Jackson listened to this story aghast. He could not bear to contemplate why anyone would make his adorable Stella suffer. Up ‘til she divulged her biography, he’d been anxious about introducing her to Mama and Daddy and the odious Bubba Ray, now fifteen and turned out just as one might expect. He was the worst kind of mama’s boy, lazy and sluggish with shifty eyes and a scheming mind. Jackson doubted there was a vice with which he’d not made at least a passing acquaintance. He feared how she’d absorb the South, too, how she’d take in Mississippi. He was afraid she’d misinterpret everything he loved back home and throw everyone into an uproar. He wondered on which street corner she’d get filled with a passion to stand with one of her petitions. He imagined with a dark mental quiver what Mama would have to say about that. Just what we need, she’d say, a dang Yankee communist attached to the family. All along, he’d been struck by how willing he was to bring Stella home anyway, despite premonitions of disaster. Then after hearing her family story, he felt an encounter with his own people infinitely benign compared to one with Stella’s. Compassion overwhelmed him and nursed the first flames of his heat to serve as her protector against this insidious family as well as any other adversary who might cross her path. He muttered as much to the top of her head, to her throat.
Now that her fears were out there, flapping in the wind, Stella felt better and allowed herself to be embraced and petted within an inch of consciousness by the solicitations of a man who swore he would make up all the unhappiness inflicted on her by giving her everything she wanted forever and ever amen. He would work until he died for her. In other words, he proposed. She accepted. He was overjoyed. They started up their journey again, rode the rest of the way to Boston holding hands over the console. From time to time Stella fell silent, and when Jackson snuck a look at her she was smiling a straight, thin smile with just the corners of her mouth pointed up. He thought she looked satisfied, but also as if she was plotting something. His joy deflated a little until it struck him maybe she wasn’t plotting so much as planning her wedding, a thought that made enough sense to restore him to buoyant happiness.
Jackson drove up Washington Street toward the great houses of Roxbury. His mouth filled with bile and his heart with both courage and dread. He stopped the car, got out, followed Stella’s directions for opening the big iron grate to the courtyard of the family Victorian, then steeled himself for battle with his teeth grit.
They parked by the front door. Before they could get out of the car, a maid in uniform hurried out and grabbed their bags. A new one, Stella whispered to Jackson. I don’t know her. Arm in arm, they walked up the stone front steps flanked by fir trees and into the foyer.
My, my, my, Jackson said, craning his neck to follow the slow curve of marble stairs that spiraled gracefully up a full three floors. Beautiful.
Something chimed twice loudly and his neck spun round looking for its source, a massive grandfather clock of a design he’d never seen before. Opposite was a fireplace graced by a mantel, also of marble, with interlocking sprigs of wheat carved into its face. There was a glass screen, a sparkling brass grate, and andirons. Orientals overlapped on the floor. Gilt-framed family portraits hung on the walls. Everything was heavy, dark, venerable. He felt oddly half at home and half in a fairyland. Foyers screaming history were not unknown to him. But foyers dark, heavy, and somber were. Yes, he thought, a winter’s fairyland. As if on cue, oak pocket doors creaked open, and Stella’s mother, a Snow Queen if ever there was one, stepped through them. Mildred Godwin was short and thin, her features sharp, coming to twin V’s at the chin and nose. She was likely the palest woman he’d ever seen with hair a darker, flatter red than Stella’s, cut close to her head and curled. It took him a second, but he saw it was a wig. Her eyes were mini versions of Stella’s. On Stella, they were large, warm. On her mother, they were small and suspicious. She extended a limp, white hand in his direction. He took it.
Mom, this is Jackson. Jackson, my mother.
Stella’s voice was dry, without emotion. Jackson would have noticed the mother and daughter barely greeted each other but he was too intent on delivering the most charming smile in his repertoire to the former. He bowed a little, just his head and shoulders, before releasing her hand.
You have a lovely home, Mrs. Godwin.
