Net of Jewels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  Then May Garth sent me a book of poetry by Langston Hughes. “Oh, shining tree! Oh, shining rivers of the soul.” I kept the books in the bedside table where I hid journals and the copy of One Arm and Other Stories Charles William had given me the summer we met. In that little cherry bedside table were all the secrets my culture meant to keep from me, everything they feared and wanted me to fear. I did fear the books in that table but I could not keep from reading them and I did not throw them away.

  Meanwhile, Malcolm had gotten his degree in engineering and was working in a small milling town in South Carolina. He did not call me and after I called him drunkenly several times in the middle of the night he got an unlisted phone number. “My sons are virgin births,” I had started telling people. After a while I began to believe it.

  “I’ll build Sister an apartment in the side yard,” Daddy had said, as soon as he got us back again. “I’ve already called the builders. We ought to adopt those babies, Ariane. They’re Mannings, Manning boys. We ought to change their names.”

  “Don’t encourage her,” my mother answered. “Don’t encourage her to leave her husband.”

  “To hell with the little bastard,” Daddy said. “I never did like the little son-of-a-bitch anyway.” It was all he said now if anyone mentioned Malcolm’s name.

  So the carpenters had appeared and built a room onto the side of Momma’s house and Daddy hired two more maids. “Sister can go back to school,” he decreed. “She can go to business school and learn about the markets.” I dutifully signed up for business school and went out and bought a wardrobe of businesslike dresses and even went to the classes for a week or two. I went until they had a spelling bee. One morning I found myself standing with my back against a blackboard spelling simple words in competition with a dour-looking man in a short-sleeved shirt. I lost on some simple word, picked up my pocketbook, and walked home in a rage. What in the name of God was I doing in a business school? I stopped a block from my mother’s house and sat down on a low stone wall and wept like a child. I couldn’t even win a spelling bee at a goddamn business school. It was clear my mind was gone, my life was over.

  Meanwhile, Daddy’s lawyers were getting me a divorce and custody of my children in exchange for Malcolm not having to pay me any child support. He had agreed to the proposition but he had not signed the papers yet.

  “I ought to adopt those children,” Daddy kept saying. “You ought to let your mother and me adopt them, Sweetie. If anything happened to you, those sapsuckers up in Georgia could come down here and take those little boys away and raise them any way they liked.”

  “Oh, Daddy.” I was shocked by the ferocity of the idea. He was always doing that, cutting right to the heart of the matter, coming out of nowhere to say what no one else would say.

  “They’re Mannings,” he went on. “And it looks like Dudley’s never going to have a boy. We ought to adopt them and change their names to Manning. That little husband of yours doesn’t care anything about any of you.”

  “I couldn’t let you do that. I couldn’t do that to Malcolm.”

  “Well, you go on and have a good time with your friends. I’m sorry it didn’t work out about business school but we’ll think of something for you to do. Maybe you can go up to Florence to that branch of the university next year. You could stay up there with my cousin, Ellen Moore, and come home on the weekends.”

  “I might. I need to do something.”

  “Well, go round up the boys and we’ll take them out to Finley Island to see the goats. I’m going to have them a little goat cart made. It’s time for them to start learning to control animals.” We rounded up the babies and the maids and piled into Daddy’s car and went out to the river to see the goats. “We’ll get them a pony next year,” he said. “By next year they ought to be big enough to ride. I swear, that Little Malcolm’s a wild one. He’s the strongest little boy I’ve ever seen.” Then he would sweep my children up into his arms and laugh with delight. He had forgotten they were mine. He thought they belonged to him.

  In the world outside, momentous things continued to go on. The public schools of Memphis, Atlanta, and Dallas desegregated in the fall. White people were building their academies, sending money to the Klan, joining the White Citizens’ Council, digging in. The part of my father that did these things and bragged on doing them was his Achilles’ heel. It would keep him from greatness and in the end would take away the riches he had been so proud of making. EVERY DAY THE WORLD TURNS UPSIDE DOWN ON SOMEONE WHO THOUGHT HE WAS SITTING ON TOP OF IT was a saying he had pinned to his dresser mirror. It should have said, HE WHO HATES IS LOST.

