“Mary Ella!” I called out, and she stopped walking and looked around, trying to see where my voice came from. Then she must of spotted me. Instead of walking toward me, though, she ran right across the path I was on, heading for the woods and home, and I knew she was running to keep away from me. She didn’t want to see me. Or me to see her. My sister was a strange one.
By the time I got home, Mary Ella was sitting on the porch rocking Baby William in her arms. Even in the dark, I could tell she was holding him so tight you’d expect him to cry, but Baby William put up with Mary Ella lovin’ on him. She was the only one who could calm him when he got flustrated from not having the words to tell us what he wanted. He knew who’d carried him closest to her heart. Moments like this, they was two quiet souls cut from the same cloth.
“Where you been?” I asked, like I expected her to tell me the truth.
“Had to get the extras from Mr. Gardiner,” she said.
I didn’t bother arguing with her. It didn’t take hours to get the extras unless she had to grow them herself. I didn’t say nothing about how I saw Eli walking home about the same time she was. There was something real breakable about Mary Ella and I was always afraid if I touched her in the wrong spot, she’d crack.
Nonnie came out on the porch, rooting through the basket in the light from the house. “He gave us some of Desiree’s banana pudding!” she said. “Oh sweet Jesus, I wish he’d do that every week.”
“You can’t have that, Nonnie,” I reminded her as I sat down on the stoop. “Your sugar.”
“Don’t go telling me what I can and can’t have,” Nonnie snapped. “You seem to forget you’re my granddaughter, not my mother.”
I shut up. Nonnie was like a little kid about her food. You told her she couldn’t have something and she’d eat it just to be ornery. You reminded her to test her pee, and she’d lie and say she already done it.
I smacked a skeeter. I wouldn’t last long out here. Once you stopped moving, they was on you.
Nonnie went back in the house and came out a minute later with a spoon. She settled into her rocker and set the bowl of pudding on her lap. I couldn’t watch her take that first bite. I heard her let out a sigh.
“I’m at the end of my natural working life, girls,” she said. She’d been saying that for years, but lately I believed it. She didn’t last but two hours at the barn today, and even chasing after Baby William seemed too much for her. It was up to me and Mary Ella to work hard enough to keep Mr. Gardiner happy so he’d let us keep the house. He could have a bunch of real workers in it. A family with a father and sons who could do five times what me and Mary Ella and Nonnie did. I was always afraid one day he’d tell us it was time to go. What we’d do without our house, I didn’t know.
I watched my grandmother digging into the bowl of banana pudding and my sister holding her secrets as close as she held her baby, and I wondered how much longer we could go on this way.
3
Jane
Dr. Carson reached his hand toward me to help me sit up. I clutched the thin fabric gown against my body as I balanced on the edge of the examining table, my legs dangling uncomfortably. He rolled away from me on his stool, then folded his arms across his chest and smiled at me, his thick gray hair giving him a grandfatherly appearance.
“I think your fiancé is a lucky man,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, although I couldn’t imagine what on earth he was basing that on. I’d barely said a word to him during the examination, too embarrassed to do anything other than stare at the ceiling. Now, though, I had to look at him. He seemed determined to hold my gaze with his own eyes, magnified behind his black horn-rimmed glasses.
“Do you have any concerns about your wedding night you’d like to discuss?” he asked.
It was so strange to be asked that question by a man I didn’t know. My own mother wouldn’t ask me that question. Gloria wouldn’t have, either, and she’d been my college roommate and best friend. And certainly not Robert. I felt my cheeks burn, not for the first time in the last hour. This man had touched my breasts, slipped his fingers inside me, and explored parts of my body even I had never seen. Why should a question about my wedding night feel even more intrusive?
“No,” I said. “No concerns.” I couldn’t wait to leave his office, but there was something more I needed from him. It was now or never, and he waited as though he knew I had more to say. I cleared my throat. “I was wondering if you could prescribe that new birth control pill for me,” I said.
He raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “You don’t want children?” The way he said it was accusatory, and I felt his opinion of me plummet.
