Jean Ville Summer
1971
RODNEY TOLD ME HE was too busy to realize we hadn’t spoken or written in months. Neither of us sent cards or letters of congratulations to each other in May. We’d both gone on with our lives and I thought that’s how it should be. The craziness needed to be over and it felt like it was.
Rod said that after graduation he became obsessed with getting in touch with me. He wondered what I was doing that summer. Perhaps he could take a train to New York after summer school. He told me that he suddenly felt a burning desire to see me, although, to me, the timing seemed strange. He said he went to the pay phone in the lobby of his dorm and called.
“The number you have called has been disconnected ...” He said he tried the number again, maybe he dialed wrong. “The number you have called ...” He couldn’t imagine that I might have left New York after graduation without calling or writing him to say where I would be. But then, he thought, we hadn’t spoken in, how long? He hadn’t heard from me since, when?
He said he went to his room and pulled out the box of letters he’d saved. He flipped through them to find the most recent.
Marianne told me he called her, frantically searching for me. He knew she and I stayed in touch. He told her he wanted to shoot himself for being so neglectful of the woman he loved, even if we had decided it was over between us and he was dealing with the, “Annette Issue.” Marianne told me that for Rodney, it would never be over between us.
Tootsie answered the phone and said Marianne was at the hospital. She’d finished nursing school the year before and was working at Jean Ville General. She said she loved her job and was saving money to go to Our Lady of the Lake Nursing School in Baton Rouge to become a Registered Nurse. I remembered all the pets and birds she lovingly brought back to health and knew she was probably the best nurse ever.
“Have you heard from Susie?” Rodney asked Tootsie.
“Well, shore, Rod,” she said. “Susie got home Monday. She was going to stay in Boston for the summer, but things didn’t work out.”
“Boston?”
“Oh, didn’t she tell you? She was going to Harvard. They accepted her and all, but she couldn’t get a job to pay for school.”
“Harvard?” I knew that would be news to him. I could visualize him rubbing his forehead with his free hand.
“Yep. She’s trying some other schools. I think she said graduation schools.”
“Graduate schools?”
“Yeah. Maybe that’s what she said. Graduation schools.”
“How long will she be in Jean Ville?’
“Not sure. Until she gets in one of them schools, I suppose. She got a job at the hospital for the summer.”
“Jean Ville General?”
“Yeah. Her daddy got her on with the man what runs it.”
“The Administrator? Mr. Michel?”
“Yeah. That’s him. I gotta go, Rodney. I’ll tell Marianne you called.” She hung up. Rodney said he looked at the receiver and heard the buzz of the dial tone. He left it dangling from its silver coil and stepped into the lobby of his dorm. It was Friday. He threw some clothes in a backpack, got in his old, blue Mustang and set out for Jean Ville.
*
I was nervous about being back home. This was only my second trip to Jean Ville in almost four years. My last trip home got me a black eye that, thankfully, healed before I returned to New York. On that trip I’d only been home two weeks. I was petrified about what might happen if I spent the entire summer in Jean Ville. But I was secretly glad to get away from Gavin. I’d told him we needed to move on. We’d grown apart after I refused the two-carat diamond ring and moved to Boston for those few weeks. Gavin argued, pleaded for another chance, told me how much he loved me, adored me, but I knew I couldn’t trust him.
There were some good things about being home for the summer. I got to see my siblings and grew to know my baby brother, Albert, who was now almost four. I sneaked off to see Marianne in the Quarters and we’d have lunch together in the cafeteria at the hospital when she worked day shift. I didn’t care what people thought. I considered myself free, even if I was staying at my parents’ house. Anyway, Marianne looked white, I told myself.
The best thing about being home was I got to spend time with Catfish. I went every week, sometimes twice a week and didn’t care who knew. I was emboldened by my college degree and full-time job. I thought I was protected from Daddy’s wrath by people like Dr. David and Mr. Michel and I didn’t worry about Rodney or his family since we weren’t seeing each other and Rodney wasn’t even in Jean Ville that summer.
Catfish was older, slower and wore out quicker, but he told me more stories, a little at a time. He told me about how he met his wife, Alabama, and about how she died and how much he still missed her. He talked about losing his mom and dad. He said his mother, Mary Williams Massey, was the daughter of Maureen, the housekeeper at Shadowland and that she learned to read and write from the pastor and his wife at the Legion Baptist Church.
