The Cotton Queen Read online

  As the weeks went on, I just couldn’t bear it. I began canceling appointments and I complained about the traffic. I wanted to keep my promise—I was determined to keep my promise. But it was getting harder and harder.

  Finally Acee suggested that I talk to our pastor. A weekly visit with a clergyman did not have nearly the negative connotations that were to be expected if I were to be caught going to appointments with a mental health professional.

  Reverend Arthur Chester, or as his congregation called him, Brother Chet, was very different from the analysts. The doctors wanted to listen to me talk, they posed questions, they wanted to hear my story. And I had a difficult time keeping it to myself. When I met with Brother Chet, he did all the talking. He didn’t pretend to ask questions, he had answers. And if he was interested in why I was the way I was, he never showed any evidence of curiosity.

  Brother Chet observed me sternly out of the top lenses of his bifocals.

  “Your child did not die because of some sin that you committed,” he said. “It’s a type of personal vanity to imagine that one’s deeds or misdeeds can affect God’s universe in such a way.”

  I nodded, but I was sure that Brother Chet would feel differently if he knew the truth.

  “Your little son, Marley, had a life and death that was in every aspect part of God’s plan,” he said. “You may not like that, but you must surrender yourself to it.”

  Brother Chet was smiling, feigning understanding and sympathy. But I knew that if he had any real concept of the suffering of the innocent, he could never be so glib.

  I changed the subject to Acee and myself, euphemizing our current situation as “bedroom problems.”

  Brother Chet nodded as if he understood completely.

  “I’m sure you’re thinking that it’s laudable to show respect for your vows to your late husband,” he told me.

  I tried to keep my jaw from dropping. I’d never mentioned Tom, nor had in any way suggested that he might be the reason that I was having a difficult time making love to Acee. But it seemed as reasonable an excuse as any I could have made up, so I made no attempt to correct him.

  “Your late husband’s temporal human form is gone to dust,” he told me firmly. “He will never seek earthly gratification again. There is no copulation in heaven.”

  I hadn’t really considered that one way or another, but I nodded.

  “You have new vows to keep now,” he said. “And it’s against the law of both God and man for a wife to forsake her husband’s bed.”

  “Well, I haven’t really forsaken...”

  “If you’re not allowing conjugal rights in response to his natural desires then you are forsaking him,” he stated with certainty. “Such action can lead him into sin and place in peril his immortal soul. Surely you cannot want that? Endangering eternity for the man you’ve married.”

  Put that way, my own revulsion seemed like a petty affectation. So that evening, as soon as Laney was tucked in, I went down to Acee’s study.

  “Brother Chet says that we need to start sharing a bedroom again,” I announced.

  He looked up at me, not with anticipation. “Are you sure it’s not too soon?”

  I didn’t answer that. I was afraid that never would be too soon.

  “It’ll be fine,” I assured him.

  Of course, it wasn’t. It was embarrassing, uncomfortable and unsatisfying. But I felt that I had no choice. If I was to be the wife that he deserved to have, then I had to be sexual.

  “Close your eyes and pray,” Brother Chet suggested.

  I found that very disconcerting. Instead I began reading Cosmopolitan magazine. I’d heard that the editor had written a book about women having sex and every month there were lots of articles about sexual things. So I bought it at Smith’s Drugs, assuring Mrs. Mantee, behind the counter, that I didn’t really read it, I just looked at the photographs of beautiful clothes.

  I lay beside Acee, spread my legs, tapped down my queasiness and pretended that I was someone else. That I was one of those women in the magazine so concerned with their own pleasure, their own sensuality. With practice, it became tolerable.

  Acee never complained. In fact he always thanked me. Proof, I suppose, that he knew I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to.

  Acee had gotten a bad bargain when he’d gotten me. I knew it and I felt guilty about it. He’d given me a home, a safe haven, security. And the certainty that I would be able to give Laney a good life. For all that, he got a cold, frigid wife, a stepdaughter and a dead son that had been palmed off as his own. Somehow I had to make it up to him.

