“What’s that mean? Insured?”
“Daddy gets some money back on it, but he would of much rather had the crop.”
“I know. It was terrible. We was terrible.”
“Wasn’t your fault.” His voice was real quiet and I knew he felt bad about the whole thing.
“A new social worker came to see me Monday,” I said, “and I was sure she was going to take me away. She came to the barn and—”
“I saw her. I didn’t know who she was. You went off with her.”
“I thought she was going to lock me up, like my mama.”
“I was wondering the same thing. I thought maybe my daddy called that mental hospital to come take you away. I was real glad when you came back looking okay.”
I smiled up at the sky. He’d been keeping a good eye on me from the south barn. “I like her,” I said. “She’s real nice. I felt like I could tell her just about anything.”
“You didn’t tell her about us, did you?” He sounded so worried, and I poked him with my elbow.
“’Course not,” I said. “I thought your daddy might of told her, but it didn’t seem like it. But your parents know now, so what’s it matter?”
“Be careful you don’t tell nobody. I promised my parents we wouldn’t get together no more, or else they’ll send one of us away.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ain’t exactly sure. I guess they’d either kick your family out or send me to my uncle’s in Jacksonville.”
They’d never send Henry Allen away. They needed him on the farm too much. My family, though? We was getting to be more trouble than we was worth.
We watched the stars a while, being quiet together. The radio played that song “Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love,” which seemed perfect except the words didn’t fit us too well. I could of stayed like that all night, but I knew we didn’t have all night. After a while, I leaned up on my elbow and kissed him. He kissed back, but then held me away.
“I don’t want to do it tonight,” he said.
“You ain’t got to pull out,” I said. “The nurse gave me something to keep me from having a baby.”
“What?” he asked.
“Special jelly medicine. I put it inside and you ain’t got to pull out.” When I got his note this morning, I decided to try out the spermicide jelly. I made a mess trying to get it in me, but figured it’d be worth it if Henry Allen didn’t have to worry about pulling out in time.
“I like the sound of that,” he said.
I couldn’t see him real good but I could hear that he was smiling. I kissed him again.
“I mean it, Ivy,” he said, “I don’t want to do it tonight.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t talk right away and I felt nervous, waiting. “I don’t know, exactly,” he said, “but after last week … I just want to be sure you know it ain’t all about doing it for me.”
“I know that, silly,” I said, relieved that was all that was bothering him. “Me, neither.”
“Just wanted to be sure you know that,” he said, and then he kissed me and I knew we’d be doing it after all, and that was right fine by me.
19
Jane
I’d worried needlessly about how I’d make conversation with Avery Jordan when I drove him to Ridley each week for his Braille lesson. He loved to talk. It took us fifteen minutes to get to Ridley and another five for me to find the colored school where the teacher would meet us, and in that time I said, perhaps, ten words to his ten thousand. It seemed that way to me, anyway. He was sweet and unintentionally funny, and he wasn’t the least bit shy about telling me what it was like to have his eye disease.
“Like looking through a long pipe,” he said. He leaned toward me in the front seat of my car, trying to make a pipe in front of my eyes with his hands.
“Avery.” I gently moved his hands aside, laughing. “I have to see to drive.”
“I can’t see nothing outside the pipe,” he continued, unfazed, “but I can see what’s at the end of it pretty good.” That explained why he turned his head constantly as we drove to the school. He could only see what was at the end of that pipe.
He told me everything I could ever want to know about his brothers, and he didn’t censor himself, as far as I could tell. I found him, frankly, refreshing. Everyone else tiptoed around sensitive topics, but Avery dove right in.
“Devil got a girlfriend at school, but he got another summer one,” he said. “The summer one don’t know nothing about the school one, but he gets them mixed up sometimes. He calls one by the other name. Things like that. So he makin’ up ways of remembering. The school one’s called Belinda and she got a big behind, so that’s how he remembers. Belinda and behind, get it?”
