Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (3 page)

Momma let me quit when I ruined all her hardwood floors practicing my shuffleball chain. Besides, Neva Jean said I was holding the whole class back. The only fun I ever had in that dance class was the day when Buster Sessions showed up in tap shoes that were too big for him. He is a real sissy and when his momma came to see him in the class, he got to tapping so fast, showing off, that one of his shoes flew off and hit the piano player, Mrs. Vella Fussel, in the back. Buster’s mother wasn’t even looking. She was sitting there in a fold-up chair, chewing a whole pack of Juicy Fruit gum and reading
Screen Secrets
.

Daddy and I bought a record of Mario Lanza singing “Because of You,” as a surprise, and I learned the whole thing for Momma’s birthday. When she had some of her girlfriends over, Daddy put me in one of his jackets and a tie and painted a mustache on my face. He announced me and I came in the room and sang “Because of You” as loud as I could. Momma suggested maybe I should learn one of Patti Page’s hits.

She was expecting a Mixmaster for her birthday, but Daddy got her a pair of expensive toenail clippers instead. I got her some Coty toilet water with sachet powder and two giant tubes
of Colgate toothpaste and some Palmolive shaving cream for her legs. She tried to pretend she liked what I got her, but I know she didn’t. I’m too young to buy a Mixmaster and I don’t even know where they sell them.

What I can’t figure out is, Felix is a calico cat and her kittens are black and white and real ugly.

Well, you are not going to believe what happened. Daddy froze five cartons of English red worms and when we thawed them out, they were all dead as door nails! Nobody is going to buy dead English red worms. Rats! The only other way Daddy could get that $500 is to ask his daddy to loan it to him, but Grandfather Harper won’t do it because he is mad at Daddy and is never going to speak to him again as long as he lives.

My granddaddy, Blondie Harper, is pretty well known around Jackson. When they used to have stage shows here, he ran the spotlight at the Pantages Theater. He was mean and if he didn’t like someone’s act, he would holler at them and turn the spotlight off. People used to come to the theater just to hear what he would yell at the Yankee comedians.

When Granddaddy first started the stagehands’ union in Mississippi, he put stink bombs in theaters where they didn’t want the unions, and that is why he is president of the stagehands’ union to this day.

He never liked my daddy from the beginning. He thought Daddy was too little and skinny, and worse, he wore glasses and did bird imitations. Grandpa thinks he is a sissy, which he isn’t.

Grandpa bought me a blue suede cowgirl outfit with white
leather trim and boots to match, so he’s all right in my book, but I feel sorry for Daddy. Grandpa calls Daddy a bad husband and father and all kinds of ugly things just because he happened to see him talking to a woman at Dr. Gus’s Beer Joint. Daddy explained that he was simply talking union business. Grandpa said there weren’t any women in the union. Daddy said that was exactly what he had been talking about at the time. If things weren’t bad enough already, last week he had to go and put a whiz bomb in Grandpa’s car.

I’ll miss not seeing my Grandpa and Grandma Harper. I used to love to go see Momma Harper, because she and Aunt Helen would let me open their Miller High Life beers for them and have a sip.

My Aunt Helen is real pretty. As a little girl, she used to sleep with her arms folded like an angel, so if she died in the middle of the night, she would look beautiful. She doesn’t like Daddy, either, because he put her boyfriend’s picture on the back of the toilet seat once.

Momma still doesn’t want to move to Shell Beach, but Daddy says that since nobody in her family or his family is speaking to him, we wouldn’t be all that happy in Jackson anyway.

The only good thing that happened was that last night my dog, named Lassie, ate Momma’s roast beef right off the table and we had to go out for supper so I got to see my Aunt Bess, who runs the Irondale Café across town. She’s about sixty-five years old and has never been married. She told me that they may put “Miss” on her tombstone, but that she hasn’t missed a thing.

She is Grandma Pettibone’s sister. Her café is great. It is right by the railroad tracks and most of her customers are railroad men. The food is good, too. She has five colored ladies that work for her and they cook biscuits, turnip greens and pork chops. Aunt Bess even has possum listed on her menu. Momma said it was only a joke or she hoped it was.

