The Book of Peach

by Penelope Stokes J.

  I adored Molly, and I was fascinated by her. She had a big hearty laugh and a soft cushiony hug, and she didn’t talk down to me or act as if my questions were stupid or unimportant. She sang Negro spirituals in a low, melodious voice as she worked, and when I asked her what they meant, she told me about her ancestors who came to Mississippi in the dark hold of a slaver’s ship to work the plantations. She talked about freedom and hope and her precious Jesus, who loved all people no matter what the color of their skin.

  “Lawd, child,” she said one day when I had been sitting on a stool at her elbow for an hour, “ain’t nobody never told you about your heritage? Look at them brown eyes. You sho ’nuff got somebody in the woodpile somewhere!”

  She laughed until tears ran down her broad black nose, and then she went on to tell me about how white masters in the South had often fathered mulatto children out of the pretty young girls who worked in their houses and tended their fields. This was news to me, news that fascinated and alarmed me. I knew enough about men and women to know that this was possible, but I had never considered the ramifications. I had always been taught that the races never mixed. According to my mother and grandmother, my Bell heritage was lily-white and unsullied.

  Now Molly was laughing, pointing to my brown eyes as evidence that some of the Bells—including me, apparently—might well have a drop or two of African blood in their veins.

  The idea didn’t offend me in the least—on the contrary, it intrigued me. It gave me a reason for the sense of connection I had with Molly, and it left me with a feeling of power. It was deliciously dangerous, this possibility that I, as a Bell-Posner and a budding Southern Lady, might be carrying some clandestine genetic aberration that my family had kept hidden from the world.

  I had been taught about the War Between the States, of course, how my ancestors had fought bravely, if vainly, to hold on to their plantations and their lives. I had been told how the Bells treated their “nigras” well, how they loved them and cared for them as one might care for a beloved family pet. But I never, until that moment, considered the other side of the story.

  It was the second step on my downward slide, the second opportunity I had that summer to identify with the untouchables. I didn’t tell my grandmother or my mother, of course—I had learned my lesson from the incident with Cooter Randolph, and I had no intention of seeing Molly become the next victim of my grandmother’s machinations.

  I kept my thoughts to myself, cherishing them, hiding them away, pondering them in my heart. My conversations with Molly aroused a feeling in me that took years for me to identify and understand. All I knew at the time was that it was a good feeling, a feeling of being privy to some great secret of life that my family did not know—or if they knew, refused to acknowledge.

  All that summer I divided my time between the training sessions Mama and GiGi devised for me and those treasured hours in the kitchen, soaking up Molly’s wisdom and hope and love. And the more time I spent with Molly, the more hollow and false seemed the social graces that were being drilled into my childlike head.

  Mother thought the summer was a great victory, a brilliant idea, a smashing success. I had learned to set a beautiful table and to carry myself with some semblance of grace—or if not with grace, at least with less awkwardness. I had mastered the art of smiling, holding a teacup without rattling it, and looking interested during inane conversation. I had been taught to think before speaking, to be polite to obnoxious people, to keep my voice down.

  What Mama didn’t know was that I had learned another lesson, one she never considered teaching me. It was Molly-Faith Johnston’s lesson, taught more by example than by precept: to cherish my private opinions and not let anyone convince me against the witness of my own heart.

  To be true to myself.

  8

  I’m writing it all in my journal. All the memories, all the details of those early days with Mama and GiGi as they tried to conform me to the image of the perfect Southern Lady and prepare me for my debut into the world of beauty pageants. All the feelings, the contradictions. Pages and pages of it. Raw, unedited footage of my upbringing, my reluctant transformation from the angel in stolen boots to the Bean Queen and Miss Ole Miss.

  Loath as I am to admit it, maybe my therapist was right. Coming home to these familiar haunts of my childhood—to Mama, to Belladonna, to Chulahatchie itself—calls up all manner of things I thought I’d forgotten forever. God knows they’re not necessarily happy memories, but a girl’s got to have something to show for being a psychiatric stereotype.

