Acknowledgments
1
Thursday, March 26, 1953
Mail call,” old Miss Beaumont bellowed into the commons room, and a flock of girls descended on her like biddies after scratch feed. Except for me. Normally, I would have been right there with them, clamoring for news from home. But since Mother called right after the tornado hit last month to say everyone back home in Satsuma was still in one piece, there hasn’t been a single word from anyone. Not even Brooks.
It was bad enough that Hurricane Florence blew through in September and smashed much of Alabama to bits. Six months later, just when everyone was getting a handle on putting my hometown back together, a tornado roared through, undoing Satsuma all over again. And while I wanted Miss Beaumont to bellow my name, I was sure the folks back home were too busy with the cleanup to write.
On good days, the silence was unsettling, and on bad days, it turned my stomach inside out. But I knew better than to complain.
Three and a half years ago, I’d been dying to get out of the armpit of Alabama to study music and accepted a full ride to the most exclusive women’s college in South Carolina. Funny how, back then Satsuma, even Alabama herself, seemed too small for me. Now, all I can think about is moving back home, and it won’t be long, just eight weeks till graduation.
I missed my mother and Sissy like it was the first day of my freshman year. And if I let myself think of the very long list of the people I love who have stopped writing me since those awful catastrophes, I would never stop crying. And Brooks. Loyal, faithful Brooks, who loved me enough to let me go away to college, saying he would wait forever if he had to for me to be his bride. The thought of how much I loved him, missed him, made my heart literally ache with a dull pain that left me in tears.
I was sure Brooks was working himself to death, helping rebuild Satsuma, because that’s the kind of guy he was, always building something. At Christmastime, he proposed, a promise without a ring, but a promise from Brooks Carter is as certain as my next breath.
Miss Beaumont called the name of one of the catty girls who are jealous of me because I am the only ’Bama belle at Columbia College. Maybe in the whole state of South Carolina. She cut her eye around at me, waved three letters, relishing the fact that I had none. My roommate, Sue, had one clutched to her chest, praying for more as hard as I’ve prayed for word from home. Something. Anything.
Sue had badgered me to call home. Collect. I knew my family would accept the charges, but I was afraid of the news that must be so terrible, nobody could bring themselves to call the pay phone in my hallway. So I waited for letters. I craved them as much as I dreaded them.
Since I went away to college, Mama and Sissy, who just turned nineteen last month, have written me every week, sometimes twice a week. Nana Gilbert and Grandma Pope wrote just as often, always slipping in a newspaper clipping from home, sometimes a dollar bill, whenever they had it to spare. With nineteen cousins who are all tighter than a new pair of shoes, I could always count on letters from them. One day I received twenty-two, a record at the college; it was better than Christmas. And Brooks, my beloved one true love, his letters were always like Christmas and the Fourth of July rolled into one.
Brooks loves and knows me better than anyone. He should; we’d been sweethearts since the fourth grade. While it has been a little rough with my studying music and education here in Columbia, and him back home in Satsuma, Brooks has been the most wonderful, understanding man in the world. Of course when I got the scholarship, he wasn’t at all happy, but he knew I was working toward our future. Me a teacher, maybe even a church pianist too, him running the feed store his daddy left him.
Lots of girls here have diamonds and are getting married the moment they graduate. But Brooks and I are waiting until next summer. He said it would be a good idea to get a year of teaching experience under my belt before we’re wed. He’s always so sensible like that, forward thinking, which I am not.
“Sue Dennis,” Miss Beaumont yelled. Sue snatched the letter from her and cocked her head at me, reminding me to be hopeful. But I knew there would be nothing for me, not until Satsuma was put together again. And it must be bad back home, much worse than Mother let on for the news from home to have stopped altogether. As awful as that was, the worst part was knowing in my heart why.
I shook my head at Sue and forced a thin smile.
“Nettie Gilbert,” Miss Beaumont called like the world had not just ended. I kept my seat on the kissing couch in the commons room. Sue jumped up and down for me, squealing, but for the life of me I couldn’t move. She grabbed the letter from Miss Beaumont’s withered old fingers and flew to my side.
“It’s from Brooks,” she gushed. “I just know it is.”
But I knew it’s wasn’t. Mother’s letter-perfect handwriting marked the front. I turned it over to see the flap she always sealed with a tiny mark, xoxo, but there was nothing. Someone was dead, their long obituary folded up inside. Someone so precious to me, no one, not even my own mother, could bear to break the news to me.
