I guess if we think of all this as going to a counselor, it’s not so bad. After all, everybody who ever went to school had a counselor. But my counselors never did any counseling like this. All they ever did was come around and explain schedules and give tests and stuff like that. When Sue Blackwell got pregnant and went to Mrs. Darnell, our counselor, Sue ended up having to quit school because of not telling who he was—you know. Everybody but Mrs. Darnell knew it was Paul Gibson.
IX
In our second session about a week ago we had an awful argument about Uncle Nate. I thought I’d be able to stay calm in front of Dr. Bridges, but some of the things Charles said about Mama and the whole family tore me up. It got me upset so quick. It does not make sense—the things he said. I got so mad I couldn’t see straight. Finally, we both stopped talking. Then Dr. Bridges talked to us about “point of view,” and that made some sense. She had us explain why the other person might say what they did. It was hard to do. She kept wanting us to talk about feelings.
Before we left she said it was okay to be mad and that when we got home we might try to write down why we were mad and bring it to the next session, but for us not to talk about Uncle Nate for a while, to leave that for the counseling sessions.
Then yesterday in our third session, neither one of us wanted to talk at all and we hadn’t written down anything. We just sat there for a minute or so and Dr. Bridges asked if either one of us had a problem to talk about. I had. I had been thinking about Charles’s attitude toward my family.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t want to point fingers but I think Charles thinks he’s too good for my family.”
Charles goes right to pieces. “I do not think I’m too good for your family,” he says.
“Then why won’t you talk to them?”
“I do talk to them.”
“Oh no you don’t. Not like you talk to me. You come home from work and talk to me about what’s going on at the library. But have you ever talked to Mama or Daddy about what’s going on at the library?”
“Wait a minute,” says Charles. “What the hell am I supposed to say to your parents about the library?”
“Charles, you talk to me about the library. Why can’t you talk to them about the library? It’s nothing but a little simple courtesy.”
“Courtesy? I eat with them every single Sunday of my life. What more do you want?”
“Not every single Sunday, Charles. There was that Sunday we—”
“If I may interrupt,” says Dr. Bridges. “Raney, how do you feel when you and Charles are together with your family?”
“How do I feel?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I wonder what he’s going to say next, if anything, and when he’s going to start acting bored.”
“How do you feel inside?”
“Well, I don’t know. Ready, I guess. Ready for Charles to start acting bored or to upset things.”
“Raney, I don’t have to—”
“Just a minute, Charles,” says Dr. Bridges. “Raney, let me ask Charles a few questions.”
Well, she asked Charles a few questions and he hemmed and hawed about feeling uncomfortable and then Dr. Mary Bridges makes this little speech about guess what: family background. I’ve been trying to talk about it all along but nobody would listen. But then she turns the tables. She says to me:
“Raney, what do you think about Charles’s parents? How do you feel about them?”
“Well, I says, “that’s different. We don’t live in Atlanta. We live in Listre. If we lived in Atlanta I could see coming in here and talking about Charles’s parents. But we live in Listre and have a problem right here, so I don’t see any need in talking about Charles’s parents.”
Dr. Bridges explains something about family “patterns” and then you know what she says? She says almost the same thing Aunt Naomi told me one time—that in a sense, families marry families. Wisdom does not reside only in psychiatrics. Aunt Naomi has her share.
“That’s what my Aunt Naomi told me one time,” I says. “She said a marriage was a marriage of families and not of people and that’s why you won’t see any whites and coloreds getting married. I’ll bet you don’t have any married whites and coloreds coming in here do you?”
“No, but I—”
“Well, that’s exactly what she said. Said a family marries a family.”
I wondered why we were paying to have a psychiatric tell us the very same thing Aunt Naomi could tell us.
“Well, in a certain sense I think you’re correct,” says Dr. Bridges. “But let me ask you to talk a minute or two about how you feel when you’re with Charles’s mother and father.”
“Well, I don’t see them that much, but when I do, they seem a little bit uppity or something—know it all, and they won’t spend much time sitting down, just with me, and talking about something I know about. They glance around off all kinds of topics I’m not interested in, like the politics in Atlanta and such. I don’t feel any connection to them, even like I feel to my own kin folks I don’t hardly know.
“Charles’s mama and daddy are on a different level from me and you can tell by the way they act that they think it’s a higher level. Of course the last word’s not in on that. And they put all this emphasis on correct English—which I don’t always use. I mean they talk about it. They keep saying the language is dying—which I don’t understand. How could the language be dying when all these people I know are talking the same way they always did? I think Charles’s mama and daddy just maybe ought to pay more attention to who they talk to. What somebody ends up talking about seems to me has a lot to do with how much your language is dying. And talking about language dying seems to me to be a dead subject to talk about.
“And they’re always talking about some book they just read which I hadn’t ever heard of. They were talking about a best seller before the wedding and I merely said the Bible was the best seller every year and it had never once been beat and they looked at me like I was crazy. That kind of thing.”
