The Cotton Queen Read online

  Aunt Maxine sewed me a beautiful formal in pink chiffon. Uncle Warren went all the way to Denton to borrow a convertible from a dealership for my ride in the downtown parade. It was, up to that moment, the most exciting experience of my life. It was a rare occasion when I was the center of attention. My mother’s funeral was the only other time I could recall and that scrutiny had been very unwelcome. But riding down the streets of McKinney, waving at the crowds gathered on the sidewalk, was a moment of triumph, a moment of self-confidence that crystalized for me the direction of my life.

  I was not the only one thinking about my future. A few weeks after the parade, Uncle Warren gave me his advice.

  “A woman’s only chance in life is to marry well,” he told me one day as we worked together in the shoe shop. “Smart or dumb, pretty or plain, it’s the man she marries that makes the difference.”

  He fitted the heavy work boot he was mending onto the shoe form of the straight stitcher.

  “If a girl was really looking out for her future,” he pointed out, “she’d look no further than Acee Clifton.”

  He bent over the sewing machine for a moment or two, allowing me to take in that thought and consider it. Uncle Warren had lost his left leg in the war, the artificial one that the Army had given him as a replacement didn’t bend and, as he worked, it stuck out from the side of his bench at a curious angle.

  “Acee Clifton?” I repeated the name as a question.

  Acee was in my class, but he was not the kind of fellow that really caught a girl’s eye. For one thing he was short. Not shorter than myself, I suppose, but he looked short and he was pudgy. He always seemed to have his nose in a book. In a high school where football and basketball were studied far more intensely than science or math, Acee was the least athletic guy in my class. Somehow I couldn’t see him as future husband material.

  The sewing machine stopped. Uncle Warren looked over at me, his expression sober and serious.

  “I wouldn’t have you aiming too high,” Uncle Warren said. “I don’t think there’s any sense in a girl trying to get above her raising. But Acee’s got money, family connections and a good mind. He’s going to be someone someday. If those silly girls down at the high school had any sense at all, they’d be tearing down his mother’s door to get a date with him.”

  As far as I knew, Acee hadn’t had many dates.

  I thought about what Uncle Warren said. And I spent more time just observing Acee, talking to him, trying to get to know him. But I also wanted a second opinion. So I went to Aunt Maxine.

  She was ironing on the back porch. She claimed to enjoy the task, saying that she found it relaxing. Of course, she was still hot and sweating from the effort, even though it was already a breezy, crisp fall afternoon.

  I told her what Uncle Warren had said.

  Aunt Maxine shrugged. “He’s trying to be practical,” she said. “Women will have their romantic dreams, we all do. But the truth is, the man you marry pretty much determines your station in life.”

  She set the iron up on its end and took a deep breath of hesitation before continuing.

  “Your uncle Warren is thinking you are like your mother,” she said, biting her lip as if uncertain about revealing what she intended to say. “She was a truly sweet person, but she should have married again. There’s no doubt that she loved your daddy, but that doesn’t always come along in life. It certainly doesn’t come along often. She’d have been far better off finding herself a good man who knew how to make a living, than pining away as a young widow and working herself to an early death. I’m sure Uncle Warren just doesn’t want you to make the same mistake.”

  I nodded, thoughtfully.

  “So I shouldn’t marry for love?”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean that at all,” Aunt Maxine said. “I think the only way to marry is to marry for love. Just try to fall in love with somebody...somebody like Acee Clifton.”

  Truly I tried to follow her advice. I was kind and polite when I saw Acee at school. I even made a point of choosing him as my partner in science lab. But I was a girl. Girls couldn’t take the lead in that sort of thing. And I was never much of a flirt.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. I went on a Christmas hayride with Tom Hoffman. He was a farm boy who sat two rows behind me in World History. He played on the baseball team. But he wasn’t one of the top athletes in the high school. He was just a sort of regular guy. He was tall, almost six feet and had blond hair that was too curly to be attractive. He kept it cut short and slicked down with Brylcreem. He had a great smile, though I can’t say for sure what was so great about it. His teeth weren’t any whiter than anyone else’s and he had a gap between the front two wide enough to whistle through. I hadn’t really thought about dating him, but when he asked me, well, I was pleased to go.