I pressed the gown tighter to my chest. “I’d like to put off having children for a couple of years,” I said. “I plan to work for a while first.”
“Surely you don’t have to work.” He looked at me curiously. “Not married to a pediatrician.” He’d told me he’d met Robert somewhere in the Raleigh medical community, and I didn’t like that connection.
“I
want
to work,” I said. Dr. Carson sounded like my mother, who claimed she only worked while my father was alive because his teaching salary had never quite paid the bills, and she only continued to work after his death because the life insurance wasn’t enough to see us through. I knew she loved working in the library, no matter what she said. Robert wasn’t thrilled with my plan himself, though. He never out-and-out said I
couldn’t
work. He did, however, say it would be embarrassing for him, since none of his friends’ wives worked. Only Gloria, who taught second grade, seemed to understand.
“What do you want to do?” Dr. Carson frowned at me as though he couldn’t imagine a job I might truly want.
“I just graduated from Woman’s College in Greensboro,” I said. “I have an interview this afternoon to be a caseworker for the Department of Public Welfare.”
“Oh, you don’t want to do that!” he said, as if I’d said I was going to pick up garbage in the street. “Nice-looking blond girl like you? That’s so dreary. If you have the itch to work, get a job at Belk’s where you can dress up and sell jewelry or smart little hats.”
“I want to do something that helps people, the way Robert does.”
“You could have gone into nursing, then.”
“I could have, if I could stand the sight of blood.” I smiled as sweetly as I could to keep my annoyance from showing.
“Well,” he said, slapping his hands on his knees as he stood up. “I haven’t prescribed the birth control pill yet and I won’t be starting today without getting approval from the man of the house.” He pulled a cigarette from the Phillip Morris pack on the ledge above the sink and I watched as he lit it with a bronze lighter and inhaled deeply. “Once you’re married,” he said, “have your husband call me with his permission and I’ll write you a prescription.”
I was twenty-two years old and having to ask Robert’s permission was humiliating. Also futile. He would say no. He thought the pill hadn’t been studied enough and the side effects were too dangerous. Plus, he wanted to start a family right away. I wanted a family, too. Three children sounded perfect to me, but not yet.
Dr. Carson blew a stream of smoke into the air and studied me where I sat waiting, still wrapped in the skimpy gown. “Seems like I don’t see many virgins anymore,” he said. “Congratulations on that. You’re a smart girl.”
“Thank you,” I said, although I didn’t like him passing judgment on me. Besides, it was a miracle I was still a virgin. Robert and I couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We’d come really close to crossing the line, but we decided to wait. If it had been up to me alone, I’m not sure I could have held out.
He pulled the door open an inch or two. “Children are the greatest blessing,” he said over his shoulder. And then he was gone.
Once alone in the room, I slipped out of the gown and began to dress, surprised by the sting of tears in my eyes. I hadn’t gotten what I’d wanted from this visit: foolproof birth control. Instead I’d been patronized and belittled. I wished I’d had the guts to respond differently to him, but that might have gotten back to Robert. I was already wondering if Dr. Carson might call Robert to tell him about my request. I didn’t want to think about any deep meaning behind the fact that I couldn’t be honest with Robert about wanting to take the pill. Everything else between us was good, and thinking about him eased my heart as I sat down on the stool to attach my stockings to my garter belt. Robert and I were a wonderful team together and the one thing I was absolutely sure of was his love. Love made any problem solvable.
* * *
I was still thinking about that miserable appointment as I drove to my interview. My car had belonged to my father and I thought it still smelled faintly of his pipe tobacco, although Robert said he couldn’t smell anything. It reassured me, that smell, and I tried to put Dr. Carson out of my mind. The last thing I needed was to go into a job interview upset and angry. Still, my inability to get the pill now hung over my head. Gloria’s doctor had prescribed it for her months ago, even before it had been approved for birth control. Even before she was
married,
for pity’s sake. I’d make an appointment with her doctor and hope I could get it in time for our honeymoon.
