The Improper Life of Bezillia Grove (23 page)

Adelaide snuggled up next to me, and I felt her slip her hand inside mine. I patted her arm and smiled, reassuring her we were right where we needed to be. And when I looked up, Samuel was standing at the front of the church. He was dressed in a dark Marine Corps uniform. He was holding a pure white hat with a short, shiny black bill firmly in his hands. He looked so handsome, so strong and brave and yet so peaceful and calm. His jaw was clenched tight at first, as if he was trying to maintain a Marine’s perfect stance, but then I saw a glimpse, a hint really, of that beautiful smile starting to appear across his face. I whispered his name, but he couldn’t hear me. Mother looked at me and gently put her finger to her lips.

Samuel sat down in a large but simple wooden chair. The preacher stepped in front of him and took his position behind the pulpit. He outstretched his arms and then announced that we had all come here today to welcome Samuel Stephenson home. Every man and woman in the church cried out almost simultaneously, chanting “Amen” and lifting their hands to the Lord as if they were offering up a gift of some kind. The minister repeated himself again and again, and then he paused for a moment and lowered his head.

“It wasn’t the homecoming we had planned,” he said softly. “It wasn’t the homecoming his mama and daddy had been waiting for. It wasn’t the homecoming they had dreamed about.” His voice was growing louder and stronger and his arms were open and inviting.

“No. It is a thousand times better. Only God could imagine a homecoming like this!” And the church exploded with excitement—people praising God, thanking God—no one seemed afraid to express what was on his heart. “This special child of God is home at last, and his journey has just begun. He will not be defined by the evil he has seen. His heart will not be hardened. No. Not this child of God. He will be a better man because of it. He will be a better American because of it. He will be a better Christian because of it.”

Then the minister grabbed the pulpit with both hands, as if his own emotions might carry him away if he didn’t hold on tight. “These are not tears of sadness we are crying today. No. These are tears of joy, tears of happiness, tears of thanksgiving.

“And while we are grateful that Samuel is here with us, we must take a moment to pray for all the young men, men just like Samuel, who will not be coming home to their mothers and fathers, to their sisters and brothers. Have mercy, Lord. Have mercy.”

Again, voices called out, echoing the words of the pastor. And now both men and women were crying out loud. Little girls, teenage girls, girls who looked about my age, girls I imagined might have loved Samuel like I had were crying out loud. Nathaniel and his wife held on to each other, their backs heaving. Samuel would look down at his parents and smile, always careful to reassure them that he was really and truly here.

The minister lifted his arms one last time toward the ceiling, and the choir started to sing. Their bodies swayed back and forth with the rhythm of the music, and before long everyone in the church was following their lead, standing and clapping their hands. Even my mother sang along. Her face was so full of emotion. And for a moment, everyone’s voice blended together as if each of us was offering the others something we really didn’t know we had. And by the time the last note had been sung, we all were exhausted from the effort. The choir sang one final amen, and the minister opened his arms as if to embrace us all. He announced that it was time at last to move this wonderful celebration downstairs.

Samuel and his parents left the sanctuary together, the three of them holding hands with the rest of the Stephenson family and the minister following close behind. And whether everyone else was eager to fill his aching stomach or to personally welcome Samuel home, I’m not really sure. But every single body in that church stood and headed in one fluid motion toward the stairs, making it almost impossible for the Groves, feeling a bit hesitant and out of place, to exit our pew and join the throng. A few men shook Uncle Thad’s hand, and Mother smiled and spoke to every woman who stopped to welcome her to Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church. And when the sanctuary was finally empty, we took our places at the end of the line.

It was probably an hour before I could even see Samuel standing a few feet ahead of me. He spent so much time with everyone that for a while I thought it might be midnight before I got close enough to touch his hand. His smile was so big and his laugh was so wonderfully tender that, as I got closer, I only hoped he would have something left for me.

Mother spoke to Nathaniel’s wife first and then to Nathaniel. She hugged him tightly around the neck and whispered something in his ear. He smiled and gently patted her shoulder. Then she moved forward one step and was standing right in front of Samuel. Samuel’s smile faded just a bit, but his eyes were still warm and open. When Mother reached out to shake his hand, you could see his surprise. They exchanged a few words. They both smiled, and then Mother moved on.

