Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  She gave Susie Marshall’s mother a radiant smile as she left the beauty parlor. You old bitch, she thought. Some day I’ll show you…

  When she got back to the trailer, her mother was out, and Hélène was relieved. She didn’t want her to see the shopping bags. She’d have to explain the dress somehow, and she was working on a story, but if her mother saw the bags, it would be harder.

  She stood still in the hot little bedroom, thinking. She hated to tell her mother lies, and it seemed to her sometimes that the lies got bigger every day, until sometimes she felt as if she were drowning in them, and she got mixed-up and frightened, so she hardly knew what were lies and what was truth anymore. But she had to tell lies. The lies enabled her to meet Ned Calvert; they’d enabled her to meet him, more and more often, for nearly a year. It was the beginning of July now; the first time he’d taken her for a ride in the Cadillac it had been early September—so it was ten months. Ten months!

  It didn’t feel that long; it wasn’t that long really, because two months of that time he’d been away, up in Philadelphia, visiting with Mrs. Calvert’s family.

  It was while he was away she had begun to think that maybe she was in love with him. She had missed him. Until they stopped, she hadn’t realized how much she had come to look forward to those evenings, to the times when he took her for walks and drives, the times they talked. But when he was away, she felt lonely. There was nothing to look forward to anymore.

  He had felt just the same way, he told her when he came back from Philadelphia. That was when he said that he couldn’t go on like this anymore, that he had to tell her. They were friends, yes, of course they were friends; but she must know, she must have realized—he loved her. He was crazy for her. All the time in Philadelphia he thought about her and thought about her. It was driving him insane…

  Quickly Hélène bent and hid the shopping bags under the bed. Then she heated some water on the stove, and carried a big pail of it into the bedroom. She wrenched shut the horrible faded little curtains over the windows, and began to wash, soaping bits of her body at a time. She hated it, she thought, scrubbing viciously at her skin. Hated having to wash like this. Hated having no bathroom. Hated being poor. Someone like Ned couldn’t understand that. He’d been born rich. He took it all for granted.

  She threw the washcloth into the water and sat back on her haunches, letting the air dry her skin.

  When Ned wasn’t there, she remembered only the good things about him, she thought. The lovely clean scent of his skin; the cologne he always wore; the soft fabrics of his beautiful clothes; his voice, with its rich educated southern drawl; the strength when he put his arms around her; the comforting sense of his age, his experience, his knowledge. He had taste; she liked the fact that he knew about things like wine, and food, and houses and paintings and gardens and cars. He was rich, and his richness fascinated her, because it seemed to her to make him certain about everything, from the cut of a suit to a question of politics. He had influence—he was on first-name terms with all the famous politicians and leading businessmen in Alabama; when Ned Calvert heard the news, he didn’t get it from a paper, he got it direct, from a friend, over dinner or lunch. He didn’t boast about that; he took it for granted that the only watch was a Rolex, the only car a Cadillac or a Lincoln, that when you took a vacation, you went to Europe.

  And he didn’t mind when she asked questions; he seemed to like it, as if it amused him and flattered him to teach her. So a lot of the time when they met, especially to begin with, he used to talk, and Hélène used to listen. He might be explaining how to tell the difference between claret and burgundy; he might be explaining why the civil rights movement would never get a hold in the South, because it was against the nature of things; either way, he talked on, in that slow, sure voice, and—since Hélène had quickly discovered that only one thing irritated him, and that was the possibility that she thought differently—she learned to keep quiet, to question, but rarely to voice an opinion, and then only on something uncontroversial.

  He had begun to call her “little girl” quite early on, and to Hélène’s own surprise, she had discovered she responded to the term almost instinctively. At once a thousand tiny memories came back, of other women she had watched, Priscilla-Anne, trying to placate Dale Garrett, her mother even, trying to charm some man behind a store counter. Then, there it was, ready-made, the role. She could slip into it at once: innocent, kittenish, naive, trusting, nonargumentative, using her feminine wiles to get her way. Being coy, being teasing, being flattering—being hypocritical.

