The Improper Life of Bezillia Grove (8 page)

Father said our mother would not be back until September. He said he was sure we were missing her but we needed to be patient. Sometimes it took a long time to get well. I tried to miss her. I wanted to miss her. But to tell the truth, I didn’t think about my mother much, except when Maizelle made me get down on my knees and say my prayers before going to bed. And even then, sometimes, I forgot to mention her name.

Mrs. Hunt started coming by not long after Mother left, just to check on us girls and let “our daddy” know she would love to do anything to help us in this truly difficult time. She loved our mother, she said. She couldn’t have chaired the Iris Ball without her, she said. Now she only wished her dear friend the very best and a speedy recovery from this most difficult condition—all the while the most perfect little smile remained painted across her face, a smile I had seen on my own mother’s face, a smile that surely hid at least a thousand perfect little lies.

Our father really appreciated Mrs. Hunt’s special attention, and one night he invited her to stay and have a drink. They talked for hours while sitting on the front porch sipping whiskey sours and listening to Frank Sinatra albums left playing on the record player in the living room. I couldn’t hear the specifics of what they were saying, but I did understand the laughter and ease in their voices. And before long, Mrs. Hunt started visiting at least twice a week to check on the poor little Grove girls and deliver another chicken noodle casserole that her Emma had baked just for us. Maizelle didn’t like Mrs. Hunt coming by any more than I did, and she certainly didn’t like her thinking she couldn’t care for her own family. She’d tell Mrs. Hunt how much she appreciated her thoughtfulness, and then she’d walk right through the kitchen door and dump that casserole in the trash can out back. Father always hugged Maizelle and reassured her she was the best cook in town. Then he made a couple of whiskey sours and joined Mrs. Hunt on the porch.

Of course when the two of them had tired of polite conversation, Father started coming home well after dinner, just as if Mother were here. Naturally he was very sorry about
needing
to be away so much. He said the hospital was short-staffed, and everyone was working much longer hours this summer than they’d like. Adelaide and I obediently nodded our heads and said we understood, but we both knew it wasn’t the hospital that demanded our father’s attention. He never mentioned sending us to the lake, as Mother surely would have. I guess he was trying to keep his wife’s condition a secret even from her own parents, although I’m sure everyone in Nashville knew the truth, or at least some mangled version of it. And even though Maizelle was always nearby, Adelaide and I found ourselves, once again, feeling very alone at Grove Hill.

I was going to run away from home that summer. I schemed and plotted but never managed to pack my bags. Maybe I didn’t want to leave Adelaide, or maybe at the end of the day even I was too scared to consider a life beyond Grove Hill. I hated myself for thinking that. But then one afternoon my plans, imaginary or not, abruptly changed. Cornelia called the house blabbering something about her father and the Buffy Orphans.

“Cornelia, slow down,” I told her. But she didn’t. “Cornelia! Stop! I can’t understand a word you’re saying!” Nothing she said was making any sense, not one word, until she said
Samuel
.

“Bezellia, you have to come over. Now!”

“Why?”

“Listen, just do what I said. Tell Nathaniel to bring you. Tell him I need you to help me, um, um, bake some brownies or something. I don’t know. Tell him anything you want. No! Ride your bike. Yeah, yeah, that’s better.”

“My bike? Are you kidding me? It’s kind of far, Cornelia, and only about a hundred degrees out there.”

“What else have you got to do? Hell’s bells. Get here however you like, but just come on. Daddy has gone and hired Samuel to help him rebuild that god-awful-looking chicken coop. Apparently he was really impressed with that dumb barn of yours. Come on. I’ll be waiting for you in my room.”

Click
.

chapter five

A
lmost a year had passed since I had seen Samuel Stephenson. Now my heart was racing and my palms were sweating, and I wasn’t really sure why. But I did exactly as Cornelia told me and ran downstairs and started looking for Nathaniel. He was in the backyard carefully watering the impatiens that bordered the walk leading to the kitchen door. Mother had Nathaniel plant flowers there every spring. She said even those of us coming to the back door deserved a proper welcome. Two fuchsia, three pink, three white, and repeat. This year she hadn’t been here to tell him what to do. But he did it anyway. Out of respect, he said.

