Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel Read online

  Praise for

  DAISY FAY and the

  MIRACLE MAN

  “Fresh, funny, and pure!”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “If you read for pleasure, buy this book!”

  —Nashville Banner

  “Growing up hell-raising in Mississippi—as chronicled by see-all, tell-all Daisy Fay Harper … ‘A Wonderful Novel’ and that ain’t just braggin’: That’s exactly what it is.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Rollicking, funny, bubbling … wonderful reading, fresh as Daisy herself, the most engaging butterfly to come down the pike in a long time.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Truly marvelous … It’s hard to say enough good things about this novel to do it justice.”

  —The Philadelphia Enquirer

  “Sassy, spirited, superb, great!”

  —Los Angeles Herald Examiner

  “A FIRST-CLASS WRITER.”

  —ERMA BOMBECK

  “SHE DOESN’T MISS A TRICK!”

  —EUDORA WELTY

  Also by Fannie Flagg

  Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven

  A Redbird Christmas

  Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café

  Fannie Flagg’s Original Whistle Stop Café Cookbook

  Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

  Standing in the Rainbow

  Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2005 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 1981 by Fannie Flagg

  Reading group guide copyright © 2005 by Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of

  The Random House Publishing Group, a division of

  Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. RANDOM HOUSE READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House,

  Inc.

  Originally published as a trade paperback by Warner Books in 1981.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79094-1

  www.randomhousereaderscircle.com

  v3.1

  For Marion, Bill, and Patsy

  WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ … REALLY DID HAPPEN TO ME … OR MAYBE IT DIDN’T … I’M NOT SURE … BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER … BECAUSE IT’S TRUE …

  —DAISY FAY HARPER

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1952

  1956

  1958

  A Conversation with Fannie Flagg

  Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

  About the Author

  1952

  April 1, 1952

  Hello there … my name is Daisy Fay Harper and I was eleven years old yesterday. My Grandmother Pettibone won the jackpot at the VFW bingo game and bought me a typewriter for my birthday. She wants me to practice typing so when I grow up, I can be a secretary, but my cat, Felix, who is pregnant, threw up on it and ruined it, which is OK with me. I don’t know what is the matter with Grandma. I have told her a hundred times I want to be a tree surgeon or a blacksmith.

  I got a Red Ryder BB gun from Daddy and some Jantzen mix-and-match outfits Momma bought me at the Smart and Sassy Shop. Ugh! Grandma Harper sent me a pair of brown and white saddle shoes—Momma won’t let me wear loafers, she says they will ruin my feet—and a blue cellophane windmill on a stick I am way too old for.

  Momma took me downtown to see a movie called His Kind of Woman with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, billed as the hottest pair on the screen. I wanted to see Pals of the Golden West with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, where Roy patrols the border for cattle-smuggling bandits. But Momma is mad at Daddy for giving me a BB gun so I didn’t push it. I’m not doing much except sitting around waiting for the sixth grade. My friend Peggy Box who is thirteen won’t play with me anymore. All she wants to do is listen to Johnnie Ray sing “The Little White Cloud That Cried.”

  I am an only child. Momma didn’t even know she was going to have a baby. Daddy was in bed with the flu, and when the doctor came to see Daddy, Momma said all of a sudden a big lump came up on her right side. She said, “Doctor look at this!” He told Daddy to get out of bed and for Momma to get in it. He said that lump was a baby, maybe even twins. Boy, was Momma surprised. But it wasn’t twins, it was only me. Momma was in labor for a long time and Daddy got mad about it and choked the doctor. When I was being born, I kicked Momma so hard that now she can’t have any more children. I don’t remember kicking her at all. It wasn’t my fault I was so fat and if Daddy hadn’t choked the doctor and made him nervous, I would have been born better. Whenever she tells anybody the story about having me, her labor gets longer and longer. Daddy says I would have to have been a three-year-old child with hair and teeth and everything, to hear Momma tell it

  I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and as far as me being a girl it was just fine because my daddy wanted a little girl. He said he knew I’d be a girl and he wrote a poem about me that was published in the newspaper in the Letters to the Editor section before I ever got here.

  We are expecting a blessed event in just a week or two

  And if my wife’s cravings are to be a clue

  Then our daughter is going to be a little pig … it’s true

  Because all her mother craves night and day is barbecue

  I’m glad Daddy wanted a girl. Most men want boys. Daddy never wanted any old stinky boy who might grow up to have a big neck and play football. He feels those kind of people are dangerous. Baseball is our game. Jim Piersall is our favorite player. He screams and hollers and causes trouble and has a true understanding of the game.

  Daddy says that everybody in history has a twin and that he and Mr. Harry Truman could be equals in history. Daddy and Mr. Truman both wear glasses, have a daughter, and are Democrats. I think that’s why when it looked as though Thomas Dewey would win the election, Daddy jumped in the Pearl River and tried to drown himself. It took four of his friends to pull him out, one a member of the Elks Club.

