The next day Rhodie went shopping with her mother, so I worked the slowest day I ever worked. I read the paper twice, and on the second read I saw an ad for a cook needed at the Imperial State Prison Farm. Paying it no mind, I folded the paper and stuck it in my pocket.
The clock ticked by every minute I was away from Rhodie. It pained me, not seeing her. Finally, I closed up shop.
Sullen, I walked home on the dirt path between the cotton farms that had suffered so badly the year before. The police station, where my cousin Earl was sheriff, sat a short stretch in from the dirt road, on the mostly paved part. Life as a sheriff treated Earl pretty well. His loud-mouthed wife wore a real raccoon coat, they owned a car, and Daddy said they kept decent drink. Earl enjoyed good things. I knew he kept a plate of fancy goodies on his desk, so I decided to stop in for a treat to help improve my mood.
The sheriff’s building sat covered in a thin coat of dry dust, as did most things in Midland. It’d been fifteen years since folks voted to build a firehouse, though I have no idea why it took so long since Midland always seemed like one bad candle from going up.
I opened the heavy steel door and walked in. Earl and some good-old-boy police officer I’d seen before but had never been introduced to were talking at his desk. Not wanting to interrupt, I sat down on the only chair in the entryway, behind a tall plant, and waited for them to be done.
They both wore beige cowboy hats, white shirts with black ties, and camel-colored vests. Their tin badges were pinned to their vests over their hearts. Earl had a scratch on his neck that looked fresh. A smear of blood brightened his collar.
“I got to go soon,” the other officer—who I think was named Clarence—said to Earl. “My wife needs milk to make some new kind of custard.”
“I’ll drive you. I need milk too,” Earl said. “I could use some nourishment after all that work we put in last night.”
He nudged Clarence hard enough that Clarence had to straighten his hat. Earl, whose baby face looked like it’d never felt a razorblade, continued on. “This is the thing: if those girls—those perverts—want to congregate, they are asking for trouble, if you ask me. Though I do believe we performed a sort of conversion last night, huh? We showed them that this is how it’s done.”
Clarence examined the cream tarts resting on one of Earl’s wife’s china plates, looking for the right one. He smiled. “Yup. We sure did. Gave those perverts a lesson in the whatfor.”
Earl hooked his thumb into his belt loop and lowered his head, the way he did. “You think it’s safe for us?”
“Safe?” Clarence laughed and started in on a tart. “You think those girls are going to tell anyone? Who would believe them? No one. Of that I’m sure.”
My legs went numb with the realization that my cousin Earl and that tall, mean-looking police officer, Clarence, were talking about violating those women—women like Rhodie and me. I wanted to throw up, my stomach rolling with fear and shame. I forced myself not to cry, and pressed the chair as far back against the wall as it would go, hoping my belly wouldn’t stick out and give me away.
The chair squeaked and both men turned toward me.
Earl leaned over and squinted. “Dara, that you?”
With every bone in my body on fire, I peered around the plant and faced those men. I smoothed down the front of my blue blouse and tried to smile.
Earl said, “Didn’t hear you come in. I got some business here before I drive Clarence home. I can give you a lift too, sugar.”
Clarence chomped away while I sat there on that weak chair, sweating. He flipped his handcuffs around his thick finger.
Earl shook his head and lowered his voice. “I tell you, last night I felt the fire of a damn animal.” He turned to me. “Pardon the language,” he said, as if the word “damn” was much more terrible than what they were casually conversating about, maybe thinking I didn’t understand.
Earl tipped his hat back a bit. “Dara,” he said, “you feeling all right?”
I didn’t say anything. I was afraid if I spoke that he might identify me as one of those perverts, just by the tone of my voice.
I wondered if Clarence had kids. I knew Earl did. How could these men be the men they’d been the night before and then go home and kiss their children hello?
My chest tingled with panic, knowing that I held in me the potential to raise that kind of ire in folks. Beyond that, I saw that no one would protect me if I was ever found out—not even the police. We all knew that there were different rules for the police, especially when it came to Negroes, but now I knew those different rules applied to me too.
Clarence sighed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Well, we got to let them go, don’t we?”
“I reckon we do,” Earl said.
“Here.” He turned to Earl with the plate. “Offer them a sweet.”
Earl shook his head and smiled, but he didn’t take the plate. Clarence opened up a file on his desk and looked over four pieces of paper, presumably papers on the women they’d arrested.
I heard the thick jail door open and looked up. The women weren’t shackled, as I thought they might be. Earl easily walked them out. They kept their heads down, in single file—a line of women heading for a firing squad. Three wore dresses, which had no doubt been nice before. One even had a flower pinned to hers—though it was all torn petals now. The fourth woman wore a suit, the kind you see Holly wood types wearing, and I wondered if she was from out of town. Her suit had no doubt been what raised the flag.