  I’d love to believe that personal insight comes naturally, inevitably, like hemorrhoids, gray hair, and liver spots. It would make this whole process a heck of a lot easier. I wouldn’t have to work so hard; all I’d have to do is wait. But then I look at Mama and realize that if wisdom automatically comes with age, she must’ve found the Fountain of Immaturity somewhere around age six, because she has yet to get past the notion that the world revolves around her.

  As my shrink constantly reminds me, I cannot control the choices other people make. I can only choose how I respond. I’m trying to learn how to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer, but even when you carry your own weather with you, mothers have a way of changing the forecast and stirring up storms without warning.

  Like today.

  “Priscilla,” Mama said, “I wish to speak with you.”

  I pried my eyelids open, groped for my watch on the bedside table, and squinted at the dial. Six forty-five. In the morning.

  For the entire duration of my eighteen-year incarceration under Mama’s roof, I never needed an alarm clock. Every blessed morning of my life, she came to the door of my bedroom and woke me—usually with some criticism primed and ready, as if it were a mortal sin to waste a single moment of daylight in the quest to correct my errant ways.

  “God help me,” I groaned. “Can’t you give me a break? I got in late last night.”

  “Precisely,” she said. “Breakfast will be served on the verandah in fifteen minutes.”

  Coffee. If she wasn’t going to let me sleep, I needed coffee. Maybe laced with a little hair of the dog. I got up and dragged myself downstairs, barefoot, still in my striped seersucker pj’s.

  I knew she’d have something to say about the pajamas. Mama hates them—not just this pair, but any pajamas. She insists that no self-respecting lady would wear them and points to her own collection of satin gowns and matching peignoirs as an example of appropriate nightwear. She even has coordinating slippers with little furry pom-poms.

  I suspect she’s channeling the ghost of Loretta Young, but I wouldn’t dare say so out loud.

  The fragrances of coffee and bacon lured me toward the back of the house, and I detoured into the kitchen, where Mama’s “girl,” Matilda, was standing at the stove. We called her Tildy. She was sixty-three, nearly six feet tall and skinny as a pole bean, with kinky gray hair and rich brown skin and enormous flat feet. When she caught sight of me, she pulled the frying pan off the fire, set it aside, and wiped her hands on her apron.

  “Hey, baby girl.” Tildy opened her arms and hauled me into a bony hug, pressing my whole head flat against her chest. I could hear her heart thunking against her rib cage, as clearly as if I were listening with a stethoscope. Strong and steady and reliable, like Matilda herself.

  She smelled like bacon and magnolias. I made a mental note of the interesting juxtaposition so I could detail it in my journal later. It might have just been lemon dishwashing detergent, but I liked the idea of magnolias so much better.

  “How’s my sweet Peach?” she said. “And how come we ain’t had time to talk since you got home?”

  “You know how I’m doing. Mama tells you everything.”

  Tildy grinned. “Reckon she does. I’s sorry to hear ’bout you and Robert.”

  I felt tears sting my eyes, and I blinked them away. “I’m okay.”

  “You’re not,” she said. “But you will be. You got grit.”
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  “I’ve got grits?” I laughed. “Well, I certainly hope so. If they’re your grits, that is.”

  Tildy shook her head. “With jalapeño cheese, just like you like ’em. I’m guessing you want your eggs scrambled soft with green onion. Fresh biscuits in the oven.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “We’ll talk later. I’ve gotta get some coffee and go face the dragon.”

  “Your mama got her hackles up about something?”

  I shrugged. “Is she still breathing?”

  Tildy giggled like a schoolgirl and ducked her head. “You bad, girl. You real bad.”

  “Maybe. But I notice you’re not contradicting me.”

  Tildy shooed me out of the kitchen and off toward the back verandah, where Mama was waiting.

