Bound South

by Susan Rebecca White

  “Darling,” I say, “if I let your friend take a photograph of my vagina—”

  Caroline’s eyes widen at my use of the actual word.

  “Will you promise me to wait at least two years before you marry Davis?”

  “I could tell you didn’t like him,” she says. “I could tell last night. God, Mom.”

  “It’s not that.” I sit back on the toilet. I have the urge to pull her into my lap, to hold her as if she were a little girl. “I just think you should stay single a little bit longer.”

  I am hurting her, I can tell. She thinks I am judging. She must think nothing she does will ever be good enough for me. How do I tell her that what I want is to know her, to know the woman who made these birds, to see who she might become if she is allowed to spread out, to expand. How do I say, Darling, please. Don’t shrink yourself so soon.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Odd Couple

  (Missy, Labor Day 2004)

  It hits us the minute we walk in the kitchen. The place smells like old beer and throw-up. There’s a black Hefty bag waiting by the back door filled with Bud cans and liquor bottles. Mrs. Parker’s red tile floor, which usually shines so clean, feels sticky beneath my shoes. Mama shakes her head looking around at the mess.

  “I expect he thinks we’ll clean this up,” she says.

  We will too. We did it last time Mrs. Parker went away and Charles threw a party.

  Charles walks into the kitchen, looking down at the floor and scratching his head. He’s wearing flannel pj pants and a white undershirt, even though it’s already one o’clock in the afternoon. He looks startled to see us.

  “Oh, hey,” he says. His voice sounds like he’s got something thick caught in his throat. “Sorry about the mess.”

  Mama doesn’t say anything, just starts organizing the bottles in her cleaning bucket.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and vacuum the downstairs rooms?” she says to me. I’m still holding her white vacuum cleaner.

  I give Charles my best look when I pass him, like I’m disappointed in him but love him all the same. I figure that is what Jesus would do.

  “Have you been keeping up with that show?” he asks in a low voice.

  Mama doesn’t even look up from the sink, where she is filling the mop bucket with water.

  “I told you we don’t have a satellite dish,” I say.

  “It’s on at four o’clock today,” he says. “Come watch it with me.”

  “If I’m through cleaning your house, I will,” I say.

  This time Mama looks up long enough to glare.

  AT 3:58 I go to the library. Charles is already lying on the couch, his right hand inside his pants. He takes it out when he sees me standing in the doorway. I hope he feels embarrassed.

  “Come in,” he says. “Show’s going to start. Hand me the remote, will you?”

  The remote is sitting on the coffee table, not two feet away from him.

  “You sure are lazy,” I say, handing it to him before sitting in the armchair on the other side of the room.

  He punches a button to turn on the TV. His hair is greasy and flattened to his head. “I’m extremely hungover,” he says. “My friends decided I was having a party last night.”

  I don’t even want to know. Pastor Finch always says it’s not drinking itself that’s the sin, it’s that inebriation takes our minds off God.

  “They invited, like, half my class from Coventry. People who wouldn’t give me the time of day at school were showing up. I’m so fucking pissed at them.”

  “Is the TV on the right channel?” I ask.

  “Yep,” he says. “I mean, Thorton Bowers was at my house. What the fuck?”

  “What kind of a name is Thorton?” I ask.

  “It’s a name for an asshole. He was the one who started calling me Butt-Fuck Chuck.”

  I turn to him. He’s staring straight ahead at the screen even though it’s only showing a preview for a show about dollhouses.

  “That’s terrible,” I say. “Why would he call you that?”

  The theme music for Salt of the Earth starts. This is my first time to see the credits, and I just love them. They start with a giant drawing of a hand spread over the top third of the screen. The screen is black and the hand is white and big. At first it’s turned upward, so it can cup the salt in it. Then the hand turns over and starts sprinkling the grains of salt over the black nothingness below. First a white cross shoots up from the ground. Then a church builds itself around it, so the cross ends up the steeple. And then a man shoots out of the ground, white and cartoonlike at first, but the wavy lines of the drawing change into a real image of my daddy, Pastor Praise. Now a guitar is drawn in his hands and then it becomes real and he’s wailing on it. He plays a few chords and his wife springs up from the ground and then his two kids. They all start as cartoons but end up as real people. Once they are all together they join hands and go inside the church.

