Actually, I could not imagine my mother, who taught us to recite the rules of etiquette more fluidly than the Lord’s Prayer, ever running barefoot in the grass and catching lightning bugs with her bare hands, all the things Nana claimed her daughter did when she was a little girl. Before, my grandmother would say, she turned angry and bitter. All I knew was that my mother ran away from home when she was barely sixteen years old. Nana said she left nothing but a shoe box filled with old letters from her boyfriend and a tearstained note taped to her bedroom door. She said she was going to Paris or Hollywood, but she got only as far as Nashville.
Apparently she was working as a salesclerk at the Vanderbilt University bookstore when a fourth-year undergraduate with a handsome smile and an expensive watch on his wrist came looking for a chemistry book. My mother quickly added it all up and told him that she had taken the semester off to pursue an independent study in Renaissance art and that the chemistry books were on the top shelf in the back of the store. My father bought the book, but I’m not sure he ever looked past my mother’s hazel eyes and generous bustline. They were married only seven months later in an elaborate ceremony attended by hundreds of Nashvillians eager to meet the beautiful girl with a supposed interest in art and an obscure past who had mesmerized the future Dr. Grove.
And while my father went to medical school, my mother joined the Junior League and the garden club and anything else she deemed worthy of her new position as Mrs. Charles Goodman Grove V. Nathaniel told me that when Mother first came to Grove Hill, she didn’t even know how to set the table properly, hadn’t even seen a real cloth napkin. He showed her where to put the fork and the knife and how to sit at the table like a real lady. And in no time at all, she learned to host the perfect luncheon, write the perfect note, raise the perfect children, and all the while, maintain the perfect smile. In the end, she probably worked harder than my father.
At some point along the way, Mother exchanged her afternoon coffee for a gin and tonic, served with a fresh slice of lime and freshly crushed ice that Nathaniel hammered into small pieces on the back porch. He guessed that my mother’s volunteer work was real demanding and that she needed a little glass of relaxation in the afternoon. But we both knew that Mother with a coffee cup in her hand was not a particularly kind or attentive person and that Mother with a gin and tonic in her hand was simply mean and withdrawn. I didn’t really care for either but learned to tolerate both.
Late at night, when the gin had fully consumed my mother’s heart, she would scold me for merely walking past her on the way to my bedroom. She said my feet were too heavy on the floor, and I needed to walk like a lady and not one of those damn horses loafing about in the field. I’d tiptoe to my room and throw myself across the bed, pretending to be a beautiful princess waiting for some handsome prince to rescue me from the wicked witch who slept down the hall. But the prince never came, nor did my father, who stayed at the hospital long after dark, preferring to save people he knew very little about.
Actually, I was never really sure if my parents loved or hated each other. One New Year’s Eve, I saw them kiss fully on the lips, but most days they merely lived side by side, sharing the same space and nothing more. Father seemed almost awkward around my mother, never quite certain of what to say or do. So he usually said and did nothing. And when he died, I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother’s tears were from knowing that she would never feel his touch again or from missing the daily habit of disliking him.
Had it not been for my cousin Cornelia, who was three years older to the day, I would never have learned anything about true and lasting love. By the time she was twelve, Cornelia was wearing lipstick and mascara to school and had already kissed several boys behind the coatrack. She didn’t have a mother—well, not one that really cared about her. In that way, we were very much alike. She said that she learned all she needed to know about being a woman from reading Seventeen and that I would surely benefit from her wisdom and experience. My cousin never threw away an issue of that magazine. It was like some sort of Bible that was specially delivered by the United States Postal Service, one chapter at a time, every word sacred and holy.
Fortunately, Cornelia and her father lived just five miles from my house on ten acres of land that my grandfather left his younger son when he died. It may not have seemed as grand a gift as Grove Hill, but the land came with no liens or judgments attached, leaving some to wonder if Uncle Thad had truly been his favorite. Our fathers were brothers but only thanks to a similar genetic code. Uncle Thad was strong and broad-shouldered with rough, callused hands just like Nathaniel’s. He wore his hair long, almost to his shoulders, and laughed and cried freely, never once worrying what somebody else might think.
