Have No Shame (2 page)

The river usually smelled of sulfur and fish, with an underlyin’ hint of desperation, but today it smelled like somethin’ else all together. The rancid smell hit me like an invisible billow of smog. I covered my mouth and turned away, walkin’ a little faster. I tried to get around the stench, thinkin’ it was a dead animal carcass hidin’ beneath the rocks. I couldn’t outrun the smell, and before I knew it I was crouched five feet above the river on an outcroppin’ of rocks, and my hummin’ was replaced by retchin’ and dry heavin’ as the stench infiltrated my throat. I peered over the edge and fear singed my nerves like thousands of needles pokin’ me all at once. Floatin’ beneath me was the bloated and badly beaten body of a colored man. A scream escaped my lips. I stumbled backward and fell to my knees. My entire body began to shake. I covered my mouth to keep from throwin’ up. I knew I should turn away, run, get help, but I could not go back the way I’d come. I was paralyzed with fear, and yet, I was strangely drawn to the bloated and ghastly figure. 

I stood back up, then stumbled in my gray midi-skirt and saddle shoes as I made my way over the rocks and toward the riverbank. The silt-laden river was still beneath the floatin’ body. A branch stretched across the river like a boney finger, snaggin’ the bruised and beaten body by the torn trousers that clung to its waist. His bare chest and arms were so bloated that it looked as if they might pop. Tremblin’ and gaspin’ for breath, I lowered myself to the ground, warm tears streamin’ down my cheeks.

While fear sucked my breath away, an underlyin’ curiosity poked its way through to my consciousness. I covered my eyes then, tellin’ myself to look away. The reality that I was seein’ a dead man settled into my bones like ice. Shivers rattled my body. Whose father, brother, uncle, or friend was this man? I opened my eyes again and looked at him. 
It’s a him
, I told myself. I didn’t want to see him as just an anonymous, dead colored man. He was someone, and he mattered. My heart pounded against my ribcage with an insistence—I needed to know who he was. I’d never seen a dead man before, and even though I could barely breathe, even though I could feel his image imprintin’ into my brain, I would not look away. I wanted to know who had beaten him, and why. I wanted to tell his family I was sorry for their loss.

An uncontrollable urgency brought me to my feet and drew me closer, on rubber legs, to where I could see what was left of his face. A gruesome mass of flesh protruded from his mouth. His tongue had bloated and completely filled the openin’, like a flesh-sock had been stuffed in the hole, stretchin’ his lips until they tore and the raw pulp poked out. Chunks of skin were torn or bitten away from his eyes.

I don’t know how long I stood there, my legs quakin’, unable to speak or turn back the way I had come. I don’t know how I got home that night, or what I said to anyone along the way. What I do know is that hearin’ of a colored man’s death was bad enough—I’d heard the rumors of whites beatin’ colored men to death before—but actually seein’ the man who had died, and witnessin’ the awful remains of the beatin’, now that terrified me to my core. A feelin’ of shame bubbled within me. For the first time ever, I was embarrassed to be white, because in Forrest Town, Arkansas, you could be fairly certain it was my people who were the cause of his death. And as a young southern woman, I knew that the expectation was for me to get married, have children, and perpetuate the hate that had been bred in our lives. My children, they’d be born into the same hateful society. That realization brought me to my knees.

It had been a few days since that awful night at the river, and I couldn’t shake the image from my mind; the disfigured body lyin’ in the water like yesterday’s trash. At the time, I didn’t recognize Byron Bingham. I only knew the middle-aged colored man from town gossip, as
that man whose wife was sleepin’ with Billy Carlisle
. Daddy told me who he was after the police pulled him from the river. I know now that the purple, black, and red bruises that covered his skin were not caused from the beatin’ alone, but rather by the seven days he’d spent dead in the river. I tried to talk to my boyfriend, Jimmy Lee, about the shame I’d carried ever since findin’ that poor man’s body, but Jimmy Lee believed he probably deserved whatever he got, so I swallowed the words. I wanted to share, but the feelin’s still burned inside me like a growin’ fire I couldn’t control. It didn’t help that some folks looked at me like I’d done somethin’ bad by findin’ Mr. Bingham. Even with those sneers reelin’ around me, I couldn’t help but want to see his family. I wanted to be part of their world, to bear witness to what was left behind in the wake of his terrible death, and to somehow connect with them, help them through the pain. Were they okay? How could they be?

