Calling Me Home

by Julie Kibler

  Her eyes flashed with uncertainty, but she carried the packet to the house. I wondered if she’d notice I wasn’t carrying a book—and didn’t follow her inside to fetch one.

  * * *

  I WASN’T ALLOWED to wear trousers. Most times now, when I visited friends’ homes during the day, they lounged in fashionable slim pants that hit right at the ankle, which didn’t look mannish to me at all, or divided skirts, as feminine as any dress I’d seen. But Mother’s campaign to wind back the decades was comprehensive. For once, I was thankful I was wearing a loose cotton dress I could tie shorter at the sides. Perfect for wading.

  The creek bed was studded with limestone, molded and smoothed by the flow, and I loved to step from stone to stone in the cool, rushing water, seeing how far I could travel the creek before I reached a spot too deep to negotiate without full-on swimming. My bathing suit, alas, saw daylight only when my family picnicked at the lake or took a driving trip to North Carolina to swim in the ocean. I’d never have been permitted to wear it for playing in the creek. I’d grown a few inches since the last time I’d worn it anyway, though I suspected it would still fit my skinny hips and flat chest well enough. I figured I was stuck with my boyish figure until I married and bore children.

  Near the creek, I slipped the ribbon from my hair and sawed it in two against a broken tree limb. I’d hardly miss it—I was never short of ribbon to keep my frizzy waves in line. I gathered my skirt into bunches at the sides and secured them. I surely looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t sacrifice a free afternoon to vanity.

  I dropped my sandals at the edge of the creek and leaped onto the first stone, pausing there for a moment to glory in my liberty, gulping the air fanned and cooled by the rushing water, so alive compared to the stagnant stuff I’d breathed all morning.

  Soon, though, I hopped from one visible stone to the next, stretching my arms like a soaring osprey to keep my balance. I stopped, finally, when I reached the last one I could without crossing back to the bank. The stone’s surface was large and flat, and I squatted close to the water, resting against my heels with my skirt pulled over my knees.

  I gazed into the familiar creek, and melancholy surprised me. I longed for the time when I’d had more space, the summers I’d been allowed to play without the burden of someone else’s expectations—ones I wanted no part of. I was too smart, said my mother. She wrinkled her nose when I claimed Father’s newspapers after he’d read them at breakfast. She complained when I returned from Shalerville’s tiny library lugging another teetering stack of books, believing I should show more interest in womanly skills. But needlework and learning to be a hostess bored me silly. I’d entertained the notion I might attend college, and it seemed my father had even encouraged it. He never discouraged it, at any rate. But Mother said, “You? College?” laughing—not unkindly, yet her derision festered. “The only instruction you need to be a wife and mother is right here, under your own roof.” So, I foresaw a future where instead of going away to a university—something I’d always dreamed of, somewhere far away from this godforsaken place—I’d be expected to marry the first acceptable suitor who happened along, likely without love or common interests guiding our dull courtship, probably someone like Jack or Patrick, who would work and spend his leisure time at whatever he wished while I shelved my own dreams in order to keep house and bear children. I felt a flash of anger toward my mother, who would surely have her way in this, and I rose quickly and lunged for the creek bank, where I pounded the dirt with my fists, the aroma of its dry, dusty cloud both comforting and infuriating me. I was privileged, wealthy, even, in comparison to so many girls, but I railed against my fate, my cries unintelligible, as though I were an out-of-control toddler. When I’d run out of steam, I dropped my head against my arms, then turned my gaze sideways.

  It landed on a pair of worn work boots.

  “You all right, Miss Isabelle?”

  I scrambled to my feet. “Where did you come from?” I pressed my fingers against my cheeks—on fire, I was so embarrassed.

  “Been here the whole time. You didn’t see me, I guess, or I imagine you’d have kept that all up inside.” He chuckled. “I was way down the creek when you got here. Just … minding my own business.” A smirk filled his eyes with humor.

