Sunshine Money

Sunshine Money

a short story
by
Reggie Poche

I never received anything for my thick skin but my brother's insults and the townspeople's snickers. That was until the people of Cheniere elected me to put on a wedding dress and play bride in their Womanless Wedding. A young man with a falsetto voice, I could see why I was the obvious choice for their tableaux, but pairing me with Toddy Boy for a groom could have been a mistake.

My older brother, Ashley, was supposed to drive me and our mom to my gown fitting since I only had my learner's permit. When we were ready to leave, I found him standing at the kitchen window, looking like he wanted something and watching Toddy Boy, Cheniere's resident half-wit and our across-street neighbor, playing basketball on his parents' driveway with his girlfriend, Rita Lemoine. It was just before sunset when their fun started as a game of Horse but then turned into a one-sided one on one. Probably the same way they do each other back in the woods, Ashley said. Toddy Boy kept faking then traveling around her and dribbling with as much rhythm as his grandmother. He never tried to make a single shot, probably content with rubbing up against Rita every now and then. All Rita could do was wrap her meaty arms around the scrawny Toddy Boy a couple of times and hold him close to her while trying to wrestle away the ball. Both times, he broke away, and they laughed at each other when Toddy Boy imitated Rita by running in slow motion and drawing out his words in an especially deep voice, "Nooooo. Sloooow Dooown." Rita tried to jump in unison with Toddy Boy, though it seemed like gravity kept her and her bouncing chest never too far from the ground. "She's going to give herself two black eyes," Ashley said. "What a beast."

Ashley loved making fun of Toddy Boy almost as much as making fun of me and my voice. He would call me Sis in front of his friends and put our mom's lipstick on me when I slept. For my fourteenth birthday, Mom sent him to Winn-Dixie for a cake. He returned with the most girlie-fied cake he could find: Barbie dolls lounging on the beach under umbrellas of pink icing. "To our best daughter and sister," it read. My mom cried and locked herself in her bedroom. But sometimes Toddy Boy helped make my life a little easier. If Ashley had the two of us to contend with, we both benefited from temporary lulls in his bashing. My favorite lull was when Toddy Boy's parents decided he could be trusted behind the wheel as long as he stayed in Cheniere, so they gave him his grandmother's Buick after her cancerous leg was amputated. Ashley saw Toddy Boy pass down our street with these large plastic sunglasses on, the kind cataract patients have to wear, and leather driving gloves in the middle of summer. Ashley rolled around on the ground in a fit of laughter. "Town's not big enough for two mooks," he said when he saw me standing nearby "Maybe you two should drive away together and start a new race."

Ashley and Toddy Boy were the same age and used to be something like friends when they were little. They used to cut trails in the woods behind our house for riding their bikes. But Ashley turned on Toddy Boy when he realized his friend would always want to play, when Ashley grew up and Toddy Boy didn't. That was why his having Rita got to Ashley so. Toddy Boy, the town's mildly retarded retard, had a girl, but Ashley, a real man from Cheniere, only had our mom. I was also a little jealous of Toddy Boy and Rita. She must have been the only black sheep in town who ignored what others said, or maybe it simply didn't matter that he was only a little slower than everyone else.

While Toddy Boy drove around Cheniere his first week behind the wheel and while Ashley followed him and let the air out of the Buick's tires whenever he found it parked, I had time to plan my escape. I would take my brother's advice and leave. I used to imagine running away and living as a mute instead of as a freak who chose to never talk. I would be the kind of person people feel sorry for instead of laughing at. I would go somewhere where the girls didn't know me as Tiny Tim or PeeWee Herman but as the mysterious man of their dreams. And I was resigned to the fact that I would have to agree to one last great humiliation; I would have to become the bride in the Womanless Wedding to make enough money to leave, just enough to help me get started somewhere else.