I have no memory of what I said to Samuel’s mother or to Nathaniel. All I really remember is standing in front of this boy who seemed so familiar and so distant all at the same time. He was dressed more like a G.I. Joe doll than the boy I used to know, who wore old, faded blue jeans and a ball cap on his head, the same boy who thought my name sounded funny, the same boy who fell on top of me and loved me the night my father died. I wanted to talk to him like I used to when we sat by Uncle Thad’s swimming pool, dangling our feet in the water, sharing everything and nothing.

“Bezellia,” Samuel said, and I closed my eyes for a moment and just let the sound of his voice fill my head. “Hey, how’ve you been?” he continued, warmly but cautiously.

“Pretty good,” I said, and then I paused for a minute. “I sure did miss you,” I said faintly, so not even Nathaniel could hear.

Samuel just shook his head. “Wrote you a bunch of letters.”

“I know. I read them all … at least a hundred times.” Samuel looked confused, and his smile began to fade away.

“I never heard from you.”

“That’s not true. I did write, not long after you left. Maizelle even gave me your address. But when I didn’t hear from you, I thought …” My voice fell silent. Samuel didn’t understand what I was saying, and I didn’t know how to explain it to him. But I knew in that moment, sitting someplace on the other side of the world, Samuel Stephenson had already convinced himself that I didn’t love him.

He just shook his head again. “Heard a great song about you too. Glad you’ve been feeling all right.”

“It’s just a song. He just made all that up.”

“Doesn’t really matter,” he said and then seemed to be almost searching for the next person in line, someone else who would hug him and tell him how wonderful it was that he was home.

Nathaniel looked at us both as if he didn’t approve of our lingering conversation. And before I could think of anything more to say, he leaned between us and announced that he needed to borrow his son for a minute. He wanted him to give the blessing, and there were a lot of hungry people waiting to hear him speak. As the two of them walked away, I felt like that little girl standing on the porch at Grove Hill, knowing then as I did now that Nathaniel didn’t want us to exchange much more than a few nice words. Samuel looked at me as if to thank me for coming and then walked off with his father, maybe even feeling relieved that he had been whisked away. And while everyone bowed their heads and praised Jesus one more time, I snuck out the door and crawled into the backseat of my mother’s Cadillac.

This was certainly not the homecoming I had imagined. In my dreams, Samuel was going to hug me and kiss me and not care who was looking. He was going to forgive me for not writing. He was going to tell me that he had missed me, that he still loved me. But that was just a dream, I guess. I’m not sure how long I was there in the backseat of that car or how hard I cried, but I woke to the sound of my mother tapping on the window glass.

“Bezellia, we’ve been looking for you. Didn’t know where you’d gone off to. Did you get something to eat?” she asked as she opened the door and slid onto the front seat. “Looks like you’ve been crying. Why are you sad? We’re supposed to be celebrating. Nathaniel’s son has finally come home. I didn’t remember him having a son that age. Sure seems like such a nice young man.”

“I just got
overwrought
, I guess, isn’t that what Maizelle would call it? But do you think we could go home? I really want to go home.”

“Sure. I’ll go find your sister and Uncle Thad. I last saw them waiting in line for a piece of that chocolate cake. You want me to bring you a piece? It sure looked good,” she said, and then she stepped out of the car and disappeared back inside the church, fortunately not seeming to understand why I was hiding in the back of her car.

When we got back to Grove Hill, the sky had turned a dark, wet gray. I ran to my room and immediately fell on my knees. I couldn’t really see what I was doing, but through the tears I reached under the bed and grabbed an old shoe box. I threw the lid aside and reached for the bundle of papers, the letters Samuel had written, the only proof that he had in fact loved me. I left the empty box on the floor and headed back downstairs.

Mother was on her way to bed; she said the day had exhausted her. She sure hoped I felt better in the morning. Maybe I was coming down with something. “I wouldn’t know what to do if you got sick. Is Maizelle here?” she asked, already looking nervous at the thought of caring for a sick child. I reassured her that I was fine and that she should go on and get some rest. I could hear Adelaide on the phone in her room, telling Lucy all about the service and the whole pig roasting on a spit behind the church.

