Sterile. Callie thought of the masks and straw animals the philosopher had left. Were they enough to save her house from a similar judgment?
Besides being a computer wizard, Nori was an amateur dancer. “Even Armando can’t top his salsa steps.” So, the baby would be a dancer.
She smiled, imagining a toddler wobbling to music.
They had done one insemination before Pamela came to Guanajuato. “It didn’t take,” she said.
Callie recalled the yearning Pamela expressed when playing “The Lost Child.” “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I was upset for a few weeks,” Pamela said. “But I’m okay now. And I have another insemination scheduled for Wednesday when I’m back in California.”
When they reached the ruins, Pamela pointed to an area shaded by a stone wall. “How about stopping a while before going on to the mine shaft?” She took off her backpack and spread a blanket. When Callie had settled down, Pamela stretched out and put a forearm over her eyes. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
She did, but saying so could open a door she didn’t want to enter. She stalled, and instead asked Pamela, “Do you?”
“I do.” Pamela said. “The moment I saw Ami Mai, I knew she was the one.” She laughed. “It took her a little longer.” She turned on her side, facing away from Callie.
Callie leaned toward her. Would she ask again? She waited. Then she heard Pamela’s rhythmic breathing. Safe again, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, recalling her first love.
Eighteen
CALLIE HAD LOVED NOAH FROM THE MOMENT HE faced the congregation. His long legs, broad shoulders, and elegance reminded her of Sidney Poitier. And then, when he began to speak, she loved his words, their warmth and intelligence, and the way he spoke them with easy confidence. And finally, she loved the lips that formed those words. She could not take her eyes off them.
Afterward, when she saw him enter the church basement, everything else disappeared. Gone was the chatter of the other kids. The Melmac bowls of potato salad, sliced tomatoes, and sweet pickle relish. The platters of ham and turkey. The fragrance of warm sweet rolls. The Formica counter tops, the six-burner stove, the aluminum sink. The humming refrigerator, the buzz of florescent lights, the tick of the wall clock. Gone, the white cinderblock walls, the linoleum-tiled floor, the little circular holes of the acoustic ceiling.
There was only Noah, walking toward her carrying a stack of pink bakery boxes. Noah smiling and setting the boxes down on the counter beside the plate of deviled eggs she had just filled. Noah, smelling of cinnamon and cloves, saying with those lips that the pies came from his aunt’s bakery. He pronounced “aunt” with a broad A, unlike her family who pronounced “aunt” with a short A like “ant,” the insect. And for that reason, she knew Noah came from another world.
Years later, she read that painters feel with their eyes. She remembered then that, when she first saw Noah, she felt his lips. Weeks before they touched hers, she felt them.
SHE traced the outline of her lips and then caught herself. She turned to see if Pamela had noticed. Sound asleep. She folded her arm behind her head. Lips. That was not exactly what Callie’s Pastor Walters had had in mind when he invited youth from a Kansas City congregation to his church. A “Negro congregation,” Pastor Walters had called it, was celebrating its new church. There was to be a weekend devoted to youth as part of a month-long celebration. The pastor there, a friend of Pastor Walters, invited him and his youth group. Pastor had told her father he thought the parents would be more willing to let their teens go if they met some of the nice young people from the “Negro congregation.” And so youth from the city came to Pastor Walter’s Sunday service, and Noah, whose parents were both high school teachers and who was in his first year of pre-med, had been selected to offer the invitation at the end of service.
Those lips. She felt a sweet shiver in the pit of her stomach. She stretched out her toes and then let herself return to the past.
After service, she had thought of nothing but Noah’s lips through the interminable Bible story game. And then when he sat down at her table for lunch, she stole glances of them forming words, which, through those lips, took on new meaning.
She and Noah had not talked much that day, as she had been too shy, but she crossed her fingers she would find some words by the weekend for youth at the new church. She couldn’t wait to see Noah again. Nonetheless, so as not to draw suspicion, she resisted, as was her custom, when her father pressed her to join in on youth activities.
“At seventeen, young lady,” he responded, “it’s time you stop being so standoffish.”
“But dear,” her mother said, trying to be supportive of Callie, “Callie has a difficult French test the week after.”
Her mother’s kindness left her in a panic until her father put his foot down and said, “French or no French, my daughter is going to celebrate with those deserving Negroes.” She ran from the room so quickly that her mother followed and knocked at her door, asking if she was all right. She had responded as calmly as she could, that yes, she was. She would see Noah again. She couldn’t believe her luck.
She had never had trouble sleeping, and in the weeks after meeting Noah, she luxuriated in drifting off to sleep recalling his posture, his voice, his lips. But she barely slept a wink the night before the drive up to the city, and when, in the morning, the mirror showed her face pale with fatigue, she wished for the first time her parents let her wear makeup. She had to make do with pinching her cheeks and applying a thin layer of her mother’s Ponds cold cream.
