God Save the Sweet Potato Queens (19 page)

I went back to speak to Winston and he was asking the doctors how long all this was going to take—how long would he be here? They told him about five days. Five days? He’d still been counting on a few more drinks and dinner, it seems. I told him that I would find Bill, and then Bill and I would call Winston’s wife, Barbara, and explain to her why he was going to be five days later than anticipated getting home. They’re wheeling him off down the hall and he’s hollering back at me, “Well, dammit, I want a rain check!” The medical personnel had not previously had any heart attack victims quite like Winston.

Now, I go out to the phone in the ER and try to track down Bill. I get his answering service. The little girl on the phone tells me that Mr. Hollingsworth is in a meeting at the moment and cannot be disturbed. I politely informed her that I didn’t care where he was or who he was with or what they were doing, this was a freaking emergency. Find him, I demanded, and tell him that Jill is on the phone and she’s calling from the emergency room, and I promised her that he would want this information. I was so right. He dove into his car and called me on the fly—literally, I think he was airborne. When I told him what had happened, he immediately accused me of having induced this heart attack. “You were in bed with him, weren’t you? And now you’ve killed him, you ho!” He’s just laughing and hollering about how he knew if he was five minutes late, something like this would happen, and how he had to watch us every second and be there constantly to keep me from running off and making time with “the Brown.”

Everybody in the ER is listening with rapt attention to this conversation; they only need to hear my half of it to deduce what is being said on the other end. Except they don’t know it’s all a long-running joke, and they are looking at me like I am, in fact, a ho, and a mean one at that. Through clenched teeth, I tell him that I can’t really play right now; just get down here so we can call Barbara. He makes the forty-five-minute drive in about eleven minutes, I think, and by the time we’d called Barbara, they had stopped Winston’s heart attack, and we got to go in and play with him in Intensive Care. We were all so scared and so relieved and so happy to have one another to hold on to, we carried on scandalously in the ICU. The two of them were doing their same shtick pretending to fight over me, and the nurses were wide-eyed. I told one I bet most people who came there to have heart attacks didn’t have this much fun, and she allowed as how that was the pure truth. We never did explain to any of them who was who, and when Barbara arrived, they were even more confused. Bill and I went on off and had dinner and I, for one, had several drinks. I did my book signing the next day and Bill and I pretty much spent the weekend in and out of the hospital visiting Winston, who never looked better in his life. And a few days later they sent him home from the hospital. He died that very night.

The grief was—and is—staggering, stunning. I go out to the cemetery. He’s buried in Jackson next to his father. There’s no headstone on Winston’s grave yet, just a marker with his name on it. It looks so out of place there. I’m most accustomed to seeing that name written over and over on my high-school binders, preceded usually by “I love.” There is a marker flush with the ground in front of Winston’s grave that bears the name “Humphrey,” and I sit on Humphrey and talk to Winston. Quite often, I lie down on Humphrey and look up at the sky above Winston, which is sometimes, but not often, the color of his eyes. I am overcome by the knowledge that he’s almost directly below me such a short distance. From this distance, if he were across from me, I could see his laugh lines and extend my hand to touch his face, but he’s not across from me, he’s beneath me and he’s in a box. I saw him in that terrible box before they took him away to bring him here. I combed his hair; it was parted wrong. I kissed his face, his hands. I all but crawled in that damned box with him. And I cried from a place so deep inside my soul, I never knew it was there before. As I lie on his grave and contemplate the nearness of his body, I know that it is only that, his body. It is the body Winston lived in—the part of him that I could see and touch and feel and hear and smell and taste—and I know that the stuff that was in that body that made him Winston is not in that box, but it is gone from me, and that’s the stuff I am lost without.

