“Yes, darling?”
“Mother—does he know?”
“About this, darling?” Her mother smiled. “No. Of course not.” She hesitated. “You see, darling, he has someone else.”
“Someone else?” Hélène’s face went white.
“I don’t know who, naturally. It’s not my concern. I think, to be honest, that there were probably always…others. Now and again. Colored women. His father was like that—or so I’ve heard. He’s a southerner. It’s in his blood. It’s just a thing he has—I didn’t want to know about it, and if it happened, it happened. It was quite a different thing between him and me—I knew that. In our case, it went on for a long time. A very long time. Sometimes we would quarrel, of course, and there were periods—sometimes quite long periods—when we didn’t meet. But in the end he would always come back to me. I think he did love me, Hélène. For a time. Until quite recently, we still met fairly often. Not as often as before, but he still needed me. Sometimes. Then this happened, which was very stupid of me, very careless, but he’d been away in Philadelphia for two months, and I was so glad to see him when he got back…” She stopped for a moment, her face softening, then took a small sip of her tea.
“You know, I’m quite proud of myself, Hélène, for saying nothing. I could have told him, I suppose. It would have been so easy to plead and weep, but really, I couldn’t bear to do that. So I just shan’t see him again, that’s all. He need never know, Hélène. The thing is”—she paused—“he reminded me of your father, I think. I’m sure that was it. That was why it all began. The first time I met your father, I was wearing a silk frock—such a lovely frock, Hélène, pale mauve, and I used to pin a rose on the shoulder. We went to the Café Royal, I remember, a large party of us—it was such a brilliant evening, so gay, and everyone so charming. I knew then that your father admired me. I could see it—”
She broke off abruptly. She bent her head, then shook it slightly, as if to clear her mind. Her eyes, which had begun to sparkle, went dull again.
“Seventeen years ago. And now this. How stupid.”
Hélène stood up. When he got back from Philadelphia. Two months ago. She pressed her hands down flat on the table to stop herself shaking.
“I’d like to kill him,” she said. “Oh, God, I’d like to kill him.”
Her mother looked up abstractedly, as if she hadn’t spoken. Then she turned her face to the clock on the icebox; the hands were on nine. She stood up. “Would you fetch my bag, Hélène? I’ve packed up some things I might need. It’s in the bedroom.”
It was impossible to move in Orangeburg without being watched. It was one of the things Hélène most hated about the place.
“Spit in Main Street at two,” Billy used to say when they were kids. “Go over to Maybury at three, they’ll tell you where the spit landed.”
Sometimes Hélène could see the watchers. There were plenty of people in Orangeburg with nothing better to do than lounge against the store fronts and gossip, especially when the weather was mean and hot, the way it was now. Sometimes it was just a curtain, moving at a window, or a shadow on the screen; still, she could feel the eyes.
Today it was bad, worse than usual. Two store fronts were boarded up; there was broken plate glass on the sidewalk. Not a colored person in sight—just groups of white men and white women, huddled conversations that broke off as she and her mother went past, and started up again the moment they went by.
The wreck of the burned-out car had been shifted. At the end of Main Street, a squad car was pulled up in a patch of shade; on its roof a blue light revolved and revolved. Dust in the air; tension you could smell. Hélène and her mother stood by the bus stop, and the air shimmered.
The bus stop was right outside Cassie Wyatt’s beauty parlor. Right in the sun; there was no shade. Her mother seemed not to notice the heat. She just stood there, clutching the small carryall, staring down the street the way the bus would come. Hélène was not to go into Montgomery with her; her mother wouldn’t let her.
After a while, Cassie Wyatt came out, still wearing the smock she wore to cut hair. It was Saturday morning, and she must have been busy. Through the glass, Hélène could see all four dryers going full blast. One of the new assistants was cutting hair, another was washing hair at the new basins Cassie had just installed. Basins with a scoop for the neck, so you bent backwards, not forward, to have your hair washed. Cassie was proud of the new basins: they were the latest thing.
