Susan Gregg Gilmore

by The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove (v5)

  “Now I know you’re not going to be fighting any Indians around these parts, but I’m afraid you may have an even tougher battle up ahead of you—although you surely know that by now too. People can be mighty cutting without knives in their hands. They can say all sorts of things that aren’t true. Damn near make you bleed. Hell, sometimes I think they just make up some of this shit so they have something to spread about town like manure on a vegetable crop. Look, Bee, your mother ain’t no angel. But she’s not all devil either. Sometimes life just forces the good right out of you so that nobody can see anything else but the bad. And your father, my brother, he wasn’t perfect either. But be careful, sweetie, because when somebody dies, it’s easy to start seeing them that way. Perfect, you know. And it’s real easy to start blaming yourself and everybody else for everything that went wrong.” Uncle Thad put his hand on the back of my head and drew me close to his body. I felt warm tears rolling down my cheeks.

  “Your daddy wouldn’t want you to hang your head in shame. No sir. He’d want you to be proud, proud of yourself, proud of your family, and especially proud of that big name he gave you,” he told me, and then leaned down and kissed my forehead and whispered in my ear. “It will carry you through this, Bezellia. Don’t you forget it.”

  The next morning, Mother came downstairs for her coffee. She was wearing a black silk suit with her diamond-encrusted G pinned to her lapel. Her hair was pulled neatly into a black barrette. She looked as beautiful as any new widow could hope to look. Maizelle rushed to pour her a cup of fresh, hot coffee, and Nathaniel helped her into one of the kitchen chairs. Her mother and father kept their distance on the far side of the table, not offering their daughter anything more than a weak “good morning.” When the doorbell rang, I took my mother’s hand and led her to the front door.

  “Thank you for coming. We’re holding up. Yes, it’s very hard, but we’ll make it. Oh, yes, the flowers are lovely. Thank you. Red roses were my father’s favorite.” And so on and so on. I must have repeated those same words at least a hundred times, each time sounding just as sincere as one of Mother’s perfectly coiffed friends who was trying to pump me for information about my father’s sudden and mysterious death. I wouldn’t have known what to tell them even if I had wanted to share my family’s latest and darkest secret.

  And in the few hours since my father died, we had all become more at ease with what we needed to do. The etiquette of death had apparently given us something to hide behind as though we were performing some ancient burial ritual I had studied in school, not really understanding why or what we were doing but comforted by our faithful obedience to the task.

  And again, after a day of serving lemonade and shaking hands, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space as I had seen my own mother do many times after an evening of entertaining. Nathaniel was picking up glasses and napkins left scattered about the living room. Nana and Pop had gone to bed. They said our friends were downright draining. Adelaide was balled up in front of the television with Baby Stella tucked underneath her arm. Mother was back in her room, soundly sleeping after one of Father’s friends from the hospital had personally delivered a handful of Valium. Maizelle was buzzing back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen, wrapping Pyrex dishes in Saran Wrap and singing the same old song about the number of artichoke and chicken casseroles she would need to freeze … or throw away. She stopped to pat my back and tell me that my father would have been proud of me today and then scooted into the laundry room with another armful of dirty linens.

  I heard what she was saying, but I wasn’t really listening. My thoughts were already drifting farther and farther away from Grove Hill, back beyond the house, somewhere on the other side of the creek, away from all the fake and phony people who claimed my parents were their dearest friends. And just when I thought I could escape for a moment, a faint and steady knock at the back door demanded my return. I dreaded the thought of having to make nice, polite conversation with one more person, but I dutifully pulled myself up and straightened my skirt. I even rubbed my hands across my head, making sure my hair was neatly in place.

  But there on the other side of the glass stood Samuel, his warm, familiar smile begging me to open the door. My hands fumbled for the lock, and that old kitchen door suddenly seemed stubborn and heavy. Samuel smiled a little bigger as I struggled with the latch, his eyes encouraging me to try a little harder. And just when I was about to give up, the door flung open and I fell into his arms, sobbing so that I could barely hear him whispering in my ear, promising me that everything would be all right. People had told me that all day long, but when Samuel said it, I wanted to believe it was true.

