Gods in Alabama

by Joshilyn Jackson

  If anyone could show me a back door to Burr now, it was his mama. I hit nine for an outside line and dialed. She didn’t seem at all surprised that it was me when she picked up the phone.

  “I guess you talked to Burr,” I said.

  “He showed up this morning at breakfast, wanting my sugar toast,” Mrs. Burroughs said against a background of glass on glass and running water—no doubt the remains of the sugar toast were being scraped away as we spoke. “He was like a bear with the sorest head you ever saw. I poked around, and when the sore spot seemed to be you, I started waiting for the phone to ring. Took you an hour longer than I bet myself.”

  I told her all about the fight, leaving out the sex parts. She was his mama and a preacher’s wife, after all. But I told her he had given me an ultimatum and walked out, and now he wouldn’t even talk to me to see if I was going to knuckle under. Not that I would.

  Mrs. Burroughs made “mmm-hmm” noises at me and sloshed water around while I spilled my guts. I could picture her standing over the sink in her kitchen with the faded tea-rose wallpaper. Pictures of Burr and his sisters hung on the walls around the table and lined the windowsill in standing frames. On a decorative shelf beside the fridge, a ceramic mug shaped like a frog stood among bronzed baby shoes. Burr had made that frog at camp when he was about twelve.

  When I wound down, she said, “Lena, you know I care for you pretty deep, but you also have to know you aren’t the girl I would pick out for my son to love. I don’t know if any girl would measure up good enough for a son in his mama’s eyes. But if it was left to me, and I had to pick someone, it sure wouldn’t be a tiny half-crazy white girl from Alabama, no matter how much I like her as a person.” The kindness in her warm voice took some of the sting out of her words.

  “But it isn’t up to me to make that pick,” Mrs. Burroughs went on. “My boy loves you. I think he loves you in a real way he can’t walk out on unchanged. I don’t think losing you is going to change him for the better, or make him happy. So if you want him like he wants you, I’m not getting in the way of that. But you better know this: If I help you find a way back to him and then you end up breaking his heart, I don’t see how I could be anything but done with you. I wouldn’t forgive that, even if it put me into hell.”

  I could hear a little laughter in her voice, but underneath the laughter was absolute conviction. All at once it was as if I were talking to Aunt Florence. The softness and the accent were wrong, but I recognized the steel behind her joking tone. I had no doubt that Mrs. Burroughs meant it.

  “I’m not going to break his heart,” I said.

  She released a loud breath into the phone, and then she said, “Then I’ll tell you two things. The first is, you have to give him something he wants. Right now I think he’s feeling that everything flows in one direction, from him to you. He’s thinking you don’t care about him the way he cares for you. So you need to yield some. But the second thing I am telling you is, you better make him bend, too. You don’t ever let a man say ‘My way or nothing’ to you. Not even a good man. Not even my son. And you never say ‘My way or nothing’ to him. You don’t take your sweetheart’s love and use it on him. You can do that to your mama, but not your sweetheart.” I smiled at that.

  She went on, “He’s wrong by doing that with you. But you’re wrong to put him in a place where he feels so poor he thinks he has to say that. You both need to bend, but I think this time it has to start with you. And that’s all I can say to you without breaking confidence. Now, don’t you make me sorry I helped you.”

  “I won’t,” I said, and I was as sincere as I had ever been in my life.

  I had to hurry to Stevenson Hall to teach my afternoon world literature class. I jogged across the quad, toting my heavy leather carryall. Stevenson was a squat two-story stone building with long slitted windows. My class met on the first floor, just inside the gunmetal-gray front doors.

  It was the last class of the semester, and all I had to do was take roll and accept the final papers. Some of the students had come by early and left them on the desk at the front. I collected the rest and then wasted a few minutes organizing the stack of folders into my bag and erasing notes left on the blackboard by an earlier class. By the time I was finished, the building was quiet around me. Most of the other classes had not met for the entire period, and there was a good half hour before the next classes in Stevenson were scheduled to begin.

