The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (24 page)

I loved the sight of Sweet and Papa talking. To give them some time alone, I went into the kitchen and acted like I was still cleaning up after the party. But really I was watching how much kindness came out of Sweet, just talking to my father.

When I rejoined them, Papa told me, “Sweet has just asked me to show him the dance studio.”

“Papa,” I said, “it’s late, I’m sure you’re tired. You don’t have to.”

“I know,” he said. “But we got to talking about dancing, and I thought I should see what this boy can do.”

Then Papa walked outside and across the lawn to the studio. He unlocked it and flicked on the lights. The room looked a little less vibrant without M’Dear, but it was still filled with magic!

Then Papa made one of the dance moves he used to do with M’Dear. And oh, it made me so happy to see my Papa dance like that. Then he put on some music and said to Sweet, “Okay, let me see you dance with my girl here.” The song he chose was “I Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night.”

Sweet and I started dancing, with Papa moving next to us in a slow fox-trot. And I could just imagine him holding my mother, the way his hands held the air in front of him.

When the song ended, Sweet went to choose a new one. Papa started singing as soon as it came on.

“Blue mooon, you saw me standing alooone…”

At first, I just felt so embarrassed for my father. But Sweet didn’t miss a beat. He just took me in his arms and waited to follow my father’s lead until the three of us were in step, my father dancing with my mother in the air and Sweet dancing with me. Then Sweet added his voice to my father’s.

Then I joined in and we sang the whole song together, doing the fox-trot. Slowly, the three of us were getting to know each other. Getting to know that we were no longer alone.

A
fter we’d pulled her out of Simmy’s bar that night, Sukey kind of dropped me and Ricky and Steve and mostly hung out with her drinking buddies. We didn’t even know who those people were.

I’d go to her apartment to check on her, and I could never tell how many drinks she’d had. Her breath never smelled. Ricky told me that was because when you really get good at being an alcoholic, you start drinking vodka so people can’t smell it on your breath.

Sukey would say things like, “Ohh, God! It’s so hot today! I’ve had a glass of ice water in my hand all day long.”

I’d think, Does she really expect me to believe that’s water in her glass? When she can barely walk? And her words are all slurred?

Or she’d claim to be drinking coffee, but then I’d hear
ice
clinking inside her mug.

The three of us had tried one more time to talk to her about her drinking, saying, “Sukey, we’re worried about you. Come on, you’ve been drinking too much. Things have got to change, Suke. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”

But she didn’t listen, and so for a while, we lost her. I kept going over to see her, and each time it hurt me so bad that I would go home and cry.

It didn’t help that Sukey wasn’t working. She told me that she’d saved enough money from the Playboy Club to take a break and decide what to do with her life. But it seemed that all she had decided to do was drink.

But this was Sukey, my best friend. I had to do something. So one day I tried begging. I took her hands in mine and said, “Suke, this is me, Calla. Sweetie, please don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?” she said.

“Sukey, you know what I mean. Don’t drink anymore. Please don’t be an alcoholic.”

“I am not an alcoholic,” she said, pulling back her hands.

“Sukey, please. I’m not trying to criticize you. I’m just trying to say please come back to us—we love you!”

“I don’t want to hear you get all emotional about friendship, okay?” she told me. “I’m tired of that. So you can tell them all—all of you—to stay out of my life. You stay out of my business. I know we’ve been friends for a long time, but y’all have gone too far. You’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

That just about did me in. That night, when I was in bed, I couldn’t shake the image of dear little Sukey on the day I met her, dropping out of a tree to show me all her treasures.

Then Sukey stopped answering her phone. And when I’d drop by after that, she was never home. Or else she didn’t come to the door.

I didn’t hear from Sukey for months, so I was surprised when she called one night and asked me to come over for dinner with Ricky and Steve. I couldn’t imagine what we’d find there, and I was terrified.

But when we arrived, we saw that the front steps of her porch were swept, and her flowers had been watered. She must have been watching for us from the window because she called out, “Come on in, y’all. You don’t need to knock.”

Inside, Sukey’s place was spotless. The last time I’d been there it had been filthy, with dried food in plates lying around and every open container stuffed with cigarette butts. But now it had that good smell of lemon oil. There was a glass vase with fresh flowers, and the smells of cooking filled the air.

I looked at our little Sukey, and her hair was shiny. In fact, it was combed and had a great little shape. Her face looked thin and drawn, but she’d done her best to put on makeup. She wasn’t wearing a high-fashion Sukey outfit, but her T-shirt and jeans were
clean.

She said, “Hey, y’all, why not sit down? Don’t be strangers. Let’s get to eating. I’ve got a loaf of French bread, and homemade lasagna, and anything you want to drink.”

