by Julie Kibler
There was no gentle give-and-take in our lovemaking. It was all greed and haste and pressing toward something we couldn’t reach soon enough. Matching each other breath for breath. Climbing. Crying out when we reached it. Agony, exclamation, discordant harmony.
After, we lay half-dressed and tangled in the damp of sweat and remnants of our reunion, gasping to regain equilibrium in our lungs and slow the beating in our chests.
Robert wedged himself into the too-small space next to the wall and flung one arm above his head, the other across my chest, covering my nakedness with a stark stripe of skin against mine. I traced the angry scar on his side, over his ribs, purple and puckered, in the clear shape of the letter A, thinking of what he’d suffered because of me. But he lifted his hand and brushed my fingers away, as though the scar were irrelevant. Then he brushed his own fingertips against my abdomen, and I froze when they lingered in the shallow valleys of skin a shade lighter than the plateaus surrounding them—my own scars, the ones that could give away my secret. But he gazed across the room, and I knew he noted nothing beneath his fingertips and saw nothing in the room itself. Rather, he studied the situation, as we both did, in the motes that floated in the sunlight piercing us from the window.
We’d made another decision with our actions.
How could I continue my farce of a marriage after this? Every time Max and I had joined in subdued pleasure paled next to the passion Robert and I shared. Max would have to accept my mistake, acknowledge I’d compromised by burying my love for Robert under the guise of doing the right thing. I’d warned him I was no good for him.
Robert and I each straightened our own garments now, retrieving the cast-off pieces from the floor, silently buttoning and zipping ourselves back into everyday life.
When he asked if he could return—once he’d found that place for me to wait—the answer was clear. I stood in the shadow of my front porch, following him down the street with my gaze, as I’d done that morning with my husband.
36
Dorrie, Present Day
LEAVING THE MESSAGE for Teague had calmed my nerves, and the vision of Miss Isabelle and her reunion with Robert both buoyed me up and put me on edge. We headed out, with me in my dressy pants and top and Miss Isabelle in a sweet little dress that showed off the exquisite figure she still had at almost ninety years old. I’d developed a crush on that word the day before—nineteen across, ten letters: “delicately lovely.” Exquisite.
We weren’t far from the funeral home—it was just across the river in Covington—and we were early. Miss Isabelle requested we make a detour on our way. She asked me to watch on either side of the river for a florist or an upscale grocery that might have a nice floral section.
“Don’t people usually send arrangements to the funeral home?” I asked. “Do people carry in flowers like that?” I wasn’t sure it was done.
“Dorrie, please humor me. I need flowers.”
We were lucky. Before you could spell Cincinnati ten times, right after we crossed the double-decker bridge into Covington, I spied a flower shop in an old building on Main Street. And lucky again—the store wouldn’t close for fifteen minutes.
“Are you going in?” I asked.
“No. Just get me a nice bunch of something simple and classy. Nothing fussy. A dozen.”
“Roses?” That seemed easy enough.
“Yes. Red roses, if they have them.”
“In a vase?”
“Just wrapped.”
Now I was really worried. What would they do with wrapped flowers at the funeral home? Maybe she was counting on the fact they’d have vases, or maybe she intended for someone to carry them home instead of leaving them. She was frugal, but not too cheap to splurge on a vase.
But I followed her directions, and soon I was back in the car, carefully settling the sleeve of flowers on the backseat so it wouldn’t get mangled when we started rolling. The clerk had bragged they’d been delivered at the end of the day. I’d gotten the pick, before anyone else had dug through them. They were gorgeous, and their sweet scent filled the car.
We pulled away from the curb and drove through the middle of Covington. The streets were lined with ancient buildings, some nice and fixed up, with open businesses, others vacant and run-down, with boarded-up windows. Then they became more residential. Tired old houses sat close to the street, mixed in with mom-and-pop businesses, bars, minimarts, and vacant lots where things had been torn down. I wondered why anyone would choose to live there, but then I’d spy a huge old historic house or school and I’d think how beautiful it must have been, and still could be, at any point in history. It reminded me of sections of Dallas and Fort Worth. Gradually, the color of the folks walking the streets shifted, though the setting remained the same. Miss Isabelle told me we were in Eastside, the historically African-American section of Covington. At a light, we pulled even with an old house that was now a funeral home.