  I chose to do that the way I’d always done it. Uncle Warren and Aunt Maxine had taken in the perfect teenager. Acee would soon discover that he’d married the perfect McKinney wife.

  That became my goal. If I could grit my teeth and have sex with him, then I could arrange the rest of his world to near perfection.

  His house should be a showplace. His meals should be delicious and nutritious. His standing in the community should be second to none and his wife should be by his side ever lovely, generous and genteel.

  Bringing those things into being were easily within my control. All I had to do was pursue, pursue, pursue. My goals were all altruistic and my method was to pursue them.

  Of course, I couldn’t do it alone. I quickly tried to become the center of female society in McKinney. Not because I wanted that for myself. For myself, I would have been content to live a hermit’s life. But the perfect wife for an up-and-coming lawyer required an outgoing nature and an interest in social activities.

  I was not a natural for this. For one thing, I hadn’t been brought up with an eye toward upward mobility. Uncle Warren and Aunt Maxine were good people, honest and hardworking, but with no pretensions of status. Aunt Maxine still did her own ironing! We’d sewed most of my clothes. And what we’d purchased had been bought at JC Penney. The Hoffmans were no better influence. Tom’s expectations for me were to be little different than a typical farm wife. I’d done my own hair and what little makeup I wore came from the drugstore.

  I quickly learned that the ladies of the Owl Club bought their fashions at Naomi’s Dress Shop. They had their hair done weekly at Miss Lucy’s. And the secrets of their facial blemishes were known only to the Cosmetic Consultants at Mary Kay or Merle Norman.

  I had a trim figure, nice coloring, good complexion and regular features. My natural tendency to hang back was probably one of the reasons I’d been runner-up rather than queen. I hadn’t known how to make the most of my personal gifts. Now I deliberately pushed myself forward.

  I quickly became active in every civic organization that would let me in the door. I was Projects Coordinator to the Garden Club, Bingo Chair of the Methodist Women, a regular at Friends of the Library and, most importantly, I was on the planning committee of the annual Cotton Days Parade.

  I didn’t have any training or experience for any of these jobs. Except for a short-lived allegiance to Ye Merrie Stenos, the business girls organization at McKinney High, I’d never been a joiner. I found it difficult to navigate all the intertwining relationships and rivalries of the other women. But I persevered.

  To my thinking, the most prestigious and worthwhile group in McKinney was the Owls. Dating back to the 1890s, this organization of women had done much for the community. But more than that, they were the “old guard,” descendants of the original settlers and the elite of ladies’ society. Entry into the Owls was by invitation only and I should have been invited. My mother-in-law was a prominent member. For some reason, Mrs. Clifton, who told me to call her Alice, but always seemed surprised when I did, was unwilling to help me.

  “It just doesn’t seem fair,” she explained. “There are so many young women who’d love to be invited but won’t be. Bringing you in simply because you’re my daughter-in-law seems inequitable.”

  Equality had never been the byword of the Owls and nepotism ran rampant, but I couldn’t budge Alice, so I quit trying
.

  Like dozens of other worthy young McKinney wives with the Owls out of their reach, I concentrated on the clubs and committees that were within my grasp.

  I’m not saying that I was immediately loved and universally accepted. Many in the Delphian Society thought of me as a bit déclassé. Some of the dried-up spinsters at Book Circle considered me a literary lightweight. And the matrons of the Historical Society always remembered that I’d been born elsewhere.

  Still, I was Mrs. Acee Clifton. Despite my recent rather hasty pregnancy and my less-than-impressive choice for first husband, I was an important member of society, an asset to my husband’s career, a near perfect wife.

  All I needed was to give Acee a son of his own.

  LANEY

  WHEN I THINK ABOUT my years in grade school, I remember my teachers, classroom parties and my friends. In my home life, what I most recall is wallpaper.

