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Billie also liked to think it was her daddy who picked out her name. She imagined him thinking about all the stars he’d performed with, then choosing the most beautiful, most talented of all, the great jazz singer, Billie Holiday.
Once when Billie had asked Lucy’s mama about the Saint, she’d said, “He dropped from the American jazz scene,” then went back to feeding her husband’s Sunday shirt through the washing machine wringer. Billie liked to think of her daddy traveling around Europe playing his silver trumpet.
Celebrities don’t have time for ordinary lives. Why, some of them hardly know their kids. Billie didn’t know any of them personally, but she kept up by reading Modern Screen magazine in Curl Up ‘n Dye, the beauty shop where Lucy’s mama did the shampoos and swept up the fallen hair.
Billie used to hope her daddy would send a birthday card, but she got over it last year. You can’t just spend your time crying over spilled milk. Queen said that all the time.
The only thing her mama ever shared about her daddy was this bus. It had been on Billie’s fifth birthday.
“Back when I was singing with the Saint and his band, we used to travel in this bus,” her mama said. Then they all piled in, Mama at the wheel, Billie riding shotgun and Queen with a big basket of fried chicken. They drove to the Tombigbee River where they swam till their arms got too tired to lift. Afterward, they spread the picnic on Queen’s quilt called Around the World, and ate till Queen said they would all grow feathers and start clucking if they didn’t pack up and go home.
When the bus wore out, her mama was going to get rid of it, but Billie had a conniption fit, and Betty Jewel built a shed out behind the house so the bus wouldn’t be an eyesore. She called it her potting shed and Queen called it her henhouse. Billie made her leave the roof off the front end on account of the clever rooftop patio her daddy had devised on the bus. He had built the ladder with his own hands and added a shiny brass railing around the top.
Though the railing would never shine again, Billie kept it polished. It was the least she could do.
Billie ate till every last piece of Queen’s fried chicken was gone, then she set in to eating fried pies. A curtain of darkness dropped around her, but Billie wasn’t scared. She wasn’t scared of anything except her mama dying.
She was probably in the house right this very minute asking the Good Lord to make her well again. Billie would like to know what was good about Somebody who’d let her mama die. If He was in charge of things, how come nice people got cancer while folks like Miz Quana Belle’s daddy lived to do their meanness till they got so old they didn’t have teeth? He drank hard liquor and robbed gas stations. How come God didn’t strike him down?
Billie couldn’t ask Queen about such stuff or she’d get the business end of her willow switch.
There was nobody she could ask. Except maybe her daddy. If she ever found him.
Billie just knew the Saint would come back and live with them and pay a fancy doctor to make her mama well and they would all be a family, especially when she proved that she wouldn’t be a bit of trouble. She could cook, and she’d learn to do his laundry.
She could even polish his silver trumpet. And maybe, if she was really a good girl and didn’t tell lies, he’d let her play it. Maybe he’d buy her a silver trumpet, then they’d sit under a sky hole-punched with a billion stars and send a blues duet up to a moon so awesome it felt like God watching. It felt like being on top of the world.
Betty Jewel would never have let her daughter find out the truth from listening at keyholes, but now that it had happened she didn’t have to pretend anymore that she was going to live. Somehow that was a relief to her. She was so tired. She was tired of pretending everything was going to be all right, tired of getting out of bed in the morning, tired of trying to live up to everybody’s expectations.
You’re not dying!
That was Billie’s expectation, and it was so fierce Betty Jewel worried that when she actually did die her daughter was going to do something crazy, such as run away from home. Nobody knew whether Saint was still in prison or God knows where, but Billie might find out about his family up in Chicago, everyone of them crazy as Betsy bugs and that sister of his—that Jezzie—mean as a yard dog.
Drawing her crocheted shawl about her, Betty Jewel walked to the window. The old bus looked like a hulking animal, something extinct, a dinosaur. When her eyes adjusted, she could make out the slight figure of her daughter perched on top, a little brown sparrow getting ready to fly.
“Baby?” She turned from the window to see Queen standing in the doorway, her face shrunken as a dried-up apple. Betty Jewel’s cancer had sucked the regal and the jovial right out of her.
“Did she eat, Mama?”
