“Can’t,” Suralee said, scratching her arm. She looked around. “I don’t think we should sit under here. I think there’s chiggers under here.”
“Listen,” I said. “We don’t charge enough! We could charge fifty cents and make so much more money!”
“Nobody’s going to pay fifty cents to see us.”
“That’s not true! I’ll bet we could charge a dollar! It’s live entertainment!”
Suralee looked at me. “How many people came to our last play?”
I shrugged.
“Four? Counting our mothers and Mrs. Gruder?”
“Well, we need to get more people to come, too,” I said. “We need to advertise.”
Now Suralee’s face changed from thinly disguised contempt to interest. “We could,” she said. “We could put up signs all over town. I could make a really nice design.”
“See?” I said. “And we could charge more!”
“No,” Suralee said. “I’ll advertise, but if we charge more, nobody will come.”
I sighed. “The trouble with you is, you don’t dream big enough.”
“I dream big,” Suralee said.
“Not big enough.”
Suralee scratched her arm again. “I’m getting out of here. We can’t be under here.”
“But I was going to make it nice for us! I thought we could write under here.”
“Let’s go and get some ice cream.” Suralee disappeared through the hole.
I sat still for a moment, unwilling to follow her command. She was always issuing commands, and I was always following them. But then I decided she was probably right. First we needed to get more people to come. Then, gradually, we could charge more. It aggravated me, how slow fame was in coming.
On our walk to town, Suralee told me about two boys she wanted me to meet. They were brothers, aged thirteen and fourteen, sons of a woman with whom her mother worked. Suralee had met them last weekend at an office picnic. They were blond, Suralee said. Baseball players. I imagined myself in a skirt and blouse and necklace, sitting beside one of them. “Did you ever hit a home run?” I might ask. You were supposed to ask them about themselves.
When we got to the drugstore, Suralee and I headed first to the magazine rack stationed at the front. We sat cross-legged before it, facing each other, the better to share things we would find in the magazines, new styles we favored. Ads for things we would admit our desire for only to each other: Wigs. Nair. Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie.
Mrs. Beasley shuffled over to us. “How is your dear mother?” she asked in her thin voice. I was obliged to answer—these were, after all, her magazines and we were in her store. But I wondered what Mrs. Beasley was looking for, asking me this question every time I saw her. Was she waiting for some story of high drama to add interest to her own life? Was she waiting for my mother to die?
Mrs. Beasley wore a cardigan over her shoulders even in this heat, and her sweater guard was decorated with little pearls. She seemed to fear things getting away from her; she wore a chain on her glasses, and the pen at the counter used by people to write checks was chained down, too. Suralee, her back to Mrs. Beasley, rolled her eyes and grimaced, but I smiled pleasantly. “She’s fine. She’s going to sunbathe today.”
“That girl always did love her tan. How’s she fixed for baby oil?”
“Okay, I guess. She didn’t ask for any.”
“Iodine?”
“No, ma’am, we’re just here for ice cream cones. Do you have butter pecan today?”
She looked behind her. “I surely do. And I’ll come over to the counter and fix y’all’s cones in just a minute.”
She moved over to Mrs. Quinn, standing with her new baby in the next aisle, and spoke quietly to her. “Well, thank the Lord, that’s a relief. Look yonder, you see Clovis Carter heading out of here all shame-faced?”
Suralee and I rose up to look, too. There was a young black man, accompanied by a white man, leaving the store. They stared straight ahead, not ashamed-looking, it seemed to me, but stony-faced.
“What did he do?” Mrs. Quinn asked. She hiked her baby up higher on her shoulder, held him closer.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Mrs. Beasley said. “He came in here with that white boy and they sat themselves right down at the lunch counter. Clovis sat right next to the widow Henderson, like to give that old woman a heart attack. She left, of course, didn’t even finish her pie. And then they just sat there, even when I asked them nice as can be to please leave. My husband came over and told them they could sit there all day but they wouldn’t get so much as a nod. Still didn’t move. Finally, Sally came out from the kitchen and spoke to them. I think she told Clovis his hanging around would only make trouble for her. Can you imagine, one of his own asking him to leave! Anyway, after almost two hours, well, they’re finally gone.”
