by Lee Lynch
“Ida, it’s you!” the woman said. Gran had once worked with her in a packing plant and they did some catching up. She asked Gran about Berry’s arm and Gran blamed the injury on a fall from a tree.
“She’s a lively looking one, all right.” The woman patted her on the head. “Take after your grandmother, don’t you?”
They drank thick strawberry milkshakes at the fruit and vegetable stand on the way home. Watching the customers poke around the bins was as entertaining as a movie, they joked.
“You can tell the Northern women,” said Gran. “Look at those floppy sombrero hats.” Berry and the ladies from Lecoats County went bareheaded or, at most, tied a scarf around their hair like Gran.
They poked fun at the visiting men’s brightly colored porkpie hats with contrasting bands. “You won’t find our men in anything but straw or truckers’ caps.” The local men bought boiled peanuts and ate them out of brown paper bags while they waited for their wives to get the melons or mangoes, potatoes and fresh pea greens in the pod.
In strawberry season, every roadside stand sold, besides the milkshakes, individual strawberry shortcakes, strawberry soft-serve sundaes, and strawberry bread. Gran had shown Berry how to freeze the berries along with stalks of rhubarb to make pies year round. A church woman Gran knew came over and exclaimed how Berry was a young lady now.
It was one of the best days of her life, despite the pain and knowing she’d have to keep living with despicable Eddie Dill a very long time if she planned to go to college. Jaudon always said no place was safe for them.
The next time Eddie took off, she got into his shed, scared herself silly when her head brushed against a croaker sack full of frogs, found his pistol, loaded it, set the frogs free in the woods, wrapped the pistol in the empty sack, and took it into the house with her.
Go ahead and womp me again, Eddie Dill. Go ahead and try to womp Gran.
Chapter Two
They started at Cloud Christian College directly out of high school, summer semester. Berry was in a hurry to make them independent. She wanted a four-year RN degree. Jaudon studied business.
The Vickers were able to foot the almost $2,000 a year for Jaudon’s education.
After Ma was born, Berry’s grandfather Binyon bought a life insurance policy from a church friend. The same friend stepped in to advise Gran on investments when she became a widow. Gran invested, but otherwise never touched the money and it grew substantially, enough so she could mostly pay for Berry’s college. Berry earned scholarships. She supplemented them by working at Jaudon’s store. Better to save the investment money, what she could of it, for Gran or a rainy day.
“Eventually, Jaudon, I’ll look for an after-school job like nurse aide. For the time being I’m going to enjoy working by your side.”
Berry looked around her. Momma had updated the Bays’ lighting, added shining stainless steel coolers, stark white ice chests, and shelving that made it faster for employees to snatch products. Model airplanes, all painted silver, glittered and swayed overhead. In her store, Jaudon kept the glass surfaces so clear they mirrored every ray of light—starbursts everywhere. Momma outfitted the Bays with white bell-shaped hanging lights. Jaudon bleached the concrete floors regularly. “This must be like one of those light shows so popular out on the West Coast,” Berry told Jaudon as she admired the ceiling from below.
Her whole life lately was a starburst, ever since the night she chose between Jaudon and her school friends and despite Eddie’s attack. Berry loved being at the tree house, but the girls at school asked her to their homes and taught her how to use makeup. She ran with them and their boy hangers-on till the night their little gang went to the movies and stopped at Jaudon’s Beverage Bay afterward. Her new girlfriends were rude to Jaudon and made fun of her. She’d recited the line from the Bible she associated with Jaudon: “People call you an outcast: Zion, no one cares for you.” She’d closed the car door behind her and shut the girls out of her life. God bless them, those school friends were a waste of good time.
An excited pleasure filled her whenever she saw Jaudon. She helped Jaudon close the store on the nights she worked and Jaudon drove Berry to Gran’s mobile home, up Stinky Lane. At graduation Pops Vicker presented Jaudon with the heavy van he once used for deliveries—he switched to a three-ton truck. The van had a bench front seat so she sat close to Jaudon and held her hand even when Jaudon maneuvered the stick shift.
