I understand that he wants do this trick he and Birdie have worked out, and he’s right: she’ll be too big to do it soon. In fact, I think she’s already too tall and lanky. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Please? Please?” Clay and Birdie chant together.
“Oh, all right. Then we all go to bed, okay?”
“Yeah!” Birdie shouts and kicks her shoes off.
Clay grips her calves. “Ready?”
“Of course. I’m Birdie the Acrobat Tortionist Clown.” She wraps her arms around her daddy’s head and eases upward until her feet are on his shoulders and her toes curl down like a monkey’s to help her balance as she stands. She stretches her arms and takes a deep breath.
Clay’s legs are braced and his biceps are tight as he holds our daughter on his strong shoulders, a huge grin on his face.
This is the point where I always hold my breath and think I should stop them. This is dangerous and I shouldn’t allow them do something so foolish.
Clay says, “Now!”
Birdie falls forward, almost like a diver. The skirt of her dress inverts as she drops forward, forward, forward, until about six inches from the ground Clay stops her fall with his grip on her ankles. Birdie’s giggles sound breathless with excitement.
Clay gently lays her down on the grass. She does a somersault and rises from her curl with her arms raised over her head. “Ta-da!” Father and daughter take a bow, while I exhale a deep sigh of relief and applaud. Birdie runs to the front door and Clay puts his arm around me.
“That’s the last time, Norah. She’s too big. It’s not safe anymore.”
MELANIE
“Do you want something else to drink, Mellie?” Robert asks.
“No, thanks.” I look around the group dancing and laughing beneath the Japanese lanterns. Stephanie and Marvin are sitting closer together. He’s putting her fingers on the strings of his guitar, showing her how to make a chord while he strums. Nerves tingle in my scalp. This is it, my first adult party without my parents. And I’m here with Robert. He wanted me to stay, so it’s almost like a date.
Awareness slips over me like a new skin. The air feels thicker somehow, like it actually touches my bare shoulders and leaves invisible, feathery fingerprints. Night-blooming jasmine and heavy-sweet honeysuckle perfume the darkness, while cigarette smoke drifts over the heads of the men standing near the fence. Their voices rise and fall. I hear the words Castro and Russia. They talk about planes and make guesses about what kind of missions their friends have been flying.
Robert stands beside me. Has he noticed the same things I have? I wonder if he hears the men’s war talk. Does it frighten him, or make him more eager to join them? His face shows no emotion, except when Mrs. Winston rises like a graceful white bird from her chair. His brows draw together, and he looks down at his shoes.
She sways through the middle of the party, clearing a path until she stands in front of Robert. He steps back and bumps against the drink table, making the bottles rattle.
“Goodnight, Rob. I’ll see you when you get back, right?” She kisses his cheek and lets her fingers drift over his forearm. “Good luck.”
I swallow the lump of jealousy clogging my throat. I really don’t like Mrs. Winston.
“Uh, thanks for coming.” Robert shakes her hand, like he shook my daddy’s.
Mrs. Winston’s hand slowly leaves Robert’s. “I always do, Rob.”
Robert looks embarrassed, but I don’t know why. It’s a fact Mrs. Winston comes to
all
the parties.
Then she’s gone, leaving her heavy scent to cloud our breath. “Want to dance again?” Robert asks.
For the second time in one night, I’m paired with Robert on the dance floor. Only this time the song is a ballad, so his hand is on my waist and mine rests on his shoulder. I think I’m in heaven.
The next hour passes so quickly. Too soon, Robert and I weave our way through the cars parked in the driveway. It’s very dark. Music from the backyard sounds softer and higher, as if it comes from way up in the sky rather than behind the house. That tingling awareness lingers with me, magnifying every scent, every sound, every touch. I trip on the edge of the driveway and Robert catches my arm. His fingers feel warm on my skin. He smells like earth and strength and heat in the night.
I want to bury my face in his shoulder again, like when I rode behind him on his motorbike. But we walk side by side down the shadowy street, in and out of puddles of porch light. Robert is carrying the empty cupcake platter, letting it bounce against his leg with a thump every now and then. We pass the five houses between Robert’s and mine without saying a word, swatting mosquitoes with exaggerated movements, a strange, silent dance.
At the end of my driveway, Robert stops abruptly and steps in front of me, blocking my way.
Was Robert going to kiss me? Me?
Suddenly, I feel like I’ve run a mile. There’s no air in my lungs, no thoughts in my head, only my blood rushing through my body.
He steps closer, his breath warm on my cheek. Then magically, without thought, our lips came together. He moves his lips, covering mine with more heat, more wetness until I feel the rest of my body disappear. Only his lips on mine. Nothing else in the world exists.
Just this kiss. Just this moment.
I move my mouth against his, following his lead, kissing him back. This is even better than I thought it would be. I want to keep kissing Robert forever.
“Mellie.” He touches my lips with one finger. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“Why? I wanted you to kiss me. I wanted you to be my first one.”
“Your first?” Robert slides his hands to my arms once more. “You’re sweet, Melanie. Don’t ever change.” He touches my forehead with his closed mouth. It isn’t a kiss.
Now, I know a kiss.
He steps around me, and turns toward his house. “’Night, Mellie.”
He walks up the street, his back straight, head held high, like he’s already a sailor.
I cover my mouth with my hands to hold onto the kiss. My whole body sings. Deep inside, in the place my soul must rest, a tiny pulse throbs and grows until it echoes all through me, from my scalp to my toes.
Thursday, October 4, 1962
NORAH
“Cherie is grounded, Mama,” Melanie says. “Steph told me her parents really hate her boyfriend, Clint.”
