We Are All Good People Here

by Susan Rebecca White

  Leroy Evans was a client of hers who had been sentenced to die fifteen years earlier for a murder he could not possibly have committed, for a number of reasons. For one, he was the pit master at a church BBQ during the time of the murder. Literally dozens of people could vouch for him, and several did just that, under oath. But the white prosecuting attorney, by God, needed a conviction. And the sworn testimony of black witnesses clearly held no sway with the all-white jury who declared Leroy Evans guilty. After years dedicated to his case, Mom and her team had gotten his conviction overturned. And so we showed up to greet Mr. Evans as he took his first steps as a freed man. We cheered and wept as he walked out from behind the metal fence, wearing the navy suit my mother had brought for him, a shy smile on his face, tears rolling down his cheeks. And there was my mother beside him, my mother who had driven down to Jackson State hours earlier, in order to accompany him through his release, to stay by his side and assure him that yes, it was really happening.

  It occurred to me that maybe I should write my essay about my mom, about how I used to resent her for taking on such hard things, especially after such a hard thing had happened to us with the death of my dad. But I was beginning to realize that Mom had taught me something essential: That sometimes it is possible to right a wrong, but you have to work for it. Justice does not simply show up on its own, gliding in on the wings of platitudes. Had Mom not worked as tirelessly as she did, Leroy Evans might well have been put to death by the state. But he wasn’t. He was not.

  And then my mind shifted to thoughts of Dean and what would happen once he arrived. I was planning on losing my virginity, on that very night! Would I seem different afterward? Would something about me exude “woman” instead of “girl”? Would I have an extra stride in my step, a deep knowing in my eyes? Would Mom be able to tell when she came home from her trip to D.C.?

  And would it feel good? Would I have an orgasm? Our Bodies, Ourselves, which I had revisited after my last conversation with Mountain Man, said that women often don’t climax the first time. And a few weeks earlier, Mom—after remarking that I certainly was “spending a lot of time with Dean”—had launched into a mortifying discussion about sex, during which she told me that it took her a little while to learn how to “be fully satisfied,” but that finally she and my father tried it with her on top and something clicked. At that point I had covered my ears and yelled, “Stop talking! Stop talking!”

  I closed my notebook, as I had stopped jotting down ideas for my essay and instead had started doodling Dean’s name all over the page. I wished, suddenly, for a sibling to confide in. A sister. Anna and I used to think of ourselves as sisters, but even if she and I had been on good terms, I would never talk to her about this. Sex was too fraught a subject. Not just because of George, but also because she would probably say I should wait until marriage. I thought briefly of calling Lizzie—but I didn’t really want to talk about sex with her, because that would open the door to talking about her and Sake, and for some reason I just felt really uncomfortable doing that. I knew it was okay for them to be together, but I just didn’t really want to think about it.

  I glanced at my watch. It was 6:45. Dean would arrive in an hour and fifteen minutes. I had a sundress I wanted to change into that I had bought from a shop in Little Five Points. It was made of soft white cotton and printed with little pink strawberries. Really, it was too summery for an October night, but I didn’t care. I stood from my seat at the kitchen table and went to my room, standing in front of the full-length mirror mounted on the back of the closet door. Here I was. Seventeen. I allowed myself the acknowledgment that I was pretty. And then the doorbell rang. God, was he here already? It wasn’t even seven. Shit. I ran my hands through my hair and walked to the back door, but when I opened it, there stood Anna, Anna who had not talked to me since I scolded her for embracing Mountain Man in the woods nearly two weeks ago. Did she know that afterward I had sent Mom over to tell Aunt Eve about what had happened with George? Surely she did.

  “Hey!” I said. “Come in! I’m glad to see you.”

  “Hey,” she said, flashing me a bright, toothy Anna smile.

  We walked into the kitchen together. “I still haven’t finished my personal statement,” I said, motioning to the notebook and pens on the table. “It’s so hard to figure out what to write!”

  “I haven’t finished mine, either.”

  “Are you still thinking UVA or Chapel Hill?” I asked.

