Across the South Carolina line, she got stuck in a column of cars and trucks behind a green tractor in a no-passing zone. The man driving it was slouched at the wheel as if unaware of the traffic jam he’d caused. Or maybe inconveniencing people was the only thing that gave him a sense of control. A teenager stood on the dusty shoulder of the road, a cardboard sign against his chest, ANY BEACH. He held a thumb in the air, moved it in a slow arc, a duffel bag and guitar case at his feet. He smiled as cars crawled past, expecting something good to happen.
She decided to stop, offer him a ride.
What will that boy think when a woman alone, almost old enough to be his grandmother, offers him a ride to the beach? She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror and imagined her eyes blue and clear behind her large sunglasses, that she was more blond than silver, that her laugh lines implied maturity and mystery, a woman who took chances.
The pickup in front of her pulled over and the boy said something through the open window. He threw his duffel into the truck bed, added his guitar case with great care before climbing into the cab. She’d missed her chance. The tractor turned off the highway and the pickup gunned it, disappearing around a curve.
She punched on the radio. Static. Twisted the dial, caught one line of Patsy Cline singing “Crazy,” a fragment of jazz, a preacher promising, in a deep baritone, “. . . everlasting life for those who believe, truly and deeply that God—” more static. At that moment, with the highway leveling out, red clay fading to sand, an endless stretch of scrub pines bordering newly plowed fields, she couldn’t imagine anything less appealing than eternity. Blaire called this area the doldrums: “How can people stand to live with no radio or TV, no movies, no museums or concerts? It’d drive me crazy.” Even as he made such observations she wondered what it would be like to live in a farmhouse set back off the highway under sheltering oaks, smoke spiraling from the chimney on a spring morning. And when had she and Blaire last been to a museum or the symphony anyway?
She passed fallow fields, unlimited flat land that stretched to a faint horizon, houses set far apart, an appealing distance between them. She gave up on the radio, grateful for a solitary silence broken only by an occasional truck flying by, rocking her car. She was happy cruising below the speed limit, no deadline, no one waiting.
At the new Winn-Dixie, the last stop for groceries before the waterway, she sat in the parking lot with the windows down, breathing in the salt air. Twenty minutes later she was on the drawbridge, two paper bags on the back seat—bread, fruit, eggs, milk, beer. The center sections began to rise as the switchman, in his glass-enclosed station, moved levers to allow passage of a sleek sailboat. A couple on a romantic getaway? A lone sailor out for the day? The water shimmered in the late morning sun.
* * *
When it was built in 1880, her grandparents named the house “Zander’s Shanty.” The two-story gray box sat in the valley of the dunes. The siding of cedar shakes battled the constant wind, but the weathered look was worth the trouble of replacing a few shingles every season.
As always the storage door resisted her, not wanting to give up the treasures in the cave under the house. The rusty lock finally yielded to her persistent key. Sunshine flooded the storeroom. One by one, leaving double-grooved ruts in her wake, she dragged the rockers to the porch where they swayed in the wind. Ghosts rocking, Grandmother had told her when she was a child.
The groaning of the front door welcomed her into the musty, closed-up parlor. When Blaire was with her, he started the three window A/C units as soon as they arrived, even though he knew how much she disliked that. Her way was to raise all the shades, tie back the curtains, open the windows, and prop dowels in those that tended to bang shut. Feel the wind.
Soon everything was in its place, the bed made, her towel hanging by itself, her clothes in the wardrobe. A luxury of space for my things. For me.
The pleasant lack of clutter was a testimony to Mother’s spare touches, the way she acknowledged the house, let it speak for itself. Unlike the cluttered mess in which Persy had grown up. Bleached pink-throated conchs as doorstops, clamshells as ashtrays. Pictures on the mantel went back ninety years, her favorite in the center: her grandparents standing on the dunes, their daughter and son in front of them, faces somber in the style of the day. Mother was young, sweet-faced, before she grew into her nasty temper. Her bathing costume was probably a vibrant blue, her favorite color. The matting was warped, faded—as in most of the snapshots—but Persy was reluctant to replace frames that dated back to when photographs were a novelty. Then there were the pictures she’d added of herself and Blaire at their wedding, of their honeymoon here. Blaire standing in his office, confident, leaning casually against a shelf of law books. An empty space where a snapshot of her, grandly pregnant, once hung.
