Destiny (45 page)

DESTINY • 279

"Well, I shall never do it again. Not after today. And I hope you've been listening to me, Helene, because it's very important to me that you understand what I've said. You're a woman now, darling, and your hfe is just beginning, and —"

She stopped quite suddenly, so Helene looked up. She was looking at the clock on the wall. The old red stickers were still there, in the old positions, now grubby and faded, but still there.

"Do you remember how you used to wait for me, darling, when Mother went out? You were such a good child." She smiled fondly at a space somewhere above Helene's head. "There was a gray and white dress, from Bergdorf Goodman's. Such a lovely dress! Pure silk. I hadn't seen silk for years. Not since before the war. That was when it began, with that dress. Oh, it had started before that, in a mild way. I used to see him looking at me sometimes, when I went up to the house to do his wife's hair. But that was the first time I ever agreed to meet him. The day after he gave me that dress ..."

Helene felt her body go rigid in the chair. Sickness crawled in her stomach. Dreamily, her mother's voice went on.

"It was so lovely, Helene. He used to take me for drives around the plantation. And there was an old summerhouse in the garden, where we used to meet. It was a little tumbledown, of course, but it reminded me of my childhood. We had a summerhouse quite like that, in the house where I grew up. I remember telling him. He was very interested. He can be such a charming man: so good-looking, and such perfect manners. . . ."

She trailed off momentarily, as if something in her memory did not quite tally with her words, and Helene clenched her fingernails into the pahns of her hands.

"It was very romantic, Helene. It's important you understand that. I wouldn't like you to think I was involved in anything—well, sordid, or unpleasant. Oh, I knew he was married, of course, but he was unhappily married, and somehow that seemed to make a difference. I thought . . . well, there was a time when I thought that he would get a divorce and marry me. He said he wanted to, you see, and there were no children, so it could have been quite simple. Except the money is all hers. It's her money that keeps the plantation going. So, of course, it would have been difficult for him, I understood that. I never pressured him, Helene—I think it's so vulgar somehow, when women do that. I was prepared to wait. He talked about marriage quite often. We used to plan—oh, you know, silly things. What we would do with the house when we lived there. How we would decorate it. How we should entertain. Mrs. Calvert never entertained much, which seemed to me very wrong, considering who she is, and her position here. I would have behaved very differently. . . ."

280 • SALLY BEAUMAN

"Mother—please!"

"Well, I did believe him, Helene." Her mother's voice contained a mild rebuke. "Do you remember that evening—when you had counted the money, and you talked about going back to England, and we quarreled? I did try to tell you then—how it might have been. He'd promised me then, you see, that he'd talk to his wife." She paused. "He never did, needless to say. I don't think he meant to lie, not exactly. Men never do. They tell hes, and they half-believe them at the time. That's why you have to be so careful, Helene. It's why it's so terribly easy to believe them."

"Mother." Helene leaned forward. All she could think was that somehow she had to get her mother to stop, stop this terrible calm mad conversation. The urgency in her voice had some effect. The dreamy violet eyes turned back to her.

"Yes, darling?"

"Mother—does he know?"

"About this, darling?" Her mother smiled. "No. Of course not." She hesitated. "You see, darling, he has someone else."

"Someone else?" Helene's face went white.

"I don't know who, naturally. It's not my concern. I think, to be honest, that there were probably always . . . others. Now and again. Colored women. His father was like that—or so I've heard. He's a southerner. It's in his blood. It's just a thing he has—I didn't want to know about it, and if it happened, it happened. It was quite a diflFerent thing between him and me—I knew that. In our case, it went on for a long time. A very long time. Sometimes we would quarrel, of course, and there were periods—sometimes quite long periods—when we didn't meet. But in the end he would always come back to me. I think he did love me, Helene. For a time. Until quite recently, we still met fairly often. Not as often as before, but he still needed me. Sometimes. Then this happened, which was very stupid of me, very careless, but he'd been away in Philadelphia for two months, and I was so glad to see him when he got back. . . ." She stopped for a moment, her face softening, then took a small sip of her tea.

