink,” I said, and went over to the bar and climbed up on a wooden stool before he could stop me. Two men sitting to my left elbowed each other, grinning at me. They were old and fat. I grinned back. “Well, hello there, honey,” one of them said. A skinny redhead sashayed down the bar in a top-hat-and-tails outfit, then came back without the tails.

I knew exactly what Jesus would think of this place, but since he didn’t exist anyway, I ordered a Coke from the flat-chested blond bartender, who was wearing a sort of corset.

“Make that a rum and Coke for the little lady,” the man said, and the bartender raised an eyebrow at him but brought it. I took a big drink. The man scooted his stool closer to mine. He touched my knee lightly, with one finger.

“Thank you, this is a delicious cocktail,” I said.

“It is, huh!” And suddenly Red is there, too, the other bartender, hands on substantial hips, fiery Medusa hair standing out all around her head, bosom heaving furiously.
“Jenny, you get your ass out of here
right now
!” she yells, and I run out the door, straight into Tom Burlington. He grabs my shoulders and shakes me until my teeth rattle, then hugs me, then shakes me again.

“You little bitch!” he says.

What a relief! I have been recognized at last. I
am
a little bitch, and I will never be an angel, and it’s okay. I start laughing, and Tom starts laughing, too.

This is the moment when the street photographer snapped our picture, and Tom paid him for it, and gave it to me, and I have it still. I blew it up. I tend to move around a lot, but I always take this picture with me, and keep it right here on my desk.

In the picture, Tom Burlington and I cling together in the jostling crowd, our arms wound tightly around each other. We look like lovers, which we never were. Behind us is the Havana Madrid sign with the winking lady’s face on it. There is something she knows that I don’t know yet. But I will learn. And I will get my period, and some breasts. I will also
do it
plenty, thereby falling into numerous messy situations too awful to mention here. I will never be really good again. I am not good. I am as ornery and difficult and inconsolable as Carroll Byrd.

I don’t know whatever happened to her, or to Tom Burlington, who left my sister for another woman, an English teacher at his school, when Tom-Tom was still small. Caroline is happily remarried now, to a lawyer in Charleston,
South Carolina, where she has raised four children and is the head of the Historical Society. Our lives are very different, Caroline’s and mine, and I regret that I don’t see much of her now, except for her children’s graduations and weddings. My oldest sister Beth is still married and still living out west; I don’t see much of her, either. Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh are long divorced. He’s an artist now. Cary Grant is dead. Grandmother and Aunt Chloë and Aunt Judy are dead. Mama is dead, too, of ovarian cancer in 1979. After she died, Daddy turned the mill into a co-op and gave it to his employees; Mr. Kinney’s son is running it today. Then Daddy surprised everybody by moving to Boca Raton, Florida, where he “up and married” (as Mama would have said) the real estate woman who sold him his condo. This woman has a black spiky hairdo, and everybody calls her “The Shark.” Daddy takes Elderhostel courses and seems very happy; his current personality bears no relation, that I can see, to his former self, to the person who is in this story. Cousin Glenda ran a rest home for many years after Raymond’s death; now she is
in
the rest home, and Rayette and her husband are running it. Rayette sends me a long chatty Christmas letter every year, even though I never did get a grip. I don’t know what happened to Harlan Boyd. Jinx is still my friend, and we keep in touch by phone, and meet at a spa in Sedona once a year.

For some reason, I can’t quit writing this story, or looking at this picture, in which the sun is so bright, and Tom
Burlington and I are smiling like crazy. I guess it reminds me of Mama and Daddy in love, of the day when Mama and Daddy and I walked down to the docks to be in the movie, and cheered when the pink submarine came in, and waved hello.

Mama always said, “Talk real sweet and you can have whatever you want.” This is true, though it does not hurt to have a nice bust either. Since I was blessed early on in both the voice and bosom departments, I got the hell out of eastern Kentucky at the first opportunity and never looked back. That’s how Mama raised us, not to get stuck like she did. Mama grew up hard and married young and worked her fingers to the bone and wanted us to have a better life. “Be nice,” she always said. “Please people. Marry rich.”

After several tries, I am finally on the verge of this. But it has been a lot of work, believe me. I’m a very high-maintenance woman. It is
not easy
to look the way I do.
Some surgery has been involved. But I’ll tell you, what with the miracles of modern medicine available to our fingertips, I do not know why more women don’t go for it.
Just go for it!
This is my motto.

