A Place at the Table: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  But when I pick the jar up they start buzzing again, angry, very much alive.

  I walk to the foot of our beds and, balancing the jar in one hand, climb up the railing of our bunks. The wooden railing creaks from the pressure of my weight. Really, we outgrew these bunks years ago. We outgrew sharing a room, too, but Mama insisted on turning Troy’s room into her sewing room after he moved out. Hunter groans and shifts but doesn’t wake up. My feet on the railing, I stand above his sleeping form. With my free hand, I untuck the sheet and the blanket from the foot of the bed. Slowly, slowly, I unscrew the jar until the lid is loose, ready to come off as soon as I lift it. I slide my hand, holding the jar, beneath the sheet.

  “Hunter,” I command. “Wake up.”

  He stirs but does not say anything. With my free hand I grab his foot, shake it hard. “Hunter.”

  “Huh?” His body jerks and he opens his eyes, but he still doesn’t seem to see me.

  “Don’t move.”

  He turns over angrily and puts the pillow on top of his head. I slap at his leg through the blanket. He better not think he can ignore me tonight.

  “I’m holding a jar full of bees. If you take the pillow off your head you can hear them buzzing. The jar is in my hand, under the sheet, and the lid is loose on top. I can release them right now. If you move I’ll release them, and maybe they’ll sting you, and maybe they won’t. And if they do, maybe I’ll run and get Daddy, or maybe I’ll wait until it’s too late.”

  “What the fuck?” He takes the pillow off his head.

  “Shut up. I want you to shut up and listen to me. Maybe you’ll get stung tonight or maybe you won’t. But know this: The woods behind our house are filled with bees and I know how to catch them. And I will. I’m a regular bee charmer. I will catch them again and again. I will bring a jar full of bees into our room every night and I will release them in your bed while you are sleeping and you will be stung and you will die. Do you hear me?”

  He sits up suddenly, jerking the covers off his body. The motion knocks the jar out of my hand. I hear it break on the hardwood floor below. The bees fly straight up, buzzing loudly, by the side of his top bunk.

  Hunter squeezes himself into the corner of the wall, like a kid in a horror film. I remain standing on the bunk bed railing, still taller than him.

  “I want you to leave me alone,” I say.

  “Just open the window, okay?” Hunter asks. “Get them out of here.”

  I climb down the railing, then walk to the head of his bed, where he is crouched in the corner. The bees buzz around me, but I am not afraid.

  “No more notes in my textbooks, no more calling me a fag in front of your friends, no more hiding things of Mama’s in my drawers, none of it.”

  “Get them out of here.”

  “First promise. Promise that you will leave me the fuck alone.”

  First time I’ve ever said that word aloud.

  “I promise. I promise. Please get them out.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  He screws up his face into a pained expression, then starts to cry. My brother Hunter is crying. “Please. Please open the window and get them out.”

  His tears are a gift, revealing the power I now have.

  I walk to the bedroom window, turn the lock, and push the window up as far as it will go. As if summoned, the bees fly out, and it is done.

  4

  I Never . . .

  (Decatur, Georgia, 1977)

  Every afternoon during track practice I try to outrun Pete Arnold, who is a miler like me. I can’t. He can’t beat me either. We are matched, sprinting side by side, each motivating the other. The first time Coach Latham had us do time trials I shaved ten seconds off my personal best, which is nuts, considering it wasn’t even a real race. Pete acts all serious and “in the zone” during practice, but afterward, when the team gathers on the bleachers for Coach Latham to go over his “Daily Nuggets” (Coach’s term), Pete sits beside me, making commentary, his Yankee accent noticeable even at a whisper.

  “C’mon, man, the boys can’t breathe. Go up a size, will ya?” Pete laments while Coach Latham, sausaged into his shiny gym shorts, holds forth on the necessity of wearing a jockstrap. I have to stare at the ground and squeeze my wrist with my hand during Pete’s comedy routine, to keep myself from laughing out loud.

  It’s hard not to lose it around Pete.