"You know, I'm quite proud of myself, Helene, for saying nothing. I could have told him, I suppose. It would have been so easy to plead and weep, but really, I couldn't bear to do that. So I just shan't see him again, that's all. He need never know, Helene. The thing is"—she paused—"he reminded me of your father, I think. I'm sure that was it. That was why it all began. The first time I met your father, I was wearing a silk frock— such a lovely frock, Helene, pale mauve, and I used to pin a rose on the shoulder. We went to the Cafe Royal, I remember, a large party of us—it was such a brilliant evening, so gay, and everyone so charming. I knew then that your father admired me. I could see it—"

DESTINY • 281

She broke oflF abruptly. She bent her head, then shook it sUghtly, as if to clear her mind. Her eyes, which had begun to sparkle, went dull again.

"Seventeen years ago. And now this. How stupid."

Helene stood up. When he got back from Philadelphia. Two months ago. She pressed her hands down flat on the table to stop herself shaking.

"I'd hke to kill him," she said. "Oh, God, I'd like to kill him."

Her mother looked up abstractedly, as if she hadn't spoken. Then she turned her face to the clock on the icebox; the hands were on nine. She stood up. "Would you fetch my bag, Helene? I've packed up some things I might need. It's in the bedroom."

It was impossible to move in Orangeburg without being watched. It was one of the things Helene most hated about the place.

"Spit in Main Street at two," Billy used to say when they were kids. "Go over to Maybury at three, they'll tell you where the spit landed."

Sometimes Helene could see the watchers. There were plenty of people in Orangeburg with nothing better to do than lounge against the store fronts and gossip, especially when the weather was mean and hot, the way it was now. Sometimes it was just a curtain, moving at a window, or a shadow on the screen; still, she could feel the eyes.

Today it was bad, worse than usual. Two storefronts were boarded up; there was broken plate glass on the sidewalk. Not a colored person in sight —just groups of white men and white women, huddled conversations that broke off as she and her mother went past, and started up again the moment they went by.

The wreck of the burned-out car had been shifted. At the end of Main Street, a squad car was pulled up in a patch of shade; on its roof a blue light revolved and revolved. Dust in the air; tension you could smell. Helene and her mother stood by the bus stop, and the air shimmered.

The bus stop was right outside Cassie Wyatt's beauty parlor. Right in the sun; there was no shade. Her mother seemed not to notice the heat. She just stood there, clutching the small carryall, staring down the street the way the bus would come. Helene was not to go into Montgomery with her; her mother wouldn't let her.

After a while, Cassie Wyatt came out, still wearing the smock she wore to cut hair. It was Saturday morning, and she must have been busy. Through the glass, Helene could see all four dryers going full blast. One of the new assistants was cutting hair, another was washing hair at the new basins Cassie had just installed. Basins with a scoop for the neck, so you

282 • SALLY BEAUMAN

bent backwards, not forward, to have your hair washed. Cassie was proud of the new basins: they were the latest thing.

Helene saw her come toward her mother, and then, as she looked at her, saw Cassie's face change. She stopped, her eyes shocked, then she stepped forward and put her hand on Helene's mother's arm.

"Violet? Violet—you okay?" She drew back, and Helene saw her glance down at the small carryall.

"I'm fine, thank you, Cassie. I'm just waiting for the Montgomery bus." Her mother hardly turned her head.

"You want to come in and sit down for a bit? It's so hot, and that darned bus—well, you never know when that'll turn up. Could be another half hour. Come in and rest your feet. I've got the fans on. . . ."

"Thank you, Cassie, but I think I see the bus coming now." Her mother turned her face then, slightly. One tear slowly rolled down her cheek, and she brushed it away.

Cassie's plain features softened; she looked genuinely distressed. "Come on, Violet," she said gently. "You don't look well. Come in and rest awhile. You can go in back if you prefer. It's quiet there. There's plenty more buses. Go in later, why don't you?"

"I have to go in now. I have an appointment, Cassie."

Her mother made it sound like something grand, a business meeting, an important lunch. She lifted her hand and waved at the bus. She was wearing white fabric gloves with a small dam on one of the fingers.

