Most people would look at Piper and find her to be unemotional and maybe even cold. She never really cried, she never yelled, and she rarely made something out of nothing. But Betty knew inside Piper were all the same feelings and emotions the rest of the world had. She’d just built a stronger cage to keep them in. It’s why Betty could appreciate how Piper chose to quietly and privately thank her for the love she’d received.
“I appreciate the kind words and the offer to sit with me. I’m not sure I’ll be reading this tonight, dear. You know when you get to the last page of a book that changed your life and you aren’t sure how you’ll go on once it’s over? That’s what this feels like. Once I read this, I’ll never get another new letter from her. Even if I read it over and over, I’ll never be able to read it again for the first time.”
“There’s no rush,” Piper agreed as she squeezed Betty’s shoulder and stepped inside the house.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Betty sighed as she ran her finger over the words on the front of the envelope. “I miss you already, Alma.”
Chapter Two
Staring at the letter for most of the night, Betty let her mind roll through the past. Reflecting on days gone by was usually a happy thing for her, but the part of her life this letter was forcing her to relive wasn’t quite as welcoming. It’s funny how the mind can be selective in its archiving of memories.
The next day, with a little nudge in the right direction, she stepped into the rundown shed behind her house. It was the keeper of all things she’d tried to forget, so she normally avoided it at all costs. She began digging through boxes of photos and keepsakes. It wasn’t long before she was holding the only photograph of her with Alma. For most people who considered themselves lifelong friends, there were albums full of pictures. But this solitary frozen moment in time was the only photographic proof of their friendship.
Brushing off the dust, Betty pushed her glasses up on her nose and inspected it. She hadn’t looked at the photo in ages. Shockingly, it was well-preserved, still holding most of its vibrant color. It had nestled for the last couple decades between the pages of an old book. Looking it over she sighed. There she was, standing with one of the best people she had ever known. Her arm was thrown over Alma’s shoulders as they laughed at some joke she couldn’t recall. There wasn’t a single physical thing similar about the two girls. Their features, their hair, the color of their skin: all polar opposites.
The day the photo was snapped focused clearly in Betty’s mind as she sifted through the box for more things that might jump-start her memory.
“Everyone’s settled on the porch and ready to listen,” Clay said in his naturally calming voice as he peeked his head in the shed. That’s why Betty fell in love with him—he sprinkled tranquility everywhere he went.
As Betty stepped out of the shed with a box full of yesterdays in her arms, she took stock of the group that had gathered. Bobby was holding the monitor, allowing him to keep an ear out for the twins while they slept upstairs on Betty’s bed, and Jules was nursing the baby who was starting to fall asleep.
Everyone was still bustling around as she joined them. Frankie was out in the yard, gathering more twigs for roasting marshmallows, and Betty took the opportunity to address one thing that had been weighing on her. “I’m not sure I want Frankie hearing all this. She still has this picture of the world being all perfect and shiny. I don’t want to take that away from her. There are some dark moments she may not be able to understand.”
Jules thought for a moment about her daughter’s readiness before replying, “If it starts going that direction I’ll send her to bed or something. I know dribs and drabs of the stories from your childhood. I know it was no picnic. Frankie can learn from this, we all can. I want her here.”
Betty nodded her head in reluctant agreement. One of the hardest things about being Grammy was stepping back and not butting in on every decision. Nine-year-old Frankie was just about two years younger than Betty had been when she met Alma. She’d always believed the best way to keep from reliving the past was to face it, so Frankie could at least face it here with her family.
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.” Betty took the hand Clay had extended to her and squeezed it tightly.
All sorts of chairs were squished together so everyone could have a seat. Bobby and Piper settled onto the porch swing. Michael, Jules, and Frankie had three foldout camping chairs pushed together. Clay sat down in his rocking chair and held on to Betty’s hand as she sank into her own.
“So we’re all covered in bug spray, we’ve popped popcorn, and we’re settled in for the evening. The floor is yours, Betty,” Michael said, tossing a blanket over Frankie’s legs. His sandy blond hair was now infiltrated by small patches of gray above his temple, but an attractive man like Michael only looked more distinguished as he aged. His wry sense of humor and mischievous smile kept him young.
“This isn’t a normal story or anything. It’s not something that just has a beginning, middle, and end. It’s my life. It’s me. How do I express that here?” Betty looked up to the sky as though she might be struck with some inspiration. “I don’t know what to say.”
Clay chimed in before anyone else could. “I’ve never known you to be at a loss for words. I half expect the record book people to show up here and take down the date of this unique turn of events.” Clay let out a small snicker as he dodged Betty’s fake dirty look. They had a playful nature between them, and it kept their relationship exciting.
“Just start from the beginning, Ma,” Jules suggested. “It’s Friday night. We’ve got nowhere to be. You start talking, and we’ll listen.”
“I want you all to promise me you’ll be objective. Please be sensitive to the harshness of this story. Don’t judge the people who sound horrible. It was a different time.” She looked at each of them until they nodded their agreement to her terms. “The beginning, huh? Well I guess that would be around 1961, right here in Edenville. I was eleven years old and spent most of my days going between three places: home, school, and church. My life was as plain as anything. Calling it boring would be an improvement. Same old thing every day, and it made the days feel like they’d last forever.