Stella’s mother seemed more surprised by him than he was by her. Her voice had a tremor, a slight one, and she could not seem to look him in the eyes. Her head bobbed all around while she studied her foyer as if she’d never seen it before.
Well, yes, yes. We like it, she managed, and directed them to their rooms, telling them tea was being served in the library and in a couple of hours they’d gather in the living room for cocktails.
The way Stella described her relations, he’d expected everybody’d be at one another’s throats before the second drink. But after he settled into his room, he ran into Stella’s brother Seth on the stairs. A short, stocky man, prematurely bald and smartly groomed, Seth shook Jackson’s hand warmly, telling him with a broad smile that his hat was off to any man who could make Stella happy and that due to unforeseen complications, he was the only brother Jackson would meet that night. He then kindly ushered him to the library, where Mr. Godwin himself poured him tea from a fine porcelain pot, then showed him a framed letter hanging on the library wall, a letter from Theodore Roosevelt penned to his grandfather thanking him on the production of uniforms for the Rough Riders.
How could this man be the tyrant Stella described in the car? Stella’s daddy seemed a soft, befuddled gentleman who spoke very quietly with a lot of ums and choppy breaks in his speech. Frequently, his hand shot up to the top of his head to settle his yarmulke, although the blue circle stitched with silver thread appeared well anchored to his fringe of gray hair by bobby pins. Jackson considered Leonard Godwin’s a humble appearance. He flat couldn’t understand how these could be the same people Stella warned him about. They looked to be the salt of the earth. Meek, even.
They drank their tea and made small talk. When Stella did not appear, Jackson excused himself to freshen up for dinner. He tiptoed down the second-floor corridor until he found her leaving her bedroom to look for him. She put a finger to her lips and pulled him back into the bedroom, closing the door behind them swiftly, quietly. There they lay upon her bed awhile, fully clothed, silent, afraid to make noise, speaking in gestures and grimaces with an eloquence only lovers can muster.
Stella told him not to bother to dress for dinner, but when the couple entered the living room for cocktails dressed in their traveling costumes—the Jimmy Dean’s, a denim shirt, and boots for Jackson, for her a turtleneck, cotton capris, and ballet slippers—Jackson was embarrassed. Mr. Godwin and Seth wore jackets and ties. As his mama would have wanted, he immediately apologized for not being attired properly for the occasion. Holding Stella’s hand at the time, he did not miss the manner in which she stiffened as if his politesse were a direct affront to her.
We could wait while you change, but as it is Stella won’t change, only a fool would ask her, and together you make a set at least, Mrs. Godwin said in a dry, cracked voice as tight as her white knuckled grip on a half full tumbler of Rob Roy.
Dinner was served in the formal dining room: oak paneled, heavy mahogany table and chairs, the latter cushioned with red velvet, a huge breakfront also of mahogany hosting a silver service fit for royalty, flocked salmon wallpaper and gilt mirrors, crystal chandelier. Two great silver candelabra graced the upper and lower ends of the table, which was set for five with china and service of rare quality. The snowy linens alone were finer than anything proudly possessed by Missy Fine Sassaport. Jackson was, in a word, intimidated by the room’s magnificence. He’d been in grand homes before in the South, where the same grace notes were of the worn and tired type of elegance. The icy sparkle of the Godwins’ riches awed him.
Once they were all sitting, Mr. Godwin blessed the bread and the wine, which Mrs. Godwin asked Jackson to pour. “Don’t forget
to twist the bottle when you’re done, dear,” she said after he’d poured for her without doing so. Now, if you didn’t count Bubba Ray, the Sassaport family were not big drinkers. Mama had the occasional medicinal whiskey and Daddy drank bourbon straight on holidays and at parties but only the one. Wine etiquette was something alien to Jackson, who then poured for Seth, next up at this Yankee mama’s left. After he was through, he dutifully turned the bottle upright and twirled the whole thing forcefully ‘til it near sloshed out the top. Easy, cowboy, Seth said with a laugh while Stella turned purple. He’s from Mississippi, not Texas, she muttered. Here, her father said, my wife meant like this. He took the bottle from Jackson and poured wine for Stella, twisting the neck so the last drop fell neatly in her glass. Jackson took color then himself.