“I’m sorry, our time is about up,” says Dr. Bridges. “We’ll certainly follow up on this, Raney, and perhaps gain insight into some of your problems by looking at both of your family backgrounds. I’d like for each of you to think about the marriages in your family—parents, aunts, uncles, and so forth. Think about their problems, relationships, marital habits, and we’ll discuss that and see what we come up with.”
So I got to thinking. The first thing I came up with is: there are not any men in our whole family—those that are close to us—except Daddy. And he sort of sits back and watches things go by. So it’s hard for me to think about marriages when all the men have died.
We started talking about it on the way home and talked and talked and talked. Some of the ways our marriage is going is like other marriages in our families—almost like our marriages are kin. Rules get set by somebody hundreds of years ago and they are hard to break, like rules about what you can and can’t talk about.
It finally came up. In our session yesterday, the fourth one, Dr. Bridges asked us about our “sexual relationship.”
Neither one of us spoke. I looked at my hands in my lap and Charles bent over and scratched his ankle through his sock.
“Do you both feel comfortable with your sexual relationship?”
“I didn’t know we’d have to talk about that,” I said.
“Well, no topic is off limits; although we may decide that this or some other topic is not really necessary.”
“I certainly think our sexual relationship is okay,” I said. “I don’t think we need to talk about it in here.”
“What about you, Charles?”
Charles didn’t speak for a few seconds. Then his eyebrows went up and the corners of his mouth went down. “Well, I don’t know.”
“Oh Lord, Charles,” I says, “you’re not going to get into that.” I looked at Dr. Bridges. “I just think there are some things we ought not to talk about. Some things are natural, and
best left alone.”
“Listen, Raney,” says Charles, “you speak for yourself. You think—”
“I am speaking for myself. You think that just because—”
“Let me speak for myself, Raney,” says Charles. “You say you don’t want to talk about it. Fine. That doesn’t mean—”
“Charles, if you’re going to get into that filthy stuff, I’m going to leave. That’s all there is to it.”
Dr. Bridges interrupts. “Raney, I’d like to have a short discussion with Charles pertaining to your sexual relationship. I—”
“He can talk about his relationship but not mine.”
“Raney,” says Charles, “You can’t separate—”
“Just a minute, Charles,” says Dr. Bridges. “Raney, I would like to talk briefly with Charles about his feelings about your sexual relationship. I can understand if you’re uncomfortable with that and we can make other arrangements.”
“What kind of other arrangements?”
“Well, we can arrange separate sessions for a while, or one together and then one separate and so on.”
“No, that’s okay. Go ahead.” I couldn’t imagine Charles in there alone with her—talking about us.
“I’ll tell you what,” says Dr. Bridges, “if you find you have a strong reaction to something Charles says just write it down on this pad with this pen and when we finish, you and I can discuss any reaction you might have had—if you like. How does that sound?”
“Okay, but I didn’t know we were going to come in here and tell secrets.”
“I hope that’ll not exactly be the case. Let’s try it this way and see how it works. If you would, Raney, move your chair sort of back there so your writing won’t distract Charles.”
I moved my chair.
“Okay, Charles, where would you like to start?” says Dr. Bridges.
“About what?” says Charles.
“Well, about how you feel about your sexual relationship with Raney.”
(So I wrote: I didn’t know we were going to come in here and tell secrets. Some things should be left alone.)
“Well, I feel it’s okay, generally. I do feel we should be able to discuss it more. I have felt rather confined in what few discussions we’ve had, as well as in the carrying out of the actual, ah, act itself. Raney is very reluctant to talk about the whole subject of sex.” (I was getting worried. I wrote again: He’d better not say anything about our honeymoon.) “I believe if we could talk about sex then that could get things going,” says Charles. (Get things going! He’s told me over and over how wonderful I am—warm, and everything. Whispers to me. And now this. He’s never talked to me about getting things going. I can’t believe this.)
“Specifically, what would you like to talk about with Raney?”
“Well, Raney isn’t interested in doing some of the . . . some of the, ah, things, I’d like for her, or for us, to do.”
(He’s going to say it. I know he is. Our honeymoon is our private business. This is getting out of hand.)
“Let me see if I hear you correctly,” says Dr. Bridges. “You basically have some problems about your and Raney’s predisposition to discuss sex. And you believe that open discussions could perhaps alleviate some of the problems you experience while or before actually making love. Is that accurate?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Then let me stop for a minute. Raney, I notice you’ve been writing.”
“I sure have. I think this is getting out of hand.”
“I can assure you that I will pass no judgment on anything that is discussed here. I do believe if we discuss problems openly we can begin to recognize basic feelings, and that that can perhaps help all three of us understand some of what’s going on—with some clarity.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to discuss. I don’t want to discuss sex and filth.”
Charles breaks in: “Raney, you don’t have to—”
“Just a minute, Charles,” says Dr. Bridges. “Raney, I would be glad to discuss what you perceive as filth—if you’d like to talk about that for a minute.”
