Beyond Molasses Creek (11 page)

“What does that mean?”

“It means we cain't see each other.” The words hung there in the air between us and then like mist they vanished, taking my breath along with them.

“But why, Vesey? I mean, I don't want you to get in trouble anymore, I don't.”

“You cain't know what I go through. You cain't know. I walk to the store and white folk yell at me, call me nigga. I try to go to school, mind my own business, and white kids knock down my books. I see signs that won't let me drink the water, won't let me come into a white restaurant. I'm colored, Ally, and I ain't nothing to do about it. I cain't do nothing. You cain't do nothing.”

If I was honest right then, if I was really honest, I knew what he was saying was true because I'd seen it. Hadn't I? Different people, different circumstances, but I'd seen it—people being treated differently, wrongly, because of the color of their skin. And what had I done? Had I spoken up? Had I? The truth pressed my shoulders down.

“I just . . . I wanted to say I'm sorry, that's all,” I told him. “And I hope . . . I hope we can still be friends. I've missed you, you know. I miss going out in the boat and just being with somebody I don't have to impress. We could just sit there and not say anything at all, not
have
to say anything, and nowadays I have to be all proper and perfect and ladylike, and, well, I just miss the way we used to be.”

“We used to be kids,” said Vesey.

I reached back behind the marsh grass and pulled out a shiny black radio. I turned the knob and a small sound pierced the night air. Then I turned it just a hair louder. It was the Beatles. Vesey stared at the radio.

“Where'd you get that?” he asked, suspicious.

“I didn't steal it, if that's what you're implying. I got it for my thirteenth birthday. It was yesterday, you know?”

“Yeah. I know. That's a nice radio.”

“So do you want to dance or what?” I asked him. It was the best thing I'd said in a long time. It made me feel right with the world.

There was nothing but stone and concern in Vesey's face at first, but when Stevie Wonder's “Fingertips” came on, he started bobbing his head a little. Then a smile broke out. A full-out grin. Then something like courage rolled onto his broad shoulders, and he put his hand out to me.

I remember the way his warm hand felt in mine. Strong and capable. Music drifted between us, around us, and up into the cool night air. Lights glittered on the black water, and I stole furtive glances at the sculpture of his cheeks as the marsh grass swirled around us.

Hands down, that moonlight dance with Vesey when we were thirteen years old was the best dance I've had in sixty years.

The worst dance was not long after that, when Margaret insisted I make Vesey appear. She said she was losing patience with me, and if I didn't produce him soon, she'd have no choice but to tell her parents or our friends at school. So I did produce him. I lured him back to the spot on the riverbank, brought my radio, and when we started shagging, Margaret stepped out from behind a tree.

“Well, well, well,” she said. “I don't believe you've introduced me to your friend.”

She held her hand out to a rock-still Vesey. He looked at me, eyes wide. “This is my friend Margaret,” I told him. He seemed too stunned and afraid to shake her hand, and I was Judas.

I'd betrayed our friendship. I'd betrayed his trust.

NINETEEN
Supper with Old Friends

Mount Pleasant
Ally

“I'
VE ALWAYS FELT DRAWN TO VESEY,” SAYS
M
ARGARET
, watching him wave from the boat. “Drawn to his . . . his, what is that, Ally? Animal magnetism?”

“Forbidden fruit,” I say.

“No,” says Margaret. “Yes? No. Well, maybe so.” Vesey ties his rope and steps up on firmer ground. “Vesey Washington, would you look at you? Looking good, old friend! Looking fine.”

“Miss Margaret.” Vesey tips his hat. “Been a long time, ain't it? Decades.”

“Don't you dare count how many, neither.”

“Miss Ally?” He turns to me. “Right nice to have me over. Ain't every day a man gets an invitation for supper . . . with old friends.”

“Vesey, you are a sight for sore eyes! I just can't get over . . . I declare, Ally, he hasn't aged a wink! And for us, we have to work so hard to look this good.”

Vesey is uncomfortable with this talk. Always has been a little uneasy with Margaret's forceful nature. I feel protective of him and take him by the arm. “You are my guests for the evening, so I want you to relax, have some ginger ale or sweet tea, something cool to drink. We've got pot roast, you know. I hope you brought your appetite.”