  Some fortunate star, some bright crystalline piece of luck had given me Charles William and Irise as a counterweight to all of that. If it was new, they wanted to see it. If it was interesting, they had to be there. If it was revolutionary, they were for it. So when they came home for Christmas vacation the first thing they wanted to do was go down to Montgomery and visit his cousin who had married a Yankee journalist and was getting crosses burned in his yard.

  “Come with us,” he said. “Come on, Dee. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “She brought the cross inside and built a pond around it,” Irise added. “An architect from Sweden designed it for her. It’s got goldfish in it.”

  “It’s in their house. In the living room.” Charles William waved his hands in the air. “I have to see it. Come on, Dee. Go with us. You haven’t got anything else to do.”

  He was right. All I did all day was watch the maids take care of the babies and go shopping and walk into the kitchen to see what time it was.

  “Momma,” I said that night. “Charles William and Irise want me to go to Montgomery with them to see a house with a pond inside it. Can I go? Will you take care of the babies?”

  “For how long?”

  “Just a weekend. We’ll be back on Sunday. We’re going to stay with his cousin Charles.”

  “Let her go, Ariane,” Charles William said. “She needs to get away.”

  “We’ll be back Sunday,” Irise put in. “We’ll come right back, I promise.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she began. “I don’t know if you should go off and leave these babies.”

  “Please, Momma. I’m so lonely. I’m so tired of everything. I never get to have a bit of fun.”

  “All right,” she said. “Okay. You can go, but have her back by Sunday, Charles William. I don’t want to be alone with these babies past Sunday night.”

  On Friday afternoon we piled our bags into the trunk of Charles William’s car and started driving. It was a hundred and eighty miles to Montgomery, a four-hour drive.

  “She used to be a reporter in Washington,” Irise said. “She went to jail for something that she did.”

  “Cousin Charles is a brain surgeon,” Charles William added. “He lets her do anything she likes. He built her the most modern house in Montgomery. He doesn’t care what she does.”

  “They had to send their children off to Arizona to go to school,” Irise added. “They sent them both away.”

  “What’s her name? Where are we going to stay?”

  “Derry. Her name was Derry Maitland, but now it’s Derry Waters. Wait till you meet her.”

  “I don’t know if we should do this. We’re going to get back so late.” I sank down into the backseat. I was getting scared. Going to see a woman who went to jail for helping Negroes sit up front on buses.

  “You want some of these cookies?” Irise turned around in the seat and handed a basket of cookies to me. “Eula made them for us. They’re pecan and chocolate chip. Try one.”

  We stopped in Birmingham to go to a liquor store and get some wine. “I want to go to the bookstore too,” I said. “If it’s still open. Let’s go and see if it’s open.”

  “The liquor store closes early. We better do that first.”

  “Drop me off at the bookstore. Then you can go get the wine.” Charles William drove down the main avenue, t
hen turned onto a side street and stopped the car beside a small hidden bookstore with dirty windows and a door with peeling green paint.

  “We’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “Okay. I’ll grab something and come back out and meet you here.” I ran inside and hurried back to the poetry section. I read the titles, T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, E. E. Cummings, Wordsworth, Edna Millay, Shakespeare’s sonnets. I already had all of them.

  “Can I help you?” The owner had come to stand beside me.

  “I want some poetry that I haven’t read. Do you have anything new? I was in here a couple of months ago. Charles William Waters brought me.”

  “Oh, I know Charles William. Where is he? Is he with you?”

  “He’s at the liquor store. I only have a minute. We’re on our way to Montgomery.” I lowered my voice and looked around. “We’re going to meet a civil rights worker. His cousin is married to a civil rights worker. We’re going to meet her.”