Those last days of high school had been intoxicating. Their plan to ignore the bullies had worked—the bullies lost interest. A new freedom awaited them, but she’d relished their last school bus rides, sitting side by side, lagging behind the other kids as usual, dallying close together from the bus stop to school, stretching out the minutes under the tall royal palms that lined their path like an honor guard.
Berry thanked the powers that be for leading Jaudon to graduation. On the last day of school Berry wore sandals and a new pinafore-style dress Gran had sewn. Jaudon was in one of her shapeless skirts; her short-sleeved blouse was half tucked in, her tennis shoes were worn through at the left little toe. At Berry’s suggestion Jaudon had finally given up wearing Bat’s old shoes. Jaudon held her hand for a few furtive feet. Berry’s heart sped to a crazy pace. Jaudon scuffed her shoes along the sandy ground, leaving a trace of Berry and herself.
In June, Berry celebrated her eighteenth birthday. After dinner Berry walked over to Pineapple Trail and climbed the ladder to the tree house. She brought some of the eighteen birthday cupcakes Gran made her. She knew she was now old enough to make up her own mind about things.
It was ten years or so since Ma and Pa left. It weighed on her about them not being at her high school graduation. What did she do wrong to get under their skins so bad? Pops Vicker was there with Gran, though. Pops had carried on about her graduating as much as he did for Jaudon.
Jaudon heard Berry’s steps on the ladder the night of Berry’s birthday and turned up the transistor. Ella Fitzgerald was singing a moony song. Jaudon’s grin stretched her mouth so wide her eyes were forced almost shut. In the tiny tree house, Berry’s kind, calm bearing filled Jaudon up with what must be happiness.
“They didn’t cost much,” Jaudon said of the two gold bands she’d found, after much searching, in an antique store. There, in the catawampus tree house, in the dusky light, she gave one to Berry. Her voice was as raspy as a teenage boy’s. “Happy birthday, Georgia gal. Will you marry me?” She showed Berry the matching ring. They’d already agreed to marry; the rings were to make it final.
Berry went so pale Jaudon feared she would faint. She held out her hand. Jaudon set down her own ring box and worked Berry’s ring onto her finger. They both admired it. Berry did the same for Jaudon.
“When do you have to be home?”
“I’m eighteen now. I told Gran I’m sleeping over tonight.”
They kissed and drew away, Jaudon’s eyes wide, as if she was surprised all over again at the pleasure of it, or in fear; Berry wasn’t sure. The boy she’d kissed had pushed at her mouth until her neck hurt. She kissed Jaudon again, gentle as she could. She touched Jaudon where her breasts should be and found slight swells of flesh around firm nipples. Jaudon was so familiar; she refused to imagine being without her.
Tears outlined Jaudon’s eyes.
She stroked Jaudon’s cheek. “You scared?”
Jaudon shrugged.
“What are you scared of?”
Twisting away, Jaudon wiped the tears from her cheeks with the hem of her faded polo shirt. Her voice hoarsened. “I don’t want to be a man.”
Berry didn’t know what she meant. “But you’re not.”
“I must be, I married you. I’m kissing you. I want to do it more. The kids know it’s true, I’m not a girl. Your gran’s boyfriend said so.”
“Eddie Dill? It’s cruel to say, but he’s as dumb as those kids. Why would I want a man? I want to be with you and you alone. Forever.” The fear in Jaudon’s eyes was receding.
&nb
sp; Berry sat on the old twin mattress they’d long ago lugged up the ladder and kept under the table. “Come and sit,” said Berry, patting the spot beside her, studying Jaudon’s shirt. “Guys don’t have breasts.”
Jaudon’s tanned face flushed pink. “Do you for a fact want to be married to a queer?”
Berry smiled. “If you do.”
Jaudon’s hands were tentative as they touched Berry’s braids. Her fingers were nicked up and there was a small wart on the back of her left thumb. Whenever she thought Berry was looking, she folded her thumb under her other fingers.
Berry admired Jaudon’s hands, big for her wrists and as sturdy looking as Jaudon.
A man’s hands, Jaudon thought with disgust as she unbraided the hair she’d so often braided.
