Dixie Diva Blues by Virginia Brown Page B

surprise, there was plenty. With no one waiting on me, I took my time in the shower, and by the time I got out, dried off, pulled my white cotton nightie over my head and opened the bathroom door, the shack was dark. I tiptoed across the floor just fine without the help of kitten heels. Bitty slept in the double bed close to the wall, and since she was my sleeping partner for the night, I lifted the edge of the cotton spread and slid in next to her. While the wood headboard and frame looked authentic mid-twentieth century, the mattress was a very comfortable twenty-first century edition.
    Bitty was on her side, facing the wall, the ribbon strap of her pajama top halfway down her left arm. Very gently, I slid it back into place. She didn’t even stir. I rolled to my back and watched shadows filtering through the gauzy window shades play across the ceiling. A harmonica sighed the blues somewhere, plaintive notes rising above the wind that plowed across the rich delta.
    It occurred to me as I lay there looking up at the same ceiling that once covered people trying to scrape out an existence, that they would never have believed their humble homes would one day be rented out as guest cottages to people willing to pay good money to experience their hardscrabble lives. What would they think now, I wondered, if they came back to their former dwellings?
    I’m old enough to remember the mid-sixties and the people who lived in shacks very much like these. They worked hard, from sun-up past sundown and later at times, sowing crops, weeding, toting water, handpicking cotton and stuffing it in long burlap snakes; the faster they picked the more money they made, and it was hot, sweaty, back-breaking labor. Even the kids worked. I can recall seeing them as we drove by on our way to school or maybe even to swimming, kids no older than six or seven out working alongside parents in the fields. I didn’t think much about it then. I was too young to notice the differences in our lives, and too self-absorbed to think about why they all seemed skinny and dusty.
    We’ve all come a long way since then. I’d like to think my generation has become more civilized, recent evidence to the contrary.
    I fell asleep listening to faint notes of music drift from the Cotton Gin bar.
    It seemed like only a few minutes later when I was yanked from sleep by a sharp, sudden noise. While the snores of three other women were strange enough, some alien sound had penetrated my REM sleep. I lay there, blinking up at the ceiling, my heart pounding crazily in my chest.
    Something was wrong. I felt it more than saw it, and the hairs on my arms stood up and the back of my neck prickled. Bitty still lay next to me, and I heard Gaynelle mutter in her sleep. Carolann? Maybe she had gotten up.
    I pushed myself up to lean on one elbow and reach for the bedside lamp. As I did, I heard a distinct scrape of something heavy across the floor in the main room. I groped for the lamp switch then paused. Maybe I should leave the lights off. I crept out of bed slowly.
    My first impression was that all four of us were in bed. My second impression was that someone who wasn’t on the guest list was busily fumbling about out in the next room. Truthfully, I felt like jumping back into bed, pulling the covers over my head, and hiding. That was my first instinct.
    Then, of course, my sense of duty kicked in and I roused the others as quietly as I could. “Get up,” I hissed. “We have a prowler.”
    Gaynelle sprang from her bed immediately, while Carolann bolted upright in bed clutching a pillow in front of her like a shield. Then she tumbled out her side of the bed to fall flat on the floor. Meanwhile, I had snagged the first weapon I could find—one of Bitty’s kitten heels—and I grabbed Gaynelle by the arm.
    “Come on,” I whispered as I tugged her toward the main living area. “Grab some kind of weapon!”
    Gaynelle really is good to have around in emergencies. Rarely does she