I walked all the way to Division Street, the large two-story homes with shiny Buicks and Chevy Impalas out front fell away behind me. A rusty, red and white Ford Ranch Wagon turned down Division Street. There I stood, lookin’ down the street that divided the colored side of town from the white side. Even the trees seemed to sag and sway, appearin’ less vital than those in town. A chill ran up my back.
Don’t go near those colored streets,
Daddy had warned me.
Those people will rape you faster than you can say chicken scratch.
I dried my sweaty palms on my pencil skirt as I craned my head, though I had no real idea what I was lookin’ for. The desolate street stretched out before me, like the road itself felt the loss of Mr. Bingham. Small, wooden houses lined the dirt road like secondhand clothes, used and tattered. How had I never before noticed the loneliness of Division Street? Two young children were sittin’ near the front porch of a small, clapboard house, just a few houses away from where I stood. My heart ached to move forward, crouch down right beside them, and see what they were doin’. Two women, who looked to be about my mama’s age, stood in the gravel driveway. One held a big bowl of somethin’—beans, maybe? She lifted pieces of whatever it was, broke them, then put them back in the bowl.  I wondered what it might be like to help them in the kitchen, bake somethin’ delicious, and watch those little childrens’ eyes light up at a perfect corn muffin. The short, plump woman had a dark wrap around her hair. The other one, a tiny flick of a woman with a stylish press and curl hairdo, looked in my direction. Our eyes met, then she shifted her head from side to side, as if she were afraid someone might jump out and yell at her for lookin’ at me. I felt my cheeks tighten as a tentative smile spread across my lips. My fingertips lifted at my sides in a slight wave. She turned away quickly and crossed her arms. The air between me and those women who I wanted to know, thickened.

I felt stupid standin’ there, wantin’ to go down and talk to them, to see what the children were playin’. I wondered, did they know Mr. Bingham? Had his death impacted their lives? I wanted to apologize for what had happened, even though I had no idea how or why it had. I realized that the colored side of town had been almost invisible to me, save for understandin’ that I was forbidden to go there. Those families had also been invisible to me. My cheeks burned as my feelin’s of stupidity turned to shame.

A child’s cackle split the silence. His laughter was infectious. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard uninhibited giggles like that.  It made me smile. I bit my lower lip, feelin’ caught between what I’d been taught and the pull of my heart.

A Buick ambled by, slowin’ as it passed behind me. I startled, rememberin’
my place
, as Daddy called it. Daddy’d keep me right by his side if he could. He didn’t like me to be around anyone he didn’t know, said he couldn’t take care of me if he didn’t know where I was. I turned and headed back toward town, like I’d just stopped for a moment durin’ a walk.  The elderly white man drivin’ the shiny, black car squinted at me, furrowed his brow, and then drove on.

I wondered what my daddy might think if he saw me gazin’ down Division Street, where his farmhands lived. Daddy’s farmhands, black men of all ages, were strong and responsible, and they worked in our fields and gardens with such vigorous commitment that it was as though the food and cotton were for their own personal use. Some of those dedicated men had worked for Daddy for years; others were new to the farm. I realized, surprisin’ly, that I’d never spoken to any one of them.

A long block later, I heard Jimmy Lee’s old, red pick-up truck comin’ up the road behind me. The town was so small, that I could hear it from a mile away with its loud, rumblin’ engine. I wondered if someone had spotted me starin’ down Division Street and told him to come collect me. He stopped the truck beside me and flung open the door, flashin’ his big baby-blues beneath his wavy, brown hair. Jimmy Lee was growin’ his hair out from his Elvis cut to somethin’ more akin to Ringo Starr, and it was stuck in that in-between stage of lookin’ like a mop. I liked anything that had to do with Ringo, so he was even more appealin’ to me with his hair fallin’ in his face.

“Alison, c’mon.”

“Hey,” I said, as I climbed onto the vinyl bench seat. He reached over and put his arm around me, pullin’ me closer to him. I snuggled right into the strength of him. It was hard to believe we’d been datin’ for two years. We’d met after church one Sunday mornin’. I used to wonder if Mama or Daddy had set it up that way, like a blind date, but there’s no proof of that. Jimmy Lee’s daddy, Jack Carlisle, was talkin’ to my mama and daddy at the time, so we just started talkin’ too. Jimmy Lee was the older, handsome guy that every girl had her eye on, and I was the lucky one he chose as his own. I’d been datin’ Jimmy Lee since I was sixteen. He was handsome, I had to give him that, but ever since findin’ Mr. Bingham, some of the things he’d done and said made my skin crawl. Others thought he was the perfect suitor for me. I wondered if that, along with my daddy’s approval, was enough to make me swallow these new, uncomfortable feelin’s that wrapped themselves like tentacles around every nerve in my body, and marry him.

