The next Sunday, Junior announced on the way home from church that he could take me to see Imogene that afternoon. I expected Momma to argue, but she didn’t.
Well, I was sure surprised. Momma hadn’t acted much interested in me going to see Imogene, but maybe she was changing her mind about that. Or maybe she just couldn’t say no to Junior. And that brought up another question. Why was he so interested?
But what I wondered about the most was why I felt the way I did. Why did I get the jitters after Junior first said he’d take me?
When Junior came, I said, “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. You don’t have to take me if you don’t want to.”
“Ann Fay, what has got into you? Do you want to go or not?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s been almost a year since Imogene wrote. So how do I know if she even wants to see me?”
“Well, you’re fixing to find out.” Junior shut the car door. I watched him go around the front and get in his side. I couldn’t help but notice how he’d grown lately. His shoulders were broader and he walked taller or something.
And he was acting mighty tough too—taking charge of this little visit like he actually cared whether I saw Imogene or not. I fretted practically the whole way. “What if they aren’t home?” I asked. “What if her daddy runs us off their property? What if Imogene doesn’t remember me?”
Junior laughed when I said that. “Settle down,” he said. “You’re talking outta your head.” I reckon he thought a song would calm me down. Because the next thing I knew he was singing, “Oh, what a beautiful morning, Oh, what a beautiful day.”
“Junior,” I said. “If you think your singing makes me feel better, you best think again.”
“Help me out, then.” Junior went back to the song. “I’ve got a beautiful feeling, Everything’s going my way.”
“That song is a big fat lie,” I said. “If you insist on singing, maybe you ought to try, Down in the valley, the valley so low.”
He didn’t pay me any mind. He just sang all three verses of his song. All the way to the end where it says, An ol’ weepin’ willer is laughin’ at me.
It was pretty sad, actually. His singing was so bad I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What do you know!” said Junior. “The weeping willow is laughing now.”
I have to say he did cheer me up. Somehow he made me feel like this trip wasn’t going to end in disaster.
When we got to Greensboro we had a little trouble finding Imogene’s address. By this time it felt like my insides were doing the jitterbug all over again. So I said, “Can we just let it go?”
“Of course not. We come all this way.” And then finally we found the street we were looking for. And the house with Imogene’s number. There was a man and a woman sitting on the steps. The man was smoking cigarettes and the woman was flipping through a magazine. A couple of children were pushing each other on the porch swing.
I didn’t see Imogene anywhere. But I saw how the woman looked up from the magazine and elbowed the man. He got up and started down the sidewalk.
Junior got out of the car then and went to greet him. He stopped at the end of the sidewalk and waited to see what the man would do. The man eyed him real cautious and nodded the least bit. “Can I help you?”
Junior handed him the envelope with Imogene’s handwriting on it. “My friend is looking for Imogene Wilfong,” he said. The woman stood then and come to stand by her husband. The children on the swing had left it and were crowding around too.
Junior came to my car door and opened it for me. “This is Ann Fay.”
The man nodded. “Hello, missy,” he said.
I started working on getting myself out of the car. “I don’t see Imogene,” I whispered to Junior. But he helped me out of the car anyway. And he got my canes for me while I hung on to the car door. But for some reason I didn’t take it. Instead I hung on to his arm and walked without the canes. It made me feel a little stronger.
That’s when I heard her momma say, “Jesse, get Imogene.” So one of the boys went running into the house, yelling as he went.
“Imogene, there’s some white folks out here looking for you!” He let the screen door slam behind him.
The man said, “Did y’all want to come up and sit a spell?” It wasn’t exactly an invitation. Just a question. Like if we said yes, he would let us.
But that didn’t mean the same thing as him wanting us to.
“If you don’t mind,” said Junior. So the man turned and the woman did too and we followed them up the sidewalk.
I noticed that some people at the house next door had come out on the porch. And I heard voices across the street. I knew without looking that everybody in the neighborhood had come out to see what the white folks was up to.
Junior helped me up the steps and onto the porch swing. “We can just sit out here,” he said. I wished he hadn’t said that. Imogene’s daddy might get the impression we didn’t want to go in their house. All of a sudden I was feeling really white. And analyzing every little thing Junior said and everything Imogene’s family did and everything I didn’t do.
“I’ll get some lemonade,” said Mrs. Wilfong, and she went inside.
Then I heard Imogene’s voice. “Who’s here, Momma?”
“Go on outside and see for yourself. I’ll bring you some lemonade.”