And then, a few months later, Willie Morris—one of the South’s, the country’s, most treasured writers, much-loved husband of my precious friend and editor, JoAnne, father of my friend David Rae, friend to untold numbers of people in all walks of life, mentor to me, and surrogate grandfather to my daughter, Bailey—I don’t know how anybody so important to so many people could do such a thing, but he did: He upped and died on us. He was fine when he woke up that morning, got to feeling real bad all of a sudden, went to the hospital—laughing and joking with all the nurses in grand Willie style, inviting them all to the premier of the movie made of his book
My Dog Skip,
and introducing JoAnne to them all as “the best wife I ever had”—and they took him off down a hall and he just died. Well, he didn’t die immediately; he was in a coma, but they said he couldn’t survive, it was only a matter of hours. JoAnne called a few of us and the word spread quickly. Within minutes it was on TV that Willie Morris had suffered a massive heart attack.

And as long as I live, I’ll never forget that day and the beautiful, generous, truly loving thing that JoAnne did for Willie and for all of us who loved him and her. Instead of barring all visitors and sitting alone with him, she flung open the doors and told the nurses to turn no one away. Anybody who showed up was going to be someone who loved this man and he would want them there and so did she. And we all sat around him, on the bed, on the floor, everywhere, and we held his hands and we stroked his hair and we talked to him. Willie’s favorite thing in this world was to be in the midst of a bunch of friends talking. And so we talked to him and told him how much we loved him and how much he had taught us, and we thanked him, and oh, it was incredible. When we came in, his blood pressure was just barely registering, he was ice cold. As we sat, holding him and talking to him, we saw his blood pressure come up, point by point. We felt the warmth return to his hands and face, saw the color come back to his cheeks. We knew he felt the love. And then he was gone.

An old man I used to know, whenever he was asked to pray at gatherings of one kind or another, would always do pretty much the standard fare of things requested and things appreciated in his address to the Almighty, but he always ended with asking that God grant us “a peaceful moment in which to die.” I had never fully understood that phrase until that day we all gathered close and helped our beloved friend to die. What a priceless gift to give someone—a peaceful moment in which to die. What a holy moment to be allowed to be present for.

And I had to tell you about these two men I loved and lost this year, Winston and Willie, because when I was writing my first book,
SPQBOL,
JoAnne Morris was my editor. She would work on it in the daytime and Willie, the night owl, would work on it at night. How lucky could a Wannabe-writer get, to have probably the two best editors in the country working on her little book? Sometimes Willie would do nothing but change one single word on a page, and it would be transformed. JoAnne and I would just look at each other and shrug—no need to ask each other why we didn’t think of it, we would have if we could have, but only Willie could. He loved all the wild, silly stuff in the book, and he laughed and laughed over it, but he told me, You must bring them back to the sweetness. Sweetness, he said, is the core of this book and you must bring your readers back to that at the end.

And so I’ve thought and thought of how Willie would want me to end this book and I think it’s this: The first time I met Willie, he told JoAnne after I left, “She’s kind. And she’s solid.” I can’t think of a finer compliment I’ve ever received in my entire life. That was one of Willie’s many gifts—making you feel really visible. He took the time to pay attention to you and size you up, and whatever good qualities he found, he told you about them and made you want to be more of that kind of person. I think Willie’s lesson for us all—by his splendid words and loving actions—is we’ve got to
be
good people, we’ve got to
know
and really show our love for good people—right now, while we can—and we’ve got to
raise
good people. So do your part.

How’s that, Willie?

Love,

Jill

Acknowledgments

In a perfect world, there would be some stupendous act or feat that would clearly demonstrate the tremendous wave of gratitude I experience toward certain people connected with this book. In a perfect world, I would know what this act is and I would perform it daily, on a stage, perhaps, for all the world to see and know of my great debt of appreciation. But things being what they are—I’ll just say thanks.

To Chip Gibson, Steve Ross, Teresa Nicholas, Brian Belfiglio, Pamela Roskin, and Rachel Kahan—all of Crown Publishing, the
only
publishing house I ever
really
loved. And to David Tran, who comes up with my book covers, which no one can resist.