  “Oh, Derry Maitland that married Dr. Waters. I know her. She orders books from me. Look, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Rhoda Manning, well, it’s Martin now but I’m divorced, I think. I guess it’s final. Do you have anything new in poetry? Anything I haven’t read?”

  “And what have you read?”

  “Well, everything that’s up there I guess. Millay is my favorite and Wordsworth and Elinor Wylie but I only have five poems by her. Do you know ‘Wild Peaches’? I love ‘Wild Peaches.’ And that one that goes, ‘I can not give you heaven; nor the nine Visigoth crowns in the Cluny Museum; nor happiness, even.’ God, I love that poem.”

  “Have you read the Greeks? Do you know this?” He reached up and took a small brown book from the shelf, The Oresteian Trilogy. “This is poetry,” he said. “It’s a play. This is a new translation.”

  “Oh, let me see it.” I opened it to the introduction and began to read out loud. “A proper introduction to these plays …”

  “No, not the introduction. Turn to the beginning. It’s a play written in Greece at the beginning of civilization and recorded time. A chorus opens it. They’re three men on the towers of a palace. It’s the last watch before sunrise. Picture a palace of stone with statues of Zeus and Apollo and Hermes before it. The men are sleeping on the roof. See, it has an opening like Hamlet. Listen.” He began to read from the book:

  O gods, grant me release from this long weary watch. Release, O gods! Twelve full months now, night after night.

  Dog-like I lie here, keeping guard on this high roof of Atreus’ palace.

  The nightly conference of stars,

  Resplendent rulers, bringing heat and cold in turn,

  Studding the sky with beauty.

  “Well, you can see the parallels to Hamlet, can’t you? It’s the same story, an adulterous queen and a murder. In The Oresteia you’re going to see the stabbing, of course. I love this new translation. It’s by Philip Velacott. I heard him speak once in London.”

  I was transported. This was the life I longed for, the person I wanted to talk to, the things I wanted to talk about.

  A horn was honking. “That must be Charles William,” I said. “I guess I have to go. How much is the book?”

  “Ninety-five cents. And tax. I’ll have to ring it up.” He walked with me to the front of the store. The horn honked again. The owner opened the front door and waved at Charles William and Irise. They had parked the Buick by a fire hydrant. “She’s coming,” he called out.

  “Donald, it’s us,” Irise said. “We’re going to Montgomery to see Derry Waters. Come with us.”

  “I already know her. Here, Rhoda, take this book as a present. No, I want to give it to you. Go on, they’re waiting. No, I insist. I want to introduce you to the Greeks.” He followed me outside. “I gave her The Oresteia,” he said to Charles William. “I don’t suppose you’ve read it either. I can’t depend on anyone to educate any of you anymore. What do they teach you in those colleges? I’ll send you some poetry, Rhoda. When I decide what I want you to read, I’ll mail you something.”

  “You won’t know my address. How will you know where to find me?”

  “Park the car,” Donald said to Charles William. “Come in the store. This is too uncivilized. This terrorizes me. Park the car. Take something to Derry and let me get this child’s address. Here, my dear.” He reached in and helped Irise out of the front seat. “Drive around back through the alley, Charles William, and park by the back door. I can’t imagine this. Using a bookstore for a drive-in. Come along, we’ll call Derry and tell her where you are.” Charles William shook his head, smiled, and obeyed. Donald took Irise and me back into the store. “Now, my dears, look around the store while I call Derry and see if there’s anything I can send her while you’re going. Let me get that back door for Charles William.” He disappeared to open the door. Irise and I giggled and began to look at the art books. Irise found an Italian monograph on Giotto and a book of English gardens and I wandered back into the poetry department and began to read. Charles William came in the back door and was loudly directed to the art section to see a new book about the French Surrealists. “Life is the urge to ecstasy,” Donald muttered. “I don’t know if they’re educating you at Georgia Tech or not, Charles William. I worry about you. And you all drink too much. Well, let me call Derry and see if there’s anything she wants.” He went over behind the desk and rang a number and began to talk on the phone in a loud voice. “They’re here with me. Yes, I’m loading them up before they leave. Rhoda, yes, she reads poetry. Clutch them to your hearts, the ancients said, every strand of hope. What happened? The old Jet magazine article about Till? I might have one somewhere but send it back. Of course I saw it. Imagine them writing that. Bragging about it. All right, I’ll send it on then but mail it back to me, Derry. Well, you never returned that article from The Guardian. All right. That’s fine. Good. Say hello to Charles. Fine. Goodbye.

