A Heart Divided (9 page)

By the end of the school day, someone had scrawled
BITCH
on my locker. On Tuesday, I found dog crap on the hood of my car. Jack couldn’t believe his ex or any of her friends had done these things. I had suspicions but no proof. Fortunately, by Wednesday, the hubbub died down, hopefully forever.

We spent all our time together. Where you found Jack, you found Kate. The warm September days melted into each other like cherry Popsicles, leaving the same sweetness behind. Only the occasional breath of autumn on a breeze promised the coming change of seasons. Sometimes on weekends, Jack and I would hike in the hills outside of town to a distant sulfur spring that he said was first tapped by his great-great-grandfather. At night, we’d sit on a blanket near the river, his arms wrapped around me, sharing anything and everything, all that little stuff that seems so unimportant until you’re in love. How I once threw up in front of my whole second-grade class, and how I had never wanted to face those kids again. How the tiny scar on his left thumb was from a fishhook—he and Chaz had ditched school and gone fishing, but they’d gotten caught because they couldn’t get the hook out of Jack’s thumb. His mom had made him apologize not only to his teacher, but also to the principal and to the chief of police.

The more I got to know Jack, the more I realized that, in the sense of being a good human being, he was probably
the best person I had ever known. He did a lot of volunteer work, but was very low-key about it. For example, he was a volunteer aide at Warren Elementary’s afterschool program. Warren was Redford’s poorest and lowest-achieving grade school. Jack tutored the kids and he coached their soccer team, the Strikers. He came up with jobs for them so they could earn spending money. He invented awards like Most Improved or Best Team Player. The awards came with gift certificates to clothing stores, bookstores, and the Red-ford Cinema. Needless to say, the Strikers adored him.

The smallest, toughest kid on the team was Cooper Wilson, a scrawny eight-year-old with carrot-orange hair and the bopping gait of a born athlete. He lived in a double-wide mobile home with his older sister and his mom. They were on food stamps. Jack told me that when he had first met Cooper, it had been in the vice principal’s office, after Cooper had beaten up a kid who’d called him white trash. Evidently, he got called white trash on a pretty regular basis.

Then there was Cooper, post-Jack. Jack tutored him, shot hoops with him, and, under the guise of hanging out, dropped by Cooper’s house with groceries. Cooper started using the word “Jack” in most of his sentences and quit getting into fights. He’d come to Strikers practice half an hour early and just sit there waiting for Jack to arrive. And when he did, Cooper’s face was the sun.

Jack also worked at Peace Inn, a temporary shelter for troubled teenagers. Kids would ring the buzzer at all hours;
a volunteer was always available to help them through the night. Sometimes that person was Jack. He inspired me so much that I started doing volunteer work with him. It made me feel good about myself. Besides, it was the best way to spend a lot of time with him.

Other than passion for each other, the greatest love we shared was for the stage. Sometimes we’d go to the theater in Nashville and afterward stay late at the Peace Inn, discussing the play over endless cups of coffee. I showed him my work; we read scenes aloud. We laughed and talked and shared our dreams. And we kissed until we were breathless.

My New York friends weighed in by phone. Nia said she didn’t care how much volunteer work the boy did or how well he knew Chekhov, falling for a guy whose mother was past president of the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was lunacy. BB counseled me to check for eyeholes in the sheets on Jack’s bed. Only Lillith suggested that I go for it, reasoning that my relationship with Jack was so hot that it would undoubtedly go down in flames, but meanwhile I should enjoy the inferno.

Before Jack, the hip, arch, jaded me would have said the same things. I’d decided long ago that all those romantic movies where girl gets guy and lives happily ever after were fairy tales. Half of my friends had parents whose marriages had cracked up. The ones that were still intact didn’t seem all that terrific. It’s not like I ever saw longing in my mother’s eyes when she looked at my father.

