A Saint from Texas Read online

  Even the boys called one another, all the fellows on the football team. And they called girls, too. I had a list of forty-two names and numbers and I’d work my way through that list every three nights normally, unless I got a real juicy call, usually from another girl, and that might take hours.

  So if a girl let a guy in, well, that night he would be telling all his guy friends, who’d relay it on to their guy friends. “Did you hear that Betty Sue let Deacon get up to the second knuckle? Yeah-huh. And she must’ve liked it, too, because she was as wet as a bloodsucker, he said, and she even touched him through his jeans. He swore on his mother’s life and a stack of holy Bibles. She got all flushed in the face and was gushing like a fountain. She’s not going to say no to our star quarterback. Well, she is still a virgin, but not for long.”

  I tried to get Yvette to boost her popularity by making some calls, but she was no good at it. The whole trick was to keep it as light and trivial as gossamer and Yvette was incapable of that. She called it “silly chatter” but I told her Meg Stevens, our English teacher, had said “silly” had originally meant “blessed,” “innocent,” and it changed over the centuries to mean “simple” or “ridiculous.” Anyway, these girls, like Betty Sue, who talked about Peter Pan collars or Tab Hunter, could turn their talk into real art. They never got serious, it’s true, but there was such delicate wordplay, such innuendo, while sounding technically innocent—well, that was pure intelligence devoid of content, and I, who’ve heard all the most brilliant badinage of Paris salons, should know frivolous but famous for its froth. I’ve been at the very heart of Paris frivole for thirty years.

  I heard Yvette trying but within seconds she’d sunk her ship. “Spinoza says we shouldn’t lavish on animals the love we should reserve for human beings. The Church says animals don’t have souls—”

  “Well, my Anna,” the girl sputtered, naming her poodle, “has more of a real soul than most of these zombie Christians around here.” She said “Christians” with deep scorn. “They’re all like the Thing,” she said, referencing a popular horror movie released six or seven years previously.

  They chitchatted about everything and nothing, but it was brilliant chatter, I was sure, and I could guess from her end of the conversation that Yvette was being led in discussions of the thick white socks versus the thin white socks, whether Brenda Lee was a heartbreaking singer, how a girl could keep a boy she didn’t like from slow-dancing up her leg: things that Yvette had never even considered before.

  After she hung up she said, “You wouldn’t guess from eavesdropping on that conversation that we have but one life to lead and if we’re lucky it will land us in immortal, loving arms.”

  “I see,” I whispered, “you have a crush on God.”

  That night in bed I tried to figure something out. When a boy was with a girl, a real sweetheart, someone he loved with the whole rush and sincerity of adolescence, his first love, an almost religious outpouring of his evangelical heart, was that the moment he was being honest? Or was it when he was laughing with his friends (I’d overheard them) about his beloved’s “juicy cunt,” how it “smelled like tuna left out in the sun,” how it was only a matter of days before she would be going “all the way,” how he’d say “Yes sir, I’m going to be shucking the hairy clam”—was that when he was being honest? Which was it—the troubadour in love or the cynical pussy-hound?

  The next evening I asked Yvette what she thought, what with all her book learning. “So many people are hypocrites,” she said. “Every well-heeled man who walks past a vagrant and says to himself, ‘He’d just buy booze if I gave him a handout.’ Well, who wouldn’t get drunk if he were homeless, hungry, and in rags? I’d get drunk, too. Or every white woman who fires her maid for sassing her, though she knows perfectly well her colored girl cooks better, cleans better, and cleans up better then she can or does. For every kid who mimes hobbling behind an old man on a cane, though he can certainly imagine growing infirm and—no, he can’t quite imagine dying, because no one can. But we can all feel ourselves sluicing through time like a keel through water. We can all feel the scandal of having an immortal soul chained to a dying animal. We are meat-covered spirits.” She paused and stuck her little finger in her ear—we had pretty ears, small and pressed to the skull, intricate as a bird’s wing—and she said, “So a boy’s first lesson in betrayal is calling his one true love a filthy cunt. What’s that song from South Pacific about having to be taught to hate?”

