Calling Me Home (7 page)

“Hey, now, silly names—that’s my trademark. But you know, ‘Miss Isabelle’ just flows. It’s cute. Plus, one thing my momma did teach me was to respect my elders.” I waited. She didn’t let me down. She twisted around and whacked my elbow with the crossword puzzle book. I pretended to duck—not easy while driving. “I call all my little old ladies Miss Whatever. Don’t you think for a minute I’m singling you out for special treatment.” Miss Isabelle rolled her eyes. “But you changed the subject.”

“It’s such a long story,” she said, echoing my own words.

“Well, it’s, what, nearly a thousand miles from home to Cincinnati? And we’re less than two hundred in. I’d like to hear more.”

“I think…” Miss Isabelle paused and gazed out the window again. A cover of clouds had sneaked up on us as we left my hometown and headed for the Arkansas border, and now a slow drizzle began to fall, creating a teal-and-chocolate blur of the tall pines we barreled past at the side of the road, like some kind of painting—like, you know, that guy Monet. Thunder rumbled in the distance. “I think my mother was terrified.”

5

Isabelle, 1939

A
FTER WE STOLE
past the sign leading into Shalerville that night, we ducked into the shadows the few times we saw anyone. Robert walked me as far as the end of my street, then watched from that distance until I reached my house. I turned in time to see him slip away from the shelter of a huge old oak he’d hidden behind until I reached my front steps.

I sent up a prayer for his safety, too. I hoped it reached a God who protected both the whites and the Negroes. I suspected our town worshiped one who wouldn’t honor such a request. In the purple dusk beside the porch, I waited until an automobile roared nearby, then clattered through the front door. I called out I was home, breathing easier when Mother didn’t come to tell me good night or quiz me about Earline’s party. As I drifted to sleep, I realized I’d been wrong about so much—not the least, my ability to handle myself in an adult world. But something else, too: I’d been wrong about Robert. That his existence had no bearing on mine.

This intrigued me. Beyond simple gratitude for his being in the right place at the right time, for his intervention in what might have been disastrous, I began to entertain thoughts it had been more than coincidence. It seemed almost mad, but I couldn’t banish the notion that something bigger than both of us had steered the situation, bringing us both to a place where we couldn’t avoid each other.

I saw my prayers had reached the appropriate God when Robert returned to our house the next week safe and sound, his jaw nicely healed from the imprint of Louie’s fist. I was in the kitchen, sent by my mother to inquire whether Cora was ready to serve lunch, when a rap at the back door startled me. I turned. The window framed Robert’s face and close-cropped head. Heat rushed to my face. I ducked my chin against my chest as Cora hurried to the door.

“Excuse me, Miss Isabelle, while I let my son in. Tell your momma luncheon will be served right on the nose at noon—like I told her this morning.” She smirked. We had an unspoken arrangement: We both agreed Mother was fussy, and Cora trusted me to keep her facetiousness to myself. When she waved Robert in, I knew he hadn’t seen me through the window. His neck seemed to flush to a deeper shade of brown, and his prominent cheekbones turned even darker. I remained motionless, like a waiting chess piece on our kitchen’s checkered tiles. Cora studied each of us with puzzled eyes, and I knew then Robert had kept my misadventure and his subsequent rescue a secret. Her voice, full of quiet authority, jolted me into motion. “You run along now, Miss Isabelle. Your momma will worry herself if you don’t tell her what I said.”

“Thank you, Cora. I’ll tell Mother,” I said, then turned to Robert. “Hello, Robert,” I said, but I stumbled over the easy syllables. He bobbed his head, looking everywhere but at me. I turned and fled, suddenly conscious of how I walked—my awkward gait surely exposed my jangled nerves.

“What was that about?” I heard Cora mutter as I slunk down the hall toward the parlor.

I slowed to a tiptoe and heard only a low mumble, but my best guess was that Robert said, “Nothing, Momma.” Cora harrumphed, and flatware clattered against china and the oven door creaked. I pictured her bewilderment as she transferred hot dishes to a serving tray.