  “I’ve actually been thinking about applying to schools out west. In California, maybe.”

  “Wow,” I said as I rummaged through the pantry, pulling out a bag of Chessmen cookies. I broke the seal, pulled one out for myself, and offered the bag to Anna, who shook her head.

  “Do you have any wine?” she asked.

  “Uh, sure, I guess.” I pulled Mom’s open bottle of Chardonnay out of the fridge and poured us each a small serving into the jelly glasses Mom and I used for orange juice. I was kind of bummed to be giving it to Anna—I had been thinking Dean and I could share the rest of the bottle—but I didn’t want to say no to her request, not when she was actually sitting down and talking to me.

  “So where in California? Pepperdine?”

  She took a sip of her wine. “They don’t allow dancing.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, it’s like, super Christian.”

  “Um, aren’t you super Christian?”

  “I’m not ‘no dancing’ Christian! I was thinking more like UC Santa Cruz or Berkeley.”

  “Really?”

  Neither was a place I pictured Anna. I pictured her tucked inside a columned sorority house on some beautiful southern campus, giggling as she tried on outfits with her roommate before a mixer.

  Of course, that was what I had imagined before last year’s prom. Before George.

  “I’ve just been thinking about how there’s this big world out there and I ought to see more of it.”

  “Wow. Would your parents let you go? California is so far away, and both places are really lefty, aren’t they?” Anna’s dad was a bigwig in the Republican Party of Georgia.

  “They’re giving me some pushback, but I think I can talk them into it. If I get into Berkeley, that will help with Dad. He’s big into rankings. And I’ll tell Mom that going out west will help me get over everything that happened last year.”

  It occurred to me that Anna had just acknowledged that I knew that Aunt Eve knew about George.

  “Anna, I’m so sorry about what happened that night—”

  She cut me off. “It’s okay. Seriously. Mom’s making me go see a counselor, and it’s been good.”

  “Who are you seeing?”

  “Her name’s Ruth. Ruth Stein.”

  “Oh my God, she’s mine, too! Mom must have given her number to your mom. What do you think about all of her Hershey’s Kisses wrappers?”

  “Huh. I guess I noticed, but I never really thought about them. I like her, though. She’s easy to talk to.”

  “Yeah, she’s great.”

  “Listen,” Anna asked. “Do you have any money?”

  “Wait, what? Why?”

  “It’s for Miss Ada.”

  “Aw! I miss her.”

  Miss Ada had retired from working for Aunt Eve earlier that year. Her back had started giving her real trouble.

  “Mom and I went and visited her last month. Some of the apartments around hers have boarded-up windows, and she told Mom to always telephone when she sends money so she can watch out for it. She says there are boys in her project who steal letters straight out of her mailbox.”

  “That’s awful!”

  “The whole time we were visiting, Ada kept grimacing and making these awful faces. Mom finally asked if her back was acting up, and Ada told us she was in terrible pain. Like, shooting pain that went from the middle of her back all the way down her leg.”

  “God, poor Ada.”

  “I think acupuncture might help. Of course, when I mention
ed this to Dad he was totally against it—he acted as if I had suggested witchcraft—and Mom is siding with him, per usual. So they won’t help pay for it. But I was thinking that if we pooled our money . . .”

  “For Miss Ada to get acupuncture? That doesn’t sound very ‘Ada.’ Unless the practitioner is also, I don’t know, a Baptist deacon.”

  “I think when you’re in a lot of pain you’re willing to try anything. And everything I’ve read about acupuncture says it can be really helpful. Doctors don’t want to admit it works because they don’t want people to stop believing in Western medicine. But look, if she doesn’t want to try it, she can always just keep the money.”

  “Why are you reading up on acupuncture?”

  “Oh, one of the guys I met on my NOLS trip was really into it. It helped him get over a ski injury.”

  I thought of the hundred-dollar bill hidden in the back of my drawer, tucked inside an old pair of wool socks. Actually, it was perfect. I couldn’t spend it on myself without feeling guilty, and I couldn’t give it back to Mom without confessing that Aunt Eve had bought me a three-hundred-dollar prom dress, something that would offend Mom on multiple levels. So why not give the money to Ada, who certainly deserved more than a bad back and a boarded-up housing project for her retirement?

