Susan Gregg Gilmore

by The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove (v5)

  Finally, one evening as the sun was turning a soft amber-red, Mother announced that the house was in perfect order. Then she promptly invited Reverend Foster and his wife over for Sunday lunch. She said she wanted a man of God to sit at her dining room table. Only then, she said, after we had bowed our heads and asked for the Lord’s grace and protection, would the house feel truly blessed.

  And while Mother was preoccupied with God, my little sister hid in her room. Mother thought nothing of it at first, a grieving daughter mourning the loss of her loving, devoted father. She just needed some time to herself, Mother said. She would snap out of it before long now. The Lord would heal her daughter’s wounded heart. But when Mother found Baby Stella’s head in the trash can, even she thought it might be time to call for help.

  Maizelle said she knew a woman on the other side of the river who, for no more than fifty dollars, could rid Adelaide of all the evil that was haunting her, not to mention the darkness that Maizelle was absolutely certain was lurking about the stairs. Mother hesitated, as if she was genuinely considering the offer, but then thanked her and said Reverend Foster suggested she take Adelaide to Atlanta, where the medical care was surely more sophisticated. And more important, Mother added, the doctors did not belong to the Nashville Town and Country Club.

  Reverend Foster came by to check on me every day while Mother was away. He said he was worried that my father’s death and Adelaide’s delicate condition might just be too much for one young girl to bear and thought I might need some comfort at this difficult time. His skin smelled of cheap cologne, and his yellowed teeth looked ghoulish, almost evil. He would touch my shoulder, letting his hand linger there longer than he should have. Today, he said, I looked particularly sad, and then he stroked my cheek. I tried to talk. I tried to scream. But I couldn’t catch my breath. He pressed his body into mine, pushing us both against the living room wall, and I felt his hand slither down my thigh.

  Maizelle was in the kitchen. She said there was corn needing to be shucked. I closed my eyes and started begging God for help. He must have been listening better this time, because suddenly I felt Maizelle’s body force its way between me and Reverend Foster. And in that moment, I knew I was saved.

  “She don’t need any comfort from you,” Maizelle’s voice boomed.

  Reverend Foster took a step back and, with a smirk painted across his face, looked at Maizelle as if she wasn’t even there. “I’d be careful what you say, old woman.”

  “I only answer to one man, and that’s the good Lord. So I suggest you go on and get out of here, Reverend Foster, ’cause taking you out of here myself might just be the biggest thrill I’ve had in a long time.”

  Reverend Foster picked up his Bible left on the table by the front door and turned around and smiled. “God bless you both,” he said and then walked out the door.

  Maizelle asked me if I was all right. She said that was a man sent from the devil himself, and then she spit right there on my mother’s new imported wool rug. That was all we ever said about that day. Maizelle and I never spoke of Reverend Foster again. He still came around, always wanting something from my mother, but Maizelle always made sure she was nearby.

  Mother and Adelaide ended up spending three whole weeks in Atlanta, and when they returned, Mother said the best the doctors could determine was that Adelaide had suffered some sort of nervous breakdown, although Mother preferred to call it an emotional disruption. Either way, sweet little Adelaide truly believed it was her fault that our father had tumbled down the stairs, and she was punishing herself since no one else was willing to do it.

  The night my father died, Adelaide never took the cold medicine Maizelle had given her. She had only pretended to be asleep. When the house was quiet, she slipped out of bed and started playing with her babies, bathing them and dressing them for the night. She could have saved him, so she thought, had she not been running the water in her bathroom sink. The doctors reassured her that she had nothing to do with her father’s accident, and then they doped her up on Haldol and suggested she write in a journal instead of playing with dolls. A girl who would be thirteen soon, they said, should be chatting with her girlfriends, not bathing a plastic toy.

  They told Mother that there was no medical reason for her daughter’s immature development and asked if Adelaide had suffered some sort of childhood trauma, other than her father’s recent death. Mother said she couldn’t think of anything at all but was certain that her daughter would grow out of her childish ways in time. She appreciated their care and gratefully put their prescriptions in her purse.