“There it is,” Miss Isabelle said, pointing. “But one more stop before we go there. We’re still early.”
I didn’t question. I kept going. Before long, we drew up to a wrought-iron gate leading into the Linden Grove Cemetery. Miss Isabelle peered at a sheet of paper she’d pulled from her handbag, then handed it to me. It was a map. “Can you find this?” she asked, indicating a numbered plot circled in pencil. I studied the map, then eyed the gate and other landmarks to be sure I had a good idea how to locate the grave. Miss Isabelle kept a tight grip on the handle of her purse. Her mood had been up and down all day, but it had changed again. The air inside her Buick hung solemn now, heavy with unshed tears.
My confusion mounted as I drove down the narrow lane toward the section with the grave site she wanted to find. I wondered if she wanted to see ahead of time where the burial would take place. Maybe the funeral home had already set a canopy over the freshly dug hole.
There was no canopy. I parked as close as I could, then insisted Miss Isabelle hold my arm as we walked toward a large marker with a last name etched into it and surrounded by smaller stones, some newer than others. She clutched her roses in the crook of her free arm—I’d offered to carry them, but she’d refused, as though they supported her from the other side.
Then, I stopped. Suddenly, I felt light-headed. Miss Isabelle let go and proceeded on her own. She stopped, then bent carefully, holding on to the top of the granite memorial, stooping to lay her roses carefully at the base of one small gravestone. She drew herself up again and stepped back to study it beside me. She nodded, bowed her head, stood with her eyes closed for a time, breathing slowly in and out, as though fighting for her composure.
On the stone, in lichen-stained etching with weathered edges, was this: Robert J. Prewitt, beloved son and brother.
37
Isabelle, 1943
I RAN MY hands down my belly, gauging the slight swell below my navel, then over my breasts, flinching at their tenderness, their reaction to even the lightest touch. They’d felt this way once before. I did the calculations in my head again. A woman was supposed to be filled with joy and wonder at the realization she was pregnant.
I’d experienced that once. This time, I was filled with dismay.
The first time, my joy had turned to sorrow when I couldn’t share the news with Robert, then fury with my family for tearing me away from my unborn child’s father and, in so many ways, from my child herself.
This time, nobody would rush to rip this child from my arms—not at first anyway. I wasn’t sure who the father was. I wanted to believe it was Robert, as I’d made love with him without any thought of preventing pregnancy. I’d held Max off in the intervening weeks, making one excuse or another when he slid close in bed and touched his bare foot to mine, our passive, silent signal. But there’d been one night before Robert—I had been angry, but Max had been cautiously optimistic when the condom slipped off, allowing his seed to spill in me.
I was smart enough to have prevented this dilemma. I wondered if my subconscious had brou
ght me to this place. And as much as I didn’t want to be pregnant, I knew losing another baby would kill me. I would do what it took to bring this child into the world healthy and strong.
But it was more than a dilemma. It was a crossroads. Robert had sent word only days earlier—a simple envelope posted and addressed to me, with a false return address, as though I’d received a letter from a girlfriend. He was coming for me. He’d found a place I could live without harassment until he returned from the front. I’d alternated between excitement and fear when reading of his plan.
I’d agonized over how I’d tell Max. How would he react when I said I was leaving? Would he be enraged, demanding explanations and berating me for misleading him, for allowing him to support me while I plotted to desert him? My hours at Mr. Bartel’s shop had dwindled to almost nothing, while Max worked extra shifts at his war-essential job to pay the mortgage and utilities and put food on our table.
Or would he fall silent, his hurt showing only in his bewilderment, wordlessly observing me as I left behind what he’d lovingly built, knowing I’d never given him my heart?