  I walked out into the hall, and Rose Mae Lolley was there waiting for me. I froze in the doorway.

  She was dressed like a student again, in ratty, fringed jean shorts and a red tank top. She had on scuffed yellow-brown boots and was lounging against the wall with one leg crossed over the other. “Hey, Arlene,” she said.

  My voice sounded high to me, wavering as I answered her. “How did you find me?”

  “They gave me your course schedule up in the English department.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean how did you know I worked here, or my address. How did you even know to look in Chicago?”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “I talked to Bud.”

  “Bud Freeman?” I said. “My cousin Clarice’s husband?”

  She nodded. I pulled myself together and turned and walked away from her without saying anything else, heading out the front doors of Stevenson and across the quad, angling towards the faculty lot.

  Rose Mae boosted herself off the wall and came after me. I sped up, lengthening my stride so that she was dogtrotting as she caught up with me, her little pointy boobies jouncing in her tank top.

  “Hold up, Arlene, I just need to ask you a couple of questions, and then I swear I won’t bother you anymore.”

  I ignored her and broke into a jog, heading across the green.

  “Stop for a second,” Rose said, keeping pace half a step behind me. “I called Clarice, but she wasn’t home, and I ended up talking to Bud. He told me you talked to Jim Beverly the night Jim wrecked his Jeep.”

  I stopped so fast, Rose Mae barreled into me. She bounced off me, and we stood facing each other. Her boots had short heels on them, and we were exactly eye to eye. All I had to do was lie. All I had to do was say “Bud is mistaken. I never saw Jim Beverly that night,” and look into her eyes with total sincerity and a bit of mild confusion, as if I was wondering why Bud would think such a thing. But I had years and years of not telling a single lie behind me, and I blew it. My gaze faltered and my eyes dropped, and I knew if I said it now, it would sound like the lie it was, and she would not believe me.

  “I didn’t talk to him,” I said, which was the truth. But it came out wrong, with the emphasis on the word “talk,” and she picked up on it immediately.

  “But you saw him?” she asked. I didn’t answer, and she grabbed my arm, trying to make me look at her. She said urgently, “Where was he? What was he doing?”

  I ripped my arm out of her grasp and backed up a step. “I don’t know,” I said, but that wasn’t exactly the truth. Out of sheer force of habit, I found myself adding, “There’s nothing I can tell you about this.”

  She took a step towards me, the end points of her hair swinging fiercely, and she said, “I don’t believe you. I know you saw him.”

  All around us, kids were streaming back and forth like ants, oblivious to the drama unfolding in front of them. If they could ignore Rose as she stalked me across the commons, maybe I could, too. I realized this wasn’t a mature or even a rational response, but who said I had to be rational? The question calmed me, because asking it showed me the solution. All I had to do was ask myself “What would Mama do?”

  I looked around. We were almost at the center of the quad, and four stone benches backed up against a square flower bed. A hot-dog vendor stood with his cart by the farthest of the benches, and a short line of students was grabbing a late lunch. A few strides to my left was a stand of four oak trees.

  I released the handle of my satchel and dropped it to the ground by the closest bench. I left it where it had fallen
and walked to the trees, Rose Mae following. I went to the second-largest tree. It had a thick trunk, but a few of its branches were low enough for me to reach.

  I jumped to give myself momentum as I grabbed a low, thick branch and hoisted myself up. My loafers slipped on the trunk, and I let them drop off my feet, using my bare toes to get purchase on the bark. I got one foot up on the branch and pushed, reaching for higher branches.

  “Arlene?” Rose Mae said. “What are you doing?”

  The answer seemed too obvious to say out loud, so I ignored her and kept working my way up the tree. Inside, I was remarkably calm and peaceful. I peeked down. A couple of students had joined Rose Mae at the foot of the tree, watching me shinny up through the branches.

  “Arlene, this is ridiculous,” Rose Mae called. “Get down here.”

