A Queen in My Blue Jeans

Abstract

A Queen in My Blue Jeans Tessa McCoy (bio) 1 It is a week until Christmas and Momma is nodding out by the tree. In a thin cotton shift, she sits Indian style, one leg folded under the other, next to a kerosene heater trying to wrap presents. A burning cigarette in one hand. A pair of scissors in the other. A heap of ashes cradled in the fold of the gown between her knees. [End Page 85] Every time her chin hits her chest, she opens her eyes slightly as if she is straining against the weight of her own existence and says, “Get.” When Momma’s doing pills, she likes to be by herself. There’s something lonely about the sound of a pill being crushed against a plate that reminds her of her past, of her failures, of her victories. Or so she says. On nights like tonight, when Momma is real bad off, I stay near enough. I am afraid a lit cigarette will drop and burn the house down, and us with it, if she is alone. I am afraid she will stop breathing and no one will know and she will die. On nights when we pile up together and sleep in the same bed, I lie next to her with my hand on her belly. The uneven rise and fall of her breathing is never enough to put me to sleep, but it is enough to know that that night isn’t the night. “O Come All Ye Faithful” is playing in the background of a local car dealership commercial on TV. “Jesus saves and so do we! Money that is! Come all ye faithful to Carl Gregory of Johnson City—Johnson City, Tennessee!” Momma hates this commercial. She says it is cheap. I turn the volume up. Momma stirs. She certainly looks faithful passed out against the Christmas tree like that. In this light, if I squint hard enough, she even looks like Mary, the Virgin Mother who, despite just giving birth to the Christ child, Savior of the world, still isn’t ready for the commitment of a five year lease on a new or preowned Chrysler, Jeep, or Dodge. 2 The baby’s bottle spins around and around on a crusty glass plate. The piss-yellow light and hum of the microwave invite me to lie down on the cold linoleum and sleep. It is 1:30 am and in six hours the school bus will run. It is going to be a tough morning at school if I don’t get some sleep, but the baby is crying. He is hungry. [End Page 86] In first grade, I was in a gifted program where I taught my classmates, who were struggling, how to read. At age four, spelling words like mountain posed no trouble at all because Momma taught me how to read and write before I started Kindergarten. “By God,” she’d say, her dark hand covering mine, tracing letters in big blocky print, MOUNTAIN. MOUNTAIN. MOUNTAIN. MOUNTAIN. MOUNTAIN. MOUNTAIN, “I’ll see to it that you do better than me.” Now, I am a freshman at Ervinton High School and my grades are slipping. It is too hard to think about classes, or grades, or anything much other than the baby and wonder if Momma is taking care of him when I’m not around. One day last month, he pulled a hot iron down on his hand. Ruth, Momma’s friend, took him to the hospital in Abingdon. When I came home from school, Momma was passed out on the couch and the baby was sitting in the middle of the floor sucking air through an empty baby bottle. His chubby hand was wrapped in light blue gauze with goldfish on it. “The hospital said the baby has second-degree burns. I am sorry for leaving the iron plugged in,” reads a note from Ruth that was laying on the floor next to Momma and a half empty case of beer. It went on to say she was going home to Grundy to take care of her Momma who was ill. I didn’t know if...