No Daughter of the South

by Cynthia Webb

  I caught her vision. For a moment, I pictured myself as an old, friendless, homeless woman. Dirty, dressed in rags, freezing to death on a street corner one winter night.

  “I can’t stay here,” was what I said, and I left.

  I tore up the roads on the short drive to Susan’s house. Or Tom’s house. That’s how I really thought of it, after all. I was pretty sure that was how Susan and Tom thought of it, too.

  Their house was in a new subdivision less than a mile from my parents’ house. Smack in the middle of what used to be orange groves. Once Susan and I had “borrowed” my brothers’ mini-bikes and chased each other up and down the rows of trees, riding much faster than was safe, wheels sliding in the sand, laughing ourselves sick.

  I pulled up in front of the sand-colored house. The yard was small, but meticulously maintained. Tidy azalea bushes, a few orange trees, some palms, a blooming hibiscus bush near the front door.

  As I rang the doorbell, I could hear a TV blaring inside. The door was opened by a thin, tan woman with frosted hair, immaculate white shorts, and long, carefully manicured nails. Her face was artfully made-up, the kind of face that gets described as “attractive,” but which looked tense and controlled to me. Everything about Susan’s appearance seemed to plead, “Can’t you see how much I want to please you?” Standing there, the full implication of a “pleasing appearance” struck me.

  There was a momentary awkwardness. How were we supposed to greet each other? If shaking hands was appropriate, I was incapable of it. A kiss and a hug—I wondered if that’s what old friends our age did in this place? But we had kissed before, Susan and me, and the memory of it was part of the tension between us now.

  “Looking good, girl.” I meant it to come out loud and hearty, but my throat was tight, and it sounded low and wistful.

  Susan smiled. That loosened things up a bit. But the smile fit the rest of her appearance. Neat, sweet, pleasing.

  She led me through her living room where two teenagers slouched on the couch, staring at a large TV. Soda cans and candy wrappers littered the coffee table. Their pricey sneakers were parked in the middle of the mess.

  Susan introduced the twins to me, but they only barely acknowledged our existence.

  Tom must have incredible electric bills, I thought. The house was actually cold, the air-conditioning was turned up so high.

  We walked back through the spotless kitchen into the Florida room. It was connected by sliding glass doors to a screened-in pool. The floor was covered with pink and purple plastic toys. A girl around Sarah’s age watched another TV in the corner, along with her baby sister, younger than Rachel, perched in a walker.

  I wanted this to be real between me and Susan. Best way to achieve that, I thought, was to cut right through the bullshit. None of this pussyfooting around. I was just gonna act like we were the same old girls. The ones who went streaking through the bowling alley, wearing nothing but Walter and Seth’s motorcycle helmets.

  I sat down, leaned back into the floral print couch and put my feet up on the coffee table. It was one of those glass-topped wicker ones. A flicker of distress crossed Susan’s face. I put my feet back on the ground and sat up straight. I was trying to think of Plan B.

  Susan asked me if I wanted something to drink. I said, “Yeah, I could sure use a beer.” Tension settled in her eyes again. “No,” I said, “On second thought, what I’d really like is a nice cold glass of water.”

  While she disappeared into the kitchen, I stared at the children, at the room, out at the pool. Boy, was I depressed. And the thing was, I wasn’t sure why. If this life was what Susan wanted, why couldn’t I be happy for her?

  She came back with a tray containing two tall glasses of ice, two cans of diet sodas, and two pastel paper napkins, monogrammed. I didn’t really believe that this was what she wanted. I couldn’t. Let me tell you something. There was a time when, if Susan was chewing gum and I asked for some, she’d give me half the piece she had in her mouth. And vice versa.

  Susan flashed me that smile. She poured soda into my glass, handed it to me.

  “Nice house,” I said. I hate myself when I talk bullshit like that.

  “Thank you. We’re happy here.” Did she think I meant the compliment? Did she really mean that she was happy? Why the hell was I convinced she wasn’t? Why was it that deep down, at the bottom of everything, I smugly believed that I was the only one living an authentic life?

