“You’re always actin’ so superior. You know your granddaddy knocked up a nigger bitch!” he had yelled out of his beat-up Ford.
“You got high-yeller cousins runnin’ all over Bear Creek.”
With that, he had peeled out in the gravel. That night when I got home I had confronted my mother who swore there wasn’t a word of truth in the story. I didn’t believe it then and don’t believe it now.
Lucy Cunningham’s face softens.
“I’ve known who you were since I was a little girl. Your daddy owned a drugstore on Main Street before he got sick and hung himself in the state hospital.”
This casual account of my father’s death, though correct, irritates me by its presumptuousness. Since he owned the only drugstore in Bear Creek, it does not surprise me she knows a little of my history. My paternal grandfather had been a small-town entrepreneur, owning a service station, the first car wash, a diner, and now that I remember it, according to my sister Marty, for a short while he owned a liquor store and the movie theater in the black section of Bear Creek. His proprietorship of the latter two enterprises was hardly proof he had a sexual relationship with a black woman.
“Did you hear that growing up?” I ask. Granddaddy Page died from a heart attack when I was about ten.
Lucy Cunningham gives me a knowing smile, but her voice is less intense.
“Many times.”
When I was growing up in Bear Creek, gossip was its major form of recreation, and racial segregation was hardly a barrier to its transmittal. It sounds like the kind of crap Barney Hyslip would make up and repeat endlessly at his occasional job at the sawmill. I have no intention of dignifying that kind of talk.
“How did you get my name?” I ask, my voice stiff.
Lucy leans back in her chair, apparently regarding me with satisfaction.
“When you represented that black psychologist charged with murder, I saw your picture in the paper and realized who you were,” she says, folding her arms across her breasts.
“James told me you lived right down the street from him and had been married to a South American woman darker than me.”
Is she insinuating that a predilection for black women runs in my family? Of my childhood in Bear Creek I re call only selected vignettes, few having to do with my grandparents. Everything was subservient to my father’s growing paranoia that the Communists were taking over the country and his eventual hospitalization and suicide.
“Rosa was truly a remarkable woman,” I say, determined not to sound defensive. I don’t feel comfortable with Lucy Cunningham. Why has she brought up the rumor about my grandfather?
“Gloria told me your wife was beautiful,” Lucy Cunningham acknowledges.
“She liked her a lot.”
“Rosa never met a stranger,” I say, forcing a smile.
There is no hostility in her voice. Probably, she sees this wild story as a bond rather than as a barrier. I don’t know.
I am guilty only of ignorance and the arrogance that comes with being white. They knew us; they had to know us. As a child before the civil rights era, I had no need to know more than the first names of the men who cut our grass and the women who ironed my family’s clothes.
“Gloria says you haven’t been much of a neighbor since she died,” Lucy observes.
“How come you haven’t moved out?”
“No need to.” I shrug, embarrassed to admit the reason is financial.
“Except for the sounds of gunfire coming from the housing development a few blocks away, it’s a quiet neighborhood.”
Abruptly she stands up. It is as if I had said that except for stomach cancer, I feel pretty good.
“I hope you can help my son,” she says, extending her hand to me.
I take it and gently squeeze her dry palm against my sweaty one. For the last few minutes this woman has had me totally off-balance. I’m glad this interview is over.
“I’ll do everything I can.”
As I step inside the waiting room after the elevator door shuts, Julia remarks, “Did your wife look like that?”
Never ceasing to be amazed by what comes out of her mouth, I gawk at her. There is no sarcasm in her voice.
God only knows what Julia knows about me. Usually, she seems so self-absorbed that I’m surprised when she can remember my name.
“She was darker and a lot prettier,” I say, daring her to make a smartass remark.
Popping a pastel jelly bean into her mouth, Julia says, “You know who she reminded me of?”
“Coretta Scott King,” I answer, again thinking of the bruised sadness in her eyes. Her past has probably left some scars. She wouldn’t have made that crack about my grandfather if it hadn’t.
“Yeah,” Julia says, with what could almost be termed respect in her voice. A first.
“Her husband was supposed to be so great,” she says bitterly, “and he was off screwing all those white women and was so dumb he didn’t even know the FBI was listening. But did she ever act in public like it bothered her? Hell, no. That’s real class. I bet she gave him shit in private.”
There are no other persons in the waiting room. I lean against the wooden counter that separates Julia from the public. Julia, in her twenties, can’t have any personal memories of the civil rights movement.
“I’ve never exactly thought of you as a liberal,” I say, glancing at her skirt as it creeps up her legs. If it rides up much further, I’ll be able to see her belly button.
Following my gaze, she tugs ineffectually at the fabric.
“You guys don’t know anything but what I want you to,” she replies softly.
“All you got is an idea based on what I look and sound like here between eight and five and that’s all.”
My face reddens at my own condescension. She is right, of course. We take her for granted. Her life is probably much richer than my own. I have assumed it was superficial, a soap opera unworthy of my attention except for idle speculation between me and Clan about her sex life.
“That’s true,” I mumble, and return to my office to make a rare call to my sister Marty.
“Come out tonight and Herbert will cook some steaks.
I’m real busy now,” she says loudly into the phone when I ask her if she has time for some questions about Bear Creek. In the background I can hear the sound of women’s voices. Marty owns a used-clothing store in Hutto, a town on the western edge of Blackwell County.
“How’s Herbert?” I ask, wondering what it must be like to have married four times. Marty has said she would keep on going down the aisle until she got it right.
“He’s the kindest man I’ve ever known. If he leaves me, I’ll kill him.” She whispers, “On top of being such a real sweetheart, he’s great in bed, too.”
I feel myself blushing. Is this my unhappy sister Marty? Her life in the last few years has sounded like daytime TV: serial divorces, eating binges, and hot-check charges.
“What time?” I ask, afraid to encourage her.
“About seven,” she says.
“Bring a bottle of red if you want.”
I tell her I will, and before I can put the phone down, Julia appears in my doorway.
“Can you see a walk-in?
This guy looks like he’s got some dough, but I don’t think he’s gonna come back if you don’t see him now.
He’s kind of excited.”
I try to schedule everyone for an appointment, but sometimes it doesn’t work.
“What’s his problem?”
“I don’t know,” Julia replies, clearly uninterested, as she checks her inch-long nails.
“Something about a landlord tenant problem.”
“Sure, I’ll be right out,” I say, hoping the man is the property manager for a corporation that owns half the real estate in Blackwell County. Barton has inspired me.
As long as I don’t have to try to read an abstract, I’ll be okay.