Coming of Age in Mississippi

by Anne Moody

  He looked up at me and asked, “What’s going on with you and Miss Adams them? The Dean tells me you just sacked out him and Miss Adams. What’s going on with you?” he said, puffing and blowing like a little dragon.

  “Nothing is going on with me. I have been in my room sick for two days. Miss Adams came to my room last night and found another girl in there. I was asleep and didn’t even know she had been there or the other girl. I am not gonna wash those windows.…”

  “What’s this about washing windows?” he asked.

  “She got all these stupid rules made up about what basketball girls gotta do. I think they are absurd. First of all, Miss Adams don’t like me. Now you look, come on go in the dorm and look at what she assigned the other girls.…”

  “Now don’t get excited,” he said. “Where is this here list?” he asked, following me up the steps.

  “It’s right here on the bulletin board,” I said, going into the lounge. He stood on his tiptoes to read it. “When I leave here,” I said, “I’m going back to bed. Now if you insist that I wash those windows, I’m going home.” He didn’t say anything, he just left.

  A few days later, I found out that the President had scratched out all Miss Adams’ rules. Dean and Miss Adams were furious with me after that. Miss Adams immediately dropped me from first string to second to side girl. Then basketball became the biggest drag I had ever known.

  After about two months of Natchez College, I was completely fed up with it. I had never in my entire life felt so much like a prisoner, not even when I worked for white Klan members at home. When I was home Mama had trusted me to take care of myself. She never told me I couldn’t go here or do this or that. During the summer when I went to New Orleans and Baton Rouge in search of work she never questioned my reason for going. Now at Natchez College, I couldn’t even go to the store a block away alone or without permission from the matron. She would always send two of us together and then time us. If we were gone longer than she expected, she would come after us.

  Every Friday evening she would post two lists on the bulletin board in the dorm—one for movies and one for shoppers. Then she called the movie house on Saturday morning to find out when the picture started and ended. When we were all ready to go into town, on Saturday afternoon, our regular shopping time, she would line us up like cows and march us up Union Street. On Franklin, the main shopping street in Natchez, we all split up. We were usually given two or three hours to shop or see a movie. Then we were supposed to meet her at five on the corner of Franklin and Union so she could march us back to the dorm. She didn’t really have to come into town with us. It was just a front so the good sisters of the Baptist churches in Natchez, who supported the college, would see that she was protecting us from evil influences.

  In spite of that big front Mrs. Evans put on, the faster girls put on an even bigger front. As soon as we split up in town, I would see them bopping around corners, hopping in cars and going here and there when they were thought to be in the movie. At the end of the shopping period, as Mrs. Evans and the rest of us stood on the corner waiting for them, they’d come running up smiling and blushing and out of breath. All the girls would look at them and know they had done something. But Mrs. Evans would give them her motherly smile and asked innocently, “Did you see a nice mooo-vv-eee? What was playing?”

  “Mrs. Evans, it was such a nice picture. But they had a little trouble with the film, that’s why we’re a little late,” Bernice, one of the little fast sexpots, would answer sweetly. As soon as Mrs. Evans turned away, Bernice would give us a big wink and we would all crack up inside.

  Sometimes Mrs. Evans would ask what the picture was about. One of the girls always knew the title of the picture and could make up a story about it. We would stand there hurting with laughter as we watched gullible Mrs. Evans nod her head and take it in.

  As we marched back down Union Street to the dorm, we would pass the house of one of the little old Baptist sisters who always sat on the porch every Saturday. Mrs. Evans would nod and smile and the little old sister would smile back, giving Mrs. Evans her approval. A lot of the girls would smile and nod at her too. But Bernice always took the cake. Instead of smiling and just nodding like the rest of the girls, she would say something like, “How you feeling, Sister? It’s really a nice day, isn’t it?” The old lady would smile back at Bernice and look as if she wanted to say, “They sho’ got some nice girls over there at the college.” When she gave Bernice that little smile, Bernice, in her little short Saturday dress with the deep open pleat in the back showing half of her thigh, would switch away laughing.

