The Summer We Got Saved

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  “That’s amazing,” Tab had said, when in fact her family had only come around to getting a black-and-white set two years ago, and then they had not been allowed to watch it that much.

  She wanted to find out about Dominique’s mother. Dominique would never talk about her, would never answer Tab’s questions, so she had stopped asking.

  Having taken the rocker next to Reverend Calder, Tab sat pushing off the floor, propelling herself into an exaggerated rocking motion. She thought she would pretend to be there for the rocking alone. This would not arouse his suspicion. She would go unnoticed as she took full measure of him.

  “I understand this is the little lady that is rooming with my Dominique,” he said, laying his hand on the arm of her chair to slow her. “Tell me, how are you two getting along?” Did he not remember that they had met before, in the dining room? “I have great plans for Dominique”—he patted Tab’s hand, which was resting on the rocker arm—“as I’m sure your parents have for you.”

  Tab had noticed Dominique strolling across the yard and then stopping when she saw them talking. Now she was walking toward them, so there wasn’t much time. “I was just wondering, does she take more after her mother or you? Since I never met her mother, I can’t tell. Not that she doesn’t take after you. I’m sure she does.”

  He leaned back in his chair and let go of her arm. “Dominique is a rare combination, a living symbol of what we are about here at Highlander. For that matter, what we are about—should be about—in the whole country.”

  Dominique was getting closer.

  “‘A living symbol’?”

  “When I married Dominique’s mother, that was one of our goals, to be an example to the rest of the world.” Dominique was on the steps and listening now.

  “We were going to have several children, but unfortunately, things didn’t work out. Her mother is back in France now—I’m sure Dominique told you. It didn’t have anything to do with that philosophy, as I’m sure Dominique told you.” Dominique was at his side now. “We are very open about things with each other.” He reached up and patted Dominique’s hand, which had come to rest on the back of his rocker. “Since it’s just the two of us now.” He brought her hand around, like he did with most people, and clasped it in his two hands. “Dominique hasn’t seen her mother since she was five. She doesn’t influence our life now. Her mother is—”

  “Daddy, you don’t need to tell Tab things I’ve already told her.”

  He smiled. “Don’t want the old dad interfering, do you? I know you girls like to have your secrets.” He turned to Tab. “What’s your family like, Tab? I’m sure large. Most of you people have large families down here.”

  Immediately, Dominique’s expression changed. She was almost smirking now. “Do tell us about your family, Tab. I’m sure we’ll be enthralled.” She put an elbow on the back of the rocker and rested her chin on her hand, pretending to be spellbound.

  “Your aunt told me you’re an agricultural family. I know you need a number of children to help out in the fields,” Reverend Calder said.

  “Have you picked much cotton?” Dominique asked, all innocence.

  “I have two brothers and two sisters. We live in Bainbridge, not on the farm. I’ve lived there all my life, and I have a grandmother and lots of aunts and uncles and a grandfather, very good at telling stories and—” She was determined to counter with as much as she could, but Dominique was just as determined.

  “I’m sure we don’t want to hear your whole all-American family saga.”

  “Now Dominique, Tab must have an interesting, if somewhat provincial, story. You should be open to the various regional folkways.”

  The bell rang for dinner. “Father Calder”—some people called him “Father” even though he wasn’t Catholic—“could I have a word with you?” A young man came up the steps, and Reverend Calder got up to follow him into the dining room, Dominique behind them.

  Tab didn’t break stride following Dominique. “And we go to the river and have picnics and we eat ice cream on the front porch every Sunday in the summer and—”

  “And you probably have a tattoo of an American flag on your fanny.”

  “And my mother makes the best fried chicken.”

  “And your brothers probably hunt up a possum every Saturday niiiight for Sunday eatin’.”

  “And every Christmas we have . . . have the biggest tree in the whole town.”

  Dominique watched her father walk off to another table with some other adults. She turned on Tab. “And don’t even think about me being your best friend—if that’s what he told you I said. I just told him that as a joke.”