Berry embraced Jaudon and clasped her to herself, imprisoning her arms until Jaudon calmed. She pictured one of their many nighttime campfires in a space under the live oaks Jaudon cleared by the pond bench. The last time they made a fire, they held hands in the dark, listening to the voices of the swamp: crickets, alligators, water birds, a dozen kinds of frogs, heard the animals grunting, croaking, whistling, rustling, flapping wings, splashing—a glee club of them making repetitive, rhythmic sounds increasing in volume and thundering in the night.
In the tree house, Sinatra sang “Almost Like Being in Love.” Berry ran the tip of her tongue lightly over Jaudon’s upper lip. Her memory of the campfire burned hotter, its crackling leapt into the roar of the swamp. Jaudon carried the smells of campfires and earth, milky sweet coffee, and strawberries, always strawberries.
Horrified and embarrassed at first, Jaudon little by little got stirred up. Berry’s tongue was rolling along her lips, moistening them. Jaudon opened her mouth to take a breath and Berry, excited, dipped inside.
Berry never knew anything as soft as Jaudon’s mouth. Should she stop? The church would want her to. It didn’t strike her as wrong, what they were doing. No, this was good and befitting and the Great Spirit wanted her to love the world and everyone in it: the birds and frogs and her own little outcast.
Jaudon was awed. This wasn’t the same as the tickling and touching they did. They’d never kissed before today; she’d never kissed before at all. How did Berry learn?
Berry was glad she’d gone out with a boy once and learned to do this. It was so much more delicate, sweet, close, tender with Jaudon. “Begin the Beguine” came on the radio. Jaudon’s arms closed around her and she let herself go without hesitation into them to be closer to those lips that did so much more than touch. She wished herself a sweet warm syrup, always coating those lips.
A mosquito came near. Eyes closed, lips against Berry, Jaudon stretched out an arm and, surprising herself, caught the bug, crushed it, flicked it away. She wanted nothing to intrude, nothing to interfere, nothing to distract them from these light-headed sensations, from the pleasure flowing through every inch of her flesh, better than delicious sleep and delicious awakenings.
On they went, kissing the night away while Rosemary Clooney, Jimmy Rushing, and Dinah Washington serenaded them.
Jaudon’s lips were impossibly sensitive. Berry’s were bruised with continuous arousal.
I’m kissing Jaudon, she thought.
“Berry, Berry, Berry,” Jaudon spoke against Berry’s lips.
They collapsed together on their mattress under the table, two swamp saplings taken by a hurricane.
Jaudon squeezed Berry to her, more aware than ever of the immoderate strength in her arms. She wasn’t a freak in the circus if Berry liked kissing her. Or maybe she was because she liked kissing Berry. She was a cauldron of excitement, remorse, desire, despondency, and a euphoria she’d never known before. This body of hers was not all torment and trouble.
Berry said, “Take off my clothes, angel?”
Jaudon tipped their table against the door for privacy. Self-conscious, they giggled at their shaking hands as they undressed. Berry managed to light a citronella candle, though the worst of the pests left with darkness. When they lay facing each other, she wasn’t sure what to do. As they kissed she looked with a finger for Jaudon’s spot, the spot she’d discovered on herself, and brushed over it. Jaudon started.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No,” said Jaudon. “I didn’t expect—”
“Relax, my angel. Everything is as it should be.”
Jaudon’s was different, fuller and bigger, but very womanly. It infuriated her when Eddie Dill walked around in skimpy underwear. She’d never looked at him after the first repellant time. Gran would tell him to dress himself. If he answered at all, he muttered, “My home, Ida. I’ll do as I please.” In fact, it was Gran’s home and property, not Eddie’s.
Jaudon tried to relax. “Where you’re touching, am I the way I’m supposed to be?”
“Of course you are.”
“I was afraid, because of the rest of me—”
“You’re not so different from me, silly. Didn’t you ever do this yourself?”
“No. You’re not supposed to.”
“Why? Because you’ll go blind? I’m not blind.”
“You do that?”
Berry kissed her. “Yes.”
“But your church—”
“Remember? It’s not my church anymore. This is another reason why it isn’t. What’s wrong with enjoying our bodies?”