  “Good Lord, whatcha doing here, Samuel?” I heard Maizelle’s voice asking from somewhere behind me. But instead of giving Samuel time to answer, I grabbed him by the hand and dragged him into the yard, slamming the door behind us both. We started walking in the dark, holding tightly on to each other’s hands. We may have walked in circles for all I know. Neither one of us said a word about where we were going. We just kept walking, and after a while, we found ourselves standing at the edge of the creek, those grand cherrybark oaks inviting us to come and rest under their strong, graceful branches.

  We sat down in the grass among a thousand chiggers and mosquitoes. But neither one of us cared about that either. Still, not a word spoken between us. Every movement of my body told Samuel exactly what he needed to know, and I didn’t care if Nathaniel was mad at me for the rest of my life or if my mother rose up from her bed and slapped me across the face. I was where I needed to be.

  “It’s not fair,” I finally said, my voice joining the choir of cicadas and crickets that seemed to have been singing a mournful, plaintive dirge. A long time passed before Samuel answered. It was as if he was letting my pain float far into space, among the stars and the moon.

  “I’m real sorry, Bezellia. You’re right. It’s absolutely not fair for anybody to die like that, falling down the stairs in his own house,” he said at last, wrapping his left arm tightly around my waist.

  “He didn’t fall, Samuel.” I said it so matter-of-factly that it almost scared me.

  “What do you mean? Somebody push him?”

  “No. Lord, I don’t know. Maybe. You know what Mrs. Holder told me today? She told me about some poor lawyer down in Williamson County that was just about my father’s age that hanged himself last week. She said it must be terrible for a young girl like myself to lose my father at such a young age, although she imagined it was better that he fell down a flight of stairs than was found hanging from a pipe in the basement. Thing is, she wasn’t sorry. She was just fishing for information, examining my face for any twitch or tear that would prove her suspicions true.

  “Of course, everybody else crowding into my house wanted to be sure I knew that all of this, someday, would make me stronger. Stronger for what? Funny, don’t you think, that whatever killed my own father is somehow going to make me stronger. Truth of the matter is, Samuel, I don’t really care about my father right now. I just don’t care. Bet that sounds pretty awful. But if he had only loved her. Or she had loved him. Hell, I don’t know. I just know things would be different.”

  Samuel kissed my lips, maybe only hoping to seal my mouth shut for a minute or two so I’d quit saying such hurtful things about a man who could no longer stand up and defend himself. He kept talking. I kept hearing words. But as I rubbed my finger across my lips, my thoughts started wandering away from my father and toward the boy sitting next to me, the boy who had once called me a princess, the boy who had just kissed me for the first time.

  “I don’t think there’s any sin in thinking things, Bezellia. Can’t hardly help what passes through your mind,” he said, taking my hand in his.

  I dropped my head onto his shoulder and tried to focus my thoughts on my father. “Yeah. But maybe that’s where things need to stay, locked up tight in your head.”

  “Maybe. But maybe it’s bette
r to set those thoughts free, instead of locking them up like some wild animal caught and thrown in a cage, pacing around and around till it loses its mind. Maybe that’s kind of what happened to your mama and daddy. They weren’t able to tell each other what they were thinking.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” I said, turning my body so I could look Samuel square in the eyes. “I never was meant to be here. I never wanted any of this. I just wanted to be in a normal family, any family that really loved each other. Hell, I’d even be in yours.”

  “Even mine?” Samuel said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Even yours,” I said, this time ignoring his insinuation, although I imagine I had insulted him without even trying. “In the past two days, I have done nothing but entertain all these people lurking about my house as if they were my best friends. Damn it, Samuel, I was good at it, being fake and genuine all at the same time. It almost felt like a gift, a strange God-given gift. And now I’m afraid, terrified really, that’s what’s in store for me—a lifetime of luncheons and parties and pretty suits and white cotton gloves. In the end, I probably will go crazy, like my dead daddy, my drunken mama, and my little sister, who’s going to carry that damn baby doll to the eighth grade.

