Sure she had to get away. I understood that. But a baby? I thought that was crazy. She thought I was insane to take up with Zack. She wanted security. I wanted a wild time.
Susan succeeded. I went with her to the clinic for the test. She had been thrilled. Really thrilled. I felt like someone had knocked the air out of me.
But Tom had balked at marrying her. When she told him she was pregnant, he whined, “I didn’t force you to spread your legs.” She went in tears to her parents. Mr. Miller had a talk with Mr. Dalman, and two weeks later, I was walking down the aisle of the First Baptist Church in a bubble-gum pink maid-of-honor gown.
Forrest didn’t give his new son-in-law access to the Miller money right away. He gave him a job in the groves, and an opportunity to work his way up. Tom was anxious to please his boss. It seemed Tom’s parents had thoroughly impressed upon him all the implications of the situation. Forrest was a wealthy man. He had no sons. His only other daughter, Belinda, had been institutionalized for years. Now Mr. Miller owned Tom Dalman and Tom owned Susan. I wondered if Susan still felt that she had gotten away.
“Susan,” I said suddenly, too loudly. I startled us both, so I lowered my voice. “Tell me the truth. Why did you have to leave home?”
She looked at me quizzically. The game show played on. The baby was making noises and starting to move the walker around. The other one was picking its nose.
“I was wrong,” I said, speaking slowly now, thinking it out as I went along. “I thought you were with me. That you were as crazy as I was about getting away from here. But that wasn’t it.” I was picking up speed, as it came clear to me. “You just wanted to get way from your parents. Just your parents.” I leaned towards her. “Why? Why did you want to get away from them so bad?”
She slumped back in the chair and looked down at her hands. Then she looked up at me. “Not them. Him.” Her voice was low. It was hard to hear her over the TV.
“Why?”
She looked up at me, anger clear on her face. It was so rare for her to show raw emotion that I was almost relieved. “You always thought he was so great. I hated that. You saw through everybody
else
! And God, you were so hard on your own family, and I thought they were so neat. Couldn’t you see what he was? Is? I was so ashamed of him.”
“I’m sorry, Susan. I’m just starting to see how much I missed. I was so wrapped up in my own rebellion that I missed a hell of a lot. Tell me about him now. ”
“You mean you still don’t know?”
I knew I should tell her then about what had happened last night. But I was afraid. I was afraid it would ruin things between us for good, and I was afraid that she wouldn’t tell me all I needed to hear.
She looked over at her kids. “I can’t talk here. Let’s go out to the pool.”
We closed the sliding glass doors behind us and stood on the patio that surrounded the kidney-shaped pool. I stood with my back against the door, facing Susan. Susan looked past me, keeping her eyes on the kids inside. “You only saw his good side. And boy, did he play up to you. I loved you, Laurie, but I hated the way he fawned over you, put his hands all over you. His other side was only for Momma and me. And his workers. You don’t know, Laurie. You just don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?”
“He was so mean... Here, listen. One example. One day our senior year, Daddy drove up to the house. He had to pick something up, I don’t remember what. He was in his Cadillac, you know?” She paused, and I nodded, encouraging her to continue. “He had his best two hunting dogs in the car. Walker hounds. Senator and Gator, I think. They were in the back seat. And he drove up real slow, you know, because he had the trunk open. And you know why he had the trunk open?”
I shook my head no.
“He had two Mexican grove workers in the trunk. Don’t you see? He had his
dogs
in the car and the workers in the trunk.” She stopped talking, took a deep breath.
“Oh, Susan.” I couldn’t think what to say. I wanted to comfort her. I reached out and grabbed her hand.
She didn’t pull it away, but she looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
I squeezed her hand, and then dropped it. “It’s not catching. No lezzie cooties,” I said.
She laughed. “I wasn’t worried.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
She nodded.
“Did you know you father was involved in the KKK?”
She let her breath out suddenly, like she had made some sort of decision. “I knew. Eventually. I mean, it was never talked about at the dinner table or anything. But I figured it out eventually.”
“Do you know anything about... anything that the KKK did?”
“Like what?”
I took a deep breath. “How should I know? But I want to know what stuff was going on all this time.”
She flinched. “Not really. I heard rumors, overheard bits of conversations. Stuff like that. Daddy didn’t want me to know much.”