  Yes, hypocritical. Hypocrisy was involved, if she admitted the truth. Because all the time he talked and she listened, there was one part of her mind that kept up its own cool independent commentary, which sifted what he said, weighed it, and, quite often, rejected it—though he never knew.

  She didn’t agree with what he said about colored people. She didn’t agree with his comments on poor whites, like the Tanners. She didn’t like the way he ostentatiously referred to blacks always as “nigras,” never using the cruder term like other whites in Orangeburg, even though she could tell he felt the same way about them. She didn’t like it the time he made jokes about Jews and liberals in Washington. She thought his ideas about women were wrong. A man liked to put a woman up on a pedestal, he said. He liked to care for her, and look up to her. It was important for a man to respect a woman, the way he respected her.

  “And Mrs. Calvert?” she had said, unable to stifle the thought.

  “Of course Mrs. Calvert,” he had said solemnly, but she could see he was annoyed.

  Women were made for marriage, he said another time. They were made for motherhood. There was nothing finer than the sight of a mother and her child. He couldn’t understand all these working women. What did it do for them? What did it do for their husbands? What man wanted to think he couldn’t provide for his wife and family, that what he brought home wasn’t enough?

  “Men have their pride, Hélène,” he said once. “They don’t talk about it maybe, but it’s there. It’s a fierce thing, a fine thing. Like pride in your country, pride in being an American.”

  Don’t women have pride? Hélène wanted to ask, but she kept silent.

  Sometimes she thought she must be some kind of a freak, thinking these things the way she did, knowing that cool voice was there all the time in her own mind, and it wouldn’t go away.

  Did the other girls at Selma High think like that too? Did Priscilla-Anne, when she was with that oaf, Dale Garrett?

  Hélène had no way of knowing. If they did, they never said so, even in the days when she still had friends in school, before they started ostracizing her. So, maybe she was a freak, maybe there was something wrong with her. Because all her life there it had been, that old refrain: love and marriage—a woman’s true purpose in life, the source of her status, the source of her identity.

  That was what all the girls at Selma High seemed to want, so why didn’t she want it? Why, whenever she thought about it, did she start to feel trapped?

  And guilty. She turned and looked at herself in the mirror.

  Guilty, because she must love Ned Calvert. If she didn’t love him, why did she go on seeing him, a married man? Why did she let him kiss her, and sometimes touch her, and why did she like it when he did that? Slowly, she ran her hand up over her naked body, feeling a shiver of excitement, of anticipation as she did so. It was quite clear, she thought. Everything the other girls had ever said, everything her mother had said, everything she had ever read, had been united on one point. Men and women were different. Men could feel physical desire for a woman they did not love. But women felt it only when they loved a man: their emotions and their physical feelings went hand in hand. So, kissing was all right, petting was permissible, because they were privileges the woman offered up in the name of love. On that altar she could, eventually, safely sacrifice her virginity. Not otherwise. Otherwise you were cheap, an easy lay. Men talked about you in the l
ocker room, and they despised you even if they slept with you. And if men despised you, that was the end, because where was your identity then?

  She must love Ned Calvert, she thought. She must. Loving was quite different from liking; it certainly didn’t mean that you had to agree with everything a person said. You just had to stop those disagreements from getting in the way.

  She felt a flurry, then, of doubt and indecision. Uncertainty washed through her mind in gray panicking waves.

  She had let Ned give her the money for this dress. She had let him kiss her. She liked it when he kissed her. She loved him—when she thought about it like that, she was almost certain she did.

  Shut up, she said to that still small voice in her head; shut up, go away, go someplace else.

  She reached for the new underclothes, reached for the new dress.

  I am dressing to go and meet my lover, she said to herself. A fine man.

  She felt a quickening excitement as she let herself slip into the role. The still small voice grew quieter. By the time she had the dress on, and looked at herself again in the mirror, she had managed to silence it completely.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Mother? Shall I boil some water?” Her mother had just gotten back. She was sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at the oilcloth. Hélène waited for her to look up, waited for the questions about the dress, but none came.

