by T. Greenwood
I was still sweating, though the air had gotten cooler. I sat in the chair that Betsy had been sitting in. I pulled out the postcard and thought about Betsy wandering through the museum, about Betsy seeing this painting and thinking of me. The river was even louder now, louder than the music, which thumped and hummed in the background. My head was pounding. I waited a long time out there on the porch for Betsy, but I was used to it by then; I’d been waiting for her almost my whole life.
When she finally emerged, she was with Rosemary and Ray. She was still wearing her crown, but her hair had come loose and was wet with sweat. I shoved the postcard in the pocket of my tux.
“My curfew’s midnight,” Rosemary said, frowning.
Ray draped his arm over her shoulder. “I’m ready. The music sucks.”
“Is your royal highness finished dancing already?” I asked Betsy.
She looked at me quizzically, and I immediately felt bad.
We all piled quietly into the DeSoto. The windows of Madame Tuesday’s glowed brightly in the darkness. I thought about all of the men driving home after their rendezvous with the ladies of Madame Tuesday’s. I thought about Betsy in the blue dress, her golden shoulders. I was pissed at myself for not kissing her, pissed at Howie. Pissed, even, at Betsy. The music struggled through the thick air and into the quiet car. I grew dizzy watching as the lights swirled and then disappeared in the rearview mirror behind us. In the backseat, Ray and Rosemary giggled and groped, quietly, trying to be polite. Betsy rolled down the window, leaned her head out, letting the air dry her wet hair. I felt my stomach roil.
Before we made it back into town, I knew I was going to be sick. And despite every effort to keep the growing nausea at bay (breathing deeply, rolling the window down all the way), as soon as I pulled into Rosemary’s parents’ driveway, I knew I couldn’t stop the inevitable. As Rosemary and Ray said their good-byes on the front stoop of her apartment, I felt a wave stronger than I could will away. I opened the door, leaned over and vomited. I felt Betsy’s hand on my back, heard her voice swimming to me, “Harper? You okay? Were you drinking ?” But her voice was distant and muted; she was already so far away.
I figure now it must have been a bad shrimp in the cocktail, but in that moment it felt like sadness pouring out of me. Just bitter sorrow. When we finally got to my house, Betsy asked if I needed her to come with me inside. I shook my head and motioned for her to go home. I gave her an awkward hug and said, “See you tomorrow.” Then I ran across the lawn, forgetting all about the badminton net, which captured me like a fly in a spider’s web. I untangled myself and rushed into the house to the bathroom, where I tucked the postcard into the mirror’s frame and then continued to vomit until my eyes burned and my ribs ached. I thought about the last time I got really sick. My mother made peppermint tea and we sat together at the kitchen table until my stomach stopped churning. She put me to bed, tucked me in, and brought me saltines and ginger ale. But tonight my mother was at her interview in Boston, and my father was already asleep.
Comfort Food
S helly didn’t go to the dance. Instead she went into her room and would not come out. When I knocked on her door, she said softly, “Just leave me alone.” Maggie was sitting on the couch, watching TV, her arms crossed against her chest. She wouldn’t speak to me either. I didn’t know what to do to make things right again. With Shelly or Maggie.
And despite the chicken and dumplings waiting in a steaming casserole dish at the table for me, I excused myself and went downstairs to the bowling alley, where I ordered a bowl of chili and a beer. It was Ladies Night again, and the place was filled with women.
“Hey, Harper!” Missy Knowles hollered, waving with her left arm. Her right arm was in a sling. Missy was a regular on Ladies Night; she belonged to one of the women’s leagues. She was in my class in high school, but I hadn’t known her until we moved in above the bowling alley. I liked Missy. She was plump and friendly. Funny.
She came over to my booth, where I was just finishing up my bowl of chili, and slid in across from me. “What happened to you ?” I asked, motioning to her arm.
“Slipped on some orange juice,” she said. “Seems Jessie couldn’t take thirty seconds of her precious time to mop it up after she knocked her glass over. Busy girl, you know.”
“Is it broken?”
“Nah, just a sprain. I told Jessie it’s fractured in four places though. Figure I should get as much mileage as I can out of it.”
“Is it working?”
“She cleaned out the fridge and did all the laundry this week.” Missy chuckled. Her cheeks were flushed.
“You playing tonight?”
“I’m here for team spirit ,” she said, and gestured toward my beer. “And my spirit’s just about run out.”