“And homemade gravy?” asks Vesey.

“Even homemade macaroni and cheese.”

“Lawd, I died and gone to heaven.” A look flashes between us, and I plead with my eyes, then mouth the words, “I'm sorry. About the whole heaven thing.”

“Not at all, Miss Ally. Not at all. And who is this?” Vesey puts out his hand for Graison, who is standing quietly in Margaret's shadow, taking us all in.

“This is my granddaughter, Graison. Say hello, Graison.”

“Hello, Graison,” she says.

“Graison is staying with me . . . for a while.”

“That's nice,” says Vesey.

“I'm preggers,” says Graison, taking his hand and shaking it firmly. My eyebrows rise.

“Graison!” says Margaret.

“Well, it's true. They'll know about it soon enough. Not like you can hide it forever. Mr. Washington, I'm staying here with my grandmother until the baby is born. Then I'll be headed back home to Memphis. Back to school and all, I guess.”

None of us knows what to say. The child is what, sixteen? A child having a child. Something aches inside of me and I brush it off. “Alrighty then, how about we go on in and eat some supper? I'd like to take a little boat ride before the sun goes down. If you feel up to it, Graison.”

“Oh, I'll be fine.”

“That okay with you, Vesey? Dinner and a boat ride?”

He nods. “Don't have to ask me twice. Here, let me lead the way.”

“As you can see, I have a long ways to go,” I say, pointing to the kitchen behind me. We never did have a proper dining room, just a screened-in patio out the back of the house with a concrete floor and aged wood walls. The table is new to the patio, teak, with fruits and little details carved into the legs. “Got this table in Hawaii nearly twenty years ago,” I say, patting the wood. “It's turned a little, sitting in the warehouse.”

“I think it's lovely out here,” says Margaret, stretching back in her chair and crossing her legs. “Love how you can sit here and feel the breeze and watch the water dance.” She looks over at Vesey. “You still live across the river there?”

“Sure do.”

“How quaint. To still be this close, after all these years.”

“Vesey was kind enough to look after Daddy over the past—”

My throat catches and I grab my glass of tea. After a sip I say, “Would anyone like some more macaroni?”

“Don't mind if I do,” says Vesey, holding out his plate. I offer some to Graison.

“Not for me,” she says. “I'm stuffed.” Margaret looks at her granddaughter and at this moment I can see the resemblance, somewhere in the eyes and the forehead. Margaret seems concerned she's not getting enough food for two.

“Graison, have you thought about what you're going to do once the child is born?” I hear the words come out of my mouth with such ease and familiarity; I don't know what's come over me. Obviously I've ruffled Margaret. She grabs her glass and swigs her ginger ale.

“I'm going to adopt, I guess. We're working with a lady to find a good family.”

She says it so matter-of-fact, she might as well be selling a used car on craigslist. “I see. Well, you do have quite a life ahead of you, high school, college—”

“Boys,” says Margaret. “It's the boys that got her in this mess.”

“Mimi!”

“Well, it is.”

“Miss Ally?” Vesey interrupts. “Looks like we got another twenty minutes or so before the sun sets. How 'bout I help you clear the table? That was some good food. Ain't et that well in many a year.” He smiles big and jovial.

“That would be nice,” I say. “Margaret, Graison, use the little girl's room if you need to. You sure you're up for a boat ride? Mister Vesey, here, can show you the most amazing views and the best places for oyster harvesting. I promise you. You're in for a real treat.”

“How 'bout we bring that old radio,” says Margaret, “and go shagging in the moonlight like we used to . . . back in the day.”

The thought of it takes me back, fully there, and I can almost feel the damp ground beneath my feet, the way Vesey's hand felt in mine, the music fading into the night. My heart skips and I smile at Vesey. I can see it in his eyes. He remembers too.

TWENTY
You've Really Got a Hold on Me

Ally

1964
WAS A LONG, HOT, HUMID SUMMER
. H
OTTER THAN
the ones before. I would lie there in damp sheets, the window open, listening to sounds of night—the frogs and owls, the grasshoppers. Every now and then a noise would ripple up from the water as if a large fish had jumped for freedom.

It sounded like my heart stirring.

