The Improper Life of Bezillia Grove (16 page)

Mother thought I was only missing my father. So she kept encouraging me to call my friends—to go to movies and parties and sleepovers—I guess thinking a busy social calendar would put an end to a teenage girl’s grieving heart. But all the girls at school wanted to talk about was the Cotillion Club’s winter formal. Every senior girl of superior social standing was invited, and my classmates chatted endlessly about their silk gowns and satin shoes and the dinner party at Mary Margaret Hunt’s the night before the dance. I wanted to be like that for once, to not care about anyone or anything other than my next date to the big event. But I regretfully declined the invitation, knowing good and well that Mrs. Hunt had only included my name on the guest list out of some sense of guilt or repentance.

So instead of looking for party dresses, I started poring over college catalogs, looking for schools in faraway places like California and Vermont, schools like Pomona and Middlebury, schools that I knew absolutely nothing about except that their catalogs pictured happy coeds wearing lightweight cottons or heavy woolens. Unfortunately, unlike Uncle Thad, my mother, who really knew very little about going to college other than what she had picked up working as a salesclerk at the Vanderbilt bookstore, did not believe there was a school worth going to that was either west or north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

In fact, she suggested that there was really no need to leave home at all with a perfectly fine university like Vanderbilt only miles from my front door. I begged Uncle Thad to talk to her. And she finally relented, although only after being held hostage behind closed doors for more than an hour, tortured with arguments about what her dead husband would have wanted for his baby girl.

Mother insisted that I apply to Sweet Briar, Hollins, and Agnes Scott. She was becoming increasingly convinced that, after four years of an all-girls’ education, four more years might be even better. And although I suspected her logic had less to do with her interest in my education than it did her concern for my acceptance into a socially prominent institution, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was right. After all, Mrs. Hunt herself was a Hollins graduate.

By spring, Mother and I took shifts waiting for the mailman. She confiscated every acceptance letter and took it to her room. She said she needed to pray over them, and she would get back to me as soon as the Lord had provided her some insight, some divine guidance of sorts. I only hoped that the Lord had taken the time to study the catalogs as carefully as I had. And then, one night at dinner, Mother made an unexpected announcement.

“Bezellia, after much thought and a lot of prayer, I think it would be best for you to go away to school. Not too far, mind you, and certainly not to California, where they seem to have lost all sense of moral decency. But you have been through a lot. I recognize that, and I do think a change of scenery would do you some good. Furthermore, I am convinced that the Blue Ridge Mountains will provide an inspiring backdrop for your academic studies, not to mention a natural reminder of the power of God, which is at work in our lives at all times. Reverend Foster agrees. So I have mailed Hollins College a deposit. They’re expecting you in late August.”

The great triumvirate—Mother, Reverend Foster, and God—had made the decision for me. I was Hollins bound. And even though I knew it was what my mother wanted, I was thrilled to be going. Mother and Adelaide both cried with excitement and took turns hugging my neck. They threw green and gold confetti all over the dining room and laughed some more. I had never seen Mother willingly make such a mess in her own house.

Maizelle poked her head into the room, and Mother motioned for her to come and join us. Maizelle disappeared for a moment on the other side of the door and then came back carrying a large bundle wrapped in yellow tissue paper and tied with a shiny white bow. She said she had been waiting to give this to me for some time now and then placed her gift before me with such solemnity and reverence that, for once in my life, I did feel like a real princess receiving some sort of royal offering.

I slowly untied the ribbon and carefully pulled the tissue away. And there, in front of me, was a brightly colored quilt, every stitch perfectly sewn with Maizelle’s own two hands, now knotted with age and wear. She said she’d started this quilt the day I went to kindergarten, holding on tight to Nathaniel’s hand. She said I didn’t want to let go, and it took the both of them just to get me in the car and convince me that everything was going to be just fine.