He went to college in the North Carolina mountains, spending most of his days writing poetry and walking in the woods, searching for the earth’s inspiration—at least that’s what Cornelia told me. Mother said all he was doing was living in some filthy commune and wasting his father’s money. Either way, he met a girl and fell in love, and nine months later Cornelia was born. But Cornelia’s mother was an artist and had already planned to study painting in New York with Rothko and Motherwell. She wasn’t sure she could care for a newborn as long as her artistic spirit was yearning to be nurtured. So after Cornelia was born, her mother and father parted ways, and Uncle Thad brought his baby girl back to Tennessee, genuinely believing that someday the great spirit of the universe would see fit to reunite the three, who were always bound by a never-ending love—at least that’s what Cornelia said.
Uncle Thad always seemed to have plenty of time for his daughter, reading to her at night, taking her on long walks through the woods, catching frogs in the creek. Nothing ever seemed more important to him than being with her. But a man’s got to make a living, he said. And before long, he started raising some kind of fancy chickens with a funny name. Buff Orpingtons, I think. Cornelia and I called them Buffy Orphans because they acted more like wayward children, wandering all over the place, even in the house. When they started laying these big brown eggs, Uncle Thad called them his golden geese. At first he gave more eggs away than he could sell or scramble, but before long he was shipping cartons of them all over the country, mostly to California.
A few years later, he started keeping bees and harvesting honey. He called that liquid gold and mixed it into fancy soaps and pretty-smelling lotions. He said he learned that if he could put the word organic on the label, he could find some overindulged fool to pay top dollar for it. People called my uncle strange. I knew they did. But I thought he was wonderful. And when Cornelia wanted to wear makeup, Uncle Thad said it wasn’t his place to limit his daughter’s creative expression, although he always added that she was beautiful just the way God made her.
So needless to say, when I kissed a boy for the very first time behind the coatrack in Mrs. Dempsey’s sixth-grade classroom, it was Cornelia I trusted with my secret. Oh, it was not a passionate kiss or an enduring kiss. It was not much more than a quick peck on the right cheek, stolen between recess and reading. But it was the first indication that I would lead my life guided by my heart and a fierce determination to know something other than what circumstance surely would have allowed me.
“Bezellia Grove, I am so proud of you,” she said as she leapt onto her bed. “You’re becoming a woman right before my very eyes. You’ll be starting your period before you know it. You will. Just wait and see. Now that you’re kissing and all, it’s bound to happen soon.” I honestly did feel more like a woman, even if I hadn’t started buying pads and tampons.
“When you get a little older, guess what?” my cousin asked as she always did, never waiting for an answer. “You’re going to kiss Tommy Blanton with your mouth wide open, tongues touching and everything. It’s called French kissing and for a very good reason. You know why? It’s very passionate, like everything French. But for now, keep that trap of yours locked tight. You don’t want to get a bad reputation before you even get starte
d. Trust me.”
I couldn’t imagine kissing a boy with my mouth wide open, nor did I understand why opening my mouth would lead to a bad reputation or a love of anything French. What I did know was that Tommy’s cheek had felt so soft under my lips that I wanted to kiss him again and again just so I could memorize the touch of his skin. I remembered pulling my head back from his face and standing perfectly still in his presence, afraid to open my eyes, afraid I had scared the boy who had seemed, until now, more interested in playing tetherball than in kissing a girl. But just as that moment of uncertainty lingered into awkwardness, I had felt something warm on my cheek. It was Tommy Blanton’s lips, his rough, dry, cracked lips.
“Tommy and Bezellia sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes …,” sang a chorus of classmates who had suddenly swarmed behind the coatrack, not giving either one of us time to acknowledge the other.
