Delta Belles

by Penelope J. Stokes

  A few of Lauren’s boyfriends had been more skilled than Phil Putnam and had managed, even in less than ideal surroundings, to awaken her to her own pleasures. But she had discovered that pleasure itself could be disturbing when her mind and heart did not follow where her body was going. On one or two occasions, she could actually recall looking down to see some oaf sucking on her breast, fumbling to get his hand between her legs, while she reacted with little more than mild surprise. She was, for all intents and purposes, somewhere else—planning a midterm project or making a list of Christmas presents she needed to buy.

  Her current steady, Steve Treadwell, was by far the best of them, the most attentive, the nicest, the least demanding. But even with Steve, Lauren had never felt for a man what her virginal sister obviously felt for Trip Jenkins.

  Lacy actually knew Trip, it seemed. Knew how he thought and felt about things like politics and religion and the state of the world. Understood his passions and dreams, why he wanted to become a lawyer, what he hoped to accomplish with his life. According to Lacy, they talked. They cared about each other. Their relationship was based on more, much more, than the convergence of body parts.

  And Lauren was jealous.

  When the word darted into her mind unbidden, she tried first to ignore it and then to bat it away. But it kept swooping back, a bold blue jay harassing a prowling cat. Vaguely she recalled something from sophomore lit, some Shakespeare play, she thought, where a character referred to jealousy as a big green monster.

  Never in her life had Lauren been jealous of Lacy. Why should she? For twenty-one years Lauren had been the one in the spotlight, garnering all the attention. Lauren was the one who had the boyfriends, the popularity, the good looks—

  Her mental processes squealed to a halt. Wait a minute. How could she possibly believe she was prettier than Lacy, when they were twins? These days Lacy kept her hair short, but other than the haircut, the two of them were virtually identical: same facial features, same eyes, lips, teeth. Even the same figure, down to the half-inch.

  And yet, Lauren realized, she had always felt that way; she had just never admitted it to herself. All these years she had felt superior to Lacy—had needed to feel superior.

  Now she was on the outside looking in. Lacy had Trip, and she had … Steve. Lacy had love and passion and joy and excitement, while Lauren had—

  Sex.

  Good sex, sometimes. But nothing to build a future on.

  The bitter taste of bile rose up in her throat. She went and leaned against the window, where raindrops pelted like rubber bullets across the frozen glass.

  A shiver overtook her. But even as she stood there trembling, Lauren could not deny the truth: The chill came not from the February storm, but from an icy emptiness deep in her own soul.

  TWELVE

  SOMETHING MORE THAN MUSIC

  Rae Dawn sat slumped over the piano in Rehearsal Room A, shivering from the rain that had soaked her on the way to the Music Hall. For the past hour she had been playing frenetically trying to escape the writhing in her stomach, the throbbing in her head. But it was no good.

  All during dinner, while Lacy had been extolling the virtues of her new love, Rae Dawn had managed to keep a cheerful face plastered on, had even forced herself to ask a few questions and pretend to be happy for Lacy.

  And Rae was happy for her. Truly she was, deep down.

  She was just not happy for herself.

  None of it made any sense, these conflicting feelings that assaulted her. She had what she wanted, didn’t she? She had a wonderful mentor in Dr. Gottlieb. She had prospects and possibilities for after graduation. The professor even had a contact in New Orleans, someone who owned a jazz club and might be willing to give her a chance. She was passionate about her music, loved what she was doing. Why then did she have this insane, unpredictable response to Lacy s good news?

  Immediately after dinner, she had sequestered herself in the rehearsal room, as she always did when she was upset or confused or had something she needed to figure out. Music soothed her soul, set her mind free, enabled her to get to the deepest, most hidden emotions of her heart.

  But this time, what came to the surface when she played only served to intensify her agony. Every tender ballad, every hot jazz riff, every plaintive love song reminded her of the adoration in Lacy’s voice when she talked about Trip, the light in her face, the fire in her eyes. The sensations crashed in upon her, a clashing dissonance, a cacophony of desire and self-contempt.

