It was the kind of moment I would have shared with Sara. I flirted, for a half second, with letting more truths gallop around the room. I could blurt out I was Jewish or not not-Jewish, but I thought it best to stop sipping and nipping before spilling this bit of news.
Gracie went to the mirror, took out the curlers, and stabbed at her un-made-up eyelid until she was more symmetrical. She dipped a cotton ball in witch hazel to swipe off the pimple cream.
I ran my hand along the embroidery on Gracie’s coverlet, feeling the scrolled monogram, wondering if someone had stitched the whole thing by hand, and if so, thinking what an act of love that would be.
“Your turn,” Gracie said, coming toward me with her eyeliner. “Don’t twitch.”
Matching eyeliner wings in place, we entered the Covenant gymnasium, where Mademoiselle Tremblay, the French teacher who always wore a French braid, was positioned by the hi-fi. She cued up the doo-wop-y “Sh-Boom.”
Life could be a dream—sh-boom.
Not that there were so very many kids at first. Not that there were Claudia and Davis, specifically. I wondered if the whole mixer was going to be a sh-bust, but then, somewhere during the fourth song—whoosh—a whole crowd waltzed in, filling the gym with girls in twirly dresses and boys in blue blazers. Davis and Claudia made an uneventful entrance, her leading, him following, and Buck and Gracie waited not even a second to hit the dance floor. It was then, oddly enough, that I noticed there were enough red balloons hanging from the folded-up basketball hoops to float every boat on the Chattahoochee. And I thought of the now-shriveled balloon, given to me by Davis, occupying a place of honor on my closet doorknob.
Mademoiselle Tremblay tapped the microphone when the song ended. “Bonsoir, students. Shall we do the Stroll? Girls on the right, boys on the left, s’il vous plaît.”
I joined the lineup of girls across from the lineup of boys. Claudia stood next to me, a gold cross nestled in her décolletage, and ballet flats—authentic Capezio, I’d bet—on her skinny feet. I imagined a zipper running from my ankles to my thighs, as suggested in the pink booklet for optimum posture purposes. Zip.
Mlle Tremblay cued up a stroll-y ballad. First-in-line Gracie and Buck came together, held hands, and dipped and kicked their way down the center aisle.
I quickly counted off, calculating who my partner would be. Six down was Vernon and his high-water khakis; he wouldn’t have been my first choice but wouldn’t have been my last either. Claudia had clearly and fiendishly calculated where to place herself for a perfect Davis partnership.
One by one—really, two by two—impromptu couples came together to stroll down the centerline of the gym. Geraldine, the only girl wearing bobby socks instead of stockings, stepped on the toes of a boy I didn’t recognize, and he dropped her hand like a hot potato. Thurston-Ann and Jimmy, who hadn’t arrived together, of course, ended up across from, and mooning over, each other. The makeup phase of their most recent breakup seemed well underway.
Next up: Vernon and me.
But!
Vernon ducked out of line at the last second, and suddenly Davis was in his place.
Davis just—just, sigh—laced his fingers in mine and led me down the line. I looked over my shoulder to Claudia, who’d scotch-taped a smile to her face.
Instead of going back around for another Stroll, Davis and I went over to the snack table. He passed a bowl of chips my way, then bounced a few into his mouth.
I shivered.
“Cold?” he asked.
Before I could answer—not cold, smitten—Davis shrugged off his jacket and draped it over my shoulder like another skin. His jacket was him. Part of me wanted to string my arms through it so he would be holding me, but the other part of me thought of Claudia. I shrugged off his jacket and handed it back with a gracious southern thank-you.
Davis and I stayed like that, our backs to the snack table, shards of potato chips greasing our fingers, as Mademoiselle Tremblay segued to regular music. Gracie and Buck moved as one on the dance floor.
I didn’t know what I’d have been doing at a dance in Manhattan, but it wouldn’t have involved a boy with a dimple or a blue blazer. I didn’t even try to say anything. There was no way to land a clever line. Clever didn’t seem to be the point.