Tossing my hair behind my shoulder, I turned and walked away, ignoring both the song and Tommy’s embarrassed plea to them to stop. I took my seat at my desk and opened my arithmetic workbook. Underline with a red pencil every equation on the page that contains a remainder. Red. The color of passion and love.
At the end of the day, Nathaniel was patiently waiting for me at the front of the hookup line, reading the afternoon newspaper with one eye and watching for me with the other. Today I desperately wanted him to be the last car in the driveway so I could jump rope with the other girls and whisper in their ears about love and Tommy Blanton, the remnant of his kiss still warm on my cheek.
“Miss Bezellia,” Nathaniel cried, his voice dragging me from deep within a cluster of girls gathered on the sidewalk. “Sweet Jesus, child,” he hollered as I walked toward the car, “you not see me sitting right here? What’d you learn in that classroom today anyway?”
“Same old stuff,” I snapped as I climbed into the back of the Cadillac, slamming the door behind me.
“Uh-uh. Not believing that. You learned something new today. I see it in your face,” he said as he leaned into the front seat, all the while studying me real hard like he was trying to break some secret code.
“Nathaniel! Stop looking at me like that!”
“Oh, Lord, I got it now. You’re a girl in love.”
“I am not.”
“You know I’ve got three girls of my own, Miss Bezellia. I know the look. C’mon, what’s his name?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just drive the car, Nathaniel,” I ordered, my tone suddenly sounding shrill and cutting, just like my mother’s.
“Miss Bezellia, there’s no harm in liking a boy or him liking you back for that matter,” Nathaniel said, gently reminding me that he deserved more respect than I had offered. Then he turned his attention forward and steered the car toward the road. He let out a slow and steady breath and settled into a familiar position—one hand firmly on the steering wheel, the other relaxed by his side.
I had spent a lot of time studying the back of Nathaniel’s head. He had thick black hair cut real short. But right on top he had a small bald spot, not much bigger than a quarter. He said it had always been that way, even when he was a little boy. His mother told him that was the very spot where the angel had kissed her son before delivering him to earth. So from where I was sitting in the back of the Cadillac, I wanted to believe with all my heart that this was a head that could be trusted.
I grabbed the edge of the seat with both hands and pulled myself forward and let my secret slide right out of my mouth. “It’s Tommy. Tommy Blanton.” There. There it was. Now my secret was floating out in the heavens for anyone to know it. I rested against the hot leather seat, feeling proud and breathless all at the same time, waiting for Nathaniel to recognize my truest confession.
He looked surprised at first, as though the name rang a bell. He put both hands on the wheel and drove all the way to Hillsboro Pike, squinting his eyes and occasionally tapping his left hand against the wheel. He must have studied that name backward and forward for three or four miles before nodding his head in revelation.
“That’s the boy whose mama and daddy got a divorce last year after she found him with … I mean after—” Nathaniel caught himself before he disclosed more than he figured a sixth-grade girl needed to know. “I mean they’re the ones who got a divorce. Went and had some judge tear their marriage apart as if it never happened. I heard your mama talking about them on the telephone just the other day. Yep, they’re the ones.”
The wind suddenly lifted my day’s work sheets from my lap. They swirled about the back of the car like confetti thrown at a parade. I started laughing and grabbing for my papers, quickly stacking them neatly in order on the top of my notebook. And there in front of me was a heart, a heart I had drawn when I was supposed to be searching for remainders, a heart that symbolized my love for Tommy Blanton. Tommy and I would never get a divorce. We would love each other forever.
Mother wasn’t home when we arrived at Grove Hill. She was probably at the country club lingering over a bridge table with friends, so I begged Nathaniel to drive me to Cornelia’s. I needed to tell her about my kiss. I needed to tell her about my newly discovered womanhood. I told Nathaniel we needed more eggs.
Even now I still remember lying on Cornelia’s pink-flowered bedspread unraveling the events of my day like a kitten playfully pulling a piece of yarn from a skein. My cousin, with her legs folded beneath her, sat on the bed across from me. She was beaming with pride, as if this kiss had been a reflection of her own efforts. She asked if I had felt a little dizzy, and when I told her that I thought I had, she confirmed that this was indeed a true and lasting love.