I’d almost wished for the first, but knowing Max, it would be the second. I would feel worse for it. He was indeed a good man. He’d never uttered an intentionally harsh word to me. He’d been patient with my slow investment in our life as a couple, but I doubted he’d ever suspected I’d throw him over so easily for another man.
Now, though, there was another cog to consider in the shaky wheel of our marriage: a baby. One Max would welcome and cherish, would be proud to carry on his shoulders so he might see above a crowd. He’d teach his son—I sensed immediately this child would be a boy—to ride a bicycle, to throw a baseball. He’d be 100 percent immersed in fatherhood.
If the child were his.
But if he were not? If I stayed? If the infant emerged, looking at first like any other newborn, pale and covered in milky vernix, squalling and reddening as oxygen filled his lungs, then eventually settled into the warmer shade of another race?
Max would have no choice but to throw me out of his house, onto the street, where I’d have to fend for myself and my child if I couldn’t find Robert again, facing untold horror as a single mother of a mixed-race child. I shuddered to realize I could be forced to resort to a life of prostitution, selling my body to keep my child alive, for who would hire me then?
On the other hand, what if I left with Robert and the child belonged to Max? My child would be subject to ridicule and constant physical threats from those who couldn’t see past his stepfather’s skin. He’d grow up on the margin of both societies—the white one, which would punish him for his mother’s sin, and the other one, which might mistrust him even if he lived in it from the day he was born.
I considered each way, and knew, eventually, I had one solution—the one best for my child.
Robert’s eyes, when he came for me, were wild with grief. As I explained, he stepped backward, as though he’d be unable to contain his fury if he stood too near. He couldn’t know how this decision devastated me; the jagged edges of my own heart weren’t visible.
“The skin of this child alone will determine our future?” he said. “I would love him, Isabelle. You know I would. Even if he wasn’t my own flesh and blood, I would take care of him. Whatever is part of you is part of me.”
But I couldn’t do it to Max or the child. I’d made a poor decision marrying Max, in not pursuing every possibility for a reunion with Robert, but I couldn’t steal Max’s son from him.
“What if he discovered I gave birth to his child?” I said. “Don’t you think he’d come after the child? Would he let us raise a child who belonged to him?”
I knew, pushed far enough, Max would react. If he learned his child had been taken, as docile as he was, he would not lie down. He would not surrender his son.
Before Robert left, he made a promise. “I’ll be back, Isabelle. One day, you’ll look up and I’ll be walking that sidewalk one more time, coming to be sure you aren’t here raising our son on your own.”
He stepped forward again. I knew he intended to bring me against him in an embrace. I wouldn’t be able to endure it. If he so much as touched me, I’d falter. I’d crumble and deny every ounce of common sense so carefully gathered the last few weeks. I’d leave with him, and I’d do it without a backward glance. I held up my hand. A warning and a plea. “Don’t.”
His answering look destroyed me. I’d never imagined how difficult it would be to send him away again. Every other time, we’d been separated by family, by circumstance. I’d clung to a barely burning ember of a dream that one day we’d be together.
This time, I knew that ember would be extinguished when he turned to go.
Turn he did, but before he walked away, he said it again: “I will come back for you, Isa. I promise.”
38
Dorrie, Present Day
“BUT HE DIDN’T come back, did he, Miss Isabelle? He didn’t keep his promise.”
The second line said it all, below Robert J. Prewitt, beloved son and brother—the one that said when he’d lived and died: 1921–1944.
Miss Isabelle pulled an envelope from her handbag, the paper so worn from handling, I worried I’d tear it while accepting it from her outstretched hand. But she pressed it on me. “Please. I want you to read it. I want you to see who he was, by his own hand. Not through some story I told.”
Miss Isabelle settled on a stone bench near the Prewitt family plot. I unfolded the tissue-thin sheets the envelope contained, walking, unable to sit while I studied the faded ink, the careful handwriting.
