Bound South

by Susan Rebecca White

  “You never saw him again?”

  “A couple of years ago I saw a commercial for a used car lot. The guy in that looked just like the photo I have of my daddy, but Mama said he just resembled him. And she was right about that. But I took out that photo after I watched Salt of the Earth, and I swear it is the spitting image of Pastor Praise.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” he asks.

  “I just saw him on TV,” I say. “Duh.”

  “No, in person.”

  “Oh. When I was six. He came to Meemaw’s funeral. She was his mama.”

  It shames me still that I cried each time he tried to pick me up during his visit. He had a stuffed white bear and a Snickers bar to give me but he had to leave them with Mama. Mama says I acted scared of him.

  Charles scratches his hair. “What’s his name? It’s not really Pastor Praise, is it?”

  I smile. “Nah. It’s Lucas Son Meadows. He goes by Luke.”

  MAMA AND RD are watching some reality show in the living room when the phone rings. I figure it’s a telemarketer, so I don’t answer, but then RD yells to say the phone is for me. Must be Crystal calling about our next Young Warriors meeting. She always wants to go together and I always say yes even though Crystal aggravates me. All she ever talks about is how she can’t wait to get married so she can experience “mind-blowing” sex. She’s been saying this ever since this young pastor came to talk to our Young Warrior group about how Christians have better sex than anyone else because they achieve true intimacy by saving their virginity for their spouse. I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t really want to think about Crystal and her future husband blowing each other’s minds. I told her that too, but she still won’t shut up about it.

  I walk to the kitchen, where the phone is. RD is standing there, holding the phone, wearing just a thin robe and a pair of flip-flops.

  “It’s a boy,” he says, smirking. “Kissy, kissy.”

  I snatch the phone from him. “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  Oh. Charles.

  “Hi,” I say.

  RD waggles his eyebrows at me and then returns to the spot on the couch where his butt has made a permanent dent in the seat cushion.

  “Guess what,” says Charles.

  “You decided to accept Jesus as your personal savior?” I ask, but I’m only kidding. Sort of.

  “That would be a negative. Guess again.”

  “I already guessed,” I say.

  “Lucas Son Meadows is indeed Pastor Praise on Salt of the Earth.”

  Here it is, the middle of summer, and I have goose bumps on my arm. “How do you know?”

  “I Googled him.”

  “On your computer?”

  “Yep. It took me all of ten seconds. The show’s filmed near Durham, North Carolina, which is about four hundred miles from here, and Mr. Luke Meadows is also a youth minister at—let me make sure I’m getting this right—the Holy Faith Church of the Redeemer and Eternal Cup of Life.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  I need to sit down.

  RD walks back into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator door. He’s just standing there, looking at the jars of pickles and the pack of bologna. I am freezing cold. Rubbing my hands up and down my arms, I try to warm up.

  “Who’s the fellow, peewee?” he asks, turning away from the fridge. I don’t know why he calls me that. I’m five seven—tall as he is.

  “Friend from school,” I say.

  Charles is saying something but I can’t listen to him because RD keeps bugging me.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” he asks.

  I glare at him and he hoots. “I knew it!”

  “What’d you say, Charles?” I ask.

  RD finally decides on a piece of bologna. He peels it off the loaf, rolls it into the shape of a cigar, and pops it in his mouth. He makes kissing noises as he walks by me on his way out of the kitchen. His kisses smell like bologna meat.

  “What I mean is, we’ve got a couple of options.”

  “Wait. What are you talking about?”

  “I think we should go to Durham this weekend,” he says. “My parents are going to Hawaii after San Francisco; they won’t be back until a week from today.”

  “Your mama left you alone for two weeks?” I ask.

  “I’m very responsible,” he says.

  “Hardy har har,” I say. Mama once grabbed my hand and slapped it at the dinner table after I said that to her.

  “I can drive us to Durham. It’s straight up I-Eighty-five.”

  “What would I tell my mama?”