She jumped off her bed and hopped over to her vanity, which was looking more and more like the cosmetics counter at Castner Knott. She picked up a tube of lipstick and then turned and stood right in front of me, staring into my eyes so intently I thought she was peering straight into my soul.
“Honey Bee Pink. Brand-new color. Just came out. It’s kind of faint but very powerful.” Cornelia hummed and then smeared the lipstick across her mouth. She handed me the white plastic tube and indicated that I was to do the same. Then she picked up a mirror with a long pink handle and admired her lips. She kissed the glass and handed the mirror to me, again indicating that I was to do just as she had done. “Remember, be careful, it’s very potent stuff. I bet there’s real honey in it.”
“Thanks,” I said in a hushed, appreciative tone, holding the lipstick tube carefully between my fingers. I slowly rubbed some across my own lips and then kissed the mirror just as Cornelia had, leaving a waxy impression of my kiss on the glass. Now this mirror knew my secret too.
At the dinner table later that evening, I sat straight in my chair and tried to cut my chicken without scraping the blade of my knife across the plate. Mother said food was not to be butchered, merely cut. Sometimes I left the table hungry because the thought of cutting anything in my mother’s presence made my stomach hurt. And tonight, with the lipstick still hidden in my skirt pocket, I didn’t want her scrutinizing my table manners. I just wanted to hide in my room and practice writing my name.
Mrs. Tommy Blanton, Mrs. T. Blanton, Mrs. Tommy and Bezellia Blanton, Mrs. Bezellia Blanton
“Sister, your uncle called,” Mother said abruptly, bringing my attention back to the meat held tightly under my fork and knife. “You left a workbook at his house today. He thought you might need it for school tomorrow.”
“A workbook?” I answered, adding an appropriate dose of both confusion and innocence to my voice.
“Yes, a workbook.” And then my mother stiffened her back and her tone became as inflexible as her body. “You come straight home tomorrow. We don’t need any more of his damn brown eggs.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered, and my knife slid from one edge of the plate to the other, screaming as it made its way across the porcelain. My mother glared at me. She looked so stern and disapproving I was afraid she could see my heart w
as aching for a boy who kept a piece of gum tucked inside his cheek. I could only hope that, by this time of the evening, Mother’s vision was too clouded with gin for her to know my most honest thoughts and that by morning she would have forgotten about a lost workbook.
Thankfully, she was still sleeping when I left for school the next day with Cornelia’s lipstick neatly hidden in my pocket. I raced to Mrs. Dempsey’s classroom and found Tommy sitting at his desk. I abruptly stopped in the doorway to regain my composure and quickly ran my hands down my pleated blue skirt. Tommy glanced at the door and then lowered his head, choosing instead to focus on the comic book lying open on top of his desk. My eyes started filling with tears, and I was afraid everyone would see my broken heart dripping down my cheeks. But as soon as I took my seat next to his, his green eyes warmed and his blank expression turned into a reassuring smile.
Mrs. Dempsey talked all morning about Columbus and Indians and fractions and prepositional phrases, one subject blending into the next, none of them making any sense to me. Finally, she directed us to close our books. And that day, like the day before, I found myself behind the coatrack primping for Tommy Blanton. I tightened my ponytail and again pressed my hands down my skirt. Then I ceremoniously pulled the tube of lipstick from my pocket and carefully shellacked my lips with a heavy coat of Honey Bee Pink, just like Cornelia had told me to do.
“Gee, Bezellia, you smell good—kind of like honey.” Tommy was standing behind me. I hadn’t noticed him until he was suddenly there, talking in that deep, raspy voice that should have belonged to a much older boy.
“It’s my new lipstick, I guess.”
“Huh. Is that why your lips are shining like that?”
Susan Gregg Gilmore Page 2