The School of Beauty and Charm (33 page)

On the long white table, melting iced tea had reached the rim of the pitchers. Somewhere, a door slammed shut, and the apple fell out of the pig's mouth.

“Let us pray,” said Henry. He bowed his head. Lord, we thank you for the bountiful gifts you have bestowed upon us and the nourishment we are about to receive.”

O
N THE DAY
I was to be driven back to the Wapanog County Jail, Florida brought me a basket of Oscar de la Renta soap, powder, lotion, and perfume. “I don't know if they'll let you keep the basket or not,” she said. “They don't want you to have anything you could use as a weapon. That perfume has alcohol in it, so don't drink it. They give you soap if you need it, but I expect it's harsh. When this runs out, I'll get you some more.”

Henry handed me a catalog: The Wapanog County Continuing Education Program. “They've got all kinds of courses,” he said. “Not just the basics, which of course you've already taken at Bridgewater. A Bridgewater graduate has the education equivalent to a sophomore in college. They've got some real interesting classes.” He thumbed through the pages. “Psychology, typing, computer science, and art and all that. It will all transfer to college when you enroll.” He smiled broadly. “Why, I'd like to go out there and take a course or two myself.”

“Your father wants to go to jail with you,” said Florida.

“You can even get a Ph.D. out there,” he added, “but of course you'll just be there for three months. You'll be done before you know it. Just do everything they tell you, and don't associate with anyone. You're not out there to make friends. You want a fresh start when you come out.” He patted me on the back, pressing his Masonic ring into my spine. “You can do it. I know you can. Remember who you are. You're a Peppers.”

“The lady I got on the phone out there said she could have a sketch pad and acrylics,” said Florida. “They're afraid you might swallow the oils.”

“You don't want that kind of paint anyway,” said Henry, who was still working on the stains Florida had made in her studio last week. The painting was hanging in a show in Atlanta and had been written up in several papers, but they'd had to tear the wallpaper off the wall. “Even turpentine won't get those stains off the floor.”

“They are not going to let her have turpentine, Henry!”

“That's what I said!”

“No, you didn't. You can start a fire with turpentine, honey.”

“I know that.” He tightened his jaw.

“Don't fuss at me, Henry.”

“I'm not fussing.”

“Yes, you are. You're all tensed. I can feel it.”

Sighing, Henry turned back to me. “They must have fire drills out there. Florida, make a note for me to check on the fire escape plan.”

O
N THE DRIVE
to jail, I sat in the back seat of the Ford Taurus letting thoughts float through my brain like balloons.
If I wanted to, I could hold on to the string of a balloon and watch it for a while, or I could let it float up into the sky and disappear. I let Zane float away. The whole Arthur Reese Traveling Show floated on by except for Lollibells. For some reason, I caught the string of that balloon and held it. I wanted to tell him what had happened to me after I drove off the lot in the red truck—Lollibells always liked a really bad love story.

S
O
I'
M DRIVING
down I-85 seeing double, and I have to go to the bathroom, but I can't get off an exit ramp because I don't know which ramp is real. One of everything is a joke— one of the blue cars in my lane, one of the yellow lines beside me. If I get on the joke exit ramp, I'll fall through the air. Unless I go up the joke ramp in the joke car. But there is only one of me. By the time I get this all figured out, I'm seeing triple, so I just pee in my seat.

Why didn't you stop?

I forgot where the brake was. I tried to pass the blue cars riding three abreast in front of me, but it was too scary, so I had another beer and decided to drive through them. I studied the cars, trying to remember which one was the original, but I couldn't tell. I could drive through the joke cars because they were made of air, but the original—then I realized that everything is made of air. What appears to be solid mass is a spin of molecules.

Atoms.

Right. Whatever. So, if I aimed right, I could drive through a car like a swarm of gnats, without hitting a single one.

You wanted to die.

Yes, it was good to die. We all had to die that day. It was time to get off the planet. I was careful not to pray, not even to say, Oh God. I had worked hard to become an atheist.

I told you about that.

I know. I'm getting to God. I ran that car off the road. That car shunned me.

Girlfriend, I hope you be under lock and key.