Davis nudged me. “You’re supposed to ask me to dance.”
“Why aren’t you saying that to Claudia?”
“Any girl can ask any boy. Haven’t you ever been to a girl-ask-boy mixer?”
I hadn’t. I scanned for Claudia and saw she was doing a rather vigorous Twist. “Okay,” I said. “Do you want to dance?”
“Hell, yes,” he said, dimple fully deployed.
Out on the crowded dance floor, I focused on the weight of Davis’s arm against my waist. For once, I was glad I’d wriggled into the girdle.
He was too tall for me to rest my chin on his shoulder—that’s what Gracie was doing with Buck—but I was the right height for him to rest his chin atop my head. And that, I decided, was even better.
Claudia knocked on Davis’s back the second the song was over. “Hey, you,” she said, cheeks So Co flushed. Before Claudia could say more, she gave a loud belch, much louder than my Eleet tea gaffe. And by now I knew the pink booklet advised against ladies eructating in public.
As the music wound down, the posse drifted out the double doors and took up residence on the big set of steps toward the field.
Davis sat down next to me, not an inch between us. He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring that floated boldly into the air. “Good clear night. Stars out to the horizon.”
My head was up, but my eyes were to him. “I can’t do that—blow a smoke ring.”
“You can.” He put his cigarette in my mouth.
I hated smoking, but I wasn’t thinking that. I was thinking this ciggie had been in his mouth and now it was in mine.
“Hold a little smoke in your mouth and then ooo it out—like you’re thinking of something great,” he said.
“I doubt Ruth smokes,” Claudia said, bending down between us.
I tried it—the breathing in and ooo-ing out—but I coughed. “I’ll practice,” I said, though I wouldn’t.
“What’s your favorite constellation?” Davis asked someone, possibly me.
“The Dipper?” I said.
“Big or Little?” Claudia asked. “I’m guessing you don’t see many stars in New York with those skyscrapers lit up.”
“Little.” I was little, so why not.
“Orion used to be my favorite,” Davis said. “It’s so easy to find in the winter—”
“Mm-hmm.” Claudia leaned forward, her hair a velvety curtain across his shoulder.
“But now it’s Cassiopeia,” he said, disentangling himself from Claudia.
T-Ann stood up. “I have to go undecorate the gym.”
“I’ll help,” I said.
“Stay here and help me look for Cassiopeia,” Davis said. “Wouldn’t that be nice? Nicer?”
It would be nice/nicer. It would be nice/nicer to be together with this boy with a wall-to-wall smile and a naturalist’s knowledge of the sky.
“Fireworks time,” T-Ann’s Jimmy announced. He’d emerged at the edge of the woods, a lit twig in one hand, Oren by his side.
I squinted in the direction of the trees and saw the faintest of faint orange glows.
“What are you going to light, Oren?” Claudia giggled and fell against T-Ann, who straightened her back up. “A football? A cross?”
“Claud,” Gracie said, “I think that’s your flask talking.”
Claudia reached in her pocketbook and tugged out her monogrammed-with-a-wreath flask. She held it up to her nose. “Flask? Are you talking?”
“Cross lighting—like cross burning?” I said to Davis, because he was the one I was next to. The Teletype at home had b
een dinging out cross burnings, announcing fires on the lawns, the houses, the storefronts of Negro families.
Davis scuffed the step with the toe of his loafer. “What are you doing here, O?”
“Just having a little fun,” Oren answered.
“Lightings are a celebration of southern spirit.” Claudia nearly hissed. “Don’t pretend you don’t like a flame.”
“I’m not pretending a single thing,” Davis said.
And I thought: Speak for yourself. I’m pretending so much—hiding the Jewish situation along with my general New York neuroses—someone should give me a Tony.
“I’m not waiting for you, mealymouthed Davis Jefferson,” Claudia said, pushing between us and jumping down the steps. “Come on, Oren!” She swayed toward the light, looking fierce.
Buck and Gracie drifted after her, and T-Ann had already gone to undecorate the gym, leaving Davis and me behind.