  “God, what is wrong with me? All I’m thinking about is me and what’s going to happen to me.”

  “Bezellia, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about yourself and what’s going to happen to you at a time like this. It’s only natural. But I can promise you that everything will, eventually, get better. Not tomorrow or the next day, but on down the road a ways. Like Daddy always tells me, you can’t climb a mountain if it’s smooth.” His voice sounded so certain, so convincing, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever find my way to the top of this rocky slope.

  “Everybody who walked through that house today thinks my mother killed my father,” I blurted into the darkness. “Maybe she did. Maybe we all did—Adelaide and me too. Little by little, maybe we all pushed him down those stairs.”

  Samuel lowered his head between his knees and rocked his body back and forth. “Lord, I don’t know what it’s like to be a Grove—nor do I want to, really. But I do know what it’s like for people to make their minds up about you without knowing the truth. You can’t let it shake you, Bezellia. You just can’t.”

  “Shit, this is not about being black, Samuel. Not everything is about being black.”

  “Well, there you’re wrong, Bezellia. Everything about me is about being black, just like everything about you is about being a Grove.”

  “Okay, then, what do you think I’m supposed to do? Go to a luncheon and play bridge? Hide behind a gin and tonic? Look for a boy who wears cashmere?”

  “Cashmere?”

  “Forget it.”

  Samuel took a deep breath, and I could tell he was trying to put his words together in an order that I could follow. “Bezellia, do you remember what you told me the first time we met?” I stared at him as if to say no. “You said I’d never forget you. And contrary to what you think, it’s not because of that crazy name of yours. I’ll never forget you because you are this incredible girl with this absolutely huge heart. Your family’s kind of strange, that name of yours is definitely strange, but you’re not.”

  Maizelle had promised me that someday I would be loved right, and now, sitting here next to Samuel, I was beginning to believe her. Yesterday I’d been hoping maybe Ruddy could give me some of that love, at least a tiny taste of it. But it wasn’t like that with Samuel. He saw the very worst of me, the rotten part, the part I hated myself, and he still loved me. And I didn’t think I was going to need a ring on my finger to prove how much I loved him either.

  “Oh, God, I’m going to hell for sure,” I said, my voice sounding soft and weary.

  “Now how do you figure that?”

  “Because I want you, to be with you. My father’s been dead barely two whole days, and I’m not wearing black and crying into a monogrammed handkerchief. I’m sitting by the creek in the pitch dark wanting nothing more than to be with you.”

  Samuel leaned across my body, and I fell to the ground beneath the weight of his chest. He kissed me on each cheek, and then on the mouth, and then we kissed again with our mouths open wide. He lifted himself up on his hands and looked down at my face, and I knew if I was going to hell, then Samuel was going with me.

  He pulled down his pants and pulled up my skirt and then wedged his body between my legs. He eased himself inside of me, carefully and slowly, stopping every so often to make sure I was okay. His body rocked back and forth as he kissed my face, gently at first. Then his movements became stronger and more deliberate. My body hurt with all of Samuel inside me, but I didn’t want him to stop. He raised his head, and I could see that he was lost in a world of his own. And when we were done, exhausted and sweaty from the effort of loving each other so fully, I started to cry. Samuel wiped my tears with his rough, callused hands, and I fell asleep feeling loved and protected just like a little baby must feel all snugly wrapped in her mother’s arms.

  chapter nine

  Life goes on, so they say. And for everybody else in town, I guess it did. But after my father died, everything around me seemed to change. Maizelle changed for sure. Although she’d never say it, I think she felt like the Lord had let her down the day of the tragic event, the formal name that soon became synonymous with my father’s death. Now she was always scared, scared that she’d trip down the stairs and break her own neck, or that Adelaide would suffocate under her bedcovers, or that I’d choke on a piece of chicken. Maizelle said bad things always come in threes, and we were just one-third of the way there. Nathaniel told her she was acting childish, but that didn’t stop her from fretting over everybody and everything. She said little prayers all day long, hopeful the Lord was listening better this time.