  “I’d love to contribute,” I said. Anna grinned.

  Just as I was returning from my bedroom, cash in hand, the doorbell rang. Anna had walked to the living room, where she was looking at the framed photos on the mantel, one of which was of us as little girls, wearing matching rainbow-striped T-shirts.

  “Here you go,” I said, handing her the hundred-dollar bill.

  “Oh my gosh, Sarah! This is incredibly generous! Thank you!”

  “When are you going to give it to Ada? Maybe I could come with you.”

  “I thought I’d go by there tonight.”

  “God, are you sure that’s safe?” I asked. “I mean, it’s getting dark, and didn’t Ada say there’s a lot of crime at her apartment building?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Sometimes the places that seem the safest are the least safe of all.”

  Like a party in someone’s basement after prom.

  The doorbell rang again. “That’s probably Dean,” I said. “We’re going to watch a movie.”

  I opened the door. There was Dean with a pizza box in one hand and a Ball jar filled with pink tulips in the other.

  “Pretty!” exclaimed Anna.

  “They’re from Aunt Linda,” said Dean. “She bought a dozen, kept six, and sent the other half to you.”

  “How romantic of your aunt to send me flowers,” I joked.

  “Smartass,” Dean said. He looked cute, freshly showered. He was wearing my favorite T-shirt, the dark blue one that matched his eyes.

  “I’m going to go!” called Anna.

  “Bye,” I said. “Love you. Please be careful.”

  • • •

  Dean set the pizza box on the counter while I cleared my work stuff off the kitchen table. And then he walked to me, draped his arms over my shoulders, and kissed me lightly on the lips.

  “You look really pretty.”

  “I was going to put on a dress, but then Anna showed up totally out of the blue.”

  “I like you in jeans,” he said. “They look good on your butt.”

  “So what kind of pizza did you get?” I asked, ignoring his comment, which didn’t sound like Dean, but rather like some guy in a John Hughes movie.

  “Meat Lover’s Delight!” he exclaimed. “Ground beef, pepperoni, sausage.”

  I must have made a face.

  “Wait, what?”

  “That’s just, that’s a lot of meat.”

  “I can go get us a different pizza,” he offered.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just pick some of it off. Do you want a Coke, or a glass of wine? There’s some left in the fridge.”

  “I’ll have a Coke,” he said. “Although mostly I just want you.” I tried not to wince. He sounded so corny.

  “There’s Cokes in the fridge. Grab one for me, too.”

  I walked to the cabinet to pull down plates. “Let’s watch while we eat.”

  We were going to watch Harold and Maude, a movie Mom and I owned and had viewed no fewer than one thousand times but Dean had never seen.

  “Sure.”

  I put two big slices of pizza on each of our plates, then started picking off most of the toppings from mine.

  “I feel like a jerk about the Meat Lover’s,” he said. “It’s just they were having a special and I thought it sounded really good.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, but in my mind I was thinking, You’re looking for discounts on this particular night?

  “Listen, don’t eat too much, okay?”

  “What, are you afraid I’m going to get fat?”

  “Jesus. No. It’s just that if you’re overly full when you’re, you know . . . it can make for an extremely awkward digestive situation.”

  Still holding the piece of pepperoni I had just plucked off, I looked at him. “Did Zoe fart while y’all were having sex?”

  We had never actually discussed whether or not he and Zoe had had sex, but I assumed they had since they had dated for two years and neither of them was evangelical.

  “Let’s just say, digestive issues can be tricky.”

  “Great,” I said, taking our plates and walking to the living room where the movie was already loaded into the VCR. “Now I’m terrified I’m going to fart.”

  Dean laughed, following me with the Cokes in hand. “This is probably the world’s most sexy conversation.”

  “I know. Let’s continue! Let’s allude to more awkward sex with your ex! You guys did have sex, right?”