I was beginning to think about boys. All the time. I was fourteen years old and pretty much any boy made my heart race, the way their hands were strong and bigger than mine, the way they walked and how their shoulders were wide. Their muscles. My goodness, I was a mess of hormones and Mama didn't know what to do with me. Not having any siblings at home to play or fight with, I'd skulk off alone in my room or on the dock with my sketchbook and draw the male figure in my mind's eye. This worried Mama, and I'd hide the book just so she wouldn't have to get all bothered about it. I never did put a face on those pictures I drew, those strong chests and rippling backs and arms. I didn't put the face on it because it could only be one person: Vesey Washington.

That summer, a strange awkwardness had grown up between Vesey and me. Having Margaret privy to us, I finally understood the taboo of our relationship, harmless as it was in my own eyes. In the South, it didn't matter how things really were; it mattered what things
looked
like. The civil rights movement was well under way and businesses and restaurants had been so-called desegregated, but while the signs on the windows no longer read
Whites Only
or
No Coloreds Allowed
, reality was another matter altogether.

I knew Vesey's life was difficult. I knew it was all because of the color of his skin. Well, that and his mama. I could sense the unrest in whites and blacks alike as I'd walk down King Street or go into a diner. South Carolina had never been a state to simply abide by what the rest of the country was doing or what its federal government was telling it to do. It prided itself in being autonomous in some ways. The people of our town did things in a way they saw fit. Even though John F. Kennedy was dead, the civil rights acts had passed, and protesters were jailed in Birmingham, New York, Rock Hill, and elsewhere, Charleston was a little different story. There were things I saw—shoving, slurs, private conversations in beauty parlors—that never got reported on the evening news or in the paper. Folks didn't just wake up one day and decide their feelings had changed toward blacks, or toward whites, for that matter. There were years and years of deep-rooted resentment built up on both sides.

Being a white girl, I was on one side and Vesey on the other, and the river of justice flowed right there between us, evading us, current taking it on by.

It was still socially frowned upon for us to be seen together, but I would lie in bed and think about him, my hormones racing. I would imagine what it would be like to kiss his full lips. I couldn't help it. I'd never kissed a boy, though I'd been tempted to kiss good-looking Murphy Halsey at the eighth-grade dance. My girlfriends had dared me to, but I wasn't about to go there. Things weren't like they are today. A girl with loose lips brought true shame to her family, and I wasn't about to be someone who brought shame to my mother and father. They'd worked hard to raise me right. And except for the lying about being with Vesey every now and again, it was almost working. Almost.

“I think we should go to Woolworth's tomorrow,” I told him one evening as the moon was setting low.

“Why?” asked Vesey, his voice quiet beside me. I could feel the heat from his arm.

“I think we should go in there and sit at the lunch counter. Together.” I could picture Margaret's horror at my sitting side by side with Vesey in public.

“Must be crazy,” he murmured.

“I'm serious, Vesey.”

“No, you ain't, Ally. You talkin' like a fool.” His words were harsh and I wasn't used to it. Normally he was so mild-mannered.

“I'm not a fool! I'm not!”

“After everythin' happenin', what with protesters in the streets and the arrests over at the
News and Courier
—”

“Maybe you like being the one who always has people looking down on you. Maybe you don't want anyone to stand up for you. Maybe you want to suffer your whole life all by yourself and then die a victim, die—”

“Would you listen to yourself?” Vesey was holding on to my arms now, tight. I stopped talking, tears streaming, and looked up at him. There was something in his eyes, a glimmer from the moonlight. I'd never seen this look before, one of anger and confusion— one of true feelings for me, I thought.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles came on the radio singing “You've Really Got a Hold on Me,” and I began to feel the music inside. I began to sway. This song was playing just for us, I knew it. He did too. So I did it then. I stood up on my tiptoes and, with my eyes fully open, touched the edges of his lips with mine. I held them there like soft butterfly wings for a long second, then I pressed up on my toes farther. I pushed myself into him. He didn't back away. He just stood there, motionless, his hands still gripping my arms with the Miracles singing around us. The heat going through us was hotter than anything I'd ever felt before, and when I think back on it now, it makes me go weak in the knees. That kiss was so packed full of double meaning and passion and taboo that I could have swam right into Vesey that second and disappeared forever.