  • • •

  My parents are almost always at our meets. Track is the only sport I’m any good at, and Mama and Daddy, taking whatever athleticism they can get, fall all over themselves to encourage me to Keep Running! Sometimes Pete’s mom comes to our meets, too, though she’s always late. She’s a secretary at a law firm downtown and doesn’t get off work until after 5:00. She’s beautiful in a trashy sort of way, her bleach blond hair feathered back on the sides like Farrah Fawcett’s. She wears lots and lots of mascara and plunging V-neck tops. She sure doesn’t look like Mama or any of Mama’s friends. She looks out of place is how she looks. Which she is. She moved Pete down here from Boston last summer, after she and Pete’s dad split up.

  Even though he’s a Yankee, the white girls at Decatur High like Pete a lot. (Who knows, the black girls might like him, too, but everyone keeps pretty separated.) Despite how goofy he is and the funny T-shirts he wears, he carries himself elegantly, his limbs almost liquid, his fingers so long they border on odd. He has perfectly square teeth that look like white Chiclets all lined up in a row. His hair is blond like his mama’s, worn a little shaggy and grown out on the sides, same as mine.

  Ever since Daddy mentioned to Mrs. Arnold that she ought to come check out Clairmont Avenue Baptist, quietly letting her know that she wouldn’t be judged for being a divorcee, Pete and his mom are at church most Sundays, his mom dressed for a cocktail party, Pete with his button-down oxford half tucked into his khakis. Our family always sits up front. Pete and his mom always arrive late and sit near the entrance. I try not to glance back at Pete during the services, but I can’t help myself. I like knowing he is there. Once I saw Pete with his head tilted back, looking up at the ceiling as if he were counting the tiles. I asked him about it afterward. He said there was a watermark on the ceiling that looked like the state of Massachusetts and he wondered if it was a sign.

  “Of what?”

  “That Ma will wise up and move us back to Boston.”

  “How can you believe in signs left on the church ceiling but not believe in God?”

  God’s existence is an ongoing debate between the two of us. Pete claims he’s an atheist, but I don’t really think he is. I think he’s just trying to annoy me. I kind of like our discussions, though. We get into long arguments about the human nature of Christ (Pete says that if Jesus was a man then he got erections), and the shame of Jimmy Carter pardoning the draft dodgers (which Pete thinks was a good thing and not shameful at all), and Watergate (actually, we don’t really disagree on that; we both think Nixon was a creep). When I debate Pete I try to show absolute faith in my convictions. But lying in bed at night I will sometimes allow myself to imagine, for a moment, the possibility that Pete’s way of seeing the world might be as valid as my own. And then I have to shake my head fast, as if shaking the crumbs off a place mat, because I don’t want the scariest of Pete’s convictions—that there is no God who cares about our lives—to settle.

  • • •

  Sometimes after practice Pete and I hang out at his house. It isn’t actually a house at all but half of a run-down duplex on a dead-end street off East Ponce. Today we sit Indian-style on the floor of his bedroom, the green shag carpet soft beneath our legs. Pete has the slide projector going. Images of his family’s long-ago camping trip to the Arizona desert flash against the wall while Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which Pete is obsessed with, spins on the turntable. The images of the desert are strange and otherworldly: barren mountains striped with gradations of pink. Pete, gap-toothed, is grinning in every single picture, his dad’s arm wrapped aroun
d his shoulder. Pete couldn’t have been older than eight. Back then his hair was so blond it looked almost white.

  Pete says Rumours sounds even better when you’re high, but his mom found his bag of pot and threw it away. I am relieved he doesn’t have any to offer. Relieved I don’t have to say no again. I am forever refusing Pete’s offers of beers, stolen from his mom’s endless supply in the fridge. I use my dad as an excuse, but the truth is, I am less afraid of Daddy than I am of altering my mind around Pete. The truth is, even cold sober it is all I can do not to reach over and touch him.

  But I never let myself touch Pete, not even casually, not to flick a piece of lint off his shirt or to slap him on the back or anything. While Hunter, who is a running back on the football team just like Daddy was, will come barreling down the hall at school and tackle one of his teammates to the ground. Straddle him and pretend to hawk a loogie in his face.

  When “Songbird” comes on, Christine McVie’s declaration of love so clear and true, I pretend I have to pee just so I can leave the room.