  “At least you’ve been to Taliesin,” he continued, returning his attention to Charles William. “When I saw it, I thought, the second movement of Beethoven’s Sixth. Turns out to be one of his favorite pieces of music, naturally. They were awfully kind to me. A genius. Well, bring the books up here and let’s get them wrapped. Education. How can they call what they’re doing education. Nursemaids and sycophants. Villains and cutthroats, greed and ambition in the academy. I knew it would come to that, but what can you do? Milk toast instead of Latin. There won’t be a Sanskrit scholar left in the world by the time I die. It’s gone out of favor in India. That’s what happens when the class system poisons a culture. Too many people everywhere.” He was wrapping the books.

  “I took Latin,” I said. “I took it for four years. They made me go to three high schools but I still got educated. I educated myself. I took anything hard they had wherever I went to school. I love Latin. I translated the whole Gallic Wars I think. I still have the books.”

  “A shaft of light. Well, let me add this up.” He took the books Irise and Charles William had and began to add up the prices on a pad of paper. He continued to talk and mutter as he added. “Take this phonograph record to Derry. It’s Debussy, something I’m lending her. And this.” He handed a magazine to me. It was Jet magazine, a magazine about black people. I opened it curiously to a page with a bookmark in it. There was a photograph of a child whose face had been beaten and disfigured. I stared in disbelief at the photograph. Charles William and Irise were looking over my shoulder. No one said anything. We just looked at the photograph and read the words. Emmett Till. “The men who did that got off scot-free,” Donald said. “They gave an interview last month and told how they did it. They sold the interview for four thousand dollars. Take it to Derry. She needs a copy for something. This is where we are, children. This is the dark side of our coin. Go on, look a long time and remember.”

  “It’s a terrible picture,” Irise said at last. “Why did they do this, Donald?”

  “He was accused of flirting with a white woman. He w
as fourteen.”

  “Rhoda and I saw the Klan,” Charles William said. “I wanted her to see it. She knows it now, don’t you, Rhoda?”

  “Isn’t it against the law?” I asked. “They don’t arrest them?”

  “They let the men who did that off scot-free. Well, it’s getting late and I’ve kept you too long. Come along. Let me help you into the car. Read The Oresteia, Rhoda. When you finish it, let me know and I’ll decide what’s next. Education, they call it. They call it educating people.” He opened the back door and put us into the car and closed all the car doors and stood in the alley waving as we drove away.

  “Read the book he gave you,” Irise said, as soon as we were on the highway heading south. “Read it out loud. I love to hear you read.”

  “Open the wine,” Charles William added. “Let’s drink wine and hear Dee read the play. Donald went to school in New England, Dee. He put himself on a train when he was thirteen and went up north to Exeter and Harvard. Then he came back to live in Birmingham as though he’d never been away.”

  “He likes selling books to us,” Irise suggested. “He’s from an old old family, Rhoda. A lot of his people are pretty crazy.”

  Irise opened the wine and poured it into paper cups and passed the cups around. Charles William drove the car. I read out loud from Agamemnon. “Zeus, whose will has marked for man the sole way where wisdom lies; ordered one eternal plan: Man must suffer to be wise.”

  “He sacrificed his daughter to make his ships sail,” Charles William said. “I remember now. They had this huge army assembled on the beach, all the chieftains and their soldiers and their ships. But the winds didn’t come so they just sat there with the soldiers getting restless. Then the priests told him to send for his daughter and they sacrificed her. They told her mother she was coming to Aulis to be married to Achilles.”