Cottonwood, Georgia
1939
He had become her best friend, even better than Jane Hawkins, who’d gone off to a business school, unlike most girls from Cottonwood, who settled down after high school and got married.
She loved Jane like one of her sisters, but Valentine was different. She could tell him everything and anything. All of her dreams and her fears. She could be angry with him and he wouldn’t get angry back. She could tell him her feelings—her honest feelings—about her papa and mama and he understood. She could cry and she could laugh and he would hold her or laugh with her. Whichever one was appropriate.
He was gentle with her, treated her sweet. Brought her penny candies he’d bought from her brother’s store. Laughed and said, “If Mister Conroy knew who I was giving these candies to, he’d probably whoop me all the way down this path.” And Stella knew Conroy would do more than that if he knew what else they’d been doing.
Sometimes Valentine brought cigarettes, and they’d smoke them if for no other reason than to keep the mosquitoes away. On cold days he’d bring a little toddy; he said it’d keep them warm. And it did too.
Now she’d been seeing him for a year. More than a year, really. Sometimes once a week, sometimes more, at a specified time, whatever worked best for him. At seventeen-nearly-eighteen, he worked alongside his father as a builder and handyman and never knew when he could break away. But he always managed to find the best time. The right time.
For her.
Stella’s schedule was a little easier. In spite of her papa’s worried looks and her mama’s anxious comments about whether or not she was going to find “a nice boy and settle down,” she managed to elude them with her hard work around the house and the farm. Elude them because Valentine said they’d have to keep their love a secret. At least for the time being.
“I don’t understand,” she’d whispered once, a long time ago—forever ago, it seemed to her—as they lay under an old gnarled sycamore and upon the pinwheel quilt she’d snuck out of the spare bedroom chifforobe, the one where Mama stored all the old linens and quilts and swatches of fabric she said she’d someday make into this or that. She lay flat on her back upon it, felt the softness of it against what little bit of flesh was exposed. Overhead, the canopy of the darkening sky curved above them, the tall stretch of pines and live oaks, bushy chinaberries and weeping willows shadowed against the orange and yellow of the horizon. The slapping of water against the pond’s shoreline combined with the occasional leap of a fish and the croak of tree frogs was comforting to Stella. It was the rhythm that carried the beat of lips coming together and then apart and the rustling of clothes as their arms encircled each other, hungry for more. Always for more. “I don’t understand,” she said again, her emotions spent and raw, “why we can’t just tell everyone about us. That we love each other. That we—”
“Shhh,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose. “I told you. We’re Lutherans. You’re Baptist—”
“Primitive Baptist. There’s a difference. And I don’t care.”
“You’d best care. It’s an even bigger difference than you know, Stella. My mama and daddy would never understand. They say we have to stick together, we Lutherans. German Lutherans, at that. You gotta understand, girl. We go to a church clear over in Savannah. They speak German in the services, Stella. It’s that way with us.” He paused, allowing his shoulders to relax and his tone to soften. “But you listen here, now. It’s gonna be all right. I promise. You gotta trust me on that.”
“I do, it’s just—”
“Just don’t say you won’t come here, to our place. Don’t say you don’t love me.”
Stella squeezed her eyes shut. “I do love you.” She opened them again. “But Papa and Mama are wondering why I’m not looking to get married by now. Why I’m not making some kind of plans for my life. They keep saying that my sisters were nearly all married by this age. Or, at least they had someone coming to the house. My folks are all thinking something is wrong with me.”
He had chuckled then, nuzzled her neck as he slipped his arm up under her and drew her closer to himself. “I can tell them there ain’t not one thing wrong with you, Miss Stella.” And he kissed her again and made her forget all about Papa and Mama and the entire town of Cottonwood wondering when she’d walk down the aisle of Piney Wood Primitive Baptist and become a real woman.
For so long, it had been enough. Clandestine meeting after clandestine meeting, sweet kiss after sweet kiss, but now . . .
Now, Stella thought. Now Valentine would have to do something about their relationship, make it known to his family first, to her family after that. Then Cottonwood . . . and the preacher who was always asking her about her purpose in life . . . and Mrs. Foster, his wife, who looked down her nose at Stella as though Stella weren’t quite good enough to sit in the pews . . . as though she was up to no good, even when Stella stood nearby, songbook open, singing to the Lord.
Now maybe Papa would stop comparing her to her sisters: Adeline, married and expecting their third child, and Lottie, married to Charles Kavenaugh, living in Rome, Georgia, and mother of two.
“Hey.”
Stella heard the familiar voice behind her and she turned. She had already spread the quilt, sat in the middle of it, her feet tucked beneath her bottom, keeping herself busy by tracing the pattern of triangles with her index finger.
“Hey yourself.” She smiled at him and he smiled back, showing off white but imperfect teeth that she’d always thought were bigger than his mouth. Not that she cared.
His face lost the smile then. He dipped his hands deep within the pockets of his overalls and he tucked his chin toward the bib.
“Did you just get off from work?”
He nodded. “Yeah.” He looked back up then. “Stella, I . . . listen, I . . . I gotta talk to you ’bout something. And it’s right important.”
She lowered her lashes. “Yeah, I gotta talk to you about something too.”
He stared at her for a moment, chewed on the inside of his mouth.
“You gonna sit down?”
He didn’t answer right away, then nodded again like an old dog and lumbered over. Crossing his ankles, he sat, his knee knocking against hers. He drew back, as though it were improper, as though there’d never been a touch between them.
“What’s wrong, Valentine?” She reached for his hand, but he pulled away.
“Stella, I . . .”
She watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down a few times, then looked into his eyes. For the life of her, she could swear he was about to cry.
“Did someone die?”
“Me.”
“What? What are you talking about? Are you sick? Valentine, you’re scaring me.” She pulled herself up on her knees, sat on the heels of her feet, grabbed his knees with her hands. “Maybe I should tell you my news first? Maybe that will make things better?”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, the word choking on something in his throat. “Why don’t you do that?”
She straightened her shoulders, waited for him to look her in the eye.
“What is it, Stella?” he asked, when he finally did as she wanted.
“I’m going to have a baby, Valentine. Your baby,” she added as though he needed to be told. “We’re going to be a mama and papa, and we can finally tell your folks and mine and we can get married like we’ve talked about . . . and . . . what? What is it, Valentine?” She covered her face with her hands. “Oh no. Oh no.” Her breath became ragged. “You’re not happy. I thought you’d be happy.” She dropped her hands and looked at him, studied him. Dear God, what must the man be thinking?
He started to cry, tears pouring down his cheeks. He drew his knees up to his chest, laid his forehead against them, and whimpered like a boy. “I don’t know what to do . . . ,” he repeated over and over again until Stella’s heart pounded so frantically within her she thought she’d die from it all.
“What do you mean? You love me, right?”
“You know I do.” His head jerked up. Blue eyes were washed out to near gray. “You know I do.”
“Then why can’t you . . . can’t we? . . . I’m pregnant, Valentine. Did you not understand that part?”
“And I’m getting married, Stella . . . tomorrow . . . to another girl . . . that’s what I came to tell you. My parents . . . hers . . . she’s from the church over in Savannah. Her father’s the reverend there and . . . and I’m getting married tomorrow . . . and there ain’t nothing I can do about it ’cept go through with it.”
He leaped from the quilt, stumbled over his feet, then steadied himself as he looked down on her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . . but I can’t . . . I can’t . . . You don’t know my daddy . . .”
He took off running then, running for home, she supposed. Running for his future, all planned out by his parents, apparently. Running away from her and their child—her child now—leaving her alone to face the rest of her life without him.