by Lisa Alther
“Isn’t there something we can do?” Jed asked.
“I’ve tried everything I can think of,” she replied sullenly. “Except eating rat poison. Maybe I’ll try that.”
It seemed like a real good idea. “Don’t talk like that, darlin. We going to figure something out.”
“Oh Jed, what are we going to do?”
He started to say, “What you mean ‘we’?” His fists clenched, and he knew he was close to burying them in her stomach time after time. He wanted to murder that little bastard in there. He threw open his door and stalked to the refreshment stand.
After he let her off at her house, he tried to figure out what she would do if he didn’t do nothing. Probably go to her old man, and he’d send her away. The whole town would know anyway. Girls didn’t just leave in the middle of the school year unless they was that way. It was so embarrassing, like being caught in a spotlight with your pants down.
He could cut and run. Hop in the Chevy and go … where? Do what? Never come back to Newland? Never see his parents again?
Besides, he loved Sally. He couldn’t just abandon her. He wished there was someone to talk to. His parents would be horrified. The guidance counselor at school was a seventy-year-old old maid with a lobster claw for a cunt. Bobby and Hank … they claimed they was humping the honeys all across town. But he doubted it. And even if they was, they probably managed to keep their rubbers on.
Finally Jed dragged himself to the minister’s house in the mill village. Mr. Marsh took him into the living room and shut out his wife and kids. As Jed explained, Mr. Marsh pressed the fingertips of both hands together like starfish screwing.
“Son, you’ve committed the sin of fornication.”
“Yes sir, I know that. I’m sorry I ever did. But now that I have, I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re being punished for your sins, you and your girl.”
“Yes sir.”
“Well son, I don’t see that you have no choice. You can’t continue to heap sin upon sin. You must marry the girl and raise the child up to be a clean-living Christian.”
“Yes sir, but see, I ain’t through school yet. She ain’t neither.”
“Well, she won’t be able to go to school no more once hit’s known she’s pregnant.”
“No sir.”
“And you won’t be able to neither, cause you’d most likely want to leave town if you wasn’t to marry her.”
“Yes sir.”
“So you’d best marry her.”
“Yes sir, but I had me some plans … college … pro ball … all like that.”
“No doubt the young lady had her some plans, too. But I reckon you’ll both have to change em. Cause the Lord has his own plans, and they override whatever piddling little notions we get into our heads. You should have thought of your plans before you went and give in to the indulgence of your fleshly lusts.”
“Yes sir.”
“Good luck to you, son,” he called as Jed stumbled down the sidewalk, his cheeks wet with tears. “And God bless you and forgive you of your sins.”
They were married by a Justice of the Peace in Virginia. The town rocked with the news that they’d been secretly married since summer and were dropping out of school to have a baby. Mr. Prince, polite and grim, offered Jed a job on the loading platform at the mill. Jed, standing at attention in front of his desk, stammered out that he would love Sally forever, and take good care of her and their children.
Mr. Prince said nothing, just looked at him. Finally he said in a low voice, “You’d better.”
Jed was covered with a cold sweat as he walked out. Never had any words sounded so ominous.
A few days later Mr. Prince called him in again and offered to give them the down payment on a house so that they could move out of Jed’s parents’ house.
As Jed expressed gratitude, Mr. Prince said, “Get this straight, Jed: I’m not doing this for you.”
Sally was a good little wife, just like he knew she’d be. She kept their house spotless, tried to cook everything he liked. She’d make a good little mother, too. Now that things had settled down, Jed was starting to look forward to being a father.
“You’re just a hero, Jed,” she’d whisper in bed at night. “What would I have done without you, sweetheart? You saved me. I aim to spend the rest of my life making you glad you did.”
“I already am, darlin,” he’d murmur …
Honey was moaning, “A woman needs a man to hold, Who’ll protect her from the cold …”
Earl took Emily’s hand and stroked her palm with his fingertips. A shiver shot up her arm. She contrasted it to the shiver of revulsion she used to feel when Raymond took her hand. It was so strange actually to want a boy to kiss you.