  She played until her fingers grew numb, trying to outrun the emotions. But she hadn’t succeeded. The feelings followed her, terrified her, a rabid dog snarling at her heels.

  She was jealous. Jealous of Lacy Cantrell.

  She had known jealousy before, of course. As a child she had envied those around her whose lives were easy. Kids who had relatively normal parents, a decent home, enough to eat, new clothes rather than hand-me-downs. She had felt the gut-twisting burn, had understood, when she had finally read Othello, why Iago called jealousy “the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”

  But she had never been jealous of a friend. Never envied the good fortune of someone she had grown to love. And certainly never thought herself capable of being jealous because Lacy had finally, deservedly, fallen in love.

  It simply wasn’t possible.

  After all she had endured growing up—her father’s liquor-induced rages, her mother’s gaping emptiness—the last thing in the world she wanted was to marry some man and risk living out the rest of her days as a stranger to herself, ripped to pieces by the shards of her own shattered dreams.

  She had her music. She had a future.

  But suddenly, unexpectedly, it wasn’t enough.

  The truth overwhelmed her, and she sat rooted to the piano bench, sobbing, her tears dripping onto the keys. How long she stayed that way, she did not know, but at last her weeping subsided, and her mind began to drift.

  She thought of Deltas major professors, Dr. Bowen and Dr. Hart. She had spent a bit of time with them now and then, when the Delta Belles had sung for voter registration rallies and civil rights protests. She had even been invited for dinner at their house a time or two.

  They had never done anything inappropriate in her presence, had barely even touched. But nevertheless, Rae Dawn saw it. The love between them. The commitment. The connection. A connection that, because of society’s prejudices, had been and would continue to be unspoken, unacknowledged.

  The injustice of it sliced through her like a hot knife.

  For a long time, she had been dimly aware of a truth lurking deep beneath the surface of her consciousness. A dragon, a subterranean beast waiting for the moment it would strike. But she had kept it leashed, suppressed it, escaped it through her music. Now the dragon reared its head again, and she could feel it stirring within her.

  Yes, she was jealous. But not because she wanted what Lacy had. She was jealous because Lacy had the freedom to speak it, to let the world know how she felt and what she hoped for.

  Rae Dawn’s desire was different, and yet the same. She wanted to be a professional musician, certainly, but she wanted more than that too.

  A life, a love. A house and two dogs and a leisurely late breakfast of waffles and scrambled eggs on a Saturday morning. A piano in the bay window and someone to listen when she played.

  The awareness writhed within her, a truth she could never declare the way Lacy Cantrell had declared her love for Trip Jenkins.

  Because that someone, in her imagination, was not a husband but a partner.

  Not a man but a woman.

  THIRTEEN

  Springtime in

  STONE MOUNTAIN

  SPRING Break

  MARCH 1969

  Delta stepped out of the car and stretched. At the end of the driveway, twin forsythia bushes draped their yellow skirts across the lawn. Up next to the house, azaleas stooped under a load of blossoms—pale pink, magenta, and snowy white
. Fragrant blue and yellow hyacinths lined the sidewalk. On a single breath she inhaled the scent of new grass and pine trees and daffodils.

  It was spring. She was home.

  She barely had time to exhale, however, before the front door slammed open and a small towheaded missile launched through the door and rocketed toward her.

  “Delta! Delta! You’re here ! You’re finally here!”

  Cassie gave a flying leap and hurtled into her arms, knocking her back on her heels. Delta staggered, recovered herself, dropped her purse. Then, laughing, she embraced her little sister, swung her around, and set her back on the ground.

  “You’re getting so big!” she marveled, though it wasn’t really true. Cassie had always been compact and petite, and although she had grown a little, she was still very small. Over her sister’s bony shoulder she caught a glimpse of her mother and father standing on the front stoop. Mama had a handkerchief in one hand and was pulling distractedly at one frayed corner. Daddy’s eyes looked empty and tired. In that unguarded moment, Delta saw something she knew instinctively she wasn’t meant to see. But she couldn’t quite articulate what it was.

