Queen Bee Goes Home Again Read Online Free Page A

Mouth-to-mouth?
    Would that even work, without his teeth?
    Oh, yuk !
    Should I just stand there and let him go?
    Sensible though that was, I couldn’t, so I started chest compressions.
    Why didn’t that woman hurry ?
    Shalayne finally shuffled in. “Now, Miz Scott, you can quit that CPR. They’s no cause to go gittin’ so upset. Last night yer daddy and yer uncle took off all they clothes and was packin’ to leave. All night, hollerin’ away at each other the whole time, as usual.” She cracked a broken-toothed grin. “They was havin’ such a good time, we just left ’em to it. They didn’t git to sleep till an hour ago, so I’m not surprised you cain’t rouse ’em.” She smiled again. “We just covered them as they lay, for modesty, don’t you know.”
    Uncle Bedford finally let out a strangled snore.
    I wanted to be stern with Shalayne, but the picture she conjured made me laugh instead, washing away my fear.
    I was grateful that the staff had let Daddy and Uncle Bedford keep doing what they’d been doing as long as they were having a good time.
    When I collected myself, I asked her, “What happened to Uncle Bedford’s hospital bed?”
    Shalayne shook her head, exhaling. “He kept climbin’ out of it and fallin’, so we just put the mattress on the floor. Safer, and a lot less trouble than restraints.”
    She pursed her lips with a knowing nod. “We tried restrainin’ him once, and he like to tore the whole bed apart. I’s afraid he’d break his wrists, fightin’ like he was.” She leaned closer. “They’s strong as a WWE rassler with ’roid rage when they have them psychotic spells, don’t you know.”
    She looked back down at my uncle. “So far, puttin’ Mr. B’s mattress on the floor seems to work just fine.”
    Uncle Bedford took a long, blessed breath, then blasted out a barely intelligible hunk of vitriol on the exhale, still asleep.
    His prejudices had come back to haunt him in the form of an armless little black man who bit him on the knees (unless you sprayed him away with Windex), phantom Japanese soldiers who sat on the furniture unless he covered it with sheets, and his wife Aunt Glory, who had turned into “that gay guy” who’d kept “stealing” his shoes (probably to put them where they belonged).
    That gay guy. Please. My father and all three of his brothers had grown up so homophobic, they were probably repressed gays themselves.
    As usual when confronted by the bizarre Southern gothic elements of my family, I tried to laugh it off.
    Lying there, Daddy and Uncle B looked so frail and harmless.
    As if she’d read my mind, Shalayne frowned. “Mr. Bedford’s dangerous, don’t you know? Coldcocked that new boy we hired last week. Thought he was gay, when all the boy was doin’ was trying to git Mr. B’s unmentionables clean in the shower.”
    Shalayne went on in her monotone with, “We had to give Mr. B a hypo of Haldol ta git him settled down, and that new boy quit right there on the spot. But that’s all past, now we went back to lettin’ the women bathe ’em both.”
    Nothing like a woman with a warm, soapy rag in the shower, regardless of what she looked like.
    Men. I mean, really.
    Shalayne pulled the sheet over Daddy’s feet. “They seem to like that.” She crossed her thin arms at her waist in satisfaction. “I tell ya, these old men is still randy, even when they cain’t hardly breathe.”
    But looking at the two of them lying there, wasted and helpless, my heart broke for my sole surviving uncle and my father. And their genes within me.
    Please, God, I beg you not to let me get to this state. Take me home now, if you have to, but don’t let me come to this.
    Then I flashed on the two of them, naked and hollering and flinging clothes and sheets, and I