Isa, my forever love,
This means I’m breaking my promise. This means I won’t be coming back for you or—if the baby you carry is mine—for our child. If you hold this letter, I pray the baby is Max’s. Thinking of my child growing up in a world that sees only his skin next to his mother’s, and treats him even worse than a black boy is already treated without his father to protect him, it kills me.
I never wanted anything more than to be with you and our child, to live beside you the rest of our days. But now you know it wasn’t meant to be. You must be content with knowing I’m looking down on you every day, asking the good Lord to keep you safe and happy. Isa—there is no one like you.
I asked Nell, who still loves you like a sister, to send you this letter if something happens overseas. Nell also promised she and Momma will open their arms and doors, welcome you and any child, no matter what. They love you as much as I do—if it’s possible. Find them if you need to.
Now, my Isa, I must say good-bye one last time.
Never, ever, forget that I loved you. It was always you.
Robert
I thought I might actually choke. It was nearly impossible for me to swallow. Why did I keep having some silly hope that things had worked out after all for Miss Isabelle and her Robert, even now, with the engraved date of his death staring me in the face? It was like I went to read that letter, thinking the headstone was some kind of joke, that any minute he’d come out of nowhere and he and Miss Isabelle would go hobbling toward each other and embrace like some happy-ever-after movie couple.
I sank down by Miss Isabelle, speechless, and she spoke.
“Robert did promise, but we both knew he might not return. That when he finished his training, he’d ship out to Europe if the war didn’t end first. Before he left, he gave Nell the letter to mail if she had to. It was dangerous even for medics in the war. They were in the business of healing people, not killing them, but they weren’t immune to unexpected or unintended attacks that took place off the battlefield. An attached note from Nell said the Americans had turned captured land into an army hospital. Another medic didn’t see the tip of an unexploded mine sticking out of the ground until Robert threw himself between it and his colleague. My Robert died saving a life, but he returned home a hero.”
Robert had died in the war. Not as a second-class member of the army who cooked and cleaned kitchens or mo
ved supplies across the country, but doing the thing he’d wanted to do since Miss Isabelle’s father had begun to groom him as a boy. He’d wanted to save lives.
But this felt so final. So sad, I could hardly stand it. I thought I had problems, right? Maybe my kid had been so dumb, I was afraid to go home, for fear I’d throttle him. Maybe I was scared to death to love a man because I assumed he’d turn out to be a loser like every other one I’d trusted. Maybe I’d had a few hard bumps in the road of my life. Maybe I was about to become a grandma before I wanted to think about it. Or maybe I wasn’t. That would make me cry, too.
But all the folks I loved were right there at home, waiting for me, biding time until I could get back and help them patch things up or move along. Oh, Stevie Junior claimed Bailey’s father would hurt him if he knew about the pregnancy, but his understanding of hurt had nothing on what Robert suffered at the hands of Miss Isabelle’s brothers. That ugly puckered scar she’d described on Robert’s side … my God.
I couldn’t imagine enduring the loss Miss Isabelle had survived again and again and again.
I folded the letter carefully and she slid it back into the zippered compartment on the side of her bag, a pocket I’d never noticed before today. No wonder she’d worried about someone stealing her purse. And I’d been thinking it might be about me.
“So, the baby, it was Max’s after all? You and he … I suppose the two of you managed?”
“Dane was Max’s baby, clearly. I knew the moment he was born. You’ve seen my boy’s photos.”
I nodded.
“After Robert left, Max assumed I was depressed because I wasn’t ready for a baby. He was right, but mainly, I was sure I was going to die without Robert. We’d found each other again, only to have it end worse than ever. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I hardly moved most of the months of my pregnancy. I stayed inside, listless in bed or with my head hanging over the commode, vomiting up nearly anything I ate, all three trimesters. It’s a miracle I gained enough weight to keep Dane alive. But he came out fighting, strong and angry and demanding I love him. He fought for his mother’s attention, and I was forced to give it, feeding him and changing his diapers to keep my eardrums from bursting with his bawling.
