“I’m a physician,” Robert said, and I saw their eyes pop open. I knew how Northerners thought. They didn’t expect a Southern boy to have the brains to become a doctor.
“A pediatrician,” I added. I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell them about the time I watched him stitch together a gash on a little girl’s leg while telling her “knock-knock” jokes to keep her mind off what was happening. I wanted to talk about his compassion, how he spent one Saturday each month working for free at a clinic for poor people. But he wouldn’t want me bragging about him that way.
“Well, my, my,” Carol said.
Bruce leaned forward, elbows on his knees, so he could speak directly to Robert. “Our son has a cut on the side of his ankle that won’t heal,” he said. “Our pediatrician’s tried a few things, but nothing seems to make a difference.”
We spent the rest of our sunset cruise with Robert offering free medical advice, his handsome face tan and sincere, while Bruce and Carol hung on his every word. I nearly burst with pride that I could now call him my husband.
* * *
After the cruise, Robert and I had dinner on the poolside patio near our bungalow. We sat close together on one side of the table sharing an enormous pupu platter.
“I’d really like to try it,” I said. “Skin diving.” I nibbled a shrimp from the bamboo skewer in my hand.
Robert shuddered. “Seriously?”
“It’d be so beautiful.”
“Not worth the risk of drowning or rupturing a lung.”
I laughed and held a sliver of pineapple to his lips. “You’re being overly dramatic,” I said, as he took the pineapple from me and chewed it slowly.
He leaned over to kiss me, then wound a lock of my hair around his finger. “Every once in a while, I worry I’m too old for you,” he said.
“Oh, that’s silly.” The nine years between us didn’t bother me at all. I didn’t see why it should bother him.
He let my hair spring free and smiled at me. “If you really want to skin-dive, we can skin-dive, sweetheart,” he said. “I don’t ever want to hold you back from something you really want to do.”
“Like my job,” I said, and instantly regretted it. I would start work the Monday after our return from Hawaii, and Robert wasn’t happy about it.
He raised his hand to stop anything else I might say. “We’ve settled it about your job,” he said. “You can try it for a while. I told you that, so you don’t need to bring it up over and over again.”
“I’ll make our meals on Sundays and we can heat them up in the oven each night.” We’d have a maid, of course, but cooking wasn’t supposed to be one of her tasks. “I’ll be sure to get home in time to do that.” All his Raleigh friends had wives waiting for them at home in the evening, showered and coiffed, with dinner on the table.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the meals.” He picked up something small and fried from his plate and studied it as if trying to figure out what it was. “You know what bothers me,” he said. “If you really want to work, I’d rather you found something … I don’t know. This is just the wrong job for my wife.” He set down the food, whatever it was. “It would be one thing if you were a teacher or a librarian like your mother. You’d still be helping people, if that’s what matters to you.”
I swallowed another bite of shrimp. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” I said.
“You won’t have to work with any colored people, will you?” he asked. “They have colored social workers for that, right?”
We had one lie between us already: the pills, buried deep beneath my lingerie in the bungalow’s bedroom dresser. I’d gotten them from Gloria’s doctor, who promised me I’d be protected from pregnancy by my wedding night.
“I’ll have some Negro clients, yes,” I said.
“That’s just … not right.”
“Oh why not, for heaven’s sake? They need help, too.”
“They should have their own social worker.”
“I don’t have a problem with it.”
“That left-wing church you grew up in put ideas in your head,” he said. “I’m glad our kids won’t be growing up there.”
I bit my tongue, not wanting to argue, and we ate in silence for a while. Finally, Robert took a sip of his wine and let out a sigh. “What am I supposed to tell my friends?” he asked, setting his glass down.
“About me working?” I asked, confused.
“None of their wives work. They’ll think I’m not making enough money.”
“Tell them I’m obstinate and you love me so you’re letting me do this.” I tried to sound lighthearted and leaned over to kiss his cheek.
“I’ll tell them you’re involved in charitable work. That’s really what it is, except you’ll get paid.” He laughed. “Not that a hundred and eighty-five dollars a month should really count as a salary.”
That stung. “It’s a lot to me,” I said.
He caught my hand on the table. “Sorry,” he said. “Really. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that you worry me sometimes.”
“I’m sure they won’t send me anyplace dangerous.”
“I’m not talking about the job.” He lowered my hand to his lap and held it there in both of his. “Look, darling,” he said. “I love you just the way you are, you know that, right? Stubborn and full of spunk. Right?”
“I’m not stubborn.”
He laughed. “Yes you are. You just admitted you’re obstinate. That’s all right. I love you, but you’re my wife now and you need to temper it outside the four walls of our house.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want people to like you, Jane. That’s all. It’s important for my career that we fit in.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“I want you to be yourself, but just … tame it down a little. Don’t talk politics like you did on the catamaran today. Definitely don’t talk about supporting Kennedy, for heaven’s sake. Especially not at the club.”
“But I do.”
“Oh come on, Jane. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, I do. He cares about the little people.”
“At whose expense?” he snapped, letting go of my hand and sitting back in the chair. “This is what I mean about you being stubborn. You say things like this just to shake me up.”
