The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel (5 page)

 

The Queens spent the next week or so on high alert, not sure which we were more afraid of: that Marcy Stevens would succeed in having us maimed or murdered, or that one of the football players was gonna try to “collect” on Mary Bennett's Promise. But Marcy gave us the wide and respectful berth we deserved (possibly because we made Darla ask Marcy, in a sweet, innocent voice, if she would like prints of the photos Darla had taken of her with the Sweet Potato Queens—just to let her know we Had Proof). And the football players followed us around in worshipful adoration—just in case there was even a Chance, I suppose.

 

The rest of our junior and senior years of high school passed faster than shit through a goose. Before I knew it, it was the last day of school, and I was sitting in the auditorium watching my friends pick up a slew of awards. Tammy got a certificate for being the lead soloist in the choir; Mary Bennett collected a trophy for best actress for her performance as Katherine in the school's production of
The Taming of the Shrew
. (She managed to pull off Shakespeare without a trace of a Southern accent, making us all wonder if her normal drawl wasn't exaggerated just a bit.)

Our darling Gerald received a huge loving cup for being the captain of the Quiz Bowl team, and Patsy was awarded several ribbons for her oil paintings—one a self-portrait in full Sweet Potato Queen regalia.

During lunch that day we all gathered under a big live oak (we'd long since abandoned the steps of the vocational building), and everyone was passing around their awards to a chorus of oohs and ahhs.

“Don't be modest, Jill,” Mary Bennett said, holding her hand out. “Show us what you got.”

“They don't hand out any kind of trophy or plaque for being ‘Wittiest' and ‘Class Favorite,'” I said softly. “They just call out your name—nothing to hang on your wall or put on your résumé. What good is it gonna do me that a bunch of kids liked me 'cause I could make 'em laugh? And that D I got in Algebra II—which was a GIFT, by the way, I shoulda flunked—means no college for me.”

“You drop that crap right now, Jill,” Mary Bennett said, shaking her head. “Who the hell cares about a bunch of dinky-ass dust-catchers from the trophy shop? You have so many other things going for you.”

I tugged at the collar of my blouse. “Like what, for instance?”

All the Queens became unnaturally quiet. Nobody looked me in the eye. Why had I asked such an asinine question?

“You're a whiz at motivating people,” Tammy said, her expression relieved because she'd finally come up with something. “You're the one who encouraged me to join the choir. You convinced Mary Bennett to try out for the school play, and persuaded Patsy to enter all those art shows.”

“Remember how you staged a pep rally before my big Quiz Bowl meet?” Gerald said, patting his loving cup. “You even made me a breakaway poster to run through. I get misty-eyed just thinking about it.”

“You're a born leader,” Patsy said, nibbling on a blade of grass. “If the Queens had a president, you'd be it.”

“And you're a helluva cook,” Mary Bennett added. “Culinary history was made when you invented Pig Candy. Who else would have had the genius to combine bacon, brown sugar, and pecans?”

“Don't forget about Chocolate Stuff,” Gerald said, smacking his lips. “We musta gone through a hundred pans of it in the last two years.”

“I'm disappointed,” I said, tossing about my hair, which was limper than usual from the June heat. “Not one of you assholes has said a word about my devastating beauty.”

They all laughed. I'd
hoped
to lighten up the moment so they wouldn't guess how down I really was. All the Queens had plans to set the world on fire after graduation. Mary Bennett was moving to New York to conquer Broadway; Tammy was going to Nashville to be a country-and-western singer; Gerald had been accepted at Baylor to major in premed; and Patsy was moving to Atlanta, enrolled in art school. As for me, I was barely going to make a spark. I planned to stay in Jackson, and I'd found a pissy little temporary job as a receptionist at the Quick Weight-Loss Clinic. It was the only job I could get where I didn't have to wear a hair net.

I must have been absent when God handed out talents. And clearly that was the same day he gave out titties and big hair.

