four

SITTING THERE AT THE KITCHEN TABLE IN HER SMALL APARTment in Harlem, Thelma lowered the phone to its cradle and wiped at tears straying down her cheek. God, how she wanted a cigarette. But a year ago, the surgeon general said the damn things gave you cancer and she had been trying to quit ever since, something George had been pestering her to do for years.

She glanced over to her husband, who stood in the hallway across from their bedroom, watching her. He had a bedroll under his arm, a suitcase in hand. “He says he’ll look for him,” she told him.

“You didn’t have to ask Luther,” said George. “I’ll be there myself by morning. I could have done it.”

He spoke in a neutral monotone, something he often did when they had been arguing and he didn’t want her to latch onto something in his voice and get angrier than she already was. The irony—and he had never quite grasped this—was that it was his very caution that usually made her angrier. She hated being treated like some ticking bomb he had to tiptoe around for fear of blowing himself to pieces.

“I know that,” Thelma replied, trying to keep the impatience out of her own voice. “But Luther can be there in three hours. That’s a fourteen-, fifteen-hour difference. A lot can happen in fourteen or fifteen hours.”

It annoyed her that she even had to say this. George was smart and he had the purest heart of any man she had ever known. But Lord, he could be obtuse sometimes.

“Thelma,” he said, still sounding as if he was addressing a bomb, “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“That’s easy to say,” she told him.

“You saw the news, you read the papers. They all say nobody was killed.”

“You really believe that? Just because those people down there claim it’s true?”

“You don’t trust those Alabama crackers, huh?”

Thelma knew her husband meant it as a joke, an attempt to disarm the bomb. But it felt mocking all the same. Maybe it was just her. Lord, maybe she really was a ticking explosive. She looked at him. “No,” she said simply, “I don’t.”

A pause. She nodded at his suitcase. “You’ve got everything you’re going to need?” A change of subject. Her own way of lowering the temperature between them.

“Yes,” he said.

“Toothbrush and toothpaste?”

“Yes.”

“Socks?”

“Yes.”

“Underwear?”

She looked up in time to see him grimace as she had known he would, then disappear into the bedroom. Thelma almost smiled. He always forgot underwear. The things you learned about a man after nineteen years of marriage.

Thelma stood and went to the doorway of their bedroom. He was rummaging in the dresser. “Top left,” she said, as if she didn’t put his drawers in the same place every week after washing them.

The things you learned …

Thelma Gordy had loved George Simon before she knew she did, before she realized such a thing was even possible between some poor black girl on a dirt road and a white man who came from money. They had met not long after Pearl Harbor. Her first husband, Eric Gordy, had died saving George’s life during the Japanese attack. The War Department had thought it would be great for Negro morale to have the white marine visit the colored widow and express his gratitude and condolences. She had refused to play along with their charade, but even so, she and George had somehow become friends. And then, they had become something more.

“What would you think if I asked you to marry me?” he had asked her, sitting on a bench in Bienville Square that Christmas Eve. “Would you think I was crazy?”

And she had said yes, because of course it would be crazy. The idea of them getting married was downright insane. But to her surprise, that had not ended the discussion. Instead, he had smiled. “What if I asked anyway?” he said. “What would you say?”

She had gaped at him. Then she heard herself reply. “I would say yes.”

Because apparently, she was crazy, too.

“You’ll call me when you get there,” she told her husband now. She made it a statement, an instruction.

“First chance I get,” he said. He stuffed the underwear into his suitcase, then scanned the room for anything else he might’ve forgotten.

Thelma heard herself say, “I really wish you weren’t going down there.”

His gaze came back to her. “Thelma, we’ve talked about this.”

“You’ve talked,” she said. “I’ve listened.”

She hated the soft accusation in her voice—why poke the embers of argument just when the fire had finally died down?—but she couldn’t help herself. Thelma felt whiplashed by how fast this trip had come together. The marchers on the bridge had been beaten yesterday afternoon, not even twenty-four hours ago. Last night, they had seen on the news where Martin Luther King was calling for clergy to come to Selma for a defiant second march on Tuesday. An hour later, she and George had been awakened by a call from their pastor. Reverend Columbus Porter had announced excitedly that he was going to rent a car in the morning and drive down to Selma with some men from the church; they would be driving straight through, taking as few breaks as possible, to make sure they arrived on Tuesday. Would assistant pastor Simon like to join them?

George said yes without even consulting Thelma, which made her furious. They had argued about it half the night, woke up arguing about it some more. Bad enough she had not been able to stop her son from going down there. Bad enough she couldn’t reach him by telephone. Would she now sacrifice her husband as well? George seemed incapable of understanding the danger.

He answered her now with that same careful voice. God, how she hated that voice. “Thelma,” he said, snapping the suitcase shut. “I don’t know what else to tell you. This is something I feel called to do.”

“Called,” said Thelma. Sometimes, she hated being married to a preacher. “Called” was their all-purpose excuse. How could you argue against something a man said he felt called to do? It was like arguing against God.