  “Nice kids,” I said.

  She smiled again. “Yes, they are. They drive me crazy sometimes, of course, but they are my whole life. And the twins. We’re so proud of them. Tom has his heart set on both of them playing football at Alabama.”

  I couldn’t picture the two lumps I’d seen on the couch in the living room engaging in any movement that was not necessary to sustain life.

  The excitement and warmth Susan and I had shared on the phone had completely evaporated. I tried to think of a sentence that didn’t have “nice” in it.

  Susan spoke first. “I’ve missed you. I’ve thought about you so much. Tell me everything.”

  She sounded honest. I tried to tell her about my work and my ambitions, as best I could. She seemed slightly dubious, as if I’d told her I wanted to be a movie star, but also truly interested.

  She asked if I had a boyfriend. I said no, I had a woman friend, a beautiful woman named Sammy. I was surprised at how good it felt to say Sammy’s name. Blood rose to my cheeks. I smiled like an idiot.

  Susan smiled in that pleasant way again as if she hadn’t really heard, but her lips were tense, stretched in her all-purpose response. It shouldn’t have been news to her, not really. After all, I remembered the time I’d kissed Susan, or she’d kissed me. I guess we’d kissed each other.

  Never more than that. And never again. Just that one kiss. It had not been enough; leaving me consumed with longing. Not sure if it was Susan I wanted or just a girl, any girl. Even then, I knew there was a chance that it was just the forbiddenness I wanted to taste. I already knew I’d have a long struggle over my fascination with everything I was told I could not have.

  Not long after that, I had met Zack, fell in love with his motorcycles, hard drugs and guitar. We went to concerts all over the state, me on the back of his cycle. So far gone with drugs and alcohol that I never remembered the ride home. Life was everything I had wanted. Dangerous, intense, real. Incredibly sexy. I ran away to live with him right after my high school graduation, just for the hell of it.

  One morning, I woke up alone in a scuzzy little trailer, way down a dirt road, within smelling distance of a dairy. The car didn’t run. It needed fixing, and it wasn’t likely that we’d have the money for the parts any time soon. Zack had taken the cycle to work. My wild man was an assistant butcher at the A&P.

  I hadn’t learned about his ex-wife and the child support payments until after moving in. And then he told me what he expected from his live-in girlfriend. I thought it was a joke. He really couldn’t expect me to keep house and cook and wait for him in that hell-hole while he worked and then went out with his friends to the places we used to go together. It wasn’t until he slapped me across the face a few times that I realized how serious he was.

  Up until I’d started spending time with Zack, Susan and I had been inseparable. We’d slept over at each other’s house a couple of times a week. Once I met Zack, I saw Susan only at school, where she’d whisper progress reports about her latest project. She was trying desperately to get pregnant. She wanted to get knocked up so she could get married. She said she had to get away from home, didn’t I understand, she had to get away.

  Sure she had to get away. I understood that. But a baby? I thought that was crazy. She thought I was insane to take up with Zack. She wanted security. I wanted a wild time.

  Susan succeeded. I went with her to the clinic for the test. She had been thrilled. Really thrilled. I felt like someone had knocked the air out of me.

  But Tom had balked at marrying her. Wh
en she told him she was pregnant, he whined, “I didn’t force you to spread your legs.” She went in tears to her parents. Mr. Miller had a talk with Mr. Dalman, and two weeks later, I was walking down the aisle of the First Baptist Church in a bubble-gum pink maid-of-honor gown.

  Forrest didn’t give his new son-in-law access to the Miller money right away. He gave him a job in the groves, and an opportunity to work his way up. Tom was anxious to please his boss. It seemed Tom’s parents had thoroughly impressed upon him all the implications of the situation. Forrest was a wealthy man. He had no sons. His only other daughter, Belinda, had been institutionalized for years. Now Mr. Miller owned Tom Dalman and Tom owned Susan. I wondered if Susan still felt that she had gotten away.

  “Susan,” I said suddenly, too loudly. I startled us both, so I lowered my voice. “Tell me the truth. Why did you have to leave home?”

