“Do what?”
“Have secret relationships with colored women, families even, but in private.”
Whitmore got up, placing his hands on the back of his chair, his knuckles white. “Jeselle’s not a secret that must be hidden away. I want her to be my wife.”
“Whit, do you know what could happen to you if you come out in the open? She’s pregnant with your child. They call that illicit sex and will prosecute you under the fornication and adultery laws.” He paused. “If they don’t lynch you and Jeselle first.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s at her cousin’s. On their farm. Sunday’s her day off.” He stood and spoke as sternly as he could. “But you cannot go there.”
Whit pushed aside his chair and grabbed Nathaniel’s upper arm, his voice raised. “Take me there.”
“Absolutely not.”
Whit shouted now, both of his hands gripping Nathaniel’s shoulders, as if he might shove him. “Dammit, Nate, take me there.”
A shadow behind them—someone was in the doorway. Freeing himself from Whit, he saw Lydia. Her breath was quick, as if she’d been running up the stairs. “Nathaniel, is everything all right?”
“Yes, fine. Lydia, meet my brother-in-law, Whitmore Bellmont. Frances’s brother.”
Whitmore stood against the wall, his arms crossed. He nodded toward Lydia but said nothing.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Mrs. Tyler. Nathaniel’s student.”
“Did you hear what we were arguing about?” Nathaniel asked.
Lydia took a step backward. “No, just shouting.” She darted a look at Nathaniel and then back at Whitmore, plucking at the skirt of her dress. “Regardless, it’s none of my business, of course. I only wanted to see if you were all right.”
Nathaniel’s words were out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying. “Whitmore thinks he’s in love with Jeselle.”
“The girl who works for you?”
He nodded.
A vein bulged on Whitmore’s forehead. He looked at Lydia as if he were spoiling for a fight. “She’s having a baby. My baby.”
Lydia spoke without a hint of alarm, her voice pitched low, soothing. “I see. Well, let’s all think this through.” As if she were an old friend, she put her hand lightly on Whitmore’s arm. “I have daughters, you see, just about your age. I’m well versed in matters of the heart.”
Whitmore’s combative expression lessened, and his shoulders slumped.
“Come, sit.” She took Whit’s arm and guided him into a chair, then closed the office door. “We might try and keep our voices low.” She cocked her head to one side, looking at Whitmore. “How does Jeselle feel about this situation?”
“I, I don’t know.”
Lydia glanced up toward the ceiling as if she were thinking and then back at Whitmore. “You must ask Jeselle what she wants. This will determine everything.”
“Yes.” Whitmore said the word slowly. “I guess that’s right.”
“And what are you prepared to do?” asked Lydia.
“Anything.”
Nathaniel stepped closer to Whit and put his hand on his shoulder. “This is an impossible situation. Please, Whit, think reasonably.”
“I cannot,” Whit said.
“You must be deliberate in your actions, not impulsive,” Lydia said.
Whitmore nodded, never taking his eyes from Lydia’s face. Nathaniel suddenly imagined how she must be with her daughters. She would rectify this situation—sort it through somehow. He was no match for this problem, but a mother, a mother would know what to do. Just as he was beginning to feel better, Lydia stood, brushing the front of her dress as if it were dirty. “Eleanor Roosevelt believes in freedom for all Americans, including marrying who you want, regardless of race. And I wholeheartedly agree.”
Nathaniel came out of his seat. “Lydia,” he said, almost shouting, “this has nothing to do with someone’s ideals.”
“No.” She stood tall and crossed her arms over her chest. “This is about love.”
“Nate no longer believes in love,” said Whitmore.
Anger spread through Nathaniel’s limbs. He spoke through clenched teeth, “I simply don’t want you to give up your life for something that might prove to be false.”
“Like you have, Nate?” asked Whit.
“Is that what you think?” His breakfast churned in his stomach. He wiped his face with his handkerchief, surprised by how angry he felt. “Whit, I’ll be damned if I stand by and let you ruin your life.”
