The Cotton Queen Read online

She was still on the phone, nodding, her brow furrowed in worry.

  “We’ll be right there,” she said. “Please don’t cry, Aunt Maxine, we’ll be right there.”

  She was already talking to Acee before she’d gotten the phone back into its cradle. “Uncle Warren has had a stroke.”

  Between Babs and Acee there was no discussion. He got his jacket, she got her purse. I was rushed out to the car with them. They said nothing. I couldn’t stop asking questions.

  “What happened? What’s a stroke? Is he going to be all right?”

  I might as well have been talking to myself. No one answered, nothing was said as we made our way through the warm autumn night to the hospital. Downtown there were people on the street headed for the eight-o’clock showing of Cool Hand Luke at the Ritz Theater. I watched them silently as we paused at the stop sign. I had an incredible urge to roll down my window and yell, “Stop laughing! Uncle Warren has had a stroke!”

  Of course I didn’t. I kept my silence as Acee drove on.

  We pulled into a parking lot near the emergency entrance.

  “You’ll probably have to stay in the waiting room,” Babs told me. “That’s better anyway. I’m sure you don’t want to see him until he’s feeling better.”

  As it turned out, we were all in the waiting room. Me, my mom, Acee and the whole Barstow family, Aunt Maxine, the twins, Renny and Pete. Pete’s lip was cut and he was holding a wet towel over his right eye.

  “What happened?” I asked immediately.

  Nobody answered.

  Acee immediately took charge of the conversation. “How’s Warren? What did the doctor say? Have you seen him?”

  It was easy to imagine how Acee might have cross-examined a witness in court. He quickly managed to get the story, in its entirety out of all five available sources. Pete and Renny had gotten into an argument about the war. When angry words had come to blows, Uncle Warren had tried to come between them. His blood pressure, always high, had shot up and blew out a blood vessel in his brain. He’d keeled over and they’d called for an ambulance.

  Understanding that people function through a crisis better by having a job to do, Acee sent the twins to get their mother a cup of coffee. He had Babs go with Aunt Maxine to see about the paperwork and billing. He took Pete into the E.R. to get his eye looked at. And he told Renny to stay with me.

  I certainly didn’t need a babysitter. But I sat down next to my cousin anyway. The knuckles of his right hand were cut and bleeding.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid,” was his response.

  I didn’t for a moment think that the word was directed at me.

  “It was just one of those things that happened,” I comforted rather lamely.

  “It’s been brewing ever since I got home,” Renny said. “I just couldn’t believe my own brother would turn into one of them.”

  “One of whom?”

  “One of those long-haired, hippie creeps,” Renny answered.

  I couldn’t understand his anger.

  “Pete’s been wearing his hair long since the Beatles came out,” I reminded him.

  “This is not about hair!” Renny snapped.

  He immediately apologized. I shrugged it off.

  “What is it about, Renny?” I asked. “You and Pete always got into fights. It was never a big deal.”

  “This was a big deal,” Renny answered, angrily. “The war is a big deal. I’m fighting for my country and my brother, my own flesh and blood is a traitor.”

  “Pete’s a traitor?” I was shocked.

  “Well, as much as one,” Renny corrected. “He’s one of those filthy peaceniks. He’s breaking Mom’s and Dad’s hearts.”

  “Really? I thought they were proud of him. Aunt Maxine is always talking about how he’s on the dean’s list. How he’ll be the first in the family to get a college education.”

  Renny made an angry dismissing sound. “He takes advantage of the freedoms that me and guys like me are fighting for.”

  I nodded.

  “He says he doesn’t believe in the war,” Renny said. “Like his opinion should matter. Pete’s just a kid. The big decisions of the world shouldn’t be up to him.”

  “No, of course not,” I agreed.

  “If he’s going to live in this country, enjoy our freedoms, then he should do what the government tells him. If he doesn’t like it, fine, he’s entitled to think what he wants to think, but he ought to keep his mouth shut.”

