by Julie Kibler
They piled up, one after another. Miss Isabelle pulled a couple of tissues out of her purse and spread them out along the bench before she joined me there. Her face said she’d heard enough to understand what had happened, and that I needn’t elaborate unless or until I was ready.
I sat there and snuffled away. I swatted the stupid tears rolling down my face, not sure if I was angrier with my son for what he’d done or because he’d made me cry for the first time in who knew how many years. Miss Isabelle’s only nod to my tears was passing me another tissue she dragged out of that bottomless handbag without a word when I couldn’t catch any more salt water with my hands and my nose was dripping, too. She understood.
Eventually, she rose and walked farther down the sidewalk, tiny, careful steps. I sighed and followed her, thinking I might as well get my mind off myself for a minute. We’d stopped for a reason, so I turned my attention to her as we made our way a half block or so.
I reached the marker about when she did—I walked faster even when I wasn’t trying. But I hung back while she studied the inscription. Then we both moved closer. A large stone sign marked the entrance to one of the campus buildings. The sign was etched with the weatherworn image of a kneeling soldier who supported the head of a fallen soldier and held a stethoscope to his heart. Below the etching, fifty or so names were carved into the stone’s surface and labeled Murray Medical College Wartime Class of 1946. Miss Isabelle traced her finger down a column of names until she paused on one and smiled up at me, tears shimmering in her eyes now.
Robert S. Prewitt.
I looked from her to the name and back again. Tilted my head and asked a question with my eyes, then whispered, “Oh, Miss Isabelle, that’s him? Your Robert?”
She straightened. “Attending med school at Murray was his biggest dream.”
Whatever trouble Robert and Miss Isabelle had experienced together—and I still didn’t know the whole story—he’d achieved his dream after all.
Back in the car, we nested among the drink cups and crossword puzzle books and all our other traveling detritus (or twenty-seven across). I turned the ignition, though I was almost too drained to back out of the visitor’s space. Miss Isabelle watched me shore up my energy. “Oh, Dorrie. This is too much. You have to go home.” She waited for me to respond. “I mean it. Let’s turn around now.”
Bless Miss Isabelle. Here we were on the way to a funeral, and she’d forget it all so I could go clean up the mess waiting for me at home. And I knew it made some sense to take her up on the offer. Things were falling apart without me while I was on some kind of mystery trip, driving toward a funeral for someone I’d never even met—someone whose identity was still unclear, though my suspicions were growing stronger.
“Miss Isabelle … this funeral … it’s pretty important to you, right? It’s someone special?”
She didn’t answer immediately, as though she was really thinking through my question. “It’s important, of course it is. But Dorrie, nothing—nothing—is more important than a mother’s responsibility. I’m telling you, if we need to—”
“No,” I said, interrupting her. Her statement made everything crystal clear. “It’s better for me to be anywhere but home right now. That’s taking care of Stevie Junior. My son’s right. If I saw him right now, I’d surely do things—say things—I’d regret. Teague told the police not to bother with the burglary. Burglary…” I laughed bitterly. Was it still burglary when your own child robbed you? Seemed like there ought to be a more serious classification for this kind of crime. And it sounded like Bailey was going to do what she was going to do no matter what—but not with my money. “Let’s go, Miss Isabelle. I’ll deal with Stevie Junior when I get home.”
I’d never answered Teague’s text about fixing the door, but knowing him, he’d handle it anyway. I hoped I could count on Stevie Junior to go by and check on things after I spoke to him next. It was the least he could do to start making up for his official worst choice ever.
17
Isabelle, 1939
I JUMPED DOWN from the streetcar onto air, so light I felt I could run forever and never deplete the energy that pulsed through my veins, my muscles, my bones—from head to toe and back again. The leaves were changing, and I dragged my fingers through them as I ran; their pungence delighted me and their varying shades seemed translucent, brighter, and more hopeful than any I’d seen before, even as they prepared to return to the earth.