“Times were different then. News wasn’t coming to you minute by minute, flashing on your phone or scrolling on a ticker across your television. Folks got their news from the paper, and it didn’t trickle down to us kids much. As far as I knew, the world was a fine place, just like Edenville, but bigger. My folks were quiet. They didn’t talk much to me, and they didn’t talk much to each other.”
“That’s sad,” Frankie sighed, looking at her parents as though she couldn’t imagine them ever ignoring each other.
“The funny thing about life, dear, is you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s all I’d ever been around, so for me it seemed normal. I think that’s why I was such a dreamer. I spent most of my free time landing on the moon or going on an African safari in my mind. I could create a world out of the simplest inspiration. But what I didn’t realize then was how much I’d missed in the real world. Looking back now, knowing what I know about history and what was really happening all around me, I can’t believe I ever thought the world to be a placid place.
“There was so much suffering and oppression, but my biggest problem at the time was trying to manage the blazingly hot summer afternoons without anywhere to swim. My daddy had told me I couldn’t go down to the swimming hole anymore, though he didn’t offer an explanation. That’s another thing that was different back then. The phrase, because I said so, was thrown around at least a few times a day. And I never dared question it.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Michael joked, nudging his daughter. “Frankie debates until she’s blue in the face, trying to understand why we decide the things we do.”
Betty raised a halting hand at him. “Count yourselves lucky. An inquisitive and confident mind is what makes the world evolve. If people didn’t question why things are done, th
e world would never be forced to improve.”
“See?” Frankie said, sticking out her tongue playfully.
“But,” Betty cut in with a stern look, “how you use that powerful mind is equally important. The way to be worth listening to is to say the right things, but also leave the wrong things unsaid. That takes restraint and thoughtfulness. It’s good to challenge the status quo, but no one will ever take you seriously if you’re reckless with your words.”
“Yes, Grammy,” Frankie said, making a face that illustrated she was up for the challenge. “Is that how you were when you were a kid? Did you talk so people listened like you do today?”
“There were no people to listen, really. I remember feeling very lonely most days. The girls in Sunday school didn’t think I was well-behaved enough to spend time with them. The girls smoking cigarettes and cursing behind the schoolhouse didn’t think I was bad enough to spend time there. That’s how things always were for me. I wasn’t enough of any one thing to fit in. I wasn’t great at school, but I didn’t fail either. I couldn’t sing well enough to be in the choir. I couldn’t play an instrument with any real talent. I couldn’t bake or sew all that well.”
“You couldn’t bake?” Frankie asked incredulously, completely unconvinced that the woman who cooked for ten people every Wednesday night and ran the kitchen at her very own restaurant couldn’t bake. She couldn’t imagine a day where Grammy didn’t have some kind of kitchen utensil in her hand or a dusting of flour across her clothes.
“I didn’t walk out of the womb making a pie crust, no. I was plain and average in all ways. My brown hair wasn’t quite curly but not straight either, so I always tied it back in braids. My face wasn’t mangled and ugly, but I wasn’t winning any modeling contests. So I spent most of my time alone, just dreaming in my own head.
“My mother, Thelma . . . she had always wanted a big family. For most folks that’s how it was back then. Being an only child in those days usually meant there was something wrong with either you or your family. It was a sign. But she kept losing babies before they could grow to full term, and it did something awful to her spirit. She never really came back from that. Rather than making her appreciate having me, it seemed to make her resent me. Like I’d done something to her insides while I was in there to make it impossible for her to have more children. That’s the way it felt, like she was looking at me, and I could never be enough for her. Every time a woman at our church got pregnant, she sank a little lower.
“My daddy . . . he was something else all together. He was my hero when I was a little girl. I can still remember him hoisting me up on his shoulders at the Fourth of July parade. He worked damn hard as a maintenance man, fixing anything and everything in town that needed fixing. It was well-known if no one else could get your refrigerator repaired, Earl Ray Reynolds could bring it back to life.”
“Your maiden name was Reynolds?” Piper asked as she curled her legs up on the porch swing and leaned against Bobby.
“Yes, and when this story is through you’ll see why I was happy to rid myself of it as soon as I married Jules’s father. It’s funny how time can change the meaning of something. How it can twist a reputation from admired to disgraced.”
“Grandad was a disgrace?” Jules asked, showing everyone on the porch just how little Betty had shared with her own daughter.
“Not nearly as soon as he should have been. For a long time both my parents were well-liked and respected. My mother was an active member of our church, teaching Sunday school and organizing fundraisers for folks who needed them. She was the first to come by with a pot of soup when someone was sick and the last to leave the school during a bake sale. My daddy was quite active too. He was part of a social group of men revered in our town. His status within the group was one of high stature, and he had worked very hard to earn his position there.”
“Did they play cards or something?” Frankie wanted to know, not appearing completely engaged in the story as she twisted a red ringlet of her mother’s hair around her finger. It was something she’d done since she was an infant, and every time Betty saw it she smiled.
