Momma had taken charge and she was formidable. The house was the cleanest it had ever been in my life. Momma had on a cornflower blue linen dress and jacket, one she had chosen deliberately because it matched her eyes. Her hair was all teased up and she smelled like perfume. She looked really pretty.
I just hoped it would all go all right because if it didn’t she might die from embarrassment at having tried to snag him when she hadn’t even laid eyes on him yet. I didn’t think the fact that he was Jewish and divorced meant anything to her at all. She had somehow overlooked that.
Well, Simon’s father didn’t go home to Michigan until Tuesday—that is, the Tuesday of the second week after Easter. He promised to write to old MC every day. Seems the doctor caught a bad case of Magnolia fever. I even saw them kissing on the porch.
Things got dull mighty quick. Simon was studying all the time, Maggie was working all the time and the rest of us had gone back to our old routines, except me. I’d been nursing a bad throat all week and had stayed home from school.
There was no question that Momma was mooning over Dr. Lips. She was walking around the house humming all the time and just waiting for Timmy or Henry to bring home the mail. When there was a love letter from Stan, she ran to her room with it and closed the door. I guess I couldn’t blame her, it was just that she seemed a little desperate to me. Okay, that was not nice to say, but it was the truth.
When I finally felt well enough, I decided to catch up on my schoolwork. Being out of class for this long had given me terrible anxiety over all the assignments I had to do. I was looking for a pen to write a book report and every pen in the house either leaked globs of ink or was dry. I knew Momma had one in her stationery box and thought she wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it, as long as I put it back.
The twins were napping, Livvie was ironing and the boys were I didn’t know where. Momma was gone off someplace. I went into her room and opened her closet. I started digging around on her shelf above her dress rack, where she had all this stuff stacked up, and the whole blessed mountain came down on my head.
I started gathering everything up, her letters from Stanley and other thank-you notes she had received from the Easter dinner, and a long envelope caught my eye. For a minute it didn’t register, but it was from St. Anne’s school for girls. It was addressed to Momma. Okay, I shouldn’t have opened it but my fate was right here in my hands and the next thing I knew I was reading it. Dear Mrs. Hamilton, It is a great pleasure to advise you that your daughter, Susan Asalit Hamilton, has been accepted for the fall term with a full scholarship and all that entails.
“Oh, my God!” I said. “I won the scholarship! I can’t believe it!”
A flood of warmth came over me and in the next breath I looked at the date of the letter. It was a week old. Why hadn’t she told me? Why hadn’t Father O’Brien called me? Then my heart sank. She didn’t want me to go. I knew it. Now what? I knew I had to confront her. I couldn’t go without her permission.
I thought for a minute, trying to calm myself down enough to think my way through this while my brain was going a million miles an hour. First of all, did I really want to fight this battle? Yes, I did. I had to go. If I stayed here I’d never get to college. The only road to Paris went through Columbia. I had decided weeks ago that even if this school was overflowing with snobs I didn’t care. I’d ignore them, get my diploma and get out. Four years was nothing. After what I’d endured in the last fourteen years, a bunch of bitchy schoolgirls looked like Cream of Wheat.
Okay, I said to myself, when she gets home, just ask her. Be calm and just ask her.
I was in the kitchen with Livvie setting the table for supper. I could hear Aunt Carol calling good-bye to her and Momma coming up the back stairs.
“Lawd, I’m so tired, I’ve got to go put my feet up!” She saw me and kissed me on the top of my head. “Hey, honey, how’re you feeling? Throat still sore?”
“No, ma’am, I gargled with warm salt water all day.” I was furious and she didn’t even notice.
“That’s a good girl. Hey, Livvie! What’s for supper? Anybody call? Mail here?”
“Meat loaf and mashed potato and the mail on the hall table. Ain’t nobody call.”
“Nobody called, Momma.”
“All right then, wake me in thirty minutes, will you? I just want to close my eyes for a few minutes.”