Robert and I could be together. Forever. It was simpler than I’d imagined. It was across a river. A wide river, but one with plenty of bridges.
Ohio had no statute against intermarriage. It had been legal for whites and Negroes to marry there since 1887. In fact, it had only been illegal for a few years at the beginning of the Civil War. Kentucky’s law against intermarriage, on the other hand, had been in effect since the state was constituted. Who could have imagined that less than one mile across water could make such a difference? I was both astonished and amazed.
And I was assuming that Robert would want to marry me. I was only seventeen, having celebrated my birthday that fall, and he was eighteen by then, but it wasn’t uncommon to marry young. Folks our age were considered grown for all practical purposes. Several of my friends had left school early, were already a year or two married, and more than a few of the girls we knew—especially those from less fortunate circumstances—had one or more little ones clinging to their skirts.
I hadn’t planned on being a child bride; my original goals, however unclear, had placed marriage farther down my time line, a few ticks after doing something important with my life.
But understand this: When you fall in love, every kind of reason flies out the newly opened window of your brain.
I was confident I could convince Robert it made sense.
After all, if we were legally married, who could keep us apart? Perhaps we wouldn’t get to court as long as we wanted, to take time to learn each other’s qualities—and foibles—thoroughly before taking such a final step. Perhaps I wouldn’t know Robert as thoroughly as I might have had our circumstances been different and we’d been allowed that privilege.
But I knew one thing: I loved him, and I couldn’t imagine that anything or anyone could change my mind. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Robert. If that took marrying immediately instead of meandering toward wedded bliss, I’d do it.
I prayed he’d feel the same.
I savored the knowledge, unblemished, as long as I could stand it before putting pen to paper to write my first letter to Robert in nearly a month. I waited through dinner, where I choked on creamed peas when Father inquired how my research had gone that afternoon. In the midst of my euphoria, I’d forgotten my excuse for being late—staying after school to find sources for a term paper. For a moment, I feared I’d been discovered—maybe spied by a colleague of my father’s while I pored over the fine print in the instructions to apply for an Ohio marriage license. Finding nothing that spelled a dead end in them, I’d asked the clerk to be sure. Her expression was unreadable, but her silence was telling. Finally, she’d replied, “Well, I don’t suppose there is any law against it, no.” She sniffed. “Not that I’ve seen.”
“So, if these two people I’ve described wanted to fill out this application and receive a license to marry, it would be permitted here?” She’d shrugged and returned to her work, as though she couldn’t bear to acknowledge it aloud. I hoped for another clerk when Robert and I returned—though I supposed another could be horrified rather than stymied or might even refuse the application for other reasons.
“My studies are swell, Daddy,” I answered once I regained control over the unfortunate wedding of oxygen and peas in my windpipe.
When the day’s small talk died down, I asked to be excused. In my room, I sat against the wall next to my bed and chewed my pen while I contemplated how to inform Robert of our impending nuptials.
“My love,” I began. No. It seemed too precious, in spite of my ove
rflowing heart.
I settled on a straightforward approach: “Dear Robert.” Anything else would paint me as a child, immature and floating in the clouds, instead of a grown woman who was down-to-earth and dead serious.
At my signal the next morning, Nell stopped short in the middle of polishing the hat tree in the hallway. She tugged her ear, but with such a questioning expression, I tapped my chin again to be sure she understood. I’m sure she’d wondered why weeks had passed with no exchange of letters, but she’d never questioned it. Later, in my room, she greeted me with an apprehensive expression. I wondered if Robert had repeated my ultimatum in the woods.
“You must take extra care with this, Nell,” I whispered. “Nobody can see it but Robert. If anyone did, there would be trouble.” I hated to worry her more, but my letter had to go straight from my hands to his, with hers the only others touching it.