  I had to be honest with myself then: The chances of his being there had been good. My whole life nearly, in the summer, if Robert wasn’t doing small jobs for Daddy, he was hanging around by the creek. But today, after my apparently not-thorough-enough surveillance, I’d determined I was alone. The thought that he had witnessed my tantrum—yes, caused in part by his absence—hurt my pride.

  So I changed the subject. “Fishing?”

  “Catching bait. Looking for minnows. If I can get a mess of them, I’ll head over to the river. Nothing running here except little bitty things not worth keeping.”

  “Show me,” I said impulsively. “How you catch the minnows.” I’d tried before, for fun, but the tiny fish had eluded me. I’d attempted to scoop them up with a bucket or my hands, but they’d raced away as soon as I’d touched the water. I’d never managed to capture more than a few.

  Robert regarded me, wary, bemused, and amused all at once. But he turned and hooked his fingers, beckoning me to follow. This time, I noticed, he wasn’t careful to drop behind after I brushed the dirt from my dress and fell into step beside him. In fact, in spots where the creek bank narrowed to a space only wide enough for one of us, he went ahead. He paused and gallantly held rushes and hanging branches away from me where they crowded the path.

  He led me to a wide spot in the creek where the minnows tended to congregate. Here, the creek drifted lazily, pausing to swirl in shelters created by larger rocks and hollows in the bank. He grunted and pointed, gesturing for me to sit on the bank, a finger over his lips warning me to stay quiet and still.

  He placed his pail next to me, then pulled a Nehi soda bottle from his baggy pants pocket. He held the bottle up to show me how he’d dropped a chunk of bread, squeezed and molded like a ball, inside. It rolled around the bottom like a marble, though he’d also dropped porous scraps of bread inside with it. He’d tied a long string around the nose of the bottle, and now he removed his boots and stepped into the creek bed, silent as an Indian, scarcely ruffling the surface of the water. He moved carefully, bent over, eyeing the small pools up close. Finally, he stopped. He dunked the bottle into the water, then lowered it into the stream on its side, the opening facing the same way as the flow, and pressed it into the creek bed until it stayed planted. He pulled a small stone from his pocket and trapped the end of the string on top of a river rock, then climbed back over to the bank and dropped beside me. It seemed an awfully long, complicated process to catch a few minnows, but I was curious to see how well it worked.

  “Now what?” I whispered.

  “We wait,” he said in a normal voice.

  “Why did you tell me to be quiet and you’re talking?”

  “I saw how loud you can be,” he said, and looked off down the creek, his lips pursed. I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

  I exhaled, shaking my head. “How long do we wait?”

  “Long enough. Not too long.”

  That clarified things.

  While we waited, we struggled to make small talk. I could finally speak to Robert alone again—what I’d longed for all summer—yet I could think of nothing to say. Time both stood still and gathered speed while I berated myself for not having paid more attention to the girls I’d mocked, for not noting how they talked to boys so effortlessly. Robert seemed comfortable in the silence, though, content to wait for me to initiate a topic. Finally, I said, “You like to fish?”

  “It passes the time. And makes it so Momma doesn’t have to buy meat for our supper or do without.”

  I frowned, feeling chastised, though not by Robert himself. I’d never considered Cora might struggle to find meat to feed her family. Food had always been plentiful for mine, even
through the worst years of the Great Depression. Patients often paid my father in kind, with produce or home-canned fruits or vegetables, and sometimes with fresh or cured meats. I knew Mother shared with Cora when we had more than we could use before it went bad, but I’d always assumed it was more a bonus than a need. Jack and Patrick often shot small game in the woods for pure sport. I was sure they simply left it to spoil.

  After ten or fifteen minutes, Robert eased back over and gently tugged the bottle back up by the string. He held it toward me, displaying a dozen or so little minnows squirming frantically inside. The bread ball had been reduced by only a fraction, though the other scraps were gone. He dumped the minnows and water into his pail and waded out again. He reached inside a pocket and added new bread crusts to the bottle.

  “How many minnows do you need?” I asked.