“He thinks he can read filthy magazines and then take me out on my one and only honeymoon and read filthy sections out of his head that come from the very pages of that magazine—all this in our own honeymoon room—when I never had the slightest idea any boy I would ever date, much less marry, could ever have such ideas. And then—”
“Raney, you can’t say that I was—”
“Just a minute, Charles,” says Dr. Bridges. “Raney, let me assure you that it’s all right to talk about this.”
“No, you all go ahead and talk, if that’s what’s got to be done. I’ll write. I’ve done said too much.”
(So I wrote some more: I think you can get some things out in the clear and that’s the best thing in the world to do. But not necessarily—like when Harold Sikes’s German shepherd threw up Fred Woolard’s pet rabbit at the church barbecue that time.)
Dr. Bridges ended the session. “Let’s try to pick up here next time. I’d like to suggest that we leave our present discussion here in the room if possible, rather then take it with you. The subject, as you see, creates a good bit of tension. Raney, would you like for me to read what you’ve written or would you like to keep it, and perhaps bring it back next time?”
“You can have it,” I said. I handed it to her.
We walked to the car without speaking.
I was so mad at Charles I didn’t know what to do. I was in a rage. I decided not to speak until at least after we passed the Triple A Rent-All. Charles didn’t speak either, so about a mile past the Triple A, I said: “Charles, I think you got a lot of gall going into that psychiatric’s office and—”
“Raney, she’s a psychologist. A psychologist! Can you say psychologist? Psy-cho-lo-gist?”
“Yes, but that has absolutely nothing to do with it and you know it. You’re trying to change the subject so you—”
“Just say it, Raney! Let me hear you say the word.”
“Charles, if you’re going to start hollering you can stop the car and let me out. I’ll just walk home. It’s bad enough already, without that. You had a lot of nerve going into a psychiatric’s office and—”
“Jesus H. Christ, Raney!”
“Okay, stop the car. STOP THE CAR.”
“Raney, I’m not going to stop the—”
“STOP THE DAMN CAR.”
I’ve never been so upset in all my life. Here I was, cussing right there in the front seat of our Dodge Dart. I felt humiliated.
Charles wouldn’t stop the car. He wouldn’t even speak. He kept driving—his knuckles white on the steering wheel, his chin stuck out so far it about touched the windshield.
I didn’t speak again until we passed the Tastee Freeze. I figured I’d wait until we got to the Tastee Freeze to see if Charles would speak.
“You got a lot of nerve,” I said, “going in there and telling a stranger all those things.”
“Raney, I didn’t tell her anything. If you want to stop going to the marriage counselor—fine. Otherwise, that’s what therapy is about: talking. Talking about problems.”
“Anybody can talk about problems. Howdy Doody can talk about problems. Charles, if you ever tell her what you said to me on our honeymoon I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live.”
I’ll tell you, I do not understand men. Charles figures the minute we’re married he can start acting like a African Brahma bull. There I was on my honeymoon night, a virgin—well, almost—laying in bed, and my husband standing in front of the Mary Tyler Moore Show with nothing on but his Fruit of the Loom, drinking champagne out of a plastic cup, looking at me with a grin that would have moved mountains. And then he started talking. I will not repeat the things he said but I will say they were unnatural. And I did not hesitate saying so that very night: “Charles, that is disgusting,” I said. “That is something niggers would do.” (He always perks up when I say nigger, but that time didn’t even
phrase him.)
“Raney, honey.” He kept calling me honey. “It’s okay. Try it. Try it.”
“You never seen dogs do that, Charles. Don’t you see,” I said, “dogs wouldn’t even do that.”
Let me tell you the truth. I can see a man bringing up something like that after he’s been married for a year or two. I can even understand Charles picking this up in a book somewhere. I won’t born yesterday. But what got to me was him standing there in the middle of that floor talking that way before our marriage was ever consumed, or whatever it is—before we ever did the act of love intended for a husband and wife on their first night of marriage.
I’ve read The Flame and the Flower. I know a little something about pornography. But what could I do? One of the most important parts of the honeymoon was ruined as far as I was concerned: the very reason for a honeymoon. Charles had blew the whole thing.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in these marriage counseling sessions. It seemed like they were good and now I don’t know. We do need a little something to get us straightened out like Aunt Flossie said, but I never had any idea we’d be plowing down into things which are nobody’s business. I’ve forgiven Charles for the way he behaved on our honeymoon. And I’ve told him so. We all make mistakes. I’ve made my share. But I don’t understand what good it can do to dig up all this sex stuff.
One of the good things me and Charles have finally agreed on is to try to listen to each other. From the time we first get in a argument neither one of us usually ever pays any attention to what the other one is saying. I know it’s true. So we’ve agreed that when we have an argument only one person will talk for awhile and the other person will listen. Then, the person listening will have to explain how the other person feels about what’s going on. We actually went through this procedure during our last session when we had a argument about . . . well, I can’t remember what it was about. I think it’s a good idea. But it’s hard.
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