She sighed and tucked it into her pocket. “You scare me with talk like this. I feel like I started something maybe I shouldn’t have. I only meant for you two to—”
I cut her off. “This means the world to me, and to Robert.” For me to speak for Robert must have seemed odd to Nell. She was the one who’d grown up with him, so close in age they were often mistaken for twins. I patted the side of her apron that hid the letter, but I also felt dismayed at the mantle of wariness that shrouded her face again.
“Best get back to my work,” she said, and turned away.
* * *
“ISA, HAVE YOU lost your mind?” he wrote back.
“Yes, my mind is lost in love for you,” I replied.
“It can’t work. You’re too young. You have too much to lose,” he responded.
I crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it into a corner. I retrieved it and smoothed it and stared at his reasoning, then pulled out a clean sheet of stationery.
“Don’t think of me. There’s nothing here for me. You’re the one who will have to postpone your studies. You’re the one they’ll come after. You’re right—it’s hopeless. Forget my insane rambling.”
He didn’t forget it. Instead, he sent a detailed list of every conceivable argument to prove the plan wouldn’t work. His analysis told me it wasn’t a lost cause.
“I know these things. Could it be you really don’t want to be with me? Am I the reason?” I wrote.
I knew it was manipulative, and I regretted it as soon as I sent Nell away with the note. I sent another the next day. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to say that. Please forgive me for doubting you.”
A weekend passed without any word, and I resigned myself. Finally, I’d proved exactly how selfish I was. But then, a week later, came Robert’s response.
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than join my life with yours—even if the thought terrifies me. But marriage won’t solve most of the problems we’d face as a couple—not even in Cincinnati. Just because the laws are different doesn’t mean the people are. And it wouldn’t be only me they’d judge.”
“I’m not an idiot,” I wrote, “even if I frequently act like one.”
But I chose, like an idiot, to dream only of the hat and dress I’d wear the day we were married, of scenes of domestic bliss. I chose to ignore thoughts of what vicious folk might do to a pair such as us. I didn’t allow myself to envision our life without my family’s support—especially the support of my father.
Robert didn’t rush his decision.
“Isa, you must be patient while I investigate the process for marrying in Cincinnati myself, for my own peace of mind. I would have to find work, a place for us to live. It would take time. I already miss you more than I can bear,” he wrote.
Though I missed him desperately, too, I distracted myself with school. If he agreed, I might not complete my final year at my own school; but wherever Robert and I lived, I could enroll and finish, even if late.
Through the remaining days of fall, I waited for confirmation. Instead, Robert’s letters were still about his schooling—unspoken and unintentional reminders that marriage would suspend his own coveted education, for my father would surely cut off his financial support. Without it, Robert would have little hope of paying for school, not to mention that he’d be busy supporting the two of us. But I believed that, like me, if he was meant to return to school, we’d find a way.
Finally, the day came. During the Christmas holidays, Robert wrote that he’d found employment in a dockyard on the Cincy side of the river. The pay wasn’t much, but enough to secure lodging in a boardinghouse. He hoped I wouldn’t be ashamed to live in the West End neighborhood populated mostly by Negroes—with a few Orientals and Cherokee-looking folks sprinkled here and there. He had no choice; women who took boarders in other parts of town had closed their doors in his face when he inquired about living space for him and his wife.
His wife. The phrase both terrified and mesmerized me.
“Isa … will you marry me?” he wrote.
“Yes, yes, yes! I will marry you, Robert.”
I sealed the letter and pressed it to my heart before I sent it with Nell.
Robert believed we needed an ally to help with our scheme. Nell eyed me with even more caution, passing letters—more quickly now that Robert was home from college—with hardly a word or a glance. The distance between us grew again, until I couldn’t stand it.
I pulled her into my room as she passed one day.
“Nell, please. Don’t look unhappy. This is what we want, your brother and I. Imagine if you and James couldn’t be together. Imagine if you couldn’t see each other in public places.”