  Then her mother was bustling down the steps, pasting on a smile. “Well, come on in, DeeDee,” she said while Cassie danced in wild circles around her sister. “Cassie, where are your shoes?”

  Cassie shrugged. “Look, Delta, I can do a cartwheel.” She flung herself onto the grass, all elbows and knees, flipped over, and landed on her skinny little butt.

  “That’s enough, Cassie,” Mama said, a bit more sternly this time. “Get inside and put on your shoes—it’s not summer yet. Delta can watch you perform later.”

  Reluctantly, Cassie obeyed. Delta followed her father as he went to the car and extracted her suitcase from the trunk.

  “Car running all right?”

  Delta smiled. It was such a dad thing to say. “Yes, Daddy. It’s running just fine. I love it.”

  “Can’t beat a Ford. I’ll change the oil and rotate the tires while you’re here. Maybe do a tune-up, too.” He stroked the rear fender. “Needs washing.”

  He had bought the used car for her the summer between her sophomore and junior years—a silver ’63 Falcon convertible with a black top and matching leather interior. The leather got hot in the summer, but otherwise the little car was a great ride.

  Daddy claimed to have purchased it in self-defense, so he wouldn’t have to make the trip to and from the college every spring and fall. But Delta knew better. He had fallen in love with the Falcon and wouldn’t dare buy it for himself.

  He was still standing there, holding her suitcase in one hand and fondling the fender with the other.

  “Want to take it for a spin, Daddy?”

  He shook his head but didn’t smile the way Delta had expected him to. “Your mama would kill me. Let’s go inside. Maybe later the two of us can take a drive out to the park to see the carving. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  Delta frowned. “Is something wrong, Daddy? Mama’s not sick, is she? She looks a little—I don’t know. Worn out. Worried.”

  “Later,” he said. Then he hefted her suitcase and headed toward the house.

  DINNER THAT FIRST EVENING home turned out to be a boisterous, chaotic affair with no time for real conversation. Mama had cooked all of Delta’s favorite foods—pot roast with potatoes and carrots, creamed baby peas, and, for dessert, a homemade buttermilk pound cake with sliced strawberries.

  She had also invited Ben Rutledge, who was on spring break as well but had stayed in Atlanta once he found out Delta was coming home. Besides, Ben never turned down an opportunity to feast on Mama’s cooking. According to the bits and pieces of conversation that swirled around the table, it appeared he came to dinner at least once a week.

  Since the moment she had arrived, Delta had known something wasn’t quite right. Now her antennae were up, and she began to see things that as a child growing up in this house she had never noticed. The way her parents didn’t really talk, or even look at one another, but used Cassie—and even Ben—as a kind of buffer between them. Her mind cast back to the pre-Cassie years, when it was just the three of them in the house. Mama cooked and cleaned and did whatever else mothers did. Daddy got up every morning and went to work, came home and watched the news, ate dinner and fell asleep in front of the television. Mama knitted. Beyond that, they had few other interests, and none in common.

  Had they been doing this all their lives, passing back and forth like two flashlight beams in a darkened room, and she had never noticed?

  “Tell my daughter about the progress on Lee’s horse, Ben,” Daddy said. “She thinks I’m totally obsessed—”

  “Have some more potatoes,” Mama said. “I know you like them. Why, last time you were here—”

  “Ben and Delta, sit-tin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s—”

  “Cassie! None of that!” Mama reprimanded. “You’ll embarrass your sister.”

  Cassie’s bright eyes darted from Delta to Ben and back again. “Ben, what are you going to do when you get out of college?” she asked with a teasing note in her voice.

  Ben leaned across the table and tousled her hair. “You know perfectly well what I’m going to do, Squirt,” he said. “We’ve talked about this a hundred times. I’m studying to be an architect. I’ll design houses, maybe, or skyscrapers or bridges.”

  Cassie pounced. “So when you and Delta get married, you’ll build her a house and you’ll live together and spend all your time hugging and kissing and—”

  “Cassandra Elizabeth Fox!” Mama snapped. “Unless you want to be sent to your room right this very minute—”

  The little girl drew herself up and gazed placidly at her mother. “All right, Mama, if you’re determined to stand in the way of my education….”

  Ben let out a howl of laughter. “How old are you, Cass? Thirty?”

  “Eight and three-quarters,” she said. “But I’m very advanced for my age.”

  EVERYONE WAS TOO FULL for dessert right away, so after dinner Delta and Ben went out onto the covered patio and sat in the porch swing that hung suspended from the beams. Now and then Delta could see Cassie peering out at them through the blinds.

  Ben put an arm around her and pushed his foot against the paving stones to get the swing moving. “They all expect it, you know.”

  Delta leaned against him and looked across the back yard at the rising moon. “Expect what?”

  “For us to get married, of course. Cassie s just repeating what she’s heard.”

  “Cassie,” Delta said, “makes things up just fine without anyone’s help.”

  Ben chuckled. “Quite true.”

  Delta gazed into his eyes. He was so sweet, and she was so content in his presence. Ben Rutledge was like an old pair of jeans that had been washed a thousand times. A perfect fit. Familiar, soft, and comfortable.

  The metaphor continued to spin out in her mind. Preshrunk. Faded. Predictable.

  Her mind shifted to Lacy Cantrell’s romance with Trip Jenkins. She recalled with vivid clarity the spark in Lacy’s eyes when she finally broke her silence and told them about Trip. The passion. The anticipation. The goose-bump, fire-in-the-veins, mice-in-the-stomach thrill that Delta knew she would never, ever have with Ben.

  Still, he was a good man. Solid. Reliable. Already part of the family. As Mama had pointed out, she could do a lot worse.

  ON WEDNESDAY, five days into spring break, Delta was out in the backyard, playing Wiffle ball with Cassie. Delta was getting pretty adept at making the perforated plastic ball curve and dip, which frustrated Cassie to no end. The kid was accustomed to doing things right, and a strike rather than a home run was simply not acceptable.

  Finally she threw down the bat in exasperation, ran to the patio, and flung herself into the swing. Delta followed, sweaty and breathless.

  “That was fun.” She pulled the rubber band out of her hair and rearranged her ponytail.

  “For you, maybe.”
Cassie crossed her arms and scowled in the direction of the back fence.

  “Ah, c’mon, don’t be a spoilsport. It was fun. Admit it.”

  Delta poked at her ribs and began to tickle her. “Okay, I give,” Cassie said at last. She leaned against her sister and heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I just hate to lose.”

  “Lose?” Delta repeated. “There’s no winning or losing in Wiffle ball. Hell, it’s not the world series.”

  Cassie’s eyes grew wide. “You swore. ”‘

  “Oh. Yeah, well, I apologize. I guess shouldn’t have said hell in front of you.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Cassie said with an impatient shake of her head. “Can you teach me to do it?”

  “Teach you to swear?” Delta laughed. “Honey, it’s not something you have to be taught. You just pick it up. When you’re older. ”‘

  “Other kids at school do it, and they’re my age.”

  Delta regarded her sister, taking in the disheveled blonde hair, the round blue eyes, the heart-shaped little face, already tanned though spring had just begun. At five, Cassie had possessed the appearance of a three-year-old and the vocabulary of a high school junior. Now, at almost nine, she looked to be six or seven at most, and although she was the smartest kid in her class, she undoubtedly got teased at school for being so diminutive. It probably didn’t help any that she had skipped third grade.

  “Listen,” Delta said, pulling Cassie onto her lap and putting her arms around her, “you don’t have to swear to be accepted. You don’t have to pretend to be tough. You’re intelligent and gifted and beautiful. Just be yourself.”

  Cassie picked at a loose thread on the hem of her shorts. “I’m not beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

  Delta suppressed a smile, noting that her little sister did not challenge the notion that she was intelligent or gifted. “When I was your age, or maybe a tad older, I had a mouthful of metal and pimples and knobby knees.”

  “Did not!” Cassie objected, but she seemed heartened by this bit of news.