  But after a while, Mother tossed the pills down the sink. She said she had prayed long and hard about that, too, and the Lord did not want Adelaide walking around drugged and dazed. Then she gave her daughter a notebook filled with paper and a box of new ballpoint pens. Again, Adelaide hid in her room for days, this time hunched over her desk, writing until her fingers cramped. Maizelle soaked her right hand in warm, soapy water at night and rubbed it with lotion that smelled like lilac and jasmine. Mother let Adelaide be, figuring it was better that she write till her hand hurt than that she be secretly changing Baby Stella’s diaper.

  Late one night, I spied Adelaide sitting in front of the fireplace. At first I thought she couldn’t sleep and was just watching the light dance across the logs. But then I saw her rip a piece of paper from her notebook and throw it into the fire. She tossed her entire journal, page by page, into the flames and watched her words, her truest confessions, burn to ash.

  Adelaide got a little better after that. She went back to school before Thanksgiving. Her teacher thought it might be best, given Adelaide’s long absence and still improving health, that she take the full year to recuperate and repeat the eighth grade next fall. But Mother wouldn’t hear of it. She said it would be an embarrassment her family could not endure at this difficult time, and besides, there was nothing wrong with her daughter, and a really good teacher would be able to see that.

  Not long after Christmas, Mother finally persuaded Adelaide to pack most of her babies in cardboard boxes and store them in the top of her closet. She said they would only be napping and promised to retrieve them if Adelaide heard them crying. Maizelle even made little flannel blankets for each and every one of them, hoping she could convince my sister that her babies were cozy and warm.

  Maizelle did not want to touch Baby Stella, who was still in two pieces and stuffed under Adelaide’s bed ever since the night my sister tore that poor doll apart. Maizelle got down on her knees and prayed for her own protection, beads of sweat pooling across her forehead as she held her breath and reached under the bed, blindly grasping for Baby Stella’s head and then her body. She taped the doll back together and placed her in a cardboard box, separate from all the other dolls, and carefully hid the box in the far corner of the attic.

  And as for me, I smiled and told everyone I was fine, but most days I felt like I was suffocating. I missed Samuel desperately. Some nights I fell asleep wanting him so bad that my body ached for him, and some days I felt only numb. I wondered what my mother would consider my greatest sin—having sex before marriage or having sex with a man of a different color. The God she talked about certainly would not have cared for either. And sometimes, I wondered if I had done something wrong. As the days went by and I didn’t hear from Samuel, I became more and more convinced that I had.

  I called his house a couple of times, hoping that he would answer. But when I heard his mother’s voice on the other end of the telephone, I hung up, never finding the courage to tell her who I was. He’d said he loved me, but he didn’t call or write. I guessed he’d changed his mind.

  Maizelle told me he was transferring to Morehouse College the first of September. The president of the school had personally offered him a full academic scholarship. It wasn’t Grambling State, but he was excited to be going all the same. And even though Atlanta was only five hours away, I knew good and well that the distance that separated us could not
be measured in miles.

  I thought about Ruddy too. He did call once or twice after Father died. He said he loved me. He said he sure hated the thought of living without me. But he also said he knew I wouldn’t be happy packed into a little house with a prizewinning bird for an alarm clock. But if I’d be patient, he would give me everything I ever wanted. He was going to be as famous as Johnny Cash someday. I wanted to love him; it just seemed it would be so much easier in the end. But I couldn’t find my way there, and I still couldn’t catch my breath.

  Mother thought I was only missing my father. So she kept encouraging me to call my friends—to go to movies and parties and sleepovers—I guess thinking a busy social calendar would put an end to a teenage girl’s grieving heart. But all the girls at school wanted to talk about was the Cotillion Club’s winter formal. Every senior girl of superior social standing was invited, and my classmates chatted endlessly about their silk gowns and satin shoes and the dinner party at Mary Margaret Hunt’s the night before the dance. I wanted to be like that for once, to not care about anyone or anything other than my next date to the big event. But I regretfully declined the invitation, knowing good and well that Mrs. Hunt had only included my name on the guest list out of some sense of guilt or repentance.