Like any real wedding, the Womanless Wedding had a reception following the ceremony, and like any real reception, it had the Money Dance. The male guests would dance with the bride and deposit dollar bills in the little satin purse at his waist. The ladies would dance with the groom and stuff his pockets. That's why my mom thought my invitation to the Womanless Wedding was such an honor. The Money Dance was sort of a scholarship though none of the young men who were in the wedding over the years ever went to college. I should have known why. But my mom swore that both the bride and groom usually got around three hundred dollars apiece. "It really looks like the best kind of scholarship. Just help everyone else act silly for a night, and all those dollars add up," she said. I couldn't imagine what Toddy Boy would spend on his groom's share, maybe some trinket for Rita. The Money Dance, combined with the little extra cash I saved, would be enough for me. I was going to miss Mom, but she was no fighter and could do nothing for me.

The dirty aluminum screen we looked through to watch Toddy Boy and Rita was coated in a black film that rubbed off on my nose, and it put a bitter metallic taste in my mouth and burned my throat, probably because of all the chemicals from the outside air trapped in it. People call Cheniere and the surrounding towns Cancer Alley what with all the chemical plants and oil refineries flanking both sides of the river. Nearly every family in Cheniere had at least one cancer patient; mine was spared. But the polluted sky above Cheniere gave us beautiful sunsets, just like the one that was backdrop to Toddy Boy's and Rita's playing. Mr. Scalco, my Chemistry teacher, said that the chemicals in the air refracted or reflected or bent the sunlight. Either way, I stopped watching Toddy Boy and Rita for a few seconds. The evening sky looked like my mom's bowl dessert: clouds for layers of marshmallow cream, lemon yellow sky for layers of crumbled cake, a bright red stratosphere for maraschino cherries, and purple-green layers of mint jelly mixed in. I thought of taking pictures of the evening sky over Cheniere so I could compare them to the sky of wherever I would end up, sort of test Mr. Scalco's theory, see if home really was something special.

"Look, Faron," Ashley said. "He's getting excited. Oh, Big Bad Rita." Toddy Boy had a bulge in his shorts, visible even from across the street. "The nut's going to hurt himself."

"What a dumb ass," I said.

Then Ashley gave me that look. That look that said, Don't answer me. Don't you dare, you retard, you woman, you embarrassment, you high-pitched freak. I was never given a respite for too long. I thought that that would be the last time I ever ridiculed Toddy Boy.

The Womanless Wedding was part of Cheniere's Spring Bazaar, a little festival on the feast day of Our Lady of Prompt Succor: the patroness of storms and floods and fire. It had been held since my mom was a girl. The day consisted of a morning parade where the volunteer firefighters would decorate wheelbarrows in crepe paper and take turns pushing each other through town. Mr. Boucvalt, fire chief for over thirty years, would lead the parade as the queen. He was always in a party dress, pantyhose, white socks and sneakers, and a firefighter's helmet with a tiara glued to the top. Mr. Boucvalt would wave his scepter, a can of Schlitz on the end of a drumstick, to the townspeople lining our streets and invite them to the boucherie at the end of the parade route. Peanut Vicknair and his brass band would play under a tent while everyone ate roasted pig and dirty rice. Mr. Castro sold hot cracklin' next to Ms. Klibert and her pecan pralines. Old Man Tregre would make chain saw sculptures out of pine logs and sell them on the spot: bald eagles, gnomes, and whatever else folks liked to put in their gardens. The buzz of his chain saw would sometimes drown Peanut's clarinet during "Black Bottom Stomp" and "Sheik of Arabi," and Peanut would play louder to the point of hurting himself, and the townspeople would laugh when his eyes rolled back in his head. But the finale, the Womanless Wedding, was undoubtedly everyone's favorite.

Toddy Boy and Rita were still playing basketball when we drove by on our way to Debbie Cassagne's house for my fitting. "I wonder what breed of babies skinny retards and fatty snackers make," Ashley said. Then he blew the horn, and Toddy Boy stopped dribbling and waved as we passed. "You can wave, you ass," Ashley said.

"They always look like they have so much fun together," Mom said while fidgeting with the roll curlers in her hair.

"Fun," Ashley only replied quietly, and then we turned the corner.

It was near suppertime, and the town appeared at rest. To anything looking down on us, Cheniere must have seemed like a little lazy snow globe of volatile gasses and dirty slate roofs, crumbling sidewalks like cancer-carrying veins that infected every little cypress cottage, ranch house, and brick bungalow. Moving quietly through town, Ashley's Caprice Classic must have looked like a little medicinal capsule that was ineffective in countering the sleepiness throughout. There really was no part of the town that would choose to come with me, I thought. It needed everything, or it would quit being Cheniere.