  “What? Oh, yes. Thank you. It’s so very hot. I’m thirsty. Whenever did it last rain?”

  Her mother never even turned her head. Quietly Hélène fetched the water and lit the butane gas.

  “Hélène…”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “What’s the date?”

  Hélène glanced at the calendar that hung by the stove.

  “It’s the fifteenth, Mother. July fifteenth.”

  “I thought so.” Her mother bent her head.

  Hélène made the tea, put the milk in a pitcher, the way her mother preferred, and put the cup and saucer and milk on the table in front of her. Her mother didn’t seem to see them, so Hélène added the milk herself.

  “Hélène. Would you go into the bedroom and get the box out. I’d like you to tell me…to count the money in there.”

  Hélène hesitated, but something in her mother’s manner frightened her, so she fetched the box, and opened it, and counted the money inside. There was a silence.

  “Well?”

  “Twenty dollars, Mother. Nearly twenty dollars. There’re two fives, and some singles, and a lot of quarters and dimes. Nineteen dollars and eighty-five cents.”

  Her mother bent her head and started to cry.

  Hélène got up quickly and went across and put her arms around her. But her mother didn’t touch her or clasp her or anything. She just went on crying, terrible gasping sobs that shook her thin shoulders. Then, just as suddenly as she had begun, she stopped.

  “Fetch me a handkerchief, would you, Hélène? I’m sorry. I’m just tired, that’s all. There’s no point in crying. None at all.”

  Hélène fetched her the handkerchief, and her mother wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Hélène sat down and took her hand. She wanted to cry too; she always did when she saw her mother like this; it made her whole heart ache with a terrible impotent pain and pity.

  “Mother, please…” she said gently. “Don’t be sad. Don’t cry. I can’t bear to see you like this. If you’re worried—if there’s something wrong—can’t you tell me? I could help, I know I could.”

  “I need some money.” Her mother interrupted her suddenly, as if she hadn’t heard a word Hélène said. “I need seventy-five dollars. I have to have it. I have to.”

  Hélène stared at her; she felt alarm tighten around her heart. She opened her mouth, and before she could speak, her mother stood up. She was twisting the wet handkerchief between her fingers.

  “I have to see a doctor. I’m not well, Hélène. I’ve known it for a while now—you said yourself. And you were right. I realize that now. I have to see a doctor and I need the money. Seventy-five dollars. I must have it. I must.”

  “Mother, what’s wrong? How aren’t you well? You’ve been coughing a lot at night. Is that it, Mother? Are you worried about the coughing?”

  “Yes, the coughing and…and other things. I’m not well, that’s all.” Her mother sounded almost angry. “I haven’t felt well for a long time now, and I must see a doctor. I can’t let it go on. I have to see a doctor and I have to pay him, and then there might be medication, drugs—drugs are expensive, Hélène, they don’t come free, you know. I need seventy-five dollars. There’s twenty there. So I need fifty-five more. Sixty maybe. Where am I going to get sixty dollars, just like that?”

  Hélène stared down at the dress she was wearing. She felt sick and afraid. That very afternoon she’d had a twenty-dollar bill in her hand. Not as much as her mother said she needed, but twenty dollars all the same.

  She swallowed. Ned’s voice swam in her mind. Take it, Hélène. I want you to, honey. I like to give my little girl presents.

  She stood up, the heat mounting in her cheeks.

  “I might be able to help, Mother. I might. I think I might be able to get hold of sixty dollars.”

  Her mother had been pacing up and down the room. Now she stopped and turned to Hélène, her eyes wide with hope. Almost at once the hope died; the violet eyes went blank.