“Nate, it will be ruined if I can’t be with Jes. It’s just that simple.”
“Nathaniel, at least give him a chance to talk with her. We could go out and get her later.”
“And bring her where?” asked Nathaniel. “It can’t be here at my office. Someone might see.”
“And I can’t go to the house,” said Whitmore.
“I have a friend who might take you in,” said Nathaniel. “Stay here. We’ll come back and get you if he says yes.”
Nathaniel and Lydia walked to the parsonage. Lulu answered the pastor’s door and, after introductions were made, they followed her into a sitting room. “Sit here now,” said Lulu. “I’ll get ye some tea and biscuits.”
The biscuits were actually cookies. Although Nathaniel felt nauseous, he took one when Lulu offered. She stared at him, one hand on her plump hip, until he took a bite. It melted in his mouth, tasting of sugar and butter. “Very good. Thank you.”
She beamed and poured them cups of steaming tea. “The good man should be back soon.” A moment later, they heard the kitchen door open and close. “Ah, there he is now.”
Pastor Ferguson walked into the room. “Nathaniel, what a pleasure to see you.” Nathaniel rose to shake his hand. “And this is Mrs. Tyler, I believe? Front row, right side.”
Lydia smiled. “That’s correct.”
“So good to see your face every Sunday. Perhaps Nathaniel could take a lesson from you on church attendance?”
“I’m afraid we have a problem,” Nathaniel said.
“What seems to be the trouble?” Ferguson took a cookie for each hand. “Please, sit.”
Nathaniel told Ferguson the entire situation. The pastor took another cookie and poured himself a cup of tea, then sat back in his armchair, looking thoughtfully out the window for a few moments. “This is certainly a complicated matter. A cookie, Mrs. Tyler?”
“No, thank you.” Lydia stiffened next to him. Please don’t start in on Eleanor Roosevelt, Nathaniel thought. Not now.
“Mrs. Tyler, I came to this country when I was a month old. My parents hailed from Scotland, where we had these same kinds of complications around clans instead of race. There is much fear in what we don’t understand, in our misguided belief that if someone else has more, we somehow will have less. Unfortunately, I have to consider the current belief system within my community when I make decisions about my congregation. Whether I like it or not, this would be an explosive situation if it were to get out around town. I’m not sure you’re aware of how strong emotions are around the separation of the races. My people will in no way understand nor support a white boy and a black girl. Do you see what I’m saying here?”
Lydia was at the edge of the couch now. “That you cannot help us. Isn’t that it? Because you’re afraid to lose church members?”
“This goes all the way up to the top of the national Presbytery. I have elders I must answer to.”
Lydia sprang to her feet. “Tell me, Pastor, how exactly do you reconcile Jesus’ teachings with the mistreatment of people because of the color of their skin?” She waved her hands in the air. “Are we not all equal in the eyes of God?”
Ferguson smiled gently, putting his half-eaten cookie back on his plate. “Mrs. Tyler, while I appreciate your point and happen to agree with you, this is a way of thinking that goes back hundreds of years.”
“I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, Pastor,” said Lydia. “Things will never ch
ange when the self-proclaimed righteous look the other way instead of taking stands against injustice.”
Ferguson nodded his head, his face impassive before turning his gaze yet again toward the window. “I understand, Mrs. Tyler. And still, I must carefully consider things. Nathaniel, what do you propose to do about this situation?”
“Me? I’m not sure. My primary concern is that they’re both safe.”
The pastor murmured. “Hmmm, I agree. And they won’t be, the minute this gets out.” He sat forward and poured himself another cup of tea. “We all three must pray about it. He will provide us an answer.” Ferguson took a sip of tea. “Until then, you’ll have to put Whitmore up at the Rains sisters’ boarding house.”
On the way toward campus, Lydia was quiet until they were almost to his office. “Please take me with you to get Jeselle.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to have to do it alone.”
“Thank you.”