  Belladonna faces east toward the morning light, so even in the heat of summer, the back verandah stays shaded and cool until midafternoon. Mama sat at the white wicker table in full makeup, wearing a flowing lavender gown, robe, and matching slippers, and looking as if she really believed herself to be a movie star subject to being photographed at a moment’s notice.

  At this hour of the morning, the bricks were downright chilly against my bare feet. I poured a steaming mug of coffee from the pot on the sideboard, sat down, and tucked my feet under my butt. One glimpse at Mama’s face, and I wished I could hide my soul as effectively.

  The woman had never had a private thought in her life, at least where her family was concerned. In public, she could maintain a gracious facade with the best of them and keep up a ladylike pretense whether she was bored to distraction or seething mad.

  But with us, even when she kept her mouth shut, which didn’t happen often, her face blabbed every single thing that was on her mind. This morning she had that pinched, raisin-faced look of disapproval. I swear, if she could see herself in the mirror and realize what kind of wrinkles that expression brought out, she’d never recover.

  I sipped my coffee and waited. She waited. The tension between us stretched out thin as spun sugar, and when it was just about to snap, we both spoke:

  “Priscilla, you’re an adult and it’s none of my business, but—”

  “Look, Mama, I’m an adult and this is none of your business—”

  If it had been anyone but my mother, we would have cracked up laughing. At least we agreed on two things: that I was an adult and that my life was none of her business.

  Except for that one innocuous little syllable: but.

  “But” was the qualifier that ruled my mother’s life and spoiled every encouraging word that might have come out of her mouth.

  You look very pretty, dear, but . . .

  Of course I like your new boyfriend, but . . .

  Certainly I want you to be happy, but . . .

  Nothing was ever good enough. In the fourth grade, I landed the role of Glinda the Good Witch in our elementary school production of The Wizard of Oz, beating out a half dozen sixth-graders, but she was convinced I should have been Dorothy. When I weighed 122, she thought I could stand to lose another five pounds. After I won the title of Mississippi Soybean Queen at the state fair, she started planning for the Miss Ole Miss Pageant before the shine was off the tiara. And never mind her response when I only got second runner-up to Miss Mississippi.

  Despite a lifetime of examples to the contrary, I naively believed that getting engaged to Robert, a rising star among the young professors at UNCA, might be sufficient. But no. She thought I might have done better marrying a real doctor rather than a mere Ph.D. “After all,” she said, “he’s not the kind of doctor who can actually help anybody.”

  So here came Mama again, showing her buts: “It’s none of my business, but . . .”

  I sighed and took a long swig of coffee. “But what?”

  “I know you’ve been seeing someone; don’t deny it. And yes, you’re a grown woman who can make her own decisions, but isn’t it a little early to get involved in another relationship? You’re still a married woman.”

  “Technically,” I said, “I’m a legally separated woman. For six months now.”

  “Five,” she corrected. “But that’s not the point.”

  “All right, five and a half,” I said. “So what is the point?”

  “The point is, Chulahatchie’s a small town. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows everybody’s business.”

  “The point is,” I said, “you’re worried about what people will think of you.”

  “Of course I am,” she said without hesitation. “I am your mother. Now, just who is this person? Is he our kind of people? Are you being discreet?”

  The woman was certifiable. She didn’t care whether I was having an extramarital affair. She only cared whether he was someone with a good name and a good family lineage.

  The right kind of adulterer, the kind who would make a mother proud.

  The right kind of people. Our kind of people.

  Not as easy a distinction as one might think.

  Many non-Southerners mistakenly believe that Southern society is divided into two categories: white and black. Certainly my family believed in and upheld the principle of separation of the races—as my mother was fond of saying, feathers and fins belong to two different species. (The mammal misconception is a common defense for racism in the South.)

  To my credit—although the temptation was great, especially during my teenage years—I did manage to avoid bringing up the reality of seagoing mammals and furry land creatures who deliver their offspring through the laying of eggs.

