We sat facing each other in two chairs in front of the desk.
“I need to go over some family matters with you,” Charles said. He took a folder off the desk that was filled with important looking papers. Daddy had a folder like that, although his was tattered and smeared with grease stains, not clean and smooth on the outside like this one. Sometimes he and Momma would sit at the table and talk about the papers as he’d turn each over in his hand. A serious look would cloud over their faces. It was as though they were engaged in life or death matters. Charles had that same look.
“Mom moved into the in-law suite off the kitchen. My parents had the addition to the house built a few years back in anticipation of my grandmother moving in with us. But that didn’t happen. Now that we’re married, Mom said she wanted to use the suite for herself so we can have the master bedroom. It’s actually better, going up and down stairs is getting difficult for her. And besides. This is our house, yours and mine.” He sat back and took a deep breath.
“My dad left everything to me when he died—this house, the contents in it, his car, bank accounts and stocks, our cottage on Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Martha’s Vineyard?” I asked.
“It’s an island off the coast, only a few hours from here. I grew up summering there, now the children will.”
“An island, I’ve never seen an island, only read about them.”
“We’ll go this summer.”
“But what about Catherine, if your father left you everything?”
“Mom’s well taken of,” he said.
Charles explained that there were several life insurance policies that named Catherine as the beneficiary and she had money from her family. The one obligation in his father’s will was that she would live in the house until she died. He showed me all the legal papers and alongside his name as the owner on the houses and the car, was my name.
“We own all of this together,” he said.
I knew it’d take time for me to absorb what Charles was saying, but there were matters on my mind too. I asked, “May I learn to drive, and get my high school degree? I want to apply for college and study to become a teacher. I’d like to get a job. May I do all of this?”
“Nell, you don’t need my permission to live your life.” He stood and took me in his arms and said, “I love you, let’s go to our new bedroom, see if that bed is as comfortable as the hotel’s.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE FAMILY AND I HUDDLED AROUND THE TELEVISION one summer day and watched images that were being broadcast from Mississippi of white policemen knocking down young black men and women, even children, with powerful fire hoses turned on full force. We watched mean dogs tearing at people’s clothing. We saw the dogs’ fangs pierce people’s arms and legs drawing blood. We saw hate stamped across the faces of whites as they yelled obscenities and shouted racial slurs. Charles and Catherine gasped as the images continued, but I didn’t. I was horrified too but not surprised by what was projected on the screen. For black southerners racism lived in the air we breathed. It had a face that we saw each day, it sounded like the hiss of a swarm of bees, and it smelled like the stench from the hog pen that never cleared from our nostrils. I’d learned that the north liked to hide its racism behind smiles and seemingly better living conditions. The broadcast from Mississippi brought the southern black experience to northerners’ living rooms for the first time.
Catherine said, “Please turn the TV off, the children shouldn’t see this.”
“I want them to see; they need to know,” Charles responded.
Catherine got up and went to her room.
I thought about the day in school, almost ten years ago, when Miss Parker showed us the picture of Emmet Till’s beaten body. We were scared when we saw the brutality, but she said, “You children need to know.”
In September the family and I watched another broadcast from Mississippi. This time it was images of a church that had been bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Four young black girls were killed in the blast. In their pictures displayed on the screen it looked as though the girls were dressed up for church or school. Junior asked, “What happened, Daddy?”
Charles said, “A church was bombed, by mean people.”
“The girls were inside?” April asked with a look of fear on her face.
“Yes, they were,” I said.
“Why were they killed?” she wanted to know.
“Because those people don’t like us,” I replied.
“Why?” she asked, then added, “They look like me.”
Charles and I glanced at each other with identical contemplative expressions on our faces that silently said, “How, where, do we begin?”
When we tucked the children in bed that night neither of us wanted to leave them alone. That was the first time I understood the rueful look and unexpected hug Momma had given me on the front porch of the farm the day Daddy and I came back from the store without any food.