“She done got that plate I took out. But she settin’ up there like she don’ never inten’ to come down.”
“Don’t worry. Billie’s got a head full of sense.”
Queen stood in the door way till she couldn’t bear the view any longer. And who could blame her? The disease had eaten away so much of Betty Jewel she looked like a one-dimensional cardboard copy of her former self.
Her old house slippers dragging on the linoleum, Queen shuffled off singing, her way of trying to make bad things good. Always she picked a spiritual or one of the gospels. She’d belt them out, too, though it had been twenty years since she’d had the voice for the soaring solos she used to perform in church. Tonight she was singing, “Somebody’s Knockin’ at Yo Door.”
Death, that’s who was knocking. Still, Queen’s expectations were softer and easier to bear than Billie’s. Lord, chile, I ain’t seein’ no way I can carry on without you. You gone have to hang on a mite longer.
Queen was eighty, the age where death could come without warning. She was at least twenty years older than you’d expect Betty Jewel’s mama to be. But she’d been the last of Queen’s twelve children and the only one to survive. Since they’d found out the cancer was too far gone, Queen had told Betty Jewel the only reason she was still living was so she could help take care of Billie awhile longer.
Till you finds somebody, honey. You gotta find somebody to raise that chile. Saint ain’t fittin’.
Betty Jewel shivered so hard her teeth knocked together. Ain’t fittin’ wouldn’t begin to describe the reasons she’d sell her soul to the devil before she’d let Saint Hughes get his hands on Billie.
Saint and his devil ways got into her head as bad as they had the day she’d flown off the handle and taken out that pitiful newspaper ad. Lord, what had she been thinking?
Desperate. Nowhere to turn.
She was desperate, all right, but she’d chop off both her legs before she’d put her child in the hands of strangers. What she needed was some of Queen’s divine intervention. But miracles were hard to come by in Shakerag.
“Please, God …”
Her head was pounding, so heavy with despair and secrets she didn’t know if she could ever lift it again. Or was the pounding at the door?
Before Betty Jewel could get out of her chair, Merry Lynn and Sudie barged in, Merry Lynn leading the way, waving The Bugle like it was a red flag and she was searching for the bull.
“Betty Jewel, what is this?” Sudie cried.
“My, God. You’re trying to give Billie away like a stray cat!” Merry Lynn flung the newspaper onto the couch and sank down beside it. The aroma of barbecue that always clung to her almost overpowered her Evening in Paris perfume. “Are you out of your mind?”
Betty Jewel had asked herself the same thing a million times. In the light of Merry Lynn’s rage and Sudie’s look that said We’re going to have a come-to-Jesus talk, Betty Jewel’s reasons for the ad drained of all plausibility—Queen losing her health, Sudie’s husband, Wayne, losing his job and Sudie sitting on Betty Jewel’s front porch, crying a river of fear, and Saint … Lord Jesus, the idea of Saint’s sorry ass in charge of Billie was enough to drive anybody crazy.
“Not yet, Merry Lynn. I think the cancer likes to get beauty before brains.”
“That’s not funny, missy!”
“Both of you just hush up. There’s no need for any of this.” Sudie’s quiet voice reminded Betty Jewel of the hymn, “There is a Balm in Gilead.” In her white blouse that always smelled of starch and sunshine, she might be one of God’s earth angels, a placid, plain woman put down in Shakerag to keep volatile, broken-to-pieces Merry Lynn from self-destructing and to ease the storm-tossed mind of a dying woman who didn’t know where to turn. “God forbid Betty Jewel’s name is called, but if it is, I’ll help Queen raise Billie like she was one of my own.”
“What makes you think you’d be better than me? Good God, Sudie, you’ve got seven kids already.”
Betty Jewel wrapped her hand around the harmonica in her pocket and held on. Two years ago this kind of sparring would have had all three of them laughing so hard they’d have to hold on to each other for support. Today she couldn’t unearth normal if she got a spade and dug all the way to China.
“I can count, Merry Lynn,” Sudie said. “And if Queen hears you taking the Lord’s name in vain, she’ll whip your sassy butt with a willow switch.”
