Net of Jewels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  Irise and Charles William came to the door of the bedroom twice to try to talk to me but I wouldn’t talk to them. I was tired of this adventure now. I wanted to go home.

  On Sunday after a late lunch we started back to Dunleith. It was late afternoon when we got there and the town was frosted with a snow. I walked up onto the porch and the front door opened and Momma was standing there with my little boys by her side. They were dressed in the red velvet suits we had bought for them to wear for Christmas. There were bells laced into their carefully polished white leather hightop shoes. They ran out of the door fighting and screaming to get into my arms. I swept them up and carried them into the room Daddy had built for me. It was finished now, decorated in beige and gold. Everything in it was fine and new and expensive and beautiful. Still, I had been lonesomer in that room than anywhere I had ever been in my life. Lonesomer and more confused. Part of the confusion was caused by alcohol and all the pills Doctor Freer gave me. Part of it was caused by the children and their incessant demands. All of it was made worse by the fact that I never for a second doubted that everything was my fault. If I stopped thinking I was to blame, Daddy was always there to remind me.

  Still, on this snowy night, Charles William and Irise followed me into my lovely spacious new room and Mother brought in a tray of tea and cookies and the children ran around and let us talk about how beautiful they were and the world seemed possible and full of warmth and friends.

  “Malcolm’s the golden child and Jimmy is an apricot,” Charles William was saying. “They’re angels, Dee. They should be painted in those suits. We’ll get Mimi to paint them. Do you want me to ask her?”

  “She only paints people she wants to paint,” Irise said, “but anyone would want to paint them.”

  “Sister.” Daddy had come into the room. “James Myers delivered these divorce papers to me today. You better come on and sign them so we can get this settled.” He was standing in the door, looking so kind and charming, holding two sets of legal papers. He lay the papers down on my desk. “Your friends will excuse you a second. Hello, Irise, hello, Charles William. How you doing? How was your trip?” He stood by the desk waiting. I went over and sat down in the desk chair and he opened the papers to a page and held out a pen.

  “You want me to read them?” I asked.

  “There’s no need for that. One is about the divorce and the other is about custody for your mother and me. You can read it if you want to.”

  “I don’t. Where do I sign?” I took the pen and wrote my name in two places on each brief, then dated the signatures and handed them to Daddy.

  “You aren’t reading it?” Charles William asked.

  “Of course not. Who wants to read legal papers. They’re so boring. I never read contracts. That’s what lawyers are for, isn’t it, Daddy?” I looked up at him. He was smiling at me. He loved me. He had given me this beautiful new room and let me buy new carpets and drapes and all the new furniture I wanted. He loved me and he had his important lawyers get me a divorce and I didn’t even have to go to court. I moved near him and put my arm around his waist. “We’re mighty proud of you, Sweet Sister,” he said. “You’re settling down to be a fine little mother.”

  “Momma and Daddy are going to be the adoptive parents if anything happens to me,” I explained to Charles William and Irise.

  “It’s to make sure the boys are safe,” Daddy added.

  “They’ll be his heirs if anything happens to him,” I laughed. “Just think how mad it would make Dudley to have to share the money with my children and with me.”

  “Charles William, you and Irise want to witness this?” Daddy said. “Then James Myers can go on and get it filed in the morning.” He held out the pen. Charles William and Irise stood up.

  “I don’t know if we should,” Charles William said. “Malcolm was my roommate, Dudley. It might not be a good idea for us to sign it.”

  “I want you to,” I said. I held on to my father. “I want you to sign it. It doesn’t matter anyway. I promise you I’m not going to die.”

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  “For God’s sake you’re only witnessing my signature. You don’t have to like what it says.”

  “I’ll sign it.” Irise took the pen and began to sign her name below mine on all the pages. Charles William stood with his head bowed looking at his feet. When Irise was finished signing the papers he took the pen from her and signed them too. Then I showed them to the door. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Dee,” he began, but I would not listen to it.

  “My daddy knows what he’s doing,” I said. “He’s the one who takes care of us, Charles William. He’s the best friend I have. Besides, I don’t want Mrs. Martin to get hold of my children. She might ruin them.” I stood in the doorway looking out at the snow. Whatever person I had been six hours ago in Montgomery, Alabama, had disappeared. I was back in my father’s house. I was my daddy’s indulged and happy little girl. All I had to do from now to the end of time was eat from the bowl he held.

  Chapter

  26

  My children had bad colds they had caught playing in the snow so I was busy with that and didn’t get to see Charles William and Irise before they left to go back to Atlanta. They called at ten that morning and made me promise to come and visit. “Come on up to the city,” Charles William said. “This time I’ll fix you up with an architect. I think our mistake was in getting you an engineer. We need to move in the direction of the arts.”

  “Is May Garth still going with that lawyer?”

  “No, it’s a musician now. He plays drums for a black band. She’s dancing to a different drummer.”

  “Thanks for taking me to Montgomery. It was really nice.”

  “Have you heard from Jim?”

  “No, why should I?”

  “Oh, Dee,” Charles William began to laugh and I could not resist it.

