Chapter Two

As far back as I can remember, my mama loved soap operas. She knew every sordid detail of every extramarital affair that every sorry character was having on every goddamn soap opera that went on after the morning news and stayed on TV until the evening news. She even named me “Grace” after some old broad that wound up dying on The Edge of Night. Didn’t matter none to my mama that Grace didn’t go with Daddy’s last name, so I wound up with the dumbest name in history: Grace Place. If I use my middle name, it ain’t so bad, but I have the worst middle name in the whole goddamn world, Henrietta.

Shit, who the hell would name their child Grace Henrietta Place? Leave it to my mama.

Mama was originally from Hixson, but then she went up to New York City when she was eighteen years old. She stayed there four years, and now she tells everyone she’s from New York City, but no one around Hixson believes her ’cause her Southern accent is so thick she couldn’t be from anywhere else but Tennessee.

I was always harping on Daddy, always begging for a trip up North. Daddy used to pull me aside and speak so softly I could barely understand a word he said but he couldn’t let Mama hear what he was saying, that would have meant the frying pan to his rear end for sure ’cause he wasn’t a big fan of New York City.

“Let’s go to New York City, Daddy,” I’d beg. “Mama says that’s real Paradise…not like the park…no trailers there. Mama says the people glitter and the streets are so wide trees grow down the middle.”

“Honey,” he’d say, “New York City is just another name for Sodom and Gomorrah. Why, when Jesus returns in the year 2000, just like Granddaddy Ellsworth says, he won’t even stop to take a leak in New York City.”

“Really? No wonder Mama only stayed there four years.”

“It’s a wonder she lasted that long,” Daddy said. “She told me she had a real hard time finding a job. She couldn’t even get work waiting tables ’cause her ankles are thin. She couldn’t stand more than twenty minutes before she’d start hollering how much her feet hurt.” He gave me a pitiful look.

I thought to myself, course I wouldn’t say it to Daddy, but maybe that’s why Mama lies on the couch all day watching TV, not really ’cause her ankles are thin, but ’cause she hates living in Hixson. Problem is she loves my daddy more than she gets the blues sitting in our backyard pinning away for skyscrapers, yellow cabs, and men in suits.

“Hell, daughter,” she’d say, “I’d rather be anywhere else in the world but Hixson. Even Butts Corner, Alabama or Omaha, Nebraska sound better to me than Hixson—only problem is your daddy never traveled more than ten miles in either direction from the Lucky Boy Luncheonette smack dab in the center of town, and there aren’t any men like your daddy in New York City, or anywhere else for that matter.”

“How about Memphis, Mama? Doesn’t Daddy like Memphis? Would you be happier in Memphis?”

“Well, unfortunately, your Granddaddy Ellsworth told your daddy that Memphis was a city of heathens.” Mama grinned and shrugged her shoulders, and I knew that was the end of Memphis ’cause Daddy would never go anywhere without that sorry old sack of shit he calls a father.

Mama’s name used to be Madeline Evans. Now that’s a movie star name if I ever heard one. She looks like a movie star, too. They say I look like her. That’s a damn good thing ’cause my daddy, Lord knows I love him and forgive me for saying this, but my daddy looks like a dirty old, boxer dog. Yes, he does—a dirty, old boxer dog. He’s got those droopy brown eyes, and his head is very large and thick, but something in his expression, maybe the way his lip hangs over, and he looks at you all soulful and sweet, looking kind of stupid, even though he ain’t, stupid, that is. And of course, he’s dirty all the time ’cause he works with cars and gets himself covered from head to foot in grease.

My mama is all pink and white and she’d look like one of those dolls you’d buy a little girl, if she didn’t drink so much. Drinking makes her look kind of sloppy. She cries a lot after a fifth of bourbon, and then that black mascara she wears runs all over her face. She’s got dimples in both cheeks, though, and her hair is the color of a lemon drop. I got the dimples, but my hair is dark, like Daddy, and I didn’t get her blue eyes either. They went to my brother, Tommy. He looks so much like Mama it’s downright disgusting. The boys in town call him “fancy pants” behind his back. Better be behind his back. He may be pretty but he can bust a man’s jaw with that lean little hand of his. Don’t mess with my brother, Tommy. He can be just as mean as Granddaddy Ellsworth, but you got to push him. He’s normally kind of sweet, but it doesn’t take much to set him off. He’s real nice to dogs and girls, but he don’t trust much else.

Mama wanted to be an actress. That’s why she went up to New York City in the first place, and then she came back down here one Christmas to visit her mama and never left Hixson again. My daddy was handsome then, and his jaw didn’t droop. I guess she fell in love with him ’cause they had me and my brother Tommy, ’bout a year apart. Mama says she was too impulsive about Daddy. She told me he was just so dashing and romantic that she fell prey to his charms and got herself pregnant. Well, I can’t see where my poor old daddy was ever dashing and romantic. But Mama always had a thing for Bing Crosby, and I can’t see that either.