“Nathaniel,” I hollered, my voice sounding much too high-pitched to hide my excitement. “Will you drive me over to Cornelia’s?”

At first he ignored me and continued tending to the flowers. I took a few more steps toward him and cleared my throat. But he was already suspicious. I could see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He put the watering can down next to his feet and stared directly at me. “Why all the sudden do you need to be going to your cousin’s house, anyway?”

“She called. Didn’t you hear the phone ring?” I spoke very quickly for fear that even the slightest hesitation would reveal my true intention. “Well, it did. The phone rang, and Cornelia wants me to come help her make some brownies for some church youth group thing she’s going to tonight.”

Nathaniel was a regular churchgoing man. He had earned a gold pin for perfect attendance every year since he was twelve years old. He brought them all to the house once to show me, hoping, I think, it would encourage me to find my way to church at least once a week. He probably should have shown them to Mother. But I knew that any man with all those shiny pins in his pocket would never want to keep me from helping my cousin do the Lord’s work.

“That girl can’t make those brownies on her own?”

“Nathaniel, will you take me or not? I’ll ride my bike if you won’t,” I said and then turned around and started walking toward the garage.

“All right, hold on. I’ll go get the keys. But what do you want me to tell your daddy when he gets home for dinner and you’re not here?”

I just stared at Nathaniel. He and I both knew that my whereabouts were no longer my father’s first concern, and so, out of either duty or heartfelt pity, he emptied the watering can and slowly walked inside the house. I had grown quite accustomed to lying to my mother—and my father, for that matter. I could do it with the most sincere and honest expression, but I was having a hard time even looking at Nathaniel. So I climbed into the backseat of the Cadillac and focused my attention on a long thread hanging down from the hem of my denim shorts.

A couple of minutes later, Nathaniel tossed his hat onto the front seat and stepped into the car, releasing a slow, almost desperate moan as he settled behind the steering wheel. He carefully placed the key in the ignition and then found me in the rearview mirror. “You know, Samuel is working at your uncle’s this summer, helping him with his chicken coop.”

My awkward silence surely confirmed what he already suspected.

“Yes, he is. He’s working real hard. Wants to go to college, Miss Bezellia, just like you. Except he’s going to be the first Stephenson to do that. His mama and I are mighty proud of that boy. He’s talking about Fisk or maybe Grambling State, if he can get a scholarship, that is. He’s making the grades all right.” And then he paused for a minute as he eased the car out of the dark garage and into the bright sunlight. “You know his mama and I sure are looking forward to that day.”

I wanted to tell him not to worry. I wanted to tell him I understood what he was saying, but I really didn’t. And I really didn’t know why I was going to my cousin’s house, but I didn’t see how it had anything to do with Samuel going to college. So nothing came out of my mouth, not one word. I just slumped down in the backseat and rode in silence, never brave enough to say anything at all.

Cornelia was downright giddy when I walked into her bedroom. She was already dressed in a blue, two-piece bathing suit and had another one, a deep raspberry pink one with little white ruffles across the seat, in her other hand, waving it like a flag. Mother would never let me buy a suit that revealed my stomach. She said those were for tramps. Cornelia didn’t look like a tramp, but she sure did look like a girl who knew what she was doing.

“Here, put this on,” she ordered and tossed me the suit.

“I brought one.”

“Yeah, I know. Wear mine,” she repeated, giving me that I-know-best look that Cornelia had perfected. “Bezellia, I can see why you like him. He is so cute, so powerful-looking, like some kind of African prince.”

“Lord, Cornelia. What in the world are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on, Bee, you with Samuel. It’s so cool. It’s like your own little march on Selma.”