"It's all right, Cassie," Helene muttered. People were starting to stare. Inside the salon, one of the assistants stopped cutting to watch.

Along the street the dust rose as the bus approached.

Cassie turned to Helene. "You going with your mother, Helene?"

"No. She's not going with me." Her mother answered. Helene dragged her shoe in the dirt.

"I'm waiting for her, Cassie," she said awkwardly. "I'll be meeting the bus when she gets back."

The bus pulled up; the doors hissed open. Her mother hesitated. "Do I have my purse? Oh, yes. Here it is." She turned quickly to Helene and placed a dry kiss on her cheek. "Good-bye, darling. I'll see you tonight. Around six . . ."

Then she climbed aboard. The doors hissed shut. There was a blue belch of diesel, and the bus pulled off. Helene lifted her hand to wave, and then dropped it again. She looked at her watch, her sixteenth birthday present; she shook it, because sometimes it stopped. But it was ticking okay. It was ten o'clock.

DESTINY • 283

She wanted to do a lot of things. She wanted to go back to the trailer and just lie down on the little bed and cry. She wanted to go up to the plantation and shoot Ned Calvert in the heart. She wanted to write to Ehzabeth and mail the letter right away. She wanted to talk to Billy. She wanted to get the next bus into Montgomery, and find her mother, and take her home. She wanted to set the clock back a month, a year, as far back as she could, till before all this happened, all this began. She wanted not to hear her mother's voice anymore, calm, self-deluding, telling her all those things and ripping a torn world further apart.

In the end she just walked up Main Street and turned off past the gas station, around back of the parking lot. There was some vacant land there, and real estate signs announcing a new building development.

No one went there. There was a falling-down tin shack that gave some shade, and Helene sat down, staring in front of her, wiUing the time to pass. She looked at the clumps of nettles and old strip of concrete path, a wall covered in poison ivy. There had been a house here once; where she sat had been part of its garden. She shut her eyes against the heat, and her mind said: England, Europe, England. After a while, she got up again and began to walk back toward the gas station. Then she stopped.

A long black open-topped Cadillac was parked by the pumps. Ned Calvert was leaning up against the trunk. He had his back to her, and he was busy talking. There was a whole group of them, five white men. Merv Peters was there, and a younger man—Eddie Haines, she thought. Then two others she didn't recognize. One of them had a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

She watched them for a while, crouching back against the wall. Then she turned and crept away, going around the back way to Main Street. Down an alleyway, past garbage cans, and backyards strung with washing. Past a wall on which someone had painted the letters KKK in red paint. She looked at the letters and spat. Then she walked on.

She hung around on Main Street for a while, pretending to look in store windows, waiting for the next bus back from Montgomery. For some crazy reason, she thought her mother might be on it. But only two white men got off. The bus pulled away. Please God, Helene thought. Let her be safe. Let her be okay.

She knew what kind of a place her mother would be going, in spite of what she said. Rich people didn't go to Montgomery to get abortions, even she knew that much. They went out of state. They took a plane to Puerto Rico or Mexico, where there were private clinics that did that kind of

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thing. Susie Marshall had known someone who had known someone who had done it once. Either that, or they paid a smart doctor, a really expensive doctor, to say they needed the operation for medical reasons. What kind of doctor did abortions for seventy dollars? And how did they do it? / don 7 know, Susie Marshall had said that time. / guess they sort of scrape it out. I mean, it's not a real baby, is it? It's Just sort of Jell-0. I guess . . .

Helene shivered. She felt sick. Her throat was so dry she could hardly swallow. She desperately wanted a drink of water, and she wondered if she dared go into Merv Peters's and order a soda. He wasn't there, she knew that. . . . She walked along the street and peered inside. Priscilla-Anne wasn't there either; it was all right. There was a girl she didn't know serving at the counter.

Helene pushed open the door and went in. Cold air hit her. Merv Peters had had air conditioners installed the previous year, and a jukebox. It was playing now.

She seated herself on a tall stool by the window, from where she could see Main Street and the bus stop. There were some girls from Selma High over in a comer by the jukebox, giggling and talking in hushed tones. If they saw her come in, they carefully took no notice.