There were other contrasts. Earl’s father was president of a chemical plant down the valley, and they lived on a six-hundred-acre cattle farm. One day she and Earl rode out on horses to see the calves—café au lait, nursing from jet-black mothers, as a placid beige bull looked on.
“Do you want to be a farmer when you grow up?” Emily asked.
He smiled. “Emily sweetheart, I am grown up. I’m going to work for my father when I graduate. But I’d like to live on a place like this. Hire some tenants. Raise cattle. Keep horses.”
She looked at him. He knew exactly what he wanted. It was a refreshing switch from Raymond’s anguish and vacillation. She also liked the way Earl fixed drinks at the KT house, put new people at ease; the way he rushed to light her cigarettes and took her elbow when they crossed the street, ordered for her in restaurants. He was vice president of KT. Everyone liked him. It was a relief after Raymond’s determination to be disagreeable. Even her parents seemed to like Earl. Her mother was almost flirtatious around him, something Emily had never seen before and was appalled by. Earl made a point of complimenting some aspect of her mother’s appearance or the decor or the menu—unlike Raymond, who had always replied to her attempts to be conversational with grunts. If Raymond was in a bad mood, he’d sometimes sit in her driveway and blast the car horn for her to come out. But Earl always came to the door and chatted with her parents about where they were going and when they’d be home—even if they were actually only going to the hill overlooking town to neck in the back seat.
Emily had never questioned that she would to go college. The only question was where. Raymond in his letters kept making different suggestions, based on which college graduates he’d met recently. So far he’d installed her at Sarah Lawrence, Swarthmore, and NYU. She wrote back each time thanking him but informing him she was going to State. He’d write back: “State? Are you out of your mind? You’ve got to get away from there. Haven’t you been reading about Meredith and Ole Miss?”
“What does Meredith and Ole Miss have to do with me?” she wrote back. If this was what the North did to people, she certainly didn’t want to spend four years there.
She and Earl went to football games in the big stadium and sipped bourbon from his silver flask. Emily studied the coeds in their blazers and pleated skirts and loafers, talked with them at the KT house. They liked State a lot. It was near home. Friends from high school would be there. Because of Earl, she’d probably get bids from both Kappa and Tri Delt. She’d work on car washes and bake sales. Freshmen teas and Christmas formats. Football in the fall. Basketball in the winter. Baseball and track in the spring. Movies on Friday nights. Beer in the KT bar. And Earl. Lots of Earl. He stroked her hand, sending more shivers up her arm.
She realized her eyes were fixed on Honey’s cleavage. She looked away quickly.
On the night before their Career Week projects were due, Donny and Rochelle sat under a bare bulb at the table in her kitchen. The kids were asleep. Her mother was back in the hospital having a hysterectomy. They copied their final drafts—Rochelle’s on library science, Donny’s on pro basketball.
When Donny arrived the next afternoon to find out why she hadn’t been at school, he found the yard littered with paper airp
lanes made from the first several pages of her final draft.
Cereal bowls and boxes from breakfast were still on the kitchen table, covered with flies. Soaked in spilled orange juice were her last ten pages. Rochelle was lying in one of the chipped white iron bedsteads in the kids’ room. The kids were climbing over and around her and bouncing on the other mattress.
“Hey, mama, you sick?” he called.
She didn’t open her eyes or reply.
“What’s happening, baby? You OK?”
She opened her eyes and stared at him.
“Hey, you look like you in bad shape.” He led the children, Pied Piper-like, into the front yard, where he busied them with sour balls.
Rochelle whispered, “I can’t take it no more, Donny.”
“Can’t take what, honey?”
“I ain’t never gon be no librarian.”
“Sure you are, baby.”
“Huh-uh.” She rolled over on her side, away from him.
“You be feeling better tomorrow, sugar. You got you a case of the flu or something is all.”