“Thelma, please don’t be that way. I don’t want to leave on bad terms.”

She gazed at him. She turned away.

George sat down on the edge of the bed, looking exhausted. “Thelma,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t discuss it with you. You’re right, I should have. But honey, there are some moments when a man can’t just sit on the sidelines and watch. At least, I can’t. There are some moments that decide everything that comes afterward. I think this is one of them—not just for me, but for the whole country. You know better than I do what it’s like for Negroes trying to vote down there. And if you have no vote, you have no voice. Which means you get ignored by the people making the decisions. That’s what’s at stake here.”

She turned to glare at him. “I know that. You think I don’t know that?”

“Then what are you so mad about?”

“Why does it have to be you? Those white people down there, they aren’t fooling around. I don’t think you understand that. You say you do, but I don’t think you really do.”

“I’ll be careful, Thelma. I already told you I would. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t respond to Dr. King’s call.”

“You and your damned conscience,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, helplessly. He stood, lifting his suitcase and bedroll. “Try to understand.”

“What I understand is that nobody knows where my son is. He’s lost down there, don’t know if he’s dead or alive. And now, my husband is going to the same damn place for another damn march.”

“You just sent Luther in there to look for Adam. Aren’t you worried about him?”

“Of course I am,” she said. “But at least he’s not going to some damn march. He’s not daring those white people to hit him. Luther is going to go in there, get Adam, and get right out. He understands the danger and he knows how to avoid it.”

“Whereas I don’t? Is that it?”

Thelma didn’t back down. “You don’t,” she said. “You couldn’t.”

“Because I’m just a dumb white guy.”

“You’re not dumb,” she told him.

He sighed. “You think I’m going to be the only white man who answers Dr. King’s call?”

“The only one I’m married to, yes.”

“Thelma …”

She turned her back on him. He put the suitcase and bedroll down and came up behind her, taking her by the shoulders. Thelma allowed him to bring her gently around. “I know you’re worried,” he said. “But I promise I’ll be careful.” With an index finger, he drew an imaginary x across his heart. A child’s gesture, she thought. “You’ll see,” he told her. “It’ll be fine.”

He was waiting for words, she knew. Words of balm to cool the tension between them. But she had no such words in her.

“Thelma, I’ve got to go. We’re meeting at the church in fifteen minutes, and I don’t want to be late.”

She recognized it for what it was, a plea for her to say the words he needed. Words they both needed. But she still didn’t have them. She would not have given them if she did. Instead, she said, “Then, you’d better go.”

“I hate leaving with you angry at me,” he said, now making the plea explicit.

She looked up at him. She gave him nothing. A moment passed. He sighed. “I’ve got to go,” he said again. And he kissed her cheek. “I love you.”

Even that, Thelma did not answer. George finally gave up with a tired shrug. “Love you,” he repeated softly. He lifted the suitcase, tucked the bedroll under his arm, and walked past her, crossed the living room and opened the door. “I’ll call from Alabama,” he said. The door closed behind him.

Thelma heard him on the stairs, his steps growing fainter. She spoke to the empty room. “I hate Alabama,” she said.

Actually, she hated the whole damn South for the petty, creative ways it found to demean you for being black. Can’t walk here. Can’t sit there. Can’t go through that door. Can’t even put your dime in this slot of the damn Coke machine, have to put it in that other slot over there.

The whole South could go to hell, as far as she was concerned.

But she hated Alabama the most. Alabama was where her parents had been butchered and burned like meat at their own front door. Leaving that hateful place had felt like rebirth, like rising from some pool of sticky filth into something clean and new.

She still remembered the long drive, New Year’s Eve day, 1945, the three of them in George’s little sports car, her brother and George’s father lumbering behind in a big moving van, dawn breaking over Mobile Bay, taking turns behind the wheel, eating bread and cold chicken from a paper bag, making a toilet of the woods, all so that they could make as few stops as possible, answer as few questions from nosy, dangerous white people as possible. She had felt guilty about it, putting Johan and Luther through so much trouble on their account.

But she had felt giddy, too. Through two long days of driving, she and George had not been able to stop laughing. There had been an unreal quality to the whole enterprise. It was as if they had become fugitives from gravity, from the rules that had defined their entire lives. It felt like a fairy tale.

New York City returned them unceremoniously to earth. Thelma had thought she was ready for it, thought she understood that it was a big, busy place. But she realized as they drove north through Manhattan and went apartment hunting in Harlem that she’d really had no idea. The city was big and grimy and loud and frightening as it rushed by you, pushed past you, nearly walked right over you, in a never-ending, God-almighty hurry. Poor Adam, clinging to her hand as to a lifeboat as they walked down the street, couldn’t turn his head fast enough to see all there was to see.

They found a preacher. They filled out some papers. The preacher said some words. George kissed her. And just like that, they were married.

Their first months were difficult. As much as she loathed Alabama, Thelma kept finding herself nostalgic for a life that was not lived to a rhythm of jackhammers and a melody of sirens. She kept wishing New York City would just slow down and let her catch her breath.