 

“Diamond bracelet, pearl necklace,” Mary Bennett said, with a yawn, as she sorted through her graduation gifts at the kitchen table. “Those are the highlights—Daddy wanted to get me a new car, but I'm not ready to give up the Tammymobile.”

“That's a hard act to follow,” I said. “Makes my Timex and gen-u-wine leather wallet seem kind of puny.”

Mary Bennett's father regularly brought her exquisite gifts, most of which she'd carelessly toss into a wooden chest and shove under the bed.

“What's your haul?” Mary Bennett said to Gerald, who was opening envelopes.

“Not too shabby,” Gerald said with a grin. “I'm already at five hundred dollars, and I still haven't opened the cards from the Goldbergs or my Aunt Bernice and Uncle Irving.”

“What's in here?” Mary Bennett said, picking up a package and shaking it next to her ear.

“I don't know. My pop handed it to me after the graduation ceremony,” Gerald said. “You can open it if you want.”

“Oh, goody!” Mary Bennett said. She stared at the object in her hands. “Well, this is interesting.”

It was a book called
How to Flirt with Chicks
.

Gerald blushed. “My father's worried that I never have any girlfriends.”

“Who does he think
we
are?” Mary Bennett asked.

“He means a
serious
girlfriend,” Gerald said. “My father's old-fashioned, and wants me to date a ‘nice Jewish girl.' He's been trying to push me toward one of my former Hebrew school classmates, Roseanne Cohen. She has a mustache.”

“I wouldn't discount a mustache so quickly,” Mary Bennett said. “Just means the girl has plenty of testosterone coursing through her veins. She's prolly a wildcat between the sheets.”

“Roseanne's not my type,” Gerald said dismissively. “What did you get for graduation, Patsy?”

Mary Bennett raised an eyebrow at Gerald's abrupt change of subject.

“I got a new easel, a book about portrait painting, and French-language tapes. Oh, I'd love to go to Paris one day,” Patsy said. “Book” sounded like it rhymed with “spook.”

“Don't know how you're going to
parlez-vous français
when ya still haven't gotten the hang of plain ol' Mississippi American,” Mary Bennett said.

“Toast time! I ‘borrowed' this from home,” I said, unscrewing the top of a mason jar and pouring a small portion of liquid gold into each of our glasses. “Gen-u-wine moonshine, kids. Daddy knows a guy across the river who still cooks up a batch every now and then. It goes down smooth as silk, cured with a peeled apple, but it will kick your ass all over town if you're not careful.”

“Where'd Tammy go?” Gerald asked, looking about Mary Bennett's spacious kitchen.

“Maybe she wandered off because we were talking about our graduation gifts,” I said. “That was kinda insensitive. Her mama probably couldn't afford to get her anything.”

“Oh, she got plenty of graduation presents,” Gerald said. “Isn't that right, Mary Bennett?”

Mary Bennett shrugged. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Yes. I guess she probably did,” I said with a smile. I'd forgotten about Tammy's “gift elf.” When Tammy first joined our club she'd confessed that the main reason she hadn't come to school the day after the Key Club incident was because she'd run out of Marcy's house wearing a maid's uniform, and had left her only skirt behind. She owned some slacks and blue jeans, but the school's dress code prohibited girls from wearing pants. The next day “someone” left a basket on her doorstep brimming with brand-new skirts and dresses from The Tog Shoppe. The only person who could afford such an extravagance was Mary Bennett, but she never 'fessed up to it.

“We can't have a toast without Tammy,” I said, plunking my glass down on the table. “I'll get her. I know where she is.”

“Tell her to get her cute little ass in here so we can raise some hell,” Mary Bennett said, sitting in a cane-backed chair, swinging her long, tanned legs. “I can't believe we're shed of that shitty high school, forever.”

I went out back into the impeccably groomed yard. St. Augustine grass thick as a carpet was tickling my bare feet, and the air was perfumed with Confederate jasmine. A kidney-shaped pool shimmered like a cool blue oasis in the velvet darkness.