"Don't be afraid to talk to Debbie, okay," Mom told me as we drove up to her home, the old Cheniere schoolhouse, a little wooden building with large windows and French doors at the front and a little green cupola that used to house the bell.

"Alright," I replied but had no intention of saying a word.

"Goodbye, Darling. Remember to think pretty," Ashley said when we exited the car.

Debbie, a tiny lady with huge glasses on the tip of her strawberry nose and a voice like wind chimes, was waiting at her front door. "Here comes the bride," she sang, "all dressed in white." She hugged Mom and kissed her on the cheek then grabbed my hand and brought us inside. "Wait'll you see it," she said, "It doesn't look so bad, considering the changes." She brought us into the dining room, which looked like it saw more cutting and stitching than meals. Bolts of fabric were piled feet-high against all four walls in no particular order, and the chandelier above the dining room table was swaged to the right side of the room, just above the sewing machine, by a hook and chain. Mom could have hurt herself when she slipped on all the fabric scraps on the wood floor and nearly fell on one of Debbie's boys who was playing sword with a large cardboard tube. The room smelled like glue and starch, and Connie Francis was playing in the background.

"There she is," Debbie said, pointing to the gowned mannequin in a corner of the room. "There's the Lady Caldonia." Yes, the dress had a name, Caldonia Plaisance, and Debbie was its keeper. She simply made the necessary alterations when a new bride was chosen each year, when someone else was granted the fortune of becoming Caldonia for a night. Debbie said I was the thirty-eighth person to be given the honor, but I was never given an exact reason why. Sure, I was now of age (two months away from getting my driver's license), and my voice would add to the comedy of it all. But the dress had to be torn in half then altered to fit me. As far as I knew, I was the largest bride in the history of Cheniere's Spring Bazaar. The largest bride with the smallest voice. Mom only came to me a few weeks before the fitting and said that Mr. Boucvalt had called and told her that the committee wanted me in the wedding and that she had answered yes for me. "But the money.easy money," she defended once I began to protest. The decision was mine, and I eventually decided to do it, give myself over one last time.

I was never even certain how the Womanless Wedding got started. My mom once told me that Cheniere used to put on a minstrel show as the bazaar's finale. My grandpa was the host, Mr. Interlocutor, and my grandma would play the spoons as Mr. Bruder Bones at the end of a semicircle of other white folks in blackface singing "O Susanna." Maybe times changed, and women were the only ones left to be picked on. When he played Caldonia's groom, Jimminy, Mr. Pierre began a tradition by wearing shackles around his ankles and screaming and crying during the ceremony that she would tie him to the bed and spend all of his money, that she would be fat within a year and roll over and smother him in his sleep.

"Okay, Faron," Debbie said. "Don't be shy." She handed me the dress to slip on over my head. "Now you have to be careful that you don't have too much champagne tomorrow night. Probably better to take the whole thing off if you have to make. Don't just yank it up because it'll fall and get dirty." Mom sat quietly sipping tea and eating a slice of Doberge cake while Debbie stuffed me into the dress. She had always been a great mother, but maybe she loved Ashley and me much too much. Maybe she loved her children to the point of hurting them. To her, Ashley never tormented Toddy Boy, and I never hated her for letting him do the same to me. Looking at her sitting there with her tea--sip and rest, sip and rest--I wanted to believe that we finally had some understanding, and she knew and accepted what I was planning to do instead of simply ignoring how hard it would be for me to go through with it. But I had no way of knowing and was too afraid to ask.

"It'll really look better once we give you some bosoms," Debbie said. She turned me around to the mirror. All of my fat was stuffed in a dress for a sausage casing that smelled of age. Debbie had to add extra fabric to its sides for my torso to fit. New, the added pieces were a slightly different color but an obvious alteration. While she stood behind me, fidgeting with my shoulders, I could see her boy in the mirror. He stood behind us, playing with the bosoms: two punching balloons, a blue one and a pink one inflated to the size of cantaloupes. He flicked the pink balloon's nipple (the place where a rubber band should have been tied) with his tongue and looked at me as he proceeded.