Hélène saw her come toward her mother, and then, as she looked at her, saw Cassie’s face change. She stopped, her eyes shocked, then she stepped forward and put her hand on Hélène’s mother’s arm.
“Violet? Violet—you okay?” She drew back, and Hélène saw her glance down at the small carryall.
“I’m fine, thank you, Cassie. I’m just waiting for the Montgomery bus.” Her mother hardly turned her head.
“You want to come in and sit down for a bit? It’s so hot, and that darned bus—well, you never know when that’ll turn up. Could be another half hour. Come in and rest your feet. I’ve got the fans on…”
“Thank you, Cassie, but I think I see the bus coming now.” Her mother turned her face then, slightly. One tear slowly rolled down her cheek, and she brushed it away.
Cassie’s plain features softened; she looked genuinely distressed. “Come on, Violet,” she said gently. “You don’t look well. Come in and rest awhile. You can go in back if you prefer. It’s quiet there. There’s plenty more buses. Go in later, why don’t you?”
“I have to go in now. I have an appointment, Cassie.”
Her mother made it sound like something grand, a business meeting, an important lunch. She lifted her hand and waved at the bus. She was wearing white fabric gloves with a small darn on one of the fingers.
“It’s all right, Cassie,” Hélène muttered. People were starting to stare. Inside the salon, one of the assistants stopped cutting to watch.
Along the street the dust rose as the bus approached.
Cassie turned to Hélène. “You going with your mother, Hélène?”
“No. She’s not going with me.” Her mother answered. Hélène dragged her shoe in the dirt.
“I’m waiting for her, Cassie,” she said awkwardly. “I’ll be meeting the bus when she gets back.”
The bus pulled up; the doors hissed open. Her mother hesitated. “Do I have my purse? Oh, yes. Here it is.” She turned quickly to Hélène and placed a dry kiss on her cheek. “Good-bye, darling. I’ll see you tonight. Around six…”
Then she climbed aboard. The doors hissed shut. There was a blue belch of diesel, and the bus pulled off. Hélène lifted her hand to wave, and then dropped it again. She looked at her watch, her sixteenth birthday present; she shook it, because sometimes it stopped. But it was ticking okay. It was ten o’clock.
She wanted to do a lot of things. She wanted to go back to the trailer and just lie down on the little bed and cry. She wanted to go up to the plantation and shoot Ned Calvert in the heart. She wanted to write to Elizabeth and mail the letter right away. She wanted to talk to Billy. She wanted to get the next bus into Montgomery, and find her mother, and take her home. She wanted to set the clock back a month, a year, as far back as she could, till before all this happened, all this began. She wanted not to hear her mother’s voice anymore, calm, self-deluding, telling her all those things and ripping a torn world further apart.
In the end she just walked up Main Street and turned off past the gas station, around back of the parking lot. There was some vacant land there, and real estate signs announcing a new building development.
No one went there. There was a falling-down tin shack that gave some shade, and Hélène sat down, staring in front of her, willing the time to pass. She looked at the clumps of nettles and old strip of concrete path, a wall covered in poison ivy. There had been a house here once; where she sat had been part of its garden. She shut her eyes against the heat, and her mind said: England, Europe, E
ngland. After a while, she got up again and began to walk back toward the gas station. Then she stopped.
A long black open-topped Cadillac was parked by the pumps. Ned Calvert was leaning up against the trunk. He had his back to her, and he was busy talking. There was a whole group of them, five white men. Merv Peters was there, and a younger man—Eddie Haines, she thought. Then two others she didn’t recognize. One of them had a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.
She watched them for a while, crouching back against the wall. Then she turned and crept away, going around the back way to Main Street. Down an alleyway, past garbage cans, and backyards strung with washing. Past a wall on which someone had painted the letters KKK in red paint. She looked at the letters and spat. Then she walked on.
She hung around on Main Street for a while, pretending to look in store windows, waiting for the next bus back from Montgomery. For some crazy reason, she thought her mother might be on it. But only two white men got off. The bus pulled away. Please God, Hélène thought. Let her be safe. Let her be okay.