  She looked at me quizzically. The game show played on. The baby was making noises and starting to move the walker around. The other one was picking its nose.

  “I was wrong,” I said, speaking slowly now, thinking it out as I went along. “I thought you were with me. That you were as crazy as I was about getting away from here. But that wasn’t it.” I was picking up speed, as it came clear to me. “You just wanted to get way from your parents. Just your parents.” I leaned towards her. “Why? Why did you want to get away from them so bad?”

  She slumped back in the chair and looked down at her hands. Then she looked up at me. “Not them. Him.” Her voice was low. It was hard to hear her over the TV.

  “Why?”

  She looked up at me, anger clear on her face. It was so rare for her to show raw emotion that I was almost relieved. “You always thought he was so great. I hated that. You saw through everybody else! And God, you were so hard on your own family, and I thought they were so neat. Couldn’t you see what he was? Is? I was so ashamed of him.”

  “I’m sorry, Susan. I’m just starting to see how much I missed. I was so wrapped up in my own rebellion that I missed a hell of a lot. Tell me about him now. ”

  “You mean you still don’t know?”

  I knew I should tell her then about what had happened last night. But I was afraid. I was afraid it would ruin things between us for good, and I was afraid that she wouldn’t tell me all I needed to hear.

  She looked over at her kids. “I can’t talk here. Let’s go out to the pool.”

  We closed the sliding glass doors behind us and stood on the patio that surrounded the kidney-shaped pool. I stood with my back against the door, facing Susan. Susan looked past me, keeping her eyes on the kids inside. “You only saw his good side. And boy, did he play up to you. I loved you, Laurie, but I hated the way he fawned over you, put his hands all over you. His other side was only for Momma and me. And his workers. You don’t know, Laurie. You just don’t know.”

  “What don’t I know?”

  “He was so mean... Here, listen. One example. One day our senior year, Daddy drove up to the house. He had to pick something up, I don’t remember what. He was in his Cadillac, you know?” She paused, and I nodded, encouraging her to continue. “He had his best two hunting dogs in the car. Walker hounds. Senator and Gator, I think. They were in the back seat. And he drove up real slow, you know, because he had the trunk open. And you know why he had the trunk open?”

  I shook my head no.

  “He had two Mexican grove workers in the trunk. Don’t you see? He had his dogs in the car and the workers in the trunk.” She stopped talking, took a deep breath.

  “Oh, Susan.” I couldn’t think what to say. I wanted to comfort her. I reached out and grabbed her hand.

  She didn’t pull it away, but she looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

  I squeezed her hand, and then dropped it. “It’s not catching. No lezzie cooties,” I said.

  She laughed. “I wasn’t worried.”

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you know you father was involved in the KKK?”

  She let her breath out suddenly, like she had made some sort of decision. “I knew. Eventually. I mean, it was never talked about at the dinner table or anything. But I figured it out eventually.”

  “Do you know anything about... anything that the KKK did?”

  “Like what?”

  I took a deep breath. “How should I know? But I want to know what stuff was going on all this time.”

  She flinched. “Not really. I heard rumors, overheard bits of conversations. Stuff like that. Daddy didn’t want me to know much.”

  “Do you know anything about a black man named Elijah Wilson? He died when we were kids.”

  “No. Never heard of him.”

  I could hear the TV through the glass. I was staring at the clear blue surface of the pool. “Different subject. When we were doing all that crazy stuff, Susan, didn’t you mean it? I can’t figure it out. How you could do all that with me, and then, you come back to all this.”

  Finally her eyes left the kids and turned to me.

  “What are you talking about?” She was frowning.

  I waved my hands about, searching for words.

  “All this stuff. You know, houses like this, and the church, and the Rotary Club, and well...” I stopped, afraid that I was not only making an inarticulate fool of myself, but was offending Susan.