So maybe I had fantasized about a guy who’d be smart and strong, and passionate and gentle, too. A guy so giving he’d spend time with a lonely kid before he’d hang out with his friends. A guy I could be entirely myself with, who cared about the things I cared about, who
knew
me, and who I knew in return. But I never really believed that such a guy existed. Until Jack Redford transcended my disillusioned dreams.

evening in late September when I sprinted from my house to the Pink Teacup. I knew I was already ten minutes late to meet Mrs. Augustus—pretty rude considering that I’d been the one to ask for the meeting. Through the front glass, I saw her seated at a small, round table for two, its glass top anchoring a teacup-patterned, lacy pink tablecloth. Standing near her, holding a white bakery bag tied with a pink ribbon, was Mr. Derry He ran the local Shell station. He’d fixed a flat on my car the week before and had refused to charge me, though he did lecture me about keeping my tires properly inflated.

“I’m so sorry to be late,” I apologized as I hurried toward Mrs. Augustus.

“It’s fine, dear. You gave me a chance to catch up with Mr. Derry.”

He hoisted the paper bag. I could see a translucent butter spot blossoming on the bottom. “Good visiting with you,” Mr. Derry told Mrs. Augustus. Then he turned to Birdie, who was behind the counter, patiently helping a young girl and her mother pick out a treat from the glass display case. “And thank you, Birdie. You know the missus has been having one of her cravings.”

“Now, Judson Derry, where are your manners?” Birdie mock scolded. “Can’t you see I’m helping Shanika here choose a very important cookie?”

“Momma says the tooth fairy wants me to get my favorite,” the little girl told Birdie as her mother beamed down at her.

“Well, tooth fairies do that kind of thing,” Birdie told her. “So you take your time, honey.” She raised her voice and called to Mr. Derry again. “You just remember, Judson, a pregnant woman in her ninth month who doesn’t satisfy her food cravings gives birth to a sickly baby. And I know you want Judson Junior to be fat and sassy like his daddy.”

Mr. Derry laughed. “Hey, now.”

“You tell Lurlene I’ll come by and see her this weekend,” Birdie promised as the little girl pointed to a butterscotch chocolate chip cookie the size of a small Frisbee. Birdie snared it for her with a piece of pink tissue paper.

“Good choice there, Shanika!” Mr. Derry exclaimed, then turned back to Mrs. Augustus and me. “Mrs. Augustus, don’t you go driving that car all the way to Tuscaloosa again before I do an oil change, hear? You’re due.”

“I’ll ask my husband to bring it in, thank you, Mr. Derry.”

“My pleasure, ma’am. You know the Mapco won’t give you any kind of service.” He fixed his eyes on me. “You keeping them tires filled, young lady?”

“Uh… I’ll have to check.”

He shook his head as if I’d disappointed him. “You get your daddy to buy you a pressure gauge.”

“Yes, sir,” I found myself saying.

The answer seemed to satisfy him. He said some more good-byes, tarried at the front door to greet another of his customers, and finally left. When he was gone, I sat opposite Mrs. Augustus and tried to explain why I was late. “My sister was having a crisis over some horrid girl in her class named Madison.”

“Madison Honeywell?”

“I only know her as Madison the Cool. Or Madison the Cruel, depending on whether or not she’s nice to my sister that day.”

“Well, if it’s Madison Honeywell at Redford East Middle School, her uncle Frank is my sister’s nephew.”

I felt the heat rush to my face. “I’m sorry. I’m sure Madison is a nice girl—”

Mrs. Augustus waved away the rest of my statement.

“Nonsense. Madison Honeywell is as unpleasant as a wet possum.”

I smiled. “I thought Southerners didn’t say mean things about each other.”

“Go on! We’re just creative about it.” She chuckled. “Here’s an example. Every new mother thinks her new child is a beauty. But sometimes a new baby is just bald, drooling, and ugly. Well, of course, no one is going to tell a new mother that her child is pitiful looking. A Yankee might lie to spare the mother’s feelings: Oh, your baby is just so cute.’ But a Southerner’ll look at the child and say, ‘Now
there’s
a baby!’”

I laughed.

“And the mother says thank you and feels you’ve paid her a lovely compliment,” Mrs. Augustus concluded. “And that, my dear, is very,
very
Southern. So, shall we have some of Birdie’s fruit tea while we chat?”