  I interrupted, “Daddy knows that show. He won’t let Bobbie Jean play the record. He says it’s against God’s will to mix the races and he starts talking about the sons of Ham.”

  “God,” Yvette said quietly, almost modestly, “God has nothing to do with Daddy’s prejudices.” She lowered her eyes and blushed, as if she were bragging on her real father’s riches. Her heavenly father, you might say.

  Every time I’d neck with a boy, I’d look at his intriguing eyes, his almost girlish features, his slender body, and I’d think, This is my enemy. He may chew Dentyne gum to sweeten his breath, he may douse himself in Old Spice to disguise his rankness, he may hand me a love poem he’s copied from an album of hit ballads and pretend it’s his, but he’s a traitor, he will soon be talking about the hairy clam and its stench. Both boys, horribly enough, may be the real ones, equally real. The gentleman and the traitor. They’re able to live in the same host body with the contradiction—they don’t even see it.

  I was tired of Yvette. She’d always draw a lesson out of every situation. I wanted a real friend, one who loved the same sexy movie stars like Tab or Troy Donahue, who read the fan magazines, who wanted to go shopping at Neiman-Marcus for hours and hours, who would smoke a Kent or a Virginia Slim at a lunch counter with me while sipping a cherry Coke. Jane Beth was that friend. She’d recently moved from Fort Worth, where her daddy had something to do with Leonard Brothers Dry Goods store (she’s a born shopper), and lots and lots of real estate. Downtown real estate was valuable, though the value had dipped, she said, because of “white flight,” all the “nice” white people moving their offices to the suburbs. Even so, she told me the family accountant had warned her that she had to spend a million dollars a year just to keep up with her stock earnings or something. She may have been lying to me, but Jane Beth wasn’t a liar. It didn’t make sense to me; I got only two dollars a week in allowance and had to earn money babysitting. The following summer, when I had a driver’s license, I’d earn good money driving the bus for the retarded kids.

  My, how Jane Beth and I would talk on the phone for hours! She’d complain about her folks, how her daddy was so religious he wouldn’t let her go to the movies on Sunday and how her mother was so stupid we called her Dull Mull. I’d complain about my father being so cheap I had to pay for my own clothes or wear my cousin Dottie’s hand-me-downs, all yellow under the arms from perspiration. Bobbie Jean, now that she’d established herself as wife and our mother, had stopped buying us designer clothes—or any clothes at all. I saved and saved all my money so I could buy two short-sleeved cashmere sweaters, one royal blue and the other dusty rose. I wore one almost every day. I’d say to Jane Beth, “Can you believe my daddy makes me work? To learn the value of the dollar? I’ve got news for him: the dollar is practically worthless.”

  We’d talk about Jane Beth’s brother, Jim, whom we called Jelly, and she’d complain how Jelly never went outdoors or played sports, no wonder he was so flabby and pale, he’d just bake and sew. Then I’d complain about Yvette, whom we called Saint Why. I’d make fun of her idea of conversation, all Spinoza and Day Cart, and her horrible clothes and her flat chest and her bad breath from not eating and her always sneaking off to Christ the King. Daddy would say he could understand why Klansmen hated old Catholics and Jews and niggers, how the world would be a better place without these three groups. Since Daddy didn’t have a regular job and an office, he had a lot of spare time to devote to his hates. Sure, he’d climb up on a ladder in his old clothes and unc
log the gutters or he’d go crazy with his power saw in the basement, trying to make a bookcase for his wife, but it came out all spindly and bancal—how do you say bancal in English? “Precarious,” “wobbly,” “bandy-legged”? “Wonky”! I have to look up some French words now to find out what they mean in English. Sometimes there aren’t equivalents. Like how do you translate quand même? “Seriously”? Or frileux? “Susceptible to the cold”? Of course, Daddy had some old relative he admired who was a Klansman. Daddy’d always tease us for saying “Cue” Klux Klan instead of “Coo.” He’d laugh and laugh; he never did have a sense of humor like other folks.

