The Improper Life of Bezillia Grove (3 page)

“That’s the boy whose mama and daddy got a divorce last year after she found him with … I mean after—” Nathaniel caught himself before he disclosed more than he figured a sixth-grade girl needed to know. “I mean they’re the ones who got a divorce. Went and had some judge tear their marriage apart as if it never happened. I heard your mama talking about them on the telephone just the other day. Yep, they’re the ones.”

The wind suddenly lifted my day’s work sheets from my lap. They swirled about the back of the car like confetti thrown at a parade. I started laughing and grabbing for my papers, quickly stacking them neatly in order on the top of my notebook. And there in front of me was a heart, a heart I had drawn when I was supposed to be searching for remainders, a heart that symbolized my love for Tommy Blanton. Tommy and I would never get a divorce. We would love each other forever.

Mother wasn’t home when we arrived at Grove Hill. She was probably at the country club lingering over a bridge table with friends, so I begged Nathaniel to drive me to Cornelia’s. I needed to tell her about my kiss. I needed to tell her about my newly discovered womanhood. I told Nathaniel we needed more eggs.

Even now I still remember lying on Cornelia’s pink-flowered bedspread unraveling the events of my day like a kitten playfully pulling a piece of yarn from a skein. My cousin, with her legs folded beneath her, sat on the bed across from me. She was beaming with pride, as if this kiss had been a reflection of her own efforts. She asked if I had felt a little dizzy, and when I told her that I thought I had, she confirmed that this was indeed a true and lasting love.

She jumped off her bed and hopped over to her vanity, which was looking more and more like the cosmetics counter at Castner Knott. She picked up a tube of lipstick and then turned and stood right in front of me, staring into my eyes so intently I thought she was peering straight into my soul.

“Honey Bee Pink. Brand-new color. Just came out. It’s kind of faint but very powerful.” Cornelia hummed and then smeared the lipstick across her mouth. She handed me the white plastic tube and indicated that I was to do the same. Then she picked up a mirror with a long pink handle and admired her lips. She kissed the glass and handed the mirror to me, again indicating that I was to do just as she had done. “Remember, be careful, it’s very potent stuff. I bet there’s real honey in it.”

“Thanks,” I said in a hushed, appreciative tone, holding the lipstick tube carefully between my fingers. I slowly rubbed some across my own lips and then kissed the mirror just as Cornelia had, leaving a waxy impression of my kiss on the glass. Now this mirror knew my secret too.

At the dinner table later that evening, I sat straight in my chair and tried to cut my chicken without scraping the blade of my knife across the plate. Mother said food was not to be butchered, merely cut. Sometimes I left the table hungry because the thought of cutting anything in my mother’s presence made my stomach hurt. And tonight, with the lipstick still hidden in my skirt pocket, I didn’t want her scrutinizing my table manners. I just wanted to hide in my room and practice writing my name.

Mrs. Tommy Blanton, Mrs. T. Blanton, Mrs. Tommy and Bezellia Blanton, Mrs. Bezellia Blanton

“Sister, your uncle called,” Mother said abruptly, bringing my attention back to the meat held tightly under my fork and knife. “You left a workbook at his house today. He thought you might need it for school tomorrow.”

“A workbook?” I answered, adding an appropriate dose of both confusion and innocence to my voice.

“Yes, a workbook.” And then my mother stiffened her back and her tone became as inflexible as her body. “You come straight home tomorrow. We don’t need any more of his damn brown eggs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered, and my knife slid from one edge of the plate to the other, screaming as it made its way across the porcelain. My mother glared at me. She looked so stern and disapproving I was afraid she could see my heart was aching for a boy who kept a piece of gum tucked inside his cheek. I could only hope that, by this time of the evening, Mother’s vision was too clouded with gin for her to know my most honest thoughts and that by morning she would have forgotten about a lost workbook.

Thankfully, she was still sleeping when I left for school the next day with Cornelia’s lipstick neatly hidden in my pocket. I raced to Mrs. Dempsey’s classroom and found Tommy sitting at his desk. I abruptly stopped in the doorway to regain my composure and quickly ran my hands down my pleated blue skirt. Tommy glanced at the door and then lowered his head, choosing instead to focus on the comic book lying open on top of his desk. My eyes started filling with tears, and I was afraid everyone would see my broken heart dripping down my cheeks. But as soon as I took my seat next to his, his green eyes warmed and his blank expression turned into a reassuring smile.