Rochelle didn’t feel better the next day, or the next week. She took a full-time maiding job and didn’t go back to school.
Chapter Eleven
Black-Eyed Peas
On New Year’s Day the Tatro table was loaded down with ham hocks, black-eyed peas, collard greens, and corn bread. Missing were the family silver, china, and damask tablecloth that adorned the Prince table on holidays. But the food looked every bit as good to Emily.
Having hitched from New York, Raymond had appeared on her doorstep the previous day in a full beard and a man’s hat with the brim turned down. Emily giggled. “What are you supposed to be—a beatnik or something?”
“You don’t like my beard?”
“I love your beard. I especially love the hat.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“And I’ll bet your father is crazy about both.”
Raymond grinned.
Emily explained to Earl that Raymond was only home for a day and a half, and that she’d like to spend New Year’s Eve with him. He’d never been a boyfriend really. More like a brother. Earl consented. But just to be sure, he asked her to wear his KT pin in addition to his lavalier. It was a miniature Confederate flag with pearls for stars. He pinned it on her crew-neck sweater, over her left breast, with the pledge pin (the Greek letters kappa and tau in gold, attached to the Confederate flag by a small gold chain) atop her nipple. She felt like a general decorated for valor. It required no valor, though: She liked his hands moving across her body, his tongue in her mouth. He had finally told her why the boulder in front of the KT house was constantly changing color: A brother painted it the color of the sorority of any girl he scored with. Earl had been embarrassed, and she’d been shocked out of her mind. Now, though, she knew that if that was what this pin was leading up to, she was nearly ready. Earl, a gentleman through and through, stopped whatever he was doing whenever she objected. But the next time he would proceed to the stopping point and go just a little farther. In this fashion they had come quite a way.
“What is all this hardware?” Raymond had demanded as he helped her on with her coat on New Year’s Eve.
“You remember I told you Earl and I were lavaliered in September? Well, now we’re pinned.”
Raymond grinned. “What’s next? A ball and chain?”
“Oh Raymond, honestly. A ring comes next.”
“Through your nose or what?”
“Are you jealous or something?”
He laughed. “Jealous? Of servitude? Are you crazy?”
“It’s not servitude. It’s love. And I’m sorry for you if you’ve never felt it.”
“I suppose you call what’s going on between my brother and your sister down in the mill village ‘love’?”
“I think you call that a mistake.”
“Yeah. It tore me up this afternoon watching them. Him staring at the ball game, and drinking too much beer. Her sewing up these tent things to wear, and writing up recipes on index cards. God, it was depressing.”
“Well, I don’t know. I mean I’m sorry they got rushed into it. But I think they’re managing real well.”
“Well, if it doesn’t depress you, I guess there’s no way I can explain.”
“Who’s this Maria you’re all the time writing about?”
“A girl.”
“I gathered.”
“We aren’t going together or anything.”
“But you’re thinking about it?”
“I’m not interested in going with anybody. But I wouldn’t mind sleeping with her.”
Emily’s mouth fell open. “Why Raymond Tatro Junior! What a terrible thing to say!”
“Is it? Why?”
He honestly didn’t seem to understand. Was this how people behaved in New York City? Emily narrowed her eyes at him.
The party was at the house of a gaunt bearded man named Albert, who looked like a short Abe Lincoln. He was an officer in an area civil rights group. Raymond, who had met him in New York, said in a tone of respect that he had had several ribs broken in Anniston, Alabama, on a Freedom Ride. To Emily this sounded dumb rather than admirable. Why would you deliberately antagonize people into busting your ribs? At the party were various white people Emily had never met—and Mr. and Mrs. Dupree from Pine Woods in their Sunday best. Everyone was standing around spearing shrimp on toothpicks with trembling hands, and carefully dipping the shrimp in horseradish sauce.
“Well. Look like we might get us some snow this evening,” said Mr. Dupree.
“What did he say?”
“Snow.”
“Oh, snow.”