WHENEVER PEOPLE HAD a disagreement with someone else Momma used to say, “Just be still with it and let time take over. Things change, people move away, sometimes they get sick, eventually they’ll even pass on.” She’d told her friend that when the friend complained about how she’d gotten fired by her missus because of the damaged lace. Momma’s friend wasn’t welcomed at the missus’ funeral that took place months later, but she went anyway and stood in the shadows. “I had to see for myself, to be certain,” she’d told Momma. I thought about Momma’s saying when I stood with the congregation at Irene’s funeral. I didn’t have to hide in the shadows, but I did stand off to the side away from her family and close friends.
It’d taken a while for the church ladies to get comfortable with me being back, just as Phyllis had warned. I’d tip toed into church for services at first but eventually everyone embraced me along with the family—except for Irene. When I’d tried to work in the kitchen, she’d stood at the doorway like an imperial guard who had no intention of letting me pass. Phyllis and Brenda had caught my eye and shrugged and looked away. The kitchen was off limits as long as Irene was in charge and held onto her disdain for me. But one day she was filling a large pot with water at the sink and as she went to lift it she let out a piercing scream and grabbed hold of her chest and fell to the floor. Brenda was there; she re-told the story. She called for help but Irene succumbed to the massive heart attack before the ambulance got her to the hospital.
I’d decided to wait two weeks after her funeral and then go back to the kitchen and ask Brenda and Phyllis if they needed my help. That morning I fidgeted with my clothes while getting dressed, I rushed the children into the car, and told Charles we had to get to church early.
“Why?,” he asked.
“I plan to help in the kitchen, or at least see if the women will have me back. As soon as the service is over I’ll head downstairs.”
“You’re sure about this? I mean, that’s where it all began for us,” he teased.
“I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“I may show up there too.” He reached for my waist and pulled me close.
“Stop, we have to go.” But I didn’t move away from him until our kissing had calmed me down.
The longest sermon in the world, kept running through my mind as the Reverend droned on and on. I didn’t listen to anything he said or hear the choir’s songs or remember singing hymns with the congregation. The children kept looking at me as if to say, what’s wrong?, as I wiggled in the pew like they usually did. Charles took my hand and whispered, “Breathe.”
When the Reverend finally gave us blessings for the day, I made my way to the stairs behind the pulpit before anyone else had left the pews and moved into the aisles to leave. At the bottom of the stairs I stopped and inhaled deeply to fill my lungs with air and then slowly let the air out through my mouth. Once at the kitchen door I watched Phyllis, Brenda, and the other women as they hurriedly moved about preparing the after-service meal the congregation enjoyed once a month. The
aroma of collard greens and ham hocks simmering on the stove along with the heavy scent of sizzling fried chicken draining on paper towels made me close my eyes and delight in the redolence of food cooking in the church kitchen that I’d missed.
“Nell,” Phyllis said. “Are you just going to stand there or do you intend to help?”
“Well,” Brenda said, “Looks like Mother Nell is back. You know where everything is, make yourself right at home.”
CHARLES HAD GRADUATED with honors from law school and was recruited by a prestigious law firm immediately afterwards. He explained that as arduous as law school had been, preparing for the bar exam would be more intense. He warned me that I wouldn’t see much of him; he’d either be holed up in the study at home or at the law library poring over legal books in preparation for the exam. He’d wear a white shirt, tie, and suit every day to his new job as an associate lawyer, which was so unlike the casual clothes he’d worn to his classes. He’d bought an armful of new white shirts for the office. One day I gathered them up to wash, starch, press, and hang them in his closet. He saw me with the shirts in my arms and said, “Nell, what’re you doing?”
“I’ll launder your shirts,” I said.
“You don’t need to do that, I use the dry cleaners.” He took the bundle of shirts out of my arms and threw the pile on the floor. My empty arms remained wide open as though they were missing something. He closed my arms and said, “I’d rather you put your time into this.” He handed me a vanilla envelope. Inside was a collection of brochures for colleges in the area.