  It was a question I had both wanted to ask and wanted to avoid. I knew from Our Bodies, Ourselves that it was really important to talk with your “lover” (ugh) about any fears or anxieties you might have. But I also really didn’t want to think about Dean having sex with Zoe. I put Dean’s plate on the coffee table and sat down with my plate of pizza on my lap. Dean put down our sodas and then sat beside me, our legs touching.

  “So you really want to talk about who we’ve had sex with?”

  “I do,” I said. “I mean, it seems like the right thing to do.”

  But did it? Zoe was so striking, so dynamic, so fucking talented, and now I was going to hear about all of the awesome, wild sex they used to have.

  “All right. You first,” said Dean.

  “Okay,” I said. “So, I wouldn’t sleep with anyone unless I was serious about him, and you’re the first guy I’ve ever seriously dated. You do the math.”

  “Cool. Mine’s pretty easy, too. I’ve just got Zoe.”

  “And y’all did have sex, right?”

  “Once. The condom broke, and she got really freaked out that she might get pregnant. She’s Catholic, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to have an abortion. So, after that we stopped having sex in the, um, conventional manner.”

  I chewed my pizza while he talked, feeling relieved that Zoe and Dean didn’t have some epic sexual history that I could never live up to. “So y’all didn’t have sex except for that one time? Wow. Cool! Is it weird to say that that makes me really happy? I mean, she’s kind of intimidating.”

  “Please. She’s got nothing on you.”

  I kissed him on the cheek.

  “We did have other kinds of sex. . . .”

  “Oh. Of course. You had oral. That makes sense.”

  “And anal.”

  “What?”

  “Sarah, it’s just another erogenous zone.”

  “Ew, ew, ew! Oh my God!” I actually felt myself scooting away from him, as if he were contaminated. “You don’t think I want to have anal sex, do you?”

  “Well, from your reaction I guess not.”

  “Ew. Seriously, nothing appeals to me about anal sex. Nothing. And honestly, it kind of freaks me out that you did that. Li
ke, more than once?”

  Dean’s jaw tightened. “You know that most gay men have anal sex, right?”

  “What does that have to do with anything? Are you telling me you’re gay?”

  “Jesus, Sarah, no. I’m just saying that you’re kind of coming across as homophobic.”

  “That’s so mean! I’m not saying I’m against other people having anal sex. We’re talking about us and what I’m comfortable with, and how I’m clearly different from Zoe, who’s just so experimental and open and artsy.”

  “Sweetie.” He put a hand on my forearm.

  “Yes, sweetie?” I answered as sarcastically as I could.

  “You know what, Sarah?” he said, placing his plate on the coffee table and standing so that he loomed above me. “You don’t want to have sex? Fine. You don’t want to have anal sex? No problem. But don’t get all biting and sarcastic just because you’ve got issues with gay people.”

  I glared at the remaining pizza on my plate, that ridiculous pizza with all of its stupid meat that I had to pick off. I was no longer hungry. I stood and walked to the kitchen. As I put the plate in the sink I called out over my shoulder, “My objection to you having had anal sex with your ex has nothing to do with how I feel about gay people. You’re the one making this about gay people!”

  He followed me into the kitchen. “When was the last time you hung out with Lizzie?”

  I turned to face him. “What?”

  “You guys used to hang out all of the time, and now you never do, and she thinks it’s because she and Sake are together.”

  “Wait, what? When did she say that?”

  “Last week. I was talking to her about my moms. . . .”

  “Your mom’s what?”

  “My moms. Look, my mom is gay. Aunt Linda is not my aunt. She’s my mom’s partner. They’ve been together since I was two. I don’t tell most people at Coventry. I mean, it’s not like I’m from the Buckhead world. It would just be one more thing about me that was off.”

  Oh my God. Aunt Linda was Dean’s mom’s lover? I could not imagine. It wasn’t that I couldn’t imagine two women having sex—Sake and Lizzie practically glowed from all of the sex they were presumably having—but I couldn’t imagine those two no-nonsense women with their sensible haircuts and their sensible shoes and their sensible diets doing anything together in bed but sleeping.