I shrug and focus on the blue booties I’m crocheting. Everyone is hoping for a boy now, even Birdie, who’s coloring blue pictures for the baby’s room.
Melanie sits beside me on the couch. She rubs a thread of yarn between her fingers. “Why do you think they grounded her? She and Clint only go to the movies and stuff.”
“Parents have to make decisions about what’s best for their children. Sometimes the children don’t like it, but it’s still the best thing for them.”
“But what’s wrong with going to the movies with Clint? Cherie’s parents let her start dating a couple of years ago. She’s had a few boyfriends.”
I study her serious face, thankful that she’s still so innocent. How long will I be able to keep her that way? I might as well take this chance to teach my girl a little about men. “There are different kinds of boys, Melanie. A girl has to be careful which kind she chooses. I think Clint might be, well, a little rough. I wouldn’t want you to date him.”
Flossie continues to dust, arranging the china shepherdess and her sheep on the bookshelf. She glances at me and smiles. She understands what I’m saying. It occurs to me I don’t even know if she has children.
Melanie looks from me to Flossie. “How can you tell, Mama?”
I can tell Mellie’s confused, wondering what kind of special x-ray vision grown-up women have that girls don’t.
“Experience, sweetie.” I can’t help but shake my head, hoping that she has an easy time of it, but knowing that learning about men and love is never easy. “Just experience.”
“Is it because Clint’s hair’s a little too long?”
“No. It’s more in his attitude. Like he rules the world and everything in it. And, of course, that means he rules Cherie, too. You don’t want to get involved with a man who wants to control you, sweetie. You want to love a man who loves you and thinks of you as a partner.”
Flossie picks up her dust-rag and runs the cloth over the piano’s smooth walnut finish. She lifts the keyboard cover and dances the rag over the keys, making nonsense chords from high to low.
“Let’s play our duet, Flossie.” Melanie slips onto the piano bench and pats the space beside her. Flossie glances at me and I nod. She scoots in next to Melanie.
They position their fingers on the keys and Flossie begins a blues rhythm in the bass register, the notes rich and dark like her fingers on the keys. Melanie tinkles a melody high in the treble notes.
It isn’t really a song, at least not one Melanie’s piano teacher would play, but it sounds like music to me. Mellie loves to play it with Flossie.
Sometimes Flossie sets the tempo faster, like a boogie-woogie, and sometimes it’s slower like a ballad. Today it’s really mournful, like the blues.
While they play, Flossie makes up words. “Sometimes a man cain’t find no peace in himself,” she sings in rhythm to her chords. “So he looks for a woman to make him quiet inside, so he can stand himself. But cain’t no woman do that for him. Just like no man can do that for a woman.”
The words pause here and Flossie plays a sad, melancholy melody. She rocks on the bench and sings, “Every person got to find his own peace. Every person got to make his own happiness, child. It don’t come from outside.” She pounds out the final notes, and Melanie’s fingers do a run in the high keys.
Flossie nods and folds her hands over her heart and sings, her voice clear and true. “It comes from here, inside.”
Melanie tinkles the piano keys a little more. “Flossie, how did you learn to play piano like that? My teacher doesn’t play that way.”
“I just picked it up here and there. Mostly at church. I had some music lessons at college, too.”
“You went to college, Flossie?”
“Yes, ma’am. I sure did.”
Flossie rises from the piano bench and takes up her dust rag again. Her shoulders are back. Her head is held high.
I know that she knows that I didn’t go to college, but she doesn’t say anything.
Does it embarrass Melanie to know that the colored woman who dusts her house went to college and her mama didn’t?
Just the other night we talked about that mess up at the University of Mississippi where that colored boy wants to go. Well, he’s going there now, despite all the fighting and the National Guard being there. What a mess.
I told Melanie that if she decided to go college I wanted her to stay close to home in case trouble broke out like that. And it’s a fact there’s going to be more trouble. Once the gate is open, there’s no stopping the trouble from rushing in.
Melanie sits silently on the piano bench, her gaze on the keys, her hands in her lap. I can tell her mind is going about a hundred miles an hour, thinking about all the different choices people can make in their lives.
I watch Flossie continue her dusting, humming under her breath like she’s just the happiest person in the world. I wonder what choices she made that led her to cleaning my house with a college education behind her. Surely, being a maid wasn’t her only option. Was it?
But then, how many options do women really have, black or white?
I wrap more yarn around my finger and begin the next row of crochet stitches.
I started working in an office, but I sure didn’t want to end up like Miss Jacobs, the old maid office manager. She’d worked for the company for nearly forty years. She couldn’t move up any higher in pay grade. Miss Jacobs didn’t have a choice, because she never got married.
Even I had more choices than Miss Jacobs. I pause to count my stitches again and look at the pattern. Two more rows like this. Birdie jumps up to show me her picture.
“That’s nice, Birdie. We’ll put it on the wall later, okay?”
What kind of choices will Melanie make? All I can hope for is that she’ll make decisions she’ll be happy with.
That’s probably the most any of us can hope for. I look at my girls, peaceful and happy, and realize that I’ve made a lot more good choices than bad.
“Mama?” Melanie’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “Is it all right if Steph and I go to the store for a Coke?”
“Sure. Bring something back for Birdie, okay?”
“All right. What do you want, Birdie?”
Birdie squeezes her eyes closed. “I can’t make up my mind.”
“Let Melanie surprise you,” I suggest.
Birdie shrugs her shoulders. “Okay. I like surprises.”
“See you later, Mama.” Melanie kisses my cheek and goes out the door. For now, her choice is simple: choose a piece of candy Birdie will like. Birdie likes all kinds of candy. Melanie can’t go wrong.
Wednesday, October 9, 1962
Jacksonville, Florida