“Open it,” Sue said. She’d already read her first letter, from her beau back home in Summerville. Her face was still flush. Sometimes we read our letters to each other, but lately, she’d kept the ones from Jimmy to herself since she visited home last. Even though their June wedding was right around the corner, I suspected they did the deed the last time she was home, and her letters were too saucy to share.
On the last night of Christmas break, I’d wanted to go all the way with Brooks and would have if Sissy hadn’t fetched us from the orange grove. We’d taken a blanket there to watch the sunset. It was a perfect night. As crisp as a gulf night can be in December. The perfect time, the perfect place, but Sissy, who could never leave Brooks alone, insisted we play Parcheesi with the family. When I protested, all it took was a Mother said from her, and Brooks was folding up the blanket, putting it back in the knapsack along with my chance at becoming a woman.
“I’ll be at your graduation before you know it,” he promised when I gave him a pouty look. “And next summer, you’ll be my June bride,” he whispered like it was naughty. His breath sent chills down my thighs and made me hate Sissy, just a tiny bit.
At Christmastime, I saw the devastation from Hurricane Florence firsthand, but after the tornado roared through Satsuma a few weeks ago, I knew it was much worse. When I’d called, Mother had sworn everyone was okay. But I knew if something were wrong, if someone were terribly injured, she’d try to keep a tight lip, at least until I graduated. Partly for me because she loved me, and partly because I would be the first on both sides of my family to get my degree.
Mother had tried college, and then got married the summer after her freshman year. But I also know part of my mother was still angry at me for going so far away when I could have gone to ’Bama, which did not have a decent music program.
“Come on, Nettie, read it,” Sue chided. But my heart refused to let my hands open the letter; I passed it off to Sue as she drug me back to our room.
“Sit,” she ordered, pushing me gently down onto my bed. “You’re being silly. It’s something wonderful, I’m sure of it,” she gushed, reaching for her letter opener. She slit the top of the envelope, pulled out a small white card, and offered it to me again.
Tears raced down my face, my neck. When I pushed it away, a sheet of lined notebook paper folded into a perfect rectangle escaped from the card and fell to the floor. Sue snatched it up while scanning the card. Her smile faded, and her face was ghostly white.
“Oh, Nettie,” she whispered, unfolding the letter from my mother.
“It’s Brooks, isn’t it?” She nodded. “Oh, God.”
I threw myself across the bed, sobbing. Brooks was dead. I would never see his beautiful face. Hear his voice rumble my name. Feel his arms wrapped tight around me, making me feel adored. Safe. Loved. The life that we’d planned would never amount to anything more than just words whispered between two lovers.
“Nettie.” Sue lay down beside me, stroking my hair. “My sweet Nettie, you need to read this.”
I couldn’t. I buried my face in my pillow. She whispered how strong I was, how life wasn’t fair, how very sorry she was my heart was broken to bits, and held me until I was all cried out. After I don’t know how long, I shook my head and looked at her. “I just can’t believe Brooks is dead.”
Sue gnawed her bottom lip the way she did when she was taking a test. “He’s not dead, Nettie.” Her hand trembled as she put Mother’s letter in my hand. “He’s getting married.”
“What?” I jerked the page away from her, and the card fell onto my lap. Neat white stock with two little doves at the top. Mother might have been a farmer’s wife from Satsuma, but her well-worn etiquette book sat atop the Bible on her bedside table. And as far as Dorothy Gilbert was concerned, they were one and the same. Except the invitations weren’t sent out months in advance. They’d been done so quickly, they were not even engraved, and the wedding was four weeks away.
Brooks’s name should be below mine, but it was below Sissy’s—Jemma Renee Gilbert, glared at me, cordially inviting me to her wedding. Worse yet, the parents of Brooks and Sissy were cordially inviting me too.
“This must be some kind of a sick joke,” Sue whispered. “How can they do this to you?”
She read my mind and uttered the words I could not bring myself to say. How could they? How could Brooks?
My hands trembled so hard it was difficult to read the impeccably neat handwriting.
Dear Nettie,
It might seem cruel to send this letter along with a proper invitation, but I couldn’t bring myself to call you, and I wasn’t given much notice regarding this matter. I also know you well enough to know you would have to see the invitation to truly believe it. Although I do regret not having enough time to have them engraved.
I’m sorry to be the one to give you the news about Brooks and Sissy. I love you, Nettie, and I love your sister. I’m not condoning her behavior or the fact that she is in the family way, but you are blood. You are sisters. No man can break that bond, not even Brooks.
