May 22, 1957
The theme of the prom this year was “Red Sails in the Sunset” and the crepe paper decorations were red and orange. Everybody said Pickle and I looked beautiful. I wish you could have seen Becky Bolden’s face. She was dancing and the pin to her corsage got stuck in her inflatable bra. One side totally collapsed. She screamed like she had been shot, and all her friends rushed over and escorted her to the ladies’ room, pushing everybody out of the way. It was a riot. She never did come back. Patsy Ruth Coggins got sick and couldn’t come to the dance. Pickle made the band play “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” in her honor. After the prom a whole group of us drove down to the beach. The boys brought blankets so we could sit and watch the sun come up. Marion Eugene gave me his senior ring to wear and Mustard gave Pickle his. Pickle must have known because she had adhesive tape in her purse and wrapped it around Mustard’s ring so it would fit. I did mine the same way. That ring must weigh five pounds.
We were eating breakfast over at the hotel when all of a sudden in walked Pickle’s daddy, who picked her up by the arm and said, “OK, young lady, let’s go,” and practically dragged her out the door. We didn’t know what to do. I am sure Pickle was embarrassed to death. Poor Mustard just sat there. He was so furious he was about to cry.
Today Pickle wouldn’t dress out for physical education so I know her daddy had beat the hell out of her. I asked her how he found out where she was and she said she had told him she was spending the night with Patsy Ruth Coggins. He had called there late and Mrs. Coggins told him Patsy Ruth had the flu and nobody was spending the night there. He went to all the motels and hotels looking for her. She said he had sex on his mind.
Today was Kid’s Day, when all the seniors dress as little kids. Lemuel was acting like a real nut and stood up in his seat. His foot went right through it and he couldn’t get out. He was stuck there for about two hours until the janitor came and took the whole desk apart.
We got our school annuals today. Pickle’s photographs were terrible. You can’t tell who is who. Everybody signed my book. Listen to this:
When you get married
And have twenty-five
Don’t call it a family
Call it a tribe
Yours till the pillowcases
Come to trial
(Patsy Ruth Coggins)
Love is a funny thing
It’s shaped like a lizard
It runs down your spine
And tickles your gizzard
(Mustard Smoot)
When you get married
Don’t marry a fool
Marry a boy fro
Magnolia Springs High School
(Mrs. Nathan Willy)
Roses are red
Stems are green
You’ve got a shape
Like a submarine
(Michael Romeo)
When you get married
and live in a tree
Send me a coconut
COD
—and—
When you get married
and have twins
Don’t call on me
For safety pins
—and—
When you get married
And live in a truck
Order your children
From Sears, Roebuck
(Edwina Weeks)
I love to be naughty
I hate to be nice
So I’ll just be naughty
And sign my name twice
(Vernon Mooseburger, Vernon Mooseburger)
First comes love
Then comes marriage
Here comes Daisy
With a baby carriage
(Mudge Faircloth)
When the golden sun is setting
And you lay beneath the sod
May your name be written
In the autograph of God
(Becky Bolden, Sister of Faith)
For my best friend
I love you little
I love you big
I love you like
A little pig
(Pickle Watkins)
One night as I lay on my pillow
One night as I lay on my bed
One night I stuck my feet out the window
The next morning my neighbors were dead
(Lemuel Watkins)
When you get married
And live up a stair
Don’t come to me
For your kitchen chair
(Judy Ashwinder)
Remember M
Remember E
Put them together
And remember ME
(Baby Sister)
Too sweet to be forgotten …
(Miss Philpot)
Sugar is sweet
Salt is strong
My love for you
Is forty miles long
(Marion Eugene)
I just wrote my name, upside down.…
May 29, 1957
Do you know that I failed algebra? On top of that, I failed civics and driver’s education. I didn’t even know I was failing civics. I worked so hard passing Spanish it slipped up on me. They don’t have summer school here. I’m going to have to go to Jackson and stay with my Grandmother Pettibone so I can be a junior with Pickle next year. I could just kill myself. Pickle and I were planning to have so much fun this summer. We were going to get a deep tan and peroxide our hair and everything.
Since I can’t be here this summer, Pickle is going to get a summer job at Elwood’s Variety Store to make some extra money for clothes.
I leave for Jackson next week, and Pickle will accompany me to the bus station. She promised to write every day and tell me what’s happening. We will have a great time next year, I just know it. Juniors have all kinds of privileges and Lem is getting a car. If he lets Pickle borrow it, we can play hookey all the time. I can’t wait.
1958
January 22, 1958
I had been in summer school two months when Pickle stopped writing me. I sent her letter after letter asking what was wrong, but never heard a word. About a month later Patsy Ruth Coggins wrote and told me that Pickle was pregnant.
How Pickle let that happen I will never understand. We were supposed to go to New York together. No matter what, I am getting out of Mississippi as soon as I can. I failed algebra again in summer school.
Daddy and Jimmy Snow and I are living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi now. The man who owned the motel Daddy was running fired him because he rented a room to some colored people and the White Citizens’ Council found out about it and came down and shot out all the windows. Daddy is working in a beer joint here called Jonnie’s, and Jimmy is still crop-dusting whenever he can.