Out of Mama’s three daughters, I am the only one that has gotten ahead in the world. The only one that really listened to her, the only one that has gone places and done things. And everywhere I go, I always remember to send Mama a postcard. She saves them in a big old green pocket-book which she keeps right by her bed for this very purpose. She’s got postcards from Las Vegas and Disney World and Los Angeles and the Indianapolis 500 in there. From the Super Bowl and New York City and Puerto Vallarta. Just this morning, I mailed her one from Miami. I’ve been everywhere.

As opposed to Mama herself, who still cooks in the elementary school cafeteria in Paradise, Kentucky, where she has cooked for thirty years, mostly soup beans. Soup beans! I wouldn’t eat another soup bean if my life depended on it, if it was the last thing to eat on the earth. Give me caviar. Which I admit I did not take to at first as it is so salty, but now have acquired a taste for, like scotch. There are some things you just have to like if you want to rise up in the world.

I myself am upwardly mobile and proud of it, and Mama is proud of me, too. No matter what kind of lies Darnell tries to tell her about me. Darnell is my oldest sister, who
goes to church in a mall where she plays tambourines and dances all around. This is just as bad as being one of those old Holiness people up in the hollers handling snakes, in my opinion. Darnell tells everybody I am going to hell. One time she chased me down in a car to lay hands on me and pray out loud. I happened to have a new boyfriend with me at the time and I got so embarrassed I almost died.

My other sister, Luanne, is just as bad as Darnell but in a different way. Luanne runs a ceramics business at home, which has allowed her to let herself go to a truly awful degree, despite the fact that she used to be the prettiest one of us all, with smooth creamy skin, a natural widow’s peak, and Elizabeth Taylor eyes. Now she weighs over two hundred pounds and those eyes are just slits in her face. Furthermore, she is living with a younger man who does not appear to work and does not look American at all. Luanne claims he has Cherokee blood. His name is Roscoe Ridley and he seems nice enough, otherwise I never would let my little Leon stay with them, of course it is just temporary until I can get Larry nailed down. I feel that Larry is finally making a real commitment by bringing me along this weekend, and I have cleared the decks for action. Larry has already left his marriage psychologically, so the rest is just a matter of time.

But speaking of decks, this yacht is not exactly like the Love Boat or the one on
Fantasy Island
, which is more what I had in mind. Of course, I am not old enough to remember
those shows, but I have seen the reruns. I never liked that weird little dwarf guy, I believe he has died now of some unusual disease. I hope so. Anyway thank goodness there is nobody like that on
this
boat. We have three Negroes who are nice as you please. They smile and say yes ma’am and will sing calypso songs upon request, although they have not done this yet. I am looking forward to it, having been an entertainer myself. These island Negroes do not seem to have a chip on their shoulder like so many in the U.S., especially in Atlanta, where I live. My own relationship with black people has always been very good. I know how to talk to them, I know where to draw the line, and they respect me for it.

“Well, baby, whaddaya think? Paradise, huh?” This is my fiancé and employer Larry Marcum who certainly deserves a little trip to paradise if anybody does. I have never known anybody to work so hard. Larry started off as a paving contractor and still thinks you can never have too much concrete.

This is also true of gold, in my opinion, as well as shoes.

Now Larry is doing real well in commercial real estate and property management, in fact we are here on this yacht for the weekend thanks to his business associate Bruce Ware, one of the biggest developers in Atlanta, though you’d never know it by looking at him. When he met us at the dock in Barbados wearing those hundred-year-old blue jeans, I was so surprised. I believe that in general, people should look as
good as they
can
. Larry and I had an interesting discussion about this in which he said that from his own observation,
really
rich people like Bruce Ware will often dress down, and even drive junk cars. Bruce Ware drives an old jeep, Larry says! I cannot imagine.

And I can’t wait to see what Bruce Ware’s wife will have on, though I
can
imagine this, as I know plenty of women just like her—“bowheads” is what I call them, all those Susans and Ashleys and Elizabeths, though I would never say this aloud, not even to Larry. I have made a study of these women’s lives which I aspire to, not that I will ever be able to wear all those dumb little bows without embarrassment.

“Honey, this is fabulous!” I tell Larry, and it is. Turquoise-blue water so clear you can see right down to the bottom where weird fish are swimming around, big old birds, strange jagged picturesque mountains popping up behind the beaches on several of the islands we’re passing.