The word
drink
sent chills up my spine.

Sukey had folded the cloth napkins on our plates into flowers, and her table was set simply, but with great care. She brought her pan of lasagna to the table with a cheery “Tah-dah!” She took a spatula and cut out pieces of lasagna to put on our plates, then she had us pass around a big salad she’d made in the hand-carved wooden bowl that her mother gave her when she moved to New Orleans. We filled our plates, but we were all so stunned that we could hardly eat.

She said, “Pulleeease! I don’t have two heads. Stop looking at me like I’m crazy. I’d like to say grace.”

Sukey closed her eyes, so we all closed our eyes. And I heard my little girlfriend say, “Thank you. Thank you God for this food. Thank you for my friends who have loved me and still love me. Thank you for the fact that through many people’s help I am sitting my little butt right here on this chair. Amen.”

Then we started eating the lasagna and tearing big chunks of bread off. And as we ate, Sukey spoke. She tried to sound casual as she refilled our glasses of Coca-Cola and lemonade.

She began by saying, “Y’all were right all along, and I know it.”

“Sukey, what happened?” I asked.

She paused. “Let me go ahead and spell it out. What happened is…I’ll start with my hair first, Calla. It didn’t look good, and neither did my face. I had bruises on it, right here.” And she pointed to underneath her eyes and to the whole right side of her face. “And here. And part of my hair was pulled out. That’s why I decided to cut it this short—me and Mia Farrow,” and she laughed.

I looked at her and thought, How brave she is being right now.

Sukey continued, “I woke up one morning in a motel room, and I didn’t know how I got there. I had been beaten up, and I saw that my wallet was gone. I didn’t know what part of town I was in, and when I stepped outside the door, the sun almost knocked me down, I was so hung over. Then I saw that I wasn’t even in New Orleans. I was somewhere out on the old highway.

“I didn’t have any money. So I went to the front desk—the motel was so cheap that there were no phones in the rooms. A thin woman with blond hair whose roots were showing was working at the check-in place. You could see where she might have been pretty if she wasn’t so run-down. I could have imagined it, but she looked familiar.

“I said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’ I could see her wince when she saw my face. ‘Um, could you please let me use your phone?’

“She said, ‘Yes. Who you gonna call?’

“I realized that I didn’t know. I couldn’t call Mama because she is in La Luna, and I was too ashamed to have her see me like that. I didn’t know if I could call y’all anymore, since I’d pushed you away and told you to get out of my life. So I told her, ‘I don’t know who to call. Where am I?’

“And this lady said, ‘Where you are, girl, is in hell. I’ve seen people like you come and go out of here. I know that you’re in hell, and I’ll tell you what you need. You need Alcoholics Anonymous, and you need to go today. There ain’t no other road that will lead you out of this hell, sister.’

“I said, ‘No, no, that’s not what I need! That’s for old guys lying in the alley, you know? With spit going down their lips.’

“‘Well, look at
you
,’ she told me. ‘You got a busted-up eye, and bruises and blood on your face, and I can tell where spit was dripping out of your mouth while you were passed out.’

“And I was thinking, How can this woman be so mean to me? I said, ‘I only asked to use your phone!’

“‘Okay,’ she replied, ‘go ahead and use my phone. But you didn’t even know who to call. Do you know now?’

“That’s when I broke down crying.

“‘I’ll tell you what,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll drive you over to AA. I know where the meeting is, and I know it’s held on Wednesday nights. You go on back to your room—I’m not going to charge you anything—but I want you to clean up. I want you to take a shower and give me your clothes, I’ll throw them through the wash.’”

The whole time Sukey was talking, I clutched my fork so tight that it left red marks on my fingers. I could not eat a bite, I just watched Sukey’s face as she told her story.

Sukey went on. “So I cleaned up, laid down, and took a nap. When I woke up, I had had a dream of some fluttery little figures around me, just all around me, like they were butterflies.

“I walked down to the office and told the woman, ‘I’m ready.’

“She drove a big green Dodge that looked like an FBI car. It turns out we were down near Mandeville. She dropped me off at her church. And so I got out and I went downstairs. There, in the basement, was the AA meeting.”

Then Sukey leaned closer to us. “Please go ahead and eat your lasagna. I’ve got some wine if you want it, but—ahhhh, I’m not sure I’m quite ready to serve wine in my house just yet. I haven’t gotten to that step yet.”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, there’s twelve steps to Alcoholics Anonymous. I’ll explain them later.

“Anyway, I got to the meeting, and I just sat down and listened to people tell their stories. One by one, they would stand up and say, ‘My name is Germaine, and I’m an alcoholic.’ And then the person would say what had been going on for the last week. Then someone else would stand up and say, ‘My name is Arlene, and I’m an alcoholic.’ They went around the room so everyone got to speak.

