by Julie Kibler
Love.
Still love.
“Hello, Isabelle.” Quiet, confident. Whereas he’d been a bit of a boy before, he was a man now. The passage of time I saw in his eyes must have been reflected in mine.
But his greeting also conveyed caution. Not the worried fear of discovery or harassment. He seemed unconcerned what my neighbors might think, yet wary of my reaction.
I forced myself to rise, pushing up from the ground against the odd sensation that gravity might win. I stepped toward him, studying him as though he might yet fade, a mirage conjured by my internal longings—or from leaning into the roses too long with the sun pulsing at the back of my head.
“You are real,” I said when close enough to touch him, though I didn’t.
“Of course I’m real,” he replied.
I wanted to throw myself at him, beg him to say why he’d never tried to contact me, plead with him to save me from my mistake of a marriage. I didn’t. I simply stood and drank in this sight of him in uniform.
The events he’d witnessed and the demons he’d wrestled across four years etched his forehead and jawbone like stories written in fine lines and tense muscle.
Though his voice was unmistakably Robert, the rough edges had been sanded away, leaving something verging on refinement. I wondered where he’d traveled since enlisting. He had already sounded different after he’d attended college—before we married—but this surpassed that. Wisdom resonated in his deep baritone, even in the few words he’d uttered.
“Why are you here? What are you doing? How…” How would I begin?
“I’m not sure I know the answers myself,” he said. “Though I believe it was providence that led me to you. Again.”
“‘Providence’?” I was confused at first, then thought of my words to him all those years ago, when I’d gushed childishly about kismet and fate. I’d been so naïve.
“I saw your father downtown. He told me about your—your marriage. Your husband’s name was easy enough to find in the telephone directory.”
He knew I was married again. And my father knew, too. I’d ignored his attempts to contact me through the Clinckes, but he’d apparently been keeping tabs on me. The mention of him stirred the ice in my heart. “Where have you been?”
“Where have I been lately?”
“I’d like to know where you’ve been since the last time I saw you. For now, lately will do.” I hated how a chilly tone crept into my voice. After all, it wasn’t as if he could have done anything differently; my brothers and mother had been determined to erase him from my life. Anything else would have been madness. But I was bitter. I couldn’t help it. Had he even tried?
“Working in army mess halls, along with other fellows who look like me—if they’re not moving supplies.” He crumpled the edge of his hat into his fist. “So far, on the home front. When I joined up, they said I’d never be allowed on a medical unit, but now they’re talking about training a group of Negro medics for the European theater. I’m throwing my name in.”
This announcement crushed the air from my lungs. Even though I was married again, I had harbored some kind of fairy-tale fantasy he’d come to rescue me. I couldn’t speak at first. When the silence between us became unbearable, I scraped up a brief question. “You’re going…” I stopped. The phrase “over there,” sung patriotically in songs, angered me. He’d found me, but only to say he was sacrificing himself to the enemy, when he could stay safely on home soil, even if his skill and training was wasted. I wanted to ram my hands against his ribs and shove him to the ground.
“Not much call for medics here. I want to do my part. There’s a unit of Negro soldiers training for Europe. They’ll need medics. Right now, nobody’ll hardly touch our injured boys. They don’t get much more than a look when they’re wounded. Most are left to die.”
I felt shame at his use of our boys. It was my people doing this. I shuddered, thinking of men like Robert abandoned in the field simply because of skin color. But this was the same country that had erected signs like the one outside my hometown, warning Negroes they’d better be gone before dark. The same country where violent men took “justice” into their own hands while others turned a blind eye.
On an intellectual level, I understood Robert’s need to go, to care for his brothers when they were hurt. Of course I did. Any other reaction would have shamed both of us.
On an emotional level, though, where I wanted to cry out for Robert to right my dismal error in marrying Max, to gather me to himself and love me for the rest of our days, I couldn’t stand believing he intended to leave me again.
“I wish you’d never come here, then.” I spit out the words. “I wish you’d left me ignorant of the fact that you’re even alive. Finally, I can stand living without you, and now my heart is going to break all over again.”