“I honestly think he’s the better choice.”
He sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I won’t talk about it in front of your friends, if it bothers you that much.” I already felt shy around his fellow physicians who looked at me as if I were a kid. We usually saw them at the country club, where no matter how many years passed with me as Robert’s wife, I’d never feel as though I belonged and I was certain everyone knew it. The wives had been welcoming at first, but when they realized I was not like them—not their age or their social class—they lost interest in me. Robert said it was me. I didn’t try to fit in, and maybe he was right. Now, with him telling me not to talk about my work—or politics—when I was with his friends, it was going to be even worse. “And if they ever ask me what I think about the election,” I said, “I’ll play coy. But at least I’d like to be able to be honest with you.” I looked away from him. The birth control pills taunted me. Who was I to talk about honesty? Robert thought we might start a baby on our honeymoon, and I didn’t say a word.
“Politics and religion,” Robert said as if I hadn’t spoken. “The two things we don’t talk about in public.”
“I told you. I’ll be careful around your friends,” I said, then added quietly, “But Robert … you knew who I was before you said ‘I do.’”
“You’re right.” He pulled me toward him and kissed the tip of my nose, and I wondered if I’d really known who he was.
6
Ivy
It was Lita Jordan who started the singing, as usual, and she started early, right as me and her began looping the first load of tobacco, tying the leaves t
o the long sticks that would hang in the barn to cure. “It’s been a long, long time comin’, but change is gonna come,” she sang. Her voice was clear as birdsong, ringing out in the steamy early morning sun. It echoed off the tin roof of the shelter we worked under. It spread out over the field in front of us, where her two oldest boys, Eli and Devil, worked with Henry Allen and the day laborers, and it traveled behind us down Deaf Mule Road. It made my heart ache, though I couldn’t of said why. It was a voice made for singing in church. When I was little and we’d walk past the AME church and I’d hear a lady singing, I’d say, “That’s Lita,” and Nonnie would say, “Every colored lady you hear ain’t Lita,” but I was sure it was her.
She could sing light songs, too, the ones that made us laugh. She could get us going with “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” and the one about the old woman who swallowed a fly, but it was like she knew that this song was one to start the day. The other colored girls, the ones Mr. Gardiner brung in each day to help with the barning, they came in with the harmony and I did my bit, too. We all knew the words. It made me laugh watching Nonnie sing a few lines and then catch herself. She probably thought the song was some of that race music she hated, but sometimes you just had to give in to the feeling and sing along.
Nonnie couldn’t stand on her feet for long these days, so she worked a while at the bench, then went home to rest for a bit, off and on through the day. Baby William was nothing but trouble and he ran around our feet with Lita’s youngest, three-year-old Rodney, both of them getting in the way. Rodney was a good boy, but he loved Baby William like some kids love candy and together they was up to no good. We had to watch them every second.
I was already sweating in my oilcloth apron, but I didn’t dare take it off till the dew was dry on the tobacco or I’d get soaked and break out in a green tobacco rash, like I did last summer. We all wore aprons, especially in the morning. Only Lita’s boy Avery, who emptied the sled at the barn and carried the full sticks to the racks, refused to wear something. He was fifteen, like me, but he looked older. All three of the oldest Jordan boys looked like men already. Avery was plenty big and strong enough to work in the field with his brothers, but his eyes was so bad, that even with them thick glasses he wore, he wouldn’t know which leaves was ready for priming and which needed a few more days in the sun. He hated working at the bench, except for being near Mary Ella, who was one of the handers. Sometimes he’d even help her, standing next to her as they pulled three or four leaves at a time from the bench and handed them over to me or Lita. I thought he liked how quiet Mary Ella was—how she didn’t sing with the others or gossip. It was like she was peaceful and he needed some of that peace, since he was always getting picked on by his brothers and the kids at the colored school. Sometimes I’d turn and see him and Mary Ella talking quiet to each other, and I’d remind myself that my sister, for all her strangeness, could be a real nice girl. Anyway, Mary Ella’s mind wasn’t on the song. It was out there in the field, I was sure of it. All us gals, we was watching the field. Watching our men—Henry Allen, Eli, Devil, and the day laborers—as they walked through the rows of tall tobacco, disappearing as they bent over to snap the leaves from the stalks and pile them in the sled.
Some days the gossip came even before the singing. Other times, we’d complain about the heat or maybe worry out loud about how the machines was taking over on some of the farms. It was mostly Lita worried about that, since her boys worked the field and machines could work it much quicker. No way a machine could do what we girls was doing, though, looping the tobacco to the long sticks.
The colored day laborers liked working for Mr. Gardiner. He paid them the same as white folks and he sometimes brung all of us Desiree’s pimiento cheese sandwiches for a snack in the middle of every morning. At dinnertime, we’d go home, scrub off the tar, and eat like there was no tomorrow. The Jordans went home, too. They lived in a house just like ours, but clear at the other end of the tobacco field. Their house was right out in the open. This time of year, I thought we was the lucky ones, with all the shade around us. In the winter, though, that sun warmed their place right up while we near froze to death. I liked being in their house because of the cooking smells. Didn’t matter if I just ate dinner myself, I walked in that house and my mouth started watering. You could tell there was a mama living there. You could tell someone was taking care of everybody. My house never smelled like the Jordans’, even if we was cooking something good.
