“Open carports let the whole world know at a glance if you’re home or not, or whether you’ve got company,” he’d said with the sly smile of one who’d slipped his car into someone else’s garage a time or two. “Besides, you’ll be glad for the extra storage space.”
Now, as Kidd and I built shelves over the workbench, I could appreciate Will’s reasoning. I would never own enough stuff to fill these shelves, but in months to come, it might cut down on my family’s raised eyebrows if Kidd’s van were discreetly stowed behind thick aluminum doors, so I hammered and sawed with a will despite the sweat trickling down my face.
At noon, Will paid the men their week’s wages in cash and I wrote him a check that covered his time, too.
“Everybody keep their act together, you could be moving in by the end of July,” Will said.
“It’s looking real good,” I told him, but he frowned as he gazed out past the pond to the dilapidated greenhouse.
“We sure do need to get Haywood to pull that ugly thing off. You speak to him about it?”
I nodded. “He says he’s going to fix it up.”
“I’d stick a match to it,” Will said, “only there’s nothing there to burn.”
After he’d gone, Kidd and I drove over to Seth’s and borrowed a couple of horses and spent the afternoon riding along back lanes, catching up on a week’s worth of small talk. By the time we’d unsaddled the horses and turned them back out to pasture, I was feeling truly gamey and sat on the far side of the van’s front seat as we drove in to Dobbs.
“Kidd! How nice,” said Aunt Zell as she opened the screen door for us. “Y’all are just in time for drinks.”
The back porch was deep and shaded. It ran the full width of the house and was a cool place to sit on a hot afternoon. The beds of bright flowers just beyond the screen echoed the crisp floral chintz on Aunt Zell’s new patio cushions. A bowl of peanuts and a plate of raw vegetables sat on the glass-topped table.
Uncle Ash set his glass down and walked over to the door of his den. “Bourbon for you, son, or gin-tonic? Unless you’d like to shower first, too?”
I left Kidd in their capable hands and went upstairs.
My rooms on the second floor had begun as an apartment for Uncle Ash’s elderly mother years ago. Although connected to the main house, it had its own separate entrance and had been a convenient place to perch while trying to figure out what I was doing with my life. I could even feel virtuous about staying on after I was earning enough to get my own place because Uncle Ash’s job as a tobacco buyer meant lots of travelling both here in the States and in South America and he didn’t like to leave Aunt Zell alone. But now that he would be retiring at the end of the summer, the time was more than right for me to move out.
Nevertheless, I was starting to feel nostalgic already as I moved through the cool, pale green rooms, undressing while I went till I stepped naked into the shower.
I lathered with scented soap and shampoo and decided that hot water on tap has to be one of civilization’s greatest luxuries.
“Unless it’s air-conditioning,” said the pragmatist in my head as I towelled off and let the cool air flow over me.
“Amen,” agreed the preacher.
I dried my hair, twisted it up in a loose knot which I secured with a couple of enameled clips, slid on a sleeveless blue dress that matched my eyes and put on a pair of dancing shoes in case we dropped by one of the clubs in Raleigh. Lipstick, mascara, and I was ready to ride.
During the week, I try to act mature and judge-like. Happily, the woman who grinned back at me in the mirror didn’t look one bit like a judge. Didn’t feel like one either as she slipped her toothbrush and a fresh pair of bikini-cut panties into her oversized straw purse.
Downstairs, Aunt Zell looked me over carefully, but all she said was, “Don’t forget we’re due early at Mount Olive tomorrow.”
13
Less confrontation
More communication
—Freedom Chapel
Maidie had promised to save us seats if we got to Mount Olive early enough and a young girl, dressed all in white right down to the small white beads braided into her hair, was on the watch for Aunt Zell, Uncle Ash and me as we walked up the gravel drive from the parking area beside the church. She looked about twelve or thirteen, that endearing time when they teeter between childhood and adolescence, more at ease in sneakers than the one-inch heels she wore this morning.
As she handed us program leaflets, the tilt of her head, her deep-set eyes and something about her shy smile made me ask, “Aren’t you kin to Jimmy White?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “He’s my momma’s daddy.”
“You’re Alice’s daughter?”
“Wanda’s,” she murmured and led us inside and down the aisle to where Maidie was seated.
Alice had been a year ahead of me in school, Wanda two years behind. Sometimes I feel as if I’m the only graduate of West Colleton High who hasn’t gone forth, been fruitful and multiplied.
Mount Olive’s interior was as classically simple as its exterior. Sunlight streamed through the frosted glass windows into a large open space of dazzling brightness. Aunt Zell, Uncle Ash and I walked down an aisle carpeted in a royal blue that matched the pew cushions. Painted on the wall behind the choir was a large colorful mural of John the Baptist standing on the bank of the river Jordan with Jesus, ready to baptize him. Everything else was painted white: walls, ceilings, all the trimwork. Even the sturdy plantation-made pews had a hundred and fifty years’ worth of white enamel on them.
Four big white wooden chairs, seats and backs padded in royal blue leather, stood between the simple hand-carved pulpit and the choir stall like ecclesiastical thrones. I recognized the Reverend Anthony Ligon, who pastored here, and the activist attorney Wallace Adderly, of course. Sitting between Adderly and Ligon was the Reverend Floyd Putnam, a white preacher from Jones Chapel Baptist Church in Cotton Grove. On the other side of Adderly was the Reverend Ralph Freeman.
Sunday School wasn’t over yet and already the sanctuary was three-fourths full as Uncle Ash let me slide in beside Maidie. I glanced around and found more white faces than one usually saw at these things. I expected there would be even more for the picnic lunch. Mrs. Avery sat next to Jack and Judy Cater from Sweetwater and my friends Portland and Avery Brewer were there from First Baptist in Dobbs along with Chief District Court Judge Ned O’Donnell. Luther Parker nodded gravely from the end of the pew across from us and Louise gave me a wink.
To my surprise, I realized that the person in front of them with her eyes firmly fixed on the wall painting was Cyl DeGraffenried.
“An upright young black woman in a black church—why should that surprise you?” asked the preacher from deep inside my skull.
“Upright but uptight. Maybe a political move?” wondered the pragmatist.
Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t tell if it was the imminent baptism of Jesus that held her attention or one of the men on the left. Wallace Adderly or Ralph Freeman.
The church was filled with the hum and murmur of voices as we waited for Sunday School to be over at eleven. Even the preachers and Wallace Adderly were talking together in low rumbles. I leaned my lips to Maidie’s ear and whispered, “Is Cyl DeGraffenried a member here?”
“Never moved her membership up from New Bern,” Maidie whispered back, “but here’s where she was baptized. That’s her granny sitting next to her. Miz Shirley Mitchiner.”
Just then, a large woman in a blue lace dress and wide brimmed white hat came in from a side door, went to the piano, and without hesitation swung straight into a rollicking hymn. Children and adults streamed in from the Sunday School classrooms. They filled the few remaining empty pew spaces and soon lined all the sides.