  I kept climbing around and around the trunk, following the thickest branches I could find. About twenty feet up, I realized the branches were getting too slender to safely hold me. I scouted for a comfortable fork and then wedged myself in it. A few more students had stopped, and one was pointing up at me.

  Rose was still at the foot of the tree, yapping like an angry poodle. “You can’t stay up there in that tree forever. You have to come down and talk to me.”

  I thought she might very well be wrong.

  “If you don’t get down here,” Rose said desperately, “I am going to take your shoes!”

  A tall, weedy-looking blonde from my world lit class was standing at the base of the tree with a friend, looking up at me. “You are not taking her shoes,” she said incredulously to Rose, and she picked up my loafers and held them to her chest. She noticed my satchel on the ground a few feet away, and she and her friend hurried to stand over it.

  I settled into the fork and looked out over the campus. I had a good view. A couple of the students who had stopped to watch me climb drifted off and were replaced by different ones. I quit looking down or listening, just closed my eyes and concentrated on the breeze hitting my face. The next time I looked down, Rose Mae Lolley had gone.

  I backed and shinnied carefully down. My student dragged my satchel over and met me as I dropped to the ground. I took my shoes from her and slipped them back on.

  “Thanks, Maria,” I said.

  “I wasn’t going to let her take our papers!” she said, outraged. “Who was that?”

  I shrugged and said, “It’s not important,” in a steady voice, but when I bent to pick up my satchel, my knees wobbled a bit on me, and Maria leaped forward to grab my arm and steady me. She helped me over to the bench, and I sat down heavily, thinking hard. The little crowd of students was leaving, except one group of three who stood in a clot, blatantly staring at me like I was TV.

  “Get out of here, you vultures,” I said irritably and flapped my hand at them. I put my head down, breathing hard, and when I looked up, they were dispersing.

  Maria sat down beside me, her fingers tapping nervously against her freckled stork legs. At last she said, “Want some of my Fruitopia?”

  I nodded and she dug a violently green drink out of her backpack. I took it gratefully and gulped down about half of it. It tasted like liquid sugar.

  “Thanks,” I said. I handed it back and said, “I have to get going now. You have a good summer.”

  “Are you okay?” Maria said, but I was already up, grabbing my satchel and heading for my car at a good clip. I’d bought myself some time, but if Rose Mae kept after me, I would eventually shift from acting like a complete lunatic to actually being one. I couldn’t leap around slamming doors in her face and shinnying up trees forever.

  I was angry with myself for failing to lie when a single good one would have solved everything. It still could. I practiced it in my head. “Rose,” I would say, “I don’t know anything that could help you. I don’t know what happened to Jim Beverly.”

  A passing student raised his eyebrows at me questioningly. I realized that my lips were moving and I had composed my face into a mask of sincerity, widening my eyes and nodding at my imaginary Rose as I walked. I gave him an embarrassed grin and ducked my head down, moving faster. This had to stop. It had to, but I couldn’t do it on my own, and I was driving myself crazy trying. I needed help. I needed Burr.

  I drove over to his condo. I had no idea what to say to him, but I had to make him understand that we absolutely couldn’t be broken up right now. I practiced a speech telling him so, over and over, whipping myself up into a frothy panic as the Burr in my head kept interrupting me and not letting me finish my sentences. I miraculously found a parking space on the same block as his building and wedged my Honda into it.

  I took the elevator up to his floor. I didn’t think Burr would be home yet, so I let myself in to wait for him. I had forgotten he often took short days in the May lull after tax season. He was sitting in his favorite leather easy chair with his headphones on, no doubt blasting the blues loud enough to kill his eardrums. He hadn’t heard me coming in, but when the door opened, he jumped to his feet, staring at me. He pulled off the headphones and dropped them on the chair. I could hear Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers, tinny and distant. The armchair was right by the entertainment center, and he reached over and flipped the stereo off.