“Sure,” I said.
Livvie just went about her work, knowing I was stewing over something. She was waiting for me to tell her. Chop, chop, chop. The onions and bell pepper hit the bacon grease with a sizzle.
“Best to cook ’em a little before they go in the mix,” she said.
“You need some saltines?”
“Yeah, crush up ’bout fifteen for me, ’eah?”
“Sure.”
She put her knife down on the counter and turned to me. “All right, now. What’s on that mind of yours? You gone tell me what’s cooking or do I have to drag it out of you?”
“Livvie, you won’t believe what happened.” And I told her the story.
“Listen ’eah, Miss Susan,” she said, “don’t be gone on raising the devil about she not showing you this. Be real sweet. You gots to know your momma gone worry ’bout letting you go, ’eah? Take her some of this tea I just make, with a cookie, and then you tell her. Then we see what.”
“God, you are so smart, Livvie! You’re right.”
She handed me a glass of tea and two Oreos in a paper napkin. My mother had been resting for only a few minutes, so maybe she wouldn’t be asleep yet. I knocked on her door.
“Come in,” she said. She wasn’t in her bed, but in the closet.
“Hi, Momma, I brought you some tea and a couple of cookies.”
“Susan, have you been in my closet?”
“Yes, ma’am. I needed to borrow a pen for my homework…”
The look on her face was terrifying to me. I’d never seen her angry like this. I’d seen her upset and crying and depressed and drunk, but never angry. She stood outside the closet door and I was frozen to the floor by her bed.
“How many times do I have to tell you children not to go into my personal things?”
“Momma, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry, I just wanted a pen…”
“And I suppose you found the letter from St. Anne’s?”
“Yes’m.”
“And I guess you think you’ll just be picking up and leaving me just like that?”
“I don’t know, Momma, but…”
“But what? Do you realize how impossible it would be for me to get along without you?”
“That’s not my problem,” I whispered.
“What did you say?”
That’s when I lost control of myself. I knew this would happen, I just knew it. Everybody else could say that they’d step in to help me, or that surely she wouldn’t hold me back, but here was the truth. I was on my own and, even if I lost, a few things needed to be said around here.
“I said that it’s not my problem, that’s what!”
“How dare you!”
“Because it’s the truth! Instead of you being proud of me and getting excited for me, you hid this from me! How could you do that?”
“I wanted to think about it!”
“Look, Momma, it’s not my job to raise your babies! It’s not my fault you have so damn many kids! I’m going away to school this fall and you can’t stop me!”
She got so frightened and she was so angry that she moved across the room before I could think of what was coming. She slapped me across the face with all her might. I stood there and said not one word more.
I ran from her room, out the front door, slamming it almost off the hinges. I went over the sand dunes to the beach. I needed to walk for a while, calm down and think things through.
It was low tide and there were football fields upon football fields of empty beach before me. It was warm enough to kick off my loafers and walk the water’s edge. Tiny shells collapsed benea
th my feet, breaking apart into millions of pieces. It felt good to break something.
An old palmetto log was up on the high ground in the white sand, near the dunes. I sat down on it and ran my fingers through my hair. The white sand was as fine as the kind in an hourglass. I let it sift through my fingers. Grains of sand, hours of my life, chances not taken, opportunities lost, lives finished, dreams never coming to life. Would Momma eventually come to her senses? Did she think she owned me?
My face stung where she had slapped me. I was so mad I didn’t care if I ever saw her again. My head ached and my throat was raw. I should’ve taken a sweatshirt or a jacket, but I had had to escape and didn’t think of that.
Pelicans and seagulls swooped all around, some of them walking near the water. Marsh hens dug their sharp beaks into the soft mud. The water was alive with dance and spirit, little waves swelling up, rolling in, layer on layer of them, stacked like steps, dissolving as the tide crept by inches toward me. The east wind was chilling.
