The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel (9 page)

Dr. Day's complexion, which had previously been a motley purplish-red, was now the hue of curdled milk.

“She's in room 107 at the Sleepy Time Motel on Fifth Street,” he said. “Are you satisfied?”

“Not entirely,” Gerald snapped. “Call an ambulance to meet us at the motel. If you don't, I'm sure your wife will just love looking at that picture while she counts her alimony.”

“There's plenty more,” I said. “Do you understand?”

“Suck my dick, you bitch,” Dr. Day said through gritted teeth.

“DICK? Hunny, PLEEZE, you ain't got a dick—all you got's a little dust flap to keep the dirt outta your pussy! Now you back up from us and call that ambulance before I start screeching LINDA!” Gerald hissed with uncharacteristic venom.

“I'll phone right away,” Dr. Day said, in a defeated voice.

Moments later the four of us pulled into the parking lot at the Sleepy Time Motel.

“What a dive,” Mary Bennett said as we took in the string of decrepit cinder-block buildings with peeling paint, the drained and mildewed pool, and the yellowed grass littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts. “If there's anything worse than a lying jerk, it's a cheap lying jerk.”

“I'm going to find Tammy's room,” I said, bounding out of the car as soon as it came to a stop. I heard the whine of a siren getting closer. “Y'all go to the office, and see if you can get a key.”

I didn't wait for a response, but instead ran around until I saw a faded “107” painted on a rusty metal door. It was slightly ajar.

“Tammy?” I said, pushing it open. The only light in the room came from an orange-shaded floor lamp in the corner. Tammy was stretched out on the bed, wearing her wedding dress. There was a foul odor and a bib-shaped vomit stain down the front of the dress.

“Tammy,” I said again, shaking her shoulders. Her nostrils flared as she took quick, shallow breaths. Panic fluttered in my belly when I saw that her lips and fingernails were a deep shade of blue. “Come on, Tammy! Wake up.”

I heard footfalls behind me. Two male paramedics rushed into the small, dank room.

“Do you know what she took?” asked one. He had to shout to be heard over the wheeze and rattle of the air conditioner.

“Some kind of pills.” I spotted a small brown vial on the nightstand table, and pointed. “I bet this.”

I stepped outside to let the paramedics do their work. The rest of the Queens approached me, accompanied by a scowling man with a basketball midsection.

“Damn-it-to-hell,” he said, breathless from the short walk. “This ain't good for business. Why'd your friend choose
my
motel to off herself?”

“Maybe she got depressed staying in such a rat hole,” Mary Bennett said.

“He's not worth the energy,” I said to her just as the paramedics were rushing out of the room with Tammy strapped to a gurney.

“How is she?” I asked as they passed.

“Her vital signs are weak, but she's alive,” the paramedic said briskly, as he and his partner loaded Tammy into the ambulance.

A couple of other sleepy-eyed motel guests had come out of their rooms to see what the fuss was about.

“The lady fainted,” the owner said to them. His pockmarked skin was the color of Swiss cheese under the neon glow of the Vacancy sign. “Go back to your rooms. There's nothing to see.”

“Can I ride along?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the spinning red lights on top of the ambulance.

“Not enough room,” said the same mustached paramedic who'd answered all my other questions. “But you can follow us to University Med Center.”

 

The Queens and I perched on the plastic chairs under the overly bright fluorescent lights of the emergency room waiting area. The pungent smell of rubbing alcohol and anesthetics made my nose run. I kept glancing at the entrance to the examining rooms, waiting for Tammy's doctor to appear.

“I've been reading the first paragraph of this article, ‘I Am Joe's Prostate,' for the last hour,” Mary Bennett said, tossing aside a year-old copy of
Reader's Digest
.

I nodded. None of us had been able to do much but stare into space.

Two seats down, a baby with an arm wrapped in gauze shrieked while his mother tried to soothe him. He'd been crying on and off since they'd arrived.

“I need to get out of here for a minute,” Gerald said, abruptly standing up. “I saw a vending machine in the hall. Can I get anybody anything?”

“Not unless they have Scotch and water,” Mary Bennett said with a yawn. An unshaven, gin-doused old man who'd been dozing startled to attention at Mary Bennett's comment.

“Go back to sleep, old-timer,” Mary Bennett said. “They ain't selling anything stronger than stale Cheetos 'round here.”

Just as Gerald was about to leave, a thin-faced doctor with five o'clock shadow trudged into the waiting room clutching a battered clipboard.

“Who is here for Tamara Myers?” he asked.

“We are,” the Queens said in unison.

“She'll be okay, except for a little soreness in the throat,” he said, approaching us. “We pumped her stomach, and now she's sleeping it off.”

My muscles, which had been knotted up like old, sun-dried fishing lines, now slowly untangled with the doctor's good news.

“Can we see her?” I asked.

The doctor shook his head. “She's on the psych floor. No visitors until noon tomorrow.”

Psych floor.
The two words hung in the air. Of course, I
knew
that Tammy had tried to kill herself, but it was awful to think of her being locked up.

“Thanks, Doctor,” I said. Various manifestations of the same followed from the rest.

“Let's get the hell out of here,” Mary Bennett said, brushing off the back of her skirt as if she'd picked up something nasty from the chair.

“I'm too wired to sleep,” Gerald said. “Is there anywhere we can go this time of night?”

“I know the perfect place.” I said. “But it ain't exactly vegetarian-friendly.”

“Screw that,” Mary Bennett said, with a flick of her hand. “Every cell in my body is crying out for grease and plenty of it.”

 

“Little squares of pure heaven,” Gerald said, a bulge of Krystal burger in his cheek. We were hunkered down in a booth eating from a tray stacked high with fragrant undersized hamburgers. “Nothing better on this continent.”

