1942 was my year ... I know lots of people say things like that, but honey, I really mean it. I was the Kudzu Queen. Of course they call me that now, but for a different reason altogether. Who would have ever thought, me, Grenadine Purdy, the Kudzu Queen of Enoree, Mississippi.

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There were festivals and parades every summer at the 4th, but this year was different. Folks were more excited. Maybe it was the heat or the home cooked food ... but I'm pretty sure it was the plant. No one had ever seen it or really heard much about it until he came. It’s funny, now you can’t drive a mile down south without seeing it... it covers everything. That shit grows fast. Pardon my French, but it does. James Dickey, the poet, maybe you've heard of him ... wrote a poem called “Kudzu.” He says, “You must close your windows at night to keep it out of the house.” Let me tell you honey, he's right. I went and got that quote framed and hung it on the wall in the den, right over the fireplace. Now I've never met James Dickey and I really don't know what he thought about kudzu besides what I've got embroidered over my mantle, but I did meet him and I guess that's where this whole story starts.

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1942 was damn hot. Mississippi gets hot every summer, don't get me wrong ... but this was oven hot. And sweaty. You could just walk outside and your back would feel like somebody hung a wet cloth on it. Just miserable. I had graduated from high school. I was a cheerleader, the Enoree Mud Claws ... state football champs. Anyway, the Dust Bowl problem out west was just beginning to settle and the whole southeast was terrified of erosion. But of course we didn't know we should be scared until he came.

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Other people knew ... they could pick up his radio show from Atlanta. Yeah, he had a show about kudzu. Broadcasted right from his front porch. WSB-AM. He was definitely a little nutty. His name was Channing Cope and he made me the Kudzu Queen, so nutty or not, I'm in no position to judge. 

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Earlier, I said that people still call me the Kudzu Queen. Well, it's true. Not for the same reasons, like I said, but for different ones. Now I make things with the plant... baskets, paper, you know, things like that. And honey, do they sell. People are always hearing about me and stopping by to see if I've got anything new. I make things from the leaves, too. Jelly, syrup ... deep-fried kudzu leaves. Let me tell you, they're damn good. My husband, Gerald, used to think I was crazy, but after forty-nine years of marriage, I guess he's given up on a prognosis. He's retired, used to be a school principal in Danville, South Carolina. That's where we live.

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But our daughters didn't always take it as easily as Gerald. They hated riding the bus ... all the little faces looking out the windows as Dinah and June's mother wrestled down a kudzu vine in the backyard. I'd spread it out in front of the house ... twist it, weave it... have a basket by the time they got home from school. And there'd be those faces, watching Dinah and June walk past their crazy mother and into the house. It stopped bothering them eventually, but sometimes they still got mad. Like the time when they were in high school and I put the sign in front of the house. "Baskets by Grenadine, the Kudzu Queen." They called it tacky. I called it business.

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Well Channing Cope came to Enoree and talked to the mayor, Jesse Winkler, and told him about the problems and terrors of erosion. He showed him the kudzu plant and explained how it can stop soil from eroding. For some reason, that just about drove people crazy. They decided to incorporate a Kudzu Festival in with the 4th of July. The first annual Mississippi Fourth of July Kudzu Festival was born. Of course every festival needs a parade. It's a necessity. What would Thanksgiving be without Macy's? They decided that a Kudzu queen should lead the parade. But there wasn't a Kudzu Queen ... no one knew what the hell kudzu was. They (the mayor and Channing Cope) decided to have an audition.

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Now I tried to be Homecoming Queen, but I got beat by Betsy Bloomfield. I don't know how. I guess they were judging based on promiscuity because I was a damn sight prettier than her. Everybody told me that. My mother talked me into auditioning for the parade, she said she thought that I could win. But I really think it's just because she knew the Bloomfields were on vacation so there was no chance of me getting whooped by Betsy again. For whatever reason, I tried out. Honey, let me tell you about nervous. That was me. I dressed up in my cheerleading sweater and did a baton routine while singing the Lord's Prayer. I wanted them to know I had good vocal and motor skills just in case they wanted me to deliver a speech while waving or something like that. I don't know why I sang the Lord's Prayer. We really weren't church people. Sure we went during the summer sometimes if my father had the shop closed on a Sunday (he was a barber), but we never heard anything good. Reverend Summey was too old to save anybody. All we ever heard him talk about was the sin of Daylight Savings. He would slam his fists down and demand we "get back on God's time." When I was a girl, I would always doze off on my father's arm during church and wonder what God's watch looked like. 