I was so lost in thought, my head down in my hands, I never heard him or saw him coming, but I looked up and saw Simon standing before me.
“Hey, Suz, what’s up?”
“Don’t call me Suz.”
“Okay, whatcha doing?”
“Thinking about life.”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“It sucks.”
“Yeah. Sometimes it does.” His hair was blowing in the wind and while his humor was present in his teasing, the look on his face wasn’t funny. He was serious. And he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I realized that his being here was no coincidence. He sat down next to me.
“So, you know?” I asked.
“Yeah, Livvie told me. I figured I’d find you on the beach.”
“How come?”
“’Cause that’s where Geechee girls go when they need to think. Sailors put their boat out, mountaineers climb, jocks throw a ball around, but Geechee girls, they have to go on down to the beach and stick their feet in the sand.”
“How’d you get so smart?”
“Yankee schooling and just paying attention to what goes on around me. I thought you were sick.”
“I’m better, almost.”
“Good. Want to hear a story?”
“Sure.”
“When I was about, oh, I don’t know, fifteen or so, I came home and found my mother in the sack with another man just getting it on.”
“What?”
“Yeah, and she made me swear not to tell my dad. I hated her for that, but I knew that if my father found out it would blow us apart. She bought me a car my next birthday. Soon after, I came home and found her in bed with somebody else. She apologized and all to me and tried to explain that she was just bored to tears with Dad. I didn’t know that being bored made it okay to screw somebody else.”
“So what did you do?”
“I told my dad.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Hold on, let me finish. My mother called me a traitor, packed her bags and left.”
“Good Lord, Simon. You weren’t the traitor, she was!”
“Exactly.” He looked at me, his brown eyes searching my blue ones. His face was so close to mine I thought I’d faint. I knew what he was telling me. I wasn’t the only one in the world who’d ever been used by their parents.
“God, how could your mother do that to you?”
“Just because somebody’s grown up doesn’t mean that they can’t be wrong.”
“Boy, is that ever the truth!”
“Yeah.” His breath smelled good. I looked at the outline of his lips. His top lip was almost a straight line, but his bottom lip was fuller and not as dark as the top one, or maybe it was shadow.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
I was thinking about reaching out and tracing the lines of his lips with my fingers, but I’d eat chopped glass before I’d admit it. So I lied.
“Your dad. Do you think your dad is boring?”
“Probably. My father is one hell of a surgeon, but he always feels a little stiff to me.”
“Yeah, me too. My mother’s crazy about him.”
“Yeah, he’s nuts about her too.”
“My mother’s really not a bad person, I guess. If I leave it is gonna make it harder for her. She slapped the hell out of me. Did Livvie tell you that?”
“She probably feels terrible about it.”
“I know I do. It hurts like the devil.” My voice cracked because my throat was so raw and then I coughed.
“I think she’ll come to her senses. Here, you want my sweater? It’s getting kind of chilly.”
“Sure, thanks.”
He pulled his navy crewneck over his head and handed it to me inside out. He had on this light blue shirt underneath. I stood up to pull it over my head. I was having a terrible time getting the thing on gracefully. The arms were too long and the neck opening wrecked my ponytail. I turned into the wind to gather up my hair and he watched me.
“What the hell are you looking at?” I said.
“You, you little witch. How is it that you’re only fourteen?”
“Can’t help it. How is it you’re so damn ancient?”
“I’m not that old. I’m also not your brother, not yet anyway.”
I started getting nervous now. Was he gonna try something? Holy smokes!
“What do you mean not yet?”
“Listen, you don’t know old Stanley. He set his cap on your momma the minute he laid eyes on her. Actually, come to think of it, they’re perfect for each other. He needs to be needed after what my mom did to him and, boy, does she have needs! I mean, he just wants to have a family. He probably did spend too much time at the hospital, but his whole life is dedicated to helping people. Amazing, huh?”