“Mr. Van would give all the workers Sundays off. Now, Mrs. Van, she didn’t like that none, and Bessie, the cook, would fix a big breakfast and leave dinner on the stove for the noon meal. Then she’d go on back while the rest of us’d be having a hoedown or a singing revival and fix the Vans some liver and grits or cous cous with crackling for supper.
“My Mama and Daddy, Maureen, Bessie, heck, all the folks in the Quarters, we’d walk to the Legion Baptist together on Sunday mornings. It was bout three miles, and the women would bring covered dishes and we’d have a picnic after the service while the preacher’s wife would sit with Mary and teach her how to read the bible. That started when she was about five, and when she was about eight or nine and my daddy was thirteen or fourteen, the older folks would head on back to the Quarters and leave daddy to walk Mary home, cause the lessons was taking longer and longer. That’s when two things happened to my daddy. First, he sat in those lessons and he learned to read, write and figure numbers hisself. Second, he fell in love with Mary, though he says it weren’t till she was bout thirteen or fourteen. When she turned fifteen—by then he was twenty—he axed Mr. Van could he marry her.
“Mama and Daddy made sure all of us learned to read and write, too, and Mama, she started the first colored school in Jean Ville at the Legion Baptist. That was before 1920 when she was just sixteen, seventeen. I think. Now here we are, some fifty years later and the state’s got schools for our kids. Ain’t that something?”
Catfish told me about the other people who lived on Shadowland Plantation, George, Big Bugger, Lizzie and others who came in and out of Samuel and Sammy’s lives. And he told me stories about the Vans, stories told by the house maids.
Each time I left Catfish, sitting in his rocker, eyes closed against the filtered sunlight, his grandchildren playing in the yard, crisp white sheets hanging on the clothesline, I’d kiss him on the cheek and hug his neck. He’d grin, but he never kissed me or even touched me, except to squeeze my hand ever so slightly when I put mine in his.
I’d go home and write everything I could remember in ruled composition books I was saving for the time when I could write Our Book.
*
Marianne told me that Rodney was in summer school in Baton Rouge. All the better, I thought. We can’t see each other, anyway. Too risky and, we were finally over each other, I thought. We needed to keep it that way. He was constantly on my mind and I wondered whether I missed Rodney or missed the memory of him. I felt he had moved on, too; and I didn’t want to disrupt his life.
After I’d been home about a month, I went to the Quarters after work on Friday at about four o’clock. I was sitting on the porch with Marianne and Catfish. He tried to tell us a story about how his daddy fell in love with his mother, who worked up at the big house, but Cat was weak and had a hard time completing sentences, so we ended up sitting together and watched a few of the children jump rope and listened to the sounds of summer.
I heard a familiar noise, a car engine that sounded like a sewing machine. I’d have known that sound anywhere. I looked at Marianne who gave me a guilty sideways glance before she got up and helped Catfish into his house. I watched in disbelief and fear as Daddy’s familiar olive-green Mercedes drove up to Marianne’s house. I saw Tootsie look out her kitchen window. That’s when I realized it must be after five o’clock. Tootsie was home from work. I was scared to death. Someone must have told Daddy where I was and he came to find me in the Quarters! I climbed off the side of the porch to hide and plan my escape.
I watched in disbelief as Daddy climbed the steps of Tootsie’s cabin and entered her backdoor without knocking. I looked at Tootsie’s kitchen window and saw my daddy embrace Tootsie, then the two of them turned and walked out of my eyesight and got lost in the bowels of the little house.
Marianne came out of Catfish’s back door and I whispered for her to join me in the trees on the side of the house.
“How long have you known?”
“A long time,” Marianne said.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t tell nobody. Don’t talk about it.”
“I can’t believe it. Not that I don’t believe my dad would do something so dirty, but because you and Tootsie have known and didn’t tell me.”
“How we gonna tell you your daddy and my mama been doin it?”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Long as I been alive, I guess. I never known it any other way.”
I had to get out of the Quarters before Daddy re-emerged so I made my way home along the tree lines behind the houses on South Jefferson Street. I ran the entire way. I was out-of-breath when I threw myself across the bed in the huge blue room that felt like it shrank to the size of a matchbox and pressed around me. I could smell the salt and mucous run from my eyes and nose as I squeezed the feather pillow and breathed in dust mites and mildew.