The refrigerator jolted to life. The pilot light on the stove responded to a match, the familiar heavy odor of the gas marked her settling in. While faucets ran to clear out the sediment of winter, she swept sand through the front door, the floor gritty under her feet. How does the sand get in when the house is closed up tight?
Lunch was a peanut butter sandwich, milk, an apple, a delicious meal eaten on the porch where she was queen of all she surveyed: the sun, wind, dunes, sea oats. The unending green of the ocean.
“Zander’s Shanty” was painted in bold black letters on a shake that hung from a hook over the front steps, having survived Mother’s ownership and whim of renaming it. When she deeded it over in the fall of 1955, Mother asked if Persy would change the name to something more modern.
“No,” Persy had told her. “This stately old place will remain a shanty.” She liked the implication of her family’s casual wealth when they built the house.
“Stately?” Mother had said. “I suppose it is, compared to the shoddy bungalows they’re building today.” Mother was concerned about the cost of upkeep to the house, given the damage done by Hurricane Hazel a year earlier, and more storms to come. At least that’s what she said. When angry, Mother could be viciously direct, but when she tried to be kind, she became awkward. Persy knew that the gift of the cottage was directly connected to Whitney’s death, to Mother’s unacknowledged attempt to assuage her daughter’s grief. But talking about that would lead someplace Persy was not ready to go.
Two months after the funeral, Mother persuaded her to go to Windy Hill, showed her the quirks of the house, gave her the deed without ceremony.
“Oh, Mother. Really?”
“Yes, really. We’ll execute it when we get home. It’s yours. If you’re smart, you’ll put it in your name only.”
* * *
In late afternoon, past the sunburn hour, she stood atop the dunes, gazing at the mostly deserted strand. A steady wind whistled past her ears. Seclusion, a connection to where her family history went back a century. The cottage had withstood all nature could throw at it. As had she, it occurred to her.
Did Grandmother stand in this same spot, pregnant with Mother, her last child, wearing all the clothes women had to wear in 1885? Did she go into the ocean? Persy hoped so.
To the north a new groin began at the dunes, crossed the beach, and continued out into the water beyond the breakers. A rope barrier had been in place for as long as Persy could remember, running from the street to the high tide line, suspended through grommets atop four-foot poles to separate Windy Hill from Atlantic Beach. Three years earlier the town had announced a plan to retard erosion, but a hidden agenda now seemed clear—more distinct separation of the two townships. Blaire had persuaded her of the ecology of the groins—low walls made of boulders brought in from the mountains. “They’re a geological necessity,” he’d told her.
They joined their neighbors in voting to fund three such structures. Thus far only the one was in place.
When they took over the cottage, scattered houses with empty stretches between them dotted the oceanfront of Windy Hill. She’d foolishly hoped it would stay that way, accepting Mother’s gift
knowing that Atlantic Beach to the north was for Negroes. The two lots between their place and the groin had been on the market for many years, the FOR SALE signs faded and battered. Blaire told the Realtors to let them know if they got a serious offer. “When that happens, we’ll buy the land ourselves; it’ll give us a buffer,” he’d said, believing that the vacant lots would remain a no-man’s-land between the white and colored beaches. At least as of now, he was right.
Laughter drifted to her from beyond the new groin. A man, woman, and little girl were running up the beach. A kite in the child’s hand bumped along behind them. Persy doubted it would get airborne. The girl tripped, fell, righted herself, gave the kite to the man. He turned, ran back toward Persy, and the kite took off into the air, soaring above the water. He bent, spoke into the girl’s ear, handed her the string. She darted away, the bright kite swooping back and forth behind her. The man and woman stood, holding hands, watching the child run with the kite.
The child looked to be about six. The age Whitney would have been. She turned away.