“Well, practically Momma’s whole life has been devoted to producing a population. It might be good for Timmy and Henry to have a man around here. With any luck, they won’t have me come September.”
“Do you really want to go to Columbia?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll get Stanley to call your momma. Don’t worry about it anymore. I’ll get him to call her tonight.”
“Thanks. You’re great, Simon, you know that?”
“Thanks, Suz.”
“Please! Don’t call me that,” I whined.
He was smiling now. I felt this funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew he wanted to kiss me and I wished he’d just do it and get it over with so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
“Simon?”
“Yeah?” he said. “You have great hair, do you know that?”
“My hair? Wait a minute, I was gonna ask you something….”
He stood up. “The back of my sweater is all bunched up on you, lemme fix it.”
“I forgot what I was gonna say….”
“It doesn’t matter….” He put his arm around me to pull down the sweater, and his hand rested on my back, down by my waist. He looked in my eyes, probably realizing from the sheer terror on my face that nobody had ever kissed me before. I just looked at him, not sure of what to do, feeling pretty stupid with my arms hanging there like two loaves of Italian bread.
Finally, he decided to be the big winner of my virgin lips. He put his other hand on my face and over my ear and then around through my hair and sort of pulled me up to him. I thought, Oh, God, this is it! When his lips touched mine I just didn’t know what to do. It was a little tiny kiss, I think, if you go by what’s in the movies, and definitely not a sin, except that he was the wrong religion and a lot older than me. It felt wonderful.
Then he just put his arms around me and hugged me and we stood there on the empty beach, feeling the wind and watching the sky get dim. The tide washed around our feet. It was time to go home. I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to stay here with him forever.
“Simon?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
/>
“She broke up with me. Got a letter yesterday.”
“Gee. That’s too bad. Do you think we could do that again?”
“Yes. A lot.”
The next kiss wasn’t so innocent. He seemed a little more excited and I know I was. Given the choice of being on a deserted beach and kissing the man of my dreams or going home, changing diapers and dealing with my lunatic mother, there was no choice to make. I had every intention of standing right there and kissing that man till I wore out his lips. Kissing him felt so good, I couldn’t believe it.
“God, Simon,” I said, in between what began to be of concern to my virtue.
“I could drink you,” he whispered into my neck.
MEN HAD POWER, girls didn’t. I could have dug a hole, jumped in and buried myself alive and still not have accomplished what Stanley and Simon did in two phone calls. My momma was so stupid over Stanley Rifkin she would’ve jumped off the Cooper River Bridge if he’d asked her to. In this case, she agreed to let me go to St. Anne’s and, in fact, became happy about it.
By May, she was bragging about my scholarship all over the Island like it was her idea in the first place. Like she had won it. I didn’t care. People were like that.
I had another fish to fry. Simon. Simon and I would meet down the beach with some beer and potato chips and make out like two fools. We had gotten to the point of lying down together in the sand and I was about out of my mind from it.
One day, we were down by the end of the Island where no one ever goes. I walked down there on the beach and Simon took his car. We thought we were so smart. I was waiting for him.
“Hi!” I called.
“Hi!” he called back.
We weren’t exactly the most poetic lovers in the world, but what we lacked in iambic pentameter we made up for in enthusiasm. I helped him unload his trunk. Simon had brought a six-pack of Budweiser and some Fritos. He pulled a blanket out of his car. Holding hands, we crossed the dunes and then spread his blanket to get a perfect view of the harbor. The tide was coming in.
“Want a beer?” He opened one and handed it to me before I could answer.
As usual, we drank about half of the can, sitting on the blanket, and then he turned to me.
The next thing I knew, we were kissing. We had graduated to him putting his hand under my shirt. I wondered if this would be the day that he felt my breasts. I was having a hard time deciding if I would let him, because it was supposed to be a sin, or I thought it was. The hotter the kissing got the more difficult it became to remember what I was allowed to do within the boundaries of impure acts.