“Queen knows I don’t have any truck with the Almighty. If He’s watching over His children, why was my Alice murdered? How come somebody took her off to the woods and did those unspeakable things, those …” Merry Lynn covered her face with her hands, a mother whose sorrow was so deep she’d mired in it years ago and never found her way out.
“If you start bawling in front of Betty Jewel in her condition, I’m gonna be the one whipping your tail.”
“What condition?” In one of those mercurial changes she was famous for, Merry Lynn wiped her tears and turned her fierce attention to Sudie.
Betty Jewel held on to the harmonica. It was time for a come-to-Jesus meeting of her own.
“I’m dying, Merry Lynn.” Betty Jewel lifted her chin a notch and dared her to deny it. “And it’s high time you face it.” She didn’t miss the way Sudie put on her mask of denial. “You, too, Sudie.”
“There’s going to be a miracle.” When it came to faith, Sudie was just one notch below Queen.
“Lord knows, Queen’s prayed hard enough. But if my mama can’t call down a miracle, nobody can.”
“Shut up! Both of you just shut up!” Merry Lynn sprang off the couch, lean and wild and fierce, a black alley cat with claws bared. “You’re not going to die. I can’t stand any more dying!”
Making soothing noises the way you would to a baby screaming with nightmares, Sudie put her arms around Merry Lynn. “Of course, she’s not going to die. She’s going to get better, that’s all. We’ll find a doctor up in Memphis.”
If they’d just let Betty Jewel talk about it. If they’d just quit denying the truth that had been staring them in the face since Christmas. She was so weak she’d had to quit her cleaning job at the Holiday Inn, and her blue dress didn’t touch her anywhere now except the shoulders. She looked like a willow twig wearing a pillowcase.
And cold. Lord, she was cold all the time. While Sudie waged a battle to save Merry Lynn’s sanity, Betty Jewel sank into a rocking chair, pulled Queen’s hand-knit afghan over her knees and listened to her mama in the kitchen taking refuge in the old hymns—“Rock of Ages” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
Betty Jewel wished she could fly away. She’d fly backward to a time when she had it all—her health, her future. Love.
Thinking about what might have been hurt so bad she turned her focus elsewhere. The clock. She could hear the too-loud ticking of the big mahogany clock Queen kept on top of the TV.
And the sound of Merry Lynn’s sobs. She was crying quietly now, saying, “I can’t stand it,” over and over.
“It’s all right. I’m taking you home.” Sudie herded Merry Lynn toward the door. “Betty Jewel, you rest up, then you call in a retraction to that stupid ad. And if you don’t, I will. If anybody has to take Billie, it’s gonna be me. You hear me now?”
“Loud and clear, Boss.”
In spite of the fact that plain, petite Sudie looked as if she wouldn’t say boo to a cat, she’d always been the leader in their circle. The three B’s, they’d called themselves—brains, Betty Jewel; beauty, Merry Lynn and boss, Sudie. They let themselves out, and Betty Jewel thought she ought to get up and check on Billie, but she didn’t have the strength to walk to the window. Snatches of her mama’s song floated down the hall. Queen was singing “Dwelling in Beulah Land” now, an old hymn that promised the downtrodden some blessed relief.
What relief was there when your meager savings were running out and the only income you had was from the three people in Shakerag who could afford piano lessons and the pies your ancient mama sold at Tiny Jim’s?
Betty Jewel leaned her head back, drifting on the melody to a better time, a sweeter place.
Suddenly the phone rang, jerking Betty Jewel upright.
Queen hollered from down the hall. “You want me to get that, baby?”
“I’ll get it, Mama.” The afghan slid to the floor, but Betty Jewel didn’t stop to pick it up for fear she’d miss the caller. The phone was perched on a faux maple telephone table by the couch. She was so out of breath when she got there she could barely speak.
“Betty Jewel?”
“Oh, my god.”
“Betty Jewel, is that you?”
She should tell him, No. She should jerk the phone jack out of the wall, then sit back down in her rocking chair and pretend that Saint Hughes was not on the other end of the line, his voice as seductive as dark honey drizzled over yeast-rising bread.
But he was there waiting, and suddenly she was faced with a new horror. He wanted something from her, and he wouldn’t give up. He’d keep calling and calling, and maybe get Billie. And then … She couldn’t let her mind go there.