She knew what kind of a place her mother would be going, in spite of what she said. Rich people didn’t go to Montgomery to get abortions, even she knew that much. They went out of state. They took a plane to Puerto Rico or Mexico, where there were private clinics that did that kind of thing. Susie Marshall had known someone who had known someone who had done it once. Either that, or they paid a smart doctor, a really expensive doctor, to say they needed the operation for medical reasons. What kind of doctor did abortions for seventy dollars? And how did they do it? I don’t know, Susie Marshall had said that time. I guess they sort of scrape it out. I mean, it’s not a real baby, is it? It’s just sort of Jell-O. I guess…
Hélène shivered. She felt sick. Her throat was so dry she could hardly swallow. She desperately wanted a drink of water, and she wondered if she dared go into Merv Peters’s and order a soda. He wasn’t there, she knew that…She walked along the street and peered inside. Priscilla-Anne wasn’t there either; it was all right. There was a girl she didn’t know serving at the counter.
Hélène pushed open the door and went in. Cold air hit her. Merv Peters had had air conditioners installed the previous year, and a jukebox. It was playing now.
She seated herself on a tall stool by the window, from where she could see Main Street and the bus stop. There were some girls from Selma High over in a corner by the jukebox, giggling and talking in hushed tones. If they saw her come in, they carefully took no notice.
“A soda, please.” She counted out a little bundle of nickels. The girl slid the cold glass across the counter.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
An Elvis Presley record came to an end; one of the girls in the corner slid a quarter into the slot, punched some buttons. A rich Negro voice singing Blue Moon filled the room, deep, husky, lingering, sad. The white girls leaned back in their chairs, quieter now, their eyes dreamy.
They played it three times in succession. Hélène made the soda last that long. Then she slid off the stool and walked out. She liked that record. And she knew she never wanted to hear it again. Not as long as she lived. Never.
“Billy Tanner…”
One of the girls by the jukebox spoke the name; the door closed on her words. Hélène looked down the street and saw what they had seen.
Billy was walking down the sidewalk on Main Street. He was alone, and walking slowly. As he walked, he was watched. Cassie Wyatt came to the door of her salon; one of her assistants craned her head to look out the window. Outside the hardware store, a man was sweeping the sidewalk; he stopped sweeping and leaned on his broom. He was in Billy’s way, blocking the sidewalk, but he didn’t move aside. Billy had to step off into the street to go past.
He passed the patrol car, still with its blue light revolving, and one of the policemen got out. He leaned against its door, just watching, one hand on the roof, one hand on his holster. Quite suddenly, the street was silent. No one called out; no one moved. A woman coming out of Merv Peters’s grocery store hesitated, a big bag of shopping in her arms. She had a child with her. She looked down the street, then down at the child, then she pushed open the grocery store door and dragged the child back inside. Hélène glanced behind her. The girls from Selma High had left the jukebox; they were all crowding around the window, their faces pale, their eyes round with expectation. One of them had her hair in curlers. Hélène looked back at the street; light glinted on glass and hot metal. Billy kept on walking. Down by the gas station, a powerful engine revved, and then gunned.
Hélène stood still for a moment, under the canopy, in the shade. Then she ran out into the heat of the street, across the road, onto the far sidewalk. She took Billy’s arm.
“Billy,” she said. “Billy. Let’s go home. Let’s go swimming.” Her clear English voice carried way down the street. Billy looked down at her; he shook his head, tried to release his arm, but Hélène took no notice. She clasped it more tightly. Billy sighed, then smiled, and they walked on.
Neither of them spoke. They walked side by side, down Main Street, past the stores, past the confusion of houses, used-car lots, and liquor shops that marked the outskirts of town. They came out past the first cotton fields, crossed the tracks by the Orangeburg crossing, passed the old decaying frame houses built for whites, where Negroes now lived; passed the square brick Southern Baptist chapel, and the big sign that said JESUS SAVES! All the way a black Cadillac kept ten yards behind them.