Our apartment house is called Milner Court. My room is a screened-in porch. I hope we move soon.
The school I am going to is Blessed Sacrament Academy, and the catechism teacher, Father Stephens, is driving me crazy trying to get me to become a Catholic. A lot of rich girls go to the school. They are all in sororities and are debutantes. Sally Gamble, whose daddy runs the biggest department store in Jackson, is in my class. I haven’t made any friends, but I don’t want any, I just want to graduate and get out of here.
February 3, 1958
Grandma Pettibone hit the jackpot at bingo and sent me $15.
There is a theater called the Azalea Street Playhouse where they put on live plays a block from where we live, so I went over to buy myself a ticket to see a show. While I was in the lobby, I overheard this man saying that the spotlight worker had gotten mad and quit and they had to have someone for the show that night. I told him I could run a spotlight because my father and grandfather were spotlight workers and had taught me, which was a lie. They never taught me, but it always looked pretty easy to me. The man said great, and for me to be at the theater that night. I got on a bus and went downtown to the Melba Theater where a friend of Daddy’s was working as a projectionist. He got out this old spotlight and taught me how to
work it. I was right, it is easy. All you have to do is point it and turn a knob to make the light bigger or smaller.
After the show that night, the director of the theater, Professor Teasley, came up to the light booth and said I had done a wonderful job. The other person they had couldn’t even find the stage half the time, so I am now the official spotlight worker. They don’t pay anything, but I can see all the shows for free. Everybody says this is the best community theater in Mississippi. I am invited to the cast party next week and my name is going in the program. I am using Fay Harper because it will look better in print. Even if I had the money, I won’t have any time for sororities and stuff. In fact, if I hadn’t promised Momma to finish high school, I would just drop out and become a full-time professional spotlight worker.
February 19, 1958
My new friend Mr. Cecil is a famous hat designer here and is the costume designer for the theater. He’s tall and skinny and has dyed blond hair and is the funniest person I have ever met There are ten young boys that work with him at his hat salon and everyone calls them the Cecilettes. They are a riot. We go out drinking together after the show. Mr. Cecil doesn’t usually like girls, but I am an exception. He thinks I am pretty and he is going to help me dress better and fix my hair. It nearly killed me when he plucked my eyebrows, but I look a lot better.
A lot of people don’t like him, but he is a real tragic figure. When his best friend, who was a hairdresser at Gamble’s Department Store, wanted to go to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras, Mr. Cecil worked for three weeks and designed him a great Snow White costume before he put him on the Greyhound bus. He hasn’t heard from him since, and that was five years ago this February. Every year he goes to New Orleans to look for him. After losing my best friend, I know just how he feels.
I also like Professor Teasley, our director, a lot. He has long white hair and a daughter who is a professional actress in Chicago. The money to build the theater came from his mother, Mrs. Nanny C. Teasley, who is very rich and a little deaf. On opening nights, which is when she comes to the theater, everyone has to scream their lines. She always wears a long black dress and carries a black cane with a solid gold top on it, but you have to be careful, because she likes to hit people in the knee with it Mr. Cecil and I went out to her house the other day. She is having an evening of culture in her front yard for the John Birch Society consisting of a dance and a poetry reading, and she wants him to design the costumes for her and me to run the spotlight. We don’t know when it will be. Mrs. Teasley says the dance is about moon goddesses and we will have to wait for a full moon.
Her house is a big white plantation, right on the water. She showed me the medal she got from the Hattiesburg VFW in 1943, for single-handedly shooting down two enemy planes over the Mississippi Bay. Unfortunately they were both United States weather planes from Pensacola, Florida, but because the pilots hadn’t been killed and she thought they were the enemy, they gave her the medal anyway. Besides, Mr. Cecil says she donates a lot of money to the VFW.
As a hobby she raises crabs. When I saw all those crabs running around, I asked her if she ever got pinched. She said yes, but if you love crabs like she does, they can pinch you and pinch you and you don’t feel a thing.
February 26, 1958
The next play we are doing at the theater is The Crucible which is about witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Mr. Cecil is sick about it, the costumes are so dull. Since they don’t need a spotlight for that play, I am working the light board downstairs.
I took Mr. Cecil over to Jonnie’s bar to meet Daddy and Jimmy Snow and you should have heard what stupid Jimmy Snow said. I told Jimmy Snow that Mr. Cecil was a friend of mine and if he didn’t like him to shut up. What if Mr. Cecil is unusually graceful for a man? He’s a lot nicer than any of Jimmy’s friends and a much better dresser and besides that, he knows all the best people in town.
Yesterday Mr. Cecil took me over to meet a friend of his who is a sculptress and comes from a very rich family, but has been disowned. Her name is Paris Knights. She’s beautiful and uses a black cigarette holder and wears army pants with pearls. She also takes snuff and cusses like a sailor. Paris is very sophisticated if you ask me.