I twisted the ring on my finger; Jimmy Lee’s grandmother’s engagement ring. In eight short weeks we’d be married and I’d no longer be Alison Tillman. I’d become Mrs. James Lee Carlisle. My heart ached with the thought.

The afternoon moved swiftly into a lazy and cool evenin’. I was still thinkin’ about the women I’d seen on Division Street when we stopped at the store for a few six-packs of beer. Jimmy Lee’s favorite past time. Like so many other evenin’s, we met up with my brother Jake and Jimmy Lee’s best friend, Corky Talms, in the alley behind the General Store. I think everyone in town knew we hung out here, but no one ever bothered us. The alley was so narrow that there was only a foot or two of road between the right side of Jimmy Lee’s truck and a stack of empty, cardboard delivery boxes, boastin’ familiar names like Schlitz, Tab, and Fanta, lined up along the brick wall beside the back door of the store. On the other side of his truck, just inches from the driver’s side door, a dumpster stood open, waftin’ the stench of stale food into the air. Just beyond that was a small strip of grass, where Jake and Corky now sat. And behind them were the deep, dark woods that separated the nicer part of town from the poor.

I sat on the hood of Jimmy Lee’s truck, and watched him take another swig of his beer. His square jaw tilted back, exposin’ his powerful neck and broad chest. The familiar desire to kiss him rose within me as I watched his Adam’s apple bounce up and down with each gulp.

Jimmy Lee smacked his lips as he lowered the beer bottle to rest on his Levi’s. His eyes were as blue as the sea, and they jetted around the group. I recognized that hungry look. Jimmy Lee had to behave when he was away at college, for fear of his uncle pullin’ his tuition, which I knew he could afford without much trouble. Jack Carlisle was a farmer and owned 350 acres, but his brother Billy owned the only furniture store in Forrest Town, Arkansas, and was one of the wealthiest men in town. Jimmy Lee might have been king of Central High, but now he was a small fish in a big pond at Mississippi State. The bullish tactics that had worked in Forrest Town would likely get him hurt in Mississippi, and Billy Carlisle wasn’t about to be humiliated by his nephew. Jimmy Lee was set to become the manager in his uncle’s store, if he behaved and actually graduated. I was pretty sure that he’d behave while he was away at college and make it to graduation, but I rued those long weekends when he returned home, itchin’ for trouble.

“Jimmy Lee, why don’t we take a walk?” I suggested, though I didn’t much feel like takin’ a walk with Jimmy Lee. I never knew who we’d see or how he’d react.

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “How’s my pretty little wife-to-be?” He kissed my cheek and offered me a sip of his beer, which I declined, too nervous to drink. I felt safe within his arms, but those colored boys were out there, and my nerves were tremblin’ just thinkin’ about what Jimmy Lee might do. I took my hands and placed them on his cheeks, forcin’ his eyes to meet mine. Love lingered in his eyes, clear and bright, and I hoped it was enough of a pull to keep him from seekin’ out trouble. Jimmy Lee was known for chasin’ down colored boys when he thought they were up to no good, and I was realizin’ that maybe he just liked doin’ it. Maybe they weren’t always up to no good. Ever since findin’ Mr. Bingham’s body, I noticed, and was more sensitive to, the ugliness of his actions.

I took inventory of the others. My brother Jake sat on the ground fiddlin’ with his shoelace. His golden hair, the pale-blond color of dried cornhusks, just like mine, though much thicker, was combed away from his high forehead, revealin’ his too-young-for-a-nineteen-year-old, baby face. Jake seemed content to just sit on the grass and drink beer. He had spent the last year tryin’ to measure up to our older sister’s impeccable grades. While Jake remained in town after high school, attendin’ Central Community College, Maggie, with her stellar grades and bigger-than-life personality, begged and pleaded until she convinced our father to send her to Marymount Manhattan College.

I wished more than ever that Maggie were home just then. We’d take a walk to the river like we used to, just the two of us, climb up to the loft in the barn, and giggle until Mama called us inside. We’d do anything other than sittin’ around watchin’ Jimmy Lee blow smoke rings and think about startin’ trouble.