  • • •

  Besides me, Pete’s other friend at Decatur High is a girl named Shawna Pringle. Shawna has always been weird. She is not like the other white girls at Decatur High, with their curling-iron bangs and their bright blue eyeliner. Shawna has long dark hair, so dark it is almost black, which she wears in a single braid down her back. Her preferred outfit is a Fruit of the Loom V-neck undershirt worn with a faded pair of Levi’s jeans. Occasionally she switches things up and wears overalls. And she always wears Birkenstocks, which we call her Jesus sandals. She bought them at some hippie store in Little Five Points.

  Shawna can get to places like Little Five Points because she has a car or, rather, a pickup truck, powder blue with an open bed. It belongs to her granddaddy, but he can no longer drive. His diabetes got so bad he had to have his legs removed. He gave the truck to Shawna on the condition that she keep it in pristine condition, requiring her not only to wash it once a week, but also not to remove the Confederate flag bumper sticker that reads, “I Don’t Care How You Do It Up North!”

  Shawna and I weren’t friends before Pete, but now we are. We didn’t really have a choice; it was just part of the deal of getting to hang out with Pete. Anyway, it’s fine. We like each other. Last weekend Shawna drove Pete and me to Midtown Atlanta. We rented roller skates from some place on 10th Street, then made our way inside Piedmont Park. I was a wobbly skater. Pete was okay, but Shawna was really good. She could leap down stairs and over trash cans and do twists in the air. At one point she even had a small crowd gathered around her. Pete and I just looked at each other and shook our heads, like proud but confused parents, wondering How did we have this child?

  Later we waited for her outside the public restrooms. She had already been in there ten minutes, but Pete said that was nothing, she had kept him waiting for over half an hour before. “She’ll tell you all about her blockages if you really want to hear,” he said.

  “I don’t,” I said,

  A trim man with a thin mustache walked up to us. He wore flip-flops, tight jeans, and a sleeveless shirt with armholes so loose I could spy his smooth chest through it. His exposed feet looked tender and new, each toenail filed into a perfect half-moon. His feet looked like they belonged to an overgrown baby.

  “Waiting for someone?” he asked, placing his manicured hand against the stone façade of the restroom.

  “Yep,” said Pete, not exactly unfriendly but certainly not inviting.

  “Why don’t you and your friend come wait at my apartment? We could smoke a joint.”

  “I doubt my girlfriend would be into that,” Pete said.

  As if on cue Shawna walked out of the bathroom, slapping her hands together vigorously, as if she just completed some difficult task.

  “Maybe next time,” the man said archly, walking away as fast as he had appeared.

  “Oh my God, which one of you did that fairy try to pick up?” asked Shawna.

  “Why, he just wanted to show us his apartment, sugah,” said Pete, all mock innocence with his fake Gone with the Wind accent.

  “Sick!” said Shawna.

  “I know,” I said. “It really is.”

  • • •

  During homeroom, Shawna announces that we are going to go to the Laser Show Extravaganza tonight.

  “The Granite Rock laser show? Are you kidding me?” asks Pete. “I saw an ad for it on TV. It looks awful.”

  “Shut up; it’s awesome,” says Shawna. “There’s bad music and lasers and you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken and bask in the glory of southern craziness.”

  I’ve never thought of the laser show as crazy—just fun. My family and I went last summer, when it first opened out at Granite Rock, which Daddy calls the poor man’s Stone Mountain. We arrived at dusk with a picnic and spread a blanket out on the flat field beneath the face of the granite mountain, which is carved with the image of Robert E. Lee on horseback. The show didn’t start until it got dark. Then they projected a bunch of laser images—cartoons really—against the rock face, accompanied by music. It was really neat, like something out of the future. Plus, Mama packed a good picnic. That night she brought us plenty of ham sandwiches and Lay’s potato chips, plus orange slices and Oatmeal Caramelitas, a salty, buttery layer of oats topped with chocolate chips, walnuts, and melted Kraft caramels. And for some reason Mama brought a big jug of sun tea instead of her usual so-sweet-it-hurts-your-teeth stuff.