  So instead of looking for party dresses, I started poring over college catalogs, looking for schools in faraway places like California and Vermont, schools like Pomona and Middlebury, schools that I knew absolutely nothing about except that their catalogs pictured happy coeds wearing lightweight cottons or heavy woolens. Unfortunately, unlike Uncle Thad, my mother, who really knew very little about going to college other than what she had picked up working as a salesclerk at the Vanderbilt bookstore, did not believe there was a school worth going to that was either west or north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  In fact, she suggested that there was really no need to leave home at all with a perfectly fine university like Vanderbilt only miles from my front door. I begged Uncle Thad to talk to her. And she finally relented, although only after being held hostage behind closed doors for more than an hour, tortured with arguments about what her dead husband would have wanted for his baby girl.

  Mother insisted that I apply to Sweet Briar, Hollins, and Agnes Scott. She was becoming increasingly convinced that, after four years of an all-girls’ education, four more years might be even better. And although I suspected her logic had less to do with her interest in my education than it did her concern for my acceptance into a socially prominent institution, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was right. After all, Mrs. Hunt herself was a Hollins graduate.

  By spring, Mother and I took shifts waiting for the mailman. She confiscated every acceptance letter and took it to her room. She said she needed to pray over them, and she would get back to me as soon as the Lord had provided her some insight, some divine guidance of sorts. I only hoped that the Lord had taken the time to study the catalogs as carefully as I had. And then, one night at dinner, Mother made an unexpected announcement.

  “Bezellia, after much thought and a lot of prayer, I think it would be best for you to go away to school. Not too far, mind you, and certainly not to California, where they seem to have lost all sense of moral decency. But you have been through a lot. I recognize that, and I do think a change of scenery would do you some good. Furthermore, I am convinced that the Blue Ridge Mountains will provide an inspiring backdrop for your academic studies, not to mention a natural reminder of the power of God, which is at work in our lives at all times. Reverend Foster agrees. So I have mailed Hollins College a deposit. They’re expecting you in late August.”

  The great triumvirate—Mother, Reverend Foster, and God—had made the decision for me. I was Hollins bound. And even though I knew it was what my mother wanted, I was thrilled to be going. Mother and Adelaide both cried with excitement and took turns hugging my neck. They threw green and gold confetti all over the dining room and laughed some more. I had never seen Mother willingly make such a mess in her own house.

  Maizelle poked her head into the room, and Mother motioned for her to come and join us. Maizelle disappeared for a moment on the other side of the door and then came back carrying a large bundle wrapped in yellow tissue paper and tied with a shiny white bow. She said she had been waiting to give this to me for some time now and then placed her gift before me with such solemnity and reverence that, for once in my life, I did feel like a real princess receiving some sort of royal offering.

  I slowly untied the ribbon and carefully pulled the tissue away. And there, in front of me, was a brightly colored quilt, every stitch perfectly sewn with Maizelle’s own two hands, now knotted with age and wear. She said she’d started this quilt the day I went to kindergarten, holding on tight to Nathaniel’s hand. She said I didn’t want to let go, and it took the both of them just to get me in the car and convince me that everything was going to be just fine.

  Scraps of my old clothes—skirts, blouses, hair ribbons—were all sewn into the patchwork. Even one of my father’s dress shirts was cut and pieced into the band. My father would always be with me, she said, pointing to the quilt’s blue-striped edge. And down in the bottom right corner, she had embroidered a deep red heart with a thin green bean stretched across it. Maizelle and I looked at each other, both of us wiping tears from our eyes. In that warm, dark, round face, I found something I had always wanted.

  chapter ten

  Mother helped pack my trunk and even insisted on driving to Roanoke with me. I was actually glad she came, though there were times when we rambled along for miles in silence, none of us, not even Nathaniel, knowing what to say. Of course, the moment the Cadillac passed through the heavy, iron gates of the Hollins campus, my mother bowed her head in prayer and profusely thanked the Lord for our safe arrival and her daughter’s future academic success.