  Besides, racism was not really the central issue. When the civil rights movement began to exert its inexorable influence in every area of Southern life, I found—much to my surprise—that my mother could accept a black family in the church as long as they were beautiful and educated and articulate and resembled the Obamas. As long as the husband was a doctor or a lawyer and wore nicely tailored suits; as long as the wife was slim, light skinned, and fashionable; as long as the children (no more than two of them) were well behaved and didn’t wear braids sticking out all over their heads. And, of course, as long as said children did not wish to date or marry the little white children.

  Prejudice by classism. The conviction that intelligent, thoughtful, professional, white-collar Christians should pretty much keep to their own.

  This was no doubt easier before the onset of egalitarian twentieth-century culture, where it’s not always a simple matter to determine who are and who are not “the right kind of people.” Black people were generally not the “right kind,” although they did have their accepted place in society as long as they knew how to stay there.

  White people were a little more difficult to differentiate, particularly for a child—even a child as bright as I was. The state did, after all, let just anyone attend the public schools, no matter what their name or heritage. It was often a matter of trial and error to discover which friends would be acceptable in my mother’s eyes.

  I had learned the hard way that following my instincts made me vulnerable to unreliable information. My little friend Dorrie seemed to have all the qualifications: She was kind, polite, well brought up, intelligent, and dressed in nice clothes—at least she wore matching colors and patterns, which I thought was a dead giveaway, considering the kind of outfits some of my first-grade cohorts showed up in.

  But as I discovered in the disappointing outcome with Dorrie, appearances can be deceiving. Her family wasn’t low class, by any means. They lived only a few blocks from us and were respectable, hardworking folks. They just weren’t quite part of our social circle. Add to that Dorrie’s disability, which made other people uncomfortable with her, and my mother’s judgment of her being “not the right kind of people” was sealed.

  Gradually I learned. By the time I was in junior high, I could spot White Trash in a millisecond. White Trash kids had dirty fingernails, regularly spoke in ungrammatical constructions, and wore the same clothes every day. Working Class kids wore the same clothes every week, rode t
he school bus, and carried brown-bag lunches to the cafeteria. Middle Class kids whose parents both worked rode their bikes to school and had keys to the house.

  I learned, all right—but the problem was, I didn’t care. As much as I wanted to please Mama, to make her proud, my mind kept dragging me back to the nagging issue of character.

  It was the school’s fault. Here I was, a Bell, of the Clarksville Bells, thrown in with people of every imaginable class and background. What was I supposed to think when I met a girl like Lorene Clay, from the wrong side of the tracks—the wittiest, funniest, most intelligent girl in the sixth grade? Or a boy like Jay-Jay Dickens—poor as a churchmouse but nevertheless a perfect gentleman, with the soul of a poet—who defended my honor when the boys with a Good Name and a Good Heritage tried to get their jollies groping me in the hall between classes?

  How was I supposed to respond when the people I connected with, heart and soul and mind, were not people who would make Mama proud?

  After Mama left to get her hair done, I wrote all of this in my journal. Another piece to the puzzle of what it meant to be a Bell woman.

  “Blood will tell,” my mother always said. But the only thing blood told me was that I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the Thorntons and the Van-Burens and the McKennas and the rest of the cretins whose names rendered them suitable companions for a girl who bore the honored name of Bell. Instead, I found my place among the unwashed multitudes, those ordinary people who had no name, no connections, no country club membership—nothing to recommend them except nobility of soul and integrity of heart.

  Thus, in the glorious, liberated hours between eight and three, I lived surrounded by a circle of friends who made me laugh, made me think, and ultimately forced me to accept myself by the sheer compelling power of their classless, unconditional acceptance.

  I had learned my lesson from the debacle with Dorrie Meacham—but not the precept my mother intended to teach me. I didn’t avoid developing friendships with people like Lorene Clay and Jay-Jay Dickens. In fact, I gave myself to them with an emotional vulnerability unbecoming a Southern Lady. I laid down the power of my name, opened my secrets to them without shame, and learned to love and be loved without reservation.