The Undertaker's Daughter (28 page)

On a Tuesday afternoon—choir practice was always on a Tuesday—I walked to the church after school in what was left of the day’s light. As I entered the hall of one of the church buildings, the preacher suddenly appeared and stopped me.

“I’d like to see you in my office for just a moment.”

“Me?” I looked around. Brother Lyle scarcely took time to speak to me in passing; what could he want with me now?
Oh, God,
I thought,
I hope he’s not going to ask me to do something embarrassing like pray out loud next Sunday in church
.

“Uh-huh. Yes, you. I just want to speak to you for a moment.” He sounded cheerfully false.

He smiled with a crinkled nose and eyes that squinted. I thought I sensed from him a small, electrifying moment of discomfort, but it passed. I became curious. We approached the door to his office, with a brass plaque boldly noting
PASTOR’S STUDY
. He led the way into his office and closed the door. I’d never been in the preacher’s office before. Brother Lyle was not one of the poker-playing brethren, we didn’t socialize with him, and as far as anyone knew, he had not succumbed to any of the normal temptations. He reeked of self-righteousness. I thought his office might be a holy place where miracles stood a chance of occurring, but once I was inside, it didn’t feel holy, it felt grand and rich. My feet sank into plush carpet and I sat down in a comfortable stuffed leather chair.
The bookshelves were lined with appropriate titles, all of which were biblical. The desk was large and wooden, more of a structure, similar to the pulpit that kept his flock at a safe distance. The lighting was quite low, and a desk lamp lit his pad and pen. I sank into the chair, and not for one instant did I expect what was to come. A large Bible lay sprawled across the desk like a fat lady sunbathing, open to the elements. When he picked it up and moved toward me, I could hardly believe it.
What’s he going to do, hit me with it? And why? What is this about?
The next thing I knew, he read aloud a passage of scripture.

Then he said, “Did you understand that?”

“Understand it? I didn’t hear a word you said.”

I thought I might have experienced some kind of auditory blackout. I couldn’t believe that one moment I was walking in the hallway and the next I was listening to Brother Lyle, with whom I had no relationship, save a “Good morning” here and there, as he brandished his big, floppy Bible in my face. After all, we were not a hand-raising, knee-buckling congregation, we were a civilized bunch, easily embarrassed by those who spoke in tongues and kept snakes in jars. But Brother Lyle read again, something about the fowl of the air, the fish of the seas, and the beasts of the fields. Then he carefully placed the black silk ribbon in the book to mark the page. He closed the Bible and returned to his desk. I looked at him as if he were crazy.

Then he hit me with it. “You see, God is telling us that the birds don’t mix with the fish. The fish don’t mix with the beasts of the fields, now do they?”

Who was I to argue this? “No, they sure don’t, Brother Lyle.”

He cleared his throat.

Then my body became hot, my face red, and I felt like mush in that big, comfy chair. I was thirteen and already up to my neck in
awkwardness. The preacher was on the verge of drowning me in awkward because now, finally, I knew what was coming.

“So, God also does not want the races to mix. White and black—they don’t mix.” He said this matter-of-factly and with great authority. “Do you understand?” The desk lamp illuminated the preacher’s kinky, light-brown head. “Do you understand?”

I didn’t answer him and I didn’t look at him. I tried to find a point in the windowless room upon which to focus.

“The scripture says it plainly right here, right here in front of us.” He leaped from his chair, grabbed his Bible, and came toward me again. He placed the Bible in my lap. “Read it for yourself. Read it out loud. Let me hear you read it.” His voice verged on the evangelical.

He returned to his chair, sat back, and adjusted his thick, black glasses, then closed his eyes, pressed his fingers together, and waited for the scripture.

I looked at the words, but they seemed to blur before me. I could have been looking at a grocery bill. “I’m not going to read it.” These words came not from bravery, but from embarrassment and frustration. I was almost in tears now.

Brother Lyle reached over his desk. “Give it back to me.”

I handed over the Bible.

“I think you understand now, don’t you? Those aren’t my words, they’re God’s words. Do you understand God’s words?”

I’d never been one to offer quick comebacks. I desperately needed a wise retort, a fact that was on my side. But instead I looked down into my lap and nodded my head.

“Okay then. Glad we had the opportunity to speak today. Now you run along and have a good choir practice.”

Ten minutes, that’s all it took. Ten minutes to get the message—not the message he meant to impart, but the message
that I took with me as I left the preacher’s study. This preacher had said not one memorable thing in all the years I had known him. Now he had. And I hoped that someday, someone would make him feel as small and flawed as he’d made me feel that Tuesday afternoon.

I walked back to the funeral home after choir practice. I had planned to confront my mother when I arrived, but I didn’t. I lost my nerve and then decided that I didn’t want her to see any kind of reaction from me at all. I knew by the way my father greeted me that evening that he knew nothing of this. That wasn’t a bad thing. It would be my mother’s and my unspoken, uncomfortable little secret. I became more careful, more deceitful, and much more determined.

N
oah and I planned our first date during the summer of that year. We were meeting at twelve o’clock in broad daylight in a wooded area on the edge of town and were careful to stagger our arrivals so that we wouldn’t be seen together in the area. I nursed a panicky sweat during the long walk to our meeting place, and even my feet tingled with fear. The coatroom at school was a walk in the park compared to my journey to the woods. What would happen, I thought, now that we would finally be alone? I heard the twigs snap under his feet as he approached me. The fire whistle blew at that moment and we both jumped. Every day the firehouse cranked up its siren at twelve noon; we called it the twelve o’clock whistle. Although it could be depended upon to sound its long, loud whine without fail, one would just forget about it until it happened. Two normal people would have laughed, but neither of us felt normal that day.