“You’re right there, Mr. Dupree.”
“Yeah, sure does.”
“It does indeed.”
“Maybe we can have us a white New Year’s Day, even if we didn’t get no white Christmas,” suggested Mrs. Dupree. She was a large, powerful woman, who dwarfed her skinny husband.
Everyone laughed like canned laughter on TV.
Raymond walked over. “Say, Mr. Dupree. How you making it?” He offered to shake wrists. Mr. Dupree cooperated, looking at Raymond oddly.
Albert put on some records, and people began dancing. Albert’s wife dragged him aside, and they whispered intently, then asked Mrs. Dupree and Mr. Dupree to dance. A hush fell over the room, similar to the hush that falls over shopping crowds when an untended package is found. The other dancers watched from the corners of their eyes as the two couples moved onto the floor, laughing nervously.
Emily was speechless. She’d never been to a party where Negroes were guests, only where they’d served drinks in white uniforms.
Raymond was glaring at the white people, ashamed of their shocked silence. He went all the time to racially mixed meetings and benefits in New York. Why was everyone in Newland determined to show what bigoted hicks they were? Gradually the decibel level in the room began to rise again. At midnight everyone gathered around the TV and watched as the ball at Times Square descended. When the crowd in New York City began hurling themselves into each other’s arms, the crowd in Newland gingerly pecked and embraced biracially, eyes wide open inspecting each other.
“Junior, take your hat off in the house,” Mr. Tatro muttered, “Now, you know bettern that. Done forgot your manners up there with all them Yankees.”
Their eyes locked. Eventually Raymond shrugged and sailed the hat into the living room. Everyone around the table joined hands, while Mr. Tatro chatted with God about the evening meal: “We just so thankful, Lord, to have our boy Junior with us, down from New York City.”
Jed didn’t know about the rest of them, but he sure as hell wasn’t thankful. The more miles between Raymond and him the better. Raymond had turned up yesterday looking like the garbage man and had sat there looking at him with … pity, it must have been. Pity, for the Lord’s sake! When Raymond himself was the pitiful one! He, Jed, was doing just great. He liked this business of being an adult.
The mill was kind of like school. You went there, worked as little as you could get away with, told jokes, and played tricks. What he did on the loading platform was run a forklift and maneuver five-hundred-pound bales of cotton. It was man’s work, and he came home to back rubs and hot meals and TV and sex whenever he wanted it. Sally was fixing their new home up real nice, sewing curtains and all.
She wasn’t such a hot cook, true. Her beaten biscuits tasted like lumps of plaster. But she’d get better the more she did it. He was proud to be able to give her the time to get better. His mother had always had to work. But Jed was earning enough right now so that Sally wouldn’t have to take no job. Mr. Prince had called him into the office and told him he’d be switching him from room to room so he’d get a picture of the whole operation. This meant Mr. Prince was already thinking of him as a possible foreman. Eventually he’d even be able to get Sally a maid like she was used to.
He glanced at her, her hands folded across her swelling belly. She’d started wearing these smock things, even though nobody but him could tell the difference yet in her body. Their son was growing in there. Jed smiled. Quarterback at the Orange Bowl in a few years.
Mrs. Tatro was refilling the serving dishes and glaring at Sally. Sally realized she should be helping. She struggled up from her chair and went into the kitchen.
“Can I help?”
“No. No, it’s all right. I think I can manage.”
“Please let me help … Mother Tatro. I’d love to.”
Sally resumed her seat. Mrs. Tatro stationed herself behind Mr. Tatro. She’d stand like that until all the men had finished, replenishing as necessary. It was the mountain way. The first meal Sally had served Jed in their new house, she’d sat down. He’d looked at her with surprise.
“What, Jed honey?”
“You’re sitting down.”
She laughed. “You don’t expect me to eat standing up, do you?” Then she remembered meals at his house, and his mother’s imitation of a guard dog. “Jed, do you want me to stand behind you while you eat?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Well, the women in my family always do.”