I was shocked and devastated about Daddy and Tootsie.
I felt more betrayed by Tootsie than by my daddy and was hurt that Marianne had lied to me. Even Catfish must have known and didn’t tell me. Anger grew inside me as I thought about how my daddy had kept me from the Quarters with his high-handed rules, yet he went there.
The worst of it was that the very people I thought I could trust and who I believed loved me, the ones I considered my family more than my own flesh and blood, those people I loved most in the world, had betrayed me. I wondered if Rodney knew, too. That would finish me off.
The more I thought about Daddy and Tootsie, the more confused and deflated I became.
Did Daddy know about Rodney? Had Tootsie told him. Was she the leak? Was Daddy the one who alerted the Klan? I tried to reconstruct the timing of the KKK incident with the Thibault family. It was a few days after Rodney had talked to me at the Cow Palace. He only spoke to me for a few seconds, and my daddy beat me within an inch of death for it.
Didn’t Rod say they thought I was going to die? No one ever mentioned the incident afterwards—the last sacraments, my hospital stay, the bruises and broken bones that healed slowly, or the emotional scars the whole thing left on my soul. It was as if it never happened. And the Klan’s visit to Rodney’s house when I came home that first Christmas and we saw each other in the hayloft? What about that incident—the visit that ended our relationship. Who alerted the Klan then?
I wondered what else I didn’t know. How long had this been going on between Daddy and Tootsie? I thought about what Marianne said, “Long as I been alive, I guess. I never known it any other way.” What could that mean?
*
I joined my family at the huge round kitchen table for dinner that evening but I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t swallow. Something felt stuck in my throat and my chest hurt so bad I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d had a heart attack. I couldn’t look at Daddy knowing he’d just been with Tootsie and was now sitting at the table as if everything was perfectly normal.
I was in trouble for not cleaning my plate, but I knew I would throw up if I swallowed even one bite of lasagna, so I excused myself and ran to the bathroom. Before I reached the door Daddy was on me like a pancake on a griddle.
“Your mother worked all afternoon to prepare lasagna because she knows it’s one of your favorites and you didn’t eat it. How dare you treat her that way.” I hated lasagna, always had. However, that’s not why I didn’t eat it.
I looked at him and wanted to spit in his face. He disgusted me.
He slapped me across the face but I didn’t feel it, nor did I respond. That made him angry so he slapped me again, and again, until I fell to the floor. Then he started to kick me. I rolled into a ball and thought about Rodney and the last time we were together, when we made love. I thought about the week he spent in New York—that glorious, wondrous time that was like a dream I could fold myself into so I didn’t feel my father’s kicks and slaps. I thought about how wonderful it was with Rodney, and how different it was from Gavin. I remembered when I knew I was pregnant and how it felt to carry Rodney’s child inside me. I thought about Josh Ryan and his kindness, how he’d stuck with me through it all, but in the end, he couldn’t stomach what I’d done and who I’d done it with. And I thought about the little girl in the picture, her wide grin and amber eyes.
That’s what I thought about when I was on the floor in front of the bathroom door, being kicked. My baby was almost two years old, walking, saying words, playing patty-cake. She would be beautiful, like her daddy. She would be loving and gentle and kind and she would love me, unconditionally, forever.
When I woke up from the beating, it was dark and I was in my bed. I tried to sit up, but everything hurt, so I lay back and tried to sleep. It was Friday night. The next morning I sneaked into the bathroom to look at myself. Well, I couldn’t go to work like that on Monday. I had two black eyes and cuts on both sides of my face, one needed stitches. One finger was definitely broken and I had difficulty taking deep breaths. I could barely walk and everything hurt.
I got two aspirin out of the medicine cabinet and tiptoed back to my bedroom. I dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, grabbed my purse and slipped out the front door. The sun had not risen but there was a yellow glow in the distance, suggesting a new, clear day. I felt it was an omen and stopped under the huge live oak, moss draped almost to the ground and listened to a red bird sing, then a sweet tweet reply from the tall pine across the street. Love birds, I thought. Yes, a new day. I’m done with my old life.