“Damn it, Cornelia. This is not some kind of sit-in. I haven’t even seen him since last summer. And we didn’t particularly hit it off then, if you remember.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. But if we hang out by the swimming pool, we’ll have a great view of the chicken coop and anybody who happens to be working on it, if you get my drift.”

“I’m not sure I want to get your drift.”

“What do you mean you don’t want to? You’re here, aren’t you? Shit, put the suit on, Bezellia. Lord, it’s not like you two are getting married. Although I would give anything to see the expression on Aunt Elizabeth’s face if you brought Samuel home to announce your engagement. I wonder if the
Register
would run your picture on the society page or the front page.”

“Cornelia, just shut up!” I exclaimed, and then threw a towel over her head and walked into the bathroom. She was still laughing as I undressed and slipped into the bathing suit. I looked in the mirror and rubbed my stomach, and then turned to the side so I could admire the little white ruffles stretched across my bottom and the two full breasts now neatly covered in two small pieces of raspberry fabric. Mother would not like the way I looked in this suit. But the girl looking back at me in that bathroom mirror suddenly felt a little bit older and a little more certain of what she wanted.

We each wrapped a towel around our waist and grabbed some of the magazines piled on the floor beside Cornelia’s bed. We raced down the stairs like we did when we were little. She pushed her body ahead of mine and took the lead. As we passed through the kitchen, Cornelia tossed me a bottle of Coppertone and handed me a cold bottle of Tab out of the refrigerator. She practically lunged through the screen door, laughing and singing, making plenty of noise so that Samuel was sure to hear us.

And as soon as I stepped onto the patio, I saw him. He had a large roll of chicken wire resting on his right shoulder and was headed back inside the coop. He was much taller and thicker than he had been only a year ago, looking much more like a grown man than the boy I had known down by the creek. Cornelia, who was just ahead of me, poked me with her elbow and instructed me to stick my chest out a little farther.

“Hey there, Princess,” Samuel hollered from the other side of the yard. Funny, I thought, how the sound of that word felt good to me now. “Don’t let that face of yours get burned again. Sun is mighty strong today.” Then he tipped his same tattered blue ball cap, just like Nathaniel would do, and walked inside the coop, the roll of chicken wire still resting on his shoulder.

“I’ll see you later,” I yelled back, but Samuel had already disappeared.

“Cool, Bee, very cool,” Cornelia chanted. “Remember, you have to act a little disinterested. Boys always want what they can’t have, especially the black ones.”

“Cornelia Grove! Where in the world are you getting this crap?”

But my cousin just rolled her eyes, wanting me to think I was the one with no sense. I stretched out on a lounge chair and opened a magazine. And by the time the sun had made its way across the swimming pool, I felt as though I had read every copy of
Seventeen
Cornelia owned, some dating back to 1961. I had painted my toenails pink, drunk three bottles of Tab, and polished off almost an entire tin of Charles Chips. I was lying on my stomach and slipping into a satisfied, contented sleep when I heard a loud splash and felt cold drops of water stinging my back. I looked up and found Samuel standing in the swimming pool with his arms crossed, resting on the concrete edge.

“I told you not to stay out in the sun too long. Looks like your back has done gotten red as a ripe tomato.”

As I shifted my weight onto my left shoulder, I could feel my skin, hot and tender. But just like that day down by the creek, I acted as though I didn’t care. “What are you doing in the pool? I thought you were here to work.”

“Sounding a bit like your mama, Miss Bezellia. But just so you know, we’re done for the day. And your uncle always lets me swim here. You know this ain’t a whites-only pool,” he added, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out that way.” I slowly flipped onto my back and lifted my left leg, carefully bending it at the knee, hoping to look more like Brigitte Bardot than a self-conscious, prejudiced teenage girl.

“Why don’t you get in? I bet that back of yours could use some cooling off.”

Cornelia looked up from her lounge chair, and even though there was a full bottle of Tab under her chair, she said she needed to run inside and get something cold to drink. She told Samuel she’d bring him a Coca-Cola. And then with her eyes, she told me to get up and walk toward the concrete steps at the shallow end of the swimming pool.