“Do you know anything about a black man named Elijah Wilson? He died when we were kids.”
“No. Never heard of him.”
I could hear the TV through the glass. I was staring at the clear blue surface of the pool. “Different subject. When we were doing all that crazy stuff, Susan, didn’t you mean it? I can’t figure it out. How you could do all that with me, and then, you come back to all this.”
Finally her eyes left the kids and turned to me.
“What are you talking about?” She was frowning.
I waved my hands about, searching for words.
“All this stuff. You know, houses like this, and the church, and the Rotary Club, and well...” I stopped, afraid that I was not only making an inarticulate fool of myself, but was offending Susan.
She seemed to have caught something of my meaning. “No. I was just having a good time. I don’t think I’d have done any of it if it wasn’t for you. I mean, it was fun, but this...” She stopped, sighed. “This is what I wanted.” Now she waved her hands, indicating the pool, the house, the children, I wasn’t sure what. “My father is a cruel, controlling man, and I couldn’t wait to get out of his house. But that’s all. I always wanted a good life.”
She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I never understood you. You were so brave and strong and smart and full of life. And you went with that creep Zack, who couldn’t give you anything you deserved. He wasn’t half good enough for you. No one knew what you saw in him. Then you dumped him, and went back with Johnny, and got married the way it was supposed to be. You two seemed perfect together. And then the next thing I knew, you’d dumped him, too. Why do you refuse to be happy? Why do you have to make everything so hard on yourself?”
I shrugged. “Beats me.”
She laughed. “But I’ve missed you all these years. We had so much fun. I always thought we’d live next door to each other, and have our kids at the same time, and take them to the beach together.”
I was shocked. I was sure I had never said anything remotely like that. “What gave you that idea?”
She looked hurt. “I thought that was the way it would happen. It’s what I always wanted to happen. And I got everything else, but I didn’t get you, right here in town, sharing it all with me. I’ve missed that.”
I should have comforted her then, should have told her how often I’d thought of her. But I was still shocked. And offended too, that she could have ever thought I’d end up that way. “But we always talked about backpacking in Europe, or moving to San Francisco, or to a commune in Santa Fe. We never talked about getting married and having kids.”
She shrugged. “Teenagers always talk like that. Then they grow up and have real lives. Everybody knows that. Everybody but you.”
The kids were hollering. We went back in. Susan yelled at the kids. I said goodbye and started out by myself. The kids quieted down and Susan hurried to walk me out.
We stood on the front porch for a moment. Susan grabbed my arm just as I was getting ready to leave. She spoke so low I had to strain to hear her, and so fast that I knew she’d been storing this up for a long, long time.
“Laurie, I hated you sometimes, too. He never paid me any attention. Not as
me
. Just as his daughter, the one who had to be perfect, like everything else he owned. He was so afraid I was going to shame him, and so he kept me chained up as best he could. I was proud when I told him I was pregnant. I’d done just the thing he’d gone to so much effort to prevent, and I’d done it on purpose. And not only that, it was my ticket to freedom, to get out of his house. When I walked up the aisle on his arm, I should have been thinking about Tom. Instead I was gloating because my father was furious that the whole town would know what a wedding with two weeks’ notice meant.
“I hated the way he flirted with you. He went just as far as he possibly could, without giving Momma any real cause for complaint. Momma hated it, too. I saw it on her face. But she still liked to have you around. She said once that something about you reminded her of my sister, Billy.
“And you just ate it up. You’d come over to go swimming, and you’d bring the bikini that your folks wouldn’t let you wear to the beach. And then he’d find some reason to come out and prune the roses, and then he’d come right over and give you some tips on your diving form! Did you think Momma and I didn’t see what was going on?”
The anger in her voice cut me. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Then her voice changed again, and she said, “ I haven’t had any real fun since the day you left, Laurie, and that’s the god-honest-truth.”
The kids were yelling again. I couldn’t look her in the face.
“I’ve got to go see about those kids, Laurie. Don’t take these things so hard, please don’t.”
“I won’t. I don’t. I’m sorry. I’ve got to go, too.”
I practically ran down the sidewalk and jumped in the car. I took off, but not before giving a real good look at the house next door.