  “How about that we’re going on a Christian retreat?”

  I shake my head, although he can’t see me. Mama would know if our church had planned a youth function.

  “That won’t work,” I say.

  “Well, what if you just leave? She won’t have any way of figuring out where you are. Then once you get back you can tell her that you went to see your dad.”

  “Yeah and have her beat me black and blue,” I say.

  “Really?” asks Charles, his voice panicky, like he might be about to speed-dial child services.

  “Wouldn’t yours?” I ask, but then I think about it, think about Mrs. Parker and her soft perfumed skin, her hands that are always manicured, that look as if they’ve never been rubbed raw and red from cleaning chemicals and hot water. No, she would not.

  And then I start thinking about what Charles is offering. Mama will kill me if I sneak out and don’t come back for the night. But what can she do to me if I am with my daddy?

  “Look. Do you have proof that Luke Meadows is your real dad?”

  “I have pictures of him.”

  “Is he listed on your birth certificate as your father?”

  I glance into the living room. Mama’s asleep, her head cocked back on the edge of the couch. RD is rubbing her knee. “I don’t know,” I say softly. “My mama’s got all that stuff.”

  “Well, tell her you want to see it. If you have a birth certificate proving Luke Meadows is your father, they’ll know you are serious. We could do DNA testing, but that’s expensive. We’d have to get some talk show to pay for it.”

  “Charles, what are you talking about? Why would a talk show pay for a DNA test to prove my daddy is my daddy?”

  “Look, right now Salt is just on some crappy little cable access channel, but it could get big. I’m telling you, this Christian entertainment shit is big business.”

  “I don’t know why you need to curse so much,” I say.

  “It’s going to be a long car ride,” says Charles, sounding exasperated. I hear him take a deep breath and let it all out. He sounds just like his mama, doing her “yoga breathing.”

  “Look, do you want to see your daddy?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Then we need a way in. We need a way to make the producers at Salt let us in while they are filming.”

  “Why not just go to his church?” I ask.

  He’s silent for a minute, and then he says, “That’s brilliant. We show up at his church—the Holy Eternal Waterfall, or whatever it is. I’ll Google it right now, find out where it is.”

  I can’t help it, I laugh. I don’t know what that boy would do without his Google.

  “I was thinking we’d leave Friday,” says Charles. “Can you skip school without someone there calling your house? If not, I guess Saturday might work. Saturday might even be better since we really don’t have to be there until church on Sunday. Church is on Sunday, right?”

  “Ha,” I say. “I think Friday will work best. That’s the day Mama cleans Mrs. Black’s house in Dunwoody. It’s the biggest house I’ve ever seen, and it takes Mama all day to clean it. I’ll just pretend I’ve got really bad cramps and then she’ll let me stay home from school and she won’t know I’m gone until she gets home that night.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” he says. “I’ll drive to your neighborhood that morning. You call me on my ce
ll as soon as your mom leaves.”

  “She always leaves around eight,” I say. I glance into the living room one more time. Mama’s still asleep, only now her head is cocked to the side. RD is holding the remote. I just know he’s punching through channels, not even stopping to look at what’s on.

  “I’ll get to Loganville around seven thirty, and I’ll just camp out down the street from your house until your mom leaves.”

  “Just come at eight fifteen,” I say. “I know she’ll be gone by then.”

  “It’s more fun this way. It will be like that time I skipped class two days in a row just to wait by my own mailbox to retrieve a deficiency notice from my math teacher. I had a disguise and everything; I wore a fake mustache and a fedora.”

  I really don’t know what he’s talking about.

  Finally he gives me his telephone number, and I tell him how to get to my house. It surprises me that he knows where Loganville is. He tells me that there is a guy from his high school that lives in one of the new developments out here who sells pot.

  “Charles,” I say, “don’t you talk to me about drugs. And don’t even think about bringing any with you on our trip. You do not want to know what I would do to you.”