  The grounds were a deep, dull green, tired from the hot summer days but well kept and welcoming all the same. A few grand brick buildings nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains acted like a kind reminder that you had, in fact, come here to learn. Girls dressed in Bermuda shorts and cotton skirts were already swarming about the campus, trying to find their dorm rooms, greeting old friends with squeals and hugs, and kissing teary-eyed parents goodbye. I felt oddly at home in a place I had only seen in photographs.

  By late afternoon, I was settled in my room in Randolph Hall. Mother insisted that Nathaniel move my bed next to the window, and I insisted that it was fine against the wall. My roommate had not yet arrived to voice any opinion or objection, so Nathaniel did as he was told. Mother felt it was very important that the morning light splash across my face. I should greet each day, she said, staring at the power of God.

  Then she made my bed, something I had never seen her do. She neatly tucked the sheets and blanket underneath the mattress, then fluffed the pillows so they looked twice their size. She gently placed Maizelle’s quilt across the foot of my bed, meticulously smoothing it as if she was trying to absorb the details of my life sewn into the fabric by another mother’s hands. Even Nathaniel seemed surprised to see Mrs. Grove manage a domestic task with such resolve and capability.

  Of course, when she was done, she left a Bible by my bed and instructed me to read the Scripture daily. “There are too many temptations out there, Bezellia, and you must arm yourself in the fight against the devil.”

  I thanked her for everything she had done—for letting me go away to school, for driving to Roanoke, even for giving me a new Bible. My mother seemed so proud of herself that day, so proud of a job well done. We left my room arm in arm and then joined the other freshmen and their parents at a punch reception in the dormitory’s formal parlor.

  And while Mother and I nibbled on carrot sticks and pimento cheese sandwiches, Nathaniel took his place by the car. He said he had packed some peanut butter crackers in the glove box and that would be enough to tide him over till later. I was not the only girl with a dark-skinned man waiting outside under a magnolia tree.
Yet I imagined when Nathaniel took Samuel to Morehouse in another week or two, he would be the one nibbling on carrot sticks and dainty little sandwiches.

  Finally the dorm mother stood in the center of the room and politely asked the parents to begin saying their good-byes. The hour had come for their daughters to take their first steps as young Hollins women, and surely, she said, they did not want to stand in our way. A tall, forceful woman with white hair swept tightly on top of her head, she promised to keep a watchful eye on their girls, and I think everyone believed that she would.

  Mother and I walked to the car side by side, her arm tightly wrapped around my waist. We hugged and cried; apparently neither one of us had expected the good-bye to be so difficult. Even Nathaniel had tears in his eyes. He said he didn’t, but I watched him wipe his eyes with the soft white handkerchief he kept in his back pants pocket. Then I watched them both climb into the Cadillac, and suddenly I felt like that little girl going to kindergarten for the first time, wanting to grab Nathaniel’s big, strong hand and beg him not to leave me alone underneath this magnolia tree. I couldn’t take my eyes off the car as it wound its way up the long, narrow drive and back out the gate. And when the Cadillac finally disappeared on the other side of the green, grassy slope, I turned around and took a very deep breath.

  My roommate was from Troutville, a small town north of Roanoke. I had imagined she would be like Ruddy’s little sister, poor and simple, but she was neither of those things. Sarah Stanton Miller was smartly dressed in a light blue pantsuit and moved her body more like a ballerina than a nervous freshman. She was the great-great-great niece, or something like that, of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and said she had come to Hollins to write. With words, she said, she was going to fight for all women who had been denied their rightful place in society as well as any other poor soul she considered in need of an authorial champion. The Feminine Mystique was her Bible, and she taped pictures of her aunt Lizzie, Gloria Steinem, and some woman named Betty Friedan to the back of our door. I wondered if Samuel had heard of this Betty Friedan. I wondered if my mother and Reverend Foster had known that girls like Sarah Stanton Miller went to Hollins. Surely if they had, they would have prayed a bit more diligently, waited a bit more patiently, for an answer that would have led me to a more traditional campus.