I was raised on beans and grits and Mama’s tales of New York City. She told me since the time I could walk, how I got to get me up to Manhattan ’cause I’m thin as licorice and tall as a pine tree, and I can use my good looks to get me on television.

“Honey, Hixson is just a little nowhere place on the map filled with a lot of people that can’t count past a hundred. Promise me that you’ll get to New York City, daughter. Time moves faster there but the journey is worth it.”

“I promise, Mama. I’ll find a way to stand on Park Avenue and hail down a yellow cab. I’ll send you postcards from Times Square, Mama. I’ll blow you kisses from the Empire State Building, and I’ll have me a New York hot dog.”

Mama would laugh and the sound of her laughter would make me mellow as a back road bike ride.

 

Mama came to me a few months after that awful night with Jeb Oates. She was so excited that she stood up from the couch and hugged me so hard we both fell over. She told me that Betty Ann Houseman over in Fair Lanes Village was looking for cleaning help, and Mama told her that she couldn’t get a better cleaning girl than her daughter, Grace Place. Mrs. Houseman told my mama to send me over there just as soon as possible, and she’d give me first choice if she liked me.

“Now, you can be close to home, sugar,” Mama said. “You’ll have enough money for New York City inside of a year.”

“Yes, Mama,” I answered. I thought I might as well try to get up North, even though I didn’t know how to be an actress, but Mama said I’d learn, and really pretty girls like me just had to be themselves anyway; it didn’t take any real talent for a pretty girl to get herself set up right. According to my mama, being pretty made life as easy as picking daylilies.

“Don’t you think I’ll make a fool of myself in New York City, Mama? How can I get an acting job? I don’t know how to act.”

Mama would laugh and hold me close. “Honey,” she’d say, “New York City is going to fall at your feet. Your bust line is a perfect thirty-six and your legs are long. Nothing like long legs on a woman. Besides, you are a natural.”

I still thought I’d make an awful fool of myself trying to get an acting job when I’d never even played a sheep in the Christmas pageant, but I nodded and told Mama she was probably right.

 

I loved Betty Ann Houseman the moment I laid eyes on her and I think she felt just as crazy about me. When she opened the door, we both smiled and grinned and giggled a lot. Then she reached out those little skinny arms of hers and drew me in.

“Why, you are just as darling as your mama,” she said.

“Thank you, Mrs. Houseman.” I blushed.

“Do you mind taking care of my baby, Tabby, not too much, just every once in a while, along with the housecleaning?”

When she leaned down to pick up baby Tabby, I noticed that she had a large behind, the kind of backside that makes most men do triple takes and whistle.

Mrs. Houseman wiggled her behind all over the place, getting a real kick out of herself.

“Oh no, Mrs. Houseman, I would love that.”

“Call me Betty Ann, you sweet thing.”

I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I just couldn’t believe that anyone could be as nice and as darling as Betty Ann Houseman. She was only twenty-five years old, not too much older than me. I was months past nineteen by then, but everyone told me I looked twenty-one. Betty Ann Houseman was so cute that you just wanted to lift her arms up and snuggle yourself there, right under her shoulder blades. Her hair was dark and thick, and she had two little teeth that hung out over her lips, so it always looked like she was smiling at you.

“I think you’re going to work out just fine,” she said.

“You offering me the job?” I asked.

“Why, I sure am, honey bun.”

Holy, Horrible Hixson! I couldn’t believe I’d be cleaning up after Betty Ann Houseman, and her little baby, Tabby, and her husband, Kevin Kain Houseman. I didn’t know him, but Betty Ann showed me a picture on the bedroom dresser of an emaciated little man with patent leather hair, and I assumed that that was him, which of course, it turned out to be.

“Oh, he’s a real pain in the ass,” she said. “Never shuts up. He thinks he knows everything about everything. Just as boring as he can be. But he’s sick now, poor thing.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“Cancer, honey. He’s meaner now than he was healthy. It’s in his stomach…the cancer. Oh, he’s so mean—calls me stupid cow eyes all the time.”

“Why, that’s terrible,” I said.

She giggled and sat down beside me. “Oh, I can be mean, too. You know what I call him?”

“What?” I said. “I can’t imagine.”

“Itsy-bitsy pin dick. Itsy-bitsy pin dick.” She giggled and I couldn’t help but join her. The two of us started laughing like fools. I thought we’d never stop. I couldn’t believe we’d become this familiar so soon. It made me sensitive to her.

I understood right then and there why she looked for love elsewhere. Her husband didn’t look like he was good for anything much. I really did understand her dissatisfaction. My God, who wouldn’t have?