  “This is just what I need to cheer me up,” says Charles, placing a throw pillow beneath his head.

  The show starts at Matthew’s school, at the track. Matthew, dressed in running shorts and a tank top with the number 3 on it, is sitting on the bleachers, cheering on his team. But he seems nervous and keeps looking around as if he is expecting someone.

  A wiry man with red hair and a whistle around his neck walks up to Matthew. “The four-hundred relay is in two minutes,” he says. “Any sign of Andrew?”

  “No sir,” says Matthew. “But I’m sure he’ll show up.”

  “Otherwise, we’ll have to forfeit,” says the coach.

  Matthew puts his head in his hands as the coach walks away.

  “My God,” says Charles. “Look at those muscles.”

  Matthew’s arm muscles are big.

  Someone makes an announcement over the loudspeaker. “Up next, the four-hundred-yard relay!”

  Matthew takes one last look around before going to consult with the coach. They talk in whispers while the camera turns from them to a dark wiry guy wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He’s spying on the meet from underneath the bleachers. I just know the guy must be Andrew.

  “You want to know why they call me Butt-Fuck Chuck?” asks Charles.

  I don’t say anything, hoping that if I ignore him he will shut up and watch the show.

  “Because once I got drunk at a party and I kissed a guy.”

  I knew it.

  “You know, God still loves you,” I say.

  Charles starts laughing. “Jesus,” he says, “you just keep plowing forward, don’t you?”

  “God has special plans for homosexuals,” I say. “We studied about it in Sunday school. He’s testing you extra because your task is even harder than most of ours.”

  “What, to get a guy to fuck you? That’s not that hard,” says Charles.

  I cannot believe he just said that to me. “No, to not let a guy do that to you,” I say. “To turn away from the temptation and to put all of your longing and lust toward God.”

  Charles turns toward me. “Are you for real?” he asks. “I mean I know you are a little fucked up about your dad….”

  “Do you know any other word besides fuck?” I ask.

  He starts rubbing his forehead. “Let’s just watch the show,” he says.

  Matthew and the coach are shaking their heads. They walk over to a bunch of boys, all in track uniforms, and say something to them. One of the boys pounds his fist into his hand.

  The camera cuts again to the guy sitting beneath the bleachers. He has an odd smile on his face, as if he is enjoying watching his team lose.

  Next thing we see, Matthew, Dawn, Mrs. Praise, and Daddy (Pastor P.) are sitting around the dinner table with their heads bowed, holding hands. Daddy says “amen” and everyone looks up.

  “So how was your meet?” asks Daddy.

  “Andrew didn’t show up!” says Matthew. “We had to forfeit.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Andrew,” says Dawn, reac
hing for the bowl of mashed potatoes.

  “Eat up,” says Charles. “You’re eating for two now.”

  “I know,” says Matthew.

  “Is this enough?” asks his mom, looking up at her son as she ladles vegetables on top of a piece of roast.

  “Great,” he says, smiling at her. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Maybe we should stop by Andrew’s house after dinner,” says Daddy. “See if anything is wrong.”

  “Maybe he has the flu,” says Dawn. Especially with the table blocking her belly, you can hardly tell she’s pregnant.

  “I have a feeling it’s something else,” says Matthew. He piles his fork with roast, carrots, and mashed potatoes, and takes a bite.

  “Why do I watch this crap?” asks Charles.

  “Maybe God wants you to,” I say.

  “What we have to figure out is how to get on it,” says Charles. “As guest stars.”

  My heart starts beating faster. I’ve been having the exact same thoughts, thinking that maybe Daddy could incorporate me into the story and I could work as a Christian soap opera actress and be reunited with him and make a lot of money so Mama won’t have to clean houses anymore. But I hadn’t thought about Charles being in on it.