I flew down the back stairs, almost tripping on my own two feet, and then out the kitchen door, kicking my high heels off as I stepped off the concrete porch. I ran barefoot toward the creek. I couldn’t even feel the freezing earth beneath me. By the time I got there, a light snow was starting to fall again from the sky. I watched for a moment as the water moved over the rocks, and then I dropped the letters into the current. I could hear Samuel calling me a princess as the papers floated on top of the water and drifted out of my sight.

chapter sixteen

S
amuel was just on the other side of the river, but he felt a million miles away. We never saw each other. We never spoke. And Nathaniel no longer talked about his son, the Vietnam hero. I guess he was afraid that talking about Samuel could lead to something more dangerous than what he’d found in that jungle.

Maizelle said that Samuel was already back in school, even hoping to return to Morehouse in the fall. He thought it best to stick close to home for a while, though. He was a good boy, she said. He knew his parents needed some time with him before he up and left again. I just nodded like I knew I should, as if all of that made perfect sense to me. And then I went on pretending that everything else in my life was fine. And in some ways, I guess it was.

By early spring, Mother had begun to venture out into her garden. She still knitted and read her Bible most every day, but usually around four in the afternoon she would put on her wide-brimmed hat and spend some time among her flowers. Sometimes I think she just stood in the middle of her garden, not really sure what to do but enjoying the beauty of everything growing around her.

She even planted a few tomatoes, and she babied those vines until they started producing fruit ripe enough to pick. When she picked the first one, she seemed almost afraid to eat something that looked so perfect. But then Maizelle took it from her hand, sliced it, salted it, and put it back in front of Mother. When she ate it, she said it was the best thing she had ever put in her mouth.

Uncle Thad came over most evenings just as the sun started to drop toward the treetops. He helped Mother with the last of the weeding and the watering. Sometimes the two of them would linger in that garden until well after dark. A couple of times I even caught them running around catching lightning bugs between their hands. Maizelle thought they had both lost their minds. Maybe they had, but Mother seemed to find an awful lot of comfort in Uncle Thad’s presence. And Uncle Thad seemed to enjoy having someone to care for now that Cornelia spent most of her time in Boston, working as diligently on another graduate degree as on her relationship with a Harvard doctor whose family tree was rooted so deep that Cornelia herself said it almost reached the center of the earth.

Maizelle didn’t really leave Grove Hill much anymore. She said her nieces and nephews had all moved out of town by now, and there wasn’t much left for her on the other side of the river. She guessed she felt more at home here than anywhere else, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she missed the life she had all but given up to tend to a family that apparently had a hard time caring for itself.

She spent a lot of time on the front porch, stringing beans, mending clothes, or whatever else she considered important. And even though her hands were always busy, her body was now slow and deliberate. Sometimes she sat there for a couple of hours simply pulling the husks off a single bag of corn. And sometimes I’d find her sound asleep with an old cardboard fan from some funeral home resting in her lap. It made Mother very nervous when she found Maizelle sleeping like that. I think she was already growing afraid of living in this world without Maizelle by her side.

A couple of times I dreamed that Maizelle had passed. I saw myself sitting by her bed telling her stories about heaven that she had first told me when I was a little girl. I’d wake up crying and dripping in a cold sweat. Maizelle said when you dream about something three times, then it comes true. So some nights I tried to stay awake, desperately attempting to avoid a dream of any kind.

Maizelle had always promised me that Adelaide would grow out of her awkward ways, and now it seemed she had. She was getting ready to join Miss Clements and a small group of girls traveling to Rome to admire Italian art. Of course, when she asked Mother for permission to go, Mother simply looked at me for an answer. I told them both it was a wonderful, life-altering opportunity for Adelaide and she surely shouldn’t miss it.

And even though I wanted the best for my little sister, secretly, honestly, I was mad that she was going and I was not. I was mad that somehow, without my even knowing it, my mother had become my child. The only time I escaped Grove Hill much anymore was in my stories. I’d probably written a hundred of them by now, all of them stuffed in a shoe box and hidden under my bed. And that’s where I figured my dreams were going to stay, neatly tucked out of sight.