There’s money and a bus ticket paper-clipped to the invitation. I’ve checked the schedules. You should be able to leave Columbia on Thursday the week of the wedding after your morning classes and get back by Sunday night. I know how you hate to miss class, and if you are also missing some wonderful end-of-the-year party, I’m sorry. So very sorry.
But the milk has been spilled, Nettie. Come home and stand up with your sister. She needs you. She’s a wreck, and it makes me worry about the baby.
Just come home.
Love,
Mother
2
Sue dressed me in a mismatched skirt and blouse and put rouge on my cheeks, trying to make me look like I hadn’t lost my mind right along with my heart. She held her mouth open, concentrating as she put her lipstick on me, a color that clashed with my auburn hair. Normally, I would have said something about her unfortunate color choices, in a very kind way. Not like the mean girls who made fun of her for being colorblind. Sue made the universal sign for me to blot, and I did. I looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care.
“I’m not going,” I whined and plopped back down on the bed I hadn’t moved from since that awful letter came four days ago.
Every day since, Mother has called the pay phone just down the hall from my room. Sue told whoever answered it that I was indisposed. Too many phone calls from meddling parents had always bound us all together, the mean girls with the sweet girls, the plain with the fancy, and me, the ’Bama belle. Syrupy-sweet lies rolled off of our tongues, and we never thought twice.
Normally, I’d worry about the lies, the threat of my mother coming all the way from Satsuma to tan my hide, but I didn’t care. About anything.
“Okay. So, you’re going to go into Dean Kerrigan’s office and you’re going to tell her?”
Sue had gone over this a million times since I was summoned for this appointment, since I missed my senior recital Friday night. She waited for me to fill in the blank.
“I’ve had the flu.” She nodded, waiting for the rest of the lie. “And I didn’t go to the infirmary because—”
“Because you didn’t want to get anybody sick.” She smiled at me like I was one of her soon-to-be first-grade students. “And since I—I mean since Sue had already had the flu . . .”
My bed covers were a rumpled mess and were calling to me. Sleep was the only cure for my broken heart. In my dreams, Sissy never came to the orange grove the night Brooks proposed. He and I went all the way so many times, our bodies were a blur. And there was no Sissy. She didn’t exist. Nothing existed, just me and Brooks. Until I woke up.
“Look at me, Nettie. Focus.” Sue turned my face to hers. I loved her to bits for caring so much, for loving me so much, but right now I would have knocked her senseless and crawled back under the covers if I thought Dean Kerrigan wouldn’t send someone to my room to fetch me. Knowing the dean, she would come herself.
“Since my roommate already had the flu,” I whispered.
“There. We’re going to be a little late, but you look perfect,” Sue said. “And don’t forget to say you’re sorry. At least ten times. Just sprinkle them into the conversation so that you can graduate, Nettie. I want you to graduate, and I know deep down you want that too.”
No, I just wanted to go to bed. Forever.
The whole way to the dean of students’ office, Sue held my hand. When we entered the administration building, I could barely hear someone in the music building next door practicing on one of the concert Steinway grand pianos. The beginning strains of Chopin’s Nocturne Opus 48 Number 1 in C minor, the haunting expression of grief that could not be contained with red bricks and mortar.
I’d wept that first day I touched those keys. After wearing out a secondhand no-name upright back home, sitting down on the sleek black bench and touching the ivory keys had been surreal. An equal mix of giddy and awe. The way Brooks always made me feel.
I turned around to walk in the opposite direction, but Sue pulled me back. “Come on, Nettie. Don’t throw away the last four years. Not for a man. Not for anyone.”
But Brooks had thrown away the last ten like they were nothing. Like I was nothing. Dean Kerrigan opened her office door, most likely to come look for me. She nodded at Sue to leave, and without a word, I walked into her office.
She closed the door behind me. “Please, sit, Nettie.” She motioned to the small couch. She sat down beside me, took my hands in hers, and smiled. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry.” How many times did Sue say I should tell her? “I’m sorry. So sorry.” But I was not at all sorry. “Flu. I’m sorry. The flu, I had—”
“A girl like you doesn’t miss her senior recital because of the flu, Nettie. Talk to me so we can figure out how to make this right, so you can graduate. You’ve worked so hard.”
“I had the flu, I—” The last word dissolved into a whine that set my chest heaving. Tears streamed down the thick makeup Sue plastered on my face to make me look normal, perky.
Dean Kerrigan wrapped her arms around me. “That’s it, dear; let it out.” She smelled like my mother, like vanilla and rose water, or maybe I just wanted Dean Kerrigan to smell like her. To be her.