Her shoulders drooped so low, it seemed they’d collapse in upon her ribs. I pressed her down on my bed and sank beside her. It had been years since we’d sat on an equal level like that, but I feared she might fall over if I didn’t brace her up. “Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m so scared for Robert, and for you, too. It’s got me all knotted up right here.” She poked her fingers against her stomach and grimaced as though her innards were in literal turmoil. I understood, though the dose of joy mixed with the turmoil in mine made it possible to bear. “There’s mean folks out there … going to be ready to make things ugly and dangerous for you two. Just because they say it’s legal in Ohio doesn’t make it safe.” She dabbed at tears with the corners of her apron, then looked away, as though she were ashamed.
I wanted to reassure her we’d be fine, that once we had our license and a minister of the gospel had signed it, we’d be like any other married couple she knew. But I knew it would be a lie. Instead I appealed on a different level. “Nell, you’re like a sister to me. I can’t wait until you are my sister—when Robert and I marry, you will be.” Her eyes widened, a fleck of pleasure lighting her irises, even as she denied our plan could work, or that if we succeeded in marrying, anyone would see my logic.
“And we’ll take care of you and your mother. I promise we will. No matter what my mother does, we’ll take care of you.” Our marriage would surely mean Cora and Nell would be fired, and they couldn’t survive on Albert’s income alone. Robert and I had agreed he’d work two jobs to replace what they’d lose. I’d work, too. His mother would find other employment eventually, and Robert even felt it would inspire Brother James to propose to Nell sooner—which seemed imminent anyway. We’d planned for every contingency we could imagine.
Her shoulders lifted a fraction. “It’s mostly Momma I’m worried about. James and I, we’ll be okay.”
I nodded. “I’ll need things if I’m going to be married,” I said. “Will you help me?”
This asked more of her than anything. It wasn’t just asking for help. It was asking her to align herself with what would cause a rift between our families—even as it joined them at one tenuous point. Nell grasped my hand and squeezed.
18
Dorrie, Present Day
HEARING ABOUT MISS Isabelle so young and so sure it would work took my mind off things. It gave me something to root for in my head, even though I had a feeling the sto
ry wouldn’t end well. There she was, the same age as my Stevie Junior, and she and Robert were trying to think of a way to change the world for the better, while Stevie was thinking of ways to ruin his life as fast as he could. I suppose at the time everyone thought Miss Isabelle and Robert were trying to ruin their lives, too. I was thankful times had changed. More or less.
When we pulled away from Nashville, finally heading north instead of east, I thought about my childhood in that small East Texas town. The schools had integrated at the last possible minute, and we all knew the middle school used to be the black high school, closed down and renovated only a few years before I was born. There was still a definite color line in the town, signs or no signs. You knew where the blacks lived and where the whites lived, and though a house or two might deviate along the fringe, nobody truly crossed the line.
One summer, I took my kids home for a visit before my mother moved to the city to be closer to us. We were playing in the park one day. A cute little white girl befriended Stevie Junior on the playground and invited him to the annual Vacation Bible School at the big Baptist church the next morning. My jaw about popped off when her mother said sure, that she was the teacher for their age group and that she’d be glad to pick up Stevie and take him as their guest. Bebe was still in diapers and too young to go. The next morning, Liz honked her horn outside my mom’s door, and I packed Stevie into her car, and they all toodled off to the church. Stevie had such a great time. He came home sticky from snacks and stained with finger paint and glitter and so tuckered out, he took a long afternoon nap for the first time in years. We walked back over to the park later, and little Ashley and her mom were there again. Only this time, Liz met us with a long face.
“I hate this town,” she said. “Ever since my husband got this job and we had to move here, I’ve been feeling this undercurrent, but I never could put a finger on it until today.”
I felt worse for Liz than for myself. I knew what was coming. I’d grown up there. I’d figured this deal was too good to be true. “Someone tell you Stevie wasn’t welcome at VBS tomorrow?”