  Everything the girls did on campus was also supervised by Mrs. Evans. Every evening after dinner, we were allowed to walk around on the campus in front of the dorm. Mrs. Evans always found some excuse to be in front of the dorm too. If she wasn’t out there picking flowers in the spring, she was raking leaves in the fall and feeding birds in the winter. Just before dark, she would go into the dorm and blink the lights. This was a signal for all the girls to come inside. She would blink the lights three or four times, then come out and stand on the steps to watch the boys walk the girls back to the dorm. “Come on in, girls, the social period is over,” she would call, just like a mother talking to a seven- or eight-year-old playing in the yard after dark.

  The only times we went out of the dorm at night were on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Wednesday we spent an hour in prayer meeting and Thursday the library was open from seven to nine. Mrs. Evans would walk out with her Bible on Wednesday, and Thursday night she sat in the library knitting.

  Once every two weeks on Friday or Saturday night, a social was given in the dining room. This was the only time boys and girls got together after six o’clock at night. The social usually started at seven and was over by nine-thirty or ten. We weren’t allowed to dance and the only games we could play were Bingo, Pin the Donkey’s Tail, Scrabble, and other word games. We couldn’t play any game that resembled a card game, not even Old Maids. But we were allowed to make up games and play them. One night one of the girls made up a game similar to Simon Said which went like this:

  Stand up, turn around, comb your hair and sit down.

  Stand up, turn around, stomp twice, sit down.

  Everyone in the room would participate. They all tried to outdo each other and come up with something more original than the last person had come up with. One of the boys in calling his turn said, “Stand up, turn around, do the twist, sit down.” He let us twist about fifteen minutes before he called the other move. Some of the students did some nasty cuts. Mrs. Evans, taking part in the games too, was so upset that she threatened to have the boy expelled. After that, the boys stopped attending the socials and the girls were very unhappy. Soon the socials were cut out altogether because didn’t enough girls go to them. Now the only time girls with boyfriends on campus got together was on Sunday from four to six. Then they sat up in the lounge with the door open and Mrs. Evans sat right across in the next lounge knitting.

  The boys weren’t too upset over the campus rules because they could go anywhere without permission, spend the night off campus, and do just about anything else except openly tamper with the girls on campus. And most of the boys had no desire to mess with the campus girls because they had three or four girls in the city.

  The majority of the girls living in the dorm came from homes with real strict Baptist parents. And a lot of them had been sent on church scholarships. They were some of the most backward girls I had ever seen. They had lived a sheltered life of Baptist fantasy. They were the girls who had courted the nice boys at church, who sneaked kisses in parked cars on the church lawn, who had never spent a night away from home except with relatives who were just as strict as their parents. For them, it was a big thing to be away from home even in a place as prison-like as Natchez College. Once away from their parents and relatives, they were also the girls most likely to end up pregnant—because at home sex was a big mystery, tabooed in conversation and bit
terly condemned in church.

  With the exception of Bernice and her three or four friends, the basketball girls were the healthiest girls on campus. Most of them had boyfriends, loved sports, had a good sense of humor, and didn’t care too much about anything. I didn’t particularly consider myself in their class. But if it was necessary for me to be in a class at all, I would have chosen theirs. Instead, I was a loner just as I had been in high school. The only thing I had in common with them was basketball.

  When the basketball team started traveling, I really saw how hypocritical everyone at the college was, especially Mrs. Evans. Even though we had a lady coach, Mrs. Evans came along to chaperone us. She was as glad to get away from Natchez as we were. As we boarded the bus on campus to leave, she came on the bus in her long dark “mourning” dress, all plain-faced and motherly. But as soon as we got to the college we were playing, she pulled off that long black dress, put on a short stylish one, and made herself up with powder, rouge, and lipstick. She shocked all of us. She didn’t follow us everywhere like she did at Natchez. Neither did she speak in her little proper speech. She was an entirely different lady and the girls liked her because she let them dance and do anything they wanted to—just about. But as soon as we got back to Natchez College, she put on her old self again.