She always kept a stack of handkerchiefs on her desk in a little wicker basket for just such occasions. After I got over being a silly freshman, I always felt more like a peer to my professors than a student, even to the dean herself. Many times I’d smiled at that basket, sure I’d never need its contents to make a tearful plea or confession to Harriet Kerrigan, and now, I was on my third handkerchief.
“All right,” she said gently. “That’s enough, Nettie. You only get thirty minutes of my time to feel sorry for yourself, my dear.” My breath stuttered when I laughed, still unable to look at her. She crooked a finger and tilted my face up to meet her gaze. My chin quivered, the tears building again. “No more tears now; we’re going to work this out.”
Dean Kerrigan’s amber eyes were warm and full of love for me, for every girl at the college. Everyone adored her because she cared so deeply.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“I want you to graduate on time,” she said. I shook my head violently. “You might not feel like it at this very moment, Nettie, but I know you want that too.”
“But I don’t.” If ten years with Brooks meant nothing, graduation meant nothing. “I know I’m supposed to make an excuse for missing the recital, but I’m not going to do that.”
“I wish you would.” She smiled. “Just a tiny excuse to show me you care.”
“I want to withdraw from the college.” I’d never quit anything in my life, but suddenly it seemed like a stupendous idea.
“Nettie. I’ve watched you play, the way you become the music. You’re good enough to be much more than a music teacher if you wanted.” Any other time, I would have basked in her accolades and played them off in an aw shucks kind of way that would only bring more. But I didn’t respond at all. “What happened to make you give up on your dreams?”
“It doesn’t matter what happened; I need to leave.”
“To go home?”
“No.” Another revelation. I didn’t ever want to go home.
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know.” But I refused to go home and watch Sissy’s belly grow with Brooks’s baby, see them together at mandatory family dinners.
“You realize if you’re not a student, you’ll have to leave the campus, don’t you?” she asked, like that would make me come to my senses.
The college had been my home for the past four years, many of the girls my sisters. I had twenty-seven dollars and a bus ticket to my name, nothing to pawn and nowhere to go. “Of course.”
“You’re a Columbia College girl, Nettie. That means something, and I won’t let you throw it all away.” She rose and went to her desk, a beautiful piece that was not like the boxy stuffy ones the other professors had. She put on a pair of blue horn-rimmed glasses, took three yellow forms out of her desk drawer, and placed carbons between the pages. “You’re taking a temporary leave of absence,” she said as she wrote, “due to a family matter. The busybodies over at the registrar’s office will want to know what that is, but I won’t tell them, and neither will you. This will make them think the worst, but let them. I want you back in September to finish your degree, Nettie. That’s more than enough time to work out whatever has you running scared.”
“Thank you; I’ll be back.” While I felt terrible about Sue asking me to lie, there I was lying to a woman I loved and respected.
She pulled the carbons out, handed one of the forms to me, and put the other two in her Out basket. “It breaks my heart that you’re leaving. But take some time to mend your heart and come back. Not for your parents or for me; do it for yourself, Nettie.”
3
EMILY
Emily pressed the jelly glass against the door and strained to listen, but Lurleen’s voice was so feeble, Emily couldn’t make out what she was saying. But she could hear that nitwit doctor’s voice loud and clear.
“Miss Lurleen, things are going to get more difficult, and Miss Emily can’t take care of you by herself,” Doctor Remmy Wilkes said like Emily was the difficult one. “You all are going to need some live-in help, and, no offense, ma’am, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find somebody around here to take the job.
“Yes ma’am,” the doctor said. “I do intend to tell Miss Emily everything. Yes, ma’am, I believe it’s for the best. But for now, I want you to rest as much as you can. I’ll come around to check on you tomorrow.”
Emily heard him putting his things in his bag and hurried toward the living room but didn’t make it to her chair before the doctor opened Lurleen’s door. She wanted to wipe that look right off of his young face as he closed the door so quietly, like her beloved sister was already dead.
Shoot, Emily remembered changing this man’s diapers in the church nursery, and here he was doctoring her and Lurleen. Well, if the Eldridge sisters weren’t already as old as dirt, that made them so. And the doctor, all prematurely gray at his temples; that didn’t make Emily feel any younger as he walked down the hall to tell her something he thought she didn’t already know about her own sister.
Emily gave him a hard look to remind him that she knew more than he could ever hope to, and she never forgot anything. Yes, she would remember this one all right till the day she died. Little Remmy Foster Wilkes Junior, long before he became Dr. Remmy Wilkes. Him and his knack for playing innocent while his friends got punished for all sorts of tomfoolery.