  Daddy and Matthew are standing in front of Andrew’s door. He lives in a house that looks a lot like theirs, brick on the first floor, siding on the second, but his front door is yellow instead of red.

  Andrew doesn’t look sick at all when he answers the door. He’s wearing the same pair of jeans he had on at the track meet, but he’s taken off the leather jacket, revealing a shirt that’s so tight it hugs his muscles.

  “Oh,” he says, looking at Daddy and Matthew without even smiling. “Hi.”

  “May we come in?” asks Daddy.

  “Let me just clean up the crystal meth I’m making,” says Charles.

  “Shush,” I say, smiling.

  Andrew sticks his hands deep into his pockets and walks to the couch in the living room. Daddy and Matthew follow.

  “We had to forfeit the match,” says Matthew.

  “You bastard,” adds Charles. I giggle without meaning to. It’s the way Charles says it; he sounds just like an outraged woman on a soap opera.

  “Son,” says Daddy, “is something going on?”

  “I have a hard-on for you,” says Charles.

  “Shut up!” I say. I almost add, That’s my daddy, but I hold back. Maybe Charles forgot about what I said the other week.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he says.

  “I have AIDS!” screams Andrew.

  “What?” say Charles and Matthew at the same time.

  “When I went on that trip to visit different colleges, I met this guy, and I thought he just wanted to be my friend but then he got me drunk, and…” Andrew starts crying. “We, we had sex with each other and now I’ve got AIDS and I’m probably going to die young and go to Hell and that’s why I didn’t show up to the track meet because, well, I don’t want anyone else to feel good about themselves when I feel so terrible, and I didn’t want the team to win! I made it so we forfeited the match because that’s the kind of terrible person I must be.”

  “No, he did not just say that.” Charles talks as if he is trying to sound black. “What, he has a little man sex and suddenly he has full-blown AIDS? Where do these guys get their stats?”

  “No offense, but I really think you should be taking this seriously,” I say. “I mean, after what you just told me.”

  “Are you for fucking real?” asks Charles. He sits up so he can look straight at me. “Can you snap out of it for one minute?”

  “What?”

  Charles slumps back down into the couch. “Never mind,” he says. “You and I are just very different people, okay?”

  I want to watch my daddy but I am also very aware that Charles needs me right now. I wonder what my daddy might do, what Jesus might do. I kneel beside Charles on the sofa.

  “We’re not different,” I say, trying to concentrate on Charles and not the TV. I look him straight in the eyes, just like Pastor Finch taught me during his missionary training course. “You and I are both sinners who have no chance of getting into Heaven on our own. Sometimes the sinner is even better off than someone who tries to do good, because the sinner at least doesn’t fool himself into thinking he’s perfect.”

  “Jesus Christ,” says Charles.

  “That’s right,” I say, even though I know he wasn’t praying. “Jesus is God. And Jesus came to this earth to take away our sin,” I say. “He died on the cross for us to pay for our sins against God. God loves us, but God cannot have us all stained with sin. But Jesus took it away. That boy you kissed? Jesus took it away. I mean, he will, if you just ask him to do it. It will be as if it never happened in God’s eyes. God will look at you and he won’t see the sinful person you are, he will see his perfect son in your place.”

  “I liked kissing that guy,” says Charles. “And he”—he points his finger to Andrew on the screen—“I bet he liked fucking that guy on the college trip.”

  I stand back up.

  I can feel the tears on my face. I don’t want Charles to see me this way. This is not how Pastor Finch said it would be to bring someone to Jesus. And I want someone to believe with me. Mama says she does, but half the time she and RD sleep in on Sundays.

  I know Jesus is with me always, but it’s not the same as having someone on this earth to share Him with. Even if this world is just a sinful blink before Eternity, it gets lonely.

  “I got to help my mama,” I say, and I am amazed at how strong my voice sounds.

