One Night in Georgia

by Celeste O. Norfleet

  “What happened?” Veronica asked.

  “They broke the door open and dragged my grandfather outside and put a rope around his neck. I ran after him and I held on to his legs, and no matter how hard those two men pulled, they couldn’t pull me free. They didn’t take my grandfather away that night or any other night after that, and that was because of me, not God.”

  “No, that was because your grandmother prayed to God.”

  “God didn’t grab his legs and not let go. I did.”

  “How does a five-year-old get the strength to hold on against two grown men?”

  “She’s got a point,” Veronica said.

  “Your grandmother had faith. She prayed for strength.”

  I opened my mouth but said nothing. Daphne’s Christian faith was unwavering and drove me crazy. She went to church, read the Bible, and prayed all the time. She was the only one I knew, except for my parents and grandparents, who believed so strongly in God. I didn’t understand it. “How can a God be so good and still be okay with so much evil in the world? Why doesn’t he kill the evil people before they kill the good people?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. We’re all God’s children.”

  “Didn’t he smite the evil people at Sodom and Gomorrah?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, so then he should smite the racists and the murderers here too,” I said.

  “And also the politicians and rich that intentionally get us into a war nobody wants just so they can make more money. Knowing that their sons will never go over and die because they get out of it with stupid made-up medical conditions,” Veronica said

  “Like I said, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Why not?” I insisted.

  “Because it doesn’t. God loves all his children.”

  “That’s just rhetoric that defies logic. How can God be so loving when someone like James Earl Ray and all the others complicit in bigotry and hate kill a good man?”

  “James Earl Ray and others like him are monsters, but my religion teaches me that he is a child of God too. He needs to be saved, forgiven, and redeemed.”

  “My father, like his mother and father before him, believed fervently. He prayed, read the Bible, and attended church service. I did, too, until the day my prayers weren’t answered. I begged and pleaded and promised everything I had if only he would save my father, but he didn’t. I gave up on God a long time ago. He turned his back on me, and I turned my back on him,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” Daphne said. “When you need him, he’ll be there for you. Everything happens as it’s supposed to.”

  “Oh, please. I give up,” I said, throwing my hands in the air, knowing this argument could rage on forever. Just as I thought of another point and was about to speak, Veronica changed the subject.

  “I’m thinking about becoming a lesbian.”

  Daniel had not said a word during our conversation, but he definitely arched his eyebrow when he heard Veronica’s words.

  6

  DAPHNE AND I TURNED AND LOOKED AT VERONICA AND burst with laughter. Veronica was the last girl on earth I would have said was a lesbian. She loved men, and men loved her. She had a flirty personality that always drew men to her.

  “Why would you say that?” I asked, half chuckling.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s a joke. Don’t you see? She’s just joking with us,” Daphne said, still humored.

  “No, I’m not joking. I’m serious,” she affirmed soundly. “I can’t stand men. They’re sneaky, conniving, egotistical, deceitful dogs and should all be spayed.”

  “You mean neutered. Spayed is done to females; neutering is done to males,” Daphne corrected.

  Veronica glared at her. “Fine. Whatever it is,” she said sternly, “they should all be neutered and castrated with a rusty butcher knife.”

  She had said the words with such vehement ire that it worried me. “What happened?” I asked, letting my words slowly ease from my lips.

  Daniel stood. “I’m going to take a walk.”

  As soon as he left, Daphne and I turned our attention to Veronica. “My father told me that I was getting married. It has already been decided and arranged.”

  My jaw dropped. Daphne and I looked at each other and then at Veronica, who was now staring out at the waves.

  “How can he do that? I don’t believe it,” Daphne said.

  “Believe it. Just like that. ‘Veronica, dear, next May, right after graduation, you will be marrying Reginald Kingston. You remember him? You met him at our Christmas party last year. He’s Holland Kingston’s oldest son.’ And that was it. That’s all he had to say to me about it. It was an order, like ‘Pick up that book.’ My plans to take over my own life after graduation ended right then and there.”

  “That’s crazy,” Daphne said.

  “How can he just . . . Wait, what about the guy you’re supposed to marry? Doesn’t he have something to say about it?” I asked.

  Veronica chuckled dryly. “I doubt it.” Then she just started laughing her head off with a huge smile on her face. “That’s how it is with blacks who have money, especially in the North. It’s expected. We have to preserve and protect the family name and melanin.”

  “What does skin color have to do with marriage?” I asked.

  “Zelda, don’t be naïve,” Veronica chastised.

  “That’s so absurd. I hate that that part of our heritage is still a part of our culture. Light-skin blacks should only marry other light-skin blacks to preserve the family melanin. Not only do we have to contend with white racists, we also have to contend with racism within our own race. The lighter you are, the better you are is slave plantation bullshit,” I said.

  “That’s the norm among my family’s ilk,” she said, then laughed again.

  “What is so funny?” I asked.

  “Yeah, what gives?” Daphne added.

  Veronica said, still chuckling, “Reginald’s family has a house not too far from us in Oak Bluffs. Last week I went over there to try and talk him out of the marriage, and I walked in and found my beloved husband-to-be having sex with his best friend, Gregory, in the pool cabana.”