“Let’s fly,” Davis said. I flapped my wings and followed.
We walked, almost close enough to hold hands, through shoulder-high thickets and a clearing in a patch of tall trees—pines, perhaps—that ringed the edge of the gym.
“Good kindling.” I picked up a couple of sticks, not more than an inch around. “We built a lot of fires at camp,” I said. Except we had s’mores instead of s’alcohol.
“You trying to impress me with your pyrotechnics?” Davis asked.
“Are you impressed?”
“Very much,” he said, snapping one of my sticks in two and putting a piece behind my ear like a flower.
But then we came to the clearing, and this fire wasn’t like one I’d seen or set—ever.
In the middle of a circle of tamped-down red clay was a pyramid of sticks taller than Nattie. A giant cone of flame licked the twigs and seemed inclined to burn the woods down.
“Good one, right?” Oren said. The fire stretched his mouth into a wild grin.
All around the fire, the sky looked charcoal, the flames sucking the light from the sky.
Every sense I’d ever had was head over heels. The crackle, the heat, the smoke lodged in my molars. I felt safe and warm, even though I was already safe and already warm, given I was at a school dance on an eighty-degree evening. Still. Still.
On the other side of the orange, Gracie waved to me, and it was like her hand was on fire, sparking light, reminding me she was, this place was, full of luminescence. All I had to do was wave back to be part of the fireworks. And wave I did, though some inside part of me knew I was still something of an outsider.
Claudia, her skin a perfect copper in the gleam of the fire, trickled what was left in her flask over the flame. It flared blue for a second but then petered into nothing before Claudia swanned off on the arm of Oren.
And that was how Davis came to drive me home.
He cut the engine in front of the main house. “I’m dying to kiss you,” he said. “But even northern girls probably don’t do that on a first date.”
I didn’t say: Is this a date? I didn’t say: I would have kissed on this date/not-date if you hadn’t warned me I shouldn’t.
“Here’s what we’re missing.” Davis leaned over and put his hand under my hair. I could feel all five fingers whisper-touching my neck.
He was so close to me I only had to exhale. “Just so you know, I kiss on the second date.”
9
The Southern Mount Rushmore
“Are you up? Are you up now? Wake up so we can go swimming.” I opened my eyes to find Nattie standing over me, staring.
“Stop that! Don’t be a weirdo.” I turned over and listened for her to walk away. And she did.
But it was hot and I felt bad, so I got up anyway.
Nattie, already suited up, was gulping her cornflakes in the kitchen. I made my usual coffee, creamy and sugary.
Mother walked in from the main house. “Oh, good—you’re up.” She smoothed Nattie’s hair, which was a mess. “The society editor called in sick, so I’m covering a wedding on Stone Mountain. What do you say? Come along? It’ll be ten degrees cooler.”
“I’ll stay here. I want to swim,” Nattie said.
“Actually, it’s not a choice, honey. I want you both there,” Mother said. “Unpleasant things happen on Stone Mountain, and I want you to see it.”
“Where there’re lightings?” I asked. Stone Mountain was prominent in Mr. Hank’s news roundups.
“Lightings?” Mother said. “If you mean cross burnings, then yes—that exactly.”
The coffee sloshed around my tongue. “Lightings are supposedly a celebration of southern spirit—that’s what this girl Claudia says.”
“I sincerely hope Claudia is not a close friend,” Mother said.
“Oh, she’s not.”
“Are we going to see a cross on fire?” Nattie asked. “I don’t want to.”
“It’s good to see what happens even when it’s not happening.” Mother ran her fingers through Nattie’s hair, somehow wrangling it into a respectable braid. “And, Ruthie—bring your notebook. I could use you on the fashion aspect. You know I can’t tell organza from organdy.”
“Organdy is usually cotton,” I said, but Mother had ducked into the bathroom to put on her face.