Why, he and Pete Mason put three of the biggest bullfrogs in Kershaw County in the baptismal font and flat ruined that poor Mixon baby’s baptism. Had a liking for reptiles of all sorts. Cleared the church one communion Sunday with a shoebox full of garter snakes, and let poor old Pete and that little Belcher boy shoulder the blame. Yes, Emily never forgot a thing and he knew it. Oh, and another thing, he was not a good baby.
“Miss Eldridge,” his voice sounded like an undertaker’s. Gave her the chills.
Emily straightened herself and smoothed the front of the new housedress she bought at Karesh’s Fashion Shop for 25 percent off. A Kleenex fell out of the sleeve of her sweater. She always kept one stuffed there because she was forever forgetting to check her pockets. What a mess a wad of tissue made going through the wash, little bits of paper all over creation. My Lord.
“Miss Eldridge,” he said, and stooped over to pick up her tissue at the same time Emily did and they almost knocked heads. “I need to talk to you about Miss Lurleen’s condition. Why don’t we sit down over here.” He motioned to the settee.
The last time a man asked Emily to sit down on the settee was three years from the day that she retired from the Kershaw County school system. Couldn’t believe she ended up buying an entire set of World Book Encyclopedias she had no use for. The fool print in those books was so small, they should come with a reading glass.
Emily ignored Remmy and sat down on the wingback chair instead. He shrugged, which was so rude, and then joined her, sitting in Lurleen’s chair. Emily kept her eyes locked on his to make sure he knew she didn’t want to sit and listen to him. He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder like he was trying to figure out how to say whatever he thought was so g.d. important.
“Miss Emily, Miss Lurleen’s heart condition is getting worse, a lot worse. She needs to go to the hospital, but she refuses. Says she wants to die at home, and, to be honest, I don’t think she’s going to live much longer.”
“You think my sister is gonna die?” Oh, the restraint it took not to smack this one. “Lurleen cheats death like a cat, always has.” So mad, she could spit, Emily shoved his hand off of her shoulder and looked the little pissant straight in the eye. “You are wrong.”
Before this little fellow was a gleam in his grandma’s eye, Lurleen had a bad case of scarlet fever, and her barely six, no, nine. They said she was going to die then, and she didn’t. The second time was when she fell off the top of the carriage house trying to walk the peak of the roofline on a dare from their baby brother, Teddy, God love him. And the third time, Lurleen was trying to learn how to drive that fool Oldsmobile. Closed her eyes every time one of those big old trucks whizzed by, and ran that contraption right off the road and into the ditch. Took out a row of mailboxes on more than one occasion. Never did learn how to drive, but then neither did Emily.
Some dust on the piano caught Emily’s eye. Lurleen was always in charge of dusting, although she could never dust worth a lick. Emily took the tissue out of her sleeve and got up off the chair. It was a nice firm one, not like the chairs they made these days that were so soft, you had to struggle to get up. She swiped at the spots Lurleen would have gotten if she wasn’t feeling so poorly, but you know how a tissue is, seems like those fool things are made of dust. Only a good dust rag would fix that ugly mess.
“Miss Emily,” he said as she tottered off toward the kitchen to get the rag. “I wish you’d sit down so we can discuss this. If you can talk her into going to the hospital, I can prolong her life for a while, although I can’t say how long. But what I am most concerned about is you. You’re going to have to face the fact that Miss Lurleen is going to die, and make some adjustments.”
“Young man, be ashamed of yourself. Why I wiped your b-u-t-t when you were just a little thing and here you are, coming in my house, presuming to tell me you know Sister better than me? Don’t you think I’d know if Lurleen was going to pass?
“Miss Eldridge.”
Oh, there he goes, trying to smooth things over like he had not just insulted her beyond all mortal bounds. Next, he’d try to humor her. Lord, have mercy on my soul, but I despise that in a man.
“I know you’ve known me since I was born, and it’s hard to hear something like this from somebody who was fortunate enough to have you as a church nursery worker and sixth-grade Sunday school teacher. But I’m certain that Miss Lurleen’s heart is about to give out on her. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can help her get her affairs in order.”
“Why, I never. What kind of doctor are you anyway? Just giving up on Sister like that. Didn’t you take some sort of oath?”
He completely ignored the question, opened his black leather bag, and dug around until he found a pen and a pad. “Now, I’m going to give Miss Lurleen a prescription for some pills.”
“Don’t you ignore me, Remmy Foster. I’ll call your mother.”