  It was a cold, frosty night. I was dressed in a sweater and rolled up dungarees. Aunt Maxine didn’t really approve of young ladies wearing slacks, but on a hayride, you couldn’t really wear anything else.

  On the way out into the country it was all carol singing and group laughter. I could have been alone or with anyone. But it was Tom who sat quietly beside me, enjoying the banter and occasionally offering a word or two of his own shy, clever wit.

  We stopped for hot chocolate at the Manigault’s farm. Tom put his hands around my waist to help me down. When we went inside, the other boys held the hands of their dates. Tom escorted me with four fingers at the small of my back. It made me feel so feminine and at the same time so fragile.

  All of us teenagers thought ourselves quite grown-up and sophisticated. But we played silly parlor games and giggled and ate gingerbread like kids.

  A brightly decorated sprig of mistletoe hung down from the door frame into the dining room. Several couples made a game of “accidentally” getting caught under it. Those trysts involved a lot of laughter.

  Tom made no attempt to steer me in that direction. I was both pleased and, I admit, a little disappointed. Aunt Maxine, as well as my girlfriends, had always made it clear that it was “fast” to kiss a boy on the first date. That should really be avoided. Still, I sort of wished that he would, at least, try. When Mr. Garmon, the Sunday School Superintendent and our driver, came in to announce that it was time to load up for the trip back to town, kids began hurriedly lining up in the hallway for a last chance at the risqué game. Tom led me outside. We were the first people back to the wagon.

  I sat there, trying to smile but feeling a little let down.

  Tom must have read my thoughts.

  “I’m not much for mistletoe,” he said.

  I nodded. “It’s silly and childish,” I told him, primly. “And we hardly know each other.”

  “I just...” He hesitated. “I just want the first time I kiss you to be because you want to kiss me, not us showing off for our friends.”

  “I do want to kiss you,” I blurted before I thought.

  Tom smiled. He leaned toward me, his hand on my jaw and our lips met. It was somehow perfect. His mouth was not too hard or too soft. He tasted like ginger and chocolate. I wasn’t afraid. I was excited.

  Other people began arriving and we pulled apart. But not far. We bundled up together under one blanket. His arm around me, holding me close. It felt wonderful.

  On the ride home several couples were openly necking. We didn’t do that, though we did steal a few more kisses.

  “I’ve liked you for a long time,” Tom admitted to me. “When you were in Queen’s Court in that pink dress. I thought, ‘she’s the prettiest one of those girls.’”

  “So you think I’m pretty?”

  “I know you are,” he answered. “But you’re smart and sweet, too. That’s the kind of girl I’d want for a girlfriend, if I was thinking to going steady or something.”

  “Are you thinking to going steady?”

  “I might.”

  He grinned at me then. Even in the moonlight I could see that gash of dimple in his right cheek. He had dimples on bo
th sides, but his smile was slightly crooked and the right side showed up more distinctly.

  “I don’t think my uncle Warren likes the idea of going steady,” I told him.

  “Then maybe he shouldn’t do it,” Tom said.

  I giggled and he planted a playful little peck on my nose.

  From then on out, I was Tom Hoffman’s girl. I wouldn’t have anyone else.

  The night of the senior prom he asked me to marry him. I agreed and we tied the knot that summer in a little ceremony at church, just his family and mine.

  “Both my older brothers are farmers,” he told me. “By the time they get my father’s land and split it up, there won’t be enough to support one family.”

  I listened and nodded as if I understood.

  “I’m good with my hands and with machines,” Tom said. “I thought about working on cars, but if I go into the Army, I can get training for free.”