  Nathaniel changed too. He wasn’t scared or anything. He was just quiet. He never talked to Mother’s impatiens anymore or whistled old hymns while sweeping the front porch. He never sat on the back steps at the end of the day, sipping a cold glass of lemonade and teasing Maizelle as she finished cooking our dinner. He talked to me some, mostly to see how I was doing. But he talked to the horses more. I think he was convinced that they better understood his loneliness. As the days passed, Nathaniel acted more and more like his old self, but there was a sadness covering his eyes that never seemed to go away.

  Mother, well, she changed the most. She missed her precious Charles terribly. And just like Uncle Thad had warned might happen, she talked about my dead father as if he had been the most loyal and devoted husband in all of Nashville, a saint really, the patron saint of marital bliss. And now, with him gone, she cried a river of tears and wore black for weeks. And after going to the funeral, she just kept going, to church that is. Before long, she had traded her bottle of gin for a Bible and was attending church more often than she had bridge parties at the country club. She was now stoic and sober and overflowing with the Holy Spirit.

  Nathaniel said we had God almighty to thank for this miraculous transformation, but I was not so sure. I had, quite truthfully, spent many tearful nights praying for a new mother, but the one that had been delivered was not exactly what I had hoped for. This one walked around the house quoting Scripture and praising Jesus and seemed to actually care about other people more than herself. I even heard her tell Maizelle that she finally understood what it must be like to be colored, to be a slave to the evil in the world. Maizelle just rolled her eyes. I think she might have even spit in Mother’s coffee just for good measure.

  Mother confessed that, after her dear Charles died, she had desperately tried to talk to her own daddy about the sadness she had endured for so long. And for once I wondered if her running away from home had more to do with her parents than with any heartsick boy or small country town. I even overheard Mother ask if they felt any regret for treating her the way they had, the three of them whispering in the den late one night, their voices growing louder and louder with every word spoken
. Nana finally stormed out of the room just like I’d seen my own mother do at least a hundred times before.

  The next morning, Pop told his only daughter that all her grieving had worn him out and he needed to get back to the lake and rest before his heart gave out for good. Before he left, though, he handed Mother an old leather-bound Bible, said it had been her grandmother’s but it looked like she needed it more than he did. Mother admitted that at first she thought about throwing it at him. But instead she opened it squarely in the middle and started reading. She read for hours and then fell to her knees and found she really liked it there. With her head bent in prayer, she poured all of her hurt and grief and anger out on the one Father who, by the very nature of his job description, had to patiently listen.

  For months after that, the Bible was the only book Mother ever read. And when she dared to pick up the afternoon paper, she promptly tossed the society page aside and read only Billy Graham’s “My Answer” and “Hints from Heloise,” one suggesting she cleanse her soul, the other her kitchen cabinets.

  One morning I saw her in front of the house, sitting awkwardly behind the steering wheel of the Cadillac. I’m not really sure where she was headed, but she looked afraid, frozen in place like a block of ice. She finally shifted the car into reverse and pulled it back into the garage. The very same day she started redecorating the house. But this time, she said, the Lord was directing her. She was on a holy mission of sorts to make Grove Hill a haven from Satan’s influence in the world, which apparently included everybody and everything from the Beatles to short skirts and go-go boots.

  First she repainted the front parlor a heavenly blue, at least that’s what Mother called it, but, to be honest, it looked more like the mold that grows on an old piece of cheese. Then she ordered a new rug for the library, reupholstered the sofa in the living room, bought new curtains for the kitchen, and had Nathaniel rearrange the furniture in my bedroom, even though I told her I liked it the way it was. And when she found an old Magic 8 Ball, a birthday gift from Cornelia, stuffed under my mattress, she had Nathaniel put on his heaviest work gloves and throw it away for fear that her even touching it would invite the devil into our lives.