  Momma said he just did it to show off, besides, he had had eighteen Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. Momma says he isn’t anything like Harry Truman at all. Mr. Truman’s little girl is named Margaret. I got stuck with Daisy Fay.… Most people call me little Fay because they call my Mother Big Fay, although I don’t know why, she isn’t all that big. Momma wanted to name me Mignon after her sister, but Daddy pitched a fit and said he didn’t want his only daughter named after a steak. He was making such a commotion, and the woman with the birth certificate was tired of waiting, so Grandma Pettibone settled the whole thing by naming me Daisy, just because there happened to be a vase of daisies in the room. I sure would love to know who sent those rotten daisies anyway. Daddy and I hate that name because it sounds country and we are not country at all. Jackson is a big city and we live in an apartment. I prefer the name Dale or Olive, not after Olive Oyl but after the actress sister of Joan Fontaine, Olive de Havilland.

  Momma and Daddy are fighting all the time now. An Army Air Force buddy of Daddy’s named Jimmy Snow called and told him that if he could get $500 Daddy could buy a half interest in a malt shop in Shell Beach, Mississippi, and make a fortune. The malt shop is right on a beach that looks just like Florida.

  Jimmy won a half interest in the
malt shop in a poker game and needs $500 to get the other half. He’s a crop duster, so Daddy could run the whole thing and he would be a silent partner. Daddy has been crazy trying to get the money. He made Momma mad because he wanted to sell her diamond rings. She said they were not worth $500 and how dare he try and take the rings off her fingers! Besides, she wasn’t going anywhere with him, him drinking so much. So, he invented a practical joke he was sure he could sell for $500. A friend of his has a filling station with an outhouse where he tried out his invention. He put a speaker under the outhouse and connected it to a microphone in the filling station. He made the mistake of trying it out on Momma. He waited until she went in and had time to sit down, then he disguised his voice and said, “Could you move over, lady, we’re working down here!” Momma, who’s very modest and says Daddy has never seen her fully undressed, screamed and ran out the door and cried for five hours. She said it was the most disgusting thing that ever happened to her.

  This joke on Momma caused her to leave him and go visit her sister in Virginia to think about a divorce, something she does all the time. I had to go with her. The child always goes with the mother. My aunt has so many children that it made Momma nervous at dinnertime, so we came home.

  I hope Daddy gets the money soon. If we move to Shell Beach, I can have a pony and go swimming every day. Daddy is busy working on his new invention. He has an English red worm bed in the backyard and as soon as they grow, he is going to freeze them and sell them all over the country.

  A lot of people think Daddy is peculiar, including the members of his immediate family, but not me. His name is William Harper, Jr. Momma says that he got this idea to get out of Jackson when he was in the Army and learned to like Yankees. He still hates hunters, though. Whenever he reads in the paper where one of them shoots another, he laughs and chalks one up for our side. He loves all animals, cats in particular. He swears all dictators hate cats because they can’t dominate them. Hitler would foam at the mouth at the sight of one, and I guess my daddy knows because he fought him in the war.

  He was drafted in the Army Air Corps when I was only two years old. He cost them a lot of money because he is so skinny they had to make him special uniforms and special goggles with his own prescription so he could see.

  But as Daddy says, “When you’re at war, they’ll take anything.” Daddy didn’t get out of the United States, but he did break his toe when he hit the ground before his parachute opened in Louisiana. The plane had already landed in the swamp when he jumped, so he could have just stayed in the plane, but Daddy lost his glasses and didn’t see it had landed. That’s where he met Jimmy Snow. Jimmy was a pilot and was always yelling bail out over the headset as a joke.

  After Daddy left Lousiana, he was stationed in California and got Margaret O’Brien to sign the back of one of my pictures. He said she has false teeth just like Grandma. He also said that Red Skelton was a wonderful guy and told the boys dirty jokes to cheer them up. All of my Hollywood true-life stories come as a result of Daddy having been there during the war. Clark Gable is the best-looking man Daddy has ever seen, even though his mustache is uneven. Also, did you know that Dorothy Lamour has such ugly feet that they gave her rubber feet to wear every time she played a native? Momma says that’s a lie, but I’ve never seen a picture of her with her shoes off unless she is in a movie. I wish he had met Audie Murphy, but he didn’t. Daddy tells me when I grow up I am going to look just like Celeste Holm.

  Daddy believes that if Momma had moved to Hollywood, California, after the war just like he had wanted to, we would be rich and I would probably be a star by now. I would love to meet Bomba the Jungle Boy and Judy Canova. But Momma wouldn’t leave Jackson for anything.

  Daddy hated being a soldier and was busted six times. Whenever he got a furlough, he wouldn’t go back until the MPs came for him. One time when I was in the bathroom, they were banging on the door hollering for Daddy. Momma wanted me to hurry up and finish so I could say good-bye, but all that knocking made me nervous and Momma believes that is the reason I have to have so many enemas now. Momma blames the Military Police for ruining what had been a very successful toilet training period.