I knew Dr. David would be awake. He went to the hospital to make rounds early, even on Saturdays. I walked across the street and rang the doorbell. He answered it, took a long look at me with sad eyes, his bushy eyebrows lowered and drawn in to the bridge of his nose. He inhaled deeply and put his arm around me then he gently pulled me inside and closed the door. Without a word he led me into the den and motioned for me to sit on the large, white sectional. If it hadn’t been leather, I would have been afraid to stain the beautiful sofa with the blood that seemed to come from various places.
Dr. David went into his study, adjacent to the den and came back with his medical bag. He didn’t say a word, but went straight to his work, I thought, like the Santa Claus I once believed in. He gave me a shot near the cut on my cheekbone, then stitched it up with tiny, neat sutures. He set my finger and began to treat each cut, bruise and bump, systematically. He unbuttoned my blouse and pulled it open just enough to reach the abrasions, then he worked on the other side, then my back. I stood and he pulled my jeans down so he could treat my butt and the tops of my legs. Every now and then, I’d feel a little stick and he’d take a few stitches. Finally, he listened to my breathing with his stethoscope and told me I had a few cracked ribs. I pulled up my shirt and he wrapped an Ace bandage round and round my torso, below my breasts.
When Dr. David was done, he gave me a pill and led me to the first bedroom off the hall. He pulled back the covers and I got in the comfortable bed. He sat next to me on top of the feather-filled duvet and put one big, burly hand on either side of me. His face was above mine, the kindest expression I’d ever seen spread across its entirety—eyes, forehead, nose, mouth, chin, and the hint of dimples in his cheeks, not deep because his smile was only a kind grin.
“You don’t have to tell me what happened. I know. I’m so sorry. I should have stopped this long ago. Each time, I guess I tried to tell myself that it would be the last time. Then you moved away and I was relieved. When I saw you at the hospital this week, I knew it was only a matter of time.”
I looked at him while he talked. My eyelids began to feel heavy.
“You were very brave to come here this morning, Susie. You did the right thing.”
“I want to go to work Monday, Dr. David. I don’t care what I look like. I’m tired of hiding his dirty work from the town.”
“You can stay here with me and Erma this weekend. I’ll take you to work Monday and we’ll make a plan for the rest of the summer.”
I was sleepy now. I wanted to thank him, but I couldn’t keep my eyes opened.
*
I enjoyed my job at Jean Ville General Hospital. I was a general flunky and assistant to the CEO, Mr. Michel whom I liked very much, in fact, I liked all the people at the hospital and my work was fun, varied and easy. They paid me well because I had a college degree. I was determined to save every penny.
I went to work that Monday with stitches in my face, left knee, right elbow and several places on my back. I had black eyes and a broken finger, lots of bruises and hematomas. It hurt to take deep breaths, but I’d had a restful, peaceful weekend with the Switzers and felt well enough to work. When Mr. Michel asked what happened, I shrugged and said, “Ask Dr. David. He treated me.” I got lots of stares and the older nurses wanted to pamper and baby me, but I shook it off and did my job. I’d been through much worse.
At noon Dr. David found me in the cafeteria and pulled me aside.
“I met with your dad. You can go home and expect to be safe the rest of the summer; unless you prefer to stay with me and Erma. We are happy to have you.”
“I couldn’t impose. You’ve done so much already.”
“No, Susie. I didn’t do enough. I should have put a stop to this years ago. I’m done with that, though and I’d like to make it up to you. Stay with us.”
“I’ll think about it, Dr. David. But please know this—I appreciate you more than you could ever know. Somehow I knew I could trust you and you didn’t let me down. Thank you.
“By the way, Dr. D, when I was in the hospital a few years ago, a certain colored boy came to visit me one night. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with setting that up, would you?” Dr. David blushed and stared at me, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. I gave him a quick hug around the neck and left the room.
I went home the next week and no one discussed my appearance or asked where I’d been. No one talked to me much, at all, which was fine with me.
I went to see Marianne the following Friday, after work. I just drove there and didn’t try to hide. After all, if Daddy could do it in the open, why couldn’t I? Marianne told me that Rodney had come home the previous weekend looking for me, but no one seemed to know where I was, not even Tootsie.
Bile rose in my throat and tears stung the insides of my eyelids as I thought about the deception that Tootsie and Marianne had pulled off.
“I want to know why you’ve lied to me,” I said. Marianne just looked at me, then tears began to stream down her face.