“Miss Emily, my mother and my father are deceased as you well know.” He let out a tired sigh. Of course Emily did know about his parents, everyone did. That accident, the whole town gushing about Remmy taking over his father’s practice so dutifully. But Emily could always read this one; she knew he wanted to be elsewhere and, at the moment, Emily wished he were anywhere but here.
“Miss Eldridge, I really am doing the best I can, and that is to say the best that modern medicine can do. These pills will make Miss Lurleen more comfortable, but they will not cure her.”
“Well then what in the name of Mary and Moses would she take the fool things for? I declare, I just don’t know about you doctors these days, passing out God knows what kinds of drugs, and nobody’s getting any better from them. Especially Lurleen.”
He stood and looked at her like he was really going to make Emily believe all of his foolishness. “You’re going to need some help to take care of her. Live-in help. Miss Lurleen agrees, and I told her I’d have my receptionist put out some feelers, maybe place an ad for y’all in the newspaper. Miss Lurleen asked me to help screen them, and I’m happy to do so if that would make things easier on you or make you feel better. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you all of this, Miss Emily. Really, I am.”
Well he ought to be, for saying such things. Emily heard Sister calling her. He picked up his bag and said he was sorry again. Like that meant something. Why, Emily had a good mind to call his mother anyway, g damn it. Forgive me, Jesus.
Emily never used to swear, unless it was absolutely necessary, especially when she worked as a teacher. She was afraid that the words would become second nature and when one of her students started sassing off, she’d say something she’d regret. Something that might get her fired. But lately, Emily cursed, a lot and for good reason. Especially when that so-called doctor was about.
But she believed if God really thought long and hard about her situation, He’d agree wholeheartedly that swearing was completely called for under the circumstances, if not a necessity. And He probably appreciated the fact that the swearing was mostly in her head.
“See yourself out, Remmy. You’re doctoring is as worthless as rubber lips on a woodpecker.”
Even without the half smile that played at his lips, he was a handsome man, for a pissant. Why, if Emily were his age, he definitely would have turned her head. When she was a young girl, Emily was quite the looker. All she had to do was snap her fingers, and she’d have a dozen boys begging to be her beau. She touched her hair like she was twenty-one instead of seventy-one. She didn’t feel that old, but sometimes, when she walked by a mirror, she was flabbergasted to see the wrinkled face looking back at her. Most days, she didn’t feel a minute over twenty back when she was the belle of the ball, and her mother had to beat her suitors away with a peach tree switch.
“Emily, for goodness’ sake. Where are you?” Lurleen called as the door closed behind Dr. Remmy Foster Wilkes. Bah.
“Coming,” Emily yelled, because the old girl’s hearing was not what it used to be. She tucked that prescription into her pocket and then remembered the way her mind slips when she does the wash. She took it out and stuffed it up her sleeve along with a clean tissue.
“Hungry?” Emily looked in the refrigerator to see what she could fix for lunch.
“Just a little bite, maybe something sweet,” Sister hollered. Oh, yes, she was quite feeble until it was sugar time.
Emily warmed up some squash and onions from dinner last night on the stovetop along with a fried pork chop from the day before. She set a piece of loaf bread on the plate and a dab of tapioca pudding for Lurleen’s ever-loving sweet tooth and started to the bedroom. But then she remembered the tea, and the fact that she poured the last glass for that g.d. doctor.
Hurrying back to the kitchen, she put two cups of sugar in the pitcher, not three like Lurleen did, and put the kettle on. She sat down at the kitchen table and looked over an old magazine and waited for the pot to call. The old girl must have dozed off, because she was quiet, for a change. But Emily couldn’t read a thing without her glasses.
They were not in the fruit bowl where she always kept them. Had Lurleen gotten out of bed during the night and straightened up? Emily absolutely hated it when she did, because Lurleen could not put one g.d. thing back where it belonged.
The kettle let out an earsplitting whistle. Emily let it go on for a little to wake the old girl up. A few seconds later, Lurleen hollered for her dinner.
“You’re not some kind of invalid, Sister. Get out of the bed.” Emily rinsed out her mother’s good crystal tea pitcher. “Why I’m fixing and doing for you when you can fix and do for yourself is beyond understanding. And having live-in help? Well, if you’re not dying, which you certainly are not, you’ve lost your mind.”
“Emily, I’m too sick to argue. Please. I’m hungry,” she huffed. Lately, Sister was really good at sounding weak and pathetic. Why, she’d never been either of those in her life.
“No. You’re just spoiled,” Emily shot back, but not loud enough to be heard. Completely rotten from all those times everybody made over her because they thought Lurleen was going to die.