  “You’d forgive me,” he says. “I mean, you’re a Christian, right?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Patron of the Arts

  (Louise, Labor Day Weekend 2004)

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” asks Caroline. “Because there are plenty of other shops in the neighborhood for us to go to.”

  “Caroline, I promised Tiny I would get her something from here. Now come on, let’s go.”

  I push through the swinging door that leads into Good Vibrations, San Francisco’s “sex positive” outfitter, a place that Ray, the leader of Tiny’s singles group in Sea Island (where she is staying until her divorce from Anders is finalized), claims is “all orgasm, no sleaze.”

  “Get me one of those Rabbit vibrators like Charlotte had in Sex and the City,” said Tiny when I told her John Henry and I were going to visit Caroline. “I’d order one off the Internet, but it’s illegal to have them shipped to Georgia.”

  I am thinking about picking up a little something for myself too. Just something small and discreet. John Henry doesn’t even have to know about it.

  John Henry doesn’t even know about this—Caroline’s and my little shopping spree. He is off having coffee (although more likely a beer) with Davis, and I fear that Davis is right this moment asking his permission to marry Caroline. Davis seems the type to do such a thing. He seems to me to be—sorry, Caroline—a real kiss-ass.

  I don’t know. I suppose I should see asking the father’s permission as respectful but it reminds me too much of horse trading. Like Davis might agree to have Caroline immunized as part of the deal.

  Tiny says somewhere along the line all of my southern blood just dripped right out of me. That’s not entirely true. I still have standards. You wouldn’t catch me dead wearing white shoes after Labor Day. And if you invite me to your house for dinner, you’ll receive a detailed thank-you note, exclaiming over the food, the flowers, the wine, and the company—even if I only had a so-so time.

  “My heavens,” I say, once inside the shop. “This is quite a selection.”

  “There’s probably a hundred different models of vibrators here,” Caroline says. “You can test them all.”

  “That doesn’t sound very sanitary,” I say.

  “Oh gross, Mom. No, you can test them by turning them on in your hand.”

  I walk over to the far right wall, which is loaded with boxes of vibrators and tester models. Right away I spot the Rabbit, although there are several models to choose from. I pick up the Rabbit Pearl, which has what looks like a string of pearls curled into the base area—the balls—of the unit. When I turn it on the pearls rotate around the base. I can see how it would feel good.

  Good Lord. This thing costs almost eighty dollars. I wonder if Tiny knew what an expensive gift she was asking me to pick up. Oh well. I grab one of the boxes and continue looking for a smaller, more delicate thing for myself.

  Caroline, who buried herself in the book section the second we walked in, comes bounding up to me with an extremely tall woman wearing a leopard print coat, skinny black pants, and chunky red heels.

  “Mom, I want to introduce you to my friend Deidre. She’s the artist I was telling you about last night.”

  Deidre, Deidre, Deidre. Oh, right. The vagina woman.

  “Nice to meet you, Deidre,” I say. I would hold out my hand to shake, but I am clutching the boxed Rabbit. I hold it up. “This is for a friend,” I say.

  “Yeah, sure it is,” says Caroline.

  I give her a stern look.

  “I love your daughter,” says Deidre. “You know, she’s got some artistic talent of her own. I mean, in the tactile arts, not just with acting.”

  “Did you see those birds she made?” I ask. “I just adore them!”

  Caroline is blushing, which is sweet.

  “Would it be too much of an imposition to show my mom your studio?” asks Caroline. She turns toward me. “Deidre works just a few blocks from here.”

  “Fine, fine,” says Deidre. “Let me just get the things I need from here and I’ll meet you in front of my building in, say, an hour?”

  She needs an hour in the sex shop?

  “Okay,” says Caroline. “We’ll get a coffee and then we’ll come over.”

  Once Deidre is out of earshot I ask Caroline how often she runs into people she knows while shopping at Good Vibrations. She blushes.