“They did not play cards, dear,” Betty explained, drawing in a deep breath. “They wore white hoods and pretended it wasn’t because they knew what they were doing was wrong. They terrorized people while hiding behind religion and righteousness. My daddy, your great-granddaddy, was a loyal member of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“Wait, I thought North Carolina was one of the more progressive states in the South, even back then.” Bobby sat up a little straighter in his chair. He’d had his own experiences with injustice, and this seemed to unsettle him.
“It was considered such, but that wasn’t true. In the early 1960s we had more KKK members than all other Southern states . . .” Betty hesitated for effect, “combined. You heard that right. There were more Klan members right here than all the other states combined. It was known around these parts as the heart of Klan country. Which, before I realized what they were doing, was actually something I took great pride in.
“But that pride evaporated and was replaced by an undying desire to understand what was happening around me. Like waking up from a happy dream and realizing it was never real, I awoke from my naïve state and found myself faced with the harsh reality of real life in the South.”
“What do you know about the KKK, Frankie? Have you learned about it in school?” Michael asked, leaning down to read his daughter’s worried face.
“I don’t know much about them. Just, like, they wore hoods and stuff. I’ve seen a picture. They were bad guys. I didn’t know your dad was one,” Frankie said, looking half confused and half disgusted, which tugged at Betty’s exhausted heart.
“Well, honey, if you stay here, you’re about to learn all about my daddy. If you don’t think it’s something you want to hear, no one would blame you for going in and watching television.” Betty pointed to the door. “That goes for any of you, really. I won’t paint this story with bright colors or make it into something better than it was.”
“I want to know, Grammy. I want to hear about what your life was like. Even if it’s bad,” Frankie insisted, pursing her lips and steadying her face, trying to look grown-up.
“It is bad, sweetie. But it’s also true.” She handed over a picture of her clipped from the newspaper. She’d won the local spelling bee and stood proudly next to her trophy. “That’s me when I was a little girl. Back when everything was right in the world, or at least I thought so.”
“This caption says Beatrice; isn’t your name Betty?” Frankie asked, scrutinizing the picture as she scrunched up her nose.
Betty wrung her hands together for a minute as she thought it over. “Beatrice is my birth name, but I haven’t been called that since my parents died. It’s the name they gave me, but it’s not who I am. Sometimes you have to take control of your own life and reinvent yourself in order to be happy. Stick around, and you’ll hear all about it.”
“Should I open the wine?” Piper asked, gesturing to the bottle on the small table next to her.
Betty sat back in her chair and began rocking slowly. “No honey, someone go get the bourbon.”
Chapter Three
1961 – Edenville, North Carolina
“Beatrice, I don’t wanna tell you again. Get your skinny butt down here. I need those eggs from Mrs. Winters if I’m going to have your father’s birthday cake made tonight.”
Reluctantly Beatrice rolled off her bed and shuffled her feet down the long hallway toward her mother’s kitchen. The shrill voice calling out to her was nothing new. Her mother always seemed to have a prickly edge when it came to addressing her. She’d never heard either of her parents say they loved her but, worse than that, she never felt like they did. They tolerated each other, and for a long time Beatrice assumed that was how all families were. It wasn’t until she started school and saw others that she realized what she was missing.
In general she wasn’t finding being eleven all tha
t easy either. It meant she was old enough now to run errands on her own but still too young to do anything fun.
“How many eggs, Mama?” she asked as she rested her elbows on the counter, looking completely bored with the idea of her chore.
“How many ya think? A dozen, of course. There’s fifty cents on the counter. It should only cost forty-five cents so bring that nickel back to me. Don’t go spending it on penny candy again. Your daddy works too hard for that money for you to be wasting it. Don’t be dragging your feet either. I’ve got the flour all sifted and everything ready to go. I’m just waiting on you.” Her mother pointed her finger threateningly.
“Yes, Mama,” Beatrice muttered back obediently. But she did drag her feet. She couldn’t help it. The two-mile walk to town was boring, and the only thing that made it better was disappearing into her mind and pretending her life was some kind of exciting adventure. She wasn’t walking to town to get eggs; this was an expedition across the desert to search for a new species of lizard. Her boring worn-out purple jumper that had grown too tight would transform into the gear of an explorer. Her black and white saddle shoes would become tall boots fit for the wilderness. Sadly, the best thing Beatrice could ever be was usually anything other than what she was.
“It’s been four days straight with no sign of the purple-beaked dragon lizard, but I’m not giving up hope.” Beatrice put her hand to her brows to block the sun as she scoured the woods to her left and right for a sign of the imaginary creature. When you spent as much time alone as she did you didn’t worry much about looking ridiculous. She didn’t have much of an audience to embarrass herself in front of. And those people she did see regularly never really seemed to see her. That was why she didn’t care if her clothes were snug or worn out. Her mother always bought or sewed her something new when Beatrice got around to asking for it, but it never seemed like a big deal. She saw girls at school who were keeping up with the latest fashions, but she was never one of them. It all seemed like a lot of work, especially if no one would even notice. Plus, like now in the woods, she could imagine herself wearing anything she liked.
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