  “Oh, fifty or so ought to do. I’ll keep what I don’t use for tomorrow.”

  I did the calculations in my head. We’d be sitting there for the next hour or more while he gathered his crop of bait. I’d been gone from home less than an hour, so I’d be fine. Nobody would come looking for me unless I stayed away until it was nearly suppertime.

  “You’re starting college in the fall?” I hoped he wouldn’t find my erratic subject changes odd.

  “That’s the plan, Miss Isabelle.”

  “Wish I were, too. Robert,” I said, impulsively, before I could snatch the thought back. “You don’t have to call me Miss Isabelle. At least not out here. It makes me feel … Well, I don’t know how it makes me feel, but I’m not sure I like it. Would you call me Isabelle?”

  “Oh, I could never. My momma—your momma,” he mumbled, shaking his head, his eyelids lowered uncomfortably.

  “They’d never know. Please?” I pleaded with him. It seemed as important as anything I’d ever wanted, as inconsequential as it might have been.

  “Isabelle,” he said. “Okay, then. Isabelle.” He rolled the sounds around in his mouth as though he were sampling a new recipe his mother wanted to test. He looked at me tentatively and grinned. “You don’t want to get me in trouble, now, do you?”

  “No! I’d never—” The back of my neck prickled. I supposed some of the girls I knew—and the boys, too—might be that ruthless, willing to do something to get one of the few Negro boys we knew into trouble on purpose. The ugliness made me cringe.

  “Oh, I know you’d never, Miss—Isabelle.” He shook his head. “That’ll be a hard habit to lose. But if you say so, I’ll try.”

  We sat in silence again. As the moments passed, I felt increasingly awkward. I became aware of myself—my skin, my hands, my bare feet, the downy hair on my shins and calves. My mother shaved the hair from her legs, but I’d never bothered. Mine were covered with stockings when it mattered. Now they appeared childlike, and I wanted to tuck them under my skirt again.

  Then I grew more aware of him—his skin, his hands, his bare feet, the downy hair on his lip and jaw. I caught myself holding my breath for too long and released it slowly so it didn’t whoosh out of me like a bellows. “Do you have a girl, Robert?” I asked, hoping to rid my mind of these thoughts by learning what would render them useless.

  “Used to,” he said. “But she already married some older boy working for the railroad, pulling in good money as a porter. Didn’t want to wait around on me going to college.” He shrugged. “I can’t blame her.”

  “Do you want to marry? Have children one day?” My earlier tack hadn’t succeeded entirely, though contemplating Robert in the light of having a life beyond my family and the way his served our needs continued to fascinate me.

  “I suppose I might one day. Right girl comes along. Patient girl, probably.” He grinned at me, and I laughed nervously, for I knew he was laughing at me, too, inside. Not that I thought it would occur to him to compare me to any girl he’d consider. How wrong that would be.

  How dangerous.

  A cloud billowed across the sky above us, sudden and heavy, and a breeze disturbed the air. I shivered as it raised gooseflesh on my forearms. When a rumble of thunder trembled the earth below us, Robert jumped up from his spot next to me.

  “Oh, Lordy, that’s a good storm coming.” He plunged into the creek, pulled the bottle up, and raced back to the bank. He dropped it in the pail, along with the other minnows, and grabbed the pail up, depositing it with his boots under a nearby tree. “Think we can beat it out of here?” He peered at the sky, and just then it opened wide, a gaping mouth. Spoon-size raindrops hurtled to the ground. “Better take cover, Miss … Isabelle. Come get under here!”

  I glanced up, too, weighing the practicality of standing under a tree in a lightning storm. But then, pellets of hail began to fall. By the time I’d scrambled to Robert’s side, some had increased to the size of the bread ball Robert had used to lure the minnows.

  He pressed his back close to the tree trunk, trying to make room for me. When I couldn’t get a good spot, he began to move away, but I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “You can’t be out in that.” Not that the tree did much to shelter us from the rain, which was now blowing almost sideways, but at least we weren’t being totally pelted by the hail.