I nodded, smiling. “And how does he remember the summer one?” I asked.
“She got big, you know”—he raised his hands and I was certain he was going to demonstrate big breasts, but instead he tapped against his front teeth—“a big space between her teeth.”
“So…” I glanced at him, trying not to laugh. “How does that help him remember her name?”
“It don’t, far as I know.”
“Ah.” I couldn’t help but laugh now. I was quickly getting used to the mind-tangling nature of a conversation with Avery.
“Does Eli have a girlfriend?” I asked, thinking of Charlotte’s suspicions about Baby William’s father.
“No, ma’am,” he said with a vigorous shake of his head. “Eli done with girls. That’s what he always say. Girls is too much trouble, is what he say.”
“And how about you?” We were at a light, getting close to the school, and I looked at him.
He grinned like a little kid with a secret, and he was fair enough I thought he might be blushing. I loved those freckles across his nose. His glasses made his eyes look bright and big. He was so cute. How I wished I could magically fix his eyes for him! He was looking straight ahead, so I knew he couldn’t see my curious expression. “Well?” I prompted him, smiling at his coyness.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “I got a made-up girlfriend, but she ain’t real.”
“Ah,” I said again. I believed him, and I was glad. If he’d had a girlfriend, I was afraid Ann Laing or someone would say it was time for him to be sterilized. I decided right then and there I wouldn’t ask him that question ever again.
* * *
I had an hour to myself while Avery was with the teacher. Gayle had given me the number for a church in Ridley where she’d managed to track down hard-to-find donated items in the past, and sure enough, they had two old window fans. Only one was in working order but the woman I spoke with promised me the other was repairable. I was discovering that Gayle knew the resources better than anyone else in the office. She was quiet and serious, but she knew how to get a job done.
I drove to the church and picked up the fans. I’d take the broken one to a repair shop near our house. By next week, I hoped I’d be able to surprise both the Harts and the Jordans with them. Then I picked Avery up at the school and we headed back to the farm.
“Ma’am?” Avery said, when we turned onto Ridley Road. “Guess why I like learning Braille?”
“Why?” I asked.
“’Cause my brothers don’t know it,” he said. “I can do something they can’t do at all.”
I nodded. “I bet that’s nice,” I said, “having something to yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am. I ain’t got nothing to myself. I sure ain’t got no bed to myself.”
“No, I imagine it’s pretty crowded in that bedroom. How about your mother? Where does she sleep?”
“She sleep in the kitchen.”
I remembered the cot in Lita’s kitchen.
“Sometime she goes missing, though.”
“What do you mean, she ‘goes missing’?
“Sometime I wake up and she ain’t there.”
“Probably in the johnny,” I said.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “She ju
st ain’t there.”
I wasn’t sure what to say or what questions to ask, so I let it rest. But when I dropped him off at his house, Lita came to my car window.
“Thank you, Mrs. Forrester,” she said. “He likes riding with you.”
“He’s a very sweet boy,” I said. “He said something … odd to me as we were driving home, though.”
“Did he now? What’s that?”
“He said sometimes you go missing. At night, he meant. He said he’d wake up and you’d be gone.”
She hesitated a split second too long before laughing. “That boy!” she said. “If I sit out on the porch, he thinks I’m on the moon or something. You can’t pay him no mind, Mrs. Forrester. He got an imagination. That’s all.”
I smiled. “Yes, I know he does,” I said, then I waved and put the car in gear. “I’ll see y’all next week,” I said, and pulled out of their yard. In my rearview mirror, I saw her watching me drive away. She wasn’t laughing anymore.
* * *
Gayle was getting ready to leave the office when I arrived. She stood by our receptionist Barbara’s empty desk in the main office, studying herself in her compact mirror as she applied her too red lipstick.
“Thanks for telling me about that church,” I said, setting my briefcase on Barbara’s desk. “I got the fans.”