  “Okay, well, hell no, he hasn’t called me. I was rude to him when he was late that night.”

  “I bet he’ll call you.”

  “He doesn’t even know my number. He doesn’t know my parents’ name.”

  “You call him. Call Derry and find out his number.”

  “I’m not calling a man. Of course I’m not. Besides, it scares me, all that stuff they’re doing.”

  “Well, I love you. We have to go now. Irise is standing by the door. She wants to get back and see if the parakeet died. May Garth was supposed to be feeding it but Irise doesn’t trust her.”

  “I love you too. Write to me.”

  “I will. Goodbye. Call him, Dee. Life is as interesting as you let it be.” He hung up and I stood by the phone thinking about the things Charles William was always saying to me. “There is no security,” was his latest mantra. I went into the children’s room to see how they were doing but Fannin had them on the floor building a fort with Lincoln Logs so I wandered upstairs and went into the bathroom and took off my clothes and weighed myself. I had gained three pounds. I reached up in the medicine cabinet and surveyed the different bottles of diet pills Doctor Freer had given to Mother and me. There were black ones for all day, black-and-white ones for half a day, and some pink tablets that Mother thought “were quite enough. The others make me talk too much,” she said. “I talked Sara Redding’s arm off at bridge the other day after I took one of those black ones.” I took down the bottle of black-and-white pills, then I put it back and took a black one. Might as well go on and get the three pounds off in a hurry, I said to myself. Fat is so insidious. And I’m a divorcée now.

  Half an hour later I poured myself a glass of sherry and went into Momma’s study and called Derry Waters’s house in Montgomery. Aurora answered the phone. “It’s Rhoda Manning,” I said. “How are you? I’m calling for Derry.”

  “She isn’t here. She’s still in the hospital.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, tell me what’s going on. What are yo
u saying, Aurora?”

  “Don’t you read the papers? It isn’t in the papers up there?”

  “What. Tell me what.”

  “She was cut. They got her. They finally got her.”

  “Tell me what happened, Aurora. What are you saying? What are you talking about?”

  * * *

  It took a while to get the story out of Aurora because there was so much going on behind her in the house. Doors opening, doors slamming, other phones ringing. “She was attacked coming out of a restaurant with a lawyer from Washington. He ran away and left her there and they got her. They cut her. Charles got a doctor from up North to come and fix her face but they can’t fix her arm. They cut an artery in her arm.”

  “What arm?”

  “The right one. The one she uses. They don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re talking about taking her somewhere. To a different hospital.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. You can’t do anything. I have to go now, Rhoda. There are a lot of people to be taken care of. Write her a letter when she gets home. I really have to hang up now.”

  “What hospital is she in? I want to call her.”

  “Don’t do that now. She’s had too many visitors already. Wait and write to her.” Aurora hung up and I was left with this tragedy to contemplate all alone. A tragedy that came from a world I did not belong to. A world of action and courage and life, a world where men and women were fighting and dying for a cause. Justice, Derry called it.

  There was no way I could call Charles William and Irise for another hour or two. There was no way to find Jim Phillips as he was living in a black neighborhood and didn’t have a phone. I hated to call Charles Waters. If I told my parents they would be mad at me for even knowing these people. In Montgomery, Alabama, momentous things were going on but they did not include me. They had nothing to do with me.

  I wandered back into the playroom and sat down on the floor with my children and wiped their noses and felt their foreheads. Fannin was sitting on a chair watching over them. “A friend of mine who is a civil rights worker was cut with a knife today,” I said. “She was cut down the face and on the arm. Her arm was really hurt. They severed an artery in her arm.”

  “That’s big trouble everywhere now.” Fannin’s face closed up like a fist. Her eyes would not meet mine. She turned her eyes away. She did not trust me, and with good cause. I did not know whose side I was on. I was too powerless to have a side or to be trusted to say what I meant. “Lot of folks going to get hurt.”

  “I stayed at her house last week when we went down there. She had a cross burned in her yard. Now they’ve cut her up.”

  “Well, I got to go get supper started.” Fannin stood up. “You take care of these babies for a while so I can get my work done.”

  “Is Ifigenia coming to help?”

  “She’ll be here at five. You going to stay and watch them now?”

  “I said I would. I tried to take over an hour ago and you said you didn’t need me.”

  “Well, I need you now.” She left and went into the kitchen and I sat on the floor with my little boys and helped them build a fort for the Indians to attack. We had fifty soldiers and eighteen Indians and ten horses that either the Indians or soldiers could ride. We had enough Lincoln Logs to build a big fort with a wall around it and we also had some Marines and a few tanks and planes from a different set but we almost never brought them in when we played Lincoln Logs until the very last when we had used up all the rest of the stuff.

  Chapter

  27

  The next afternoon was Friday. The children were better and I decided to go downtown and buy them some books. “I’m going to start reading to them every day,” I told my mother. “I’m going to start really paying attention to them. I bet I could teach Little Malcolm to read if I really tried.”

  “Sure, honey,” she said. “Go on. But don’t be back late. Get back before Fannin leaves.”

  “I’m only going to the bookstore.”