To Steven Wallace of Random House, who has been my champion since before the beginning, and to his great crew, Ed Brazas, Toni Hetzel, Eileen Becker, Julie Kurland, and Bill Stich for their support.

To Marlyn Schwartz and Larry L. King for encouragement, advice, and belly laughs.

To Sambo Mockbee, famous architect and Buckethead, always a man of extraordinary vision, for giving Malcolm four hundred dollars of the money he inherited from his sweet mama to buy the flatbed trailer that became the once and future float for the Sweet Potato Queens.

To James Griffin for keeping us dancing—for
all
these years.

To Bill Croswell and G. C. O. for their generous sponsorship of the Queens.

To Larry Bouchea, Official Chaplain to the Sweet Potato Queens for Spiritual Guidance and Ejaculatory Prayers.

To Ginger Tucker, for doing the hard part on the computer.

To Liza and Rick Looser of the Cirlot Agency in Jackson, Mississippi, for creating our award-winning Web site (
www.sweetpotatoqueens.com
). To Greg Gilliland of Cirlot for his design and patience. Rick and Greg are total Spud Studs; Liza is the ultimate Wannabe. Thanks to Jay Sones for all his help so freely given to maintain our Web site—I promise we’re gonna start paying you, Jay. Thanks to Sarah Babbin and Bailey Browne, without whom no merchandise would ever actually be shipped to anybody.

To The Junior Leagues of America, for their enthusiastic and unexpected support.

And finally, thank you so very much to all of you who have written to me of your own Queenliness and especially to all of you genuine Wannabe Wannabes who came all the way to Jackson, Mississippi, to march in our parade—for helping us teach the world: The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God.

Glossary of Sweet Potato Queen Terms

Here are some commonly used words and terms in Sweet Potato Queen jargon that will be helpful to you.

Boyfriend: Any and all heterosexual male persons who buy you dinner, take you to the movies, etc.

Come Back Sauce: The Official Condiment of the Sweet Potato Queens. The recipe is in
SPQBOL,
but for hopeless slackasses, it may be ordered from Hal and Mal’s at 1-601-948-0888.

Fat Mama’s Knock You Naked Margarita Mix: The Official Margarita of the Sweet Potato Queens—mix available from Tammy’s store, the Everyday Gourmet; call toll-free to order (1-800-898-0122).

Fiancé: Any and all heterosexual male persons with whom you are currently having sex. Fiancé status does not have any bearing, real or implied, on the ultimate future, if any, of the relationship.

Five Men You Must Have in Your Life at All Times: According to Lydy Henley Caldwell, and she ought to know, these are: one you can talk to, one who can fix things, one you can dance with, one who can pay for things, and one to have great sex with. The good news is: All but one of them can be gay.

Four Major Food Groups: According to the Sweet Potato Queens, these would be Sweet, Salty, Fried, and Au Gratin.

Lolling About: The Official Activity of the Sweet Potato Queens, sometimes referred to as Not Doing Jack Shit.

Promise, The: The True Magic Words Guaranteed to Get Any Man to Do Your Bidding, a physical act of a personal, oral nature—or rather the Promise of such an act—very popular with males.

Spud Studs: Men in the entourage of the Sweet Potato Queens who make themselves useful in various and sundry delightful ways. May include current and/or former boyfriends, fiancés, and husbands. No one is ever allowed to escape.

Tammy: The Official Name of each and every Sweet Potato Queen, used to preserve some shred of a semblance of anonymity.

Tiara: The outward physical symbol of the inward spiritual act of embracing one’s own Queenliness, should be worn for some part of every day—it’s important.

www.sweetpotatoqueens.com
The Official Web site for Sweet Potato Queens information and merchandise—visit it often, bring your credit card.

Zippity-Do-Dah: The Official Funeral Song of Sweet Potato Queens for late—and unlamented—husbands. This song definitely does not apply to all departed spouses. We quickly acknowledge that some—perhaps even most—are indeed greatly lamented and sorely missed.