Queen Esther

Perhaps the most interesting bureau drawer in Ben's mother's room was her unmentionables drawer. Most of the items looked fragile, the same shade of pink, coral and dusty rose, stacked in three rows like silk scarves. Further, once the compartment was drawn open, a sweet aroma wafted out of a calico sachet bag.

Petticoats, half slips, camisoles, panties, and, at the very bottom, the ballast—a chunky girdle festooned with bone stays, wire fasteners and elastic straps with catches that kept her nylon sheers from drooping like loose skin on her legs. "It doesn't belong here," thought Ben. He recalled an aged catfish he'd once pulled out of a pond with wire leaders and hooks decorating its mouth.

Ben had looked forward to this day. She'd promised the two of them were going on a special trip. He sat all dressed on the side of the fully made bed. His father had left early to hurry onto the golf course.

"Where are we going, Ma?"

"To a Queen Esther social."

Queen Esther was the name of her Sunday Bible class. All women, most of whom Ben thought looked like boarded-up Victorian houses. His mother was the youngest and prettiest in the group. He watched her draw cocoa stockings up her legs, careful so as not to cause them to run, then roll their ends in cloth covered rubber bands high on her thighs.

"Are the seams straight, Ben?" she asked. Lifting up the half slip.

"Yes," he said. She never asked his father.

"Ben, go get the clear nail polish."

He watched her dab its applicator brush on the snag that threatened to travel a cloud stream down her leg.

"What's a social, Ma?"

"An occasion when women get together."

"What do they do?"

"Oh, talk. Drink tea, and there will be much to eat." He'd seen the fresh macaroni salad sitting in a container in the refrigerator that morning.

"What will I do?"

It didn't matter, actually. When he was invited by his father to go someplace, it meant sitting on a barstool downing several fountain Coca-Colas while studying reflections of the patrons in the giant bar mirror. It was always dusky in those places, and smelled of Lysol. His father never wanted to leave. But he and his mother took long drives in the country; she'd turn on the car radio and sing like Jo Stafford. Sometimes she'd drive thirty miles to Warren, Ohio, to visit her aunt. Ben would walk down the street to the crossing and watch the freight trains move through. Alongside the tracks a black man owned a shack roofed with metal Royal Crown Cola signs; he sold bread, milk, candy, and soda chilled in an ice trough. Ben liked to go inside and "fish" for a bottle of lime green soda. The store had a dirt floor. Black children would fish with him in the soda trough, too. They liked purple soda.

"You will do what you've always done, Ben . . . stick by me."

The social was being held in a rambling Queen Anne Victorian with a grand wrap-around porch in a rural community called Harmony. Several wicker-back rocking chairs with peony cushions lined either side of the oval windowed entrance like Hotel guests taking the morning sun. When the pair climbed the steps to twist the bell, Ben spotted goats in a penned enclosure alongside the driveway.

"See," she said, "I told you there would be something for you to do."

Ben immediately recognized Grace McKibben when the door opened, the president of the Queen Esther class. Except he was used to seeing her dressed in black wool, layers of it—blouse, cardigan sweater, a jacket, and skirt that fell just above a short expanse of her black cotton stockings and string-tied heels. A cameo brooch was the only color in the whole expanse of garments, and it rested tight against her Adam's apple. Mrs. McKibben always wore a pill box hat in church, too, with black netting over her chignon—a dark scrim that she...