As we waited for Birdie to bring the icy tea, I got my cassette recorder ready. “Everyone says if I want to really know Redford’s racial history, I should speak with you.”

“Yes, I’m a living fossil,” she teased. “So this play you’re planning to write will be about Redford?”

“I think so. I’m not really sure yet.” I fiddled with the microphone. “Do you mind if I tape you?”

“Not at all.”

“Two glasses of my best fruit tea,” Birdie sang out, setting the frosted pink glasses on the table. “And something to nibble on.” She plunked a pink platter of fragrant cookies, fat with chocolate chips, in the center of the table. “Straight out of the oven. You know you can’t drink my tea without my cookies,
Mrs. Augustus.”

“Indeed I do, Birdie, dear.” Mrs. Augustus reached for one. “Have you tried these yet, Kate? They’re heavenly.”

“Oh, sure she has,” Birdie put in. “Me and Kate are buddies already. I met her on her first day in Redford. Well, I’ll let you two visit. Don’t let me catch you leavin’ any crumbs.” She grinned over her shoulder as she departed.

“She’s really nice.” I bit into a warm cookie and felt a chocolate chip melt onto my tongue.

“Birdie’s grandmother opened the Pink Teacup in 1928,” Mrs. Augustus told me, then took a contemplative sip of tea. “Her name was Florence, but everyone called her Florrie. She was my mother’s dearest friend.”

I nodded and switched on my recorder.

“My mother brought me here on opening day,” she went on. “I believe I was eight years old at the time. Miss Florrie was an unmarried woman, and she’d hired a black man as her baker. Mr. Samuel Brewster, his name was. He taught Miss Florrie how to make those cookies you’re eating. Everyone thought they were keeping company. It was quite a scandal.”

“How do you remember all this?” I marveled.

“Memory’s a funny thing.” Mrs. Augustus patted her lips with the pale pink linen napkin. “Half the time I can’t remember where I put my glasses, but I remember things from seventy years ago as if they happened yesterday.

Anyway, Mr. Brewster’s grandfather was a slave who had been freed by Birdie’s great-great-grandfather a year before the Battle of Redford, which was in November of 1863.”

“What made him do that?”

“I heard he was a very religious man. I believe he prayed on it and simply came to the conclusion that one human being owning another human being went against the Bible.”

“How could anyone come to any
other
conclusion?”

“You must understand, Kate. It was a very different time then—a different world, really. It took a hundred years after that war for real change to come.” She paused for another sip of tea. “When I was your parents’ age, there were signs posted everywhere: Whites Only. Colored Drinking Fountain. Blacks couldn’t stay at most hotels or eat at most restaurants. There were laws about it. Jim Crow laws, they were called, after a Negro minstrel—it was a terrible and insulting name. Essentially, they were a way to make blacks second-class citizens. And not just in the South, either, my dear.”

I rested my chin on my cupped hand. “It just seems so… so….”

“Ugly,” she filled in. “I have a cousin in Danville, Virginia. Bernice Abernathy She’s a librarian, too. I recall—I believe it was around 1960 when the segregation laws were repealed—her library took all the tables and chairs out of the library rather than have blacks sit with whites. You had to pick up your books and just carry them on out.”

“What about here, Mrs. Augustus? Did your library do that?”

“No, my dear. I’m pleased to say we did not. But we had our own problems.” Mrs. Augustus reached for another cookie. “You know Jimmy Mack’s restaurant?”

“Sure. Right across the square.”

“It was whites only till 1961.”

I couldn’t believe it. “You’re kidding.”

“No, my dear, I most certainly am not. Do you know about the sit-ins?”

I tried to recall what I’d read somewhere. “Where… blacks went into restaurants and tried to get served?”

She nodded. “In 1961, there were big ones in Nashville at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. Not long after that, Lucas Roberts integrated Jimmy Mack’s.”

I was surprised Nikki hadn’t mentioned this to me. “You mean Reverend Roberts? Nikki’s father? She’s a friend of mine.”