She would not, she feared, know what to say to Noah when she saw him again. But she needn’t have worried. He welcomed her to the Saturday social with the broad smile of an old friend. Then, as if to make up for lost time, he told her all about his family between bites of fried chicken, sliced tomatoes, and corn bread. His mom taught remedial math and also trained the students who excelled for math contests, and his father taught social science and coached basketball. He told her about his little twin brothers who were just entering first grade and could already read, and his sixteen-year-old sister, who primped all the time, designed her own clothes, and would have been at the social, were it not for a serious cold. There were uncles and aunts, too, and cousins. While folding and stacking chairs after lunch, Noah talked about his plans. He would not get married any time soon, he said, as if he knew she was thinking about that. He wanted to get through college and med school and set up a practice. Then he would be ready. He would do community work, too. Now he helped his father with basketball workshops, but, once he set up his practice, he would organize workshops on health education. He planned to marry a woman who shared his goals.
She made her own plans while he spoke. His sister would be her maid of honor. His youngest cousins could be ring bearers. They would wait a few years after marriage to start their family, and then they would have a large one, so their children would not be shy. When the youngest went to kindergarten, she would go back to work, teaching high school, like his parents. And, yes, she would help with health education. Just like he wanted.
She planned all of this—and the kiss—before they finished stacking the chairs.
In the late afternoon when her youth group was piling into the van to be dropped off at family homes for the night, Noah asked her pastor if he could take Callie on a tour of the city and then give her a ride to the home where she would be staying. He knew the couple well because they had served with his father on the committee to select the minister for the new church.
Pastor gave his immediate approval. “Don’t you kids stay out late,” he said. “Our choir’s singing in the eight a.m. service, and we count on Callie.”
On the way to the car, she felt so buoyant she wanted to take Noah’s hand to make sure she did not float away. But there was no way she could touch him. Not with Pastor’s eyes following them. Instead she would hurry to the car where she would be safe.
She picked up her pa
ce, getting ahead of Noah who called out, “Hey, hold on, the tour’s not that exciting.”
She stopped and looked back. Her face must have turned bright red by the flash of warmth she felt rising to her cheeks.
He laughed and then pointed to a station wagon with “Better than Momma’s Sweet Potato Pies” painted on the side. “Race you there.”
He got there first and held the passenger door open for her.
“What would you like to see?” he asked, when he settled into the driver’s seat.
She was out of breath, but in any case speechless, since there was nothing she wanted to see but him. Not that she could look at him. She stared straight ahead.
He started the car, pulled out of the gravel lot, and drove down the road.
“Well?” he said, when they turned onto a wide boulevard.
She felt the blood drain from her face. Why couldn’t she be chatty like other girls?
“How about the park?”
Aunt Ida had taken her there to see a starlight performance, and she had been to the zoo, too. “I love the park,” she said. She imagined saying “I love you” and felt her face grow hot again. But for once she did not mind being embarrassed. Noah there beside her was all that mattered. She got up the courage to look at him and found him looking at her.
He looked back at the road just in time to swerve around a bicyclist, and she fell toward him on the bench seat. He reached out and drew her closer. “That’s better.”
She wanted to lean into his shoulder. But what if someone saw them? She thought of the two little African-American boys who had been convicted of molestation after a little white girl had kissed them on their cheeks. That had been some years before and in another state, but even so, she had never seen a white girl alone in a car with a Negro boy in her small town. Was it different in the city?
PAMELA stirred, and Callie checked her again. She lay deeply asleep and with a soft smile on her lips. Callie relaxed and returned to her memories.
She had rubbed her hands on her skirt and taken a breath. “Is it all right?” she asked. “You and me … together?” She looked around. If only she had a scarf to cover her hair.
He stiffened, and she dared to touch his hand with hers. “I mean …”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I may join your church. I may make the winning hoop at the playoffs. I may graduate with honors. But I’m not someone you take home to meet the family.”
She pulled her hand away. “That is not what I meant.”
“Well, plenty of whites think that way, and, honestly, my family wouldn’t exactly be delighted,” he said and put both hands on the steering wheel. “I am to be a leader in our community, married to a ‘respectable Negro woman.’”
She pulled herself up straight and smoothed her skirt against her legs. This was not going according to plan.
“To tell you the truth, hanging out with a bunch of dogooders was the last thing I wanted to do on a Saturday, but my parents … Tolerance. They’re always preaching tolerance.” He slapped the steering wheel. “When I resisted going, they got heavy on me …‘As long as you are under our roof, young man …’ So I went in spite of myself. And then I have to stomach those boys moving between me and the girls when I came in, as if they needed to protect them, and the girls with their fake smiles and artificial voices.” He mimicked their greetings, and Callie flushed at how like them he sounded.
“So,” she said so quietly she could almost not hear herself, “… a do-gooder. Is that what you think of me?”
He turned to look at her. “No, Callie. No. I knew you were different from the moment I saw you off by yourself hovering over your deviled eggs.” He laughed. “That’s why I made a beeline for you. But tell me, honestly, how comfortable is your congregation with blacks? I didn’t see black people besides us there.”