  “I need it now, Hélène. You can’t get sixty dollars. Not just like that…”

  “I could, Mother. I know I could…” Hélène moved impulsively around the table. The lie was on her lips almost before she had time to think. “Merv Peters would let me have it, I know he would. You know I helped out there sometimes—at the soda fountain, after school? Well, he wants me to do it more often, on a regular basis, he said so. Saturday mornings as well. They get busy then. He said…he said he’d pay me five dollars every Saturday, and five dollars for the evenings after school. That’s ten dollars a week, Mother, think of that—and he’d advance me some money, I know he would if I asked him. If I said I needed it…”

  She came to a stop. None of it was true. She’d never worked the soda fountain. Merv Peters had mentioned it once, ages ago, but it had never come to anything, and he’d hardly give her a job now—Priscilla-Anne would see to that. But the soda-fountain story had explained her absences after school these past months, and her mother had never questioned it. She looked at her mother’s tense white face, and for a second she longed to throw herself into her mother’s arms and tell her the truth, everything. And she might have done it if she hadn’t seen her mother’s face change.

  Hope lit up in the violet eyes; her hands stopped twisting the handkerchief. She drew in her breath.

  “You could do that, Hélène? You really think he’d agree?”

  “I know he would, Mother.”

  “Oh, Hélène.” Her mother’s face crumpled, and she held out her arms to her. Hélène ran into them, and held her mother close. She was the taller of the two now; her mother’s body felt very frail in her arms. After a while, her mother drew back. She made an attempt at a smile, gestured at the pink gingham.

  “Such a pretty dress. You’re going over to the soda fountain tonight? You said something—I can’t quite remember…Could you ask him, Hélène? Ask him tonight?”

  “I’ll bring the money back with me.” Hélène helped her mother back into the chair. “I’ll bring it back with me, I promise. And then you can see the doctor, and get well again, and then—” She hesitated, looking down at her mother’s bent head. “Then we ought to talk more, Mother. You remember—the way we used to do? We ought to—plan. Think. I could leave school. I could…” Her mother looked up.

  “It’s gone six, Hélène. Oughtn’t you to be leaving? I’ll be all right. I’ll be fine. I feel better now. I don’t want to hold you up.”

  She reached for the teacup, picked it up, and sipped the half-cold tea. Hélène moved uncertainly to the door.

  “I might be a little
late getting back, Mother…”

  “That’s all right, darling. I know where you are. I shan’t be worried. Run along now.”

  Ned was waiting for her outside the old summerhouse. They had often met there this past month, on the evenings Ned didn’t pick her up on the Orangeburg road. Tonight he was waiting as usual, pacing up and down the grass outside, smoking a cigarette. Hélène saw him before he saw her, and her heart leapt. He looked so impatient for her to arrive. She had been running, and now she increased her pace, across the grass, cannoning into his arms. She clung to him then, her shoulders heaving, her breath coming fast, fighting back the tears, and Ned laughed with surprise and pleasure, and then held her tight, rocking her back and forth.

  “Whoa there, whoa there,” he said softly against her hair. “You seem in a mighty fine hurry to get here…What’s this now?” He tilted her face up to his. “Something happen to upset you, honey?”

  Hélène shook her head and buried her face again against his chest. She couldn’t tell him, not yet. She’d have to ask him and try to explain, but later, she thought—later.

  “I’m all right.” She pressed her lips against his fine lawn shirt. She could feel the thud of his heart. “I was just running, that’s all. I wanted to see you.”

  “And I wanted to see you, honey. I’ve been counting the minutes…” He took her arms and held her away from him so he could look her up and down. Hélène stepped back shyly, smoothing back her tumbled hair. His eyes rested on her flushed face, her anxious eyes. Slowly they fell to the neckline of the pink gingham, then down, then up. He gave a long sigh.

  “You look beautiful, Hélène.” His voice was soft, and his eyes had taken on that intent look they did sometimes, so Hélène knew he meant what he said. “You look just beautiful. And your hair. You’ve had your hair fixed.” He lifted his hand and touched her hair, then slipped his fingers down a little way, and caressed her throat. “It makes me so happy, you know that? Just to see you look the way you do. To know you went right out, and chose that, for me…Give me a kiss, honey, just a little kiss. Doesn’t my little girl want to tell me she’s pleased to see me now?”