  Tab had taken the seat at the head of the table, two seats away from Dominique, still seething at Dominique’s insults to her family. Mr. Spivey—from the Delta country in Mississippi—was in between them.

  Tab picked up the big bowl of mashed potatoes in front of her. “Could you pass these mashed potatoes to Dominique, Mr. Spivey? Of course, they may not eat mashed potatoes where she comes from.”

  “I have mashed potatoes,” she said, her head turned away. Mr. Spivey, who was in his eighties and had come to Highlander because he was “too long being stepped on,” was also very hard of hearing.

  “SHE SAY SHE GOT MASHED POTATOES, TAB.” The whole table looked up whenever Mr. Spivey said anything. It was impossible not to.

  “I don’t see any on her plate.” The bowl of mashed potatoes was cradled in Tab’s palm ready for Mr. Spivey to pass on.

  Mr. Spivey turned to Dominique. “SAY SHE DON’T SEE NONE ON YOUR PLATE.” Everyone at the table turned to look at Dominique’s plate and, seeing no mashed potatoes, waited for Dominique to acquiesce.

  “I don’t care for mashed potatoes, thank you. I prefer boiled new potatoes with fresh parsley, but they never seem to have that down here.” Dominique grabbed her iced tea glass. “Like a lot of other things they don’t have around here.”

  “SAY SHE DON’T LIKE THEM MASHED POTATOES, WANTS SOME PARSLEY INSTEAD.”

  The bowl was swaying precariously in Tab’s hand. “Well, you might tell her we have lots of parsley down here. We usually feed it to the hogs.”

  Mr. Spivey looked rather perplexed before he passed it on. “SHE SAY SHE KNOW ’BOUT PARSLEY AND HOGS AND FOR YOU TO HAVE SOME MASHED POTATOES SO’S I CAN GET ON WITH EATING MY SUPPER.” Mr. Spivey took the mashed potato bowl out of Tab’s hand and passed it on to Dominique, who could not refuse, especially since other members of the table were also perturbed by now—“Take the mashed potatoes, for God sakes.”

  Dominique took the bowl of mashed potatoes from Mr. Spivey. Tab was smiling now—and she should not have. Dominique stood up, still holding the bowl, took a heaping tablespoon of potatoes off the top, and reached over Mr. Spivey to slam a glob on Tab’s plate. Then she did it again. The table had gone quiet while watching this unfolding drama, all except for Mr. Spivey, who had resumed his eating. Tab pushed her chair back and stood up. “I was just trying to help you out, but I can see you don’t understand people with decent manners.”

  “Manners? You call saying that I’m a freak just because my parents are divorced good manners? You call telling me all about your low-life family good manners? Here’s some more good manners for you.” Dominique dug the spoon once again into what was left of the mashed potatoes and sailed a spoonful across Mr. Spivey and onto Tab’s T-shirt.

  “What’re you doing? Look at my shirt.” For a moment, she and everyone else at the table stared down at her shirt, but for only a moment. Tab grabbed a handful of potato from her plate and started after Dominique. “Let’s just see how this is gonna look in your bushy colored person’s hair.”

  “You ignorant redneck backwoods cracker.” Dominique backed away to fend Tab off, but she was too late. They both ended up on the floor, shouting and kicking, arms flailing, rolling into chairs and tables.

  Dominique was much stronger and she knew what she was about in a fight. By the time the two lif
eguards pulled them apart, Tab was much the worse for wear.

  An hour later, Eugenia was still incredulous. “Did you actually call her a bushy-haired colored person? How could you? How could you? I am responsible for bringing you up here, and what do you do but make a mockery of everything this, we, I, stand for? Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”

  “But we don’t have manners up here.” She spoke to the floor. “You said yourself that we do what we want to up here. We’re free.”

  They were sitting in Tab’s bunk room. That is to say, Tab was sitting. Tina was lying prostrate on her bed, an arm flung over her eyes. Eugenia was standing in the doorway. She had not come in to dinner, had been sitting on the front porch when the commotion started.

  Tina jerked up to a sitting position. “And I had to go screaming like some idiot out to the porch to get Aunt Eugenia.” She flopped back down on her mattress.

