by Julie Kibler
I subjected myself to mental self-abuse every time I lit up, yet I’d never managed to make it all the way to done. I’d started in high school, one or two a day, snuck in the alley behind the vocational ed room with the other cosmetology students. We weren’t supposed to smoke, but the instructors turned a blind eye. They were career addicts and knew it was in our forecast as future beauticians. Smoking went with the territory. They likely hoped our cravings would end at smoking—not something worse. Too often, hairstylists turned to stripping on the side, desperate to supplement measly beginner’s wages with so-called easy money. Then it was a few casual steps from stripping to hooking up for cash to finally doing the hard stuff just to forget about it—cocaine, heroin, eventually crack. A lot of my old friends from class were strung out now, barely existing from fix to fix in the worst parts of my hometown.
I was one of the blessed. I was only a smoker, and I still had my livelihood.
But even though Miss Isabelle hadn’t said a negative word, my smoking suddenly seemed such a waste of income and energy. I could hardly believe—as soft and silky as her skin still felt, and as healthy as her hair still seemed for her age—she’d raised even one of those deadly bones to her lips like she’d described doing at that nightclub.
Now I wondered if Teague, too, realized I smoked. I hadn’t let him too close yet, but we’d watched a few movies together. He’d pulled my hand into his, warm and lanky like the rest of him, and held it loosely. When we parted company, did he press his palm to his nose, breathing in the scent of me as I’d done with his? If so, my secret sin might not be so secret. I held the cigarettes far from my body, always outside, letting the smoke drift away from me, not realizing it lingered on my palms and fingertips like the scent of lotion might on someone else. Leave it to Miss Isabelle to make the first mention of it in all my years of hairdressing.
I’d told myself I’d quit for good before Teague had a reason to find out—if our relationship lasted that long. Now I was determined. But it wasn’t just about Teague. I never wanted my kids to watch me struggle for breath like my mother did. If I quit now, I’d have leverage when I advised them it was dumb to ever begin the habit. Not that I had any reason to believe my oh-so-innocent son hadn’t ever smoked a cigarette. I was sure his troubles already went deeper than sneaking cigarettes behind my back.
I brought the almost-empty pack close to my nose and took a draw of the bittersweet tobacco aroma. I counted to five, then dropped it into the swingy-door trash bin outside the elevator. I almost dropped the lighter in, too, but then convinced myself a lighter might come in handy for all kinds of emergencies. It could come in especially handy for lighting the cigarettes in the two extra packs at the bottom of my suitcase. But I wasn’t going to think about those—not if I could help it.
I couldn’t imagine throwing away two unopened packs. I’d spent good money on them, and I was too married to my money. Quite possibly, to my bad habit, too. Throwing away my current pack was one thing. Going complete cold turkey was another. I still had over a thousand miles to drive in the next several days. I wasn’t crazy.
9
Isabelle, 1939
MOTHER BEGAN PUSHING me to interact with the boys at church. Why now, I wondered, when in the past she’d been satisfied to send me off to Sunday school socials or see me seated with a row of girls at church, the boys behind us, their hair slicked back and shoes shined, as if that would keep them from poking at the backs of our necks with sharpened pencils to see if we’d disturb the quiet while Reverend Creech droned on and on. Now, when Mother dawdled after services, pretending to gossip with the other women, my neck prickled. I’d catch her observing me, watching to see whether I singled out any particular boy for attention. After I reminded one boy in my grade that we had a book to read before school started again, she swooped in like a vulture and invited him to our house for homemade ice cream that evening. She gushed at Daddy later, insisting he prepare the ice-cream freezer and chip the ice while she made a rare venture into our kitchen to mix up cream, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.
The boy showed up early, and Daddy cranked the handle of the freezer, grinning, while I attempted small talk with Gerald, who flushed from the top of his skinny collarbone to the roots of his Brylcreemed hair whenever I so much as looked at him.