  “We’d had a neighbor like that. He was a good friend to my mother and me after my father was killed. I called him Uncle Phoenix. He used to bake cupcakes and bring them over. Then Darnell moved in and would always go on and on about him and called him ‘sweet.’ Eventually Uncle Phoenix stopped coming by and later moved away.”

  “Well then,” Daphne began, “if that’s the case, it’s a good chance he doesn’t want to marry you any more than you want to marry him. Right? Problem solved.”

  “No, no, no, you don’t understand. Being homosexual doesn’t make a difference. I’ll still have to marry him. My father holds the purse strings.”

  “You can’t marry a man who likes other men,” Daphne said.

  “Of course she can. Uncle Phoenix was married,” I said.

  “That’s right. So he’ll have his affairs and I guess I’ll have mine. That’s how it’s done all the time.”

  “Hey, what’s going on over there?” Daniel asked, pointing across the beach to the water’s edge.

  I could see a woman screaming for help. I jumped up and ran over in the direction of the woman with Daniel right behind me. A short distance into the water we saw three men struggling. One was punching and fighting in the water, as he went under several times. The two might have been trying to save him, but he was fighting and flailing. The woman on the shore continued screaming, looking around in desperation. She pointed farther out in the water by the sewage pipe. “I can’t swim. Please somebody save my babies.”

  We saw two little kids struggling, barely holding on to a large pipe sticking out into the water. They bobbed on the surface of the water several times. Without hesitation, Daniel and I ran into the ocean and swam toward the pipe. We reached the children quickly.

  They struggled, clutching th
e pipe and sliding under the surface of the water, then came up again gasping for air. Daniel tried to grab them, but they kicked us away. “Stop! Let go!” I screamed to them. They had scratches on their cheeks, hands, and arms from grabbing at the iron pipe, yet they continued to reach for it. They slid down beneath the surface again. That’s when Daniel and I grabbed hold of the kids. “Swim parallel to the beach!” Veronica screamed to me. Daniel and I kicked away from the pipe and swam back to shore with the little kids in tow.

  As we reached the shore, the man who had been fighting and struggling in the water came up and snatched the two little kids away. The woman who had been screaming on shore earlier stared at us, then turned and followed.

  We helped each other, dragging and crawling, then collapsed onto the wet sand near the water. A wave splashed us, then receded. We got up and staggered farther onto the shore, landing in hot, dry sand, which covered us from hair to toenails. By this time a small crowd had gathered around us. Some stood in silence as others began applauding and congratulating us for saving the kids.

  A few seconds later, I saw the man who had snatched the kids from us, raging forward with wild eyes. He picked up a clump of wet sand and threw it, just missing me but hitting Daphne on the shoulder and Veronica on the leg.

  “Get up! Get up, you black niggas!” he shouted, staggering forward. He fell to his knees, then got up.

  “I’m gonna kick your ass. Get up! How dare you put your filthy black hands on my children? Don’t you ever touch a white child again. Do you hear me, niggas?” he barked.

  “I guess you would have preferred for us to let your children drown?” I said.

  He glared at me but didn’t say anything.

  I think I stunned him by speaking up.

  “What did you say to me?” he asked.

  “You heard her,” Daniel said.

  He glared at both of us. “Now get your ass up off this beach. You don’t belong here with these fine white folks. Go back to Africa where you belong.”

  We were stunned. The crowd stopped applauding. We were surrounded by all pale faces looking at us.

  “What did he call them?” someone in the crowd asked.

  “Niggas,” a man whispered loudly. The word repeated.

  Here it comes.

  Daphne quivered and trembled, praying, “Please, God, save us,” over and over. Veronica looked away, staring out at the ocean. The seconds that followed seemed like a millennium. Time hung in the air like the strange fruit I had seen so many times in grainy, black-and-white photographs of men, women, and children hung by the neck during slavery times and more recently in the Jim Crow South.

  My heart thundered in my chest. There was nowhere to flee. Surrounded. Trapped. Terrified. I could feel the adrenaline as I began to hyperventilate. My tears ran, mixing with the salt water from the ocean.

  Silently, yet with stern presence, Daniel stepped in front of us, using his body as a barrier against what was to come.

  “No, you leave, you wanker,” said an accented voice in the crowd.

  “Yeah, you bloody go, arsehole.”

  “They just saved your kids’ lives, jerk,” someone shouted.

  “That’s right,” others mumbled throughout the crowd.

  “You should be thanking them,” someone else added.

  “Jerk!”

  “Pig!”

  “Asshole!”

  “Racist!”

  The man looked around quickly, searching for anyone on his side. No one seemed complicit. The surrounding crowd had rebuffed his ignorance. He searched anxiously, appearing even more angry.

  “Yo, bugger off, you bloody tosser,” said the guy who had fallen near us with the Frisbee.

  “Yeah, we’re civilized here in Cape May. We don’t do that racist shit here,” a man standing next to him shouted.