  “It’s not like I’m a frequent shopper or anything, but I swear every time I come in here to buy a gag gift or whatever, I see someone I know. Or someone who knows me. Once I did this guest spot on my friend’s cable access show, Vegan Nation, and later I was in here and this guy who must have been the show’s biggest fan comes running up to me, going on and on about whether or not honey counts as vegan because of the bees.”

  “How odd,” I say. I’m not entirely sure what a vegan is and I don’t think I want to ask.

  “So are you ready?” she asks.

  I really want something for myself, but somehow, having run into Caroline’s friend—even though she obviously is a frequent shopper—has made me self-conscious. “Sure,” I say. “Let me just buy this thing for Tiny.”

  The woman who rings me up is enormous. She wears a T-shirt that says “If you want the job done right, do it yourself.”

  I hand her the box. As she scans the price code she says, “This doesn’t come with batteries but we sell them here. A buck apiece.”

  “Thank you, but this item is for a friend,” I say. “So I’ll let her purchase her own batteries.”

  The woman looks at me as if I am a child caught telling an amusing lie.

  “No judgment, no judgment,” she says, smiling.

  DEIDRE’S STUDIO IS on Harrison Street, which is more like ten, not “a few,” blocks from Good Vibrations. The studio is in a large warehouse, up a metal staircase that clangs when you step on it. The studio is big, at least two thousand square feet, and it has little tables and chairs set up where Deidre teaches art to schoolchildren. It amuses me to think of taking one’s child to so raw a space for art class. When Caroline was little she used to take art from Miss Bitsy, a divorced woman who lived in a cute little bungalow in Peachtree Hills.

  The art that Deidre has hanging on the walls is fairly uninspiring, in my opinion. The canvases are painted gray with wispy black lines that vaguely resemble telephone wires. I guess I’m just a concrete person; abstract images have never done much for me. Still I murmur and cluck over them and Caroline points out a few that she absolutely loves. I wonder if she is giving me a hint, if she would like for me to buy her a piece of Deidre’s art for Christmas.

  There is a corner of the studio with a little kitchenette and a fifties-style linoleum table. After we look at Deidre’s art we sit at the table and
Deidre puts on a kettle for tea. She is so tall that I feel abnormally little around her, as if I am from the munchkin species. It is nice to be sitting. At least now I don’t feel as if I should be standing on my tippy-toes.

  “Hey Caro,” says Deidre. “Guess what time it is?”

  Caroline glances at her watch and then looks furtively at me. “What?” I ask. “What?”

  “Do you really want to know?” asks Caroline. She is wearing a blue T-shirt that reads “Shalom Y’all.”

  I wonder, Does she want people out here to think she’s Jewish?

  “Is your mom not four-twenty friendly?” asks Deidre, smiling at me.

  “Four-twenty what?” I ask, blinking. I feel like my first year at summer camp, when I tried so hard to fit in with the girls who had been going there for years.

  “Okay, so some people smoke a joint at four twenty in the afternoon,” says Caroline. “Not all the time, of course, but there’s a little bit of a tradition of doing it at this time.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

  “Okay?” asks Caroline, looking stricken.

  “Okay!” says Deidre. She walks to a drawer underneath the kitchen counter and pulls out a long white cigarette.

  “Have you ever smoked pot before?” asks Caroline.

  Once I did. With Ben Ascher. But I don’t want to get into that with her.

  I shake my head. “No, but I don’t mind giving it a try. If it’s what San Franciscans do.”

  “Has something gotten into the water in Atlanta?” asks Caroline. “You have turned into, like, groovy Mom.”

  “And my daughter’s dating a Republican,” I say.

  Deidre, who was occupied lighting the marijuana cigarette, pulls it from her mouth. “Davis is a Republican? I knew it.”

  Caroline shakes her head, her mouth open in protest. “No, I mean, he’s not like a registered Republican or anything. He just doesn’t adhere to any one party’s line. He’s voted for Democrats plenty of times. And yes, he’s voted for Republicans too. But he’s not like a crazed right-winger. I mean, he won’t vote for Bush this time.”