As I drove back to my parents’ house, something was crackling, hissing gently inside me. The sight of Susan’s bare refrigerator door had started it off. And then it exploded inside me like a firecracker after a long fuse—that intense longing for Sammy.
I pulled up in the driveway and walked to the kitchen door. Momma was stirring something on the stove. She was wearing a hot pink running suit with pink-feathered earrings, and pink rhinestones on her sneakers. Her lipstick matched her suit exactly. I looked at her refrigerator door, decorated with snapshots of my father holding a fish he’d caught, or next to a dead deer. There was a shopping list, and photocopied diet she was following.
I took a glass out of the cabinet and filled it from the iced tea pitcher in the fridge. Without looking at her, I said, “I’m sorry I was rude, Momma. I know you just want me to be happy.” Then I looked at her out of the corner of my eye to see how she was taking it.
She kept looking in the pot she was standing over, but the tightness around her mouth relaxed a little. “Well, honey, I’m sorry, too. You know, there’s a sale on down at Burdine’s. Let me finish up my chicken and dumplings here. Then I was thinking we could go find you some clothes. Something a little more appropriate for this climate. My treat.”
I sighed. “I don’t think so, Momma. Listen, I have to make a phone call. Can I use the one in your room?”
Her jaw tightened again. “Why do I even keep trying?” she murmured to herself as she turned her back to me to get something out of a drawer.
I could ask myself the same question, I thought, as I left the room.
Sammy answered on the second ring. When I heard her voice, I nearly screamed with joy. I had almost been afraid that I’d made her up. That she was some dream I’d had some lonely night. But there she was, on the other end of that long, long wire, real and calm and warm.
I told her everything that happened. She made me feel like I wanted to feel. Appreciated, understood, special, loved. Then she was quiet.
“What is it, Sammy?”
“I shouldn’t have sent you there, Laurie. It was stupid. I did it because I couldn’t face it myself. The hole in the center of my life. Not knowing anything about my father. I was afraid I wouldn’t like what I found out. Or I was afraid I’d be too afraid of that to look hard enough. And I thought you would tell me the truth, however painful. You’re like that. But I shouldn’t have asked you. I should have known that once you got started it would be uphill work to get you to quit! You’re really something, Laurie. But listen to me, now. Since you’ve been gone, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been thinking that it really doesn’t matter what kind of man my father was. The living people in my life are what matters now. You matter. Whether Elijah was a drunk, or was messing with someone’s wife, what difference can it make to me now? I miss you, Laurie. Just forget about it, and come home.”
My heart skipped. When Sammy said “come home,” did she mean to her, or to my own apartment? And which was really home to me? But I had no intention of abandoning my quest yet. And I was irritated that one more person in my life was telling me what to do. For my own good. I pointed out to Sammy that my run-in with the Klan had nothing to do with her. It was my own past I had been researching at the rally that night. I wanted to know something more about where I came from, too. And as for Elijah Wilson, I wanted to finish what I’d started. It might well be that there was nothing I could find out this many years later, but I was damn well going to prove that to myself before I quit.
When I told her that while I was down here I wanted to speak with her mother, she protested, “I want to keep her out of this. I don’t want to upset her! If it was that easy, you know, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“Sammy, she’s the one person who might know something. Maybe she’ll tell me things she won’t tell you. That she’s afraid to tell you.”
Sammy didn’t say anything.
“Come on, be fair,” I coaxed.
“All right, go ahead, talk to her. But Laurie, one thing... she doesn’t know about us.”
I kicked hard with the toe of my boot against the leg of Momma’s French provincial night table. “You’re ashamed of me!”
“Never.” Sammy’s voice was so firm and certain that I felt the anger drain away.
“So, why haven’t you told her?” To my horror, I could hear myself whine.
“Have you told your mother about us?” There was amusement and warmth in her voice. God, how I loved her right then.
“No,” I admitted. “But I told my brother,” I added quickly.
Sammy laughed. “What’s amatta, you ashamed of me, or something?”
I laughed, too.
“Okay,” said Sammy. “I wish that I had told her. But I haven’t. It isn’t you. I’ve never told her about any of my lovers. Unless she happened to meet them, which is rare, because I have trouble getting down to visit her, and she hates the city. She was a widow when I was born, Laurie. She gave her life to raising my sister and me. And then after my sister died, she worried herself sick over every little detail of my life. I quit telling her about my lovers, male or female, to give her that much less to worry about.”