“How about I buy us a pitcher?” I asked. It felt good to have someone to chat with. I hadn’t had a normal adult conversation since the wreck.
When I came back to the booth, Missy said, “Where’s Shelly at tonight? Over to the dance?”
“Upstairs,” I said. “Pouting.”
Missy nodded, sympathetic. She had three daughters, each just a year apart. The youngest, Jessie, was in Shelly’s grade. We’d commiserated before.
We finished off the first pitcher and then a second one before I checked my watch. Missy was telling dirty jokes. I’d been laughing so hard tears were coming out of my eyes. “I should really go back upstairs,” I said.
“You got some help, I hear,” Missy said. “A girl to help out with Shelly?”
I thought about Maggie then, for the first time all night, remembered the argument we’d had.
“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s just a temporary thing.”
“It’s real good of you to take her in,” Missy said. “A lot of people’s hearts only got so much room for a girl like that. Especially around here,” she whispered.
I remembered Maggie’s shoulders like two unripe plums in my hands.
“I really have to get home,” I said.
“And leave me all alone?” she asked, flirting a little. This was the inevitable outcome of two shared pitchers with Missy. She was one of the few women who still bothered with me. I could always count on Missy.
“You’re not alone ,” I said. “Here comes Louise.”
Missy’s best friend, Louise, kissed me on the cheek as I stood up and then slid into my seat in the booth.
“Goodnight, ladies ,” I said with a smile.
“See you at the bake sale tomorrow?” Missy asked.
“Bake sale?”
“At the graded school. The fund-raiser for the families of the people in the wreck? I was pretty sure Shelly told Jessie she’d be there.”
“Sure,” I said. “Bake sale.”
In the morning, I woke up wishing I hadn’t had either the chili or the beer the night before. I was paying for both. I made my way to the kitchen, my head thick and my legs shaky.
Maggie and I sat across from each other at the kitchen table eating leftover dumplings drizzled with maple syrup in complete silence. Each time I glanced up from my plate, she looked down at hers. Shelly was still in her room.
“Listen,” I said, wiping my mouth with a paper towel. “I’m sorry about last night. But you really shouldn’t have gotten into my things.”
“That was a mean thing, what you did,” she said.
“I know.”
“You coulda hurt me.” Maggie’s face was that of a child’s, her bottom lip trembling.
I nodded, resisted the urge to reach out for her hand.
Maggie shook her head, sniffed, a fighter going back into the ring. She folded her paper towel daintily and set it on her plate. “It was kinda your fault anyway. Shelly didn’t have nothin’ nice to wear to the dance. You know that girl doesn’t have a single dressy dress? I was only tryin’ to make her feel pretty. That’s important, you know. She’s not a little girl anymore.”
“Yes, she is ,” I said, setting my fork down.
“Maybe in your mind, but not in hers.”
I nodded. Point taken.
Maggie offered me another dumpling. I shook my head, took a long sip of my coffee. “Maggie, we really need to discuss what to do next,” I said. “I understand that you don’t want to go to Canada. I’m assuming that your family has arranged for some sort of adoption or something…you’re obviously too far along for…” I took a deep breath. “But, what I don’t understand is why you want to stay here . I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but for someone like you, Two Rivers is hardly the place to blend in .” I thought about Missy’s comment. I thought about the stares we’d already gotten at church. On the street. “You’ve got the baby to think about.”
Maggie closed her eyes for a minute, her jaw tightening. She opened them again and smiled. “Are you sayin’ that I haven’t been a good guest?”
“That’s not at all what I’m saying,” I said, exasperated.
“I mean, you’ve come home to a hot meal every night this week. Shelly’s been to school on time every morning; she gets her homework done every night.”
“It’s been very helpful having you here,” I said, speaking slowly, trying to remember that Maggie was still a child. I had to try to think like a child. Whatever her father had said to her, done to her, he was still her father. “Don’t you miss your dad? I’m sure he misses you.”
Maggie’s face softened; her eyes were wet. “I don’t miss nobody.”
“What about the baby’s father?” I asked quietly. “Does he know where you are?”
Maggie’s face grew hard again. She stood up and cleared the dishes off the table, setting them down hard on the counter. A knife dropped and rattled onto the linoleum.
“I made a raspberry pie for Shelly’s bake sale,” she said, turning on her heel. “Unless you’re fixin’ to make somethin’ else?”