When Aunt Bess was twenty, her daddy looked at her and knew she was never going to get married like her other sisters, so he gave her enough money to start a business. She opened
a barbershop, but sold that. Then she and her friend Sue Lovells started the Irondale Café. It is very successful.

All of the Pettibones are Methodist and hit the church every time the doors open. They get upset with Aunt Bess because she won’t go with them. She loves to fish and one time when my grandmother was having one of her bingo parties at home, Aunt Bess, who was drinking, drove up to her house with a string of dead trout hanging out the side of the car. George, the colored man that she takes with her, was sitting right beside her in the front seat

Aunt Bess is getting rich because all the old railroad men die and leave her their money. Most of them are bachelors and love Aunt Bess. But she gives it all away.

The café has gunshot holes all over the floor and ceiling from when Aunt Bess plays poker with the railroad men after she closes. They get to drinking and pretty soon there’s a fight Aunt Bess watches until she thinks it has gone on long enough, then she shoots off her gun.

Aunt Bess likes Daddy—thank goodness! The other night she kept slipping him Wild Turkey whiskey in a paper cup and it made Momma mad. Momma is real proper and hates it when Daddy has a good time. She put me in Catholic school because she thought it would make up for having Daddy for a daddy. Everybody says he is a bad influence on me.

Daddy won’t let me be baptized a Catholic, but those nuns are having a good time trying. I have a lot of holy cards and get lots of attention because they think I’m going to hell. I like the nuns very much, all except Sister Plasida.

I have two boyfriends, Dwane Crawford and Luther Willis. Luther wears bow ties. When we had our fifth-grade dance, Luther and I were dancing to “The Tennessee Waltz” and Sister Plasida came over and took me into the hall and tried to wipe the lipstick and rouge off of me, which I wasn’t even wearing. Momma, who was there in the PTA group, came in and told her not to do that because when I got excited, I had natural coloring.

I don’t like catechism too much either. Daddy was the one
that told me that the Epistles were the wives of the Apostles. That old priest went all funny when I asked him if Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ girlfriend. He doesn’t want you to ask questions at all.

I am a second-year Brownie. I got a first-aid badge that really comes in handy. One time after school, Jimmy Lee got hit by a car and was bleeding all over the place. I remembered what to do. I sat down and put my head between my knees to keep from fainting.

Once a colored man was in a wreck in front of my grandmother’s house and had his ear cut off. When the ambulance came, they said to my grandmother, “We can’t take him, you’ll have to call a colored ambulance.” Can you believe that they wouldn’t help him with his ear? Boy, were we mad. Daddy said things were pretty bad when rednecks were in the medical profession.

I personally don’t trust any of them as far as I can throw a gum wrapper, especially after the time Dr. Clyde told Momma that my tonsils would have to come out and that it would be a snap. He talked all about the ice cream I could eat and what fun it would be, and Momma took me to the Rexall and bought me a Sparkle Plenty doll.

When I got to the hospital, Dr. Clyde promised me my momma and daddy would be with me the whole time. Then they put me on this table and rolled me down the hall. I was OK until we got to these two big screen doors and my momma and daddy were told they would have to wait outside. I sat right up when I heard that. Momma and Daddy were looking scared, but those people at the hospital rolled me in the room alone and closed the doors.

Then some other people with masks started fooling around and even tried to take my Sparkle Plenty doll away. They asked if I was Catholic, which made me real nervous before an operation, and then they put this strainer on my face and tried to kill me with ether, one of the worst-smelling things I have ever smelled in my life.

When I heard a commotion outside the door, I tried to get up, but five against a little child is not fair. It was the worst
experience of my life. I heard bells, sirens, and saw terrible things. I dreamed a story about a magician with a magic stick that scared me to death.

I found out later that as I was being rolled into the operating room Momma turned to say something to Daddy, but Daddy had run down to the end of the hall and shut himself into a telephone booth. Some doctors got him out and gave him a shot, he was so upset. I love him, but Daddy isn’t much help in a real-life crisis.

Don’t ever let them fool you with that ice cream stuff. I couldn’t even taste it and didn’t want it, to boot. After I got my strength back, I opened up the head of my Sparkle Plenty doll and pulled the eyes out.

