“I never heard a no maid come with a house before,” Fannie said.
Lawd, listen how she talks. Working class—Queenie was sure of it now. And that accent, she ain’t from the city. Probably country folk, the way she draws out her words like they is taking their time getting out of her mouth. But one thing’s for sure. She gone live in this neighborhood, I’m gone have to teach her how to talk proper so she don’t stick out like a sore thumb. Lawd, all I need is for the other help to make fun. Can’t have none a that. Maybe start her on the word of the day in the newspaper, to improve her vocabulary. Gone try to make her more like Miss Althea. Now that lady, she had manners.
“And what kind of highfalutin’ name is Saphro . . . Saphro . . .”
“Saphronia, ma’am,” Queenie interjected.
“What kind of name is that anyway? Just who do you think you are? Queen of the Nile? Huh, Queenie?” Fannie put her hands on her hips. “Now go on home, like I told you.” She gave Queenie a dismissive wave of her hand.
“Yes, ma’am.” Queenie left the dining room, grabbed her pocketbook from the kitchen drawer, and left.
The next morning, Queenie came back. And when Miss Fannie came down the stairs, Queenie was standing in the same spot as she had been the day before, beside the dining room chair.
“Queenie, what the hell you doing here?” Fannie huffed. “I thought I told you to go home and never come back.”
Queenie was afraid to look at her on account she had on a see-through nightie. Instead, she peered at her sideways, trying not to flinch. “What can I get you for breakfast, ma’am?”
“You cook?” Fannie folded her arms across her body, suddenly conscious she was standing there half-naked.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m a mighty fine cook, according to Miss Althea.”
“I don’t need no cook,” Fannie said, waving her hand at Queenie. “Now go on home, like I told you.”
For the next week, Queenie came back to that house on Prytania Street every day. And each morning she asked Miss Fannie what she wanted for breakfast. Finally, on the seventh day, Miss Fannie gave Queenie a different answer.
“You know how to make eggs benedict?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Queenie answered.
A little while later Queenie came back into the dining room and placed the eggs in front of Miss Fannie along with a brandy milk punch, hoping the brandy might make her more palatable.
Fannie looked at the plate with wonder in her face. “I ain’t never had eggs benedict before.”
“Well,” Queenie said, hoisting up her bosom, “now you can have them every morning, if that’s what you want.”
Fannie cut a portion of the eggs benedict and tasted it.
“Why, this is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth!” she declared.
“I got plenty more where that came from. Can make you gumbo, or grillades, or whatever else you like. I make me a mean crème br?lée.”
Fannie turned her steely blue eyes up at Queenie. “Really? You’ll stay? I’ll call you Saphro . . . Saphro—you know, your name—if that’s what you want.”
Queenie wasn’t quite sure what to make of her sentimentality. No employer had ever talked that way to her before, so intimate like. Maybe she not so bad after all.
“Queenie’ll do just fine, Miss Fannie.”
“Your grandma, she been calling her Queenie ever since. Been a good thirty years now,” Doll said.
“Did Fannie make up your name, too?” Ibby asked.
Doll shook her head. “No, child. The way Mama tells it, the day I came into this world, she said I looked like a little brown baby doll, the kind you find in a king cake. From that day on, she called me her little Dollbaby.”
“What’s a king cake?” Ibby asked.
Doll twisted her mouth. “I forget you ain’t from around here. You heard of Mardi Gras, ain’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“King cakes are an oval-shaped strudel they serve during the Mardi Gras season. I don’t really know why, but they stick a little naked doll the size of a half my pinkie in the middle of the cake. Sometimes it’s porcelain, sometimes plastic, but they always look the same—they got their little arms and legs sticking up in the air like they getting ready to pee.”
“Is Dollbaby your real name?”
“No. It’s Viola, but nobody calls me that, lessen we at church.”
Doll stopped in front of a large clapboard center-hall cottage painted the color of strawberry ice cream. A boxwood hedge led up to a raised front porch lined with columns. In the side yard, a towering pecan tree held a swing on its lower branches, the grass beneath it worn thin.
Doll bent over and whispered to Ibby, “Now, don’t you let little Miss Annabelle get under your skin. You hear me? She thinks she’s a real princess, just like her mama do. Don’t be put off by no airs she puts on, that’s all I’m saying.”