The rest of the colored help ate dinner at tables outside the Gardiners’ house. Every once in a while, Mr. Gardiner’d ask me and Nonnie and Mary Ella to eat inside with him and Henry Allen. Me and Henry Allen always acted like we hardly knew each other when we ate together. We was careful not to look straight at each other’s eyes, afraid we’d start laughing. It was the same when I hitched a ride to church with them on Sunday morning. Nonnie and Mary Ella was too shamed to go to church ever since Baby William came along, but the Gardiners took me with them, and me and Henry Allen sat in the backseat of their old Ford as far apart as we could get, acting like we didn’t know each other’s name. I liked that nobody knew I understood that boy inside and out. Mr. Gardiner wouldn’t take kindly to that news. I was a tenant on his land. Nothing more than that.
“Pay attention to your work, now,” Lita said to me, quiet so Nonnie wouldn’t hear and start yelling at me. I’d slowed down on my looping because I was too busy watching Mary Ella, making sure her eyes didn’t light on any particular boy—or man—out in the field and give her ideas.
Then Lita started singing “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” and we joined in. Nonnie liked this one and she sung it out as loud as she could, though she didn’t have much of a singing voice left. I could remember when I was little, I loved listening to her. She’d sing her hymns around the house. That was before everything went wrong and she was happy and didn’t have the sugar and the rheumatism and Mama and Daddy was still with us and harvesttime was me and Mary Ella running around with Henry Allen and the Jordan kids, throwing the hornworms at each other and feeling important as we made our few pennies picking up any leaves that had dropped. All of us was playmates and workmates. White and colored, didn’t make no difference. But one day when I was about ten, we was at the Gardiners’ store when Eli brung in a package for Mrs. Gardiner. I asked him, “You want to fish in the crick later?” in front of other shoppers and Nonnie grabbed my arm and pinched it so hard I had a bruise for a month.
“Don’t you talk to that boy,” she snapped in my ear, like me and Mary Ella didn’t talk to him every single day. Eli understood. Didn’t even look at us. Pretended he didn’t hear nothin’. He’d already learned what we was only learning: colored and white didn’t mix in public. Especially not colored boys and white girls. We got the message that day. We could be friends at home, but out in the world, we didn’t know each other.
I watched Lita while she worked. She looked out at the field the same way we all did, and I wondered if one of the men out there was someone she knew well. Real well. Maybe Rodney’s daddy? People said every one of her children had a different daddy. “They can’t help themselves,” Nonnie told us. “They’re still like animals in the jungle.” But Lita didn’t make me think of no animal. I was jealous of all them boys having a mama they could count on.
* * *
After dinner it was so hot that Baby William was as cranky as the mules. He sat crying in the dirt or he wobbled around, hitting us on our arms to get us to pay him some attention. By then, every one of us was pretty wrung out and thirsty, and I couldn’t wait for Mr. Gardiner to bring out the drinks. Baby William headed for the water bucket next to the barn. He reached for the green gourd ladle leaning up against it and Nonnie ran after him quicker than I thought she could move and swatted his hand. “That’s the colored gourd!” she said, handing him the yellow gourd we used. He started hollering and no one could hear themselves sing, so we all went quiet for a while and Nonnie said, “That’s enough. I’m taking him home,” an
d she set off down the dusty road with him yanking on her arm and kicking his feet at the air.
After a while, Mr. Gardiner came around the side of the barn and up to me. “I ain’t got enough Nabs for everybody,” he said. “You go on over to the store and get a box full.”
He hardly ever asked one of us to go to the store for him because he couldn’t spare us, so I was surprised. I thought he was staring at me right hard, and I looked down at my hands, pretending to peel the tar off them. When he looked at me like that, I was afraid he knew about me and Henry Allen.
“Why’re you going red in the face, girl?” he asked me now. “You ain’t gonna have no heatstroke on me, are you?”
“No, sir,” I said, “I’m fine. I’ll be back right quick.”
The bike was tossed in the dirt a ways from the barn and I climbed on and took off for the store. I wasn’t sure what Mr. Gardiner’d do if he knew about me and his one and only son. Henry Allen said his parents told him, “No girlfriends till you’re done with school,” but what boy pays attention to that kind of thing?
I rode the bike down Deaf Mule Road to where the store stood on the corner of Deaf Mule and Gardiner Store Lane. The store wasn’t much, just an old wooden place with GARDINER’S CORNER STORE painted on a board, the “Gar” near worn off the wood. Inside, the fan was going strong in the window and there was a colored woman and a white boy in there, most likely doing the same thing I was: getting afternoon snacks for the farmworkers. From behind the counter, Mrs. Gardiner waved to me. “Hey there, Ivy,” she said. “Ain’t you working at the barn?”
“Mr. Gardiner asked me to get some Nabs,” I said.
“He probably wants a whole box, don’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s what he said.”
“I’ll get that for you. You pick yourself out a drink. Too hot to ride out here today.”