My brothers guffawed from across the patio, where they reclined on chaise lounges, one of them flinging an entire deck of cards at the other when he lost a game. I’d be sorting cards again soon, I could see.
“Hey, Gerald,” Patrick called, “you better treat Bitty-Belle right, boy. We’ll be keeping an eye on you. No monkey business, ya hear? We’ll come after you.…” Daddy’s arm stopped turning the crank on the ice-cream freezer. Both my brothers doubled over in laughter, and Daddy started cranking again.
Gerald’s face turned an even brighter shade of orange. Mortified at my brothers’ rudeness, I attempted a spontaneous but ill-chosen rescue. “Gerald,” I said, “what do you think about the unrest in Europe?” I’d pored over the Sunday paper all afternoon, trying to understand events across the ocean.
He had no thoughts on this, but my question uncorked him. He proceeded to speak for more than ten minutes—never once looking me in the eye—about the newly opened Baseball Hall of Fame in New York, which he hoped to visit before summer’s end. Daddy winked as I sank lower in my lawn chair. I wondered if Gerald might die before he took a breath, or whether I’d die of boredom first. The only thing that saved me was comparing him in my mind with Robert, who, though only a year older, looked like a man compared to Gerald, and certainly acted more like one.
Mother emerged from the house, and Gerald transferred his attention to her. He successfully deflected each of her attempts to steer him back into conversation with me while he raved about her ice-cream recipe, claiming it was the best he’d ever had, when we all knew she used the same basic ingredients as everyone else. He finally departed, his sleeve smudged with ice cream where he’d dragged it across his mouth.
“Mother,” I begged. “Please, never invite him to our house again, for any reason! That was painful.”
She sighed. “I guess it wasn’t a particularly successful date.”
Date? I growled. “It was not a date. I’ll arrange my own dates, thank you very much.”
She smiled and patted my shoulder. “Mother knows best, dear.” Daddy shook his head when our eyes met, and I shrugged off her hand and escaped inside, where I could pretend to read my book while I continued my inner life, uninterrupted.
I dropped my books—sometimes now only half-read—at the library each Wednesday afternoon, then returned in time to pluck more from the shelves before Miss Pearce locked up. My new routine baffled the librarian. I’d always spent hours in summer with my elbows on the uncomfortable ancient tables, a leg curled under me in one of the straight-backed chairs, too impatient to wait between picking new books and carrying them home to dive in. Books had been my solace, my dearest circle of friends.
I told Miss Pearce I had weekly errands now and that it was too hot to tote my books along. I did not explain I had a new friend who wasn’t hidden in the library stacks. That, in fact, he wasn’t even welcome in the building.
I’m certain it was no accident Robert appeared at Mount Zion Baptist Church at the same time, more or less, each Wednesday, ostensibly to clip and hack away at the tangled vines over the arbor in preparation for his church’s August revival. It became quite an artistic effort.
According to our tacit agreement, each of us was there, ready to resume our conversation where we’d left off the week before. Robert studied branches, eyeing the arbor for straying members of its knotted congregation, or collected freed limbs into piles for burning. I followed him or sat on a bench, watching him while we talked. I volunteered my help eventually, and I guess he trusted I’d guard the secret of our meetings—or he’d have laughed away my offer. I trailed him with rake or broom, saving him a few steps by gathering debris. My mother had always t
urned up her nose at physical exertion, though I suspected her restraint was due more to lethargy than gentility. I found the work, though not especially strenuous, exhilarating. The company likely helped.
Under the arbor, I discovered that my father gave Cora extra wages so Robert might remain in school, when so many of his peers dropped out to help support their families. I wondered what my mother thought. I wondered if she even knew. I suspected not. I might have been jealous, but Robert’s humility about my father’s generosity made jealousy impossible. And my father’s generosity wasn’t simply for the sake of soothing some guilty itch to help those less fortunate. He’d spotted something special in Robert long before I took notice. The more time I spent with Robert, the more his intelligence astonished me. I’d never met a boy at church or school who’d read as widely as I had, who dared speak to me of current events—indeed, who cared to speak to me much at all, as Gerald had recently proved.