“Nobody looked at me. Nobody waited for me to put out my cigarette. I puffed on it until it was right down to the filter. Then I stubbed it out, and I stood up. I said, ‘My name is Sukey, and I’m an alcoholic.’”

I was in tears again. I got up from the table and went to give Sukey a hug.

“Sukey,” I said, “nothing you’ve ever done in your life has made me more proud.”

“Come on, don’t get all corny about this, for heaven’s sake! It’s not like I’m going to change the outfits I wear, y’all! I’m just going to try not to drink. One day at a time. Okay?”

“Okay,” we said.

“That sounds really good, Sukey,” Ricky said.

“Sukey,” Steve said, “any help you need, just give a holler.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Sukey paused for a minute, and said, “Oh, there’s another thing I need to tell y’all. The real reason I got my Bunny ass fired was that I was showing up for my shifts drunk. I thought I was hiding it okay and that the Bunny Mother wouldn’t notice—it is a club, after all. They gave me a couple warnings, and some of my close friends there, Bunny Ginger and Bunny Lou, tried talking to me. Even Bunny Mother Trixie suggested that I get some counseling, but I just blew them off.”

Then Sukey said, “Well, look at the bright side. Now I have a whole new social life. I can go to a meeting every night of the week if I want. Talk about being booked, huh? The only trouble is, I can’t date any of the guys. It’s just clear as the nose on my face that I shouldn’t try to hook up with anybody right now. It’s not a good idea to date, frankly, because for me, dating means drinking. And it has since I was fifteen years old.”

I nodded my head and thought, Why didn’t I catch this sooner?

It was like Sukey could read my mind when she said, “There is not a thing that any of you could have done to make me not drink. I did it myself.

“And I want to tell you all that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for my drinking and the way it jeopardized our friendship. And I ask you please to forgive me.”

She looked back at me first, and tears were in both our eyes as Sukey watched me, waiting, her eyes pleading. And I said, “Oh, Sukey, of course I forgive you.” I reached out to hold her hand. We sat there while the boys waited and the lasagna got cold, and together we cried. We held hands like we hadn’t since we were girls walking the paths of La Luna, skipping and singing. I thought, Oh, speak your thoughts to Sukey, and so I did.

“Oh, Suke,” I said. “Now we can skip together again. And we can play.”

She said, “Yes.”

And I said, “I forgive you,” again.

She reached down to her napkin and blew her nose. “Excuse me, everybody.” Then she turned to Ricky and said, “I’m sorry, Ricky.”

“Oh, Sukey, baby, of course I forgive you.”

As she turned to Steve, he was already nodding, and said, “Yes.”

Then we all looked at her, and as a group we all said, “Yes, Sukey. Yes.”

Sukey laughed through her tears, and said, “Okay, y’all. Let’s eat. I labored over this lasagna. And y’all know that I only cook once in a blue moon.”

Then Steve asked her, “So what are you going to do for money, Suke?”

“I haven’t gotten that quite figured out. I’ve still got a little to live on, probably a couple months, maybe three if I watch it. And I’ve been looking for a job. I interviewed for a position at Maison Blanche. There’s an opening in the women’s shoe department. I also interviewed for a waitress job at Howard Johnson’s. Whichever job I get, I’ll take.”

As we congratulated her, she revealed her long-term plan.

“I’m also planning to go back to school. I want to become a substance abuse counselor. It’s going to take me a while because I need to get further along in AA. But they say that nobody makes a better counselor than somebody who’s been through a long period of abusing alcohol or drugs themselves. So I figured, that’s the job for me. If I can help somebody—some little girl from some small town like La Luna—from drinking and carrying on too much, then I’ll be doing a good thing.

“Besides, I just like the way it sounds: ‘Sukey, the Counselor.’ I think we should put it in big blue Christmas lights. And then when people come for counseling I’ll be dressed to the nines. I can get new outfits that simply scream ‘Sukey the Counselor!’” She was laughing, and so were we. A laughter of relief.

So it was the four of us, together again. And it quickly became the five of us, as Sweet was coming up almost every weekend now. He’d say, “If I’m on land, I’m coming to see you.” It was amazing how quickly and easily he had become a part of our group and a part of my life.

Sweet told me, “Now, instead of me trying to cheer up the riggers when we go out, it’s the other way around. You were right: a week on the water seems like eternity when you’re missing someone you love. And I love you, Calla, and all that love comes with me when I’m away. When I’m in my boat, when I’m out to sea, you are in my heart. I hate being away from you, but even when I am, it’s like we are together. I hope I’m not jumping too far ahead with this thing.”