The Secrets She Carried

by Davis, Barbara

  Outside, I linger in the shade of one of the church’s white pillars, fanning myself with my program. I try to be invisible like Mama taught me, but it’s hard. I don’t fit with the women here, all wrung of color and wearing the weight of the world on their married faces. I feel their eyes crawling over me, wondering where I came from and why I’ve invaded their church. I see their husbands too, trying not to gawk too long at my ankles. But there’s nowhere to hide, and so I stand there, waiting for Susanne to crook her finger at me.

  That’s when I finally find something St. Augustine and First Presbyterian have in common. If you want to know all about a town’s business, all you need to do is stand around on the church steps. That Sunday I learn all about Mary Farmer’s hernia operation, and how Gladiola Vicks had to send both her girls to her sister up in Pennsylvania after Lester lost his job at the mill, and how Bobby Grayson stayed out ’til all hours of the night and came home with a black eye and a torn shirt. But it’s Henry’s name that makes my ears perk up.

  Two men in suits stand behind the next pillar, smoking cigarettes and looking out over the crowd as it begins to thin. The larger of the two is built like a bull, thick and dark, and there’s something in his face I don’t like the look of, something sharp and mean.

  His eyes are narrowed on Henry, watching as he crosses the lawn, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries. “You hear Gavin’s been hiring a bunch of coloreds to work out at his place?” He blows out a plume of gray smoke, spits a fleck of tobacco off his lip. “They say he’s working ’em right alongside the whites, too.”

  His companion, a slight man in a brown suit, leans back on his heels a bit and takes a lazy pull on his cigarette. “Heard something about it,” he says finally. “Didn’t give it much thought, though, since it’s not really any of my business.”

  “It’s everyone’s business,” says the Bull. “Man’s got no right giving away jobs to Negroes when there’s white men hard up for work.”

  The man in brown gives the Bull a hard look. “Seems to me, a man’s got the right to give his jobs to whoever he damn well pleases. Just like you’ve got a right to do what you do on your own land.”

  “May-be,” the Bull grunts. “But I don’t think there’s too many who’d compare running a little shine with giving away white jobs to coloreds.”

  “They’re family men, Porter. Not black men, not white men—family men. And Henry Gavin doesn’t care what color they are. He cares how many mouths they have to feed. You’re standing on the steps of a church. Do you honestly think when Christ Almighty was handing out the loaves and the fishes he turned the dark ones away?”

  Porter. The Bull’s name is Porter. He doesn’t answer, just stalks off down the steps. I’m glad to see him go, but his name won’t leave my head. It’s familiar to me, though I can’t recall right off where I’ve heard it. Then I remember the carload of boys that come around every Tuesday to bring Susanne her bootleg—brothers, I think, two half grown, and a little one who tags after the others like a puppy. I wonder if they might not be the Bull’s kin, wonder too as I watch the Bull climb into an old black truck and drive away, what Susanne thinks of this business of hiring Negroes to work so close to all her fine things, and how long it’ll be ’til there’s trouble.

  As it turns out, trouble isn’t far off at all.

  Tuesday is Susanne’s ladies club day. The Gavin Ladies Historical Society, they call themselves, though I never hear them do much talking about history, unless it’s the history of how a certain husband’s been seen driving around town with his new secretary, or how a certain house is on the verge of going back to the bank, or how the silver tea service has disappeared from a certain dining room on Grover Street. It’s all said with a great deal of head shaking and the woeful clucking of tongues, but there’s something hard and sharp in the powdery faces of those women as they serve and digest their bits of news, gobbling it all up as greedily as they do the little frosted cakes Lottie serves on white paper doilies.

  This week is Susanne’s turn to play hostess, though it’s me who greets them at the door. I recognize a few of the ladies from church—Sarah Harwood, whose husband is president of the bank; Betty Stillwater, who’s been twice widowed and only ever wears black; and Eugenia Lane, who claims to be distant kin to James Henry Lane, who was a famous general during the Civil War. Susanne insists that this is highly unlikely since her people are from Baltimore, and as good as Yankees as far as she’s concerned.