At least on paper, I had traveled the world and found true love on top of the Eiffel Tower and standing in the shadows of the Egyptian pyramids. I guess, in the end, Nathaniel’s mother had been right. In a story, you can be anybody you want to be, even if it’s just a girl who wants to be loved right. I made Adelaide promise to send me a postcard every day. I told her to memorize every detail. My next story would be set in a small village just outside of Rome. Of course, I never thought that my sister, the one who used to stand on the front steps with a grape-jelly biscuit in her hand, would be the one to take me there.

And just when life seemed to be feeling a little bit normal, my grandmother called the house. She had not telephoned since Mother was in the hospital, since before I had driven out there to pick up the memorabilia from my mother’s childhood room. She had told me then she was done worrying about her girl, and apparently she’d meant it. Now, she was only calling for a favor.

“You want to talk to your daughter, Nana? I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.”

“Don’t really have the time to chat right now, Bezellia. I called for a reason, not to sit here and talk up a blue streak. I need to get Nathaniel’s phone number from you. I’ve done torn the house apart looking for it, but figured Elizabeth would have it for sure.”

“Why do you want Nathaniel’s number?”

“I didn’t know I needed to explain my business to you, dear. But apparently that’s what it’s gonna take to get that number from you. I’m trying to get ahold of that boy of his before he heads this way.”

“Samuel?” Just hearing myself say his name left me feeling excited and sick, like a thousand butterflies were swarming in my stomach. My heart started to race, and the palms of my hands grew hot and sweaty.

“He’s only got one boy, don’t he? You got his number, Bezellia, or not? I really ain’t got all day to sit here on this damn telephone.”

“Why do you want to talk to Samuel?”

“Lord, child, if you must know he’s fixing that damn dock. Thing is about to float right out into the lake, and your grandfather ain’t strong enough to do it himself. But I need Samuel to stop on his way up here and get a couple of gallons of gasoline for the tractor. Your grandfather wants him to mow the yard. You got that number, Bezellia, or not?”

Mother had written it in pencil on the wall by the telephone not long after coming back from the hospital. Nathaniel had told her to call him night or day if she needed anything. Just knowing the number was there by the phone helped her sleep at night, she said. But I didn’t need to look at those old pencil markings. I knew it by heart.

I gave my grandmother the number and then rushed into the kitchen and told Mother and Maizelle I was meeting some old friends over at the shopping center. I told them I didn’t know when I’d be home. We might even stay for dinner and a movie. All I knew was that Samuel was leaving for Atlanta in a few weeks, and if I didn’t get to that lake, I might not ever see him again. I grabbed my mother’s keys from the nail where they were left hanging by the back door and ran to the garage without waiting for Mother or Maizelle to think of anything to say to stop me.

As I drove toward the lake, I realized somewhere deep inside that I had no idea what I was doing, but I couldn’t turn back, not now. Something kept propelling me forward. When I pulled up to Route 171, I looked for the old man in his blue coveralls keeping watch over his collection of Quaker State motor oil. But he wasn’t there. The building was empty, and the cans of motor oil were gone. I sat at the stop sign for a moment trying to make sense of his absence, wondering if I’d made a wrong turn. My window was down, and the air seemed particularly still and quiet. It was as if even the cows had disappeared. I finally turned left and headed toward the lake, still not really knowing what I was going to do when I got there.

Maybe I was feeling a little hungry or maybe I was stalling, still trying to come up with a plan, but just before turning onto the gravel road that led to my grandparents’ house, I pulled in front of the little corner store where Pop came early in the mornings to buy his minnows for the day’s fishing. It was an old wood-frame building that looked as though it might collapse if you sneezed real hard. Faded lettering above the front door read
WATKINS BAIT AND TACKLE
.

There were some high school boys standing in front of the concrete tank that held the fresh bait. They were drinking RC colas and talking about fishing and football. Every once in a while the biggest one, with sandy brown hair, would pick up the net hanging outside the tank and run it through the water. He’d lift the minnows into the air, and just when you imagined those poor little fish, flopping about in front of their captor were about to die, he would drop the net back into the water, giving them another chance to escape.