  “So this is what you fought about?”

  Renny nodded. “I couldn’t believe it. He said that he was thinking about burning his draft card.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “If he can, he shouldn’t be able to,” Renny answered. “But that’s not the worst. He said if he was called up, he’d move to Canada.”

  “Canada?”

  “That’s when I hit him,” Renny said. “I hit him and I couldn’t stop hitting him. All the time I was in Vietnam, when things got bad, I tried to remember that I was there for my family. I was doing all that for you and Mom and the twins and Pete.”

  He buried his face in his hands for a moment and then looked over at me, his eyes almost as sad as they were angry.

  “And I find out that Pete wouldn’t do that for me.”

  “You want him to go to Vietnam, too?”

  “No, no, I don’t want him to go,” Renny said. “It’s awful and just...just awful. I don’t want my brother there. He’s my kid brother. I don’t want him to go. But I want him to want to go. Does that make sense?”

  It didn’t to me, but fortunately, I didn’t have to answer. Janey and Joley returned, each with a cardboard carrier full of coffee and Cokes. They sat down with us, though both seemed wary of the older brother whom they had always loved. Their uncertainty seemed to annoy Renny even further.

  “If anything happens to Dad,” he told us ominously. “I’ll never forgive Pete.”

  “It wasn’t Pete’s fault,” Joley said. “You’re the one that started it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who started it,” Renny said. “There’s right and there’s wrong. I’m right. Pete’s wrong.”

  BABS

  UNCLE WARREN’S stroke left him unable to walk and barely able to talk. We were all grateful, but I was very worried. About Uncle Warren, of course, but also about Aunt Maxine. Taking care of him was a full-time job and she had plenty of full-time jobs. Uncle Warren still owned and operated the shoe repair, the dry cleaners, the coin laundry and the Dairy Hut.

  From my perspective, the only answer was that one of the boys stay home and take care of the businesses.

  “They should probably sell out,” I confided to Acee. “But that might make Uncle Warren give up. The only alternative is for Renny or Pete to take over.”

  Unfortunately I put it to the boys just that way.

  Renny was my first choice. He was the oldest, after all. And he’d already done his duty in Vietnam. I was certain that the Army would let him have an early out.

  “You weren’t really planning to have a career in the military,” I pointed out to him as we sat together on the front porch swing outside their house. “And I’d hate to ask Pete to give up college when he’s so close to graduating.”

  I knew immediately that I’d made a mistake. His expression, which had indicated thoughtful consideration, suddenly hardened into stubbornness.

  “Oh, yeah,” he responded, his tone sarcastic. “Pete’s college is so very important and defending the country, that’s practically like having no job at all.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I corrected him quickly. “And I certainly didn’t mean that. You know how proud we all are of you. But you’ve already done your share for the country. Now you’re needed at home.”

  Renny’s refusal was adamant.

  “I like the Army. What I do is important. I’m not giving that up to make things more convenient for a shirker like Pete.”

  Pete was just a
s difficult when I finally caught up to him with a phone call to his dorm room.

  “Babs, I know your heart is in the right place,” he said. “But I think you’re overstepping.”

  “I’m not,” I assured him. “Aunt Maxine has far too much to do caring for Uncle Warren. There is no way that she can care for his businesses, as well.”

  He nodded. “I agree. But butting in and deciding for them what they should do about it is interference.”

  “They are too proud to ask for help,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “Or maybe they don’t really need any. Either way, it’s their life. They get to decide all the big things and live it as they see fit. Forcing your view of what they should do is the worst kind of selfishness, Babs.”

  “Selfishness? Are you nuts, Pete?” I was incensed. “You should want to do the right thing for them.”

  “I do,” he said. “But I’m not convinced that throwing away all I’ve worked for, all they’ve worked for, without a specific request from them, is at all what they would want. It may be what you would want. But I’m not sure it’s what they would want.”