Mrs. Dempsey talked all morning about Columbus and Indians and fractions and prepositional phrases, one subject blending into the next, none of them making any sense to me. Finally, she directed us to close our books. And that day, like the day before, I found myself behind the coatrack primping for Tommy Blanton. I tightened my ponytail and again pressed my hands down my skirt. Then I ceremoniously pulled the tube of lipstick from my pocket and carefully shellacked my lips with a heavy coat of Honey Bee Pink, just like Cornelia had told me to do.

“Gee, Bezellia, you smell good—kind of like honey.” Tommy was standing behind me. I hadn’t noticed him until he was suddenly there, talking in that deep, raspy voice that should have belonged to a much older boy.

“It’s my new lipstick, I guess.”

“Huh. Is that why your lips are shining like that?”

“They’re supposed to shine.”

“Huh.”

I closed my eyes. Then I closed my mouth and held my breath, eagerly but patiently waiting for Tommy’s lips to find mine. I smelled his skin, a faded hint of Ivory Snow, as he leaned toward my face. His lips felt soft and tender today, gentler than I had remembered. I smiled, a thank-you of sorts, and then straightened my skirt once more and walked back to my desk, my lips tasting like the sweetest clover honey.

For three more days, Tommy and I loved each other as well as any two eleven-year-olds could. We stood next to each other in the lunch line but never said more than hello. And we faithfully met behind the coatrack but never spoke a word about what we did there.

Every afternoon I begged Nathaniel to take me by Cornelia’s, if only for a moment. And every afternoon Nathaniel would say the same thing: “If your mama finds out, dear, sweet Jesus, she’ll wallop us both.” But we both knew my mother was more interested in her bridge parties than in my comings and goings, and so he’d smile and turn the car right onto Davidson Road.

But by the end of the week, the late September air had grown thick and heavy. Nathaniel leaned his head out the open car window. And even though there wasn’t a cloud in sight, he said a thunderstorm was surely heading our way. Nathaniel read the sky like my mother read the society page, and he could say with great accuracy when we were heading into violent weather. But today I felt it too.

“That’s right, Miss Bezellia. A storm is surely heading our way. Be here by nightfall. Mark my words,” he declared, and he gingerly pulled the car into the driveway and continued toward the front of the house. My mother was perched near the top of the porch, her arms folded across her chest. She had never welcomed me home from school, and it did not appear that was her intention today. She stood unusually tall in her high heels, almost like a giant. Her eyes remained fixed on the car.

Nathaniel lifted his foot off the accelerator, being particularly careful not to stir up any dust as he approached the house. He came to a stop and placed the car in park. He eased out of the Cadillac and tipped his hat. Mother just ignored him. He walked to the other side of the car and opened the rear door. Without a word, Nathaniel reached for my arm and tenderly pulled me out of the backseat. He squeezed my hand before letting go, as if trying to secretly inject some hidden strength or courage into my small body.

Mother remained motionless as I climbed the few steps toward her. Standing in her shadow, I shielded my eyes with my forearm. The sun was shining so brightly behind her I couldn’t see that she had already raised her right hand. Without saying a word, she slapped me across the cheek. For a moment, I desperately tried to balance myself on the edge of the hard marble step. She could have reached for me. She could have grabbed me. Instead she looked beyond me, as if I wasn’t even there, her hands resting behind her back as I fell helplessly against the steps.

“Listen to me, Sister. You are not going around this town acting like some whorish tramp,” Mother said with an ugly and bitter tongue. “You hear me? No makeup on your face and no more Tommy Blanton. He is as worthless as his worthless, two-bit parents. Do you understand me?”

She didn’t care what I thought, and I knew it was best to say nothing. In my silence, my mother once again folded her arms across her chest and then turned to walk back inside the house. Truthfully, my head was full of so much hurt, I hadn’t heard much of anything Mother said except that Tommy Blanton was worthless. And as soon as she stepped through the front door, Nathaniel rushed to my side. I buried my face in his strong, steady arms and began to sob. He picked me up and carried me to the back of the house and through the kitchen door.