I dragged my gloves off and threw them at the base of the rosebush, kicked my pruning shears out of my way. I ran along the walk, then clambered up the steps toward my front door, leaving Robert speechless in my wake.
“Isa!” he finally cried. “I’m here because I had to see you. I still love you. Every day, every minute, I love you.”
I faced my screen door, slowing at his words, at the sound of his name for me.
I shook my head. He wasn’t here for me. He was going away, as soon as he’d appeared.
Even if he loved me still.
I buried my fists against my eyes, trying to contain the scalding tears that threatened to betray me.
“Nell, she told me … she led me to believe you’d found someone else.” I said the words so quietly, I wasn’t sure he’d hear them. But his voice came over my left shoulder.
“You saw Nell?” he asked. “She told you—Oh, Isa, there was never anyone but you. Never, from the day I saw you at the creek, screaming and beating your fists on the ground.”
And now when I pictured Nell, I saw her clearly, doing what she thought was best for both of us, leading me to believe Robert had moved on. Always trying to do what was best for both of us.
“Is that why…” His voice faded, but I knew the question he left hanging.
I turned and faced him. “Yes. That’s why I live here in this pleasant picture of hell. I watched for you. Waited for you. But you went away. You gave up and went away. So when I met Max and he didn’t demand more of me than I could give, I married him.”
“I wanted to come back for you. I would have. I wasn’t sure I’d tell you this. But … there’s something else you should know.” Robert looked down at his shoes now, almost as if he were ashamed. “I wanted to come back for you long before now, Isa. I planned to. I thought I was brave enough to break the rules. I stayed at the docks, saving money to go back to school in the summer—I knew your daddy wouldn’t be paying my tuition again—and hoping I’d think of another way for us to be together. I tried so hard to think of a way.
“Summer was coming on … already so hot and humid, tempers were short everywhere. Felt like if I sneezed wrong, the boss would fire me. I was walking home from the job one afternoon when out of nowhere, two men jumped me. They grabbed me by the arms and dragged me to a car. It was Jack and Patrick. And it was your daddy’s shiny car.”
Robert stopped, gazing off down the street, looking at nothing, really, as though remembering my brothers’ faces—or maybe that afternoon we’d flirted with water while he washed my father’s car. I thought of the timing. When my pregnancy started to show, Jack and Patrick never gave any indication they’d noticed. Not the day I gave birth. Not after.
But they’d noticed.
“They shoved me in the backseat. This guy in the front seat—I didn’t know him—he drove, and they kept pushing my head down, though I fought it at first. By the time the car stopped, I had no idea where we were. On a dirt road—really just a path with ruts—in the middle of some woods. They yanked me back out of the car, and I tried to run, but all three pounced on me, nearly beat me to a pulp. Then they dragged me by the ankles int
o a clearing. Three or four more waited there.
“I begged your brothers to tell me why they’d taken me there. I said I’d done everything they asked. Left you alone, Isa. Didn’t come around asking about you, didn’t try to contact you—even though I wanted to. Still intended to. Momma and Nell were gone from your house by then, Nell, a long time before, of course, and Momma a few weeks.
“They said, ‘Shut up, nigger.’ Said it was about time they taught me a lesson for defiling a white woman.”
I leaned on the screen door, afraid my knees wouldn’t support me. Robert’s words made them quiver, made them useless. The flimsy door wasn’t much better, but it held.
“By then, I was past scared. I figured my best chance was to be quiet, to go along with whatever they had planned. It was six or seven against one—what else could I do? I prayed it wouldn’t involve a rope or a tree.
“There was a rope. They tied my hands and ankles together—one big knot, me laying over on my side. One of them, he wanted to gag me, but Jack said, ‘No, I want to hear this coon scream. I want him to scream good.’ I knew then what I had coming wasn’t going to be no picnic. I could only pray I’d come out alive.”
As his words came faster, Robert sounded more like the boy I’d known so long ago.