“Not at all comfortable, I suppose.” What else could she say? The only other black people she had seen there were visiting missionaries from Africa and that had been on just one occasion. Local black people had never attended her church.
“So tell me, then, what would your parents think about our being together?”
She started coughing. She had, after all, known better than to tell her parents she liked Noah. And not just because her father would be jealous of any boy she showed interest in. He even resented Steve. But Noah. She could never take Noah home. Never. She wanted desperately to disappear. Too bad she hadn’t floated off leaving the church. No chance of that now. She felt heavy as lead. And she could not stop coughing.
Noah’s voice softened. “Are you all right?” He pulled onto a side street and parked the car.
She reached for the door handle.
“Wait, Callie. Look. I am sorry.”
She sat still, looking down. “No, you are right. There’s no way I could invite you home.”
“But still I shouldn’t have talked to you the way I did. I need to watch my tone. My parents are right about that. I shouldn’t have let those kids get to me.”
Were they right about his future wife, too? The “respectable Negro woman.” Her chest went into spasm and tears ran down her cheeks. She turned her face away.
“They said the kids would be uncomfortable. And they were right. Those kids didn’t know how to act.”
He laid his hand on her shoulder. “And our parents. It’s understandable how they think, but our generation will be different.”
Would it? She hoped so. She looked up at him and tried to smile.
“So, are you are all right? Are we friends?”
She nodded.
“I have a cousin who has coughing fits. When she was called up to the podium to receive a prize at the science fair, she coughed all the way there and back. You kind of remind me of her.”
Callie turned toward him. “Your cousin… ?”
“Look at you. White shirt and plaid skirt. You look like you just walked out of a library. All that’s missing is a stack of books. Hold on a minute.” He turned and gathered the books scattered across the back seat. After sorting them, putting the largest on the bottom, he set them on her lap. Then he leaned back and pretended to take a picture. “Perfect,” he said. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’re a bookworm.”
She smiled. Being called a bookworm had never sounded so good.
“Now take some slow breaths. Relax your throat. You’ll be all right.”
His voice, calm and warm, reassured her. He would be a good doctor. She started looking through the books and stopped coughing long enough to ask, “Are these yours?”
“The chemistry and calculus texts.”
She opened up a chemistry book and glanced through the pages.
“Hey, Bookworm,” he said and started up the car. “There’s a great science library at the university. Want to see it?”
SHE often sat across from her friend Steve in the high school library, but he had never looked at her the way Noah did that Saturday afternoon. And when Steve went in search of a book, her eyes had not followed him the way they followed Noah.
She had not been like other girls in her high school, giggling about boys in the library. The sign posting the library hours attracted her gaze more than the boy at the front desk, the one other girls flocked around, whether they had a book to check out or not. She would sometimes stand behind the magazine rack and wonder what drew them to that skinny boy with his crew cut and pock-marked face?
There in the science library with Noah, she saw differently. The shelves of books where she customarily would have centered her attention became the background for Noah. Noah walking along slowly, savoring science books. Noah’s lips forming the words of their titles. Noah’s eyes lighting up as if seeing old friends. She noticed, too, how Noah’s polo shirt revealed the muscles of his shoulders. How he dipped one hip when he paused to read.
Noah selected a book, opened it, turned, his smile widening, and then sat down and spread it open. He looked up and saw her looking at him. “What?” He s
miled another kind of smile and cocked his brow. “What are you looking at?”
She felt exposed, out of her element, her familiar world of numbers and formulas. Abstract and alienating to some, but to her concrete and comfortable.
And what was she looking at but a boy in a library reading a book? She stood up abruptly, “I want to look at the books.” Standing by the shelves, her hand slipping along the books, she read the titles. They all attracted her. But she selected just one. Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory. When she turned to sit down again, she noticed Noah studying her. She felt her face flush and turned away, pretending to take an interest in another book. When she turned back, he was working out formulas on a yellow pad by an opened physics text. He mumbled while he wrote. She sat across from him and lay her book down. But before opening it, she leaned forward to see what he was reading about. The attraction between positive and negative charges.
Did that explain it? Her attraction to him. To some they may seem opposites. But seen from another point of view they were not opposites at all, she and Noah. When she looked at him, hunched over his book, didn’t she recognize herself? Well, maybe she did not mumble or chew on her pencil, but she twirled her hair, and sucked her lip. And what if her lips were thin, not full like his? They formed the same words. And if he was tall, lithe, and dark, and she short, plump, and light— well, their bodies were both made of flesh and blood. They both loved science, and they sang the same hymns. And Noah spread mayonnaise on sliced tomatoes after peppering them first, just like she did. And if he was confident, well-spoken, and strong. Well, she wished to be, didn’t she? So he was all she was and wanted to be. Not her opposite. Her other half. She smiled, opened her book, and began to read.
It seemed only a few minutes later when Noah waved his hand in front of her face. “Hey, Bookworm, you’ve been reading over an hour. Wouldn’t you like to take a break? Get something to eat?”
She looked up at him and then down at her book again. She sighed. She would have to leave it there in the library.
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