“You don’t get it, do you? I never lied to you. I hate him. Telling you means saying it to myself.” My anger began to melt as I watched Marianne’s tortured heart break.
“He’s a bastard,” Marianne said.
“I agree, but he is my father. We only get one.” Marianne looked at me in the most peculiar way. “What?” I asked.
“Don’t you know? Don’t you get it?”
“What, Mari? What are you trying to tell me?”
“You know, Susie.” Marianne said. “You a smart girl. Figure it out.” I just looked at her. Maybe my mind couldn’t grasp it. Maybe my heart wasn’t ready. I searched her face for a clue, anything.
“When?”
“Since I was born, you fool!” Marianne got up and walked toward the barn. She moved fast and her arms swung high, her knees bent as if she was marching, her chin was tilted toward the tops of the sugar cane.
I sat in Catfish’s chair and rocked back and forth slowly. I needed to think. I breathed the fresh, clean air in the Quarters and tried to relax. I thought about things, like who told my daddy about my trips to the Quarters, and who told the Klan about Rodney. I wondered in my heart if Daddy was responsible for tipping off the Klan. If so, who told Daddy? I was plagued by my dad’s relationship with Tootsie and thought there must be a connection.
It was easy to avoid Tootsie most of the summer. I was at work when she was at our house, and when I went to the Quarters, if she was home, she stayed in her cabin. I wasn’t ready to face her. It was hard enough to look at Daddy at the supper table every night.
I didn’t see Rodney all summer, a sign that he understood it was over, I thought. Of course I didn’t know he was dealing with his own issues. Marianne was closed up about Rodney and, I felt sure, she didn’t tell him things about me, either.
At home in the evenings when it was so quiet the only sounds were the hum of the fan and Sissy’s slow, sleep breaths, I wrote letters and filled out applications for every graduate program in the Northeast and appealed for scholarships. My preference was an MFA in writing, but I’d accept anything in the liberal arts field if the college gave me a full ride.
Two weeks before the fall semester was scheduled to begin, I went to the mailbox and pulled out a large brown envelope from St. John’s University in Queens. Someone withdrew their name from the fellowship program and they offered me a full scholarship in the Masters of Fine Arts program. I was elated.
With the money I’d saved working at the hospital I bought a one-way airline ticket from Baton Rouge to New York City and a bus ticket to Baton Rouge from Jean Ville, and had plenty left to help me get moved into an apartment in Queens. I didn’t tell my parents about the scholarship or my travel plans. I hoped they didn’t know about my last day at work. They had no say in my life anymore. That thought made me feel free.
*
I got up early and walked to the bus station on Prescott Street in the pre-dawn darkness on a Monday morning, the end of August. The world was just waking up and I watched lights begin to appear in some of the windows along Gravier Road. I had a suitcase in each hand and my purse over my shoulder. I inhaled deeply, a last whiff of the moss-draped oaks and hot asphalt, my final reminder of a childhood of love and hate, friendships and deceptions, first love and final good-byes. I would miss Catfish. I loved him like a grandfather, and he loved me. I would miss Marianne, my first and only friend, a sister in more ways than I ever expected. I would miss Tootsie, my surrogate mother, protector, and confidant ... traitor?
Catfish’s family had become mine, but I was disturbed and confused by their deception. It hurt. It caught me blindsided—I’d trusted them totally, innocently. I felt a knot form in my throat that begin to tighten, like a rope used for lynching, a choke hold that renders it’s victim helpless.
The murmurs of waking, the soft whispers of bird calls, the hum of a bus engine, air brakes on the concrete and the beating of my dying heart were what I heard as I waited at the Greyhound station for my final escape. I wondered whether my family would be upset when they realized I was gone, but I knew they wouldn’t be, only that they would be upset because I’d sneaked away and tricked them. My dad didn’t like to lose and today he’d feel like he’d lost—to me. I knew his elephant’s memory would come back to grab me, body, soul and heart one day.
But for now, I was free.
Marianne told me that Rodney had a job in the Clerk of Court’s Office in the Baton Rouge courthouse for the summer and that he hoped they would let him work part-time after he started law school in the fall. He told her he liked the work and made decent money, plus he had time to study. He got to sit in the courtrooms and listen to interesting cases, which he thought would give him an edge in law school.
I’m not sure who answered the phone when I called. Maybe one of the clerks.