  Babs could never quite get it right. She would hang a pale floral in the dining room and then see a box print that she liked better. But when the print was up, it clashed with the sitting room, which then had to be changed. The solution to that made the entry hall seem too busy. It went on like that, room after room after room. And it seemed that as soon as it was all finally done right, I’d come home from school to see that she’d ripped the wallpaper down in the kitchen, starting it all over again.

  I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention if Babs had brought in workers to do the job. Unfortunately she liked doing it herself, but it wasn’t a one person operation. When I was still so small I had to stand on a step stool to hand her the scraper. I was her wallpaper assistant.

  “Why are we covering up everything all the time? Can’t we just strip all this off and paint the walls,” I suggested when I was about ten.

  She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  “Laney, painted walls are for new homes, track homes.” Her tone was dismissive. “We live in a beautifully restored example of turn-of-the-century architecture. We must be true to the era.”

  That true-to-the era stuff did not extend to kitchens, bathrooms and air-conditioning. It was even flexible for furniture and drapes, but that wallpaper...somehow she could never give it up. The smell of paste still reminds me of home.

  I was also dragged into many of my mother’s do-gooder activities. Monday night bingo in the church basement was as nonnegotiable as Sunday morning service. I was going to be there and I was going to help.

  The same was true of Christmas festivities and Easter egg hunts and dancing the maypole. My mom was right in the middle of things and I was always there beside her.

  That was especially true when it came to the Cotton Days Parade. The annual celebration was a hangover from earlier times when wagons of picked cotton would be lined up along Virginia Street and curve all around the corner waiting to drop their loads at the gin. Apparently it was a very festive time, all the hot, hard work of summer done, the year’s wages just ahead of them, adding to the excitement of a day or two waiting in town. The old-timers said that farmers began decorating the cotton carts as sort of an identity and a point of pride. The merchants took the opportunity to serve up roasted corn, berry pies and cold beer. The town was bursting at the seams with crooks, gamblers and confidence men eager to snatch up the money the farmers made.

  Over time cotton became less the livelihood of the area, but the celebration lingered. It was transformed into an end of summer festival with a downtown parade, a carnival in Finch Park and a Coronation Party at the Elks Club for the Cotton Queen and her court.

  My mother had been in the Cotton Queen’s court and she loved all the hoopla and girly giddiness of it all. There were floats to be made from glitter, crepe paper and tissue. Convertibles to be decorated with streamers and bunting. A series of stair-step thrones to be constructed with cut-cardboard backs painted gold. Gigantic white pom-poms hanging from the dance floor ceiling to represent giant cotton balls.

  The year my cousin Renny came home, Babs recruited him to help. I was still getting over my childhood crush, I suppose, but I was very excited that he was going to be there. I’d hardly seen him since his return. We’d gone over the night he’d come home. He’d caught a hop into Fort Bliss and Uncle Warren had driven down to pick him up. Aunt Maxine was so excited. She’d baked his favorite, pineapple upside-down cake and put up a Welcome banner that she’d made herself. She’d called Pete at his dorm at college and insisted that he be there. He rarely showed up in McKinney these days. He got lots of ribbing about his long hair and sandals. It didn’t seem to bother him.

  The house was crowded, noisy, excited as we waited for Renny.

  The guest of honor didn’t show up until almost midnight. And he didn’t seem all that glad to see us. He hardly acknowledged the house full of people. He didn’t even recognize his brother, who’d let his hair grow longer than the Beatles ever did. And when his mother offered him cake, he said he wasn’t hungry. He went into his room and shut the door shortly afterward.

  “He’s exhausted,” Uncle Warren was left to explain. “And the transition is too fast. He was in Saigon this morning.”

  We had all left, nodding understanding.

  “He’s home safe and that’s what matters,” Acee said.