You should see her sculptures. I know what they are, I’m not dumb, hundreds of men’s things of all sizes. The reason she got disowned was because she donated one to the Hattiesburg Museum of Art to be auctioned off at a big Beaux Arts Ball. One of the women on the committee thought she recognized her husband’s thing and threw a martini in Paris’s face and caused a big upset. Paris said the resemblance was just wishful thinking on that woman’s part.
Mr. Cecil told me that when she lived in New York, she had an affair with Marlon Brando. I wonder if one of those things is Marlon Brando’s.
While we were there, Paris served us some wine and a French cheese called Camembert. It is the first foreign food I’ve ever had except Mrs. Romeo’s Italian food and some Chinese food at Joy Pong’s Restaurant.
When Paris asked me if I believed in free love, I didn’t know what to say, so I said yes. She’s had affairs with all kinds of men, including Orientals. She thinks I am at the age where I should be experiencing life. To tell you the truth, I think I’d better wait. I haven’t even gone to bed with an American man yet. She’s looking for an apprentice to help her in her studio, but I don’t feel like handling those sculptures of hers. Maybe Catholic school has made me a prude.
Daddy has a new girlfriend. This one is the worst yet. Jimmy Snow said she couldn’t help being so ugly, but she could at least stay home. I think she just wants free drinks.
March 11, 1958
Tootie, Helen and Dolores are secretaries that work at the theater. Since they all want husbands, I took them over to Daddy’s bar, hoping one of them would like Daddy so he would quit running around with that ugly woman. They didn’t like Daddy, but they thought Jimmy Snow was the cutest thing they had ever seen. Jimmy’s so shy he wouldn’t even talk to them. Tootie did the bunny hop all night and couldn’t go to work the next day she had so many blisters.
I wish Daddy’s bar looked better. The walls are all fake wood and stuffed blowfish and a fishnet hang from the ceiling.
Mr. Cecil and I are writing a funny sketch for the cast party. He plays a witch and I interview him at home just like the TV show Person to Person.
He’s mad at Mrs. Teasley. She called us up at the last minute to say there was going to be a full moon and the costumes for the dancers were only half finished. It really didn’t matter because it wasn’t a full moon after all, and I missed half of the dancers with my spotlight. Nobody told me they were going to use hoops and balls. You should have seen those girls, they were jumping and leaping all over the yard. One girl stepped on some dog stuff and screamed and stopped dancing, but Mrs. Teasley hit her with her cane and made her go back. At the end of the evening everybody read a poem they had written. Mrs. Teasley’s was the best.
Soon it’s gonna rain, soon it’s gonna freeze
Soon it’s gonna blow all the moss off all
the goddamn trees.
March 16, 1958
We did our sketch at the cast party for The Crucible and it went over great. Professor Teasley said I could be in the next play, it’s called Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Mr. Cecil advised me to hold out for a big part. I want the lead, the one Elizabeth Taylor played in the movie, so I am practicing my diction. All you can hear backstage is people saying “Pepsi-Cola, Pepsi-Cola.” I am screaming at least an hour a day to strip my vocal cords so I will have a low voice. Since Jimmy Snow sleeps all afternoon, I have to sneak into the theater through the ladies’ room window and scream there. It must be working because I am hoarse all the time. If the reviews are good, I’ll bet Kay Bob Benson’s mother reads them. She was always bragging about how she read the Hattiesburg Press Register. I got a funny letter from Grandma Pettibone. She isn’t speaking to Aunt Bess since she gave her a party for her sixty-fifth birthday and Aunt Bess got drunk and went up and asked G
randma’s preacher if he knew where she could get some birth control pills.
March 21, 1958
Professor Teasley assigned the parts in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof today. He says there are no small parts, just small actresses. I think he is dead wrong! Playing the part of a colored maid with only one line, “Storm’s a-coming,” is a small part no matter what. I have already bought Daddy and Jimmy Snow tickets for opening night. I should have waited. I had more lines as Mother Goose. According to Mr. Cecil, stars start out with small roles. When I asked him to name one, he thought a long time and then said Ann Sothern, but I think he is lying.
April 6, 1958
There is a scene in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof where the head maid and the other servants bring in a birthday cake and everybody sings “Happy Birthday” to Big Daddy. I hadn’t thought about it before, but on opening night it seemed perfectly reasonable to me a maid would sing along with the family. After all, I was a house maid, not a field hand! At intermission Professor Teasley flew backstage and demanded I get out of my costume because I was no longer in the play. He said I ruined opening night, that maids don’t sing “Happy Birthday” and throw kisses and scream, “I love you, Big Daddy.” Evidently I was the only one the audience heard. I was just trying to be loud for his deaf mother, that’s all. What is the matter with improvising? All the people at the Actors Studio in New York do it. Paris Knights, who was there, thought it gave the play an interesting twist and made it look like Big Daddy was having a hot affair with one of the colored maids. Thank God, Daddy and Jimmy Snow didn’t show up!
I am back doing lights for the next play and does it stink! It is an original written by some woman in Jackson named Mrs. Mamie Kole Stafford, called I Heard a Cry of Despair from the Bougainvillaea. The play takes place in Macon, Georgia, on the hottest day of the year. Here’s page 1: