The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  “What you talking bout, Mr. Dupree? I ain’t never been in no trouble.”

  “You born a Negro in this country, you in trouble from your first breath.”

  “Well, I don’t aim to go heaping trouble on trouble, sir.”

  “Son, you think life is gon be one big happy fish fry. But you better wake up right quick, or you’ll find yourself in the skillet.” Waving his hand as though shooing a fly, he turned away.

  Donny cut lawns and hedges on Tsali Street, saving up for a car. Leon had him an old beat-up maroon Dodge, and all the girls were falling all over themselves trying to get him to take them out. Not that Donny had any interest in any girl but Rochelle. But he wouldn’t a bit have minded her falling all over him a time or two. Leon said a car was what it took. And he hadn’t known Leon to be wrong yet.

  Some days he walked to the country club and carted bags around. The white caddies from Cherokee Shoals had them a clubhouse. Once when Donny tried to go in during a rainstorm, they said, “Get the hell out of here, you motherfucking coon.” Now he sat under a tree by the putting green, watching above the hedges as white kids sprang off the diving board. Sometimes he saw Sally Prince strolling in her suit from the pool to her car. Or he watched the women on the putting green in Bermuda shorts and straw hats, hunched over putters, shifting from one cleated shoe to another. Rochelle cleaned the houses of some of these same women while they knocked little white balls all over the place. Seemed like a crazy way to spend your time. But you didn’t question the behavior of white folks.

  The white caddies were chosen first, but Donny usually got a nod at some point. Mr. Prince, for instance, always picked him, even if there were white boys waiting. They would eye him as he heaved Mr. Prince’s huge zippered bag onto his back. Occasionally, one would warn him not to come back, but he always ignored them and stayed within view of the pro shop while he was waiting. Once walking home along the highway, he was nearly run over by a caddy on a motorcycle. He jumped the ditch as the cycle threw up a shower of dirt and pebbles.

  Although Donny had never played golf, he had learned enough from watching to know when to free which club from its leather mitt. He enjoyed hiking with a couple of bags on his back around the bright green course, listening to the birds and watching the little white balls and scrubbing the grass stains off them in the ball washers. The white men liked him and sometimes chatted.

  “Hot enough for you, son?”

  “Yes sir, it sure is.”

  “A real scorcher, all right.”

  “Yes sir, it sure is.”

  “Hit me a pretty good ball off that last tee.”

  “Yes sir, you sure did.”

  “Boy, wouldn’t a beer taste good right now?”

  “Yes sir, it sure would.”

  They always tipped him good. He’d walk home picking up soft drink bottles along the highway. With his refund, he’d buy candy for Rochelle’s brothers and sisters. Each time he walked back into the familiar streets of Pine Woods, he felt like a secret agent returning from enemy territory. All those pale faces. Starting to look sick to him.

  Rochelle’s brothers and sisters would squeal when they saw him coming across the yard. They’d climb his long legs and search his pockets for treats. “Whoa there! Hang on here now!” he’d laugh. Rochelle minded them when her mother was maiding. When her mother was home, Rochelle maided on Tsali Street or in the development across the river. Donny would horse around with the kids, throwing them over his shoulders and whirling them by the arms. He’d get into a crawling position, and they’d hurl themselves on his back and tickle him. Rochelle, her mother, and every woman in Pine Woods discussed what a marvel he was with those children.

  The town decided to integrate the first grade city-wide that fall, so the children could grow up together in mixed classrooms. Most people in Pine Woods thought it made good sense. But Mr. Dupree snarled one afternoon when Donny stopped in for candy, “What the hell are eleven grades of our children in an inferior school supposed to do?”

  “Aw, Booker T. ain’t such a bad place, Mr. Dupree,” Donny insisted.

  “Not unless you want to learn something.”

  Donny went over to Rochelle’s and sat under a tree while she brought him a Nehi and sandwiches. He ate, and they watched the children tussle in the dusty yard. Their skin color was of every hue, from dark brown to café au lait, but Rochelle was the lightest. He remembered even in third grade thinking she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. She’d been the teacher’s pet all through school.

  Seemed like he was getting obsessed with the color of people’s skins lately. He often caught himself gazing at his dark nose from the corner of his eye. He remembered being unaware of skin color when he was a kid. Until one afternoon when he couldn’t sit with the rest of The Five in a movie. This had set off weeks of worrying, in which he’d begun to grasp that he was colored and they were white, and there was a difference. That awareness had gone away for years, but here it was back again.

  One of Rochelle’s brothers would be starting in a white school in the fall. Others would follow. Donny couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Seemed like that the white students would win all the offices and run the school. At least over at Booker T. his classmates edited their own paper, ran the student council. He was glad he wouldn’t be around to see it. Although Rochelle’s bunch would. Even kids of his own might be.

  Donny liked to pretend he and Rochelle was married and these was their kids. He knew his own father only from a photo his grandmaw had hid in a drawer at the apartment. A dark grinning man in an upside-down vee of a soldier’s cap, a white woman on his knee. His grandmaw always told him his father was a fine strong man who’d been killed by the war. His mother mentioned something about stealing and prison. He never really got it straight. But he missed knowing him. He decided to be around for these kids the way he wished his father had been around for him.

  Although he never acknowledged this to his friends at the swimming pool. Later that day they sat in the painted metal chairs in their bathing suits, watching the girls and commenting.

  Lorraine slunk by, and Leon called out in a falsetto, “Where you going at, Lorraine baby?”

  “Walking,” she growled.

  “Man, if I could get me a piece of that pussy,” Leon sighed, “I’d be stone living.”

  “Don’t give me none of that action, man. You said the same thing last month about Charlene. Now you got her, you want to cut out on her. Can’t no woman keep you happy for long, Leon.”

  “Ah, I can’t take no more of Charlene’s shit, man. She all the time saying, ‘What you gon do with yourself, Leon? You ain’t never gon mount to nothing.’ I says to her, ‘Mouth, now you just listen here to me. You ain’t my ole lady yet, so you just hush up that flapping hole in your face.’”

  “Well, when you get done with her, man, you just let me know,” said Sidney.

  They got up and sauntered to the snack bar. On the rear wall was a soft drink poster with a busty blonde white woman in a tight sweater and pedal pushers, standing beside a red Sting Ray which was parked next to a split-level ranch house. As they ordered hot dogs, their eyes studied her. Leon announced, “Man, I really laid me some hot pipe last night after the revival.” Everyone listened when Leon talked about girls. He claimed he’d been screwing since he was eleven. Donny kept hoping maybe he’d pick up some pointers that would work with Rochelle.

  “Naw, you never did.”

  “I swear it. I swear I did.”

  “You got that little chick from North Carolina to put out for you?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Naw, you’re lying.”

  “I ain’t lying, man. Who you calling a liar?” They scuffled and slugged each other, until Donny dragged Leon over and dropped him in the pool to cool off.

  Sally and Jed had moved their trysts to the powder magazine. They kept pillows and blankets down there, and a battery lantern. Sometimes Sally brought down a vase of flowers.
One night Jed lay propping his head on one hand and gazing at Sally’s pubic area. Now that he had easy access to every area of her body, he wasn’t really that interested. Or rather, he wanted her available when he wanted her. But he didn’t want all this other stuff—comforting her when she was getting the curse, having to account for every minute of his day, listening to criticisms of Bobby and Hank. It was like being a kid again and having to ask Mommy’s permission. He hadn’t known it would be like this. With Betty Boobs you was in and out, and that was that. You didn’t have to spend your whole life keeping her happy. Of course while you was in Betty, she expected a hell of a lot. Her cunt had been like some big dark warm slimy sink hole that he would get mired down in and never escape from. It was like the mouth of one of them hairy tarantula spiders. God only knew what germs festered in there. It seemed like that he couldn’t win. Why couldn’t he find him a nice normal girl who took what he gave her and was grateful?

  Sally watched Jed watch her. He was so good-looking. She guessed this was worth it to keep him. If you sinned but knew it was sin, did that make it less sinful? But it took her breath away to think of him down here with that Betty French. He’d promised he’d never do that again. What he saw in screwing, though, she’d never know. He’d heave himself on top of her and push that big thing in. It was over before it ever started. All in all, it was one big disappointment. And now that she’d given him everything, he didn’t seem to love her as much.

  “Do you love me?” she demanded.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “No, I mean do you really love me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure don’t sound like it.”

  “How would I sound if I did?”

  “Not like that.”

  He shrugged.

  “You don’t, do you?”

  “I love you,” he said, with a hunted look.

  “If you really did, you’d tell me so without me asking.”

  He glowered. She inched closer. He inched away.

  She burst into tears. “You despise me!” she wailed. “I’ve given you everything, and now I’m nothing but trash to you!”

  “Goddam it to hell, I love you!”

  “You don’t!” she shrieked, pounding his chest “You’re just using me! You’ve ruined my rep, and now you hate me!”

  “I don’t hate you,” he snarled, glaring with hatred.

  “Then why are you looking at me like that?” she moaned, burying her tear-drenched face in her hands.

  He grabbed his hair with both hands, as though about to rip it out. He smashed his fist repeatedly into the dirt floor, growling. Sally sneaked an awed look through her fingers.

  “OK. What do I have to do to prove that I love you?”

  “Hold me,” she pleaded. “Love me a little bit.”

  Gingerly he pulled her to him, wanting only to be far away. She melted into him and murmured endearments, her hand stroking his erection.

  Chapter Nine

  Homecoming Queen

  At half-time the band marched onto the football field to a martial version of “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.” They formed a five-pointed crown. The homecoming queen and her attendants rode out, each perched atop the back seat of a white Cadillac convertible. Sally, the junior attendant, wore a strapless yellow net ballerina-length gown and a rhinestone tiara and held an armful of yellow roses. Slowly the cars circled the field, as the stands applauded. Sally smiled until her cheeks ached and waved a white-gloved hand until she thought her arm would fall off.

  The floodlights were cut, and a bonfire was lit in center field. The Cadillacs pulled up around it like Conestoga wagons. Band members switched on lights on their hats, so that the outline of the crown remained. Majorettes in white boots with flaming fire batons stationed themselves at each point and performed a complicated routine, as the band played “The Sabre Dance.”

  Sally reflected, as she gazed into the snapping fire, that she had had a hard time zipping her dress this evening. Of course, she hadn’t worn it since the Rebel Christmas Formal last year. She wondered, still, if she really might be pregnant.

  One night in the cave when Jed withdrew, he whispered, “Oh Christ!”

  “What, Jed honey?” Sally murmured, her eyes closed.

  “The goddam rubber came off!” He grabbed a bottle of ginger ale, wrenched off the top, put his thumb over its mouth and shook it up, then inserted it in Sally’s vagina. She screamed and tried to sit up, as ginger ale shot into her. Jed shoved her down, shook the bottle and repeated the process.

  He jumped up and stalked back and forth. “When’s your period due?”

  She was sobbing.

  “When’s your goddam period due?”

  “I don’t know,” she wailed.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I’ve got it marked on the calendar, but I can’t remember.”

  He dragged her to her feet. “Come on.”

  They raced to the library where they sweated over anatomy and physiology texts. The librarian, an old lady with a grey bun who had read to them both at Story Time when they were five, smiled benignly. High school sweethearts at work on term papers.

  “It looks like it’s fourteen days after the first day of your last period,” Jed concluded.

  He waited in the driveway as she sneaked into her house and consulted her calendar. “This is the eighteenth day,” she said, climbing back in.

  “Thank God for that. I think we’re safe.” They fell into each other’s arms and kissed fervently. “From now on I wear two rubbers.”

  A couple of weeks later Sally threw up in the girls’ room. She decided her breakfast ham had been spoiled. When she began falling asleep before supper, she decided to go to bed earlier. The aching and burning in her nipples she explained by the enthusiasm with which Jed sucked them.

  When her period was several days late, she decided she’d miscounted and went back over the calendar half a dozen times. But her period had been late before, so she refused to worry. The timing had been wrong, and Jed had been wearing two rubbers ever since.

  When she missed her second period, she began to get nervous. She made an appointment with a gynecologist in a neighboring town. After the exam he sighed and said, “Well, young lady, I can’t say for sure whether or not you’re pregnant. I’ll give you a prescription. If you don’t begin your period five days after finishing the pills, you’ll know you’re pregnant.”

  Each morning she took a small peach-colored pill. A dozen times a day she retired to a bathroom, where she prayed for bloodstains. Even a hemorrhage would do. Her prayers remained unanswered. She’d sit on the toilet long enough to regain composure, before returning to the classroom or dinner table with her pep-squad smile intact.

  One night Jed delivered her home from a Devout meeting where they had prayed for success against Chattanooga Central. Darlene, the new Devotions Deputy, shut her eyes in the flickering candlelight and said, “We thank Thee, Lord, for last week’s victory over Roaring Fork. But we would have been even more grateful if Thou hadst not let their JayVees defeat ours by such a wide margin. But Lord, we really need this next one against the Purple Pounders if we’re going to have us a go at the state championship …”

  Parked in the driveway, Jed slid his hand up Sally’s thigh. She shoved him away, wrenched open the door, and ran toward the house. He ran after her. “What’s wrong? What did I do?”

  “Nothing,” she gasped. “I have to be in early.” She twisted away and ran into the house.

  “Those pills didn’t work,” she told the doctor over the phone.

  There was a long silence. “Well, I’m sorry, young lady.”

  “Can’t you give me something else?”

  No reply.

  “I mean, my period’s late is all, doctor. It’s been late before. I’m out of whack. Maybe something’s wrong with my ovaries.” She’d been reading in the library
about the diseases and deficiencies that could interrupt menstruation. She’d stood in front of mirrors inspecting her coloring for signs of anemia.

  “I’m sorry, young lady. I’ve done all I can.”

  “But what should I do?”

  “I don’t know, young lady. I’m sorry. Good luck.” He hung up.

  She stared at the phone. After a while she walked into the bathroom and threw up. Then she picked up her calendar and counted off her periods. It was just humanly impossible for her to be pregnant.

  “Come on!” whispered Leon, pushing aside hemlock branches and dashing across the open space between the wall and the band bleachers. The boys from Cherokee Shoals who hung out there during the game and the highway patrolmen who broke up their fights were all up by the fence watching the fire batons.

  Donny got halfway to the bleachers before he froze. This wasn’t right. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods,” the Bible said. Leon kept calling him Mr. Junior Church Usher and saying that white people had been stealing from niggers for three hundred years. So you was just getting some of your own back.

  Rochelle’s mother had gone into the hospital with a ruptured tubal pregnancy last month. She was in bed at home now, and it didn’t look like that she was getting her strength back. The county was paying the hospital. Neighbors brought over groceries. Rochelle’s mother’s employer brought down boxes of old clothes and canned goods. Donny had given Rochelle his car money from this summer. Even so, she’d had to quit her library job to work at maiding every afternoon and on Saturdays. The neighbors took turns minding the kids. Mr. Dupree was giving them credit. But things couldn’t go on like this. Rochelle was up at six every morning to get the kids dressed and fed and off to school and to babysitters, then off to school herself, maiding in the afternoon, home to fix supper and clean up the house and tend her mother and wash the kids and put them to bed and wash and iron their clothes; then she sat down to her homework. Every time she and Donny went out, she fell asleep on him. Her clothes were often unironed. She hadn’t smiled in weeks.

  “What about their daddies?” Donny asked one night.