“What do you want?” She didn’t dare say his name, didn’t dare chance that Queen would hear.
“I want to talk, that’s all. Just talk.”
Betty Jewel’s worst nightmare was coming true. The Saint was trying to weasel back into her life, and she was plunged into a new kind of hell. In the kitchen Queen was singing “Amazing Grace,” but all Betty Jewel could think about was taking a gun and blowing Saint to Kingdom Come.
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Well, I got plenty to say to you. You still my wife.”
“Are you insane? You were so drunk the day I left it took you two weeks to notice I was gone.”
“It’s all gonna be different now.”
“Are you out of prison? Lord have mercy, tell me they didn’t let your low-down hide out of jail.”
“Got out last week. I can’t wait to be with you.”
“I’d rather eat cow shit. Where are you?”
“Memphis.” It was too close, only a hundred miles away. Betty Jewel thought she might faint. “I’m fixing to make a comeback. I’m putting together another band, found some great guys on Beale Street. I want you to sing the lead.”
“I’m not ever singing with you again. You hear me? Not ever.”
“Aw, Betty Jewel. Don’t be like that.”
She heard the oven door slam shut, knew the pies Queen was making for Tiny Jim were cooking, knew her mama would be washing the dough off her hands and would soon be coming to the den to stretch out on the flowered chintz couch and watch Milton Berle on Texaco Star Theater.
“Can you hold on a minute?” Betty Jewel eased the door shut. When she picked up the receiver, her hands were trembling so hard she nearly dropped it. “You stay away from here. I mean it.”
“We were good together, sugah.”
In more ways than one. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up anymore, and she sank onto the arm of the old couch. “Don’t you sugar me. You couldn’t pay me enough money to sing with you.”
“You and me, we got a little girl. What’s she like?”
Betty Jewel bit her lip so hard she brought blood. If she screamed, Queen would come running. And Billie. Tiny Jim would have told Saint about Billie. Musicians stick together. “Don’t you ever call here again. You hear me? If you dare show your face around here, I’ll have you arrested. I’ll say you’re trying to sell me cocaine.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
She heard Queen’s slow shuffle in the hall. “I swear on a stack of Bibles.” Betty Jewel hoped God was not listening. She hoped Queen was not. She’d wash her mouth out with soap, and her a dying woman. “If the cops don’t get you, I’ll shoot you myself.”
She slammed the receiver down and made it back to the rocking chair, but all she could think of was Saint coming to get Billie and Sudie trying to fend him off.
“Pies’ll be ready in twenny minnits.” The old couch springs groaned under Queen’s weight. “Lord, my feets is killin’ me.”
Years ago when Betty Jewel left Shakerag, who would have believed it would all turn out this way—Queen getting ready to bury her only living child, Billie searching for the truth through keyholes, the Saint resurrected from the awful past, and her sitting in a maple rocking chair with cancer cells eating her alive.
But then what twenty-year-old ever imagines herself dying right at the height of middle age—or any age, for that matter—when all she had on her mind was a man who was fixing to set the world on fire? That was the Saint. Lord, that man was the most dazzling person she’d ever laid eyes on, him all dressed in white up on that stage at Blind Willie Jefferson’s juke joint in the Delta, the lights turning him red and blue and green. Like Christmas tree lights. Like one of those chameleons you’d never guess from one minute to the next what color he was going to turn.
Saint Hughes. With his silver tongue and his silver trumpet. When he put that horn to his lips and commenced playing, she’d swear the angels wept. And when he started in on her with his glib talk, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him, including throw away her college education and her blossoming singing career and say I do to whatever he asked.
The wedding dress he bought her was white silk. The real thing, he’d said. It wasn’t till years later she’d learned it was cheap imitation.
Her ring came from a Cracker Jack box. By the time she’d met him, the once-great jazz legend was already on the skids.
“Someday I’ll get you a ring with diamonds big as golf balls,” he’d said, and Lord help her, she’d believed him.
She’d believed everything he told her back in those days, including that he was going to reclaim his fame and be rich. It wasn’t riches she cared about, though, but the dazzling future he promised.
