“Who are you talking about?” I ask, distressed by the quaking of my voice.
“I don’t think I want to tell you.” She smiles the smile of someone who has all the power. Then she pivots and walks to the doorway. I say nothing as she leaves the room and I watch her move down the hallway with the ease of a younger woman. Shutting the door, I stand frozen for a full minute before my brain kicks in and I rush to the window. I look out at the tiny parking lot we reserve for clients and contractors, watching for Ann Smith, hoping to see what car she gets into. But she never appears and I stand there numbly, the specter of her presence still looming behind me.
Chapter 2
ELLIE
1965
There are moments in life when you suddenly see your future and it’s not at all what you expected. I was home from the University of North Carolina for spring break and we were all sitting in the living room. Daddy was reading the paper in his favorite chair, the leather so old it made cracking sounds each time he moved. Buddy was at the fold-down desk by the fireplace, tinkering with some small mechanical part from a car. And Mama sat between Brenda and me on the sofa, the Brides magazine open on her lap. Brenda had brought the magazine over and the three of us were admiring the dresses. I had to bite my tongue as Brenda paged through the magazine, though, and I wondered if Mama was biting hers, too. After all, Brenda would not be wearing one of those frothy white dresses, and I, as her maid of honor, would not be wearing one of the beautiful taffeta bridesmaid creations. Brenda’s wedding to Garner Cleveland, due to take place next Saturday, would be small and quiet and necessary, with no attendants other than Garner’s best friend, Reed—who happened to be my boyfriend—and me.
Brenda turned the page, and the photographs of dresses gave way to the headline of an article: “Sexual Harmony and How to Attain It.”
“Don’t need that one.” Brenda laughed, patting her still-flat belly. She turned the page and if my mother hadn’t been sitting next to me, I would have turned it back, curious. I knew next to nothing about sexual harmony. It wasn’t that I was a prude. It was just that Reed and I hadn’t gone that far, by mutual agreement. I wanted to wait until I was married and although Reed did give me a bit of an intellectual argument about it, he said he admired me for my decision. I hadn’t criticized Brenda for her decision, though. Every girl had to figure out what was right for herself when it came to that sort of thing. What had shocked me the most about Brenda’s pregnancy was that I’d had no idea she and Garner were intimate. I felt hurt that my longtime best friend and dorm mate had kept something so monumental from me.
When I told Mama about Brenda’s condition and that she had to marry Garner right away, she expressed sympathy. “That poor girl,” she said. “She just cut her freedom short,” followed by a stern, “Learn from this, Eleanor. This is what happens when you let things go too far. You and Reed better behave yourselves.”
“Mama,” I’d said, “I’m not stupid. And we’re not as serious as Garner and Brenda are.”
“I’d say Reed’s plenty serious about you,” she said. “That boy adores you.”
Reed was a real sweetheart and I’d known him most of my life. He finished college in three years and now worked at Round Hill’s biggest bank. He wore a suit and tie every day—a blue tie, to set off his sky-blue eyes and dark hair. He was handsome in a suit, no doubt about it, but now that I was surrounded by college guys in their chinos and madras shirts, Reed sometimes seemed a bit stuffy to me.
I was touched that Mama was sitting with Brenda and me now, kindly oohing and aahing over the bridal gowns as if Brenda might actually be able to select one and wear it to her wedding. Mama loved Brenda, sometimes referring to her as her “second daughter,” and Brenda had called her “Mama” for years. Brenda’s own chilly mother would never look through Brides magazine with her. She agreed to come to the “ceremony,” as she called it, even though Brenda’s father refused, but she wasn’t about to indulge Brenda’s fantasies of a fancy wedding when it would be anything but.
“I love this one.” Brenda pointed to the sparkly bodice of a beautiful, silver-hued white gown. “I keep coming back to it over and over again.”
Mama touched the back of Brenda’s hand. “It must be very hard to know you won’t be able to have the wedding of your dreams,” she said.
I glanced at Brenda. I could tell she was holding back tears. I knew she was happy, though. She and Garner were madly in love.
“Listen to this,” Daddy said suddenly, and I shifted my gaze from the magazine to my father. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table by his side and began to read. “‘Reverend Greg Filburn, pastor of the AME church in Turner’s Bend, announced today that several hundred white students from Northern and Western colleges will spend the summer in the Southern states registering Negroes to vote. Derby County is expected to host a number of those students. Only—’”
“Oh great,” Buddy interrupted him without taking his eyes off the metal part in his hands. “Just what we need. A bunch of Northern agitators.”
“‘Only thirty-four percent of Negroes in Derby County are now registered,’” Daddy continued reading, “‘compared to ninety-four percent of the white population, Reverend Filburn said. The voting rights bill, soon to be signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, will hopefully change that disparity, and we need to do all we can to make sure our folks can register. The program is called SCOPE, which stands for the Summer Community Organization and Political Education project—’” Daddy interrupted his own reading with a laugh. “That’s a mouthful,” he said, then continued, “‘—and it will send more than five hundred volunteers into seventy-five rural counties with the aim of removing racism from American politics.’”
“What do you think of this bridesmaid dress?” Brenda pointed to a page in the magazine, but neither my mother nor I even glanced at it. Both of us had our attention on my father. Especially me, even though I wasn’t yet certain why.
“Are you sure they don’t just mean deeper south?” Mama asked. “You know, Alabama and Mississippi where they have all the trouble? Not North Carolina.”
“Sounds like they mean here too,” Daddy said, “since this Filburn fella’s church is in Turner’s Bend.” Turner’s Bend was the town right next to Round Hill, where we lived.
“This sounds exactly like the sort of thing Carol would’ve done, doesn’t it?” Mama asked.
We all automatically turned our heads to look at the empty rocking chair by the fireplace, where Aunt Carol always sat. Cancer took her from us the year before and I don’t think anyone had sat in that chair since. I felt her loss every minute of every day. Aunt Carol was the only person in the family who seemed to understand me. Or, as she told me one time, I was the only person who seemed to understand her.
“Carol would’ve hopped right on that bandwagon,” Mama continued, and Daddy rolled his eyes.
“That woman never met an underdog she didn’t like,” he said.