The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin Page B

all of her old hats (which Zenie told me she wouldn’t be caught dead in).
    When Zenie took the bus to the bank twice a month to put her and Ray’s money into savings, she would take me with her. For insurance, she said. Once we got off the bus at Main and Goodlett, where the Millwood Bank and Trust Company was, she grabbed my hand just as we were walking up the steps to go into the door. I was seven years old then, but when we crossed Main Street, she treated me like a baby. The first time she did it, I jerked my hand out of hers, but she just snatched air until she got me again. She’d never held my hand like that before, like I didn’t have good sense, and I didn’t appreciate it. She clamped down. It made my palm sweat and itch and my fingers lose feeling.
    She hauled me up to the teller’s window and just stood there. First the teller dragged her pale eyes over Zenie like a net, holdingher in view but not really looking at her. Then the teller looked down and saw me and her whole face melted and it was oh sweet little Florence this and isn’t she growing that and what a head of hair I was getting and do tell my grandfather hello. Only then did Zenie let me go and take out her handkerchief with the wadded up bills inside and smooth them out on the counter. The teller picked them up the way you pick up something hot, handling the bills at the edges and dropping them quickly into the money drawer, not even smoothing them out. Zenie just stood there looking at the place on the counter where the money had been while the teller took her own sweet time writing something on a piece of paper and bam! stamping it hard. When she finally handed Zenie the piece of paper, Zenie pushed her little navy blue book with the frazzled edges over in the teller’s direction, and the teller wrote something in it and stamped it. Zenie took her time looking first at the bankbook and then the piece of paper. Then she folded the paper up and put it in her little book and placed the little book back in her purse. We took the bus back to her house, where she unfolded the piece of paper and pored over the bankbook. When she was satisfied, she put a rubber band around the whole thing and put it in a drawer in a big dresser. Then she’d say, “Um, um, another slow day, another slow dollar,” and shake her head.
    When Zenie’s bankbook said $275 (she’d already put Miss Josephine’s money in to draw the extra interest), she wrote a letter to the Jim Walter folks and told them she and Ray were about ready for their house. The way she told it was here comes this white man with ducktail hair and a smile like sorghum molasses. He knocks and says, “Mrs. Zenobia Lee Johnson?” and she says, “You looking at her,” not believing her ears. A white man calling her Mrs.! He comes on in and sits down and pulls out the house pictures and Zenie calls to Ray and he comes in and they point tothe same picture at the very same time and say, “ That one .” Two bedrooms. They were expecting Miss Josephine to move in when she got too old to do for herself. (What they didn’t expect was that Eva would show up, though she ended up sleeping with Miss J, who by then was too old to care.)
    Then Mr. Jim Walter says he’ll go ahead and take Zenie and Ray’s $275 now and they can send the $25 later and he’ll take Zenie to the bank to close down her savings and hand it over. But Ray allows as how he thinks it’d be better to wait till they’ve got the whole thing and can send it all at once by Western Union and get a receipt. That’s when Mr. Jim Walter knows he’s not dealing with a bunch of fools. He whips out the contract, and they sign Rayfield Eugene Johnson III and Zenobia Lee Johnson .
    When the house finally came, it came like gangbusters. Big old long truck with half a house on it bumping right up Goodlett Street, past Mimi and Grandpops’, and on down to the other end of Goodlett into Shake Rag where Zenie and Ray’s lot and the