“She’s too mean to die,” Daddy had said, while at the same time slipping her a little sack of candy from Zemp’s Drug Store.
Truly, she was not mean, but that was what Daddy always said when any of his children got hurt and started to whine, even Teddy. Like the time Tilara Jones’s old milk cow stepped on Emily’s foot and broke it. The pain was so great, Emily cried and cried and begged Jesus to take her home. When Daddy came to pick her up from the Joneses’ place, he just laughed and told Emily she was too mean to die.
Emily poured the hot tea in the pitcher and stirred the sugar until it dissolved. Lurleen always let it sit for a while, which just turned it into a syrupy mess. She said lemons cut the syrup, but they don’t. How Lurleen could drink it that way was a great wonder. It was not good tea.
With the glass and dinner plate on the tray, Emily headed down the hall, even though Lurleen could come out here and sit and eat with Emily if she had a mind to. But she took to bed after church, three weeks ago Sunday. Emily didn’t let on that she knew Lurleen was okay. She just played along and fussed over her. Sister loved that almost as much as her syrupy tea.
4
NETTIE
Sue has cried enough for both of us; still, through my tears, my roommate looked like a kaleidoscope. A very lovely clown dressed in an orange poodle skirt, a blinding red blouse with a Peter Pan collar, a chameleon green sweater draped over her shoulders.
“Don’t go.” Her voice tailed off into a whine again.
“We’ve been through this, sweet girl. You know I can’t stay.” I stroked her hair, taking in the scent of the Chanel No. 5 her boyfriend splurged on for Valentine’s Day. She puts a dab behind her ears every day, but only on her wrists on Sundays. “I’ll be fine.”
“Come home with me, Nettie. You can share my room until the wedding. Mama and Daddy want you to come. Please do.”
Sue was the oldest of five girls and one lone boy they all doted on. Their home was as tumultuous as the tiny plot sandwiched between two orchards back home. Four houses squeezed together. Mine, Nana Gilbert’s, Aunt Opal’s, and Uncle Doak’s.
“You’re going to graduate and go home and marry Jimmy. And I—” Daddy had always called me the queen bee, said I came into the world so sure of myself. But for the first time in my life, I didn’t have any idea what came next or what to do. Nothing was certain. Everything was broken, but I’d be damned before I’d let Brooks or Sissy or Mother break me. “You’d better get going, Sue. You have class.”
She nodded and ran her hand over the top of my suitcase. “But a bed at the Y, Nettie?”
Dean Kerrigan had been kind enough to see to it that I had a place to go. I knew she had lived at the Y when she first moved to Columbia, a lot of the single teachers at the college still did. “You make it sound like it’s some sort of flophouse. It’s not.” She nodded, giving my arm a gentle squeeze. “Now go to class. I’ll be here when you get back. Promise.”
Going through the motions of packing felt good. Better than wallowing in heartbreak. The rest of my belongings fit easily into the yellow Samsonite wardrobe Daddy gave me for high school graduation. I’d already taken most of my things home at Christmastime.
I stiffened at the memory of Brooks touching me in the orchard that night. The way his breath felt on my neck as he told me how much he loved me. Wanted me. Was that how he seduced my sister? Or had my sister’s childhood crush grown into something feral and devious, something that was bigger than her? I shook my head, trying to get the image of Sissy’s face out of my mind, that prissy sly smile when she’d interrupted Brooks and me that now obviously had nothing to do with Parcheesi.
“Damn you, Sissy.” I’d never sworn out loud in my life, and yet the words tripped off my tongue. “Damn you and Brooks.” And the baby? Brooks’s baby?
A wave of nausea dropped me to my knees. Gritting my teeth, I would not damn that child, but I wouldn’t shed another tear over the fact that it had taken a place in my family. My place.
Checking under the bed, I pushed the rumpled twin away from the wall. Doris Shelley’s pink sweater fell to the floor. I had no recollection of taking it off the day my world came to an end, no recollection of much of anything after reading my mother’s plea for me to return home to Satsuma. For Sissy. But there it was, shoved between the bed and wall, as soft as cotton candy, pink, with little white pearl buttons.
I folded it neatly and got to my feet to get back to the business of moving on. To where or to what I had no idea, but moving forward was imperative. The only way not to feel the gaping wound Sissy and Brooks had made inside me when they made that baby.
Since Mother’s letter, the rumor mill at the college had been gushing with all kinds of scenarios, which Sue felt duty bound to squelch. But her efforts only served to make things worse, and made nice girls like Doris feel sorry for me. I hurried down the hallway, the sweater clutched to my chest. Returning it seemed almost silly; I knew she’d never ask for it back.