I thought, when a person lived long enough in one place, he became inseparable from it. He became an institution of his own, a definite part of the whole, something that could not be ripped out for everyone else's sake. I expected that of Ashley, and Toddy Boy already had his place in Cheniere solidified, but I never expected it for myself. I was given only one chance, I thought, as I looked in the mirror. At that moment, I felt no shame. Certainly, I was scared, but shame never once dared to nibble at the base of my neck. I expected to miss the evening sky above Cheniere, not so much because of its beauty but because it was the only prompt succor in my life. I could look up and believe that no one else cared or wondered about it; that made it mine. But I would have to give it away to Toddy Boy, leave him there in his tuxedo. Hopefully he would learn to appreciate the sky though I never thought he would fully realize its importance.

Ashley was sitting in his car and talking to Jordie, Debbie's oldest daughter, when Mom and I came out. When he saw us walking towards them, he started the car.

"You ladies finished playing dress up?" he asked.

"Be nice," Jordie replied, and then she opened the door for Mom.

I saw her smile at me, but I couldn't make eye contact. Of course, she knew why I was there at her mom's house, but the smile embarrassed me nonetheless. Though I wasn't wearing my gown, I walked out of Debbie's house as Caldonia; I could feel it. And if seeing Jordie there as an outside witness was so unbearable for me, I thought, the wedding would be torture.

"See you later, Moose," Jordie said after we got in the car.

"Why do they all have to call you that?" Mom asked Ashley as we drove away.

"It's a high school thing," he replied.

"No matter. She's such a pretty and nice girl. Faron, make sure you tell her to dance with your brother at the reception."

"He'll be too busy asking for a molesting from those old men," Ashley said.

"But she'll definitely want to congratulate him, especially since her mother made the dress," Mom said.
"She has pride, you know," Ashley replied.

No matter, I thought. I'll say that I asked her and that she declined. I was leaving anyway, so why did his happiness have to matter to me?

"And Faron, remember to tell people thank you when they put money in your purse," Mom said.

"Um huh. Alright," I managed to say.

"What are you going to buy first, hormones?" Ashley laughed. "You both are a couple of idiots."

The people of Cheniere knew better than to hold the Womanless Wedding at St. Genevieve. Instead, they opted for the church hall next door. I stood at the back waiting for my cue, nervous, actually nervous. Ashley was at the other side of the hall, at the reception area, probably sneaking a few beers before the lines formed. He signaled to me and stuffed a full beer can into the front of his pants and pointed to Toddy Boy who was waiting on the stage. My feet burned in the bright red sneakers Mom gave me, my something new.

"I thought these would be more comfortable than those other shoes. Who'd see them anyway?" she said.

Mom understood me for that much. The shoes were a hidden rebellion against the Womanless Wedding so as to not put my plans in jeopardy. These private rebellions had carried me a long way over the years. They weren't necessarily physical actions, but mostly my belief that I still had control over myself, that I was better than everyone else, that I was smarter and more cunning but maturity kept me from using my skills. "They're just jealous of you," Mom used to say. Her words comforted me for years, but they lost their potency over time. She was the only person I ever spoke to outside of necessity. Everyone else thought I was a half-wit, and I was afraid to prove otherwise--afraid that I would be stopped in mid-sentence only to be silenced by laughter.

The bride's music began playing on a couple of speakers, and I walked down the aisle according to Debbie's instructions, bosoms leading me. The townspeople turned in their seats, all with the same pleased expression, closed smiles and opened zippers for eyes. For a moment I thought that they were thanking me for years of wonderment. They all wanted to shake my hand and say their goodbyes, "Thanks for giving yourself to us, Faron. Thanks for being our patron against layoffs and sickness, boredom and idle conversation."

The friction of my cleavage made the bosoms squeak. I walked with my nose pointing up to the ceiling; Caldonia was supposed to be a snob. In fact, we all played stock characters just like my grandparents in the minstrel shows. The priest, played by Mr. Miano, over articulated his words. Old Man Tregre, who walked me down the aisle, said to Jimminy, "You gotta take her, man. She needs to go." Toddy Boy's shackles jingled as he pretended to cry like the petrified Jimminy. When objections were called for, everyone yelled. Then one of the men said, "I love Caldonia more." A woman then said, "I hear she's really a man." "Run, Jimminy, Run," another one had to add.