  By the time the school term ended, I was so sick of Natchez that I was sure I wouldn’t return the following year. But the schools in New Orleans cost just too much money, so a few weeks before the new term I decided to go back.

  Chapter

  NINETEEN

  That second year at Natchez, I discovered that I had changed. The year before almost every boy on campus had tried to make it with me, especially the basketball boys, and I had turned them down one after the other. Now I found myself wondering whether I should have been so rude to them. When I saw girls and boys sneaking kisses out under the trees, I got curious. Sometimes I wished I had a boyfriend. I was twenty years old and I had never been kissed, not even a smack on the lips. I wanted to know how it felt.

  There was a new basketball player on campus named Keemp, whom all the girls and boys were talking about. He was tall—six feet five—and slim. Besides being tall, he had a “cool” about him that most girls liked. So they all went around talking about how handsome he was. It was early October and we hadn’t started practicing yet, so I didn’t know whether he was a good player or not, but I certainly didn’t think his looks were anything special. He looked just like my daddy without a mustache and I never thought Daddy was handsome. I used to see Keemp walking around on campus and wondered what was it that all the girls saw in him. Then too he made me wonder what all the women had seen in my daddy when he was young.

  One Sunday after church, I was leaving chapel when Keemp walked up to me and said, “So you are Anne Moody, huh?”

  “Yes. Why?” I asked, and kept walking.

  “I heard a lot of talk about you,” he said, walking beside me. “Where are you going now?”

  “To the dorm,” I answered.

  “If you’ll slow down, I’ll walk you over there,” he said coolly.

  For the first time in my life I slowed down for a boy. I was a little surprised at myself.

  As we walked together, Keemp didn’t try to force the conversation. He hardly said anything and whenever he did it was like a brother to a sister. When we got to the dorm he asked if he could walk me to dinner. I again surprised myself by answering yes.

  Because Natchez College was so small, most of the relationships between girls and boys were a public thing. Everybody knew everybody else’s business. The students were all shocked when I started going with Keemp, especially the sophomore boys who had tried to make it with me the year before. A couple of the guys who had tried hardest came up and bluntly asked me what did I see in Keemp or what did Keemp have to offer me that they didn’t. I was a little surprised at the girls’ reaction. Most of them seemed glad that I had finally decided to join the club. So much so that they started giving me all kinds of advice about how to handle men.

  When Keemp started playing basketball, I really began to like him. He had the longest limbs I had ever seen. As he moved down the basketball court, he was so light he looked like he was flying. He could just walk up to the goal and dunk the ball with ease. Through basketball, he became the most popular boy on campus.

  Keemp tried to kiss me many times but I wouldn’t let him. I always told him that I had a headache or something. When we traveled to play other teams, all the other boys and their girls on the team kissed around on the bus. Keemp, the best player on the team, sat beside me begging me to kiss him. Everyone else on the bus knew that Keemp wasn’t getting anywhere with me, and most of the boys began to tease him.

  There were a couple of girls on the team who were having spasms over Keemp. One of them sat in the seat behind us and late at night she would start clawing on the seat like a big cat. When Keemp started answering her clawing, I went to one of my friends, seeking advice on how to kiss. She told me that I didn’t have to do anything but part my lips to Keemp and he would do the rest. For the next two months I thought of how I would part my lips. Then one night I dreamt that Keemp and I were kissing around nude on the back seat of the bus and just as we were about to have intercourse, I woke up screaming. I was so frightened by the dream, I began to think that if I kissed Keemp it might lead to something else. The mere thought of getting sexually involved caused me all kinds of anxieties. But I had a tremendous guilt about treating Keemp the way I did when another girl would have treated him better, so I made up my mind to quit him and let that clawing girl have him.