And now, Robert allowed himself to do what I’d asked in our first conversation under the arbor. He trusted me.
When I asked him the same question I’d asked Gerald, he had opinions. We’d each huddled over our family radios for weeks, listening to the building tension—new alliances between Britain and Russia, a broken treaty between the United States and Japan, news trickling in of atrocities happening to Jews in Germany and beyond.
“War is worthless,” I declared. “Men are simply looking for an outlet for their natural tendency to barbarianism! We need to stay out of this mess.”
Robert shook his head. “Isa,” he said. He’d been calling me the shortened version of my name for weeks now. I’d never had a nickname beyond the patronizing ones my brothers had called me. I loved how “Isa” rolled off his tongue, ending in a soft, grown-up-sounding syllable instead of the childish “-belle,” which made me feel like a princess held captive by convention. “America will regret leaving her head in the sand too long. Mark my words.”
The thought of war frightened me—the ones who would fight were my peers, no matter how they frustrated me. Still, I tried to view it from his perspective. “Would you go to war? If you could fight?”
“If I believed it was a worthwhile cause? In a heartbeat,” he replied, and I fought the urge to pummel him myself, not believing he’d go to his potential death so easily. Of course, I wouldn’t have to worry much—Negroes weren’t allowed in combat, as though they were incapable of the same decisions white soldiers made to kill or let live.
I steered the conversation to a less uncomfortable topic, but inevitably it veered back toward a stickier one. I was delighted to find someone besides my father who would spar with me, who would engage in conversation as though I had valid things to say—even if we disagreed.
Finally, the arbor looked more than serviceable again. I wished I could attend the revival services, if only to share in Robert’s sense of accomplishment when his church family gathered under the neatly trimmed umbrella of our handiwork. I’d developed a sense of ownership after our weeks of labor, though my part, of course, was negligible. One day, after clearing the last section, we rested.
“Why do you trust me?” I asked.
Robert pulled a faded bandanna from his trouser pocket and dragged it along his gleaming forehead. “I trust who trusts me,” he said.
I’d come to the arbor week after week, spent several hours alone with him, a Negro boy older than I was by almost a year and stronger by a long shot. I could only imagine my mother’s horror or that of her friends and my peers if they discovered us. There was a prevailing mistrust of colored men, especially young colored men—even those we allowed into Shalerville to run errands or do our heavy lifting. By day, we treated them as weaker, as lower than ourselves, but when the sun set, we banished them. Then, simply the sight of a young Negro male wandering too close to the edges of town raised a collective shiver in our spines and a call for vigilante gatekeepers to run him far enough away that he couldn’t be a threat.
Considering it now, I couldn’t exactly finger that threat. I knew every crowd had good and bad, but I’d been as guilty as anyone, lumping entire groups under one designation. Now I questioned how a young Negro man, traveling the short distance across town in the dark of night, could pose any greater danger than one of our own. And now that I’d grown to trust Robert and considered him a friend, I wondered how the notion had originated. I supposed it was a calculated ploy to keep the Negroes in their place after they were grudgingly awarded their freedom, to prevent them from taking jobs or encroaching on living space whites had claimed.
I understood this suddenly and clearly; it was misguided fear.
I asked Robert about the signs, too, whether he knew how long they’d been there. He was even less forthcoming than my father, shrugged when I asked if he’d heard any history from his mother or anyone else. I suspected he knew more than I did but wouldn’t say so.
I asked one last question. “Do you wish I were different?”
“What do you mean?” Robert said, his voice more guarded than it had been in weeks.
My cheeks flamed, though I’d been thinking about this for weeks. “Do you ever wish I were more”—I paused—“like you?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Do you ever wish I were more like you?” He cocked his head, waiting.