Mr. Miano continued, "Jimminy Mudd, do you take Caldonia Plaisance?"

"I already took her, three times or so," Toddy Boy said.

Then the priest stuffed a stick candle in each of his ears and said, "Caldonia Plaisance, you must take Jimminy Mudd for your husband. Being that you gave him a piece, the man now owns your furry fleece."

"But I'm shedding," I was supposed to say-and did-though I didn't know why. When I spoke, everyone in attendance brought their hands to their ears in a mock cringe, maybe a mock one. Someone was also in charge of shattering a couple of glasses in a paper grocery bag when I spoke.

"Does that mean you agree?" Mr. Miano asked.

"I do."

More cringing ensued. Then Toddy Boy did Jimminy's happy jig, and we walked down the aisle as man and wife with the Looney Toons theme playing in the background. I pitied Toddy Boy's stupid and unassuming enjoyment. He would live out his life as Cheniere's resident fool, only his ignorance and Rita keeping him sane. I imagined him having children: normal, sad, and damaged children. Victims of guilt by association. That was the only way I could understand Ashley. My brother needed to distance himself from me, and I was more than happy to oblige. Mom remained seated in the front row as we passed. Her hands were neatly folded in her lap, and she smiled sweetly at me. I felt like the most whole man there because they didn't know what I knew. I sometimes felt the same way when I prayed. I was taught never to ask for myself because nothing would come of it. Instead, I prayed for Cheniere, and as a resident, I would benefit by default. I used to look up at the fading sunshine and pray for joy for all of us, not just one day a year. If we all had joy, I thought, I would no longer be used as an artificial means for it.

Not long before the Money Dance and my feet still burned. The altar was taken off the church hall stage and replaced by Peanut Vicknair and his brass band. Peanut's slick-back hair was now like a mushroom cloud, and his eyes drooped at the corners. It looked as if he had Band-Aids on the tips of his fingers. The lights above the stage transitioned from maraschino cherry to lemon yellow to mint green, and the reception began. Before tonight, the last time I'd been on that stage was when my fourth grade class put on the Christmas Nativity. I was one of the Wise Men, the one who gave myrrh. It was a non-speaking part, and I thanked God accordingly. All I had to do was present my gift at the manger, a shoebox spray painted black. I wore a Burger King crown covered in gold wrapping paper and a bed sheet tied with a curtain tassel from my mom's bedroom. But on my wedding night, I was the one now receiving, I thought.

Several other townspeople were also part of the reception entertainment. Four firefighters, euphoric from a day of drinking and wheelbarrow riding, donned majorette uniforms borrowed from the high school. They pranced around in their swimsuit-like, gold-sequined outfits to "Stars and Stripes Forever." I saw one of their batons fly like a boomerang from the stage and nearly take someone out on the dance floor. After a few glasses of champagne, I understood their euphoria well and had to admit to myself that being the center of attention is not always that bad, when it was the right time. But these men didn't have my problem. They acted foolish only once a year. The wedding was the only time in my life when I was not the fool but one fool. Strangely, I found camaraderie for the first time. I even laughed when Mr. Chetta, Cheniere's sixty-year-old butcher, came on stage as Nancy Sinatra in a wig and mini skirt and white leather boots. While lip-syncing to "These Boots are Made for Walking," he danced like he was trying to crack pecan shells under his heals.

I was relieved when Rita refused to let Toddy Boy dance with me. "She's jealous," he said, "Now she's wanting me to ask her to get married. I told her I was marrying someone else." However, Rita did ask me to shove cake into Toddy Boy's mouth for a photo. He stretched his neck out and put his face, with eyes closed, in mine. "Feed me, wife," he said. As I did, I heard a champagne glass chiming over the music. It was Ashley. "Shut up, everyone," he said. His fly was undone and there was a little spilt beer on his shirt. "I want to toast my brother." It seemed like everyone turned to him with the precision of a drill team, glasses in hand, ready to attack. My feet began to burn again, and the sneakers were now soiled by wedding cake and champagne. "We have to thank Caldonia, a.k.a. Faron, for one of the best Womanless Weddings ever." I waited for the punch line. "Salute," he said and drank his champagne. Everyone else followed his lead. It could have been the beer or the champagne he drank, but I desperately wanted to believe that Ashley had finally made peace with me.