  There are others too, eight more who straggle in to make an even dozen. Some smile at me and one even remembers my name, but most look right through me, and that’s just fine with me. These are Susanne’s friends, these sniping and vicious women who can still afford to host a luncheon now and then, whose husbands still have some semblance of income, whose gloves are still fine and white. They drink a lot of tea and eat a lot of fancy sandwiches with the crusts cut off, then tear into whatever sweets Lottie has set out on Susanne’s best silver tray.

  When the dessert plates are finally scraped down to the glaze, the ladies adjourn to the parlor. I top off their iced tea glasses, then pass out little lace coasters to protect Susanne’s lemon-polished tabletops. I’m about to slip from the room with the tea pitcher when I hear one of the ladies—the one who remembered my name at the door—pipe up and propose they do something for a few of the struggling families in the area, collect clothes for the children, or maybe bring by some food.

  I can’t help myself. I stop in my tracks, turn to look at her. I see how young she is, how her china blue eyes are soft and wide, with none of that knife-edged bitterness of the others. She’s new, I think, and believes these women mean to do some good. She’ll learn soon enough.

  They’re all looking at her now, all eleven of them. Susanne sets down her glass, her blue-white hand at her throat as if the poor woman had just suggested they invite the hogs in for tea.

  “Henrietta,” she says down her nose. “We are the Historical Society, not the Salvation Army. Besides, if word ever got out that we’d done for a few, we’d have the rest of them crossing the tracks in droves. The churches are there to handle that sort of thing.”

  But Henrietta is not dissuaded. She sits up straight in her chair, a tiny crease between her fawn-colored brows as she looks around at the circle of the Ladies Historical Society. “The churches are already stretched to breaking. If we all just pitched in a little—”

  She’s cut off again, this time by a woman with bobbed hair and too much rouge on her cheeks. “Good gracious, Henny, Mr. Cunningham would have a thousand fits if I told him I was going across town to deliver hand-me-downs to those people.” She turns in her chair then and cuts her eyes at Susanne, her red lips turned up in a smile that’s part honey, part venom. “Not every woman has a husband like Henry Gavin. Why, I hear he’s the soul of Christian charity these days.” She bats her eyes a time or two, then freezes that smile right on Susanne. “How proud you must be of your husband, my dear.”

  The quiet that falls is deafening. I can’t say for sure what Mrs. Cunningham is referring to, but when I think back to the church steps I have a pretty good idea. And I can tell by the color coming up in Susanne’s cheeks that she does too—and that she doesn’t like it one bit. She fiddles with her pearls a little while she collects herself; then, with her hand on her belly, she summons a brittle smile and turns it on Henrietta, as if she hasn’t heard a word Mrs. Cunningham has just uttered.

  “I’m afraid, my dear, that my delicate condition wouldn’t allow me to participate in something like that.”

  There’s the creak of wood and the rustle of skirts as the women all shift at once in their chairs, the rush of breaths being let out in unison, relief, and disappointment. Still, it’s enough to turn the talk from Henry, which is all she wanted.

  The meeting breaks up after that, but Susanne is pouty and sharp for the rest of the day, glaring out her bedroom window, gnawing on the Cunningham woman’s taunt like an old bone. I do my best to
steer clear of her, tiptoeing around as I hang up her clothes and tidy up her dressing table. I’m relieved when she asks me to dose out her afternoon tincture. Soon she’ll drop off to sleep and I can slip away to my room. I’m sorry for Henry, though. He’s due back from the Smithfield market sometime tomorrow, and I don’t want to be around when he walks through the door. Nothing sits worse in Susanne’s craw than humiliation.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning I find Susanne naked and tangled in her covers.

  Her bottle of bootleg is on the floor—bone-dry—and I see that she’s been at her tincture as well. She howls like a scalded cat when I try to draw back the curtains, then moans for a damp cloth for her head. When I tell her I’m going down to fetch her breakfast she turns three shades of green and sends me running for the basin.