“Very good.” She pressed her lips together, then tilted her head to check her short, dark hair in the small mirror. “You have the office to yourself,” she said, snapping the compact shut. “I’m on my way to see a client. Fred and Paula are in the field and Barbara has a doctor’s appointment. You’ll be all right?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “I have a petition to work on.”
“Good,” she said, heading for the door. “See you tomorrow.”
I carried my briefcase to my own office, then headed back into the main room. Paula had helped me with Ivy’s petition the day before, but I’d made a mess of one of the forms and needed to find a blank one to work on. I remembered her telling me the forms were kept in one of the cupboards by Barbara’s desk. I squatted down in front of the cupboard and opened it, instantly overwhelmed by the stacks of teetering paper threatening to spill onto the floor. I sat on the floor, hiking my skirt up, glad no one else was around. How was I ever going to find the form I needed in this mess?
I began pulling stacks of paper from the cupboard, planning to take a stab at organizing them. Soon, I was surrounded by piles of forms and booklets and memos and address lists.
A few blue pamphlets were tucked into a stack of other papers. I pulled one of them out and leafed through it. It was full of simple drawings that looked like they’d been done by a kindergartener, but it was the message behind the pictures that made me uncomfortable. You wouldn’t expect a moron to drive a train or a feebleminded woman to teach school, the pamphlet read. Then why should we expect them to be good parents? Voluntary sterilization saves taxpayer dollars and protects the community.
How voluntary would it be in Ivy’s situation if no one told her what was happening to her? Or Avery’s, for that matter?
At the back of the pamphlet, someone had tucked a magazine article, folded in thirds. I unfolded it and read the title: “Better Human Beings Tomorrow.” The first line read, “Tomorrow’s population should be produced by today’s best human material.” I scanned the article, which advocated sterilizing “mental defectives.” All I could think about was Hitler and his master race. How was this any different?
I heard the door to the main office open, and Paula shouted, “Hello!”
“Paula!” I said. “I’m over here. Come here and see what I found!”
“Yikes, what a mess!” she said as she spotted me sitting on the floor in a sea of paper. She leaned against the side of Barbara’s desk. “What are you doing?”
“I was looking for a blank form for my part of the petition,” I said, “and this cupboard was such a mess that I decided to clean it out. And, Paula, I found things that … Well, they give me the creeps.”
“Like what?”
“This, for example.” I handed her the pamphlet on sterilization. “Tell me this doesn’t remind you of Nazi Germany.”
She sat on the corner of Barbara’s desk and paged through the pamphlet. “Oh my God.” She laughed. “This is so ridiculous. Look at these drawings! I think this was written for morons.”
“But don’t you find it upsetting?”
“I find it silly,” she said. “Is there a date on this thing?” She turned it over to check the back cover. “Nobody uses this anymore,” she said. “I’ve never even seen it before.”
“What about this article?” I handed it to her.
She scanned it as I had, shaking her head and smiling as though she couldn’t believe I was upset. “Did you see the date on this?” she asked. “It’s 1947! Thirteen years ago. We don’t think this way anymore, Jane.” She looked at me. “You haven’t been comfortable with the program from the start, have you?”
“I can see the benefit in some cases,” I said. “I have a client who really wanted to be sterilized and I know it’s helped her. Ivy, though”—I shook my head—“she needs to have a say in this.”
Paula leaned toward me. “E-pi-lep-sy,” she said. “That’s all you need to think about. Plus her IQ.”
“She’s normal,” I said.
“Not by much.”
“I think that IQ test is off.”
She let out a sound of exasperation, throwing her arms up in the air. “I don’t have time for this,” she said, standing up. “IQ tests don’t lie.” She handed the pamphlet and article back to me. “Charlotte thought you might be a problem,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re unprofessional,” she said. “You get too involved. That’s what she was afraid of. It’s easy to lose objectivity when you get too involved.”
I didn’t like that they had talked about me.