I hardly noticed when the Money Dance began, when Peanut and his band started playing Dean Martin's "He's Got You." I expected each dance to consist of a few seconds of two-step and my partners squeezing my bosoms before leaving me to someone else. Old Man Tregre was first, and he rested his head on them as his bald wife took a picture. Mr. Boucvalt, still wearing his tiara helmet, put a can of Schlitz in my cleavage for safe keeping while we danced. They both added to the little purse tied to my waist.

"Show me some leg," Mr. Castro said. I did, and he also made a contribution. "You're quite the little whore tonight."

"Yes I am," I replied.

When the purse began to have some weight to it, I knew that the reception was nearly over. Everyone but Toddy Boy and me would turn back into pumpkins. But I couldn't pretend that I still hated them all. They chose to become us for a night. I wanted to find some respect in that, and I had hoped they found enough joy to last the year. "Great job, Faron," Debbie said. "Bring the dress by tomorrow, and you can sign your name on the inside next to all the other former Caldonia's." I wasn't sure if I wanted to sign it, write Caldonia off as merely something I did. It seemed more important than that.

"Let's go home and count your money," Mom said. She held the top of the wedding cake, which was wrapped in plastic. Ashley stumbled to the church hall's front doors and put his arm around her neck. "You're driving," she told me. All three of us had never before been in the car together with me behind the wheel. Toddy Boy, Rita on his arm, said his goodbyes and thanks at the door as the whole of Cheniere exited the hall. He shook hands with nearly everyone. He would be fine, I thought. Toddy Boy would never deny himself a sense of inclusion as long as his blind pride would hold.

"Bye, Toddy Boy," I said.

"See you later, wife," he replied. Then he handed to me what looked like a one hundred dollar bill from his tuxedo pocket. "A wedding present," he said.

"Who gave this to you?" I asked.

"I don't know. One of the ladies."

Then Ashley began to laugh, and Mom covered her ear with her hand. "You are as stupid as this dumb ass here, Sis. Do you really think they would give a couple of clowns real cash?"

I checked the purse. It was full of ones, fives, tens--all the way up to one hundred. They were all fake, all novelty money. Probably from the same stores where punching balloons and straw Chinese finger cuffs are sold. Novelties for the novelties.

"You said they give money," I told Mom.

"I never thought they weren't real. I really thought they did. I always gave the groom a couple of dollars, and he never told me anything different," she replied.

"Jesus, Mom, don't be as stupid as this jackass here," Ashley said, nearly matching the pitch of my falsetto.

"I couldn't believe you two didn't know. It was too good. Even the retard knew better," he continued.

"Yeah, I would really give you a real one hundred dollars," Toddy Boy said to me. Then he began laughing. Rita just stood there, confused.

I then understood what Toddy Boy meant to me. There always had to be at least one person in Cheniere who never knew he had reason to regret or to feel like a victim. Because of him, everyone else could have hope and feel a little bit better. I finally understood that knowing my reason for suffering made me less like Toddy Boy and more like everyone else in Cheniere. So I had no choice but to punch Toddy Boy in the gut. He doubled over in pain, and Rita fell to his side while Ashley went ultrasonic.

"I'm no retard like you," I told Toddy Boy.

"For God, You didn't have to hit him," Mom cried.

"He can't make fun of me. Nobody can," I replied.

"No one makes fun of you," Mom said. "There's just your brother's stupidity."

"Yeah, but there's no reason for it," I said before walking outside to the car.

From the driver's seat, I could see black silhouettes in front of residual reds and purples of sunlight move out from beyond the doors and disappear among the heat lightening. In a couple of years, I would fade away from Cheniere just the same and move on to bigger things and hopefully make the whole town proud, maybe even Ashley. But I no longer had to run.


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