| Delphine Dials
9-1-1 by Elatia Harris |
| A native of Texas, Elatia Harris
lives and works in Massachusetts. She is currently working on a novel.
This is her first published short story. This time, it was for real. Bébé would soon be dead by her own hand—if she were not already—and Delphine had to act. How did a mother in Badeau, Louisiana dial nine-one-one in New York? Surely there was a way! She tightened her fringed shawl about her shoulders, dug her double-socked feet deeper into the comforter, stabbed ‘zero’ on the keypad of the phone and held her breath. Who were Bébé's friends? So long ago, she'd been introduced to a few raggedy people by first name only—Linda, Bertie-something, Jerry or Cherrysomething. Marginal people. No real names. And Bébé was marginal, too. Even a daughter of the Monfort family might amount to nothing up there. No money, no job. Not young. "Southeastern Bell, may I help you?" An earnest, hillbilly voice. Tennessee, most likely. Delphine had an ear for such things. "Yes, Operator. You may help me. I'm extremely worried about my daughter Bébé in New York City. I expect I should dial nine-one-one up there, but I don't know how." "Try four-one-one, ma'am." "Well, you see—I prefer to talk to a real person." "Yes, ma'am. Try one-two-one-two-five-five-five-one-two-one-two. Try asking them what to do." No notebook, no pencil, nothing handy when she needed it. She patted beneath the pillows of her big Biedermeier bed, reached behind the mattress where her hearing aid sometimes turned up. Nothing. A houseful of paper, an empire of paper, dried-up ballpoints bristling from every bowl—and nothing right at hand. "Uh, ma'am?" "Operator, I'm in bed. And it's so cold! I wonder if you could get hold of them for me?" "I'll see, ma'am." Well. That was nice. Would the telephone people be as nice up North? Certainly not. She looked over the foot of her bed to the big glass at her dressing table, where her reflection was perfectly framed by carved walnut fronds. The very picture of a mother in terror: yellow-white hair streaming, blue eyes burning, phone clutched with both hands to her ear. Usually, it was just that old, old lady reading in bed, so old she didn't really grow any older from year to year. And Bébé had destroyed forever—would destroy, if she had not already done—her peace of mind. A deep-voiced male recording welcomed her to speak the name of a city and state right into the uncaring air. Man had a leer in his tone. Operator, she'd have to keep bleating, Operator. Until someone finally came. "Help you?" "Yes, thank you. How do I get to nine-one-one?" "Just dial nine-one-one." Smart-alecky Yankee fella. "Well, you see, I'm in Louisiana!" "Same thing everywhere. Nine-one-one. "Well, I want the New York City nine-one-one. I'm really very worried about what my daughter Bébé has done to herself. And I don't know any of her friends. She needs to be checked on! I'm really very concerned." "Can't do that hook-up for you, lady. Can't—not won't. So, where's your daughter live? You got a street address?" "Oh, I expect she lives somewhere on Varick Street. Wants to be an actress. That sort of thing. But we don't really write. We talk on the phone." "Okay. I'm trying to help you, lady. When did you last speak with her?" "Couple days ago. Three days." "So call her back. She might be doing all right." "Well, I would—but I just can't stand it. She needs professional handling. What she says to me on the phone is nothing a woman of my years should have to listen to. Still, I'm very concerned." "Nothing I can do." "Well, thank you kindly, I'm sure." Would she have to fly up there herself? An awful lot more money than she had lying around. That horrible walk-up Bébé had lived in for years, nursing her pathetic ambitions. How was she supposed to get up those stairs to find the body? Six flights of stairs! "Flora!" she screamed hoarsely. "Flora!" She found the buzzer under a pile of newspapers on her night table, and worked it like a piston with her finger. Woman slept the sleep of the dead! Oh, now she was clomping around up there. "Flora, hurry!" Presently—a rap on her bedroom door. "Come in, Flora." In the glass, the old lady opened and shut her lips. "Miz Monfort, ma'am. It gone midnight. What I 'posed to do now?" Didn't she look a sight! All those wiry gray pigtails and that plaid flannel robe. Lord, she was getting heavy. "Flora, I need my bags packed. I'm going up to New York City. I'm afraid it's Bébé." "Whatchu mean, Miz Monfort? You talk to her an' she give you a turn, but she been fulla the devil her whole life an' she still alive. Let her be! You can't pay for no airplane ride an' you knows it." The cheek! Slouching in the doorway, her hammy arms crossed, barely containing breasts as big and flat as toilet lids. And yawning without covering her mouth. Simply fiendish. "Miz Monfort, ma'am. 