  “What they want and what is best may not be the same thing,” I said.

  “Look,” Pete said. “If Mama asks me to give up college and come home, I’ll do it. But I’m not forcing myself into the situation by volunteering.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I told him snidely. “Volunteering is not your big thing, is it.”

  He didn’t appreciate my sarcasm.

  “G’night, Babs,” he responded, hanging up the phone abruptly.

  I was incensed and complained to Acee.

  “You know, Pete has a point,” my husband told me. “Aunt Maxine hasn’t asked you to stick your nose into this.”

  “Somebody is going to have to do this,” I explained. “And if I don’t get the boys involved, it will end up being me. And I don’t have the time.”

  Acee looked up from the biography he was reading. That was an unusual occurrence in itself. He prided himself on being able to talk and read at the same time. It was a rare moment in his conversations with me that he lifted his eye from the page.

  “Getting out of the house, doing something, that might be good for you,” he said.

  I stared at him in shocked disbelief.

  “Doing something?” I asked, sarcastically. “For heaven’s sake, Acee, I am so busy now, I’m near to going out of my mind.”

  “Yes, of course you’re busy,” he said. “But I think it might be nice for you to get involved in some sort of business. You always worked as a teenager. And you seemed to enjoy it a lot.”

  “I am working at the only career I’m interested in,” I told him. “Housewife and mother.”

  I saw it in his eyes then. An expression that I did not recognize and couldn’t interpret. It was almost dismissal. He went back to his paper.

  “Whatever you want,” he said.

  Whatever I wanted? I wanted him to have whatever he wanted. I wanted him to be happy, successful, fulfilled and I was working at it night and day. I was still very involved in serious socializing with the best of the community. And I was making progress. Acee was, of course, already well-known and respected. But I was, slowly but surely, making him the most sought after lawyer in McKinney, at least on the level of entertaining. We were more than simply within the social whirl. We were a prominent cog, fundamental in keeping it turning. We had several parties at the house every month. They were fancy affairs with glamorous dresses and dry martinis. At first I knew that wives dragged their husbands there to see the inside of our house. The beautiful restoration was a natural draw. I made sure that they were never disappointed. I was constantly redecorating, so that there was always something new to see. And I think that it became, for many upwardly mobile McKinney matrons, a point of pride over a lunch at Woolworth to be the one able to describe my new wallpaper.

  I was helping my husband. I was creating a happy, healthy homelife, keeping my figure and following fashion. Those things were my job. Of course, I knew that I should be giving him a son. That, it turned out, was not as easy as simply deciding to do so.

  I still hated being touched. I hated having sex. Night after night, I would grit my teeth and open my legs, determined to do my duty.

  My sessions with Brother Chet became infrequent, as I assured him that everything was now fine. I read my magazines, books, newspaper articles. There was no shortage of information out there. Sex was the topic of the era. Everyone wanted to talk about it. But all that gab was about woman rising up from the ashes of repression and having orgasms.

  That didn’t interest me. I wasn’t seeking the pleasure of sex, but the product of it. I needed to have a baby. I was letting my husband do that to me several times a week, but nothing was happening.

  I didn’t know who to talk to or even what questions to ask. Aunt Maxine, the closest person I had to an advisor and confidante, had her hands full, and with four children of her own, I suspected that she hadn’t had any problems getting pregnant. Among the ladies in my circle, all the talk was about preventing babies. Discussions of “the pill” took place regularly and all the women claimed it was a miracle drug. I pretended a sophisticated agreement. But I had never tried to prevent anything in my life. Why weren’t they developing an antipill? A little tablet you could take in the morning and be with child by afternoon.

  After almost two years of trying to get pregnant, I went for a checkup with the doctor. I couldn’t face the aging family physician, so I made an appointment with the young upstart in town. I was as nervous as if wading in a creek full of crocodiles. The moment he came into the room I blurted out my concern. Thankfully Dr. Mansfield didn’t suddenly turn into Brother Chet and fault me for my lack.