“Now, now, Miss Bezellia, you’re gonna be all right. You’re gonna be all right,” he kept chanting quietly in my ear.

Maizelle looked up from her chair and dropped the basket of green beans she was stringing for the night’s dinner.

“Sweet Jesus, Nathaniel, what’s done gone and happened to Miss Bezellia? Bring her here to me.”

Nathaniel placed me on Maizelle’s lap, and then he gently held my chin in the palm of his rough, thick hand so both he and Maizelle could better examine my face. He saw the blood trickling from the corner of my lips, where my mother’s diamond ring must have ripped my skin. My mouth tasted as if I had been sucking on a piece of metal pipe. Nathaniel handed me a glass of ice water and told me to drink it all.

“What happened?” Maizelle persisted, looking at Nathaniel with bold, determined eyes, afraid that she already knew the answer to her question.

“Miss Bezellia fell down the front steps, lost her footing.”

Maizelle understood what Nathaniel was not saying, and she pulled me tighter against her chest. “Get me a cold rag and the baby aspirin there in that drawer.” She held the cool, wet rag to my cheek while Nathaniel fumbled with the bottle of aspirin. The only other sound was the kitchen clock that hung over the back door, gently humming as one second poured into the next.

We’d all heard my mother say some pretty ugly things to me, and she had certainly swatted my hand more times than I could count. But she had never hit me. Not like that. Not on the face. For the first time in my life I really, truly believed I hated her. But I didn’t hate her because she had hit me or because she’d just stood there and watched me fall. I hated her because she had said such mean things about Tommy.

“He’s not worthless,” I finally muttered and burst into tears.

“Oh, Lord, child, that boy, that’s what this is about?” Maizelle looked at Nathaniel for confirmation.

“You listen to me, honey. It’s natural for that heart of yours to feel things. You ain’t done nothing wrong. Ya’ hear me, Miss Bezellia? Not nothing wrong.”

Nothing wrong? I couldn’t kiss Tommy anymore. I couldn’t stand next to him behind the coatrack anymore. Everything about this felt wrong, very wrong.

Mother didn’t come to the dinner table that night. She told Maizelle she wasn’t hungry. I sat there and wondered if she might starve to death, even pictured her in my head crawling to the kitchen, begging for food. But Nathaniel carried a small plate of scrambled eggs and a gin and tonic to her bedroom before leaving for the evening. Mrs. Grove had what she needed, he said, and then winked good night at me and Adelaide and walked out the back door. I wanted to go with him so bad I almost cried, even if his house did have dirt floors like Mother said it did. I would rather have been anywhere than here.

But Adelaide and I just sat frozen at the table, staring at each other, eating our dinner alone. Father had phoned, as he usually did, a few minutes before Maizelle was ready to serve our plates to let us know that he needed to care for another dying patient. Fine with me. In fact, I was almost grateful that some poor sick soul had captured my father’s attention once again. I was in no mood to endure another meal under my mother’s watchful eye or my father’s mournful stare. Adelaide sat still and quiet, a chicken leg in one hand and Baby Stella dangling in the other.

By the time I went to bed, the corner of my mouth was swollen and a rich shade of blue. I would tell my friends that Adelaide and I had been playing freeze tag in the house and I ran into the edge of a door. And I would tell Tommy Blanton that I could not meet him behind the coatrack, that I could never again feel his lips against mine. I would try to explain that ours was a forbidden love, like Romeo and Juliet’s, at least that’s what Cornelia called it. Tears rolled down my face, stinging my mouth where my skin was raw, washing his kisses away forever.

As I slipped into that space between sleep and wakefulness, I heard someone walk into my room. Without even opening my eyes, I knew it was my father. I had felt him by my side so many nights before, leaning over my bed, studying me as if he was memorizing some beautiful painting. He stroked my head and then turned and walked out of the room. I wondered if my father knew what had happened on the steps of his childhood home. I wondered if he hated my mother as much as I did.

After school the next day, I asked Nathaniel to drive me to my cousin’s house. He looked at me through the rearview mirror. His eyes were open so wide with surprise and concern they looked like two small saucers placed side by side. I quickly shook my head and told him not to worry. I just needed to return something. I’d only be a minute.