Grandma Pettibone came over to the hospital and fanned me with a bingo card and I got to miss school, but other than that, the hospital was the pits.

Jimmy Snow called Daddy and asked if he had the $500 yet. I got to talk to him, and he sounds very nice. Daddy has decided to try and get on
I’ve Got a Secret
to win the money. Boy, you should hear some of the secrets he has come up with so far. When Momma told him the secrets have to be true, he put me in training for
Beat the Clock
. He thinks I can beat the clock because I am very well coordinated. Nobody has the heart to tell him they don’t let children on the show.

Momma took me to the doctor again today, but I was just overheated because Daddy made me push the car a couple of blocks.

Life is not much fun. Momma is watching me like a hawk. She has taken me to the doctor four times this past month thinking I have polio. She won’t let me go swimming or to the movies and she won’t even let me eat a Popsicle because someone told her that the little colored boys take the wrappers off and lick them before they sell them.

Daddy sneaked me a grape Popsicle the other day, but it turned my lips purple and she found out. That’s what you get when you have fair skin.

Grandmother Pettibone’s neighbor’s little boy got polio and is in an iron lung. His daddy had his head chopped off by the Japanese in the war. I can’t do my imitation of the little crippled match girl anymore. I better not get polio. My momma would have a fit.

Daddy had to promise Momma he would stop drinking so much after he got drunk at work and put the movie on backwards. Now all Daddy drinks is Hadacol to build up his blood. He drinks it all day. I don’t know how he can stand it It tastes like swamp water. I hope Daddy gets his $500 soon, and we can move.

I hate Rose Mary Salvage. She stole my best friend, Jennifer May, by telling her she had a lot of information about the facts of life. I ask you just how much can you know in the fifth grade, even if you are an Italian?

As for me, Momma says for me not to listen to any facts of life and if I do hear some not to believe them. Besides, I am not interested after seeing those kittens born. I think I’d be better off not knowing.

I ran into my Granddaddy Harper downtown the other day. He was standing in front of the pawnshop, talking to some of his friends. When he saw me, he called me over and asked me how I was and gave me $5. When he saw Daddy come around the corner, he just looked at him and said, “Nuts to you, bub,” and went on down the street.

I bought myself a Davy Crockett hat and a Gorgeous George paper doll book and a lot of jewelry from Woolworth’s.

Momma says she is convinced I have Indian blood because I like colored beads so much, but I think I get it from my Grandmother
Pettibone. She has tons of colored beads. I would give anything to have her yellow crystal beads and her multicolored stone earrings.

Grandma Harper has two green bottles shaped like women with black hair painted on their heads and a yellow glass colored captain’s hat that she keeps her face powder in that I want, too, and a picture of a naked girl in a swing, swinging way up in the air over castles in a blue sky.

I don’t know why I want those things. I just do.

Last night was the night of the biggest bingo game in town. The East Lake VFW was giving away $500 for the jackpot. Momma was a nervous wreck all day. Daddy was trying to figure out a way to cheat and was making fake bingo cards in the basement. She kept telling him there was no way to cheat at bingo and even if there was, she wouldn’t do it, because she was the mother of a small child and had no intentions of going to jail in disgrace.

Finally, Momma sent him over to the Wagon Wheel to have a few beers. That was the first time she ever told him to go for a drink. He was out the door in jig time, then she grabbed me and braided my hair so tight I had a headache.

She wouldn’t let me pull the cord on the streetcar, even though we were an hour early. She took me to the Rexall and bought me a June Allyson and Van Johnson coloring book, a Little Audrey comic book and a Casper the Friendly Ghost coloring book, so I would be plenty busy and leave her alone.

The East Lake VFW Bingo Hall has big blue neon VFW
letters out front and hundreds of yellow faded pictures of soldiers all over the wall, and lots of flags. They are very patriotic. Everybody was at the bingo game early, trying to get a good seat.

The Catholic women showed up and some people from the American Legion bingo parties came and they don’t even like the VFW people. We got a seat and saved Grandma a bingo table. Everybody was carrying on about what they were going to do with that $500 if they won it.