  “Let’s have a look,” he said. “We know that you’re capable of conceiving, because you’ve had two live births to your credit. Let’s just make certain that we haven’t developed some problem we’re not aware of.”

  I did what I had to do. I put on the ugly cotton gown and climbed up on the table. With my feet in the stirrups, I was completely vulnerable. I hated having to do it. I hated Dr. Mansfield for putting me through it. I closed my eyes and pretended it wasn’t happening. But in my mind I saw that set of salt and pepper shakers. It was that table again and it was all I could do not to throw up.

  “All right, Mrs. Clifton,” he said. “You can sit up now.”

  I brought myself to an upright position, my legs together tightly. I held back the nausea in my throat. I didn’t look at him.

  “You can get dressed now and we’ll talk in my office.”

  As I put on my clothes, I pulled my scattered emotions together. It had all been so long ago. I couldn’t let it still be there for me. I must just forget it. Too much had happened. It was well past time to put it all behind me.

  With my makeup freshened and my lipstick reapplied, I was ready to face the man from across the width of his mahogany desk.

  Dr. Mansfield was smiling at me.

  “Everything looks normal,” he said.

  That news both relieved and frustrated me. In my secret heart I think I was hoping that my womb might be full of cancer, a giant abscess or a withering disease that rendered me sterile as only the first step on a ladder to death. I could gracefully exit my world with no one the wiser and everyone believing that I’d done my best.

  “You have minimal scarring from childbirth and all the tissues are rosy pink and the picture of health.”

  “What wonderful news,” I lied.

  “I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to carry a half-dozen more children if that’s your wish.”

  I nodded.

  “Could it be Acee’s fault?” I asked him. “I read in Cosmo that sometimes men don’t have enough of those sperm things.”

  Dr. Mansfield shrugged off that concern. “Don’t believe everything you read in those silly women’s magazines,” he said with a laugh. “You two didn’t have any problem getting i
n the family way before. I don’t see any problem coming up in the future.”

  I didn’t even consider telling him the truth. Doctor-patient confidentiality might seem sacrosanct, but in small towns some truths are always too dangerous to reveal.

  “I’m sure that it’s not physical,” he continued. “It’s emotional. You need to just stop worrying about it. Relax and let it happen.”

  That was much easier said than done.

  “That’s not a bad prescription, now is it,” he said. “Build a nice hot fire in the bedroom and don’t let the flames go out.”

  His little suggestive laugh was maddening. I wanted to scream, pull my hair out, rail against God.

  Instead I smiled.

  “Thank you, Dr. Mansfield,” I said sweetly. “You have certainly relieved my mind about that. Oh, and I was wondering, I’m giving a little dinner party a week from Friday. I’d love to have you and your lovely wife join us.”

  He blushed and his chest puffed out. The Mansfields were new in town, but not so new that they didn’t know the social strata.

  “We would like that very much,” the doctor assured me.

  “Fine, I’ll give your wife a call and give her the details.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

  It was better if the Mansfields were in my debt, I decided. It was never good if rumors about me got started. Cultivating his wife as a friend should insure that nothing untoward was ever said.

  That’s what my life was about. Being beautiful and warding off the prospect of unkind words.

  My face to the world was that everything was wonderful and that Acee, Laney and I were the happiest, most perfect little family in Collin County. It was an image I struggled mightily to maintain.

  If Acee approved of my efforts, he never said so. The harder I worked to make him a leader in the community, the less he had to say to me personally.

  It’s not that we were ships that passed in the night. That analogy just wouldn’t hold up for us. We saw each other constantly. We ate breakfast together every morning and dinner every evening. We attended all our social functions together. He and Laney had become great friends and were inseparable on weekends. And I was always there. We had multiple conversations on any day of the week. Still, he and I had very little of substance to say to each other.