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Anyway, I brought the house down. I sang the Lord's Prayer like it was meant to be sung. Dirty. I twirled that baton and pushed out my breasts like nobody's business. Everybody watching stood up and clapped when I was finished. Channing Cope walked up to me right there and told me he'd found the Kudzu Queen. Some boys in the back working the spotlight started whistling and I think one of them was Natty Pitts.

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Back then, I never really wanted anything I didn't have. Never really was passionate about anything. Maybe that's why I always took Natty Pitts with a grain of salt. All through school he was always writing me love letters, walking me home ... you know, the kind of things boys did back then. I never really thought about him being attractive. But I was never the Kudzu Queen before then either. 

 

July 4th rolled around slow as Christmas. Everybody in town was excited about the festival. It doesn't take a whole lot in a small town to get people going. Gossip, divorce, religion. They'll get going about whatever you'll let them hear. 

 

My mother dressed me in a white, long dress, a little low cut in the front. Surprisingly low cut for back then. But it was hot and I didn't think much about. She pulled my brown hair tight around my head and then curled the pony tail into little ringlets. I felt beautiful. 

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They drove me in the back of a convertible Ford, black of course and shiny as hell. And at the end, I gave a little speech about the importance of our country's Independence. Channing Cope wrote something for me to say about the kudzu, but he didn't hear it. He was long gone to some other town, exciting their mayor and honoring some other Kudzu Queen. He was a Kudzu Guru. A true pioneer if you ask me. When the U.S. stopped advocating kudzu growth in the fifties, I bet he about lost it. And in 1972, when the USDA declared it a weed, well I figured Mr. Cope probably just up and killed himself ... if he made it that long. 

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Now I know what being watched feels like ... and I know what being watched feels like. That night, I was watched. It seemed like every boy in town was there to see the parade, and there I was at the front of it in my low cut dress, sweating like you wouldn't believe. And when I got up to give my speech, those little beads of sweat on my chest ran down into my breasts and burned me like coal. I knew he was watching. 

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Right after I walked off stage, he was there. But something was different. Maybe it was heat, the smell of the fireworks, or maybe it was just his eyes and the burning under my dress. 

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I've been married for forty-nine years and I've burned for Gerald a million times. That man has given me more pleasure and delight than any woman could ever deserve. But I've never wanted anything like I wanted Natty Pitts that night.

 

We ended up walking around the street during the festival, me still in my dress and he in chinos and a white t-shirt, rings of sweat around his armpits, his blonde hair shaved close and sharp. But we made our way to the park, away from the crowds and noise, away from the cars and the 4th of July. We kissed and he leaned into me with a force I'd never imagined and still can't put my finger on. Then I went home, my white dress dusty and wrinkled, my lips smiling and wet.

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They say lovers can't go to sleep with a heavy heart, but that's not true. That night, I slept like a child's dream and woke the next morning as the Kudzu Queen. 

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My daughters are grown and married, one lives in Houston and the other in Greenville. I love them dearly and we tried to raise them right. But even now I long for another child, as if something inside me tells that it's not complete, that my story was never finished or a new one never begun. That's how I know. 

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Natty Pitts came around a lot in the next few weeks, which really drove me about crazy. I felt guilty that I had given in to that one night, not that I was a pillar of morality. I just didn't want to hurt him anymore than I had to. One afternoon, we were sitting on his deck, the porch swing under us swaying back and forth. Kudzu grew from the side of his house and ran up a tree limb, disappearing in the leaves. It had already started. 

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Natty reached for my hand, but I pulled it away and looked at him. I had to tell him I was sorry for what happened, that I knew that I could never be with him, not the way he wanted. His eyes kind of welled up, but he fought them back, which just about broke my heart. He told me that the least I could do would be to let him watch me walk away. So that's what I did. I got up and walked down the stairs and into the yard, never turning back. I never saw him again. He never knew. 

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After that, he got drafted and fought in WWII. I never really heard any news of him, just that he died somewhere in Europe during a battle. Even now I imagine him lying dead on a beach, still eighteen years old, ocean washing up around him, his face and body perfect and new while the dead around him are ravaged and broken. I didn't get my period that first month. 

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I knew. My friend Jenneane said not to worry, that it happened to her all the time. Shit, I thought. I sat on the steps watching cars go by that summer, kudzu growing all over Enoree while I felt a small child tug at chords in my body, growing, becoming real. The next month was different though. I didn't get my period but something else happened. 

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Sure, I made me believe that it was a mishap in my cycle, that I skipped a month. But the clots told me I was wrong. I bled out the life that was growing and its father was dead on a beach where people didn't even speak English. 

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But all this aside, I suppose everything turned out fine. I'm happy. And even now I can look out in the backyard and see the vines still growing, weaving and moving. Trying to complete the circle. At night, I close my windows.