I wondered if that included the girls’ fathers. I wanted to ask if I was just one in a line of Sammy’s lovers. Someone making a cameo appearance in her life. Maybe I was just an extra, not even listed in the credits. At any rate, I was someone her mother hadn’t needed to know about.
That’s the way it was. That’s the way I’d wanted it once. But I didn’t want it to be that way anymore. And I didn’t like to hear Sammy say it.
She gave me her mother’s phone number. I felt a little better. She trusted me that much, anyway. I remembered to ask about the girls before we hung up. I was actually interested in what they’d been up to. Then, just before I said good-bye, Sammy said, “I want her to know who you are. When you’re there, in front of her, she’ll see. She’ll understand how good you are for me.” Those were awful sweet words to hear. The she added, “And you can tell her as long as you tell your mother first!”
After I hung up the phone, I sat there for a while, staring at the half-dozen framed photographs of my brothers and me Momma had hung on the wall over her chest of drawers. Professional portraits, very formal. Typical sibling poses: five children, in their best starched and ironed clothes, lined up straddling a bench, or arranged in a stiff grouping. Corny to the last degree. My brothers were wearing slacks and blazers, button-down shirts. They all had crew cuts and those friendly, innocent, boyish grins of the fifties and early sixties. I don’t think anybody in history grinned like that anytime before or after. You can estimate the date of any male photo- graph, just by that kind of grin. I guess you can only smile that way if you’re the male offspring of the guys who just saved the world for democracy. If you are the ones who are being groomed to tame space, “the last frontier,” by wearing coonskin hats, singing “Davy Crockett” and playing Little League while your entire family cheers from the bleachers. Do I sound bitter? Jealous? You better believe it.
I, on the other hand, am visibly sulking in every single shot. I’m wearing fussy dresses with puffed sleeves, lace collars, the whole bit. And my hair was teased, puffed up, and styled. Like cotton candy. Momma had tried so hard to round up the five of us, make sure we were dressed and cleaned, every hair and button in place. Every detail in every portrait fits the scene she was trying to set. Except me. My strong features, brooding eyes, and thick brows were out of place, all wrong.
I appeared about eleven years old in the most recent picture. I didn’t know why my mother stopped with the portrait nonsense after that. Did she just admit failure? Give up the idea of trying to make us look like we belonged together?
I had gotten up to leave the room when I was startled by a thought that had never occurred to me before. My mother’s first and last vision of me every single day was of that awkward child, frozen in a dress and hairstyle which didn’t suit her. No wonder she was desperate for me. She really didn’t know that there are places in the world where I fit just fine. And I didn’t think she’d believe me if I told her.
In the kitchen, Walter and Josh were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking beer and talking. Momma was serving chicken and dumplings. The boys looked up and said “Hi.” I got a beer and sat down at the table with them.
They were talking about the Tashimee Fiesta, something else on the long list of things I hadn’t thought about in a long time.
“The Fiesta? They still have it? I can’t believe it!”
The boys looked at me, surprised. “Why can’t you?” asked Walter.
“Well...” I thought for a minute. “It’s so corny. For one thing. And it’s so tacky. Fake. I just can’t believe it still goes on.”
I had offended Walter. “Right. You’re calling us tacky. Talk about the kettle. Well, Miss Sophisticated New Yorker, to us poor old country boys, the Fiesta is a hell of a good time.”
Momma stopped her cooking and walked over, a potholder in her hand. “The Fiesta is a god-send for the local businesses, Baby. Wait until you see how big it’s gotten. You won’t recognize it. It’s advertised like a big tourist attraction. Why, it brings in people from all over and they come spend money in Port Mullet.”
Josh spoke mildly. “Every town has some sort of founder’s day celebration. So what if it’s corny?”
I knew I should just let things be, but when have I ever done that? “That’s just it! I was wrong to say I don’t like it cause it’s corny. Actually, that’s one thing I really do like about it. I’d love an authentic corny founder’s day celebration. But this whole thing is so fake!”
Momma turned away and went back to the stove, talking to us over her shoulder. “It’s not fake. It’s educational. All about the Indians and the Spanish explorers. I would think you’d appreciate notice being taken of the Native Americans, Miss Politically Correct!”