Chapter 39
Whitmore
* * *
Whitmore waited with Nate on the wobbly front porch of the decaying Victorian for Sarah and Alba Rains to come down from their living quarters.
Hearing the women approaching, Whitmore held out his hand to Nate. “I know you’re not sure about this. But, thank you.”
Nate’s eyes reddened, and he glanced toward the street. “Just get some rest. We’ll sort it all out.” Then, to Whit’s surprise, Nate pulled him into a quick embrace before heading down the rickety steps of the porch.
Alba and Sarah were twins, both grizzled and gray, with identical whiskers growing out of their protruding chins. They took Whitmore down a dark hallway to a small room at the back of the first floor that smelled of dust and decaying wood; it held a twin bed against one wall, a desk with a chair, and a braided rug. A large glass window looked out onto a dry lawn. “Window opens if it feels stuffy,” the sister in the plaid dress said.
“He won’t want the window open,” the other said.
“He surely will,” her sister replied.
“The room’s fine.” He followed the women back to the desk in the foyer area near the front door.
“I’m Alba, and this here is Sarah. We live upstairs and only come down when absolutely necessary.” Alba lowered herself gingerly into the chair at the desk.
“Sister’s not as good on the stairs as she once was.” Sarah stood at the side of the desk, scrutinizing him with eyes the same faded blue as her house dress.
Alba opened the guest ledger. “Sister’s the one can’t get up the stairs anymore. I’m as fit as a fiddle.” As far as Whitmore could see, the sisters seemed to be in the exact same condition.
“We expect quiet after eight p.m.” Alba wrote his name into the guest ledger.
Whit nodded politely. “Of course.”
Alba continued, as if she hadn’t heard him, “We have loaded shotguns we keep by our beds. We come down shooting if we hear any noises in the middle of the night.”
“What my sister is trying to say, young man, is we expect quiet at night. No women or drink.”
“I understand. I won’t cause you a bit of trouble.”
Sarah, still standing, crossed her arms. “We’ll need at least a week in advance. That’s two dollars a week.”
“Fine.” Whitmore took the money from his wallet and laid it the desk.
Sarah, continuing to watch him with distrusting eyes, wrapped a knobby hand on the back of her sister’s chair. She raised a bushy, white eyebrow and said to Whit, “You don’t look too good.”
Alba looked up from putting the money in her dress pocket. “You sick? We don’t want to catch anything.”
“No, ma’am. I’ve been traveling for several days. I’m here to see about a girl.”
“You best get cleaned up first,” Alba said. “No sweetheart gonna kiss you looking like you do.”
Sarah looked at her sister, shaking her head. “Sister, what do you know about sweethearts?”
“I figure more than you, sister.”
Whitmore stepped back from the desk, muttering a polite farewell before heading toward his room. As he shut the door, he heard the women making their way up the stairs slowly, bickering over the price of bread. “I saw seven cents,” one said.
“Surely it was eight cents. You don’t see as well as you used to, sister,” replied the other.
In his room, Whit sat at the desk, his hands between his knees, rocking back and forth, trying to conjure the right words to say to Jeselle that might shift her thinking, whatever it was. He moved to the bed, took off his shoes, and reclined with his hands folded behind his head. He counted fourteen bumps in the ceiling and one broken cobweb in the corner by the window. The glass panes were dirty and overlooked an old drooping oak tree. A child’s rotting swing hung by a rope from a thick branch. Was it the sisters’ swing from long ago? He tried to imagine the old women as children but couldn’t envision them without their crepe paper faces, coiled white braids, and stooped shoulders. Had either ever had a sweetheart? Were their hearts broken once? Had they waited for someone who never came?
Ironic, he thought; he needed persuasive words now, but Jeselle was the writer. He closed his eyes, the pain there in his chest again, remembering Jeselle crouched in the butler’s pantry at the lake house, scribbling word after word into the diaries his mother gifted to her every year on her birthday. It made him think, then, of his mother’s bold decision to educate Jeselle all those years ago.