  I closed the door behind me and leaned on it, and we stood staring at each other. I had to have him on my side. I couldn’t lie to Rose Mae Lolley, so I had to make him be with me, because without him at my back, helping me, I didn’t see how I could win. His mother had told me I had to bend and give him something he wanted, but I sure as hell couldn’t take him home to Alabama. I opened my mouth to give the speech I had been working on in the car, but what came out of my mouth was “I think you should have sex with me.”

  Burr raised his eyebrows at me. “That’s certainly . . .” He paused, searching for a word. At last he said, “Abrupt.”

  “I think you should have sex with me right now,” I countered. My voice faltered. “Here, on the carpet.”

  Burr half laughed, incredulous, and stayed where he was. At last he said, “I think you should have sex with me. Here. On this chair.” He extended one arm like Vanna White, modeling the recliner.

  I stamped my foot. “I am being serious, Burr. Let’s go. Let’s do this.”

  He searched my face, and then he said, “Baby, what happened? You’re so pale. Are you sick?” He came over to me and took my hands and led me back past his chair to his big leather sofa and sat me down. “Your hands are clammy. Do you need a glass of water?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I had a Fruitopia.” He was temporarily setting aside the fight and the breakup because I was so obviously in extremis. I was flooded with such relief and gratitude that I sagged against him and said, “You remember that girl? The one on my doorstep last night?”

  “The one with the Mace?” he asked. “Yeah. That’s not an easy girl to forget.”

  “She’s Rose Mae Lolley,” I said. The name meant nothing to him. I added, “From my hometown. From Alabama. And she’s up here and she won’t stop following me, and it’s like she’s dragged with her everything ugly I left behind me, and she’s dumping it all over me and I can’t make her stop. She knows where I live, and Burr, she’s turned into this relentless, awful girl with political hair and no bra, and she isn’t going to ever leave me alone. I can’t go to my apartment, and then today she tracked me down at school. There’s no place I can go. I acted like a lunatic just to get away from her, and if the head of my department saw me, oh crap. You know he’s going to hear about it . . . but I don’t know how to get rid of her.”

  I was clutching Burr’s arm and pounded his shoulder for emphasis. “I have to get her off me, Burr. She’s stalking me.”

  “Take a deep breath,” Burr said. “You need to calm down. Lena, I’d put you in the ring with any bra-less girl from Alabama. I have no doubt you could kick her ass. In fact, I’m getting a pretty good visual.”

  I smiled in spite of myself, and he grinned at me and continued, �
�Here’s what I think we should do. Let’s put our fight on hold. We can fight later, after she’s gone. I’ll take you home, and I’ll make you that tea you like that smells like cat pee. We’ll order a pizza. Watch TV. If she shows up again, you can handle her. I’ll be there to back you up in case she gets crazy with the Mace can.”

  I nodded, relieved. “Burr? We aren’t broken up, are we?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He shook his head, and I let go of him and sat back to study his face. “Whatever is going on with us, let’s leave it alone for now.”

  “I can do that,” I said. “That seems good.”

  We caravanned back over to my place, Burr following me in his Blazer. I had a spot in the lot behind my building, but Burr had to drive around and around the block until a parking space opened up. I waited nervously on the front stoop for him. The sun was starting to go down. When I saw him walking up the block, I got up and went to meet him.

  “Find a spot?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “In Egypt.”

  We headed up the two flights to my apartment together. The stairwell was clear, but when we got to my door, I saw an envelope taped to it. My name was written on it in fat girlie handwriting, the kind with the overblown vowels and the perky upstroke at the end of each word.

  “The stalker?” said Burr.

  “Has to be,” I said. “No one in Chicago calls me Arlene.”

  I took it down and we went inside my apartment. “Hey. My book,” said Burr. It was still lying on the floor where I had thrown it. Burr picked it up.

  I sat down on the sofa and opened the envelope and read the letter.

  Dear Arlene,

  I’m really sorry for what happened today on campus. Bud told me on the phone you had not been home in ages, but gave me no indication you were so troubled. May I suggest, not in a judging way, but as someone who knows and is speaking from experience, that you should get professional help?