Later, while she was doing the clearing up, I excused myself from the table and ducked into the kitchen again, knowing I had only a moment before she’d return with the tray. My heart raced when I found Robert still at the table, engrossed in a schoolbook splayed next to the plate Cora would have filled between trips to the dining room. He looked up, his expression changing as he discovered me in the doorway instead of his mother. His puzzled eyes questioned me, but he didn’t speak.

“You made it home without any problems?” There he sat, in obvious good health, but I didn’t know what else to say, and we couldn’t just gaze at each other indefinitely.

“It was fine. Nobody even noticed me being late—” he began.

“I was lucky. Mother never even came to check on me—”

Our words intersected, and we laughed nervously.

“I said thank you before, but Robert, I can’t tell you … I’ve replayed the possibilities time and again.…” I took a deep breath and plunged on. “You being there that night, seeing me leave town, following me—I believe it was kismet.”

After I said the word, I felt my face flush. It was a word I’d discovered in Sunday’s crossword puzzle, after I’d lain awake so long the night before. It seemed a sign my thoughts weren’t ridiculous. But I’d never heard the word uttered in everyday conversation, and now I just knew Robert would find me silly and dramatic—if he even knew what it meant. Especially if he knew what it meant.

The amusement in his eyes confirmed two things: He knew the word’s meaning, or could discern it from the context, and I was dramatic. Yet, he didn’t deny my statement, and his amusement verged on another emotion I couldn’t name, although I wanted to.

*   *   *

T
HAT SPRING,
I tracked Robert’s comings and goings from our house, at first subconsciously, then on purpose. Before long, I realized my interest had altered into something more, and I didn’t completely comprehend it. I caught myself primping in the mirror when I thought he might be around, then scolded myself for caring. What reason could I have to make myself attractive for a colored boy?

I was embarrassed on the one hand.

I was terrified on the other.

I knew if my mother ever learned about the night Robert had seen me home or if she discovered me patting my hair or biting my lips to make them brighter just as he climbed the steep driveway to our back door, she’d come unglued.

One day, I overheard her argument with a neighbor about the sundown signs. I was sitting on the stairs, sorting decks of playing cards that had been jumbled together, when their voices floated from the sitting room at the front of the house.

“What could it hurt to take down those signs, Marg?” the neighbor said. “Colored people have worked for nearly every one of us over the years. How much easier would it be if they didn’t have to hurry away before sundown? Or if we didn’t have to transport them across the city limit like we were running the Underground Railroad because we worked them late?”

My mother harrumphed. “Imagine this town if coloreds were allowed here after dark, Harriet, or—heaven forbid—permitted to live here again. Goodness, they’d probably want to go to our school. Next thing you know, their children would be mingling with ours, their boys trying to sully our girls.” I detected the shudder in her voice. She’d started out as not entirely certain but had picked up steam as she neared the end of her speech.

Nell had been sent to the kitchen for iced tea, and she emerged, carrying a tray heavy with a crystal pitcher and glasses of ice. My brother Patrick passed through the hallway as she headed toward the sitting room. He bumped up against her, causing her tray to tilt at a precarious angle, setting the iced tea to sloshing and the glasses clinking into each other. Patrick reached to steady the tray, and as he released it again, he brushed his hand against her aproned breast, leaving it there a moment as her eyes widened. His eyes dared her to react as he slowly squeezed. She flinched but didn’t make a sound.

“Nell, is that you?” my mother called. “We’d like our tea now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nell said. “Coming, ma’am.” She pushed past Patrick, her eyes averted. He spied me on the staircase, my hands frozen, clutching the aces from three different decks, and he grinned, as though I’d be amused by what I’d witnessed. I felt nauseous. Mother worried their boys would sully ours? She hadn’t seen the combined effect of terror and resignation on Nell’s face. After hearing what she’d said to the neighbor, I guessed she’d view this differently, maybe even accuse Nell of enticing Patrick.

My father would have harshly reprimanded him—except it seemed as if he’d given up trying to influence my brothers now that they were supposed to be men. As far back as I could remember, for reasons that were never quite clear to me, Jack and Patrick had emulated the other boys and men who surrounded them in our town instead of Daddy, and Mother’s lack of intervention hadn’t helped. I was the one who’d imitated my father’s behavior since I was a tiny girl, and he had always modeled respect for our household help and any colored folks with whom he interacted—for all the good it did with my brothers.