  She pretends she’s just morning sick, but I know better. I’ve been at Peak long enough to know what Susanne Gavin’s trouble is, and to know it begins and ends with the little brown bottle she keeps by her bed. She’s been having me increase the drops lately, fifteen now instead of ten, and I can’t help wondering, while she’s sipping that terrible concoction from her pretty little teacup, if she ever thinks about the child in her belly, and if Henry knows how fast the little bottle is going down these days.

  If Henry doesn’t, the doctor does. Last week he had a word with the druggist about her refills. There are to be no more for two weeks, and then at only half the amount. Susanne was so incensed that she threatened to change doctors. She would have done it, too, only she’s been through all the others.

  For the rest of the afternoon I walk on eggshells, waiting for Henry’s old truck to cough its way up the drive. When he’s still not home by supper, I bring Susanne a tray. She makes me sit with her while she pushes Lottie’s chicken and dumplings around her plate. I can feel the anger boiling off her like lye, waiting to spill over on whatever’s nearby. When she finally pushes the tray away, I take it from her gladly, ready to be away from her and out of that stifling room. I’m almost out into the hall when I hear the truck rattle up. Susanne hears it too, and her eyes go to slits.

  I hurry down to the kitchen to make myself scarce. Lottie shakes her head at the sight of Susanne’s nearly full plate. She’s been cooking all day, all Henry’s favorites, and I can see she’s not happy that even a mouthful of her chicken and dumplings has gone to waste.

  “There’s going to be trouble,” I whisper.

  Lottie pours me a glass of tea and sets down a plate in my usual place. “You mean about what that Cunningham woman said at the meeting. Yeah, I expect the Missus has been stewing on that all day.”

  My fork hovers on its way to my mouth. “You heard?”

  She’s scraping Susanne’s plate off into the trash now, waiting for the dish tub to fill. “I’d have to be deaf not to hear. Nothing quiet about that woman.”

  I swallow my bite, wash it down with some tea. “I thought she was supposed to be Susanne’s friend.”

  Lottie cocks her brassy head to one side and looks at me like I just said something crazy. “Ladies like that ain’t got no friends; don’t you know that? They only got acquaintances they’re waiting to turn on. They smile and they smile, just biding their time ’til there’s something to get their teeth in. Looks like it’s the Missus’s turn.”

  I chase a dumpling around my plate, too keyed up to be hungry but not wanting to put Lottie’s nose out of joint. “It’s because of the colored men, isn’t it? That’s what she meant when she said Henry was the soul of Christian charity?”

  Lottie scowls over her dish tub. “Been talk for weeks now. Nothing but a handful of troublemakers stirring the pot, but they get louder every day. Most folks don’t care. They’re too busy trying to keep body and soul together to worry what other folks are doing. Not to mention it’s Mr. Henry we’re talking about. Not many in this town with a bad word to say against him, coloreds or no coloreds.”

  I don’t say so, but I’m pretty sure Henry’s wife is about to have a bad word to say, and I don’t envy him one bit. My mind flashes to those church steps, to Mr. Porter and the loaves and the fishes, and all of a sudden I feel a surge of pride to be working in Henry Gavin’s home. Not because he’s an important man—because he’s a good man.

  When I’m finished with supper I slip up the back stairs, hoping to duck into my room unseen. Instead, I freeze halfway up. Susanne is standing outside her door, eyes blazing, her chin poked out like a willful child’s. Henry stands at the other end of the hall, unshaven and gritty after the long drive back from Smithfield. Not a word has passed between them yet, but there’s a tension crackling across all that space, like the air before a lightning storm, and I know I’ve blundered into the very skirmish I’ve been dreading all day.

  I stand there clutching the banister, afraid to move a muscle. They’re too busy locking eyes to notice me pressed back against the wall, halfway up and halfway down. I tell myself I should creep back down to the kitchen, wait until the storm has blown over, but when I hear Henry’s voice my feet root themselves to the floor.

  “Susanne, please.” There’s no missing the strain in his voice, like he’s used to confrontations—and like he’s been dreading this one. “Do you think maybe you could wait ’til I’ve cleaned up and had something to eat before you start in on me?”