I saw Tammy in a tea-length white dress, standing between two boxwood hedges, gazing down the hill at a big, gray Dutch Colonial blazing with light. Snatches of conversation and laughter drifted up from the house like bubbles from a champagne glass.

“Pretty view, isn't it?” I said. Mary Bennett's house was perched on one of the highest points in Jackson, and several of the stately homes could be seen from this vantage point.

“I guess,” Tammy said, looking away quickly. “I just wanted a little air. It's so nice out tonight.”

Pointing at Marcy's house, I said, “I heard some kids mention she was having a big graduation shindig tonight.”

“Really? I hadn't heard,” Tammy said, her eyes cast downward. She was one of the lousiest liars in the world.

Marcy's house did look enticing, glowing brightly like a lit-up birthday cake. But almost everything seems more attractive when you are outside looking in.

“I promise they aren't having as much fun as we are,” I said. “Money won't buy a good time, ya know—and it sure as hell won't buy real friends.”

“I know,” Tammy said, smoothing the bell-shaped skirt of her graduation dress. It looked expensive and fit her beautifully, so I was sure it came from the “gift elf.” She was dressed as if she belonged at Marcy's party.

“One day they'll be talking about you,” I said. “They'll say, ‘I used to know Tammy Myers in high school before she became a famous country-and-western singer.' At class reunions, they'll all be sucking up and clamoring for your autograph. They'll hope to God you won't remember how shitty they were to you.”

“You think?” Tammy said, and I could tell by her tone that she very much liked this daydream.

“Someday, you'll have the power to fix 'em good. You could write a number one song called ‘Marcy Stevens Deserves to Die,' but the truth is you won't care enough about her to humiliate her. After all, you'll be this huge star, rubbing elbows with George and Loretta, and she'll just be an aging perma-blond, small-town socialite with bad teeth and a cheating husband.”

“Wow,” Tammy said. “You have such a vivid imagination. It's almost as if this could be
your
dream.”

I toed the grass with my sandal. “Well, it
was
my dream. When I was a kid I always wanted to be a Supreme, or at the very least a Pip, but unfortunately I was born white with the vocal talent of an under-laid cat in heat.” I shook a finger at her. “That's why I'm counting on you to conquer Nashville so I can vicariously live my life. Swear to me you won't let me down?”

She gave me her first smile of the evening. “All right, Jill. I swear.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek. “Thanks.”

“Thank God, that's settled. Now, let's go inside—I brought a little something for a special toast.”

The Queens drank like a band of gypsies that night, and after a raucous celebration that included dancing, skinny-dipping, and the rabid consumption of a vast array of decadent foods like Pig Candy, Chocolate Stuff, fried chicken, barbecued ribs, and big wads of cheese, we were all sprawled on the floor of Mary Bennett's rec room, surrounded by empty glasses, food wrappers, and a formidable pile of well-gnawed ribs and nekkid chicken bones.

Giddiness had given way to melancholy. I saw a pity party coming on as soon as Gerald started whistling “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

Mary Bennett was the first to lose it, possibly because she'd had the most to drink. “I don't know what I'm gonna do without my friends,” she slurred. “After all, what's the point of being the most famous actress in the world if I don't have y'all to lord it over? Let's promise that we'll never lose touch with each other.”

She dangled a bag of corn chips from her hand. “Swear on this fag of Britos,” she said, mixing her words, and of course we all swore, knowing how seriously Mary Bennett took her Fritos. She called them the Manna From Heaven.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Each of us solemnly touched the Frito bag and whispered, “I swear.”

I was the last one to make the vow, and as I did, memories of the last two years zipped through my brain: dancing to “Land of 1000 Dances” until I wanted to collapse, eating until I thought I would burst, laughing until my sides ached, and riding in a convertible with the wind whipping through my wig, singing “Tiny Bubbles” (the Queens' theme song) at the top of my lungs. But most of all I remembered our long talks about our secret hopes and dreams—talks that were like stitches, knitting us together in a way that I thought would last forever.