  She seemed to have caught something of my meaning. “No. I was just having a good time. I don’t think I’d have done any of it if it wasn’t for you. I mean, it was fun, but this...” She stopped, sighed. “This is what I wanted.” Now she waved her hands, indicating the pool, the house, the children, I wasn’t sure what. “My father is a cruel, controlling man, and I couldn’t wait to get out of his house. But that’s all. I always wanted a good life.”

  She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I never understood you. You were so brave and strong and smart and full of life. And you went with that creep Zack, who couldn’t give you anything you deserved. He wasn’t half good enough for you. No one knew what you saw in him. Then you dumped him, and went back with Johnny, and got married the way it was supposed to be. You two seemed perfect together. And then the next thing I knew, you’d dumped him, too. Why do you refuse to be happy? Why do you have to make everything so hard on yourself?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me.”

  She laughed. “But I’ve missed you all these years. We had so much fun. I always thought we’d live next door to each other, and have our kids at the same time, and take them to the beach together.”

  I was shocked. I was sure I had never said anything remotely like that. “What gave you that idea?”

  She looked hurt. “I thought that was the way it would happen. It’s what I always wanted to happen. And I got everything else, but I didn’t get you, right here in town, sharing it all with me. I’ve missed that.”

  I should have comforted her then, should have told her how often I’d thought of her. But I was still shocked. And offended too, that she could have ever thought I’d end up that way. “But we always talked about backpacking in Europe, or moving to San Francisco, or to a commune in Santa Fe. We never talked about getting married and having kids.”

  She shrugged. “Teenagers always talk like that. Then they grow up and have real lives. Everybody knows that. Everybody but you.”

  The kids were hollering. We went back in. Susan yelled at the kids. I said goodbye and started out by myself. The kids quieted down and Susan hurried to walk me out.

  We stood on the front porch for a moment. Susan grabbed my arm just as I was getting ready to leave. She spoke so low I had to strain to hear her, and so fast that I knew she’d been storing this up for a long, long time.

  “Laurie, I hated you sometimes, too. He never paid me any attention. Not as me. Just as his daughter, the one who had to be perfect, like everything else he owned. He was so afraid I was going to shame him, and so he kept me chained up as best he could. I was proud when I told him I
was pregnant. I’d done just the thing he’d gone to so much effort to prevent, and I’d done it on purpose. And not only that, it was my ticket to freedom, to get out of his house. When I walked up the aisle on his arm, I should have been thinking about Tom. Instead I was gloating because my father was furious that the whole town would know what a wedding with two weeks’ notice meant.

  “I hated the way he flirted with you. He went just as far as he possibly could, without giving Momma any real cause for complaint. Momma hated it, too. I saw it on her face. But she still liked to have you around. She said once that something about you reminded her of my sister, Billy.

  “And you just ate it up. You’d come over to go swimming, and you’d bring the bikini that your folks wouldn’t let you wear to the beach. And then he’d find some reason to come out and prune the roses, and then he’d come right over and give you some tips on your diving form! Did you think Momma and I didn’t see what was going on?”

  The anger in her voice cut me. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Then her voice changed again, and she said, “ I haven’t had any real fun since the day you left, Laurie, and that’s the god-honest-truth.”

  The kids were yelling again. I couldn’t look her in the face.

  “I’ve got to go see about those kids, Laurie. Don’t take these things so hard, please don’t.”

  “I won’t. I don’t. I’m sorry. I’ve got to go, too.”

  I practically ran down the sidewalk and jumped in the car. I took off, but not before giving a real good look at the house next door.

  Chapter Eleven

  As I drove back to my parents’ house, something was crackling, hissing gently inside me. The sight of Susan’s bare refrigerator door had started it off. And then it exploded inside me like a firecracker after a long fuse—that intense longing for Sammy.

  I pulled up in the driveway and walked to the kitchen door. Momma was stirring something on the stove. She was wearing a hot pink running suit with pink-feathered earrings, and pink rhinestones on her sneakers. Her lipstick matched her suit exactly. I looked at her refrigerator door, decorated with snapshots of my father holding a fish he’d caught, or next to a dead deer. There was a shopping list, and photocopied diet she was following.