Orientation
M y mother left for Ohio the day after my graduation from Two Rivers High School.
The graduation party was thrown by Carla Simmons’s parents, who owned a whole bunch of land, which they offered up for the all-night event. Most attendees brought tents and sleeping bags. If my mother hadn’t been leaving the next day, I probably would have drank myself silly and passed out under the stars too, but instead I spent the whole night feeling disconnected from the music and laughter and celebration. Betsy found me sitting in one of two adjacent tire swings, which were suspended from a single giant oak tree near the creek. She sat down in the other one, swinging quietly, and we barely spoke. Nothing to say, maybe. Or maybe too much.
Just after ten o’clock, I stood up, my legs all pins and needles. “I should head home.”
“Will your mom be up still?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She’s so brave,” Betsy said, leaning backward and swinging slow and low.
“How so?”
“It’s dangerous down there. It’s not like it is here. People like your mom, just wanting to help other people, they get treated like they’re criminals or something.”
“Hmm?”
“ Helping colored people? That’s worse to those bigots than actually being Negro.”
I hadn’t thought much beyond what it would be like for my father and me after my mother was gone. I certainly hadn’t thought about her being in any sort of danger.
“She’s just teaching. Piano lessons,” I said. I imagined my mother sitting in her straight-backed way at a piano, little colored children all around her.
“I’m just saying that it takes courage to do what she’s doing.”
“I’ll tell her you think so,” I said, feeling defensive. I was a little angry still, about my mother leaving us. And about Betsy leaving me.
“Someday I’m going to do something like that,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Something big. Something that will change the world.”
I wanted to tell her that she already had: that her very existence made the world a brighter place. I wanted to tell her that when I was around her I barely remembered to breathe. Instead I hopped off the swing and said, “Anyway, I gotta go.”
“You okay to drive?”
I nodded. “Wanna ride?” I asked.
“Nah,” Betsy said. “I’ll catch a ride home later.”
“Howie going your way?” I asked. Howie Burke and Betsy Parker seemed to have completely reconciled following their respective coronations. At graduation Howie had put Betsy in a playful headlock and called her “Duchess.” When I told Betsy I couldn’t believe she could forgive him for what he’d done to her, what he’d said about her mother, she’d only shrugged saying, We were kids then. And it’s not like he wasn’t telling the truth.
“Did you see where I put my shoes?” she asked. She was always losing her shoes. We couldn’t see anything in the dark. “Oh well,” she said. “Coming?” And she started walking barefoot through the grass back to the house, which was filled with light and loud with music. She was wearing blue jeans, rolled up, a soft white sweater that glowed in the little bit of moonlight that burned through the heavy clouds. I walked behind her as she skipped ahead. Her hair had grown so long it was touching the waistband of her jeans. I wondered what it would feel like in my hands. Imagined the way it would feel on my skin. I wanted to catch her up in my arms, collapse with her, make love to her. I wanted to keep her.
“You leavin’ already?” Ray asked. He and Rosemary were sitting on the porch steps.
Ray was wearing his mortarboard crookedly on his head. He’d started his job as a maintenance mechanic at the paper mill on Monday. Rosemary was going to go to cosmetology school. I envied them, their certain futures.
“Come over tomorrow?” Betsy said to me, sitting down next to Rosemary on the porch.
“Sure, after we drop my mom off.”
“Wish her luck,” she said.
I drove home, sober and feeling slightly melancholy though I couldn’t pinpoint why. It seemed like this day had signaled the end to so many things—some of which I wasn’t quite ready to see end yet.
When I got home, my mother was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a glass of wine. My father had moved the kitchen table into a corne
r in order to make room for the computer, which sat ominously in the middle of the room.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“I sent him to bed.”
“What are you doing up?”
“Can’t sleep,” she sighed. “Thought this might help.” She gestured to the wine bottle, which was half empty. “Want some?”
“Nah,” I said.
She poured a little more and then peered into her glass.
“I bet it’s hot in Mississippi in the summertime,” I said.
“So they say.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Nervous?”
“About the summer?” I could count on one hand the number of nights my mother had spent away from this house. I tried to imagine her with a church family in Palmer’s Crossing, Mississippi. I tried to picture her pale moon face staring out at a room full of colored kids. What would she say to them? And they to her? I thought about the people there who would hate her for what she was trying to do.
She looked at me, studying my face. It made me feel self-conscious. “Did you know that when I was pregnant with you, I almost lost you?”