The evening went downhill from there on in. No one asked him if his great granddaddy raped the household help, but they might as well have. After the wine debacle, the next bit of trouble Jackson got himself into was inquiring if he might please have the butter without checking first if the substance was laid on the table at all. We don’t use butter with meat meals, Mrs. Godwin said. We’re kosher Jews. She mistook his look of humiliation for confusion. Don’t you know what I’m talking about? Aren’t there kosher Jews down there? Well, not so very many, ma’am. The South is the birthplace of the Reform movement, you might recall, Jackson replied, which catapulted the conversation into an examination of the reason why Jews in the old South kept slaves. Perhaps, Mr. Godwin offered in his soft, halting manner, it was, um, a lack of foundation in the true tenets of Judaism. Perhaps, um, they didn’t analyze properly the, um, ethical issues, being ignorant of halachic principles which would have guided them to, um, righteousness.
No, no, sir, Jackson felt compelled to reply. Race was a subject he’d been trained all his life to avoid in social discourse, but his classmates the last three years had no such scruples and pestered him constantly about it. He’d developed an instructive patter on the subject that he now delivered for the enlightenment of the Godwin family.
The Jews came to the South a lot earlier than they came to the North and in very sparse numbers, beginning around 1700, he told them. They were itinerant peddlers, providing a service needed at the time. Consequently, they were accepted as whites and participated in the dominant culture. The Bible had bondsmen, the South had slaves. They were part of their times, they didn’t find a distinction. Perhaps you don’t know this, but the majority of whites didn’t keep slaves at all. It was a rich man’s province to do so. Of the Jews in that category, some of them mistreated their slaves. Some of them treated their slaves well. Others were pioneers of abolition, but they didn’t get very far and invited the wrath of the white population to fall upon their whole community. Basically, if Southern Jews disagreed with the institution, they practiced charity where they could and kept their philosophies to themselves to get along. My point is they were individuals like their neighbors, and each had his own take on things.
In other words, Mr. Godwin offered, they were just like any other, um, cracker with a few dollars to spend on human flesh. I’m sorry, lad, the lack of Torah is disastrously evident in your, um, people. I hear there are even Jewish members of the White Citizens’ Council in your state. Pack of racists. Might as well be apostate, those, um, Jews down there.
Jackson nearly choked on his dry, unbuttered roll. Never in his life had he heard a judgment so rudely delivered to a dinner guest about his forebears. For a heartbeat, he was tempted to relate the story of his own daddy’s membership in the WCC, how tortured a decision it was, how based in the desire to keep his family safe from the likes of J. B. Stoner and Admiral Crommelin. But how much could a man like Leonard Godwin comprehend about the doctor’s fear of Mississippi’s version of jackboots in the night, of those unctuous agents of the scions of the town with their clipboards and door-to-door surveys asking which Jews were with us and which against? He looked over to Stella helplessly, unsure whether to confront her father or not. Should I tell him, darlin’, why the Council came to existence? Created by peace-loving businessmen to guide social change at a pace people could handle while keeping the violent tendencies of the Klan in check? But Stella was occupied studying her lap while biting the inside of her cheeks. No help there. Well, sir, he managed at last, I regret I have not convinced you otherwise. Mr. Godwin snorted then patted his lips delicately with a napkin. Apparently, his gesture was enough to spark Stella’s long-smoldering fuse. Tossing her glorious hair, thrusting her chest forward, she corrected him.
Dad, she said, you have no right to make such cursory statements, especially to Jackson. Why his best childhood friend was Mombasa Cooper.
Cutlery and jaws dropped all over the table.
No, really? Seth asked, incredulous.
