The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin
Authors: Minrose Gwin
conversation wasn’t going anywhere good. Daddy was back home oiling his box. Mama had told me to stay out of his way. In the doorway, Mama seemed about to turn around to face Grandpops, but then she said, to the great outdoors, “It didn’t work out. Seems like some men just can’t work for somebody else. They got to find their own way. Free spirits.” She took another step out the door.
Grandpops eyed the living room ceiling through his thick specs. “Free spirits. They any relation to free loaders ?”
My mother stopped again in her tracks. Lately she’d taken on the shape of a drooping vine, but now the set of her back made it look as if a hard little tree had sprung up in the open door. She stayed there a minute more. Then she just walked on out the door and closed it with a click. Not a word out of her. She just went on.
When I helped my mother unpack boxes from our year on thelam, I came across an old photo of me and her from back in her Welcome Wagon days. Mama has the look of someone drifting in the ocean waiting for a rescue. She has her arm around me, but she’s looking somewhere off in the distance, to my left, over the long dark row of pecan trees in Mimi’s backyard. The ones that caterpillar worms build their webby nests in every summer, requiring Ray to light torches with gasoline and get up on a high wobbly ladder to burn them out. The webs curl up and vanish in clouds of smoke. The busy worms sizzle and crackle like chitlins in the pan.
But, now at long last, glory and hallelujah, Daddy had found his true calling. A few days after we got back to Millwood that spring, he went out to his first meeting since we’d returned and met a man who sold burial insurance door to door in Shake Rag and Milltown. This man was old and tired. He said he’d tell the folks at Mississippi Assurance about Daddy. A big packet would come in the mail and Daddy would get the old man’s customers and his route. No Boss Man looking over his shoulder; he is the boss. What could be better?
Now that Daddy had a job he could live with, he was one of three policy men in Millwood and out in the county too. Mississippi Assurance had burial insurance for poor folks so they wouldn’t get caught short. “Every body’s got a body ,” he’d say to folks in Shake Rag, and then flash his pearlies at them. They’d be standing in their front doors, saying nice as spice, “Yes sir , that’s the Good Lord’s truth.” Then he’d say, “Now you don’t want to end up in a cardboard box, or worse, do you, Auntie?” and they’d say back, like they were in the choir at church, “No, sir , don’t put us in no box!” And then he’d get them to sign the papers and that’ll be fifty cents a week from now on, seventy-five for couples, twenty-five for each child. Mississippi Assurance had Shake Rag and Milltown locked up. Daddy told people not to worry. He’dtake care of them when the time came, as it surely would. Some days, when he’d had a good day, we’d be driving home and he’d throw back his head, his curls loosening up from their heaviness, and belt out, “Blessed Assuuuuurance, Jesus is Mine. Oh what a fooooooretaste of Glory Divine. Wealth of Salvation, Purchase of Love. Wrapped in his Spirit, Washed in His Blooooood.”
When the policy man left, Zenie threw her cards into the slush pile. “You win,” she pronounced, and struggled to get up from the table.
“Wait!” I protested. “We didn’t finish the game.”
“Could tell you had it by the look on your face. Look like the cat that ate the canary. I ain’t got time for fooling. Got to get some sewing done so I can pay that bloodsucker. Get on in the bathroom and wash up. Then go on out front and wait for your Mama. Tell her I need a raise.”
4
To go into Zenie’s bathroom I had to push aside a long curtain hanging ceiling to floor across where a door should have been. The bedrooms in her house had curtains for doors too. The curtains were light and
Grandpops eyed the living room ceiling through his thick specs. “Free spirits. They any relation to free loaders ?”
My mother stopped again in her tracks. Lately she’d taken on the shape of a drooping vine, but now the set of her back made it look as if a hard little tree had sprung up in the open door. She stayed there a minute more. Then she just walked on out the door and closed it with a click. Not a word out of her. She just went on.
When I helped my mother unpack boxes from our year on thelam, I came across an old photo of me and her from back in her Welcome Wagon days. Mama has the look of someone drifting in the ocean waiting for a rescue. She has her arm around me, but she’s looking somewhere off in the distance, to my left, over the long dark row of pecan trees in Mimi’s backyard. The ones that caterpillar worms build their webby nests in every summer, requiring Ray to light torches with gasoline and get up on a high wobbly ladder to burn them out. The webs curl up and vanish in clouds of smoke. The busy worms sizzle and crackle like chitlins in the pan.
But, now at long last, glory and hallelujah, Daddy had found his true calling. A few days after we got back to Millwood that spring, he went out to his first meeting since we’d returned and met a man who sold burial insurance door to door in Shake Rag and Milltown. This man was old and tired. He said he’d tell the folks at Mississippi Assurance about Daddy. A big packet would come in the mail and Daddy would get the old man’s customers and his route. No Boss Man looking over his shoulder; he is the boss. What could be better?
Now that Daddy had a job he could live with, he was one of three policy men in Millwood and out in the county too. Mississippi Assurance had burial insurance for poor folks so they wouldn’t get caught short. “Every body’s got a body ,” he’d say to folks in Shake Rag, and then flash his pearlies at them. They’d be standing in their front doors, saying nice as spice, “Yes sir , that’s the Good Lord’s truth.” Then he’d say, “Now you don’t want to end up in a cardboard box, or worse, do you, Auntie?” and they’d say back, like they were in the choir at church, “No, sir , don’t put us in no box!” And then he’d get them to sign the papers and that’ll be fifty cents a week from now on, seventy-five for couples, twenty-five for each child. Mississippi Assurance had Shake Rag and Milltown locked up. Daddy told people not to worry. He’dtake care of them when the time came, as it surely would. Some days, when he’d had a good day, we’d be driving home and he’d throw back his head, his curls loosening up from their heaviness, and belt out, “Blessed Assuuuuurance, Jesus is Mine. Oh what a fooooooretaste of Glory Divine. Wealth of Salvation, Purchase of Love. Wrapped in his Spirit, Washed in His Blooooood.”
When the policy man left, Zenie threw her cards into the slush pile. “You win,” she pronounced, and struggled to get up from the table.
“Wait!” I protested. “We didn’t finish the game.”
“Could tell you had it by the look on your face. Look like the cat that ate the canary. I ain’t got time for fooling. Got to get some sewing done so I can pay that bloodsucker. Get on in the bathroom and wash up. Then go on out front and wait for your Mama. Tell her I need a raise.”
4
To go into Zenie’s bathroom I had to push aside a long curtain hanging ceiling to floor across where a door should have been. The bedrooms in her house had curtains for doors too. The curtains were light and