I had never been kissed. A little boy or two had stolen a silly peck on the cheek, but I was never kissed in any way that was memorable until that summer day when the branches of the trees hid the warm sun and the smell of the baked woods hit my nostrils. I thought he was beautiful. I knew that almost everyone else in Jubilee would be sickened by this. Noah put his hands around my waist. I had only recently discovered that I even had a waistline. I caught sight of it in the full-length mirror in my bedroom, and it took me completely by surprise.
A curve! When did you arrive?
Now he had his arms around it as if he knew it better than I. His lips were soft and warm, and when they parted, I felt I was being safely led to a place that would change me. He tasted of sweetness dusted with a light sprinkling of salt.

The kiss was the only physical exploration made that day and was quite enough for both of us. The consequences were daunting enough without any extras. The reality of leaving the woods separately and making sure we weren’t seen was sobering. We both knew the seriousness of the situation. The barrel of a gun was not considered an unseemly sight in our town, and it would not have been far-fetched to imagine one at Noah’s temple. I feared some angry landowner—we were trespassing—plodding through the wood’s growth would greet us with his favorite hunting rifle. My parents would have made me their prisoner, every waking moment monitored, all privileges revoked, until I reached legal age, at which point they would disown me.

At the edge of the woods we parted. I left first, saying, “See ya.”

“Yeah, see ya, too.”

I stopped downtown at Elvis’s for a hamburger, then killed some time in the library. I longed to walk up the steps of the old bank building with the tall shelves and wooden floors. They had never got around to providing chairs or a bench for visitors, but it
didn’t matter. I recalled a cozy corner where my back fit perfectly against the wall, my legs crossed, a comfortable hideaway on the floor. I wanted to sit there and watch Theo, hoping to see if she noticed anything different about me. Was it somehow written on my face, where I’d been and what I’d done? But that library was just a memory now. Theo had retired and Jubilee had built a new library on another street, a boring, modern building with low ceilings, drab carpets, and punishing lighting. Still, the shelves of books relieved me of the daze in which I found myself and helped to prepare me for my return home.

I approached the back of the funeral home in early evening and adopted a casual stride as I walked past my father. He was out back turning Omaha steaks on the barbecue, his eyes slitted for protection against the smoke. We spoke about nothing as he poked at the filets mignons, one of the treats he ordered for us, along with Florida oranges and massive cheese balls from the East Coast. I assumed I was back in his good graces as he’d not said anything else about the incident at school. The steak was good, and as I ate that night, I slipped back into something closer to normal. No one suspected that I had returned with the traces of a black boy’s kiss still on my lips.

That was how my secret life began. That’s how I became a liar and a sneak. Amen, Brother Lyle. I had tapped a black boy’s foot in school and kissed him in the woods. I knew that I was playing with fire and my parents’ disapproval didn’t surprise me. But discontent from another source caught me entirely off guard.

Late on a spring afternoon, before the days became long, I strolled home from visiting a teacher who lived near the school. I often walked this route, a shortcut home on a familiar passage that allowed me to free whatever loose thoughts had crowded my
mind that day. I didn’t hear the footsteps on the grass, but I felt an invisible pressure behind me and looked over my shoulder to find two black girls several feet away. I thought nothing of it, even when I saw several more girls, all black, coming toward me. As they drew closer, I could see that they were familiar to me and each was about the same age as me. One of them, Nanette, seemed to act as their leader, and out of respect for what I gathered was her important position, I spoke to her first.

“Hi, Nanette.” I was friendly.

“Humph.” She was not.

As if the exchange were a signal, the other girls closed in on me. A feeling in the pit of my stomach told me something was wrong. I tried not to panic and continued to walk slowly. I was now surrounded, but oddly, still walking. In some strange and precarious balletic movement we crossed the schoolyard together.

“So what you doin’ with that Noah?” Nanette demanded.

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“You got no bi’ness with Noah, you hear me? We see you talkin’ to him all the time. You leave our boys alone. What you want to go and do that for? Go back to your own kind. Find some white boy to talk to.” She didn’t draw a breath.

Nanette was the biggest of them, tall and solid. Nothing could hide the pugnacious bully that lived beneath the soft folds of her faded cotton dress. I looked down at her thick, white socks and sturdy, black shoes while she gave me a piece of her mind. In an attempt to remain calm and appear mildly in control, I shifted my focus from her shoes and intended to meet her eyes. But one of Nanette’s eyes, the left, was stuck, immovable in its socket, and she looked permanently out of that stationary eye toward her left. I kept thinking of Cyclops. I was afraid she would be even angrier at me for staring at it, so I counted the squares on her head from
which coarse, black plaits sprouted in unruly spires. Five were visible from where I was standing.

“I think you crazy. We all,” she said with a grand gesture of her arm, “think you crazy. And we don’t like it. We don’t like it one bit, Miss Mayfield,” she spat.

The other girls began to touch me. They pulled on my clothes and poked at me. I searched through the faces of Nanette’s coterie for the most sympathetic onlooker. I found her, stared her down until she dropped her eyes in, well, if not shame, then an uncomfortable moment. But she didn’t help me.

“Stay away from us. ’Specially the boys. You stay away from our boys.”

Nanette became more agitated, and while her anger fizzed, I began to feel sick. I turned from her, again searching for a way out. I looked around for another living soul and there was no one. Not even a car passed us. The drooping, heavily branched trees hid us from view anyway. I thought of breaking through the circle of girls and running for it, but I was a lousy runner.

Nanette slapped me on the back of the head. “Did you hear what I said? You be lookin’ all off somewheres for some help or somethin’. There ain’t no help here.”