Stella drew back to offer her brother that straight little smile she’d displayed in the car.
Yes. Really.
Lord, how they peppered him with questions. Stella told Jackson to relate the old story of his paid companion. Given his state of mind, he did not deliver it with half the charm or style he usually did. He rushed through, eliminating a host of details in his great hurry. Mombasa Cooper, Mrs. Godwin kept repeating every time he took a breath, imagine that. Paid? Seth asked, once again incredulous. How’d that make you feel?
Lucky, Jackson replied. Let them figure out on their own what that means, he thought, I am done tonight. He then helped himself to more wine without twisting the bottle and abandoned the conversation, leaving the Godwins to enthuse about the black separatist movement from Marcus Garvey to Mombasa Cooper.
Later on, after Stella had stolen into his room in the dead of night, she said: Didn’t I tell you? Weren’t they just awful? No, don’t answer that. I can’t bear the answer. The thing of it is they cry and cry about race, and they do nothing. If you knew what wages they pay at the factory! Believe me, if I were a man, I’d change all that. But no. I’m a woman, and my opinion doesn’t mean anything, even though they sent me to Radcliffe and Wesleyan. Where’s the sense in that? And Mom! Mom! She won’t have anyone but the Irish in here to clean. Negroes are all thieves and liars as far as she’s concerned. So much for civil rights no matter what lip service she gives.
Little as he knew about their history, Jackson didn’t want to be the fuel that further enflamed his future wife against her mother. He tried to mend things.
But she seemed quite impressed by my relation to Li’l Bokay. I mean, Mombasa. And didn’t I hear her mention donations to his movement?
Stella hit a pillow with her fist.
That’s exactly what I mean! Hypocrites! The lot of them!
Shh. You’ll wake somebody.
She was young, his caution made her giggle. They groped each other and made a hasty kind of love. Afterward, the first words out of her mouth were: Honey, what went on with you and Mombasa between the paid days and, you know, what happened later with Katherine Marie?
He pulled his neck back to study her with narrowed eyes. God, she was beautiful.
You want to hear all that?
Yes. I want to know everything about you. I want to know what separated you.
Howdy-doody.
What are you talking about? Don’t tease me, tell me.
He sighed.
Ok then, ok, and he told her.
When Jackson reentered school the September after the summer of Li’l Bokay, he was a changed child. Gone forever was the shy, effete boy perpetually mourning the loss of Mama’s company. He’d become vigorous in both mind and body, verbally confident, outgoing, perhaps too much so. His teacher was required to remind him repeatedly that the classroom was not the place for conversation. He tried very hard to obey her, but his efforts made him antsy. His teacher was further required to threaten him with a half-hour’s standing in the corner or, worse, in the cloakroom, if he did not simmer down, stay in his seat, and sit still. At recess, he tore about with the swiftest, playing tag or red rover, or if it was rainy would often b
e found at the center of a circle of mesmerized boys while he told them tall tales from the village, which was what the Negro side of town was called when people felt like being polite, or informed them snootily of all they did not know about sex. All of this he’d got from Li’l Bokay, and much of it was the older boy’s imaginative speculation or made up out of whole cloth to entertain his charge while they squatted in the dust under the blazing August sun and drew dirty pictures in the ground with sticks. If you grab a woman’s titty, Jackson told those fine Episcopal lads, milk squirts out, and you gotta be careful it don’t smack you in the eye or it might blind you. And don’t put it in your mouth neither, cause it don’t taste no good. They’s a man in the village, and he called Walkie-Talkie cause that’s all he ever be doin’ walkin’ and talkin’ round and round all the day long. An’ Walkie-Talkie he got an eye patch ‘cause he got blinded from a squirted tit he didn’t take the trouble to aim right. Now, that’s a big secret I just tole you all ‘cause not one saved soul in all the village knows the real reason why that patch be over his eye, but I’m tellin’ you all to save you the trouble of titty blindness you own self.
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