After a while, though, she finally got used to it. They found a church, she got a job waitressing in a diner and did temp work in an office. George, who had declined on principle all further offers of assistance from his wealthy father, worked as a security guard and managed a gas station. They alternated taking night school classes, a semester on, a semester off, so that one or the other was always home with Adam. It made getting their degrees take years longer than it otherwise would have, but in the end, he graduated and was ordained, and Thelma passed the state bar exam on her second attempt and went to work for the Legal Aid Society of New York.

And life was life.

She never went back to Alabama. For her, it was never even a consideration.

Even when George’s mother died, she made an excuse to avoid accompanying him to the funeral—the woman had hated her anyway. And she never joined him when he went down to visit his father. She felt terrible about sending George down there by himself, but she couldn’t help herself. She absolutely hated Alabama.

And it hit her then, as she stood there in her living room wishing her husband would come to his senses, wishing her son had never snuck out to go down there, that that wasn’t quite right. It was what she had told herself for years, but there was more to it than that. Oh, she hated Alabama all right, but it wasn’t only that.

It was also that she feared Alabama. It was that Alabama scared her to death.

That’s why each click of the odometer, each mile that put first Mobile and then the whole damn state further in the rearview mirror, had felt like a vise squeezing her chest was loosening by increments until finally she was able to breathe. And maybe that was why she had been so giddy—she and George both. They were happy, yes. They loved each other, yes. But they were also high on oxygen, on the simple joy of finally breathing.

That had been years ago. And for the first time since then, she was finding it hard to breathe.

It wasn’t that New York City was paradise.

They drew stares, even in Harlem, when they walked down the street as a family. It still rankled her to recall the time one of those side-walk preachers on 125th Street had yelled something about “so-called Negro women who pollute their bodies with the white man’s seed” as she and George and Adam walked past. George had flushed a bright crimson. Adam, who was twelve at the time, had also turned colors; he refused to walk with them after that. Thelma hadn’t known at the time who that preacher was, but years later when she saw him again on television, she realized it was a man from the Black Muslims who called himself Malcolm X. He had been shot to death just last month and while she was sorry to hear that, while she prayed for his widow and his daughters, she still held those words against him.

So no, this city was not paradise. But it had become home, a place where they could at least be, openly and unafraid, a small grace impossible even to dream in the state where she was born. Indeed, she and George were not even considered married down there. Never mind that the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution—Article IV, Section 1, she could recite it by heart—required each state to respect the “public acts, records, and judicial proceedings” of the others. In other words, if you were married in New York, then you were also married in Alabama.

Never mind that, because the South simply ignored any rules it did not feel like obeying. It was like Appomattox had never happened; those states just went on their merry way as if they thought they were still some other country, bound by some other set of rules, as if constitutional commandments did not apply to them and Supreme Court decisions were merely suggestions they were free to accept or reject as they pleased. When challenged on its lawlessness, the South reacted as unthinking animals do—with savagery.

Now the three people most important to her were converging in that awful place. And she had just sent one of them, her husband, down there without so much as a reminder that she loved him, that he meant all the world to her. He had needed the words, had all but pleaded for the words, and she had withheld them.

Thelma felt something curdle in the pit of her stomach. What if that turned out to be the last time they spoke? What if she never saw him again on this side of life?

What might Rita Schwerner, widow of Mickey, give for the precious chance Thelma had just spurned? What might Myrlie Evers give? Or Mamie Till?

Lord, what have I done?

And she was out the door. And she was flying down the stairs. And she was walking at a brisk step down the street, hugging herself against the March chill.

All the while, she was bargaining with God to let her be in time, let her be in time, please let her be in time. Dear Lord, what had she been thinking? They couldn’t part like that. She could not send him down there like that.

By the time she reached the church, she was almost running. Temple of Praise AME—situated between a beauty parlor and a record store on a side street four blocks from their apartment—was little more than a glorified storefront. Thelma pushed through the front door and crossed the vestibule into the sanctuary. There, she stopped. It was empty. But maybe they were meeting in Reverend Porter’s office?

“You just missed them,” said a voice behind her.

Thelma turned. Mary Porter, the pastor’s wife, was a thin, nervous-looking woman with big eyes that, just now, regarded Thelma with concern. “They just left,” she said. Then she inclined her head. “Sister Thelma, are you all right?”

Thelma tried to lie with a nod but even as she did, she felt her face betray her, felt it tell the truth. Her mouth contorted, her eyes spurted tears. “Oh, dear,” said Mary. She wrapped arms around Thelma and held her close. “Thelma, what are you crying for? Shush, now. It’ll be all right.”

But the assurance just made Thelma bawl all the more. It wasn’t all right. It would never be all right again. She sagged against the confused woman, made helpless by the collision of guilt and fear within her. She had bargained with God and God had said no.

And Thelma felt herself crumble in the grip of a sudden crushing certainty that she would never see her husband or son again.