  Jane Beth said the Klan wasn’t all bad, they were pledged to protect white womanhood, which made her feel safer. I thought she was crazy but said nothing. Jane Beth’s parents were rich, really rich—at least, they had twelve bedrooms and eighteen bathrooms, an indoor swimming pool and what I thought back then was a snazzy decor, all Western with leather chairs designed by a saddlemaker complete with a big horn and dangling skirts, wagon-wheel chandeliers and branding irons turned into andirons. In the basement stood a massive carved wood bar with mirrors advertising beer labels from the last century—and of course there were swinging louvered doors admitting you into the saloon. Oh, and a player piano cackling old-fashioned Wild West tunes. Her daddy had even bought Tom Mix’s original cowboy hat and a photo of Mix on Tony, his horse. There were brass spittoons everywhere, which made me think of the boring math professor, Bobbie Jean’s daddy, but they were just there as authentic “accents” (no one spit in them). In the yard out back they had a custom-built outdoor grill. You could’ve smoked half a cow on that baby. Remember, this was before such things were common. Of course, the whole house was air-conditioned with ducts disguised by log cabin boiseries, if you can imagine such a thing. There were dehumidifiers in every room, but they weren’t hidden. They looked like friendly little robots. The maids dusted them every day, that’s what Jane Beth told me.

  During our interminable phone calls, we bad-mouthed our parents for being so selfish and such hicks. We also complained about our teachers, how hard and unreasonable they were, and how no girl needed to know her quadratic equations anyway.

  We had dates but no steadies. I didn’t mind, except I wanted to be popular, but how could I with no boyfriend and such horrible clothes? I would even have considered going out with Jelly, though he was so skinny (I bet he weighed less than me) and he knitted, at least he was a guy.

  Real guys sort of scared me, though I’d made out for hours with that nondescript Luther, president of the Math Club, who always had food stuck in his braces and didn’t seem to know about deodorant.

  We never, ever talked about it, but when I’d stay over at her place, Jane Beth and I would fool around. That’s right: with each other. Two girls, that’s right. She had much bigger breasts than I, though they had icky hairs, just two or three, near the nipples. But down below she was pretty clean. In the dark we’d finger each other, and that’s how I had my first orgasm. It was pretty gentle, like one of those lights nowadays that gets brighter and brighter until it dims. I mean, it didn’t tear me apart the way it does now. We’d kiss, but with our eyes closed and always in the dark and we’d never talk about it.

  One night at dinner (pork chops and baked apples), Daddy said, “Why-vet, I heard tell you’ve been lurking around some old Catholic church, King of something. Are you fixing to become an old Catholic? How’d they recruit you?”

  Yvette turned bright red. She put down her fork and looked Daddy in the eye. “I’d never join the Catholic Church.”

  Bobbie Jean piped up, “Why not?”

  Yvette said, “I’m not worthy.”

  Daddy got real mad then. He said, “Look here, young lady, you were brought up a Baptist and that’s that. You’re a hardshell Baptist and I don’t want no back talk. I’d spank you like I used to and send you to bed without your supper—”

  Bobbie Jean interrupted again with a sly smile, “Except she’d like that, P.M.” She’d started calling Daddy P.M., just like his mother did. I’m not sure he liked that. He suddenly started tugging on the Kentucky string tie he wore laced through a little black bolo tie on which was a pink jackass bucking, his rear legs kicked back. Daddy liked to look ordinary, even ridiculous, especially when our fancy friends dropped by. He thought we’d all gotten too big for our britches—yes, that’s what Texans said back then: too big for your britches.

  I looked at poor Yvette. I felt sorry for her. Usually I was a little envious because Daddy favored her—she was such a good student and made him proud. Since she and I were identical he had proof positive that I wasn’t living up to my potential. But now I felt real sorry for her and I wondered who’d ratted on her. We didn’t even know any old Catholics, but maybe one of the maids had seen her at Christ the King and snitched to Bobbie Jean. Daddy disapproved of everyone; Jane Beth was a Methodist and Daddy couldn’t leave it alone, he’d bring it up with Jane Beth, ask her if her folks were teetotalers who refused to dance or bet on horses.

  “When you said you didn’t want to go to church no more,” Daddy said to Yvette, “I thought you wanted to sleep in on Sundays. Or maybe you’d lost your faith studying all that chemistry and physics and biology. I figured they’d talked you into evolution.”