“One of the other guys was stirring up a fire I hadn’t paid any attention to until then. He called over to Jack, said it was good and hot. I started sweating, wondering what were they going to do. Burn me alive? I would have preferred hanging to being a human barbecue. And I’m not too proud to admit I begged for mercy then. I cried like a baby. I thought I was going to die.”
Tears covered my cheeks, but I didn’t move a muscle or make a noise. Robert was in front of me—100 percent alive—yet I felt the terror, as if it were happening now, as if it were happening to me, too.
He released a breath through his nose. “They had something else in mind. Jack said, ‘Go get the thing out of the car.’ Patrick returned with a long metal tool, like a fire poker. I didn’t know what they were going to do. Rape me with it? Blind me? What? When I think what could have happened, I guess I was lucky. Jack took it from Patrick and went to the fire. Then I figured it out. It was a branding iron.”
I gasped.
“Jack heated it up, a big thick glove on his hand—I knew how hot it was going to be when he couldn’t handle it bare-fisted. It glowed orange-white. I shivered, the temperature of my body ice-cold now compared to what I knew was coming. ‘Scared, boy?’ he asked. When I didn’t respond, he walked over and kicked me in the kidneys.
“‘Yes,’ I finally spit out when I stopped coughing.
“‘Yes, what?’ he said.
“‘Yes, suh.’
“‘That’s better. Now, boy, this here will be a reminder—in case you ever think about even looking at a white woman again, hear?’
“I nodded. ‘Yes, suh.’
“‘And any white woman who dares to look at an animal like you will be punished, too.’ I jerked my face up, and Jack stared me down. I don’t think the others knew, except Patrick. They never spoke your name, but Jack meant they’d hurt you, too. It killed me, thinking of them touching you in any way, punishing you because of me.
“Jack said, ‘This won’t hurt at all—you’re an animal, after all. A big hairy animal who can’t keep his hairy thing in his pants around white women.’ Pardon my language, but that’s what he said, only not so politely.
“The others laughed along with him. But I wasn’t laughing. Not then, not when he jabbed the iron hard into my side, into the thin skin of my rib cage. Last thing I remember before passing out was the sizzle and smell of my own flesh cooking.”
I pressed my hand to my mouth, afraid I might vomit. I backed into one of the metal chairs on our porch—chairs with shell-shaped backs and seats, which Max had painted cheery yellow. The yellow made me even more nauseous, and I shielded my eyes from the empty one. Robert stepped close, bent on a knee, and continued in a low, quiet voice.
“Next thing I remember, I’m waking up where they tossed me out of the car somewhere in those woods. They’d untied me, but I could barely stand from the pain in my side. I crawled, following the sound of trickling water until I found a slow-moving creek. I tore a strip off my trousers and soaked it in the water and held it to my skin, though I could hardly stand it. I hoped the cool water would take away a little of the pain. It was almost dark by then. I lay by that creek all night, wondering if they’d killed me after all—just a slower death.
“I woke the next morning to a voice asking was I okay. I was never so relieved in all my life to see the face of an old Negro peering into mine. I showed him the letter burned into my side. A, for animal. He carried me in his wagon to Momma. They’d left me less than a mile from the house, barely across the line from Shalerville. I only stayed a few days, until I was strong enough to work. Nell took word to my boss. I was lucky he didn’t fire me.
“Why they chose that time or place, after all those months … I guess I’ll never know. But it changed me. I lost my nerve. But then, after I joined up, after I spent months dealing with all kinds of guys who thought they were better than they were, I got it back. I believed again. I found the courage. And I wanted to find the means to get you away from there—from them. To keep you safe no matter what they threatened. Then I found out you were already gone. And that you gave up, too, Isa.”
I kept my eyes averted, focusing through my tears on the dimples in the concrete of the porch. He was right. What I’d said about waiting and watching? It was mostly a lie. I had given up. Without so much as a fight after I lost our baby. Doing nothing, when I could have sought him out once I’d left my childhood home. I’d given up, believing Nell’s hints that he’d moved on.