I sped up to the next car, and then I blacked out. When I came to, I was parked on the side of the road, surrounded by patrol cars. One of the cops rapped on my window. We looked at each other through the glass, and I knew that he loved me. I was going to marry a cop.

Might as well since you're already dressed for it.

We'd live in a trailer. When he came home from work, I'd unbuckle his holster.

Don't forget the handcuffs. What's your friend's name? Harvard girl?

Drew.

Drew St. John is appalled but secretly fascinated. Watch out!

Someone said, “Christ, it's a bride.” Someone leaned into the front seat of the truck and said, “Phew! Get a whiff of this.” They went on all around us talking about expired tags, open containers, stolen vehicles.

And y'all didn't pay no mind.

He touched me. He pulled my wrists behind my back. “Now I'm going to put these on real loose, so they won't hurt,” he said. “If you act up, I'll have to tighten them.” In the front seat of the patrol car, I slipped my wrists out of the cuffs and waved to him. He said, “Louise, what did I tell you about that?”

Father figure. Here we go.

I asked how he knew my name; he got it off my license.

Clever. Y'all stop off for a cocktail on the way to jail?

He said no. He wanted to ask me a personal question. He wanted to know if I was an alcoholic.

Did you smack his hand?

Then he wanted to know if I thought I was different from other people.

In what way?

I don't know. I told him I was both. Different and alcoholic.

I
N THE FRONT
seat, Florida asked Henry if he was low on gas. “We can't run out today. We can't make her late. They'll come after us. Pull over here and fill up your tank. I mean it now. Louise, are you asleep back there?”

“Yes.” Behind my closed eyelids, I watched balloons fill the sky. Everything was an illusion. A balloon, a thought, a breath. Pull it it in, let it go. In and out, in and out. I was telling Lollibells: Locked in the bathroom of the Wapanog County Jail, I banged on the steel door and screamed until a woman hollered, “Quit making that noise, you're messing up the radio waves!” It was a small room and it kept getting smaller. No windows. No lid on the john. Nothing to kill yourself with. Nothing but walls squeezing tighter and tighter around me; the floor came up and the ceiling came down, pressing the air out of my lungs. I tried to breathe, but I couldn't remember how. I curled into a tight ball and tried not to look at the walls. Then I knew something. God breathed for me. I didn't have to worry about it.

“Henry, up here on your right,” said Florida. “Ninety-two cents a gallon, honey.”

You got religion? asked Lollibells, and I let his balloon go. More balloons floated past: the dark eyes of Eva, Zane's bare throat as he leaned back to swallow the sword, Daisy's wicked grin, Sunny. More came. Drew throwing a left in her grandmother's pearls. Mr. Rutherford crouched in a tackle position in front of a room of seventh-graders as he introduced Shakespeare. Regina Bloodworth reading a magazine behind dark glasses. T. C. Curtis in a tired light. And more: Mrs. Gubbel on the organ, Sunday after Sunday. Mary MacDermott breaking plates. Raymond Patch wheezing into his box, another voice moving out of his throat. Daddy-Go in a tobacco field with the tall green plants high over his hat, and Grandmother Deleuth in the chicken coop pushing hens off their eggs.

Finally, Roderick came. There was no picture, just the sense of him, raw and familiar at the same time.

I'm an alcoholic, I told him.

I know, he said.

I told him about the black man singing on the corner, the last day I ever drank. Like a knife slicing through the canvas of the universe. A light. A sound like no sound I ever heard. Black man singing “Amazing Grace” on the corner of Front Street and Magnolia. Suit and hat, frost on the ground and no gloves. Blasting it out straight to God. Everybody on the sidewalk stopped. Maybe there was a red light, I don't know. Someone said, “He should make a record. He could make a lot of money.” He sang it over and over; maybe that was the only song he knew. I never heard the human voice sound like that. It was inhuman. A God. A Love. A Big Love. So big I could just see the tail end of it, and that shook me up. He didn't even take his hat off for money.

That's love, said Roderick. You'll get used to it.

“Henry,” said Florida. “What was wrong with that gas station?”

