The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (23 page)

she could say.

Never put off your education. The world is lying in wait to

come between a girl and her ambition.

Rule Number Thirty-one

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

C h a p t e r 1 1

Sissy drove the younger children and the revived dog home

from Flannigan’s Animal Clinic, but not before making a sizable

contribution to the vet’s new house, the education of his children,

and the welfare of his drug suppliers. Peewee’s going to have a con-

niption fit when he finds out we have a dog, Sissy thought. But

Marilee’s dog was there to stay no matter what he said. Southern

Belle’s Handbook, Rule Number Twenty-six:
A smart woman picks

her fights
. So when she fights, she wins.

Puppies are naturally seductive. She suspected they had the

power of mental telepathy, and this one was beaming “love me,

love me” as he bounced around panting. Telepathy or not, Ed Sulli-

van (Marilee’s name) had won her over. But she sure wasn’t looking

forward to Peewee’s learning how much she’d shelled out for its

medical services.

She turned the corner and found Clara sitting on the back steps,

where she’d spread out a white lace handkerchief to protect her

navy skirt. Sissy was flooded with relief. And then sarcasm began

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 5 3

making its rounds of her brain, picking up words here and there,

accepting some, rejecting others, searching for the really biting

phrase. But a second look at the girl stopped sarcasm’s progress.

Clara, who was usually so bright, looked as if she’d abandoned all

hope.

Sissy walked to the back steps as the children and Ed Sullivan

rolled over the side of the convertible. But Clara didn’t even

remark on the dog. “What happened?” Sissy asked, sitting down

next to her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be silly, everyone is late sometime.” Sissy couldn’t believe

she was saying this at one o’clock in the afternoon. She heard Pee-

wee screaming in her brain, “You’re letting that girl take advantage

of you again. Fire her.”

“I mean, I have to quit.”

“Now, let’s not go through that again.” She put her hand on her

cousin’s arm. “If it’s about what happened last night . . .”

Clara shook her head. She’d spent the morning applying for a job

as a sweeper for Gulf Chemicals. She’d given Sissy as a reference. “I

hope it’s okay.”

“Are you crazy? What do you want to work at that smelly old

place for?”

“A dollar an hour.”

“If this is some scheme to get yourself a raise, forget it. I don’t

have the money.” Sissy was still wondering if she should explain the

vet bill to Peewee or keep it a secret. Of course if she kept it a secret,

she’d have to explain why there was no food on the table for two

weeks. She wished she had money of her own, money she didn’t

have to explain. Still, she felt a need to justify herself to her cousin.

“Nobody pays that much for housework.”

“I know,” Clara said. Misery was radiating from her. Sissy

breathed it in and became miserable, too. “Dammit, Clara. Why

are you doing this?”

Clara handed her a letter from the University of Chicago, dated

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May 10. “Sometimes the mail has trouble finding its way from the

post office to Butlertown. This one just found me yesterday.”

“I don’t understand,” said Sissy, looking up from the letter. “I

thought you had a full scholarship.”

“Me, too. But it was just full tuition. It didn’t cover room and

board. They want a thousand dollars.”

“That’s crazy. Nobody can afford that!” Sissy had never seen a

thousand dollars in her whole life.

“I talked to the admissions lady this morning. She said the size of

my scholarship had been decided by a committee and it was too late

now to change it. Then she gave me a lecture on how I should

expect to make some contribution to my own education. She said if

it was free . . . I mean were free, I wouldn’t appreciate it.”

Sissy was pissed. She knew the world wasn’t fair, but she always

hated getting proof of it. “Even at a dollar an hour, you can’t make

that much before September.”

Clara sighed and nodded. “I know, but I’ll be that much closer.”

“Well, damn,” said Sissy.

The two cousins sat side by side on the porch. “There are always

the colored colleges around here,” Sissy said.

“No!” said Clara. She was silent for a few moments. “I guess I

could work for a year and apply again next spring.”

“No!” said Sissy, and made up Rule Thirty-one on the spot. “The

Southern Belle’s Handbook says,
Never put off your education. The

world is lying in wait to come between a girl and her ambition
.”

“Yeah, well, does your Southern Belle’s Handbook say how I’m

going to find the money?”

They were silent for a while. And then Sissy asked, “Have you

talked to Uncle Tibor?”

“He hasn’t wanted to have anything to do with us since my

mama got married.”

“Then it’s high time you made up with him.” Clara shook her

head. “He’s your daddy.” Clara didn’t say anything. “Don’t worry,

he’s loaded. My daddy says he only prosecutes the innocent, the

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 5 5

guilty pay him off.” But her witticism was lost on Clara, who was

staring at the Spanish moss hanging from the branches of the live

oak. Then Sissy saw the girl’s lip quiver. She kept forgetting how

young she was. “I’ll bet he’d be real proud of you, if he knew. Hell,

those boys of his and Aunt Ida May’s are never gonna win a schol-

arship. Together they don’t have the IQ of spinach.”

“He won’t be proud.” Clara was rigid.

“Okay, maybe the Great White Hope won’t take out an ad in the

paper, but I’ll bet inside he’ll be tickled as he can be.” Clara was

having a silent debate. “Give him a call.” Clara shook her head.

“What have you got to lose?”

“I hate him.”

“Well, get over it.
There are some principles a poor girl just can’t

afford
. Rule Number Twenty-seven, Southern Belle’s Handbook.”

Clara hesitated. Sissy could see she was having a silent battle

with herself. “What is it?” But Clara didn’t answer. “Haven’t you

figured it out yet? You can trust me.” Still Clara didn’t say any-

thing. “What is it? What did he do to you?”