I dipped my toe into the cold blue water and quickly yanked my foot back onto the hot concrete. Samuel walked toward the steps and held out his hand. He wrapped his cool, wet fingers around mine, and like a preacher guiding a sinner into the waters of salvation, he led me into my cousin’s swimming pool.

“That sure is a pretty bathing suit you got on there.”

“It’s Cornelia’s.”

“Well, it sure looks pretty on you.” But I was too cold or too nervous to respond to his compliment. I pulled myself up on my tiptoes, trying to lift my body out of the water, and stretched my arms across my bare stomach. “Girl, you got to move around a little.” Samuel dropped my hand and started swimming, gracefully extending one arm above his head and then the other, turning to the side to take in a full breath of air.

Mother had always told me that black people couldn’t swim. She said their bodies were too thick and they just sank to the bottom like a lead weight. But Samuel swam right to me, and when he put his feet on the bottom of the pool, we were standing face-to-face.

“Come on, Bezellia.”

“I’ll swim when I’m good and ready, thank you very much.”

“We’ll see about that,” Samuel taunted, and then he dove under the water. He swam directly beneath me and put his head between my legs, lifting me out of the pool.

“Damn it, Samuel!” I screamed.

“Yeah,” he answered, ignoring my protests. “Now stand up on my shoulders and dive into the water.”

“No!”

“Go on, Bezellia, you can do it. I’ve got you. Besides, there’s no other way down from here.” He started hopping from one foot to the other, jostling my body from left to right. “Come on. Like I said, there’s only one way down from here.”

“Okay, okay.” I took a deep breath and carefully lifted my right foot onto his right shoulder, pausing for a moment to regain my balance. “I hate you right now, Samuel Stephenson,” I snapped and held his hands tightly in mine. I slowly lifted my left leg up and onto his left shoulder, crouching on top of his back, again trying to balance myself before pulling my entire body up and out of the water.

“Good going, Princess, I knew you could do it.”

I stood up straight and tall just long enough to yell at Cornelia, begging her to stick her head out the back door and take a good look at her cousin. And then I dove, arms straight above my head, into the water. When I came up, Samuel was cheering for me, and I swam right back to him like a piece of iron drawn to a magnet. He grabbed my hands and pulled me into the shallow end, dragging me across some line that we both knew had been drawn deep in the dirt beneath that swimming pool long before the two of us were ever born.

I started spending as much time as I could at Cornelia’s house. And with Mother gone and Father preoccupied with Mrs. Hunt, it wasn’t hard to find my way there. Samuel worked on the chicken coop until late in the afternoon. But before he went home, we met by the edge of the swimming pool. Cornelia and Uncle Thad were always nearby, but somehow neither one of us ever seemed to notice them being there. And with our feet dangling in the water, we talked about school and family and movies and growing up. I had always figured our dreams would be as different as the color of our skin, but they weren’t really.

Samuel dreamed of marching with Dr. King, although he wasn’t convinced that sitting at a lunch counter was going to get his people where they needed to be. He dreamed of getting married and raising a family. But he said, more than anything else, he dreamed of having children who could do and be what they wanted without people spitting on them or calling them names.

I simply dreamed of living in a house where it didn’t matter whether your linens and towels were monogrammed and your friends were members of the Junior League. I dreamed of living in a house where your mother called you by your name, saying it with genuine love and affection. I dreamed of being a woman who didn’t need a husband who owned cashmere and convertibles. So I guess, in the end, Samuel and I wanted pretty much the same thing, just to be ourselves.

He asked me one afternoon, as the sun fell behind the house, if I remembered that day down by the creek when he first called me a princess. I told him I did. He asked if I remembered the promise he made to buy some land of his own and a big house just like mine. He wondered if I believed him now—believed that he was going to be more than the son of a house servant. I told him I did.

“Good,” he said, and then he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a thin gold bracelet. He clasped it around my wrist and made me promise not to take it off until that land and that house was his.