  Ultimately he decided on Air Force and airplane engines. It was a very good plan.

  We didn’t plan on having Laney. But, as soon as I held her in my arms, I couldn’t imagine anything in the world that could have made me happier.

  LANEY

  THE ONE THING that I know most about myself is that I am nothing like my mother. Nothing. Not anything. We’re completely different.

  What I suppose, since I’m pretty sure I wasn’t adopted or accidentally switched in the hospital, is that I’m like my dad.

  The first memory I have of him is olive drab fatigues and big, heavy boots. I remember running toward those boots, arms outstretched. I was scooped up into the air and twirled around as I giggled.

  Daddy was so tall and he had a deep voice. He smiled all the time and when he laughed, it came from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere that was full and content and extremely at peace with the world.

  I was certain then, as I am certain now, that Tom Hoffman, my daddy, loved me.

  His years in the Air Force, our years in the Air Force, were brief in retrospect. But at the time it seemed that it was everything. Mama, or Babs as I call her now, stayed home in McKinney for the first couple of years. My father was an infrequent visitor, dependent upon the head of his unit for leave. After he finished mechanics school he was promoted to Airman Second Class. We lived on base in California. I’m not sure where exactly. I have no memory of that, either. But there are lots of photographs, wonderful photographs. Babs in her pedal pushers with me in the stroller. Daddy on his hands and knees as I, apparently shrieking with delight, rode on his shoulders. Me playing in the sand on the beach as Daddy watched, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There is even a whole photo album devoted to what is described as “Our First Trip to Disneyland.” It turned out to be our only trip.

  It had been an idyllic childhood, I suppose. It ended too abruptly.

  I was playing in the yard. I had a brand-new red tricycle. I hadn’t figured out how to pedal it yet, so I just pushed it to the spot I wanted and then sat down on it. I suppose I’d been pushing when the car with the men drove up. I hadn’t noticed them until they were knocking on our front door. I was accustomed to seeing men in uniform. All my parents’ friends were in service. I didn’t think anything about it until Babs began screaming.

  To this day, I can hear that sound in my memory as clearly as I did then. It was a horrible, lost, almost inhuman sound. It frightened me. I jumped off my trike to run to my mother. When I realized that was where the terrible cry emanated I stopped short. I was just there a few feet away from her, frozen to the spot. Babs had nearly sunk to the ground, as if her legs would not hold her. It was the grasp of one of the men that kept her from actually falling. The other airman was closer to me. Somehow I must have mistaken his neatly pressed navy dress slacks for my own father’s leg. I ran up to him and clasped my arms around it, like I always did. And just like always, he bent down and pulled me up into his arms. I felt a moment of pure bliss and complete safety.

  Then I looked into his face. This man wasn’t Tom Hoffman at all.

  “Daddy?” I questioned him, hoping he was wrong.

  “I’m so sorry, little girl,” he said.

  That was all he said. That was all anybody said. Without further explanation, my mother began a hurried packing. Everyone we knew, close friends and mere acquaintances, showed up at our house to get everything into boxes and loaded up on a truck. It was a quiet, subdued atmosphere with lots of effort and almost no laughter.

  Then we were on an unexplained flight back to Texas. It was a military hop from our air base in California to one near my grandparents.

  A sad-looking old man met us as we got off the plane. He seemed a little disappointed that I shied away from him.

  “Of course you remember Grandpa Hoffman,” Babs insisted.

  So I nodded as if I did.

  I didn’t know him at all. And Babs didn’t seem to know him that well, either. Neither he nor my mother had much to say to each other.

  We waited as they unloaded a big box covered in a flag. Two lines of airmen saluted it before they put it in a long black station wagon.

  We got in my grandfather’s pickup truck and drove the long way to their farm in near silence.

  There was nothing quiet about that evening. We had dinner in the Hoffmans’ kitchen. We were interrupted a hundred times by the telephone and people at the door. The house was full of flowers. So many it was kind of sickening. Who could eat fried chicken when all you could smell was mums and gladiolas.