I’d believed what the world told me. I’d surrendered.
Robert reached to cup my chin, to force me to look up. “But I’m here now. You’re here now. And I still have this. It proves you’re married to me, not him.” Robert gestured toward the door, then pulled a slip of paper from his chest pocket.
I recognized the document, the leaf so thin, you could see the sun through it if you held it up to the sky. I said, “My mother had our marriage annulled.”
He shook his head. “Not as far as I’m concerned. I swore to love you until the day I died.”
“It’s no good.” As horrified as I was at the story he’d just told me, as sick as I was at the thought of what my brothers had done to the man I loved, as nauseous as I felt at their threats, my voice still emerged sullen. His declarations were useless—no matter how genuinely he felt them. No matter how I wanted to believe them. It had turned me into a hateful mess.
“We could take this piece of paper, Isabelle. Take it where people will respect it and leave us in peace.”
“There’s no such place. And you’re leaving again.”
“I’ll find that place. But first, I’ll take you where you can wait for me and I’ll come back to you. I promise.”
I allowed myself to contemplate the idea. If I left, Max would surely hate me. And though Robert held our marriage certificate, my mother’s actions had made it good for nothing but the scrap pile.
Yet I had made those same vows. His suggestion that he could find a safe place for us made my heart leap in a song it hadn’t sung in years. More than anything, I wanted Robert.
“Isa?” He rose from his knee, again using the nickname only he had ever called me. And it was too much.
I rose, too, and flung myself at him. Without looking to see whether a neighbor watched or if a stranger passed by on an errand, I threw my head against his chest, my tears freed, hot, ugly sobs bubbling from deep in my lungs, where I’d buried them too long.
When I’d spent my fury and frustration at my choices, I laid my cheek against the heavy cloth of Robert’s uniform shirt. My tears had left damp spots on its starched surface.
Robert held me for a time. Then he slid a hand up my arm and lifted my chin with his finger u
ntil I looked straight at him, at those oak-colored eyes I’d believed I’d never see again. At his strong jawbone, so freshly shaved it appeared as smooth as the skin of his lips.
I reached toward him and our mouths collided, as though we’d both been wandering, searching a midnight desert for the last thing that could save us.
I stepped back, tugging him along with me, pulled the screen door open, and stepped inside our house, my house and Max’s.
The thought stopped me less than a heartbeat. Long enough to tell myself a lie: that Max was an unimportant variable in this strange new equation.
We kissed—no, we devoured one another—through the living room, the hallway, all the way to the doorway of the bedroom, where I paused and glanced at the simple bedstead Max had installed before bringing me to this room on our wedding night. I pushed away from the door frame and led Robert instead to the smaller second bedroom, where we’d set up a single bed.
My hesitation at the first door hadn’t gone unnoticed. Robert questioned me with his eyes and with one simple word: “Isabelle?”
I covered his mouth with my fingers, then led him to the narrow bed, where I sank down and lay back on the pillow, pulling him to me. I remembered the unlocked front door, wishing I’d thought to slide the bolt home. But Max wouldn’t return for hours, and he had a key—not to mention that a bolt couldn’t keep him from this, whatever it was. A betrayal of Max? When I’d already betrayed Robert with him?
I no longer cared.
It was no simple, innocent wedding night. No Robert afraid he might hurt me. No me shivering beneath my nightgown, hiding under a heavy quilt with nervous anticipation of the unknown. No half-child, half-grown boy and girl playing house, ignorant of what would destroy us so soon.
Our eyes were open.
My fingers hurried to unbutton the shirt that separated his flesh from mine, to push it away from his shoulders, even broader and stronger now than when the same muscles flexed to clear overgrowth from the brush arbor. I pressed my nose against his skin, inhaling everything I’d so bitterly missed. My hands trembled at the resistance of hipbones and long, lean tendons on the backs of his thighs. I shivered as he swept my blouse away from my ribs and unhooked my brassiere to expose my breasts to his mouth, then removed my plain skirt in a clumsy game of lift and tug until it fell next to the bed.