  Susanne balls her fists and stomps a bare foot on the carpet. “No, I cannot wait! And I’d appreciate it if just for once you’d think of someone besides yourself! You didn’t see Celia Cunningham’s face yesterday, and me sitting there having to pretend I didn’t hear a word she said. This town thinks you’ve lost your mind, throwing good money after bad on a bunch of tramps—and colored tramps at that!”

  Henry flinches, and his face goes dark. “They’re working men with families to feed, Susanne. And who I hire is my business.”

  There’s an edge to his voice, something just shy of a warning, but Susanne isn’t put off. Patches of red boil up in her cheeks, down along her slender white throat, and when she finally answers it’s through clenched teeth.

  “Not when it’s ruining my name in this town, it isn’t. People are talking, and I don’t just mean Celia Cunningham. They know you’ve taken on twice the men you did last year, and with prices way down, too. That makes you a fool—fine. I can live with being married to a fool. But what are they going to call you when they find out those coloreds are earning the same wage as white men, taking jobs that belong to whites, taking food out of white children’s mouths? Way back when, your great-grandfather founded this town, Henry. You’ve got a duty to set some kind of a standard.”

  At his side, Henry’s fingers curl slowly, crushing the brim of his already battered hat. “That’s precisely what I am doing. And it seems to me, if I’m as God-Almighty important as you make out, I ought not to have to worry what anybody calls me—especially not the members of the Gavin Ladies Historical Society.”

  “Maybe you should worry about how people treat your wife!” she shrills back, so loud and sharp it makes my scalp prickle. “Instead of a bunch of those dark-skinned heathens and their brats!”

  Henry’s shoulders sag, as if all of a sudden he’s just too tired to keep on. “I’ll pay who I like, and I’ll feed who I like. Colored or white, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

  And with that, he’s gone.

  In the quiet I hear the lock turn on his bedroom door, as cold and final as if he had slammed it. For a moment it’s only Susanne and me standing there, her with her bloodless face, me shaking like a leaf, and I know any minute she’s going to see me and realize I’ve heard every last word. I think about losing my place, about going home to Mama, and I almost hope she does see me. But she doesn’t. She only melts back into her room, banging the door shut behind her.

  The blood seems to have left my legs as I make my way down the stairs. I’ve just entered the kitchen when I hear Susanne call for me. I close my eyes and gather my nerves, then grab one of the dark flat bottles fr
om the back of Lottie’s pantry. The Missus will be wanting a dose of her tincture.

  She’s sitting in the dark when I step into her room, still as death in the small square of moonlight bleeding through the window. She’s stripped down to her slip now, her clothes a dark puddle on the carpet, and I see that she’s pulled all the pins from her hair. It’s standing out from her head like a halo of snakes. The sight of it—of her—makes me shiver.

  “Ms. Susanne?” I say, soft, like I’m creeping up on something poisonous. “Do you want the light?”

  When she doesn’t answer, I click on the lamp. I expect to find her crying, but what I find glittering in those icy eyes has nothing to do with tears, and I know then and there that I never want Susanne Gavin holding a grudge against me.

  “Go down and fetch a bottle from the pantry, Adele. I—” Her gaze falters, skittering away from mine. “I spilled the last one.”

  I ignore the lie and point to the bottle sitting next to the lamp. “I already brought one.”

  Her eyes touch mine again, a wary look that says we share a secret and if I know what’s good for me it’ll stay a secret. After a minute, though, they go flat and dull, as if she’s somehow looking through me, and for the first time I notice her hands, darting and scratching like a pair of pale, angry birds, raising bloody welts on her wrists.

  “Should I fetch Mr. Gavin? You don’t look…well.” I know, even as I say the words, that Henry’s the last person she wants to see, but I have to say something—do something—before she flays herself raw.

  Her eyes spark to life then, and for the moment her hands are still. “Do you know what my husband has been up to, Adele?”

  The knot in my belly tightens. I don’t want to hear this, don’t want to hear her call Henry a fool again for making sure men can feed their children. My hands are unsteady as I splash a bit of bootleg into her pink teacup.