  “No, Daddy, it has almost nothing to do with science or even theology,” Yvette said. She was blinking really fast, the way we both did when we were saying something unwelcome to our listener.

  “Do you like all those old Catholic gewgaws, then? The satin and the holy water and the incense? Men in dresses? Well, I’m not going to have it. No daughter of mine is going to swallow all those lies and take her orders from Rome.”

  “I’m an independent thinker,” Yvette said in such a small, little-girl voice that it was hard to take her seriously.

  “What is it—have you fallen for some Mexi boy? Do you go to that church because your sweetheart’s an old Catholic?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” Yvette said. I could feel what torture this interrogation was for her.

  “I almost wish you did have a boy—at least that would show you were normal. Not some damn vegetarian and Catholic, starving yourself half to death and stinking of incense like some damn R.C.”

  Bobbie Jean said in a low voice, “Now, P.M.”

  The maid came in to clear and everyone went silent. We always did that, usually because we were talking about something “cute” Pinky had said that day. Bobbie Jean announced as soon as we were alone, maybe to change the subject, “You want to hear the most preciousest thing Pinky said today? Today she said she was afraid of plugging in the Hoover because she was afraid of being ‘electromocuted.’ Isn’t that the most preciousest thing you ever heard? Electromocuted. Don’t that beat all?”

  I smiled a sickly little smile and Daddy laughed out loud—he just couldn’t stop guffawing—but Yvette looked at us all stony-faced.

  Daddy said, “Can’t you even laugh at something funny, Goddammit, Why-vet, or does it have to be in Latin to tickle your funny bone?”

  Now Yvette looked terrified, as if her face were no longer hers to do with as she pleased. Or her thoughts.

  After dinner I went straight up to our room. I thought she’d be sobbing but she was sitting there, glassy-eyed. It was worse than tears. It was hopelessness. I touched her on the shoulder, her little shoulder. At first she was startled, then she reached up and patted my hand. I said, “What did you mean you weren’t worthy to join the Catholic Church?”

  I thought those superstitious monkeys would be lucky to snare someone as smart and sweet as my Yvette, someone so solid and good, if weird. It may sound strange to call her weird now that she’s on her way to becoming a saint, but you have to remember, I was just a Texas girl and nothing is more conformist than the teenager who longs to be popular—all the more so in Dallas back then!

  “I’m not kind enough, my faith is wavering, I like to debate with my priest instead of just belie
ving. It’s all about belief! Belief is inarguable. And I’m not in a state of grace.”

  I said, “I guess Daddy would be happy that you argue with the priest.”

  “I pray for all of you every day,” she said. “Not that you’ll change or even come to accept me as I am. But that you might find some peace—or feel God’s grace.”

  “Do you think only Catholics can feel God’s love, God’s grace?”

  “No,” she said slowly, quietly. “I’m not sure what I think. I know I feel bad about having said to you some boys are hypocrites. So am I! I’m the biggest hypocrite.”

  I said, “Daddy must rub your fur the wrong way”—that was an expression I learned from Jane Beth—“with all his bossiness.”

  “I guess he thinks we’re still small children, easily hoodwinked. We must try to understand him.”

  “Why?” I nearly shouted. “Why on earth? He makes no effort to understand us.”

  “We must love the Christ in Daddy. Charity isn’t based on reciprocity. What did Marx say—‘From each according to his ability to each according to his needs’?”

  “I hope you’re not drifting toward Communism,” I said, feeling stupid.

  “Our Lord was close to a socialist. At least he was mainly concerned with the poor.”

  It made me queasy when she said “Our Lord.” I wanted to say “Their Lord.” I wasn’t sure her Lord was the same as mine. I couldn’t wait to share all this—Daddy’s anger and Yvette’s calm—with Jane Beth. Things didn’t quite seem real until I talked them over with Jane Beth.

  Daddy grounded Yvette every Sunday. He didn’t want her sneaking off to Christ the King. Of course, he didn’t realize old Catholics celebrate Mass every day and several times a day and that she’d become a regular.