The boys stopped talking and stared real hard as I walked past them and opened the screen door before stepping inside to get a cold drink. The man behind the counter said I looked familiar and asked where I was headed. I reminded him that I was the Morgans’ granddaughter and was just here for a short visit. He said he’d heard my mama wasn’t doing well. Said he knew her when she was just a little girl and hated to hear that she had done gone and lost her mind. Spending time in the state hospital was no picnic, he knew that for sure, seeing how his own mama had been there a few years back.

“For some reason always thought your little sister was the one that was kind of special that way. Wasn’t she the one that carried that baby doll around with her all the time, remember that? What she’s up to these days anyway?”

I reassured him that my mother was doing much better and that Adelaide was actually vacationing in Italy with some friends from school. “Hmm,” he said, as if I was telling some kind of tall tale to disguise my family’s misfortune, “vacationing in Italy” being nothing more than a big-city, fancy way of lying about another
tragic event
.

I grabbed a bottle of Dr Pepper from the icebox in the back of the store and a bag of potato chips and took them to the counter to pay. I thanked the man for his concern and then stepped back outside, the bright sunlight blinding me for a moment. But even with my hand shielding my eyes, I could see the boys were still there. I could hear them whispering as if they were telling a joke meant only for them. And as I stepped toward the Cadillac, I heard one of them humming the tune of “Big City Girl.” I turned my head and shot them all a scathing stare. But the three of them just laughed and took another sip of their RC colas. The big one licked his lips.

“Stick your tongue back in your mouth. You wouldn’t even know what to do under that tree if you were ever lucky enough to get there,” I shouted at him. And then I jumped behind the steering wheel of my mother’s car and pushed the gas pedal to the floor, leaving the boys choking in a cloud of dust and me feeling more determined than ever to see Samuel Stephenson.

But I couldn’t drive to my grandparents’ house and admit that I had come to see the black boy working on the dock. And neither Nana nor Pop would believe for a minute that I had come to see them. So I slowed the car down, making certain not to stir any dust in the road and reveal my position. I coasted a few hundred yards past the final turn to the house and then pulled the Cadillac off the road and into a field dotted with nothing but a couple of cows and some Queen Anne’s lace.

Perched on the hood of the car, I could see Nathaniel’s old blue truck sitting in my grandparents’ driveway. I sat there for what seemed like hours, making necklaces out of dandelions and drinking my Dr Pepper. And when I had to pee, I jumped off the hood and squatted low in the field, leaving my mark like a dog declaring his territory. I picked a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace, crawled back on top of the car, and counted the clouds floating across the sky.

Finally, just as the sky cleared and left me nothing to look at, the sound of my grandfather’s John Deere tractor hummed in the distance, consuming the quiet of the late afternoon. I knew Samuel’s work was almost done for the day, and he’d be heading home soon. I slipped off the top of the Cadillac and walked back to the small private road that led to my grandparents’ drive. I had thought all afternoon about what I would say to Samuel when he saw me out here in the middle of nowhere, waiting for him. But now I couldn’t remember anything that made any sense. I waited some more, and just as I was growing afraid that Samuel would never finish mowing that yard, the tractor grew silent.

I figured by now my grandmother was handing Samuel his pay for the day’s work. She may have even offered him a cold Coca-Cola and a piece of buttered corn bread. He’d surely smile and say thank you and then promptly get in his truck and head on home. And as if I was choreographing the scene myself, I saw his blue truck ease its way toward me.

I walked into the middle of the road, and as Samuel got closer I could see that his eyes were growing wide with surprise. He just stared at me, seemingly trying to make sense of my being there. And again I found myself wondering, as I had so many times during the afternoon, if I had made a mistake coming all the way out here. But then he smiled, gently at first, and the smile grew slowly until it stretched clear across his face. He slowed the truck and stopped a few feet in front of me. I walked around to the side, yanked the door open, and climbed onto the seat next to him. And without saying more than a few words, I directed him back down the road to the sandy beach that Ruddy had introduced me to some years ago now.

“A beach,” Samuel said in surprise. “Never would have thought of putting a beach out here on the lake.”