  While Daddy was in the war, Momma and I lived in a big white house with my Grandmother and Grandfather Pettibone. We lived on one side and they lived on the other. Grandpa was sure funny. He stayed up all night once and planted a Victory garden that had forty-seven whiskey bottles lined up in a row. He loved whiskey and could put his leg over his head and do cartwheels. Grandma met him when she was in college. She was in a receiving line and when Granddaddy stopped in front of her, she laughed in his face, so they got married and moved to Virginia. He was very rich, and Grandma brought all her sisters but one to Virginia and married them off to rich men. But then Grandpa got to drinking too much and his family disowned him, and they had to move back to Jackson. Boy, was Grandma furious having to leave her rich sisters.

  Grandpa became a pest control exterminator and raised chickens on the side. He was crazy about poultry of any kind and he used to play checkers on the kitchen table with this old rooster he had. Grandma says they weren’t really playing checkers, but I think they were.

  I had a good time living with Grandma and Grandpa, all except for the ducks and chickens in the backyard that used to peck my toes. They thought my toes were corn. Stupid things. I wasn’t too crazy about Grandma wringing those chickens’ necks either … one time one of them without a head chased me all over the backyard. It scared me so bad that I ran right through the screen door and ruined it.

  Grandpa liked me a lot. He was always sneaking over to Momma’s side of the back porch and stealing me out of my baby bed and carrying me down to the Social Grill and sitting me up on the bar. Once he took me to see a friend of his that was in jail. It made Momma and Grandma mad. They said I was too young to be visiting jails.

  When Daddy came home from the Army for good, he brought me a rabbit fur coat from Hollywood and some Chiclets chewing gum and twenty Hershey bars. By then he had been busted down to private again, but he had a Good Conduct Medal. Momma says he must have bought it.

  We didn’t live with Grandma and Granddaddy too long, though. They didn’t like Daddy and thought he was a little worm. Anyway, that’s what Grandma called him. When Grandpa would get drunk, he would put chickens in Daddy’s room. He also sent Momma a telegram that said there was a big rat living on the other side of the house. Then one night he got his pest control equipment and shot rat poison through our door, so we had to move. Right after that Grandpa went off to the Social Grill to have a drink and never came back. Somebody said they saw him driving a cab in Tupelo, Mississippi, but we don’t know where he is. He left his chickens and everything. I sure do miss him. I have to go now. Felix is having kittens in the back of the refrigerator and Momma is having a fit.…

  April 2, 1952

  Guess what? I saw the kittens being born … I’m never going to have children. No wonder Momma was mad at me for weighing nine pounds.

  I’ve told you a lot about my daddy, but the thing that makes him really special is that he is a motion picture operator and so is his daddy. I come from a show business family; even my mother once was a movie cashier. She was working in the theater because it was the Depression and because her daddy didn’t worry about her if he could see her sitting in her glass cage.

  Daddy running the movies makes me special. Some people call it cocky, but Daddy admires that in a person and told me that I don’t have to say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am.” He doesn’t want his daughter sounding like a servant. I never do say it either, unless I am trying to be real sincere … or Momma is around.

  Right after the Army, Daddy worked at the Woodlawn Theater. I spent every Saturday and Sunday in the projection booth in the balcony where colored people used to sit before they got smart and opened up their own movie houses. After that, white people wouldn’t sit up there, which suited me fine because I had the whole balcony to myself. The theater
had red seats and big green lights that looked like lilies going up the sides of the wall. I could hang over the rail and drop things on people I didn’t like.

  Momma says sitting in that balcony, looking down on people, has given me a superiority complex. Maybe so, but Daddy didn’t want me downstairs where some child molester might sit down by me and then Daddy would have to kill him. However, I have my own instructions as far as that nonsense is concerned; if anybody gets funny with me, I am supposed to stand up and scream out loud, “This is a molester. Arrest him.” Daddy told me that if everybody did that, there would be very few molesters.

  He also gave me other useful information to protect me in the real world. If anyone hits me, I’m not to hit them back. I wait until their back is turned, then hit them in the head with a brick. I have a beautiful aristocratic nose and Daddy doesn’t want it hurt. He himself has been saved from many a severe beating by bigger men by threatening to stab them in their sleep. The only bad time I ever had sitting in that balcony was while I was watching the movie Mighty Joe Young with Terry Moore. I was under the seat during the part of the picture where poor Mighty Joe Young was being hurt—I couldn’t stand him being so unhappy. Some people see fit to stick their old gum under their seat. Daddy had to cut a lot of my hair off that night. I say that people should put their gum on the side of the popcorn box or else in a candy wrapper. Momma says I shouldn’t sit under any more seats.

  The Woodlawn Theater showed a lot of cheap movies. As I have gotten older, I am surprised to find out that Patricia Medina is not the star I thought she was. However, I still say that Mr. Goodbars and Raisinets are your best buy. Zeros, Zagnuts and Butterfingers are good, but a Bit-O-Honey lasts longer. I got a JuJu stuck in my ear once, so I stay away from them. Momma blames my cavities on eating all that candy, but I can pop gum better than anybody.