  • • •

  I am waiting in the living room with Mama and Daddy for Shawna to pick me up. I keep glancing at my Timex, nervous. Shawna was supposed to be here by 5:00, but it is already 5:18. Mama is methodically licking stamps and placing them on addressed envelopes for yet another SERVERS fund-raiser she is hosting for Lacy Lovehart. Watching Mama lick those stamps makes my throat tighten. Mama hasn’t acted the same toward me since that first luncheon she hosted for Mrs. Lovehart, over two years ago. It isn’t that she’s mean, just cool. Almost formal. Daddy acts just the same as always, which means Mama never said a word to him about that afternoon.

  Daddy is watching the Braves on television. I pretend to watch, too, but the moment I hear Shawna’s horn beep I leap off the sofa.

  “Bobby, your friends need to come in and say a proper hello,” says Mama, her eyes meeting mine while her tongue dabs a stamp.

  “Oh, Edie, this isn’t the cotillion. Just a group of young people going to a casual event.” Daddy winks at me, jovial and self-assured.

  “Yes, sir, that’s right,” I say, and I head fast for the door before Mama argues back. Mama says that Daddy is the head of our household while she is its heart, but the truth is she doesn’t often get overruled on anything.

  • • •

  Once outside I slow jog to the truck and open the door to the cab. It fits three, tightly, though it’s a little awkward if you are in the middle, because the gearshift gets in the way of your leg. But Pete is already squeezed in the center seat, so I don’t have to worry about that. Still, I am a little scrunched on account of the red Igloo cooler on the floor at my feet.

  Shawna and Pete are awfully giggly as we wind our way through my neighborhood of sturdy ranches and Cape Cods, the lawns rolling from the houses down to the sidewalk like green skirts over the bellies of pregnant women. Once onto the busier Clairmont, Pete tells me to get him a Miller Lite out of the cooler. Shawna says she wants one, too.

  “Compliments of Roselyn?” I ask Pete as I open the cooler and pull out two cold cans.

  “If she notices any missing I’ll just say Ricky drank them.”

  Ricky, a beefy guy with a thick head of hair and an air of arrogance so potent it could be bottled, is the latest of Pete’s mom’s boyfriends. Although really “boyfriend” is too grand a title, as these men stick around about as long as a thunderstorm on a hot summer afternoon.

  Pete hands a can to Shawna, then pops the tab on his own and takes a long sip.

  “Want some?” he asks, handing the
can to me. He always asks, and I always refuse.

  “Wait—are we being filmed for an Afterschool Special or something?” I say, deadpan. Pete and I love watching the terrible acting on the ABC Afterschool Specials, with their dramatic plots and their high-stakes endings.

  “Yep,” says Shawna. “Now bottoms up, young man. I want you to do something crazy and learn a lesson.”

  I know she’s just joking, but hearing Shawna call me young man immediately brings Mama to mind. Her tongue darting in and out of her mouth as she licked the envelopes for the SERVERS fund-raiser. The fact that she didn’t say good-bye when I walked out the door. Mama’s love for me has become so restrained. It’s not that she withholds her love completely, but rather that she measures it out, teaspoon by teaspoon, as if giving me too much at once would be unwise. As if she might oversalt.

  “Oh, what the heck,” I say, fake jolly, though I am thinking of Mama’s furrowed brow. I take the can from Pete’s hand.

  “Oh my God, we’ve finally corrupted him!” says Pete.

  “PTL!” Shawna says, which is short for “Praise The Lord.”

  I roll my eyes and take a sip. From the way Mama and Daddy talked about alcohol, I imagined beer would taste like sewage or cat pee or something equally disgusting. But the Lite Beer from Miller tastes okay. Not great. Not like a Coke or a Grape Fanta or something like that, but fine. Just kind of watery and flat.

  Pete and I trade the can back and forth. His mouth touches it, then my mouth touches it, then his mouth touches it, then my mouth touches it again. We finish the one and I pop open another. All the while Shawna drives, taking Scott Boulevard to Highway 78, then merging onto 285 N, toward Tucker, where Granite Rock is located.

  “Good thing we’re driving ‘I Don’t Care,’ ” remarks Pete.

  “Why, cause it’s so cool?” asks Shawna.

  “That and we’re getting deeper and deeper into Dixie. That red truck up there is the fourth I’ve seen with a Confederate flag bumper sticker.”