  I never let go of his sleeve, though I’m not sure I noticed at first. He stood with his back pressed close to me, and my nose barely reached his shoulder. I gazed at the sheets of rain, every other sound silenced by their intensity. I’d never felt as close to another human being. Or as alone. I eased my fingers around Robert’s arm and held it at the crook of his elbow.

  He didn’t react at first, not visibly. He remained still and straight, like the tree trunk behind us, so ancient and wide, it scarcely swayed in the storm.

  But when another peal of thunder cracked the sky, I startled, tightening my grip on Robert’s elbow. Without a word, he turned to pull me close against his chest. I breathed in his scent, sweaty, natural, but not unpleasant, mingled with the aroma of rain pouring over the leaves and bark of the tree.

  The scent transported me, and I was seven or eight years old, huddled under a different low-hanging tree near the creek with Robert and Nell while a summer storm raged, warm rain trickling down our arms and necks in spite of Robert’s attempts to shield us with the blanket Nell and I had been using for a picnic. Nell sat between us, but my bare arm snaked around her waist, and my fingers brushed against Robert’s crossed feet. He shrieked like a girl when I tickled his anklebone, but he held the blanket steady, doing his best to keep us dry. Was it a real memory? I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed so.

  Robert and I stayed like that until the storm gentled, until the hail and rain stopped, fast as it had begun. He dropped his hands to his sides and backed away.

  I felt naked. Alone, once again.

  “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, his face stricken, glancing around as though we might have been observed.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m not sorry at all.”

  I turned and rushed back to where I’d left my sandals, but of course they no longer rested on the creek bank. They’d likely floated long away by then. I ran home, ignoring my pounding heart, stopping only to release the sides of my skirt before I reached the back gate. I crashed into the kitchen, where Cora and Nell sat at the table, one peeling apples, the other potatoes. Cora pushed her chair back with a scraping and scratching that felt physically painful to me.

  “Oh, Miss Isabelle, look at you,” she hissed. “Your momma will have a fit if she sees you like this! Hurry on and get out of those wet clothes. Surely she’s awake by now, but maybe you can sneak by.” I only nodded. I crept upstairs, wondering how I’d explain away my bare feet if I couldn’t avoid Mother, wondering how I’d explain the disappearance of my sandals the next time she suggested I wear them. I’d had them a month, and though we were better off than most families in our area, new shoes were expensive. But I also knew I wouldn’t trade my afternoon at the creek to get them back. I wou
ldn’t trade it for anything—a thought that shook me all the way to my bare soles.

  6

  Dorrie, Present Day

  THE HIGHWAY ROSE and fell in little hilly places now, and I gazed straight ahead, trying to wrap my brain around Miss Isabelle’s story. She sat quietly, as though she was still remembering. Who knew she’d had such a prickly relationship with her mother? Before, I’d have pegged her as a typical sheltered white girl, spoon-fed the idea she could do whatever she wanted from birth, then choosing marriage and family. A sweet, obedient daughter with a doting mother. The more I thought about that last part, the more I recognized the assumption it was. Miss Isabelle, meek and tame? Yeah, right. Full of pickles and vinegar, more likely.

  I liked this mental version of young Miss Isabelle better. It helped me dismiss my worries about unveiling my own missteps and miseries, made me more confident she wouldn’t judge me.

  And to think she’d crushed on a black boy when she was a girl. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but if anyone had found out, I bet it was one fine mess. In my head, Robert was beginning to resemble Teague as I pictured him in his younger days. If that was the case, I certainly didn’t blame her for falling for him.

  “My momma,” I said, interrupting my own thoughts, “she didn’t care what kind of snags I got into as long as I wasn’t making things too hard on her. That is, as long as she didn’t have to solve any problems for me or spend any money to get me out of trouble. Oh, and as long as I didn’t interfere with her boyfriends.”

  I guess Momma thought one of those men would be her ticket to a better life. Too bad her choice of men hadn’t really worked out.

  Four fingers pointing back at me, of course.