  Babs put me to bed early in the front bedroom. The house was old and creaky and unfamiliar.

  “I’m scared,” I admitted to her.

  She rubbed a hand across my forehead.

  “I’m going to sleep with you in here,” she told me.

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.” She was nodding.

  “I have to talk to your grandma and grandpa for a while and then I’m going to come in here and snuggle up beside you. Would you like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So don’t you go hogging all the bed, ’cause there’s got to be some room for me.”

  “You can sleep right here,” I told her, indicating the mattress right next to me.

  “Okay, that’s where I’ll be,” she said. “But right now, you have to go on to sleep and I have to talk for a while. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She leaned down and kissed me on the end of my nose.

  “It’s just Mama and Laney against the world,” she said.

  She left me then and went into the kitchen. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t really. It felt so early and I heard every noise in the place. I soon became distracted by the raised voices in the back of the house. I was curious. I listened intently, trying to keep up with what they were saying, but I couldn’t. Some people’s voices carried better than others. I could hear my grandmother pretty well and Mom only when she sounded angry. But there were other people talking and I couldn’t make it all out.

  I slipped out of bed and sat down on the floor next to the door. That wasn’t much better. I opened the door. I could hear more. Down at the end of the hallway the light from the kitchen shone in on the floor. As I crawled closer, it became clear that it wasn’t just Babs and my grandparents. Several of my aunts and uncles were in the kitchen, as well. But it’s my mother’s voice that I heard distinctly.

  “I know what I’m talking about,” she said. “None of you have ever been a child who’s lost a parent. I have. I know exactly what it means and how it feels.”

  “She’ll need to say goodbye,” Grandma said. “No matter how painful it is, she’ll need that for the rest of her life.”

  “No.” My mother’s voice was calm, but adamant. “The memory of that body in the coffin will supersede every other memory she has of him. Laney is not going to that funeral, even if I have to stay here with her myself.”

  That sounded good to me. My mother and I would stay together, while these other people went to the funeral. It sounded okay, so I
made my way back to bed. I snuggled up under the covers and fell asleep waiting for her to join me.

  The next day began before I was ready. Babs was sitting at the dresser in her underwear, hooking her hose to her garter belt.

  “Is it time to get dressed?” I asked.

  She turned to smile at me. Even smiling she looked sad.

  “Yeah, you should probably wash up and get dressed,” she said. “I’m going to have to go somewhere this morning.”

  “You’re leaving me here?”

  She nodded. “I’ll only be gone a few hours,” she said. “You’ll stay with Aunt Grace and Aunt Lurlene. And you’ll have lots of cousins to play with.”

  She was right about that.

  My Hoffman cousins were, as Grandma would have said, numerous as ticks on a dog. I didn’t actually know any of them. But as things often are with kids, after only a few minutes I was having a very good time.

  The Hoffman farm had a very strange yard. It was bigger than any I’d been in in California with lots of small buildings and sheds and fences. There were contraptions made with pipe that you could walk on or hang from like a monkey. There were chickens and guineas running loose everywhere. A big old dog lay bored and unconcerned by the back-door step. There were a half-dozen cats in the barn. And an outside water trough with huge goldfish in it.

  Two girls about my age, Cheryl and Nicie, were my immediate playmates. Nicie, Cheryl explained to me, was an “only child,” which meant she had lots more toys than Cheryl. But Cheryl was bossy, so she decided what we would play and which of Nicie’s toys we needed. That seemed okay to me.

  The older kids had all gone with the parents in the cars. So the games that were usually mostly theirs, like “kick the can” and “tag,” could be played by us younger kids without the usual fate of always being IT. We were running and shrieking, laughing, having a great time. We took our turns, each of us chased or were being chased.

  I was standing against a tree catching my breath when Ned, Cheryl’s brother, came up.

  “Do you want to climb that tree?” he asked me.