“You have a phone call, Rodney.”
Rodney said no one ever called him at work. His parents called him at his dorm in the evenings or on weekends. He told me he was worried that something was wrong at home, another Klan visit, his mother was sick, maybe Catfish, as he hurried to the desk phone on one of the clerk’s desks.
“Hello,” he said.
“Can you tell them you have a family emergency?”
“What? Susie? Where are you?”
“At the Greyhound station.”
“Where?”
“Here. Baton Rouge. A few blocks from the courthouse.”
“I’ll be there soon. Don’t move!” I heard him take a deep breath and swallow hard. He told me later that it was like happiness wrapped in Christmas paper. He pulled up in front of the bus station in a cab thirty-minutes later. I was sitting on a bench in the 100-degree heat, fanning myself with a cardboard square glued to a popsicle stick. I tried to hide my misery and the perspiration that made my dress stick to me at ten o’clock in the morning. I certainly wouldn’t miss the oppressive heat and humidity when I got back to New York, but I would miss the gorgeous man who jumped from the cab before it came to a full stop.
He grabbed my bags, threw them in the trunk, opened the back door and ushered me in. He slipped through the back door on the other side. Before his door was completely shut, he reached for me. I fell into him.
Oh, so familiar, so safe, so wonderful. The almost three years felt like three days as the familiar, gentle comfort of his arms wrapped around me and I inhaled ink, sweat, after shave, laundry soap and the familiar scent that came from Rodney Thibault’s pores. How had I lived without this?
We didn’t speak, didn’t kiss, didn’t grope —we just sat in the backseat with our arms wrapped around each other, my head on his chest. Every few seconds, he would stroke my back and heave.
It was hot in the cab, especially against the radiant heat from Rodney’s body. The cabbie took us to a motel on Airline Highway and pulled in front of room number 12. Rodney had a key and let me into the air-conditioned room, a welcomed relief. He followed me inside with my bags, dropped them on the floor, slammed the door and pulled me to him. We had not said a word since the phone call. We kissed hungrily, then he let go and held me away from him.
“I just want to look at you,” he said. I stood there, my damp dress clinging to my every curve, my ponytail askew from hugging him in the backseat, my lipstick gone from kissing, but he looked at me as if I was the most beautiful creature in the world.
“God, you’re beautiful. You get more beautiful with age.”
“You act like I’m an old woman.” I laughed. He put an index finger in one of my dimples.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said. “Ever since the first time I saw you at my dad’s Esso station. You were thirteen. I fell in love with you that day and I’ve been in love with you ever since.”
“You look good, Rod. You are more handsome than ever. It looks like you grew another inch or two. I didn’t think that was possible. How tall are you?”
“Not sure. About 6’5” or 6’6” I think.”
“Wow. You make me feel so small.”
“You are small, and perfect. You fit perfectly. See.” He pulled my five-foot, eight-inch body to him and folded his long arms around my shoulders. The top of my head fit under his chin and tucked comfortably into the crook of his neck. He wore a white dress shirt and I inhaled starch and laundry soap plus a distinct musky scent. He looked gorgeous, as ever, and older, more confident.
“You fit, perfectly. We fit,” he said.
“Yes. We fit.”
My head rested over his heart, a familiar position where I could hear the fierce magic of the organ that pumped blood throughout his body—and feelings, too. When I lifted my head, he bent to kiss me. I had forgotten what his lips felt like—full, wet, sweet. The urgency of our kiss was gentle, thoughtful, regretful. I wonder if he tasted my anguish because he opened his eyes as soon as tears begin to roll down the sides of my nose. He licked my closed eyes.
I was glad and sad. I’d tortured myself on the bus about whether to call him. I felt guilty, like I was messing up his life by dropping in it, knowing I’d be leaving for good the next day.
Our kisses became more intense and he sucked on my bottom lip, softly, at first, while I moved my lips and teeth around so he could get to every square millimeter. He tasted like honeysuckle. He held me gently, yet passionately. How’d he do that?
“If you continue that, you are going to cause trouble,” I muttered.
“What kind of trouble?” He continued to tease me with his tongue.
“Hmmm. Not sure.”