* * *
After a long, pounding shower she put on a turquoise blouse, and wrapped a bright print skirt around her waist, feeling like a Gauguin woman. She put white sandals on her bare feet, thinking of Grandmother, who never wore white before Memorial Day. Gold hoop earrings set off her glowing skin, and gold and silver bangles gave her a touch of defiance for breaking Mother’s rule about not mixing precious metals.
She bent over, face to knees, her hair flying and snapping as she brushed it with a fury. Persy loved the feel of her hair hanging free, and wished Blaire liked her to wear it down. Age had brought more gray than blond, a change that was less noticeable when she hid it in a French twist or under a hat. Blaire had asked recently, “Why don’t you put a little color in?”
Grandmother’s mirror stand, angled in a corner between two windows, was tilted at exactly the correct degree for a head-to-foot reflection. What looked back at her was a middle-aged woman—full breasts filling out the turquoise blouse, ample hips and thighs under the bright skirt. She imagined Grandmother’s reflection at the turn of the century, dressed for dinner.
With dabs of My Sin at her pulse points Persy headed out, leaving the front door open.
She took Highway 17 down to Myrtle Beach, hoping not to bump into anyone she knew, wanting to enjoy her solitude. With the mild weather, people they’d known for years would soon arrive in Windy Hill and notice that the house was open. Until then, she wouldn’t seek company.
She stopped at one of many fish houses dotting the highway. The interior was decorated with nets, seashells, and Spanish moss. Did whoever selected the moss consider the bug life it supported before it became a wall hanging?
The waiter frowned when she said she was alone, leaving her to “check for a table,” although the place was half-empty. He returned clutching one menu and led her to the last booth, where she sat facing the restaurant, to entertain herself by looking at anyone else who came in. She ordered her dinner and asked for a beer. For some reason the waiter nodded, as if to say, “Excellent choice, ma’am,” though she was clueless about his change of attitude. Maybe Blaire was right, that she was too sensitive. He never seemed to notice the attitudes of clerks or waiters. Then again, maybe Blaire wasn’t sensitive enough. She smiled. A man seated by himself at a booth across the room lifted his beer to her.
She went back to her dinner, pleased, feeling attractive for the first time in ages. As she was writing a check at the front counter, she couldn’t help glancing to see if the man was still there. He tipped his mug in her direction. She grinned in spite of herself, and laughed in the car as she headed home.
CHAPTER 7
At Belk’s, where I go to buy underpants on sale, a pretty skirt catches my eye. It would catch Mr. Griffin’s eye, too, and that makes me happy, the way thinking about him always does. I’m so busy deciding if I could spend four dollars on a cotton skirt that I’m already zipping it up when I remember I don’t have to be in the back dressing room where the letters COLORED ONLY are faint on the door. Habit’s a funny thing. Now I can change where the white ladies do, and here I am, at the end of the hall, in this room smaller than a closet, no mirror, no place to sit. At least it’s private.
I open the door to step out to look at myself in the three-way mirror and hear a white lady in another changing room, talking loud.
“Ooh, I like this one, fits well. How’s yours?” In the space at the bottom of her dressing room door I see high heels turning this way and that. Admiring her reflection.
From the next room, “A bit tight, but I’m reducing, you know.”
“Yes, I know, dear.”
The skirt I have on is real pretty, but it’s gon go back to the rack. Four dollars buys eight gallons of milk.
The first woman say, “Harold’s on the commission, working on that mess in Second Ward. Getting rid of the blight.”
I take off the skirt, put it back on the hanger, listening. They don’t say anything else about my neighborhood.
Blight. I say the word to myself as I walk home, looking around me to see what it could mean. Got to be bad, but it sounds like bright or light. Maybe it means outhouses. There’s one or two down by the creek, mostly because a sewer line is four-fifty a month. About the same price as a pretty skirt, and worth every penny. When we got city water, we got the wringer-washer, never had to go to the laundry-mat again. The money we saved on that paid for the sewer. But some folks don’t see it that way.