Nattie and I changed into what I now thought of as tea dresses—soft of color and swingy of skirt. Soon we were off in the Savoy, lurching east, past the outskirts of Atlanta along a four-lane road, then a two-lane road—Mother driving, me front-seating with an eye on Nattie in the back. Nattie had brought along a pocketbook filled with rainbow index cards to make her precise notes; she was now organizing them by color.
A half hour later, we pulled into the parking lot, and I was surprised, for some reason, to see Stone Mountain was an honest-to-goodness mountain, an eerie, nearly naked hunk of granite erupting out of the ground. Even more surprising: On the side facing us was the start of a carving chiseled into the stone.
“Why’s there half a horse on the mountain?” Nattie asked.
“Let’s have a look,” Mother said. We walked to the edge of the lot and stared up.
The carving wasn’t so very big. Almost people-sized. And it wasn’t only horses or half horses—two half soldiers were atop them.
“Are there carvings on every side?” Nattie asked.
“Just the one,” Mother said. “From everywhere else, it looks like a gray egg of a mountain. Some call it the great southern Mount Rushmore.”
“Great?” I asked. Nothing about it seemed especially great.
“When I was Nattie’s age,” Mother said, “the Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned it to honor the Confederate troops. The group ran out of money after Robert E. Lee, but I hear they’re back on a fundraising tear and the state is set to buy the place. Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis may make it yet.”
Jefferson Davis, Davis Jefferson—once I thought of Davis and his tribute name, transposed though it might be, I couldn’t forget the feeling of his fingers cradling the back of my neck. I held my hand on that spot and craned to get a better look.
The mountain sat against a perfect sky, a riot of wildflowers bloomed nearby, and the strong sun warmed our shoulders—it was a postcard for how gorgeous Atlanta could be. Except. Except: Carved Confederates were half blasted into the mountain, and beyond the wildflowers there were clearings used to host cross burnings once the strong sun went down.
“I can’t decide if it looks real or looks phony,” Nattie said.
“It’s real, honey,” Mother said. “But now let’s find the other reason we’re here. The more joyful reason.” We followed Mother to a fancy inn on the far side of the parking area. “Looks like a wedding setup to me,” she said without much oomph, pointing to a garden with a gazebo festooned with roses.
“Why’s this news?” Nattie asked, not caring that her Mary Janes were sinking into
the red clay. I high-stepped it to avoid the same muddy fate.
Mother smiled. “It’s for the society page. All the vows that are fit to print.”
“What makes a wedding society-worthy?” I asked, but even as I said it, I bet the answer was in the pink booklet.
“Depends where you are. Here in Atlanta or thereabouts,” Mother said, gesturing to the grounds, “if you’re the bride, it’s a matter of what club your family belongs to, and what church you go to, and what your daddy does for a living or what his daddy before him did. And if you’re the groom, it’s a matter of where you were graduated from—University of Virginia, Duke, Ole Miss, Emory, more or less in that order, plus, of course, Georgia, not the most original choice, and the occasional Princeton for the real intellectuals.”
“Was your wedding in the paper?” Nattie asked. “In the society pages?”
“Your dad and I eloped.”
Which was something I had not known. I could picture their black-and-white wedding photo in a carved wooden frame, Mother beaming in a light suit and Dad looking at her adoringly, his mouth to her ear. It never occurred to me no one else was in the shot.
“What did Fontaine have to say about that?” I asked.
“Not a lot, and that was the point.” Mother spun a button of her blouse around until I thought it might fly right off.
I wondered if they eloped because of the Jewish situation, and the wondering made my stomach hurt.
“C’mon, let’s find a spot to observe,” Mother said. The up-front rows were filled with fetchingly dressed guests. We settled into chairs in the past-last row, and Mother gave Nattie and me assignments while we waited for the service to begin. Nattie had the job of recording little facts on her index cards. “And, Ruth, take in what people are wearing. Write fast,” Mother said. “We can make sense of the notes later.”
“I don’t write fast, though.” I thought fast but wrote slow.
“There’s a trick,” Mother said. “Find me a blank page in your notebook.”
In the Neighborhood of True Page 8