“Even better than hooch?” I asked, trying to be hip.

Mary Bennett and Gerald swapped a guilty look and grinned.

“We're sorry, Jill,” Mary Bennett said, her smile a squiggly line of embarrassment. “While you were in the ladies' room, Gerald and I were discussing it, and…we may have acted a bit shitty when we first got here.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Are you referring to the way you treated me and Tammy like a pair of backwater hicks who don't know their asses from their elbows?”

“Yeah,” she said sheepishly as Gerald nodded. “That's pretty much what we were referring to.”

I let out a deep sigh, and contemplated the crisp French fry in my hand.

“Well,” I said, swabbing it in gobs of ketchup. “If you can forgive me for thinking the two of you were a couple of drugged-out hippie freaks with questionable fashion taste, then I guess I can forgive you. And of course, we ARE backwater hicks who don't know their asses from their elbows, so there's that…”

Gerald laughed so hard he had a near-nasal Coke experience but swallowed just in time. “That's the Jill I know and love. Get over here! We haven't had us a real hug since I arrived.”

I stood and held out my arms to Gerald, and we locked our bodies into the most breath-squeezing bear hug in the entire world. I caught a strong whiff of patchouli, but also smelled another more familiar scent that transported me straight back to high school.

“Brylcreem!” I shouted, stepping back from him. “I can't believe you're still using that stuff!”

Gerald dropped his chin and smiled in the bashful way I'd remembered. “I buy it by the case. Even free-flowing hippie hair needs that ‘little dab'll do ya.'”

I laughed and flung my arms around him, burying my face in his neck.

“Hey, y'all,” Mary Bennett said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Think I might be able to sneak into this love fest?”

“And what about me?” Patsy demanded. “Don't leave me out.”

Gerald and I dropped our arms to let them in, and all of the Queens huddled together into one big, weepy, lopsided, groping embrace.

“Geeze,” Mary Bennett said, breaking free from the group. “I love y'all to pieces but the smell of onions is getting mighty thick in here—or was that you, Poot?”

“You better hush about that right now, missy—she just had ten Krystals—you know she's working up a paint-peeler!” Gerald laughed.

Patsy glanced at her watch. “Shit! Jill, it's one o'clock! We gotta get your ass home. You need your beauty sleep for the wedding.”

“The what?” I said. I'd been so involved with Tammy and the Queens, it was as if the last few years of my life had been erased from memory. “Oh, yeah. I'm supposed to get married tomorrow—uh, today.”

Suddenly Norman “Sonny” Butts seemed like a remote acquaintance from somebody else's life. Who was this man who folded his tighty-whities before sex? Who'd planned an extremely detailed itinerary of our upcoming honeymoon in Biloxi, going as far as to pencil in the times for sex? Who'd barred dear, sweet Gerald from the wedding because he didn't fit in with the other guests? More important—who the fuck was the woman who had so readily agreed to marry that man?

“The wedding,” Mary Bennett said, glancing uncomfortably at Gerald. “We'll come if really you want us to.”

“Sure,” Gerald said. “Sonny seems like a decent sort, a little on the stuffy side but—”

“I think we just expected someone a little different for you, Jill,” Patsy said. “Not that Sonny isn't a decent catch and all, but—”

I stiffened. Even ever-agreeable Patsy didn't like Sonny?

“Out of curiosity,” I said softly, “what sort of guy do you see me with?”

“Somebody fun, and spontaneous, and funny—or at least somebody who knows YOU'RE funny,” Gerald said.

“Egg-zactly,” Mary Bennett said. “Somebody who makes things happen and has a zest for life!”

“And somebody with a heart as big as yours,” Patsy said, spreading her arms wide. “Somebody as wonderful as you, only with bigger biceps.”

I felt as if they were talking about a stranger. When I packed my Tammy wig in the attic shortly after I met Sonny, what other parts of myself had I boxed up and hidden away?

 

“Jill?” Tammy said, her eyelashes fluttering as I stood over her. She blinked rapidly as if adjusting to the light. Her gaze made a jerky sweep of the room.

“Oh,” she said with a soft exhale. “All the Queens are here.”

“Damn straight we are, gorgeous,” Gerald said, squeezing her hand.

Tammy touched her red curls, most of which were matted to the pillow. “I bet I look like dog doo.” Tammy's infamous potty-mouth had been severely curtailed by the disapproval of the inexplicably prim Dr. Day. His own adultery somehow passed muster on his moral scale, but to hear a woman swearing was simply intolerable to the man. Go figger.

“No you don't,” I said, gently stroking her clammy forehead. “You look fragile, and beautiful. Like Camille.”

“I don't feel beautiful,” Tammy said in a raspy voice.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Water, a cold towel, hard candy?”

“A straitjacket,” Tammy said flatly. Her eyes flickered to the wire-meshed windows.

“Don't fret, hunny,” Mary Bennett said. “There's no shame in being sent to the loony bin. Everybody goes a little crazy now and then.”

“That's right,” Patsy added. “All the world's greatest artists have gone mad at one time or another.”

Tammy managed a weak smile. “Well, I musta been crazy as an acre of snakes.” She cast her eyes downward and sighed. “You were right, Jill. Deke never had
any
intention of marrying me. He came back from the conference to tell me that his so-called frigid wife is pregnant with twins. He told me we should lay low for a while.” Tammy snorted. “And he fired me. That's the ‘future' he had in mind for me, unloved and unemployed.”

“That bastard!” Gerald exclaimed.

“I'm so, so sorry, hunny,” I said.

“I am, too,” Tammy said, tensing her fists. “I'm sorry I wasted five years of my life on that worthless jerk. And I'm mad!”