“Now that you have your high school degree, it’s time you applied for college. That’s where I want you to put your time, not cleaning and washing. And I want you and Mom to find a housekeeper who can come at least once a week. There’s a lot of people living here, you can’t keep up behind the children.” He took me in his arms, kissed me and said, “I love you, Nell. I want you to be as happy as I am. Let me know which colleges you want to visit.” He rushed downstairs to his study.
Sometimes your mind doesn’t process change and you continue to do things as you always did even when your life and world are completely different. Instinctively I felt obligated to pick up his shirts and clean them; but I flipped through the stack of college brochures instead, and walked past the dirty shirts.
Acknowledgments
I started on this journey with a small group of good friends and family who were all willing to read pages and chapters of this novel as I worked away at creating the life and experiences of Nell. I thank you. Lois Lewis, Freddie Lewis Archer, Shirley Mayhew, Terry Cutler, Leslie Cutler, and my number one fan and first person to read any words I put on the page who provides edits and comments, my husband, Eric Turner. Your feedback kept me believing in the possibility that this novel would actually see the light of day and not just sit on my desk or inside the internal tangled web of my laptop.
Many thanks to my editors Alexander Weinstein for your insightful edits and suggestions about the nature of the character I was creating and for steering me in the right direction. And to Ursula DeYoung, you guided me to an ending that landed where it was meant to be.
About the Author
Anthony Mariel Photography
JENNIFER SMITH TURNER is the author of two poetry books: Lost and Found: Rhyming Verse Honoring African American Heroes and Perennial Secrets: Poetry & Prose.
Her work has been included in Vineyard Poets, an anthology of poems by Martha’s Vineyard writers, and in numerous literary publications. Her poems frequently appear in the Vineyard Gazette. She was featured on National Public Radio’s Faith Middleton Show and Connecticut Public Television’s poetry evening. She has been a featured speaker at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania Kelly Writer’s House. She has also worked extensively in the public and private K–12 schools in Connecticut and Massachusetts, bringing poetry to students and educators.
Turner formerly served as Interim President/CEO of Newman’s Own Foundation, where she is a board member. She is the retired CEO of Girl Scouts of Connecticut. During her professional career, she served as an appointed government official with the State of Connecticut and the City of Hartford, as a corporate and non-profit executive, and as a member of many academic and non-profit boards of directors.
She holds a BA from Union College and a master’s degree from Fairfield University. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Hartford.
Turner resides on Martha’s Vineyard with her husband, Eric.
www.jennifersmithturner.com
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The Sea of Japan: A Novel, Keita Nagano. $16.95, 978-1-684630-12-7. When thirty-year-old Lindsey, an English teacher from Boston who’s been assigned to a tiny Japanese fishing town, is saved from drowning by a local young fisherman, she’s drawn into a battle with a neighboring town that has high stakes for everyone—especially her.
Peccadillo at the Palace: An Annie Oakley Mystery, Kari Bovée. $16.95, 978-1-943006-90-8. In this second book in the Annie Oakley Mystery series, Annie and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show are invited to Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebration in England, but when a murder and a suspicious illness lead Annie to suspect an assassination attempt on the queen, she sets out to discover the truth.
Sarah’s War, Eugenia Lovett West. $16.95, 978-1-943006-92-2. Sarah, a parson’s young daughter and dedicated patriot, is sent to live with a rich Loyalist aunt in Philadelphia, where she is plunged into a world of intrigue and spies, her beauty attracts men, and she learns that love comes in many shapes and sizes.
Trouble the Water: A Novel, Jackie Friedland. $16.95, 978-1-943006-54-0. When a young woman travels from a British factory town to South Carolina in the 1840s, she becomes involved with a vigilante abolitionist and the Underground Railroad while trying to navigate the complexities of Charleston high society and falling in love.
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