Halfway between the town and the trailer park, Hélène stopped. Billy tried to make her go on alone, but she held on tight to his arm, and wouldn’t move. The Cadillac slowed, approached, came alongside. Ned Calvert couldn’t look at her—he kept his eyes on the road ahead—but the others did. Five grinning white faces, two up front, three in back, sun glinting on chrome tail fins and the barrel of a hunting rifle. Hélène stared at them: Ned Calvert, Merv Peters, Eddie Haines, the two others she didn’t recognize.
“You looking for something?” Suddenly she screamed the words at them. “You want to say what it is you’re looking for?” Her words bounced off the chrome, were swallowed up into the hot silent air. One of the men laughed.
Eddie Haines took the gum out of his mouth and flicked it into the road.
“You just lost yourself a job, boy…” he called, and touched Ned Calvert’s shoulder.
The Cadillac swerved in close, dust rising. Then it pulled away fast. Hélène watched it disappear. Then she looked at her watch. Past noon, almost one. The sun was almost vertical over their heads as they turned off the highway and began slowly to walk toward the trailer park.
“You shouldn’t go gettin’ yourself involved.” Billy’s blue eyes looked down into hers. “You know where I’d been?”
“To the police station? Of course I knew.”
“You shouldn’t have done it.” He shook his head. “I don’t want trouble for you.”
“Billy,” She pressed his arm. “It’s hot. Let’s swim.” They were standing under the cottonwood trees, in the still, shaded air. The shadows of branches striped their skin. There was no sound except their breathing.
“Hélène?”
“I want to swim, Billy.”
She stepped back from him; light and shadow glanced in her mind. The heat of the morning, and the cool of the cottonwoods. She knew exactly what she meant to do. Not why—but the “why” didn’t matter; it was very unimportant, very small.
Billy was watching her, his body tense and wary, as if he could sense something hectic and wild in her behind the calm of her voice.
Hélène lifted her hands, which did not shake at all, and began to unbutton her blouse. She took off the blouse, her wristwatch, the blue jeans, the sandals, the underclothes. Billy never moved. When she was naked, she stood still for a moment; Billy sighed. Then she turned, and slipped like a fish into the cold brown water. She surfaced, and tossed back her wet hair from her face, rivulets of water glittering like dia
monds on her arms.
“Please, Billy…”
For a moment she thought he was going to refuse, though she knew he understood. Then, slowly, he pulled off his shirt, eased off his sneakers. He kept his jeans on, and came into the water slowly, the water inching up over his body, as if he were going to a baptism. When the water was up to his chest, he paused; then he smiled at her, a slow crooked smile. Suddenly he ducked his head down and under the water, and came up in a shower of spray. He laughed, a loud sudden shout of pure elation that echoed through the trees; then he swam in the water beside her.
They swam for a long while, side by side, back and forth, never touching. Hélène climbed out first. She stood on a part of the bank that sloped gently, a hollow of ferns and shadows. She waited. She knew he would come to her; she knew time had stopped; she knew Orangeburg didn’t exist, nor Montgomery, nor the past, nor the future. There was just—this: one right thing in a world gone crazy.
Finally Billy came out of the water. He climbed up the bank and stood beside her, looking down into her face. A kingfisher flash of blue; eyes that were sad and troubled.
“I can’t,” he said at last. “Not now. Not like this. I can’t do the wrong thing by you—you know that.”
“The right thing! The right thing!” She lifted her hands and rested them against his chest. “It’s very important. I know you understand.”
“I understand.” He covered her hands lightly with his, pressed them.
“That doesn’t make it right. Now. Here…”
“Especially here.” She lowered her head. “I want you to be the first, Billy.”
She felt his hands tighten over hers, and his body give a little jerk. She glanced up quickly.
“You knew? You knew I was seeing Ned Calvert?”
“I saw you together one time.” Billy shrugged. “I knew better than to say anything. Knew you’d find out soon enough—what he is. It was better that way.”
Destiny Page 37
