The Saint Louisans Read Free Page B

streets. I saw all kinds of people unimaginable in Dubourg, especially blacks. Foreign tongues gabbled above me. Beautiful, un-Baptist women clopped down the street in spike heels and fur coats. No trip home would be complete without a visit to Famous-Barr’s bakery and a white cardboard box filled with their jelly doughnuts. I craved their rich, almost black jelly and powdered sugar on top of a dark, moist, bun. It was the most artful jelly doughnut ever made. I still mourn its passing.
    The second time was in summer. We’d visit the Muny Opera in Forest Park. We braved the outdoor theater and the spongy humidity of St. Louis summers to hear musicals. Huge, propeller-like fans roared before the performance to circulate the air, reminding me of airplanes and Dad in his jet. The musicals bonded me to Aunt Mary and Spud, because they were our music, that of an era I call B.A., before the assassination. Our favorite was
South Pacific
. Its tunes flowed out like juice from a squeezed orange, and I loved Nellie Forbush, the wisecracking nurse who fell in love with the French guy. The kernel that made me become a nurse was planted when she scrubbed her head and sang about washing that man right out of her hair.
    And then, my favorite trip of all was camping out on the floor before the TV set when it broadcast the Veiled Prophet Ball and its yearly convocation when the Prophet held his court of love and beauty. It was magical.
    The Veiled Prophet Association (or the Krewe of the Mystic Order of the Veiled Prophet of the Enchanted Realm, if you take the scenic route) was formed in 1878 by wealthy St. Louisans who wanted to imitate their more raucous cousins down the river and throw a Mardi Gras cum débutante ball for their daughters. I delighted in watching its pageantry absorbed in its black and white splendor while Aunt Mary graded papers and Spud cleaned his shotgun (it was during hunting season).
    There were maids of honor, heralds, pages in tights, Verdi’s march from
Aida
announcing the presentation of debutantes wearing single-plumed tiaras imitating the English royal court and their three plumes. Bearded and robed ministers of the court proclaimed in stilted rhetoric the wishes of His Mysterious Majesty. Bengal Lancers marched and flourished lances.
    The Prophet was indeed veiled, having been borrowed from Thomas Moore’s oriental fancy
Lallah Rookh
, whose veiled prophet—‘The veil, the silver veil, which he had flung in mercy there, To hide from mortal sight his dazzling brow, till man could bear Its light no more…’—crowned his queen, later honored with a torchlight parade through the streets of downtown St. Louis. The Prophet and his ladies appeared enclosed in a glass box like precious gems. This only increased my delight. Later, I found out it was plastic because boys had started throwing rocks and firing pea shooters, a sign that the fifties and its Eisenhower peace was starting to unravel. The Veiled Prophet’s troubles multiplied as the sixties rumbled and matured. Marches were held against the Veiled Prophet Ball as being racist, a privileged toy of the ruling class. In 1972, a crisis was reached when a woman broke into the ball and jerked off the Prophet’s veil. Horror!
    For far too long, I obsessed over the court of love and beauty. I wanted to be crowned; become a secret princess, a changeling who had royal blood. After all, even though loved by Aunt Mary and Spud, I was a child on loan. Outwardly I was a precocious savant imitating Aunt Mary, but inwardly I wanted a crown. I wanted to be Nurse Forbush swept off my feet by a Frenchman in the tropics. I wanted the magic of Christmas shopping and the spectacle of its windows. I wanted to wear a tiara again, recalling the day Dad crowned me in his cockpit. But the fantasies that charmed me as a child would later bloom with unfortunate results for little Cindy Lee Taylor.
    And now those long-dead fantasies had been