  “I know. Don’t go by anyone’s house on the way home. Don’t start drinking with anyone. Promise me you won’t.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You really should stop drinking, Rhoda. You’ve been drinking too much lately.”

  “I can’t help it. There’s nothing to do. I’m so bored all the time.”

  “Well, go on to the bookstore but come back by five. Promise that you will.”

  “I already did.”

  “Well, keep it this time.” I walked away without answering. It was driving me crazy to have her watching me all the time. Sometimes I just got into the car and drove aimlessly around town trying to put off the moment when I walked back into the house and back into her power. Daddy had the money power but she had the maid power. She had the power to make me take care of the children. He had the power to make me rich or poor. What did I have? Well, I had the bookstore.

  The only bookstore in Dunleith at that time was connected to a gift shop in the old business section of town. They had cookbooks and gardening books and leatherbound classics and children’s books and a few new novels, three or four at a time. I bought a children’s book about the Arabian Nights and one about a little boy who loved horses and paid the saleslady and drove slowly home through the cold winter day. There was hardly a leaf on a tree. The dead of winter. The winter of my darkest discontent.

  As I neared my mother’s house I saw Malcolm’s car parked by the entrance to the side porch. It was the old blue Chevrolet Daddy had given me for quitting Vanderbilt. That seemed a million years ago. The sight of my husband’s car burst upon Wheeler Street like a storm. As I drove nearer I could see him standing on the side porch. He had Malcolm in his arms and Jimmy was holding on to his legs. I parked the car and got out and ran up the steps and put my arms around him and began to cry. I wanted him. I wanted him back. I wanted to take off all my clothes and fuck him and tell him I was sorry. I wanted to be guilty and punished and I wanted him to fuck me. It was the first thing that had happened to me in months that I could understand.

  “I’m moving to Alexandria, Louisiana,” he said. “I’ve got a new job. It’s a promotion and a raise. I’m going to be the plant engineer. I want you to go with me, Rhoda. I want us to go there together.”

  At dinner we told Mother and Daddy we were making up.

  “I wish you’d leave those boys here with me,” Daddy said. “You and Rhoda go on down there and get settled and I’ll bring them later.”

  “No, I want them to go with me.” We were all at the dinner table. Mother and Daddy and Malcolm and I and my two little brothers and the boys in their high chairs. Usually we made them eat in the kitchen with the maids but sometimes we spread plastic cloths over the oriental rug and let their high chairs be at the table.

  “Your mother and I could take care of them while you get your lives straightened out,” Daddy said. “I don’t mind Sister going off with you again, son. I’m glad you want to get this straightened out, but don’t go taking the boys off. You haven’t even got a place to live.”

  “We’re going where he goes,” I said. “That’s it, Daddy. That’s settled. They’re our babies. They belong to Malcolm and me.”

  “My new boss is finding us a house,” Malcolm said. “His wife found us a brick duplex with a fenced-in yard. He said they’d have it ready. All we have to do is move in. I talked to him again this afternoon.”

  “When are you leaving?” Daddy looked very old suddenly. Fannin and Ifigenia were serving vegetables and roast beef. Mother was passing biscuits. My brothers were talking to each other and fighting with their forks under the table. In Daddy’s desk were the adoption papers signed, sealed, and delivered. Malcolm had signed them and I had signed them and old Judge Butts had put his stamp on them. They said that Mother and Daddy had custody of my children in case I was incompetent. Neither Malcolm nor I had the slightest idea what we had done or what had been done to us.

  But this night, at this dinner
table, Daddy was sad and suddenly old. It was clear he had lost a skirmish. I was going to pack up my babies and go off and live anyway I liked in a place where he could not control me. I was going to go off and ruin his grandchildren. His hope of renewal, his survival, the survival of his genes. Manning boys, he was always saying when he showed them off. They’re perfect little Mannings.

  “When do you have to be there?” he asked Malcolm.

  “We need to leave tomorrow. I have to start work on Monday.”

  “I’m going with him, Daddy,” I said. “I’m going where he goes.”

  “Well, you’re going to need a bigger car. We’ll go out in the morning and get you a station wagon.” He cut a very small piece of his roast and chewed it. He took a sip of tea. Malcolm sat up very straight and ate my mother’s food. My mother looked grim but also happy. She was going to get rid of me. She was always glad of that. My little brothers began to fight above the table. She ordered them to go outside. The babies began to fuss and squirm in their high chairs. I got up and took them out on the porch. I was leaving this goddamn place. I was going to get the hell out of here. There was one good thing about moving around all my life. Packing up and leaving meant nothing to me. I could do that all day long.

  Chapter

  28

  So we made up and this time we were going to have a chance. We were twenty-three years old and we had suffered. Even the Greeks knew you had to suffer to be wise. Aeschylus knew that and put it in the mouths of the chorus in Agamemnon, the play that Donald had given me to read. We had suffered and I had met some people who weren’t crazy and Malcolm had begun to make a small success in the world. People had begun to talk about him in his profession. They said he was a comer, they said he was after it. He still had to spend nine and ten hours a day inside of manufacturing plants but at least people had their eyes on him.