“It’s a shame, all these things happening,” Mrs. Quinn said. She shook her head and moved down the aisle, and Mrs. Beasley turned her attention to us.
“Look here, now,” she said quietly, “the new Seventeen just arrived, and I’m going to give y’all a copy. Free of charge.”
Suralee turned around quickly to face her.
“You’ll have to share it,” Mrs. Beasley said, looking pointedly at her. “But I’ve got to ask y’all not to tell my husband I did that. Can you promise me you won’t tell?”
Suralee and I nodded together, and with a sarcasm Mrs. Beasley didn’t grasp, Suralee crossed her heart. Old Mr. Beasley with his hairy knuckles and pee stains and bent back and stale breath and toilet paper stuck to his face every day from cutting himself shaving! Who cared what he said? But we would honor our promise.
Mrs. Beasley had never given us a magazine before, and it seemed to me that her generosity was in direct proportion to her unease about what had happened with Clovis Carter. But I didn’t care—we were getting a new magazine free of charge.
When Shooter began viciously barking outside, we stood and looked out the window. A man we’d never seen before must have tried to pet the dog, and now he was recoiling, hands held up before him, surrender-style. “Whoa! Message received!”
Shooter didn’t bite, but he was not friendly. He lived for Suralee, listened to her exclusively and devotedly. She never put him on a leash, and he followed right behind her and waited outside any place she went in—including school—for as long as it took her to come out. He would doze and snap at flies, stare with intense, tight-muscled concentration at things going by that interested him, but he would never move until she told him to. Most people in town knew him, and they also knew to leave him alone.
The man stepped inside the store, took off his black cowboy hat, and headed for the counter. Mrs. Beasley walked quickly toward him, and Suralee and I exchanged glances. He was very handsome—tall, lean, a nice head of black hair styled in a high pompadour. “Elvis!” Suralee and I said together, and then I smacked her, saying, “Jinx; you owe me a Coke,” before she could. Not that either of us ever delivered on our debt. Both of us had a great interest in Elvis Presley, Suralee for the more common reasons, me for reasons a little less ordinary.
When my mother was a twenty-year-old student nurse, she had cared for Elvis’s mother, Gladys, when Gladys was admitted to the hospital after becoming ill at the Tupelo garment factory where she worked twelve-hour days as a seamstress. Elvis had visited his mother there, and my mother had met him. Gladys had told her son what a sweet girl Paige Dunn was, how much kinder and more intelligent than the other nurses. My mother said she had been a bit tongue-tied in Elvis’s presence—unheard of for someone as fearlessly outspoken as she. It had not been because of his great fame, which had yet to happen, but because of his looks and his smoldering sensuality, even at that young age. She told me he had been very much taken with her, too. “He’s crazy for black hair,” she’d said, “and he loved mine—he touched it. He himself had blond hair—he dyes it, you know. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. And it was more than my hair he liked,
too. I’m sure he’s never forgotten me. I expect I’ll marry him someday.”
She told me this for the first time when I was seven years old, and I believed her. For a few years after that, I told everyone who would listen that my father was going to be Elvis Presley. Oftentimes in the evening, after supper, I would sit out on the porch steps waiting for a baby-blue Cadillac to pull up. How sorry he would feel about what had befallen my mother, how tender! He would swoop her up in his arms and put her and all her machinery in the front seat of the car, and I would sit in the back. On the way to his house, we would sing his songs together and he would comment on my mother’s and my ability to harmonize. I figured he had enough money that surely he could find a doctor somewhere who could heal her. My bedroom in Elvis’s mansion would have my heart’s desire, a canopied bed, and I would be lying in it when my mother, able to walk again, would come in and kiss me good night. “He took so long to come,” I imagined saying, and I imagined my mother answering me, “Never mind. We’re all together, now.” Even after I realized she was kidding about marrying him, I still felt as though my mother—and therefore I—had a special bond with him.