  I WALK STRAIGHT out the library, through the hall, and down the three steps that lead to the enormous living room. It’s always colder in this room than in any other, and the ceiling is higher in here too. Standing directly in front of me is the life-sized portrait of Jesus in a dress. No wonder Charles is so confused. I finger the edge of one of the orange and red silk throw pillows Mrs. Parker has on her sofa, but then I don’t pick it up. I don’t want to mess it up with my tears.

  “Hey.”

  I look up. Charles is standing in the doorway. I can see the dark circles under his eyes even from here. He walks down the stairs and sits down on the couch. He pats the space next to him.

  “Sit down a minute,” he says.

  I sit.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Charles says, and when he talks I smell the peppermint from his chewing gum. “I was being a jerk. I just—almost everyone I go to school with is some kind of a Crispy Christian, and I—I’m different from them. I’m sorry. I’m sure you have good intentions, but I’ve heard it all before. Believe me, a lot of people have quoted John three sixteen to me.”

  “If you know about it why don’t you believe?” I ask.

  Charles shrugs. “At my high school, the biggest assholes are always the Christians. It’s like this thing all the popular kids do together. They go to Young Life and they slap those stupid metal fish on their Ford Explorers. The boys play football and wear cowboy boots and have Confederate-flag license plates, and the girls are all white and rich and wear lots of silver jewelry and are cheerleaders or else they play volleyball or some such crap.”

  “But you’re white and rich,” I say.

  He looks surprised, as if I wasn’t supposed to say that. “We’re not really rich,” he says. “You should see how much money some of the kids at my school have.” He blows out a big puff of air, as if he’s been holding it in for a long time. He looks at his fingernails as if they are really, really interesting. “I mean, even if my dad did have a lot of money, even if I was a trust fund baby or something, he wouldn’t leave it to me. Not if he found out I like guys.”

  He makes quotation marks with his fingers around “I like guys,” his voice high as if he’s making fun of himself.

  “How do you know you like guys?” I ask.

  “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Sixteen,” I say.

  “You act a lot younger,”
he says, and then shrugs. “It’s the same way you feel about boys, that’s how I feel about them.”

  “I don’t really think about boys,” I say. “I think about God. And my daddy, I’ve started thinking about him again.”

  “Do you still think that guy on the show is your father?” he asks. “For real?”

  His eyes light up a little.

  I chew on my lip, considering what all I should tell him. I hear a voice in my ear, a soft Do it, and I know Jesus wants me to tell my story just like Charles told me his.

  “Mama says that Daddy always wanted to be an actor. When he was younger he got to perform a lot: he started a theater troupe at my granddaddy’s church. But Mama says he always wanted to be on TV. He thought it was the perfect place to evangelize. Plus, Mama says my granddaddy never really supported Daddy’s theater group. He wanted Daddy to focus more on the Gospel than on entertainment. Mama was in the group. That’s how they met. She used to be a real good singer.

  “The theater group would travel around together to different churches, performing. And I guess what happened was one night after a performance they got carried away with sin, and Mama got pregnant with me. She was only seventeen. Daddy was ten years older, twenty-seven. Anyway, once he got Mama pregnant, Granddaddy didn’t let him have any responsibilities at the church anymore, and he shut down the group. Daddy took a job as a loan collector. Mama says there wasn’t anything he wanted to do more than move out of his parents’ house, but he didn’t make enough money, not to afford rent and support me and Mama.”

  “Do you still live with your grandparents now?” Charles asks.

  I shake my head. “They’re dead. But we still live in their house, in Loganville.”

  “Jesus, that’s a commute.”

  I shrug.

  “Anyway, Daddy was really, really good-looking, so he started auditioning for commercials. He always wanted to be on TV. And then when he got this chance to be in an educational movie they were filming in Florida, it was too expensive for him to take us with him so he went down on his own. But then Mama says he must have stopped getting work and he was too embarrassed to come back with nothing to show. So he didn’t.”