He’d never thought to ask his mother, or perhaps never had the courage to ask, why? He only knew his mother’s choice to rebel against her husband, her upbringing, and every cultural norm of her time had set something in motion that was intertwined in every aspect of his life. Like the first hasty movement of a water bug on his beloved lake, the ripples of that one decision spread in wider and wider circles—a courageous move toward some equilibrium in a chaotic and unjust world.
He remembered the baby, again, with the same dart of shock. There would be a baby. And what world would he or she inherit? Would there ever be enough ripples of love set in motion to change humankind? He had to believe it started with one action, one movement toward love.
Chapter 40
Lydia
* * *
After Nathaniel left with Whitmore for the boarding house, Lydia stayed in Nathaniel’s office to await his return. It was nearing two in the afternoon, and she ate an apple she found on his desk, staring at Frances’s photograph. Soon she was at the piano, her fingers flexed and lifted, tapping up and down the piano keys, practicing her assigned scales. She was on the second exercise when the idea came to her, so abruptly that she stopped playing. It was France. They must live in France. Whitmore and Jeselle could live there as man and wife, openly.
Just last month she’d read an article about the dancer Josephine Baker, a beautiful and eccentric black woman who had moved to Paris in order to live without the cultural constraints of America.
Later, as she and Nathaniel drove out of town to get Jeselle, she attempted to adjust her skirt to allow some air to reach her hot skin. What was this? Her skirt was stuck, caught in the car door. She’d closed the door on her own skirt. What an absolute oaf. It would be frayed and tattered by the time they reached Jeselle. She moved closer to the door, hoping to keep it from ripping.
Goodness, it was hot. Stifling actually. The inside of the car smelled of rubber with a hint of gasoline. Lydia rolled down her window, allowing the breeze to blow on her face, aware that this was the first time she’d ridden in a car without her braid. As they headed away from town, she glanced, with just a slight slip of her eyes, at Nathaniel’s austere profile. In the afternoon light she saw that the rims of his eyes were pink and he was graying at his temples. He sat perfectly upright, elbow resting on the open window frame, looking straight ahead, his body moving only with the jars and bumps of the road.
As they drove deeper into the country, the smell of freshly plowed soil drifted in
through their open windows. Beyond, as far as the eye could see, were rows and rows of cotton. The pickers were scattered among the rows, carrying sacks over their slumped forms.
“Does Jeselle walk all this way?” she asked, forgetting her vow not to talk too much.
“I drive her.”
She blinked, surprised. “Why doesn’t she live in?”
“We don’t have enough bedrooms.”
Not enough bedrooms? That model of kit home usually had at least two rooms upstairs. And then it occurred to her what that implied: he did not share a bedroom with his wife. She turned away, feeling embarrassed. Dust drifted in through the windows, sticking to their skin and clothes. Lydia glanced at Nathaniel. His face, pale, dripped with perspiration, and his eyes appeared unfocused. “You feeling peaked?” she asked, alarmed.
His voice sounded dry, almost raspy. “Something Jeselle said. Probably nothing.”
“What is it?”
“She said Frances is gone in the afternoons.” He wiped his face again with the handkerchief and slowed the car as they turned a corner. “That is not my understanding of how Frances spends her afternoons.”
Lydia gazed at the giant oaks alongside the road. Moss hung from burdened branches.
“It’s probably nothing,” he repeated.
They drove in silence for several minutes until Lydia turned to him. “Have you heard of Josephine Baker, the entertainer?”
He nodded. “She’s the Negro singer that sings and dances half-clothed?”
She chuckled. “Some might think of her as risqué, but I’m quite an admirer.”
Eyes still on the road, she saw his mouth turn up in a brief smile. “Lydia Tyler, you’re nothing if not unpredictable.”
“She lives in Paris. Without cultural constraints.”
He looked at her full in the face, and the car veered to the right, so that they were precariously close to the ditch. “You think they should move to France?”
Duet for Three Hands Page 26