  But that had been weeks earlier. We hadn’t seen him. We hadn’t talked to him. According to what I overheard from Babs and Aunt Maxine, he never left the house. She would spend all morning trying to coax him out of bed. Then he’d just sit on the front porch swing, reading for the rest of the day.

  That didn’t seem all that weird to me. If I’d had to be away for a year and only had six weeks of leave, I’d probably sit around myself. But Aunt Maxine was worried, so Babs was, too.

  I guess that’s why we drove by and picked up Renny on the way to the Nehi Bottling warehouse where the Collin County Bar Association was turning a Chevy pickup truck into a horror movie–size boll weevil, the spurs on its front leg improvised with meat hooks. The parade float required a lot of volunteer effort and Babs was determined that we help.

  She dropped us off as she scurried around town to see what was getting done on time and where more help was going to be needed.

  I was put on the task of cutting the brown crepe paper into inch wide strips. Renny threaded them through the chicken wire form. Because of his youth and agility, I suppose, Renny was sent up to lie flat on the scaffold so that he could reach down onto the ten-foot-high back of the big, ugly insect.

  We’d worked about an hour when he decided to take a break. I quickly abandoned my job and followed him over to the refreshment table where there was free Nehi, doughnuts and an angel food cake.

  Renny’s six-foot frame was now more muscular than when he’d played sports in high school. The buzz-cut military-style hair somehow drew more attention to the handsome features of his face. His eyes were the bluest blue, shaded by the thickest blond eyelashes, the kind any girl would have been jealous to possess.

  He smiled at me, but didn’t look that keen on having a conversation. That wasn’t really a surprise. I doubt that many grown-up military men talked to skinny, gawky ten-year-olds on a regular basis. But I was determined to break the ice.

  “I guess all this seems pretty dorky to you after being all over the world,” I started out.

  His brow sort of furrowed, like he was actually considering my question and then he shrugged.

  “I don’t know if dorky is the word that I’d use,” he said.

  “I mean not cool, you know, stupid, stuff like that.”

  He grinned. “I know what dorky means,” he replied. “I just don’t know if dorky describes this. It’s more like surreal.”

  “Surreal,” I repeated thoughtfully. I’d never heard the word before, but I sure didn’t want Renny to know that.

  “But these days,” Renny continued, “it’s like everything is surreal. I just kept thinking that everything would be okay when I got home. But it’s still all craziness.”

  I pi
cked up a doughnut, dripping with chocolate glaze.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Renny shrugged. “On this same planet, at this same moment, only a plane ride away people are dying,” he said. “They’re not just dying. They are dying in gruesome, ugly ways. They’re dying from picking up a baby that has a live grenade in his diaper. They’re dying from eating some food offered up by a sweet old grandma that happens to have ground glass cooked inside. They’re dying because they happen to walk across a piece of the land that the policy map says automatically makes you the enemy. People are dying. And I’m here making a giant crepe-paper bug. What’s that about?”

  He looked over at me, as if I could answer the question.

  I was still trying to take in what he’d just said.

  “There’s not really any babies with grenades or grandmas with ground glass,” I stated firmly. “You’re just making that stuff up.”

  Renny glanced over at me, as if he was seeing me for the first time.

  “You’re just making it up,” I repeated. “Ned does that sometimes. He says things to try to scare me. He’s just making it up.”

  Renny managed a strange little smile. “Yeah, you’re right, Laney,” he said. “I’m just making it up.”

  There was something about the way he said it that made me unsure.

  Everything he’d said might have gone straight into my you-can’t-fool-me brain storage area, an area that was already crammed full of crap my cousins had told me. That’s probably what would have happened if something more permanently damaging hadn’t occurred a few weeks later.

  Acee and I were in the family room watching the Smothers Brothers on TV. Babs was seated at her secretary writing little handwritten notes on white paper to thank whomever for whatever, whenever.

  The telephone rang.

  “Hello,” my mother said as she picked it up. There was only a short pause before a very frightened and soulful, “Oh, no!”

  “What?” Acee stood up and turned to her.