I walk by Mabel Morrison’s house. She owns it outright, like Bibi, and got it painted last spring, pink with white around the windows and doors.
At home I get Uncle Ray’s dictionary from the shelf over the TV. It’s almost worn out we’ve used it so much, the cover torn, pages coming loose. Nothing under “b-l-i-t-e,” and “b-l-i-g-h-t” is about a disease that makes plants sick and die. Then I see it: “That which frustrates one’s plans or withers one’s hopes.” That’s what the ladies in Belk’s meant. I look up “withers.” They’re even taking hope from us.
Mr. Griffin is the reason I can stand unhappy thoughts like we might have to move, or Bibi heading downhill now. Thinking about Mr. Griffin gets me through everything.
I like the way the skin crinkles around his gray eyes when he smiles, the way his cheeks get flushed in the heat of the kitchen. He’s not pasty-faced like some white men. I’d been at the S&W maybe a month when all of a sudden I saw what a good-looking man he is. After that there was no going back to thinking of him as only my boss. Seeing him at work I get jittery. If he’s anywhere around I can’t say a thing. But I find myself watching him when he comes into the kitchen, see the way he straightens his bowtie, how he brushes his hair off his forehead. He’s well over six feet, but when we stand in the alley talking, if we on break, he slouches some so I don’t have to strain my neck looking up at him. Maybe tall men get use to bowing down a little, the nice ones like Mr. Griffin.
At work, we never talk in the kitchen, not even looking at each other too much on break in the alley. Retta looks sideways at me when she’s slicing onions or changing the oil in the deep fryer, thinking something’s going on with me and Mr. Griffin, but she doesn’t know for sure. Someday I’m gon tell her, maybe.
Now I ache for him, like at night when I’m in bed touching myself, wondering if he’s thinking about me, having to be quiet, not moving, with Hawk asleep across the room.
The whole thing started over a crate of apples that was borderline mealy, and Mr. Griffin gave some to Retta, some to me, some to the boy who mops up. I imagined applesauce with a slice of ham, a hot fried pie, a batch of Bibi’s apple butter on toast. Not thinking about how I was going to carry two bags of apples to the bus stop, until I stood by the back door in my heavy coat, already punched out. I stared at the bulging sacks. I wasn’t going to leave them no matter what.
“Loraylee?” Mr. Griffin comes up behind me. “You need some help?”
“Got to figure a way to
get these to the bus.”
“I could give you a ride. You live downtown, right?”
I wanted that ride, wanted those apples, but when I said yes, it was for more than two bags of Red Delicious. I walked out the door with him, down the alley to the parking lot on Church Street.
He helped me into his blue four-door Chevy, neat and clean like he is.
Alone in his car, we rode a couple of blocks without a word, the air heavy with the smell of the ripe fruit. Then he asked me what I was gon do with them.
“First I’ll get Bibi to stew some for supper tonight. My uncle Ray loves him some stewed apples.”
“Who’s Bibi?”
“My grand. She does most of the cooking.” Back then that was true. Bibi could cook, didn’t leave a pot of water on the stove till it boiled dry, or burn the cornbread or boil collards to mush. “What you gon do with yours?”
“I’m not sure, but I couldn’t see throwing them out, though I can tell you I won’t buy from that supplier again. Twice they’ve brought us produce that was overripe.” He clicked his blinker, turned onto McDowell. “I don’t know, maybe some pies. Apples don’t freeze, do they?”
“I reckon if you cooked them first, but when they thaw they’d not do for anything but sauce.”
We got quiet again. You can only say so much about apples. When he stopped in front of our house, I jumped out and grabbed the bags, saying, “Bye,” and heading across the yard, dropping a couple of apples as I went. I didn’t want Bibi or Uncle Ray to see me in a white man’s car, or Dooby Franklin, either.
A week or two later, we act like Mr. Griffin is giving me a ride because it’s cold, fall coming on. But we both know what I’m doing in his car. We wind up in the deserted lot behind Park Center, carrying on in the back seat till the windows fog. Not a word said all the way back to Brown Street, both of us pretending that’s a one-time thing.
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