I was stunned. Floored. When had she learned to say “Native Americans” and where had she learned the phrase “politically correct”? Had my mother actually been reading or was this something she had picked up from watching t.v.?
While I stood there in silence, Momma continued. “They were Calusa Indians, anyway. I know that from the pageant. And that’s why the club that plans the fiesta is called the Calusa Tribe. They were here, they built their mounds—Mrs. Pierson has one in her backyard, you know—and we have a fiesta to celebrate them.”
Walter and Joshua nodded.
I didn’t know if she was right or not. That was what I had always heard, but lately everything I had always heard and thought had turned out to be wrong, or twisted, or incomplete. My insecurity made me even more argumentative than usual. “I thought you said the fiesta was about the Spanish explorers.”
“That’s right,” she answered. “It honors the Spanish explorers. They discovered Florida, you know.”
“What did they discover? This place was already here. The Indians had been living here for thousands of years. What did the Spanish ever do for Florida? Nothing that I know of. We don’t speak Spanish, we don’t have Spanish names. Nothing. And, hey, what happened to the Indians that the Spanish found here anyway? Did they just disappear? Are they in a reservation somewhere?”
“The Seminoles are down in the Everglades, Baby,” said Walter impatiently.
“I think they weren’t originally from here,” said Josh. “Didn’t we learn in school that they are a mixture of various tribes that were pushed out of other parts of the country?”
Instead of being grateful for Josh’s help, I plowed on. “So, why didn’t they teach us what happened to the first Indians, the ones that were here when the Spanish arrived,” I demanded. “Maybe the Spanish killed them all. Maybe that’s what the fiesta celebrates.”
“They were missionaries,” interrupted Momma. “In the Tashimee pageant, they show the priests converting the Indians to Christianity.“
“To Catholicism, Momma. You’re the same woman who sent me to Sunday School where I learned the Pope is the anti-Christ.”
“I didn’t know they would tell you nonsense like that! Now you’re blaming me for trying to give you a good Christian upbringing? I never saw or heard tell of ingratitude like this.”
Momma turned away from the stove, crying. Walter leapt to her side, putting his arm around her. I felt bad. I hadn’t really meant to criticize her for my childhood. I hadn’t really meant to make her cry. Not that I have a clue as what it was I did mean to do. I moved awkwardly towards her.
Walter pushed me away. “Grow up, Laurie. You’ve turned into one of those whiners who blame everything on your parents. Momma did the best she could. As far as I’m concerned she did a damned good job. You just work out your own problems and leave her alone. Don’t go blaming your own failures and your own lack of direction in life on her.”
I shook my head, unable to respond. I walked past Josh and went to the rear of the house, out the back door into the backyard where I hadn’t come since arriving home. There I stood out on the patio, looking at the clear, still water of the pool, then sat at the shallow end, took off my shoes and socks, and dangled my legs in. The water felt cool at first, but almost immediately turned lukewarm, soft and comforting against my legs.
I was in the shade from the live oak tree, protected from the worst of the sun. A pretty tree, the full branches made a canopy over half the back yard. Bird feeders hung all over it. I remembered the day the tree had been planted. I was about nine, I guess, and it had looked like a dry stick, no taller than I was.
Momma had wanted a shade tree for her backyard. Daddy had said he’d get around to it, but he never did. One Saturday, she had pitched such a fit that he’d gone to the plant nursery. But he came back saying oak trees were too expensive. So she’d gone out in the woods, herself, and come back with this stick she planted. She watered it carefully every night, along with all her plants and the orange and tangerine and grapefruit trees.
After dinner, Daddy would come out of the house, sit himself down in a lawn chair, and smoke a cigar. He’d laugh at Momma, watering her tree. He’d say, “I never seen the like of anyone watering a dead stick before.” I didn’t say anything, but my smirks made it clear whose side I was taking. I had grown tired of my mother’s disappointment in me by then, and had begun to return it with my own harsh judgments of her. I was already fading fast from my father’s favor, and I hoped the distance I set between my mother and myself would raise my value in his eyes. It didn’t work of course. He was fond of her, but his affection was mixed with mild contempt. Meanwhile, I had refused my place in the class of Southern ladies, and there was no other place for me in his scheme. To my father’s mind, one test of a strong man is how well he manages his womenfolk.