“Everything will work out,” I said out loud to myself as I stopped at a red light. That’s what Gloria said whenever I shared my doubts about fitting into Robert’s social sphere. Although he and I both came from middle-class families, his fortune changed dramatically when he got that M.D. after his name. His father was an electrician and no one else in his family had graduated from college, much less medical school. He’d worked hard for years to get where he was and it meant something to him to be a part of the country club set and to play golf with some of Raleigh’s most prominent citizens. I didn’t care about the trappings of wealth and status, but he did. He was proud of his accomplishments and I was proud of him, and other than having babies right away, I would do all I could to make him happy.
I’d only known him for a year. He’d asked me to marry him when we’d been together six months, though it felt like forever. “Six months is only six months, no matter how long it feels,” my mother had warned me when I told her we were engaged. She did like Robert, though. She particularly liked the fact that he was a doctor and I would want for nothing. As a widow, she worried about that.
We’d met at the wedding of a girl I went to college with, and we happened to be seated at the same table. It had only been a year since the accident that cost my father and sister their lives, and I was still weighed down by grief. Sitting next to Robert, though, I felt suddenly awake, as though I’d been sleepwalking through the past year. Lord, he was a handsome man! He reminded me of Rock Hudson, cleft chin and all. He said I reminded him of Grace Kelly, which was ridiculous but flattered me anyway. All my life, I’d been called plain. Teresa had been the pretty one. Suddenly, I felt beautiful. It was one of those attractions that made everyone else at the wedding disappear. He was thirty to my twenty-one, but the age difference didn’t matter. When I found out he was a doctor … Well, I could be just as shallow as the next girl. I was doubly attracted to him.
We crammed a lifetime of getting to know each other into that one night. He liked that I was not your typical girl. I didn’t make a fuss when the woman sitting next to me accidentally dropped butter on my dress, ruining it with a greasy stain. I didn’t blush when a man at the table told an off-color joke. We talked about music we liked and movies we’d seen. I’d just seen
Peyton Place
and his eyes widened at that. That movie
had
shocked me, but I didn’t let on. When the band started playing, we danced and danced and danced. My feet ached in my high heels and I tossed them under our table and kept on going. I felt giddy with joy. I’d nearly forgotten how it felt to be happy.
When we parted that evening, he kissed me in a way that turned my knees to jelly. Then he asked for my number. “You’re so refreshing,” he told me. “So different. You’re not always running to the ladies’ room to powder your nose or check your hair. I love how you took off your shoes to dance. I really like you.”
His extended family was huge and important to him, so I agreed to have the wedding in Atlanta, where he was from, instead of Raleigh. He’d been raised Methodist, so once we were married, we’d attend the Edenton Methodist Church instead of my beloved Pullen Baptist, where my father had been a deacon. When Robert’s parents came to visit him in Raleigh, I proudly took them to my church, not realizing that a visiting colored pastor would be preaching that day. That was nothing new at Pullen, but it was far too radical for my future in-laws, who walked out during the service. To Robert’s credit, he stayed with me for the service and apologized for their rudeness, but I knew he’d never set foot in Pullen again.
Leaving my church would be only one change among many. I was bidding good-bye to life as I’d known it and saying hello to the country club, where I couldn’t quite get my bearings, and the Junior League, which I still hadn’t applied to join. I would have Robert and that would be good enough. He’d brought me back to life when I hadn’t even realized I was dead.
I found a parking place in front of the Department of Public Welfare. My dress stuck to the back of my legs as I got out of the car. I was sure my hair was a mess after the drive with the windows open, and I tried to comb it into place with my fingers as I walked into the building. My appearance wasn’t going to make the best first impression and I suddenly felt nervous. I really wanted this job.
There was a fan in the office where I waited to be interviewed and I sat as close to it as I could without turning my hair into a rat’s nest. The air it blew on me must have been ninety degrees, but it was better than nothing.
A woman stepped out of her office and walked toward me, smiling. “Miss Mackie?” she asked. She was very slender and wore a short-sleeved blouse tucked into beige slacks. A Katharine Hepburn sort of look.
“Yes.” I got to my feet and shook her hand.