The shortest one—and the prettiest one—lifted her eyes to mine. She had a slightly bruised ring around her neck as if she’d been choked. I wondered if Earl had done that to her—my own cousin. Her eyes were red and the bags under them as deep and dark as a secret.
Clarence yelled out without looking up while Earl opened the front door for them. “No charges filed! You all just find your way home—and by that I mean into the arms of the Lord. We best not ever see you four together in any way again, not in this town.”
The women walked out into the bright sun and around the side of the building, still in single file. I could see them out the side window, through the chalky dust, as they continued down the road. The one with the flower turned around to the woman in the suit and made a slight—very slight—gesture with her hand, as if to say, We are all right. But the woman in the suit shook her head no and stopped right there in the middle of the road. The other three stared at her. Then, without any notice, the woman in the suit sprinted off, running so fast that you’d think someone was chasing her—and I suppose in her world, someone always was. The other three watched her run off. A minute later, without saying a word, they separated and went in three different directions.
Earl strolled over to me, carrying what was left of the tarts. “Care for some?”
I could barely hear him since my ears were pounding with a fright so intense I thought my heart might stop. I shook my head no.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
I knew I had to look casual. “I just don’t like cream tarts.”
“Since when?”
“Just since now. My stomach’s upset.”
“You want that ride?”
“No, no. I’ll walk from here.”
“Well, all right. Hello to your mama and daddy.”
I nodded and thought about Mama and Daddy—just two of the townsfolk who would publicly say that they believed the police officers and not the women, but who would privately agree that the incident probably happened and those women got their comeuppance. They might think it was unnecessarily harsh, but they would agree that it was for the overall good of Midland, where the overall good was of foremost concern.
The world worked this way: women were property to be managed and kept in line as needed. It wasn’t uncommon to see a woman in Sunday services with a bruised eye hiding beneath her makeup and sunglasses. Back then, there were no domestic violence shelters for women—why would there be, since beaten women brought it on themselves?
Children were even lower on the rung. The purpose of most children was to help with the work and to give assistance in their parents’ twilight years. When I’d dared to consider myself higher than that, I knew the sting of Daddy’s belt and the difference between getting slapped with the front of Mama’s hand or the back.
So there I was, an unmarried female child and now, adding to it, a deviant. Even if the police didn’t get involved, discovery of my affections would surely result in a brutal beating. They might even land me in a clinic where doctors would remove my baby-making parts, same as they started doing years earlier up in Portland, Oregon—or so the preacher told us. All those men arrested during the scandal, then sterilized for being with each other. Lost their jobs, got beat up—by the police and by the people of the town. I truly would have eaten a bullet if I’d been in their place.
That, I knew, was my future if I let things go on: beatings and shame and suicide and eternal damnation.
I stood up slowly, knowing now that me overhearing the police was a message from above—a warning from God not to be deviant. I came into that building right when I needed to, to hear what I needed to hear in order to take a good look at what Rhodie and I were getting ourselves into.
I walked to the door, wanting to get out of that place where all the air was being sucked out. Without looking at Clarence, I pushed the door open just as I heard him throw his police file in the trashcan and say, “No need for paperwork on something that never happened, now is there, Earl?”
× × ×
That night, away from Rhodie’s magic, I nearly drowned in a panic over the realities of the world. For at least three weeks I might be in the kind of position that could cause my cousin Earl to behave the way he did.
The thought of me and Rhodie kissing—a moment that should have been the best in my life—was now shadowed by the idea that there existed many folks who not only hated us, but thought our love warranted a hastening in getting us to our rightful places in the fires of Hell. That people might kill us, and before that they might drag us into dark, cockroach-infested jail cells to be chained to walls and done in.
This juggle of thoughts made me nearly sick. I could see no bright spot in it, and I wished I could just go numb—that I could kill all those feelings I had for Rhodie.
Three doors down from my house, a German shepherd they called Shut Up howled and barked at nothing. The owners said they thought she could see ghosts, and possibly she could because she only howled that way at night. Usually it made me smile, but that night I imagined she might be howling at people she saw coming up to my house—people who knew my secret and wanted to haul me out and beat me after they’d exposed me to Mama and Daddy. Or maybe that dog was barking at some ghost who’d taken over my body and made me kiss Rhodie back. Something that God had sent to test me. Something wrong and wicked.
I rolled over and plugged my ears with my fingers, hoping to block out Shut Up’s damn howling. Tomorrow was church, with me sitting between Mama and Daddy, as always. The thought of entering that place of worship, under the eyes of God and all the good folks in their pressed clothes, caused me to sweat with worry.
I decided I just couldn’t do this. I could not love Rhodie anymore. I simply could not.
When I rolled back over I felt the newspaper in my back pocket. I pulled it out and flipped to the back page. There it was: the ad for Imperial State Prison Farm. Wetting the edges around it in a perfect square, I removed the job notification and put it under my pillow. If it was still there the next morning, I would apply. If they’d have me, I’d leave here. I would.