He was tolerant, pretending to enjoy my antics when I got my hands under his shirt and began to stroke his chest. He let out a deep sigh, picked me up and lay me on the bed on my back. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anyone or anything in my life, but I was afraid that it was because I was lonely, afraid and, mostly, because I felt so rejected by Tootsie and the people I’d come to believe loved me. Was that why I called him? Did I need something from him, something to negate the deception and disloyalty I felt from my best friend and her family? Some reassurance he wasn’t in on the ploy?
Rodney knelt on the floor beside the bed and bent his head to mine.
“I forgot how blue your eyes are, and that, when you look at me I can see my reflection.” I saw my own reflection in his amber, gold, green eyes. There were rainbows of blues and pinks in there.
“Tell me about yourself,” he whispered. “I’ve missed you, missed knowing what you are doing, where you are. I tried to call you and your phone was disconnected. I panicked.”
“I’m sorry, Rod,” I rolled onto my side so I could face him as he knelt on the floor beside the bed. “I’ve really tried to make a clean break of things with you. I feel guilty calling you today, but I had to see you before I go back to New York.”
“When do you leave?”
“In the morning.”
“Oh, so soon?” Neither of us spoke for a moment. “Do you want to talk about things?”
“No. There’s nothing to talk about. Nothing’s changed. I just wanted to see you one more time. I wanted to remember, to see for myself that you weren’t a dream I made up.”
“It sounds so final.”
“This is my last trip to Louisiana, unless it’s to return for a funeral.”
“Oh, I see.” He looked rejected, sad.
We kissed softly and he slowly unbuttoned the top of my dress. I gasped.
“Hold on, Baby. We have all night,” I whispered.
“I’m holding. I’m holding.”
Our lovemaking was selfless. We were all about each other. He wanted to please me and I wanted to please him. It was gentle and loving, without urgency. We pressed ourselves into each other and became one. I was happy. I had forgotten what real love was. For the moment I let myself live in a dream, unreal, a small blip of hope in a hopeless world.
After we made love I told Rodney about my daddy and Tootsie. I could tell by his face that it was a surprise. It made me feel better that he wasn’t in on the cover-up. At least one of the people I trusted was who I thought he was. I told him how hurt I was that I’d been betrayed by Tootsie and Marianne.
“And Catfish,” I said. “He’s known all along and he never told me. I trusted him like a grandfather.”
“Try not to look at it like that, Baby. Catfish has divided loyalties. Tootsie’s his daughter. Marianne’s his granddaughter. You can’t expect him to go behind them.”
“Hmmm. I never thought about it that way. I’m just so hurt. I thought they were the family I didn’t have.”
“They still are, Sweetheart. They are the same people they’ve always been. What’s happened between your dad and Tootsie started long before any of them knew you and grew to love you. Trust me, they love you. This is a horrible discovery for you, but it doesn’t change who they are and how they feel about you.”
“Rod, have you thought about how the Klan kept getting information about you and me?”
“For a while that’s all I thought of, but not living in Jean Ville... I don’t know ... Out of sight, I guess.”
“Yeah, me too, until I saw my Daddy and Tootsie together.”
“You saw them together? With your own eyes?”
“Yes. I don’t think I’d have believed it otherwise. I’m not sure if I am more shocked at my daddy’s behavior or at Tootsie’s.” Rodney reached over and took both my hands in his.
“There are things you’ll never understand about colored people and the patterns they’ve lived for two-hundred years.”
“What?”
“Well, not all coloreds ... and not all whites ... let me see how to say this. Ever since slavery, white men have owned Negro women, like cattle, and could do whatever they wanted with them. They took them as concubines, fathered children with them, sometimes had a string of colored women waiting for them to show up, be rough and cruel, and leave. It’s been a way of life, Susie. No one thinks anything about it.”
“You mean you think it’s normal, it’s okay, for my daddy and Tootsie to have an affair for twenty years while he’s married to my mother and Tootsie is in a relationship with Joe Edgars?”
“I’m not saying it’s okay, or normal. I’m just saying old habits die slowly. Tootsie doesn’t think she’s betraying you. She’d doing what your dad wants her to do because he’s white and powerful and she’s scared to tell him, No. And Marianne. Well, if it was you, would you want people to know?”
“Uhmmm. I guess not, when you put it that way.”