  Tab moved the cold washcloth from the cut on her leg to the black eye that was developing. She had bumped into a chair on one roll and then into a table leg when Dominique had grabbed her hair and yanked it. That had been right after Tab had twisted Dominique’s arm behind her back.

  Tina suddenly rose up again, feeling the gravity of the situation warranted a better description. “You know what you are. You’re common. I’ve told you you’re gross, but have I told you you’re common? I have never been so embarrassed in my life. Fighting, and with a colored person.”

  “That’ll be enough, Tina.” Aunt Eugenia had one hand on the bunk to steady herself.

  “Rolling on the floor like some common criminal. Egads, if our father ever finds out.”

  “That’s quite enough, Tina.”

  “Well, aren’t you going to say anything else to her, Aunt Eugenia? You need to tell her what an embarrassment she is to the whole family.”

  “I will if you will let me get a word in,” she almost shouted, then caught and calmed herself. “Tab, do you understand that you have violated every principle that this place and these people stand for? For nonviolence, for racial harmony?”

  “Tell her how common it was. There I had to go and try to pull her away kicking and screaming.” She slumped back down. “I broke a nail, you know.”

  “You told us.”

  “If it hadn’t been for Greg and Jeremy, I never would have gotten them apart. And they were laughing like it was some big joke, pulling those two hellions apart.” She leaned over the side of their bunk to get in Tab’s face. “That’s what Greg called y’all, ‘hellions.’”

  “It takes one to know one” was all Tab could think to say, and she knew it was vastly inadequate, but her eye was beginning to hurt and she had to save her good stuff for Aunt Eugenia.

  “Oh, you are so, so—”

  Eugenia looked to the heavens. “Let me guess—gross.” and instantly reneged. “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Aunt Eugenia!” Tina rose up again, devastated.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Eugenia rushed to pat Tina’s arm. “It’s just been a long day, sweetheart. Gross is a very nice word.” She tried to hug Tina, who was already tearing up. “Listen, I know you had a huge responsibility being in there when I wasn’t, and you did yeoman’s duty. You know what I think you should do?”—still patting—“I think you should go find Greg and Jeremy and thank them for helping out this afternoon.”

  “Do you think so?” wiping away tears and trying not to smear her eyeliner.

  “Oh yes. That would be the correct thing to do, preserving the family name and all. Why don’t you do that? As a matter of fact, when I was coming in just now, one of them asked if you were all right.”

  “They did? Which one?”

  “I’m not sure, but one of them. Why don’t you go find them and tell them how much you appreciate their help?”

  “That probably would be the right thing to do.” Tina was already looking in the mirror she had nailed to the wall next to her bunk. “I’ll just,” she was already unzipping the makeup bag she kept up there with her, “just freshen up my lipstick. Does my hair look okay?” She popped back the lipstick and slipped down off the top bunk. “At least I,” a disdainful nod back over her shoulder to the lower bunk as she left the room, tucking in her blouse, “know the honorable thing to do.”

  Tab and Eugenia were left alone in the quiet. Sounds could be heard from the dining room down the hall—clinking glasses, moving chairs—as the tables were being cleared and floors were being swept.

  “I don’t know what to say to you. Have you been so influenced by others that you don’t see what you’ve done? Is that it? Or is it all my fault?”

  No answer from the lower bunk.

  “What did I do wrong?” Aunt Eugenia asked again.

  “They said in the meeting the other day to express your feelings. That’s what I was doing, expressing my feelings.” Tab moved the washcloth to her knee and dabbed at the scrape. “Besides, I hate her.” The sound of dishes being stacked echoed in to them. “I was trying to be nice. I was offering her the mashed potatoes, wasn’t I?” It sounded so innocent when she said it, she decided to take that tack, because she knew there was no reason, other than she must hate her—must hate colored people—but that was not what Aunt Eugenia would hear. “That’s right. All I was doing was offering her the mashed potatoes, and she threw them back at me for no good reason whatsoever. Granddaddy said . . .”