Patrick lumbered up the stairs, thwacking me on the forehead with his fingers as he passed me and kicking the cards I’d already arranged, jumbling the decks again.

But at that moment, the interest that had begun to possess me since the night Robert had walked me home became clear—an interest that might even confound my father. If my mother could read my thoughts, she’d believe an evil spirit had taken up residence in my heart—not unlike her vision of Negroes living in our small town, with all its implications.

My thoughts, not entirely platonic, gave me shivers.

*   *   *

O
NE LATE SPRING
afternoon, I was reading in the backyard, propped up against a tree, when Robert ambled up the drive. He lifted his hand when he saw me but continued walking toward the back door. My eyes began tracking the same lines of text over and over as I wondered what had brought him to our house that day. Moments later, he came out of the house and went to the garage, where my father stored his prized 1936 Buick Special. Robert backed the crimson car into the driveway. He shut off the engine, then returned to the garage, eventually emerging again with a bucket and rags.

He’d washed my father’s car plenty of times before. Daddy was proud of it and liked to keep it in top shape. He no longer trusted Jack or Patrick to do it—the few times he had, they’d done a sloppy job and damaged the immaculate surface by leaving soap spots in their hurry to move on to less menial preoccupations. Mother claimed their carelessness was only because Daddy wouldn’t allow them to drive his precious Buick, especially considering he rarely drove it himself. Shalerville was so tiny, he visited most of his patients on foot unless the weather prevented it or they lived out of town; only rarely did he take appointments in his office, which was a few blocks from home. He took turns chauffeuring my friends and me to our parties, and occasionally we’d drive across the Ohio for dinner in Cincy or take the car on a family holiday out of town, but mostly it stayed right there in the garage, shiny and awaiting its rare adventure. The boys made do driving Daddy’s old Model T, the first car he’d owned, which only ran part of the time—the reason he’d abandoned it.

But I’d begged my father to teach me to drive the Buick, and he’d actually agreed to it, claiming he’d teach me in the summer, when I sometimes accompanied him on out-of-town calls. Mother intervened. “Now, John, don’t put ideas in Isabelle’s head,” she’d said. She wouldn’t dream of getting behind the wheel, and wouldn’t hear of my doing it, either. It was unladylike. Daddy shrugged his hands, an unspoken apology, and I stomped off to sulk. But even though I’d been thrilled that Daddy almost taught me, I’d felt troubled, too. He wouldn’t allow my brothers to drive his car, but he was willing to teach me to do it; Mother wouldn’t dream of letting me drive, yet she didn’t understand my father’s adamant refusal to let the boys near his car. It seemed, sometimes, we were pawns in an unacknowledged battle between our parents. Was Mother’s permissiveness with the boys a way to get back at my father in some way for a fault I couldn’t see? I found myself studying him after that, trying to discern what he might have done to disappoint my mother. He seemed perfect to me.

Now I watched enviously while Robert walked to the outside spigot, jingling the keys in his pocket. I glanced at the back windows of the house, though I knew my mother rested every afternoon about that time. Satisfied nobody was watching, I carried my book to a lawn chair nearer the car, where I pretended to immerse myself in my story again. “Too shady over there,” I said. “I was getting a chill.”

“Yes, ma’am, it’s a nice day out, but I can see how it might be cool in the shade.” Robert filled the bucket with suds and carried it to the car, then stopped short. I recognized his dilemma almost as soon as he set the bucket on the ground. I’d glimpsed him from inside the house in the past—he usually wore only his sleeveless undershirt when he washed the car.

But usually I wasn’t there.

I could have jumped up to go inside so he could follow his usual protocol, but something inside me rebelled. I buried my nose deeper in my book, shifting away slightly so my line of vision wasn’t so direct. But instead of removing his shirt, Robert rolled his long sleeves as high as they’d go and plunged his arms into the suds. He couldn’t avoid soaking the sun-bleached fabric in the process. He wrung out the sponge and dragged it over the hood of the car, grimacing at the water stains on his sleeves.

I couldn’t help it. A giggle sneaked past my lips. I slapped my hand against my mouth.