“I don’t want you to feel like this changes anything between you and Tootsie, Marianne and Catfish. They live in survival mode. You shouldn’t judge people until you’ve lived their life.” I got up and walked to the window. The sun was going down over the Mississippi River and I watched a tugboat push a big barge towards the bridge and thought about what Rodney was saying. It made me feel better, not completely abandoned by those I depended on to be there for me. Still, I couldn’t rid myself of the notion that Tootsie and my daddy had something to do with the Klan’s tactics and the beatings I got. Their timing seemed to coincide with each other and with times Rodney and I were together. I tried to shake it off.
“Are you hungry?” Rodney asked.
“What time is it?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s dark outside.”
“Oh. Are you? Hungry?”
“I could eat something.”
“What’s on the menu?” I asked.
“Funny you should ask. There’s a Kentucky Fried and a McDonald’s across the street.”
“I’ve been in Jean Ville all summer. I forgot about civilized city food joints.” We laughed at the irony of it, that McDonalds seemed civilized!
We didn’t sleep all night. We were both reluctant to waste our precious time together. We talked and talked, ate Big Macs, and caught up on school and career plans. When Rodney mentioned he might go back to Jean Ville to practice after law school, I frowned.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“We’ve never talked about it, and we probably shouldn’t. It’s just that, I’ll never live in that town again. Things are so different up north. So much more tolerant.”
“Tell me about it, Baby. How do they treat couples like us now. I was there for a week, but that was three years ago, almost. I don’t remember it being a problem for us, but of course, we were in Harlem most of the time.”
“I see them sometimes, couples like us, together on the streets, in cafes, at school—black and white, white and yellow, red and brown, men and men. They walk on sidewalks holding hands and no one stops them. Some people stare and some of the old biddies whisper, but it’s nothing like the South.”
“It would kill my dad if I moved that far away.”
“You probably shouldn’t.” I found my robe in my suitcase and went to the bathroom. When I came out he was in his boxers, sitting on the side of the bed with his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. He looked up when he felt me come close.
“You should go home and marry a nice colored girl and have a family.”
“What about you? Will you marry a white boy?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever marry, Rod. I’d be afraid of what a husband might do to our daughter. The girls at Sarah Lawrence were older, so I have friends who are married now. They wed guys they thought they knew, but after the honeymoon, the husbands turned into controlling monsters. That frightens me. I don’t want my child to live through what I’ve lived through.”
That was the most I’d ever said about the abuse of my childhood. I didn’t tell him about the times during and after college. I didn’t tell him why I had to leave LSU after my dad talked to him on the phone in the lobby of my dorm. I didn’t tell him about Gavin or Josh and I didn’t ask him about girls at his school. I was sure he’d dated during the past three years. He was a normal, hot-blooded guy and I imagined every girl at Southern University wanted to go out with Rodney Thibault. I didn’t blame them, he was quite a catch. But I didn’t want to know.
I didn’t tell him about my pregnancy. I couldn’t. I never wanted him to think he owed me anything. It would kill me to think he’d give up his dreams for me, then come to regret it and resent me for it later. No, I couldn’t tell him. That had to remain a secret.
I didn’t tell him I loved him, either, that I would always love him, that I couldn’t marry anyone else because I’d never love anyone else.
I knelt on the floor in front of Rodney, who sat on the side of the bed with his head in his hands. I wrapped my arms around his waist. I just wanted to hold him and feel him and touch him and breath in his scent of sweat and mint and manhood. I wanted to subject it all to memory—everything about him and this night, because I knew I’d never see him again. I thought he probably felt the same way because once we finally put our heads on the pillows, he held me all night and every time I opened my eyes he was awake, staring at me.
In the morning Rodney kissed me with bird kisses all over my face and ears, my nose and hair, my fingertips. His weight began to feel heavy so he rolled on his side and pulled me close. I loved the taste of him, the sweaty, sticky, sweet, sensuous flavors that seeped from his pores and rested on my palate and wrapped me in comfort and safety.
I could hear the sounds of morning outside. Car doors slammed, footsteps on the concrete sidewalk, someone whistled a tune and I lay there and wished for this moment to go on forever. I didn’t want to move, to disturb the magic.
It was different, making love to Rodney. There was nothing hidden in him. He gave me everything he was, all of himself, willingly. There were no tricks, no ulterior motives and no demands. He took what I could give him in that moment and gave me everything in return.
I didn’t feel like he expected anything from me, and that was important because I had nothing permanent to offer him.