“Elvis” asked for Band-Aids, and Mrs. Beasley directed him to the proper aisle. Then she leaned over the counter to call after him, “I’m Opal Beasley.”
“Dell Hansen,” he said, turning around.
She straightened and stepped back, fingered her top button. “Oh, my goodness, really? Handsome? Well, I guess it fits.” She tilted her head and smiled at him. Her glasses were all crooked, as if it weren’t hopeless enough.
“Hansen,” he said gently, and turned down the aisle.
She rose up on her toes to follow his progress. “Just a bit farther down, on your left-hand side.”
When Dell came back to the counter, he had a high stack of boxes of various-sized Band-Aids.
“My goodness, Mr. Handsome, is there a war on?”
“It’s Hansen,” he said, and I was struck by the mildness with which he told her his name for the third time. My mother grew impatient if she had to repeat something once.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Beasley said, and began to laugh. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right; it does a man good to have a lady pay him a compliment. ’Specially one as good-looking as you.” He turned toward Suralee and me and winked.
Mrs. Beasley pressed her thin lips tightly together, unsuccessfully trying to hold back a smile. “Well, I did have my days,” she said. “I surely did.”
“These Band-Aids are for the hardware store,” Dell said. “We’re all out.”
“You work at the hardware store?” Mrs. Beasley asked, for which I was grateful. It was where Suralee and I were headed next, and now it would be infinitely more interesting to go there.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dell said. “Today’s my first day.”
“Where are you from?” Mrs. Beasley asked, and he told her Odessa, Texas.
“And what brings you here?” she asked.
“Just here doing a favor,” he said. “For a friend.”
“I see.” Mrs. Beasley handed him his change. “Well, welcome to Tupelo.”
He put his hat back on and tipped it. “Thank you kindly.” Just before he pushed out the door, he smiled at Suralee and me. His eyes were an arresting light blue. He had one dimple on the left side. Straight white teeth.
“Kill me dead before I die,” Suralee said.
I swallowed. “Do you still want ice cream?”
“Are you crazy?”
We always got along this way. We understood each other. We started out the door and Mrs. Beasley said, “Don’t you girls want your cones?”
“We’ll be back,” I told her.
“Your Seventeen?” she asked.
Suralee and I looked at each other, and I ran back to the counter. Mrs. Beasley put the magazine in a bag and handed it to me, then put her finger to her lips; her husband was emerging from the back room. I thanked her, then ran outside to join Suralee, who was waiting impatiently.
We quickly crossed the street, Shooter trotting behind us. Debby’s Dress Shop was located next to the hardware store, and I saw Mrs. Black, the owner, standing at the window with her arms crossed, watching us. She was probably afraid we were headed her way, coming in to finger the Ship’n Shore blouses we couldn’t afford but liked to look at anyway. If we tried something on, she always checked for smells, and made no effort to disguise it. When Suralee told Shooter to lie down beside a parking meter in front of the hardware store rather than the dress shop, Mrs. Black gave a fake-friendly wave. Hating myself, I smiled and waved back. I had to. Debby Black had once donated a set of saucepans to us. Most had scorch marks and one was missing screws at the handle, but LaRue fixed it for us.
Inside the hardware store, Suralee and I saw not Dell but Brooks. He was standing by a display of paint cans near the front of the store, dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, shiny navy blue pants, and white socks with his black tie shoes. He was talking to an old colored man; they were laughing about something. “Hey, Diana!” he said in his overly hearty way. Suralee always said he should do used-car ads. Brooks only jutted his chin at her—he always forgot her name.
“Hey,” I said. “This is my friend, Suralee. Remember?”
“’Course I do. What can I do for y’all?”
I looked around the store as though trying to locate what I needed, when in fact I was looking for Dell. Suralee began moving across the heads of the aisles, doing the same thing.
“My mom needs something,” I said, at the same time that Suralee pointed and said, “Right there!”
“Plumbing supplies?” Brooks asked, for that was the aisle Suralee had gone down.