“You need guts for this work,” Paula said. “I hope you’ll get some, because we need you. Obviously. We need you badly right now, with Charlotte gone. Just keep working on the petition,” she said. “I think as you work your way through it you’ll understand why it’s the best thing for your client.”
She picked up something from her office and called good night to me as she left, and I sat there on the floor surrounded by messy stacks of paper. I thought of taking the pamphlet and article home to Robert, but I was frankly afraid of his opinion. I suddenly felt alone, surrounded by eugenics propaganda and forms I wish I didn’t have to fill out, and all I could think about was the teenaged girl who was only now starting to trust me.
20
Ivy
“That lady’s here,” Mary Ella said. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen where me and Nonnie was canning. We was all hot and sweaty and I was tired after looping all day, but the canning had to be done while the tomatoes was still good. “I seen her come out of the woods.”
“What lady?” Nonnie asked, but I had a feeling right away who it was, and I ran into the living room and pulled open the door. Sure enough, Mrs. Forrester was coming onto the porch carrying some big metal thing and sweating up a storm.
“Hi, Ivy.” She set the metal thing down on the porch and dusted off her hands. “Guess what I have for you?”
I took a closer look. “Is that a fan?” I asked.
“It certainly is. I just left one with the Jordans, too.”
I couldn’t believe it. I ran back in the house. “Nonnie! Mary Ella! Come look what Mrs. Forrester brung us!”
Nonnie hollered something about not being able to leave her jars, but Mary Ella came out and looked down at the fan. “Do it work?” she asked.
“How about we find out,” Mrs. Forrester said. “Let me talk to your grandmother. See what window she’d like it in.”
We all walked into the kitchen, Mrs. Forrester carrying the fan again.
“We got a window fan, Nonnie!” I said.
“Hello, M
rs. Hart,” Mrs. Forrester said, “I hope you don’t mind me visiting this late in the day, but I just dropped Avery Jordan off and thought I’d stop by.”
“You work night and day, now don’t you,” Nonnie said, not even looking up from her steamy pot on the stove. Her dress and hair were wet with sweat and it dripped down her shiny face.
“Looks like you’re working pretty hard yourself,” Mrs. Forrester said.
“Ain’t no choice here.” Nonnie could be right ornery when she was hot.
“What window should it go in?” I asked.
“I’d suggest we try it out right here.” Mrs. Forrester pointed to the window at the end of the kitchen. “See if we can get some circulation in this room while your grandmother’s cooking.”
“She ain’t cooking,” Mary Ella said. “She’s canning.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Forrester said. “I’ve never canned anything. I’d love to see how you do it.”
Nonnie looked at her like she was the dumbest lady she’d ever seen. “Oh, it’s exciting, all right,” she said.
“Would it be okay if I try to install it?” she asked Nonnie. “I’ll have to take out the screen.” The screen was old and full of big holes and not doing much good anyway.
“Do what you please,” Nonnie said.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“You go outside and just make sure it doesn’t fall through while I’m putting it in the window,” she said.
I ran outside and helped steady it while Mrs. Forrester stretched out the sides of the fan to fit the window. I came inside and she was plugging it in.
“Everybody ready?” she asked, as she held her finger above the knob to turn it on.
“Ready!” Mary Ella said. I could tell she was excited. “Baby William!” she called. “Come watch.”
Mrs. Forrester turned the switch and a breeze blew into the room and changed everything like magic. Nonnie smiled. Mary Ella laughed. Baby William came running from the other room to see what the fuss was about. And I looked at Mrs. Forrester where she was playing with the knob and a feeling come over me that was real good and real warm. I couldn’t remember the last time I had that feeling, but I knew exactly what it was. Hope. She cared enough to bring us a fan. Mrs. Werkman never did nothing like that in all the years I knowed her. Mrs. Forrester could make things change for the good. Ever since that day she talked to me, I been talking to her in my head, telling her every little thought that came into it. I wished I could talk to her every minute. I was bursting with things to say to her, except for anything about Henry Allen. I wouldn’t tell nobody about me and him.