With my inquiry turned back on me, first I sighed. Then I shrugged. Finally, I clambered up from the bench and paced. The answer eluded me. It was tricky, laid with traps. If Robert were a privileged young white person, what would I see in him? Would he still be Robert? Or … did I want to be with him, to cultivate our relationship, simply because he was different?
“Never mind,” I said, but Robert caught my elbow as I brushed by him, intending to reclaim the broom I’d discarded when we’d stopped to rest, though there was nothing left to sweep—we’d already cleared all he’d cut that day away from the arbor, where he would burn it later. In spite of the agonizing late-July heat, I shivered at the sensation of his fingertips, calloused and unexpectedly cool, pressing against my skin.
“Only reason I’d ever wish you were different, Miss Isabelle,” he said, intentionally emphasizing the word he never used anymore when we were alone—not even by accident—“is so we could do this in public, out in front of everyone, no worry the wrong somebody might see us. Otherwise, I think you’re perfect. Every last thing about you.” He released my arm and nudged me toward the broomstick, though when I grasped it, it was all I could do to stand upright with my heart going whoosh whoosh, a wild bird, captured and locked away in a cage smaller than its wingspan.
“Now, you get to answer my question, too.” Robert leaned back, his chin tilted at me, impudent, but his eyes serious.
“I—I think you’re perfect, too, Robert, but I do wish…”
“You wish what?”
I plunged ahead, reckless. “I wish Mother would invite you to the house instead of the boys she asks, trying to marry me off when I’m not even out of school. In fact, I wish we’d gone to the same school. I wish we attended the same church. I wish you walked me home from the library after we studied from the same books. Or drank sodas together at the drugstore. I wish—” I flung my hands high. “I wish for all of that, and”—I closed my eyes—“much, much more.” With no backward glance, I gathered my book bag and the crumpled waxed paper that had covered a slice of pie I’d shared with him—a pie his mother had baked—and sped away down the lane, accelerating until I was running by the time I reached the road. I traveled the route home as fast as I could, not once looking to see if Robert followed.
I crashed up my steps, then stopped short, not only because my book bag dangled limp from my fingertips, reminding me of my omission, but because my mother, motionless on the porch swing, furled hand resting on her hip, observed me. “I sent Nell to fetch you home,” she said. “She returned alone. Said Hattie Pearce only saw you a moment this afternoon—much earlier. That, in fact, she expected you’d be by after yo
u finished your other errands. As you do every week.”
The screen door revealed Nell peeking around the frame, eyes frightened and apologetic. I didn’t blame her for telling my mother the truth—assuming she’d even want to cover for me. I wasn’t sure anymore. But we both knew if Mother had caught her in a lie—and there’s no doubt she would have—it would have spelled disaster.
“Isabelle? Where have you been spending your Wednesday afternoons?”
I fished for an excuse, for some plausible fib to diffuse her anger. A lie from Nell would only have made things worse.
The truth, coming from me, was impossible.
10
Dorrie, Present Day
THE KIDS WERE fine. Well, Bebe was fine. By which I mean, she was her usual sweet self, showered, ready for bed, and reading one of her favorite books for the millionth time before she went to sleep, even though another one of my longtime clients brought a new stack every time she came to see me. She knew Bebe loved to read.
Bebe handed the phone over to her brother. “How’s it going, Stevie Wonder?” I asked. That usually got at least a snort from my boy.
“Fine.”
Now, everyone knows when your kid says that and then sits there silent, nine times out of ten it means he’s anything but fine. Otherwise, he’d be rushing to get off the phone and back to whatever he was wrapped up in, or he’d be talking my ear off about the dope car he’d spied down the street, just the one he wanted, with a FOR SALE sign and a price of only four figures, well, slightly under five, but what a good deal, Mom, and how after he bought that car, or any car, he and his buddies could take off on a six-week road trip to celebrate graduation, and it was only going to cost about a thousand bucks each, the way they figured it.