“No, that’s for Suralee’s mom,” I said. “My mom needs you to look at her icebox.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Not keeping things cold.”
“Again?” Brooks looked at his watch. “I can’t leave right now, but I can come by after dinner. Tell her we’ll have a TV date, how’s that?”
I shrugged. She wouldn’t mind his company, but I would. They would talk in low voices and ignore me. Sometimes my mother winked at Brooks. Once, I’d seen him rub her hand. He’d used only two fingers and had moved them along slowly; it had made the back of my neck cold.
“Tell her I’ll be there about seven-thirty, and I’ll bring her a Dairy Queen—doesn’t she like Dairy Queen milk shakes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ll bring her one.”
“I like them, too,” I said. “Especially chocolate.”
“Yeah, I believe that’s your mother’s favorite, too.” He turned again to the colored man. “I’ll tell you what,” he told him. “I ’bout busted a gut, watching old Randy try to throw that ball. Looked like a goddamn girl.”
“Like a girl, you say,” the colored man said, then laughed, a wheezy sound.
I started for the aisle I’d seen Suralee go down and saw her standing at the end of it. She was talking to Dell, her hands loose at her sides, relaxed as if she’d known him forever. “Here she is,” she said when she saw me. Then, when I reached them, “Mr. Dell Hansen, I’d like you to meet Miss Diana Dunn.”
“…Hello,” I said dully, studying the floor. I wanted to look into his eyes and say, “Hi!” brightly, but I couldn’t. The only time I wasn’t shy was when I was in front of an audience. Last year I had run for secretary of the seventh-grade class and had to give a speech in front of the entire student body. I did all right with that but couldn’t handle the one-on-one conversations the candidates were supposed to have in the cafeteria during lunch hour. For two weeks before the election, card tables were set up at the front of the room for the people running for office, and everyone but me chatted easily with kids who’d come up to talk or to ask questions. I’d stared into my lap, afraid to eat lunch or talk, and I lost the election, along with a fair amount of weight. “What’s the matter with you?” Peacie had scold
ed one morning at breakfast. “Way you suck up food, you ought to be busting out of your clothes, not drowning in them.” Of course, as Suralee not unkindly pointed out, I wouldn’t have had a chance to win anyway. She said no one in our school had the vision to see the noses on their face, much less the kind of qualities a good leader needed to possess.
Dell leaned forward to shake my hand. “Diana Dunn. Sounds like a movie star!”
Suralee gasped. “That is exactly what I tell her all the time!”
Suralee had indeed told me this, though only once. But I had to agree. Sometimes I lay in my bed at night whispering, “And now, The Ed Sullivan Show is proud to present…Miss Diana Dunn!!” And then I would say to the audience, “Thank you. Thank you! Oh, aren’t you nice, thank you all!”
“Suralee just invited me to your play,” Dell said.
I looked quickly at Suralee. “You know, the one tomorrow night, in your backyard,” she said smoothly.
“It costs fifty cents,” I said, avoiding eye contact with Suralee.
“Okay if I bring a date?” Dell asked.
“Yes!” we said together. A dollar!
This was it. Things were starting to happen. This was a sign. There was so much for Suralee and me to talk about—most particularly what we were going to do for a play. We always had a few ideas on hand—the latest featured Suralee playing my mother in a garbage-can iron lung—but nothing was ready to present.
“We’d better go,” I told Suralee. There were roles to be decided on, costumes to be designed. Refreshments to be begged from my mother and Peacie. Especially from Peacie. We had a watermelon we might be able to use, but then we would have to follow Peacie’s rules: Eat the flesh, but! save the juice in a bottle to drink; bake the seeds in lard and salt; use the white rind for preserves; keep the green skin for her to feed to her chickens. She loved her chickens, and she named them, every one. She said they could cure things. If you got a wart, you were supposed to prick it with a needle, rub the blood on a kernel of corn, and then feed the corn to one of her “children”—your wart would disappear. She swore by it. Also she swore by placing slices of raw potato on your forehead and securing them with a blue bandanna to get rid of a headache. “Come on,” I told Suralee, pulling her arm.