Finally Clara spoke. “I was only six, Marilee’s age, and I was

dying to see what went on in that big brick house with all those

white columns. I figured I was half white and I ought to know. I

was too young to understand half don’t mean shit around here,”

Clara said, falling back into the black vernacular she usually kept

out of her conversations with her white cousin. “Anyway, the night

before, I’d gone to see this movie with my brothers and they had

this detective on a stakeout. So after my mama went to work, I

snuck out of Butlertown and climbed up into that big magnolia tree

in front of his house and watched them through the leaves. But

nothing happened. You know how hours dissolve into seconds in

the movies? Well, in real life, seconds turn into hours. Pretty soon I

fell asleep and out of the tree.

“That’s when Miss Ida May came running out of the house with

her cook and insisted on bringing me inside. I was so thrilled I

could hardly stand it. She sat me down in the living room. I can still

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remember that big velvet couch, with those maroon cushions. Do

they still have it?” Sissy nodded. “I’d never felt anything so soft in

my life.

“Anyway, the cook, Miss Virginia, I knew her from church, put

ice on my bruises while Miss Ida May sat down next to me and

asked me about my people. Well, I’d been warned not to tell anyone

who my father was, but I felt so close to this nice white lady and she

was
married to him, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to tell her.

“But then Miss Virginia shook her head and introduced me as

‘Denise Conners’s girl.’ Miss Ida May got all excited about that,

because my mama had worked for her.

“Anyway, after they’d cleaned me up and painted me orange

with Mercurochrome, we all went into the kitchen, and Miss Vir-

ginia gave me some chocolate ice cream. I’d had a fight with my

mama that morning, and I thought I’d go live with my daddy for a

while and eat ice cream every day.

“That night he came to our house and I said, ‘Daddy!’ and ran

and hugged his knees, just like I always did. But before I could tell

him I wanted to live with him, he’d picked me up and was shaking

me and yelling that I was never even to walk down his street again. I

was crying and Mama was trying to pull him off and then the last

thing I remember was him chucking me against the wall. I was just a

little bitty thing. But he smashed me so hard he cracked the plaster.”

“Good God!” Sissy had never had much use for her uncle, but

she’d never imagined the self-proclaimed “protector of the family”

had sunk to abusing a six-year-old girl, and his own daughter to

boot. “What happened then?”

“I’m not sure. When I came around my face was all puffed up

and throbbing and I’d lost a tooth, but I was afraid to cry. Mama

was trying to calm him down, you know, listening and nodding

sympathetically, making all those soft little moves she made around

him. It took her a real long time. I thought she ought to chase him

out of the house with the shotgun. But she said she didn’t know

how to do that and stay in Gentry. He was too powerful.”

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Clara stopped for a moment.

“But now I think, in spite of everything, she kept letting him

come back because she was used to him and because she was afraid

of being alone.”

“So he kept coming around?” Sissy asked.

“Oh, yeah. He even tried to make up with me. Once he brought

me a big baby doll, you know with blue eyes that opened and shut

and blond hair. ‘Rubinstein’s best,’ he said, smiling that politician

smile of his.” Clara grimaced. “And my mama made me walk up to

his chair and let him give me one of his wet kisses.”

And then Clara’s eyes blazed. “But she couldn’t make me thank

him. Not then. Not ever. Or call him Daddy. You know what I did

after that? When I went to school, we had those hand-me-down

readers you all had at the white school. Remember?” Sissy nodded.

“Well, I still couldn’t forget that I was half white. So I used to pre-

tend I was living with my white daddy, only I’d pretend he was

Dick and Jane’s daddy. We all lived together and had chocolate ice

cream every day. I’d play with Dick and Jane and Baby Sally all

afternoon after school and then at night Father would come home.

And he was always especially nice to me and read me stories. You

know, the way fathers are supposed to be.” She paused and then

added, “It was my favorite pretend.”

Sissy thought she understood what Clara saw in Parker, but she

didn’t say it. What she said was “I wish we didn’t always have to

wait around for handouts from men.”

“Why do you think I want to go to college? I don’t want to ever

have to take nothin’ from nobody.”

And then Sissy had an idea. She’d always hated do-gooders. They

smacked of Amy Lou Hopper and her Christmas baskets for the

poor. But this was something else. This girl ought to have a chance.

“What you need is a scholarship fund.”

“Uh-huh,” said Clara. “Who’s gonna give me one of those?”

“You wait here,” said Sissy. “In fact, you can clean up the

kitchen while I’m gone.” She didn’t want to ruin her reputation by

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doing something completely unselfish. So she opened the door to

the disaster area.

An hour later, Clara had finally gotten the kitchen cleaned up

and the children fed when Sissy emerged from her bath, smelling all

sweet and flowery. She had pulled on her most ladylike dress, the

one she’d bought for her rare appearances at the Episcopal church.

“Keep an eye on the children, will you?”

“Where in the world are you going?” Clara asked.

“To see about your scholarship fund.”

Clara watched her pull away from the curb and the words of her

grandmother, Beulah May Conners, echoed in her head: “Some

white womens just loves to pretend they is the savior of the colored.

It gives them something high-minded to do, but the truth is they

don’t have the attention span of a gnat. Soon as it gets a little both-

ersome, or somebody calls her a nigger lover, she’s gonna become

the savior to the puppies and the kitties. You just watch.”

Sissy pulled up in front of the converted cottage that housed

The Weekly Avenger
downstairs and where her father, Hugh

Thompson, lived upstairs. He had chosen this name for his newspa-

per in the days of his youth, before his passions had been ground