  “What did Granddaddy say?”

  “He said that they have terrible tempers. If you don’t watch them, they can flare out on you.” Okay, that was not reasonable, but she was grasping at straws.

  “That is absolute nonsense. Don’t you know that? What ever happened to ‘turn the other cheek’?”

  “I don’t care about that. I just care about her—I mean, I hate her.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “You couldn’t possibly. I don’t want to hear that. You couldn’t possibly.”

  “What do you mean, she couldn’t possibly?” The leader was standing in the doorway. “She says she does and she obviously means what she says.” Eugenia went red. “Myles, I’m so sorry. I . . . I don’t know what to say. Here we—I—bring these children into a place they are obviously not ready to come to and they upset the whole group. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “Eugenia. You told her she was free to express her feelings, and she was doing just that. Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about?”

  “I know, but Myles—”

  “Don’t be so quick to embrace the philosophy if you aren’t ready to accept the reality that goes along with it.”

  Tab disappeared back in her bunk, draping the wet cloth over as much of her face as possible. He bent down to look at her. “Gave you a shiner, did she?”

  Tab jerked away the cloth. “No, sir. She sure did not. I gave it to myself.” She closed her eyes so he could see the purple swelling on the lid and around the lashes. “Well, I knocked into one of the table legs, that’s all.”

  “You should see what Dominique gave to herself.” He laughed.

  “She’s okay?”

  “Says she’s got that busted lip because she hit the floor too hard. Says you’re too weak to really hurt her.”

  Tab studied the dotted specks of blood against the white washcloth. “I didn’t hit her in the mouth. I wouldn’t do that. But I coulda. Maybe I shoulda.”

  “Well, it looks to me like you’ll both live through it.”

  Eloise stuck her head in the door. “You mind if I come in and get my swimsuit? Ain’t no other way for me to get it ’cept to come in here, even if y’all are having a big argument.” She looked to the leader.

  “Come on in here and get your bathing suit, Eloise.” The leader turned to go. “I’ll get out of your way. Think I’ll get mine and take a swim, too.”

  “Look, Myles.” Eugenia followed him out the door. “I know she violated every rule, probably offended every bla
ck person here. We’ll understand if you ask us to leave.”

  “On the contrary, Eugenia. I think you should stay longer, at least a couple more weeks. See what those two can work out.” He walked off down the hall, with Eugenia following along, asking for pardon again and again when a pardon was not in order. “Eugenia, there wouldn’t be any need for us, for Highlander, if everybody sprang from the womb in harmony with the rest of the world—especially teenage girls.”

  Eloise came in, glancing at Tab before she began digging through the stack of clothes in her orange crate. “You done busted up Dominique pretty good.”

  “She deserved it.”

  “That’s what she say ’bout you.”

  “Well, she deserves it more than me.”

  “’Cause she’s colored and got bushy hair? I heard you at the dinner table yelling at her.” She pulled out the top half of her suit and kept looking for the other half. “Guess that means you don’t like me, neither.”

  Tab looked up at Eloise, astonished she would think such a thing. “Of course not, Eloise. I like you. You’re . . . you’re black. She’s light brown. I don’t like light brown people with bushy hair.”

  “I got nappy hair.”

  “No you don’t. Yours is slicked down nice and you don’t have a Yankee accent.” Tab put down the washcloth so that she might clarify for Eloise—using her fingers to enumerate—the more sophisticated parts of her newfound code. “Here is what I don’t like, Eloise. I don’t like light brown”—index finger—“bushy-haired people”—middle finger—“with Yankee accents”—ring finger—“who think they’re smarter than everybody else just because they speak French”—little finger. She smiled at Eloise and held her hands out, palms up. “See, you’re not any of those things. I like you.”

  “You sure must have a hard time keeping all them categories straight.” Eloise found the bottom of her suit and began taking off her shorts to change. “You wanna go swimming?”

  “Oh, sure.” Tab eased over to the door to see if Aunt Eugenia might be coming back. “Yeah, I think I can come. I’ll find my suit.”