“And there’s nothing wrong with me?”
“Nothing I can tell, honey.”
They kissed more.
Berry was excited, touching Jaudon, giving her pleasure. She shut out everything but Jaudon, Jaudon’s lovely pleasure. Jaudon didn’t get wet the way Berry did. No matter, Jaudon was shuddering against her. Berry wanted to shout in triumph. This is beautiful.
Jaudon somehow knew to put her fingers inside as Berry went over her edge and Jaudon’s was receding. It alarmed her when the walls around her fingers contracted and then opened wide once, twice, again. She hoped Berry wasn’t irritated by the calluses on her hands when they touched her sensitive places.
“Lord have mercy. Don’t ever stop what you’re doing, Jaudon.” The unexpected exquisite sensation of Jaudon inside her blocked every other awareness. When her mind was clear, Berry whispered, “We’re two halves of the same person.”
Against her belly, Jaudon’s lips stretched into another big smile. Make this last, she thought.
Chapter Three
Summer 1969
Pops brought his proud daughter a nameplate: Jaudon Vicker, Store Manager.
As of that day, Jaudon hired her own helpers. She required them to be flexible because she needed to schedule around school. Berry had long since taken a part-time job as a medication aide at a rehabilitation facility. Her Aunt Lessie covered odd shifts to relieve Jaudon and her cousin Cal.
Cal came in one day with his draft notice.
“Gosh damn. There’s no way I wanted to go. Guys are getting killed right and left in ’Nam. Can’t you tell the army you need me here?”
Jaudon squared her shoulders, filled with patriotism. “Bat’s done a couple of tours in ’Nam. Your country needs you more than I do, Cal.”
Her cousin was a motorcycle enthusiast. When he wasn’t putting in hours at Beverage Bays, he fixed cycles, raced, and was friends with guys in a motorcycle club. He was a burly, hairy kid who seldom took off his prescription aviator glasses and had accumulated a wardrobe of motorcycle club T-shirts, though Aunt Lessie forbid him to join one.
“I knew what you’d say, Cousin Goody Two-Shoes.”
Jaudon said, “Ha-ha.” Cal came off threatening, but growing up they’d played at each other’s houses. She knew he’d messed around with dolls as a youngster. She’d hated playing dolls, even paper dolls.
“You can’t shirk that easy, Cal. They’d know I was lying.”
Cal’s shoulders slumped. “Find me a way to serve, but let me do it alive and whole. What if I’m released with no arms to steer my hog? And for what? Someone else’s civil war?”
/> She pumped a fist in the air. “To keep the Commies in line, Cal.”
“I guess.” The poor guy pouted as he always had. “If I don’t have to kill anybody. Hey, I have to do this quick. I don’t want to spend my last days of freedom selling cigarettes and beer, and I already asked my mom if she minded taking my hours.”
“Aunt Lessie told me a long time ago she never wanted to work regular hours, but I always get a few people stopping by to ask if I’m hiring. One lady in particular I’ve taken to. We josh each other no matter how many cars are waiting. Momma will have a conniption, though.”
“The lady’s not from our family?”
“And then some.”
“Don’t tell me you’re hiring a colored lady?”
“Afro-American is what we say nowadays, Cal. You better practice saying it for the Army.”
“Your momma’s going to have a fit.”
Jaudon jutted out her jaw. “By the time it’s done, Momma won’t be able to undo it. Mrs. Ponder used to come through every day with her youngest boy, Emmett, and his older sister. The boy’s busy playing sports and studying to get into college, and the sister is married with her own baby. Mrs. Ponder tells me she’s bored and lonely. We jaw about every subject on earth and she teases me about my delusional Southern white girl opinions. She wants to make money to send her boy to college, but wanting and getting hired are two different animals around here if you’re Afro-American.”
Cal put on his Beverage Bay jacket and went to wait on a customer. Jaudon called Mrs. Ponder to ask if she was available. She arrived the next morning for training.
Jaudon leaned, elbows on the counter, eye to eye with Mrs. Ponder. “There’s one thing I need to tell you.”