'Pose I fetchu a glass of milk?" "I don't want any milk, Flora. I want my bags packed!" She bounced up and down in her bed, hands knotted in her shawl. "You sit tight, Miz Monfort, ma'am. You ain't goin' nowhere. Gone an' told the whole AA an' everybody else what you think Miss Bébé done!" "It's not the AA, Flora, it's the Al-anon. It's for people whose lives have been destroyed by someone else's drinking—Bébé's drinking." "How it mess witchu she take a drink up there? Miss Bébé not the one in this house done took to drink. You go tellin' on Miss Bébé to perfeck strangers, how she 'posed to hold her head up at your funeral?" "Flora! You've been eavesdropping!" "Yessum." "Flora! For shame!" "How else I 'posed to take care of you? You 'posed to get your rest, an' not go lookin' for trouble. That what Dr. Rose say. An' you don't eat right, neither! I sees whatchu does witchu food." Scowling, and telling her how the cow ate the cabbage—unendurable, after fifty years together. The lady in the glass looked too fine to be defied. Blue lightning, her eyes were. How dare anyone? The phone rang. "Now that Miss Bébé, for sure. She a night owl, too. An' she gonna git you good. I be fine if she axe." Flora harumphed and turned, her carpet slippers slapping down the hallway. "Flora!" "Yessum." "Close the door behind you." "Yessum." She waited for the sixth ring to pick up. A police officer, perhaps? A disgusted neighbor? Did Bébé even have her mother's name and whereabouts written down? Surely the girl realized that with her moods she was a non-stop emergency. She should be prepared, with a list of her relatives nearby, whenever she got so low. But that would be too kind, too fundamentally thoughtful—and Bébé had shed her breeding, among so many other things, when she'd gone up North all those years ago. "This is Mrs. Monfort speaking," she said, holding the phone slightly away from her ear. It came out awfully hoarse and old, considering she'd just been speaking in her normal, silvery tone. "Mama. Did I wake you?" "Well!" She drew the sound out the way only she knew how, freighting it with dismay, hollowing it with shock. "I—I thought you were—dead!" "No such luck. Wanna go back to sleep?" "Oh, I'm wide awake, thank you." She wasn't the least bit sleepy. She read the papers most of the night in the soft pink light, napped through much of the day. But how could Bébé know that? "You can't think I'd be a-sleep after the other night. Are you at home?" That tiny little room, with its view of all the television aerials in Greenwich Village. Girl ought to be in the hospital. "I'm at home. I've got a recording I want to play for you." "At this hour!" What an idea. Girl sounded so far-off and calm. Must be pills. "I don't mean Beethoven's Ninth. I mean, some messages on my answering machine." "Well! I'm sure I didn't leave any!" Sitting up straight now, her lace-edged pillows cast aside. Look how the old lady had kept her elegant carriage, still had a slender back. And hair as long as a girl's. "No, you didn't. But everybody else in Badeau did. Your Al-anons, anyway. Listen to this." There was a click, then a whoosh. "You listening, Mama? 'You don't know me, but my name is Elizabeth E., and I just want to tell you that if you're not dead, well—you ought to be.' Here's another. 'Bébé, you are the livin' end! Crybaby! I don't care a fig if you think you had a lousy childhood! Everybody had a lousy childhood, Missy—let me tell you! Woo! Go ahead and get yourself dead—what with your drinkin', what with your booze-hound Lesbo friends—but don't take your mama with you. And by the way, you don't deserve to know my name!"' A click. "Mama, have you heard enough?" "There's more?" The loyalty! All the Al-anons knew Bébé was up there rolling around on that paisley-covered mattress on the floor, dyking and boozing all the day, so fat she could hardly stand up—and they didn't care for it! "Yes, there's more. There's one from Cousin Ninette. Since she's the mayor now, I guess I should be flattered she made time to call. Here you go. 'Bébé, I'm very sorry if you're not happy. But you don't live the kind of life that leads to happiness, so I'm not surprised. Number one, it sounds like you're diggin' your grave with your knife and fork. Number two, I guess you're just an unnatural woman—'nuff said. If you can't manage to stay upbeat for the little time you give Tante Delphine these days, then maybe you shouldn't call her at all. Take my advice, cousin. Lay off the sauce. Good luck.' Well, Mama?" "Well!" Diggin' her grave with her knife and fork! Precisely! Mm-boy, that Ninette! Six feet tall, stick-thin, and Madam Mayor of Badeau. "Mama, I'm sorry you're all upset. But I didn't call you. You called me, on a real bad night. And I'm like Daddy, okay? I get the blues. But he died a natural death and so will 1. Guess I should have known better than to let my hair down." "In Al-anon, we say that you're only as sick as your secrets." "So you went after my secrets. God knows, I sure have got my problems, Mama, but what are you doing inventing more for me? I'm close to what my insurance company calls height-weight proportional—sorry that's not good enough for you. I don't drink even on my birthday. And it's permitted in some circles to be unmarried without being a Lesbian. However—you listen good, now—there'd be nothing wrong with my being a Lesbian if I were one, which I'm not. And, please, get this—I'm not an actress who never gets hired. I'm the curator of a small museum." "So you may say!" "Mama, I know you don't like it that I'm up here living my life as I need to live it. But there're some things we need to get straight if—" She placed the receiver carefully on a pillow, heard only the droning voice, not the words. Lies, lies, self-serving lies! Oh, wasn't it easy to be slender over the phone, when in reality, you're in a shell of fat, lying on your paisley mattress like a turtle on its back? Sloshed. Another woman in the room, chortling throatily into her funneled hands so that the sound needn't reach your mother's ears. And all of this perfectly invisible. She threw back the down comforter, kicked at the bedding and crept out of the bed. Gave her profile to the glass and pulled her long nightie tight to one side. Looky what a flat tummy! Seventy-nine years old, and a crupper no bigger than