For most of the school year, everyone had heard her tearful conversations with her boyfriend on the hall phone. He was handsome, a frat boy at the University of South Carolina with a sporty black convertible. A lot of girls thought Doris let him do her wrong because his family came from money and hers didn’t. She knew he was catting around, but she always took him back. I’d always wondered how she could forgive him, just like that.
Could I offer a polite acceptance if Brooks apologized, begged me to take him back? After all, I was still Dorothy Gilbert’s daughter, bound by blood and good manners. Would I take him back? I placed the sweater on Doris’s pillow along with a heartfelt thank-you note and hurried out of the room, grateful she wasn’t there. I couldn’t have taken another mournful look from her piercing blue eyes that said she knew exactly what it felt like to be me.
Pages on the hallway bulletin board ruffled as I pulled Doris’s door to, advertisements with neatly cut fringes with phone numbers written in perfect script. Requests for transportation, ads for students who wanted to get a jump on finding a summer job. Hurrying home to Brooks the moment summer vacation began, I’d never had any cause to peruse the board. But with only a few dollars and a bus ticket to my name, I’d definitely need a job.
The telephone rang at the opposite end of the hall. A girl dashed out of her room to answer it. I could feel her eyeing me as I studied the board. Summer work babysitting an infant? Definitely not. Three offerings for camp counselors? Nothing that lasted for more than a couple of weeks. Lifeguard? I was a horrible dog paddler and couldn’t save anyone without drowning myself. Besides, I’d heard the girls go on about the cute boys from USC who lifeguarded at Sesquicentennial State Park and the city swimming pools, and wanted no part of that.
Caregiver? I’d helped nurse Nana Gilbert through a horrible bout of the croup once; I could do that. But the position was in Camden, not Columbia. I took the advertisement off of the board, stuffed it in my pocket, and hurried back to my room. Justine, the cattiest of the mean girls, was on the phone, looking at me, twirling the phone cord around her finger. Her smile devious. “For you,” she said, dangling the phone toward me.
After Dean Kerrigan filed the paperwork, one of Justine’s catty minions who worked part-time in the registrar’s office broadcasted that I was withdrawing from school. The only pleasure I had in this horrible mess was that it was killing every last one of them to know why.
Justine was a well-sculpted beauty who was never without a date and there was a good reason for that. While the rest of us dressed like young girls in poodle skirts and tasteful sweater sets, Justine, the ringleader of the mean girls, wore cotton peekaboo blouses with tight skirts and high heels. All of us had covered for her on more than one occasion.
Just a few weeks ago, when she didn’t come back to the dorm after a fraternity party at USC, our housemother, Miss Beaumont, was on a mission to find her and wasn’t about to give up until I stepped in and assured her Justine was at the library. On a Saturday morning. Studying. Something Miss Beaumont knew probably was not true, but she liked me, trusted me, and my word was good enough for her.
“I’m not here,” I whispered to Justine, eyes pleading for her to follow the unspoken code we all shared.
She slid her delicate hand over the receiver and couldn’t look any more like the cat who ate the cream. “You haven’t had a phone call in over a month, Nettie, and it finally rings for you and you aren’t lunging for it? Must have something to do with your leaving school.”
“Please, Justine, I’m not here.”
“Oh, but you are, though not for long I’m told,” she gloated. “Tell me why you’re leaving, and I’ll tell them you’re at supper.”
“Justine,” I said, begging her to lie for me the way I had for her a thousand times.
“Oh, this is too rich. The perfect ’Bama belle in a tizzy, leaving school so suddenly. Who got you knocked up, Nettie? Because your precious Brooks sure isn’t the daddy.” She might as well have punched me in the stomach. “Who is it? One of the boys from Fort Jackson? From USC?”
My heart pounded out of my chest. “Justine. Please.”
She licked her bright red lips and took her hand off of the receiver. Her smile put the Devil to shame. “Here she is, Mrs. Gilbert,” she said, slapping the phone in my hand.
“Hello? Nettie, honey? Hello? Hello?” I could picture my mother by the telephone table next to the blue platform rocker in the living room. Sitting on the edge of the seat, reading glasses dangling on the end of her nose. “Nettie Jean Gilbert! You speak to me this instant,” she ground out in a motherly tone that had always made me snap to.
But how could she love me and command me to attend Sissy’s wedding? How could she welcome Brooks into our family after what he did to me? And how could she choose Sissy over me? Because of a baby?
“Mother.” The word sucked the air right out of my lungs; my stomach roiled.