  “Are you okay, darling?” A large woman in a size-too-small bathing suit knelt down and protectively put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, child. Nobody’s going to do a damn thing to hurt any of you. I promise you that.” She turned and glared up at the angry man. “He’ll have to go through me first.”

  “Me too,” said a man standing beside Daniel.

  “Yeah, and me too.”

  “I have the whole thing on my Super 8 camera.”

  “Hold still,” a man said, looking down with an instant Polaroid camera pointed at us. We didn’t smile. We barely looked up, but he took our photograph anyway. He pulled it free, then took another. The first one he gave to us. “Here, this is for you.”

  I took it.

  “Here, y’all take my towel, dry yourselves up,” an older man with mixed black and gray hair offered.

  “No thank you. We’re okay. Our towels are over there.”

  The woman who had been screaming on the beach for help came to stand by the racist man. The two little girls followed.

  He glared menacingly at the people standing around us and then stormed away, cussing vehemently. The woman and two little girls followed.

  “The gall of that man. He should be horsewhipped.”

  “Thank you for speaking up and helping us, Mrs. James. It’s good to have neighbors like you,” Veronica said.

  “He’s a damn fool,” she continued angrily.

  Two other women standing nearby agreed. “He sure is.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Hertzberg, Miss Lewis,” Veronica said.

  “Veronica, are you girls okay?”

  “Yes, we’re okay, Miss Lewis. Just a little shaken up.”

  “Well, don’t you worry. You and your friends just stay as long as you want,” Mrs. Hertzberg declared. “No one’s going to bother you.”

  “That’s right, Maude.”

  “He obviously doesn’t live around here. We don’t care for racist trash like him,” Miss Lewis added.

  “Thank you so much for your help. I’ll make sure to tell my parents how kind you’ve been,” Veronica said as the woman walked away and others spoke up.

  One man wanted our names so he could put us in the local newspaper. He called us heroes. I thanked him but declined. Veronica obliged.

  Veronica dried herself off, then wrapped a towel around her hair. Daphne’s wet hair clung to her scalp like gnarled vines on branches. She pulled it back severely, as tight and restrained as possible. Her shoulders hunched. My hair puffed up like Jiffy Pop, looking like a giant dripping mass of riotous ringlets. I dried it as best I could. As I looked for my Afro pick in my beach bag, I saw the Polaroid photograph the man had given us. “Hey, look at this.” I peeled back the negative to view the image. We weren’t smiling. We were staring blankly at the camera. We passed the photo around. “We can do better than that,” Veronica said, pulling her camera out.

  At that moment, the guy who had caught the Frisbee near us earlier came over, smiling from ear to ear. “Hey,” he said.

  Daniel stood protectively.

  “Hi. Would you take our picture, please?” Veronica asked.

  “Sure.” He took the camera from Veronica, and the three of us sat close and smiled.

  “Wait. Come on, Daniel. You get in the picture too,” Veronica said.

  Click. “Perfect,” he said, giving the camera back to Veronica. “I’m Harry. That’s my mate Liam over there. I just wanted to say that you birds are bloody amazing,” he said with a very noticeable British accent, and seeming to speak directly to Veronica.

  “Thanks for what you said over there. You blokes are pretty amazing too.” She smiled, pleased with herself.

  He laughed. “Yeah, well, we should have let the bloody arsehole drown,” he said, sounding more serious. Veronica grinned. He slowly fell to his knees in front of her. “So are you here in the area for long? I mean—”

  “We’re here for long enough,” Veronica said teasingly.

  He smiled, bobbing his head up and down. “Far out. So listen, a few blokes and I rented a house not too far from here. We’re having a party tonight. Why don’t you and your friends come by?
It’ll be a blast. We’re right off Grant, the corner house. You can’t miss it. We’re gonna really groove tonight, even got a special friend coming.”

  “Who’s the special friend?” I asked.

  “Come and you’ll see,” he said, grinning again.

  “Well then, we might just stop by.”

  He nodded. “Yeah? Far out. I’ll see you tonight.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, far out.”

  He popped up, waved, and then ran off down the beach with his buddy, who immediately cheered and nodded. They waved at us. Veronica waved back.

  “Please tell me you were not flirting with that white boy.”

  “And what if I was?” Veronica said, still smiling.

  “That’s asking for trouble,” I scolded tightly.

  “Zelda, you’re so provincial. Don’t you know it’s 1968? Times have changed. People are different now.”

  I shook my head. “Believe me, times and people will never be that different. There will always be a separation of the races. Didn’t you just hear what that white man called us?”

  “Yeah, I heard him. I also heard about a dozen other white people come to our defense. See? Not all white people are the same,” she insisted.

  I shook my head. “They are as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Given that logic, then all black people are the same.”

  I opened my mouth but said nothing.

  “You are such a hypocritical cynic,” she added. “You can’t group a whole race in with those kind. There were white people who fought against slavery, and there were black people who owned slaves.”

  “Black people didn’t own slaves,” Daphne spoke up.

  “Yes, they did. We did. My family owned slaves.”

  “They did not. You’re lying.”

  “I am not. They did.”

  “For real, your family owned slaves?” I asked.