  One night in November, when we were playing Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, I decided that this would be the night I would quit Keemp. Since the game was one of our biggest, I decided to wait and tell him after it was over. I knew we would lose if he wasn’t at his best.

  Keemp shot forty-some points during that game. He played better than I had ever seen him play. Just about every time he raised his arms, it was two points for us. When the game was over, the rest of the boys hugged him down to the floor, then picked him up and declared him “King of Basketball.” As I watched him play and then saw how everyone loved him, it suddenly dawned upon me that he was a terrific person and that I was a fool to be thinking about quitting him.

  When the boys let him go, he walked up to me smiling. Without saying a word, he put his arms around my shoulders and walked me to the bus. As he touched me, a warm current ran through my body.

  As I sat on the bus beside Keemp that night, a feeling I had never known before came over me. He held my hands, and it seemed like every hormone in my body reacted. Neither one of us said a word. As the bus was coming to a stop, Keemp leaned over and gently placed his lips on mine. They were like a magnet slowly pulling my lips apart. Once my mouth was open his tongue explored areas that had never been touched by anything but a toothbrush. I completely forgot where I was until one of the boys sitting near us started banging on the basketball and yelling.

  “Jesus! Y’aaaall! It finally happened! Keemp done did it!”

  The bus had stopped. The lights were on and everybody was looking at us. Keemp wouldn’t stop. He pretended that he didn’t even hear the yelling, that we weren’t on a bus surrounded by spectators. I tried to pull away but I was so weak I couldn’t control myself, so I just gave in to his kisses.

  Didn’t anyone on the bus say one word or stir, not even Mrs. Evans. No one made a move to get off the bus until Keemp and I did. When Keemp finished kissing me, I saw that he had lipstick all over his mouth. My first reaction was to wipe it off real quick before anyone could see it. Keemp just smiled as I wiped it off. When I finished, he took me by the hand, pulled me up out of the seat, buried my head in his shoulder and we walked off the bus.

  I was very embarrassed about the fact that my first kiss had been such a public thing. But I didn’t regret the kiss at all. Once we were back on campus, Keemp and I greeted each other
with a kiss every time we met.

  We never did hide behind trees or posts to sneak kisses like the other students. When Mrs. Evans blinked the lights for the girls to come in, I’d give Keemp a smack on the lips right in front of her. Soon most of the other girls started smacking kisses on their boyfriends in front of Mrs. Evans too. Finally, one day Mrs. Evans called me in for a “conference” and accused me of leading the kissing game on campus.

  During the first six months of our relationship I was happier than I had ever been. Keemp turned me on so much that I made the first straight-A average that had been made at Natchez in many years. Studying was a cinch and everything else seemed so easy. But that spring when the basketball season was all over and the excitement of traveling was gone and boys and girls began swarming all over each other like bees, I slowly began to drift away from the whole scene. I had gotten tired of being part of “the club.” There was something about the way couples were relaxing into relationships and making them everything that bothered me. I didn’t want to get all wrapped up in Keemp the way some of the other girls did with their boyfriends. My relation with him had gradually become a brother-sister thing. He could tell I was moving away from him, so he got himself a girl in the city. I wasn’t even jealous and I didn’t say anything. I just didn’t care. I knew I would be leaving him behind next year and figured he’d have somebody else. I pretended that I didn’t know he had another girl and went on being friends with him. He was the best friend I had had since Lola, and I told him everything.

  I had spent all of my money buying foxy clothes when I was high on Keemp. Now I was down to ninety dollars, and I was beginning to worry about where I would go to college next year. It was about two months before school ended and I tried to hold on to that money. I figured I could make at least two hundred dollars at the restaurant the coming summer even if business was bad. But I knew that still wouldn’t be enough to get me into a good senior college. The closer it came to school ending, the more depressed I got.