Miss Myrtle

Miss Myrtle is one of the two women who coms back to the brothel with Miss Reba after the funeral for Red. (The context suggests they might be madams at other Memphis brothels, but that is not made explicit in the text.) Myrtle is the "short plump woman in a plumed hat" who is accompanied by Uncle Bud, a "boy of five or six" (250). She may be his mother, though her attempt to discipline him for drinking from their beers is half-hearted at best. What we know for sure about her is that Red's death reduces her to tears several times, that she is extremely fond of Miss Reba's beer, that she knows Popeye well enough to know about his annual visits to his mother in Pensacola, and that she believes "It's us poor girls" who "causes all the trouble and gets all the suffering" (255).