Bound South
Page 35
“ ‘You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.’ ”
Emerson again. Eve was a quick study.
• • •
Eve posted her letter in the campus mail the following day. For the next week, if Daniella checked their mailbox before her Eve would race in from class and go through the letters on her desk, looking for one on Belmont stationery. “Nothing?” she’d ask, and Daniella would say, “Nothing.”
“Well, damn.”
Eve was still going down to Miss Eugenia’s room to watch Central Hospital most afternoons, but Daniella spent every afternoon in the library, writing papers and studying for exams. Eve told Daniella that she hadn’t mentioned the letter to Miss Eugenia, saying she didn’t want to disappoint her if nothing came of it, which she was beginning to think would be the case.
On the Thursday before Christmas break, Daniella, who had taken her last exam the day before, turned in her final paper of the semester. Her parents weren’t picking her up until Saturday, so she had a day and a half to play. The sky was blue and the December air was crisp but not too cold—the perfect weather for a hike along Lazy Creek, which ran through the campus and then continued to wind all the way to the base of Mount Illahee.
Daniella’s appreciation for the surroundings of Belmont had deepened. She loved the crisscrossing of bare tree limbs, the mountains that held the college within their embrace, the stillness of a winter day. Earlier that week, Eve’s mother had sent peanut butter fudge—made by Ada—and Daniella imagined munching on a piece of it as she and Eve hiked, following the circuitous path of the half-frozen creek.
She just hoped Eve was done with her papers and exams as well. She couldn’t quite remember her friend’s schedule but was pretty sure she would be finished by Thursday, too. Daniella went back to their room, but Eve wasn’t there. Glancing at her watch, she realized it was Central Hospital hour. She headed down the basement stairs, hurrying as she got near the bottom, because she could hear keening, like a cat in heat.
It was Eve, slumped on the floor, clutching her knees to her chest, her hair in her face, crying and hiccupping, her back against the wall. A cold certainty settled over Daniella as she walked toward her friend. She knew that Miss Eugenia was not in her room; she knew that Miss Eugenia would no longer be returning to Belmont. When she peeked inside, she saw that the bed had been stripped and Miss Eugenia’s pictures had been removed: the one of Jesus with a halo, the one of Dr. Martin Luther King, the one of President Kennedy. There was no TV set on the dresser, no chipped cup on the bedside table, no worn slippers peeking out from underneath the bed. There was no sign of Miss Eugenia at all.
Daniella walked toward Eve and slid her spine down the wall so she could sit beside her. “What happened?”
“I got here right as she was finishing packing. She barely looked at me, Daniella. Said she’d been fired for being an ‘agitator.’ Said she was given the afternoon to get her stuff and find a ride home.”
“Oh, Eve.”
Eve, her cheeks stained with tears, her breath hot and foul, looked at Daniella. “I did this. I made this happen. It’s my fault.”
Daniella kneaded Eve’s shoulders, which were bunched, tense. She imagined absorbing some of Eve’s pain into her own hands. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I promise. This is all much bigger than you are. This stuff has been happening for a very long time. Just ask my father, the historian.”
“Well, I never knew about it,” said Eve, and in that moment she sounded like a haughty child.
Daniella tried not to think of Miss Eugenia pulling an old suitcase down the basement hall, on her way to the parking lot to wait for one of her daughters to come pick her up, to drive her toward a bleaker, starker future. For a moment, Daniella felt a cold, calm anger toward Eve, her silly friend who was so naïve she thought she could splash and kick her way into an ocean of oppression and instantly change the tide. But then she looked at Eve, saw her weeping, saw that she was deep in grief. Daniella, so full of instant indignation, deflated. She understood that she was as responsible as Eve. Before the two girls met, Eve was blissful in her ignorance. And Miss Eugenia had a job.
Continue Reading…
We Are All Good People Here
Susan Rebecca White
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Touchstone
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Susan Rebecca White
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
White, Susan Rebecca.
Bound south: a novel / by Susan Rebecca White.
p. cm.
“A Touchstone book.” 1. Female friendship—Fiction. 2. Atlanta (Ga.)—Fiction. 3. Southern States—Fiction I. Title.
PS3623.H57896B68 2009
813'.6—dc22 2008024252
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6063-0
ISBN-10: 1-4165-6063-7
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