two peaches! Damn, it was cold! She took up the receiver again, curled back onto the bed, and pulled the comforter up around her. "Bébé, I regret to tell you I simply can't believe a word you say. I just know none of it's true, you see." Magnificent! If there were ever to have been a stage actress in the family, it would have been herself! Bébé had never understood—for some lives, you needed abundant looks and talent. But those were often not decent lives. Girl had the worst of it all, anyhow—plain as a pot-lid, fat as a pig, couldn't act her way out of a paper bag, and plenty indecent, too. And still trying, after all these years. Oh, Lord -- the lies! The awful, awful lies slithering fluently from the phone. She didn't want those lies in her bed! "Mama, you've got hold of a total fantasy of my life. You need to come to terms with that. And you let the fantasy out of your head and into the Al-anon meetings. Listen, Mama—Dr. Lazarus says not to be too hard on you. She says if you haven't been eating, and you're at that age where it can get a person's mind all fogged up to starve, then you probably just need food—" "Your answer to everything, isn't it? To eat like a Louisiana wild boar! I like that gorgeously named head doctor of yours. A big batch of good she's done you!" Delphine's jaw trembled, her whole frame shook. Cold as a bear's ass, and she needed hot water bottles. She pressed on the buzzer, pointing her finger into it like a screwdriver. "Mama, I don't see Dr. Lazarus any more—I just call her up when you freak me out. But the medical take is that you might be malnutritive, which can warp things. Mama, look. This is a hard phone call for me to make. It's hard for me to talk nice to you after the things you've been saying about me—" "I hear Flora. You'll have to wait—to tell me all about how hard everything is for you again." She clamped her hand over the receiver. "Come in." Flora entered without a word, leaned over, and swinging her big arms, gathered up two blankets and a top sheet that had fallen from the bed to the floor—how? What was her bedding doing down on the floor? "Flora! Gimme a couple hot water bottles. And don't you fill them from the tap. Boil the water fully for one minute and wrap the bottles in terry towels." "Yessum. I 'pose that Miss Bébé on the phone." "Yes it is. I suppose you'd like a word?" "I sure would, Miz Monfort, ma'am." "Well, make it snappy. I'm cold!" She handed over the receiver, wrapped her shawl twice around her shoulders, and lay down flat. Bed like a frozen tomb! Flora showed her big white teeth in a euphoric grin. "Hi, Baby! Sure, everything be fine down here, except your mama don't eat and I don't sleep. Other'n that, it a grand life." Those red slits where she'd rolled her eyes back into her head—was Flora a safe person, really? They could turn on you in no time flat. Turn on a dime. Especially when they got old themselves, and Flora wasn't five years younger than she. "Now, Baby. Yo' mama do too love you. She just miss you so bad she all spooked, so she stay good an' mean the whole time. Why don't you come on down an' show off? Show everybody how fine you doin'." Those red-rimmed eyes boring into her, pinning her to the bed. Flora—mocking at her! "You hand me back my daughter, Flora! This instant!" She sat bolt upright, grabbed the receiver, and motioned to Flora to tuck the bedding back into place. "Bébé, honey—are you coming down to see me? Oh, precious girl, please! Won't you please come down?" "Well, it wouldn't kill me. Why not. But there's something I gotta know first, Mama. Did you really believe I was dead—for three whole days?" "Why, yes—I did!" "Well, what were you thinking to do about it? I have to wonder." "I was having my bags packed. I was scraping together the money for the trip. I know I could find where you lived if I were driven past the right building again. I just know it." With her free hand she unwound the shawl from her shoulders, and tossed one fringed end around her neck. A scarf to muffle her throat against the freezing claws of the Yankee winter. It looked so right that way in the glass, so dashing! An arched hand thrust out, to ward off the wind-driven snow, the newspapers flying everywhere. "I'd find a big fireman with a big axe." That little red fire station not far from where Bébé lived—so tiny, like a toy. "And he'd walk me up all six flights of stairs. Or he'd carry me! I'm so light! As light as a feather! And he'd take his axe to the door for me, and he'd hack and he'd hack and the door wouldn't give! And I'd tear my way in. I'd tear my way in with my bare hands!" Tears filled her eyes, turning them the color of wet sapphires. Look how they blazed! What precious jewels they were—a blue that burned through the hideous caul of age. "And I'd find the body! And I'd die! I'd die!" At the foot of the bed, Flora moved squarely between her and the glass, arms out like wings. Snorting, shaking her head, making her lips as if to spit. What could she be thinking? She was in the way! "Mama, I'd have been alive. You weren't prepared for that. And you'd have been turned away." "I'd have been turned away!" It came out a fast whisper, raspy from the cold, overlapping the younger voice, joining it, like a recitation of the creed in an ill-attended church. "I'd have been turned away!" she rasped again, getting up on her wobbly knees and straining past Flora's shifting bulk towards the face at the mirror's edge, the dark fronds splintering like the wood of the sullen door, to see just how it would have been.
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