H
ENRY STOOD OUTSIDE
the processing room wearing Florida's pocketbook over one shoulder and mine over the other. They wouldn't let Florida carry her bag into the ladies room, and I was handcuffed. I was wearing the bright orange pajamas I had been issued.

“I like this uniform better than the old zebra suits they used to use,” said Henry, making conversation. “Orange is a good color on you.” Gently, he touched my wrists. “Are they tight? I think that fellow was new. The older officer just wanted to show him how to handcuff a prisoner, in case he ever had to. They were using you as an example for procedure.” Again, he pressed the cold metal against my skin. “Aw, you've got all kinds of room in there. You could get out of those in a minute if you had to. Now don't you try that. You'll get in big trouble. But in case of emergency, if there were a tornado or a fire . . . I asked them if they had fire escapes and they said they did, but I don't see any.”

“What are y'all talking about?” asked Florida, returning from the rest room with sharp clicks of her heels on the tile. She took her purse from Henry's shoulder. “I always tried to get you to wear orange. That's your color.”

“We were talking about fire escapes.”

“Henry, they can't have fire escapes in a jail. They don't want people to escape. That black girl was so ugly to me in the rest room. I ought to tell somebody. I guess she's just doing her job, guarding everybody, but I don't think it would kill her to be a little more courteous.”

“Black woman,” I corrected.

“Her name is Yolanda. I asked because I was going to report her. Louise, you stay out of her way. Meaner than a snake. All I said to her was, ‘This commode is stopped up. You might want to take a look at it.' She jumped all over me! Told me she was not the cleaning lady; she was the guard. Big fat old thing, too, about to pop every button on her uniform. You stay away from her, Louise.”

“They can't keep her locked in here if there's a fire,” said Henry. “Of course they don't want inmates escaping, but they have to have an evacuation plan. That's the law. Why, there aren't any windows in here. She'd smother to death in the smoke.” When I touched his hand, my cuffs clinked.

“I can't look at those chains on you,” said Florida. She turned her head away. “Do they hurt?”

“They don't hurt,” said Henry. “I checked them. That fellow put them on real loose. He was just demonstrating the procedure to a rookie.”

Sniffling, Florida went through her pocketbook looking for a Kleenex. “I brought some crackers. I don't know if anybody is hungry or not. Henry, go up to that window and see if she can bring crackers inside with her. I'm not talking to these people again if I don't have to. That black lady was so rude to me. Just awful.”

A guard approached us with a clipboard. She wore mahogany lipstick and had ironed her hair into sausage curls. On her holster, she carried a baton and a pistol. “Frances Louise Peppers?”

“She's right here,” said Henry, standing up tall.

“Excuse me just a minute,” said Florida as she stepped between the guard and me.

“Ma'am,” said the guard.

Florida put her arms around me. My handcuffs clinked against the zipper of her purse.

“Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the way.”

“I love you,” said Florida. “You don't know.”

Henry wrapped his arms around both of us.

The guard tapped her pen against the clipboard. “I need the prisoner to identify herself. You're obstructing her.”

“Tell her who you are,” said Henry, brushing some lint from my back.

“Can't you take those things off her wrists?” asked Florida. “They bother me.”

“We will ma'am. Once she's been processed.”

“They will,” said Henry, handing his handkerchief to Florida. “This is just how they organize everybody. This place would be a madhouse if they didn't.” Two tears ran down his cheeks.

“You telling me,” said the guard in a softer voice. “Are you Frances Louise Peppers of 711 Mount Zion Road, Counterpoint, Georgia?”

“I am.”

“Y'all can hug once more, then you need to come with me.” Henry pressed me so hard against his chest I couldn't breathe. He kissed me on top of my head. When Florida kissed my cheek, I tasted her tears on my lips.

Finally, the guard took my arm. She led me through a grated iron door into a cell block. Pulling out a ring of keys, she unlocked my handcuffs and then the door to Cell 11. Inside the
cell, the concrete-block walls were painted the color of scrambled eggs. On top of a steel bunk bed, a female prisoner, with a shaved head and good tattooed on one arm and evil on the other, sat reading a magazine.