It was real quiet then, except for some whispers and giggles and Imogene’s crutches in the hallway. And her braces clicking. And maybe the sound of my heart going extra fast. Then a girl came out and it wasn’t Imogene either. She held the door and then I saw Imogene’s face peering out.
I wish I could say it lit up like a candle, but it didn’t. It might’ve even got a little darker for a second. Like she was thinking, Uh-oh, I got a problem on my hands. But then she smiled and said, “Ann Fay, I do declare. I never expected to see you today!”
She come through the door on her crutches and stood there and stared at me. I knew it was my turn to say something. “I just wanted to see if you’re okay,” I said. “You haven’t written in a long time.” It sounded like I was accusing her.
“I’m okay,” said Imogene. Then she looked at the other girl, who was standing there watching the two of us. “This here is my friend Sue Etta.”
“I’m happy to meet you,” said Sue Etta.
“I’m glad to meet you too,” I said. But I had a feeling Imogene was telling me she had her own friends now—colored ones—and she didn’t need me anymore.
Just then I heard her momma’s voice. “Jesse, can you please open the door for me?”
Jesse, who was busy staring at Junior, jumped up and did just that. Imogene and Sue Etta sat on chairs that Mr. Wilfong pulled up for them. And Mrs. Wilfong came through the open screen door with a tray of drinking glasses with orange and blue flowers painted on the side of them.
Mr. Wilfong took the tray from her, and she handed me a glass and then gave one to Junior and then Imogene and her friend.
Jesse wanted to know could he have some lemonade. “Come inside and I’ll get you a cup,” said Imogene’s mother. “That goes for the rest of you too,” she said to the other children. “How do you expect these girls to get reacquainted with you sitting there staring?”
So Mr. Wilfong rounded up all of Imogene’s brothers and sisters and took them inside. But I wouldn’t exactly say that me and Imogene got reacquainted. We tried. I asked her about school and what she was doing this summer. And I told her about Warm Springs.
“I’m sorry I didn’t write,” said Imogene. “But I did save your letters. Every last one of them.”
I nodded. “I have yours, too.”
“I still got the rose. Do you want to see it?”
She was talking about the yellow rose the Lion’s Club gave me at the Charlotte hospital. That’s where they took us when Hickory’s emergency hospital shut down. They had put the roses in the train station to honor President Roosevelt the night his funeral train came through. After the train passed, they brought them to us polios. At least to the white patients.
I gave my rose to Imogene.
Junior held the screen door, and Imogene and Sue Etta led us into the house. It was hot in there and darker too. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness in the front room. There were two couches in the room and some other furniture, but I didn’t pay them much mind. I was busy watching my step on their pretty flowered rug.
Imogene took me to the corner cupboard, and sure enough, there was the faded yellow rose laying behind the glass on a lace doily. And beside the rose was the letter I wrote her to go with it.
Dear Imogene,
I reckon you heard the sad news. I reckon everyone has heard. They give us each a rose that was bought just to honor the president when his train come through town. I want you to have mine. Yellow roses always dry real nice, so I know it will keep for a long time. Keep it forever and always think of me and the best president this country ever had.
Your friend,
Ann Fay Honeycutt
I stood there and read that letter and I had the hardest time holding back the tears. Did Imogene think about me anymore? Maybe it was for nothing that I gave up my precious rose. Maybe it didn’t even mean a thing to her.
Then she spoke up. “I ain’t forgot what you did for me,” she said. “And I never will.”
I looked at her and I knew that everything we’d talked about in the polio hospital was real. That, in an emergency, they could break the rules and put blacks and whites side by side in the same hospital. And we could even become best friends—for a little while.
But maybe other people weren’t ready for blacks and whites to become good friends. And maybe we weren’t ready either. All of a sudden I knew it was true what Imogene had told me in the hospital. There was a muddy wide river between her people and mine. And it would take more than a polio epidemic to get us across it.
But who wanted another emergency?
By now I knew I could overcome just about any obstacle I bumped up against. So maybe the real problem was that we all just liked being comfortable. Maybe making changes was too scary as long as things were running along smooth. Who wanted to go stirring up trouble where there wasn’t any?
I bit my lip to keep from crying, and Imogene must’ve noticed. “Do you want the rose back?” she asked.
“No!” I said.
It wasn’t true. I did want that rose. But I didn’t want Imogene to think I was asking for it. I for sure didn’t want her to give it to me. On account of that would be like taking away everything we had between us. And even if we couldn’t be friends in the future, there was no way I was going to take my chances on losing what we had in the past.
After all, she was the one who helped me see that even something that hurts can make us stronger. You just have to face it, and after a while it starts to get better.