Scraps of my old clothes—skirts, blouses, hair ribbons—were all sewn into the patchwork. Even one of my father’s dress shirts was cut and pieced into the band. My father would always be with me, she said, pointing to the quilt’s blue-striped edge. And down in the bottom right corner, she had embroidered a deep red heart with a thin green bean stretched across it. Maizelle and I looked at each other, both of us wiping tears from our eyes. In that warm, dark, round face, I found something I had always wanted.

chapter ten

M
other helped pack my trunk and even insisted on driving to Roanoke with me. I was actually glad she came, though there were times when we rambled along for miles in silence, none of us, not even Nathaniel, knowing what to say. Of course, the moment the Cadillac passed through the heavy, iron gates of the Hollins campus, my mother bowed her head in prayer and profusely thanked the Lord for our safe arrival and her daughter’s future academic success.

The grounds were a deep, dull green, tired from the hot summer days but well kept and welcoming all the same. A few grand brick buildings nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains acted like a kind reminder that you had, in fact, come here to learn. Girls dressed in Bermuda shorts and cotton skirts were already swarming about the campus, trying to find their dorm rooms, greeting old friends with squeals and hugs, and kissing teary-eyed parents goodbye. I felt oddly at home in a place I had only seen in photographs.

By late afternoon, I was settled in my room in Randolph Hall. Mother insisted that Nathaniel move my bed next to the window, and I insisted that it was fine against the wall. My roommate had not yet arrived to voice any opinion or objection, so Nathaniel did as he was told. Mother felt it was very important that the morning light splash across my face. I should greet each day, she said, staring at the power of God.

Then she made my bed, something I had never seen her do. She neatly tucked the sheets and blanket underneath the mattress, then fluffed the pillows so they looked twice their size. She gently placed Maizelle’s quilt across the foot of my bed, meticulously smoothing it as if she was trying to absorb the details of my life sewn into the fabric by another mother’s hands. Even Nathaniel seemed surprised to see Mrs. Grove manage a domestic task with such resolve and capability.

Of course, when she was done, she left a Bible by my bed and instructed me to read the Scripture daily. “There are too many temptations out there, Bezellia, and you must arm yourself in the fight against the devil.”

I thanked her for everything she had done—for letting me go away to school, for driving to Roanoke, even for giving me a new Bible. My mother seemed so proud of herself that day, so proud of a job well done. We left my room arm in arm and then joined the other freshmen and their parents at a punch reception in the dormitory’s formal parlor.

And while Mother and I nibbled on carrot sticks and pimento cheese sandwiches, Nathaniel took his place by the car. He said he had packed some peanut butter crackers in the glove box and that would be enough to tide him over till later. I was not the only girl with a dark-skinned man waiting outside under a magnolia tree. Yet I imagined when Nathaniel took Samuel to Morehouse in another week or two, he would be the one nibbling on carrot sticks and dainty little sandwiches.

Finally the dorm mother stood in the center of the room and politely asked the parents to begin saying their good-byes. The hour had come for their daughters to take their first steps as young Hollins women, and surely, she said, they did not want to stand in our way. A tall, forceful woman with white hair swept tightly on top of her head, she promised to keep a watchful eye on their girls, and I think everyone believed that she would.

Mother and I walked to the car side by side, her arm tightly wrapped around my waist. We hugged and cried; apparently neither one of us had expected the good-bye to be so difficult. Even Nathaniel had tears in his eyes. He said he didn’t, but I watched him wipe his eyes with the soft white handkerchief he kept in his back pants pocket. Then I watched them both climb into the Cadillac, and suddenly I felt like that little girl going to kindergarten for the first time, wanting to grab Nathaniel’s big, strong hand and beg him not to leave me alone underneath this magnolia tree. I couldn’t take my eyes off the car as it wound its way up the long, narrow drive and back out the gate. And when the Cadillac finally disappeared on the other side of the green, grassy slope, I turned around and took a very deep breath.

My roommate was from Troutville, a small town north of Roanoke. I had imagined she would be like Ruddy’s little sister, poor and simple, but she was neither of those things. Sarah Stanton Miller was smartly dressed in a light blue pantsuit and moved her body more like a ballerina than a nervous freshman. She was the great-great-great niece, or something like that, of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and said she had come to Hollins to write. With words, she said, she was going to fight for all women who had been denied their rightful place in society as well as any other poor soul she considered in need of an authorial champion.
The Feminine Mystique
was her Bible, and she taped pictures of her aunt Lizzie, Gloria Steinem, and some woman named Betty Friedan to the back of our door. I wondered if Samuel had heard of this Betty Friedan. I wondered if my mother and Reverend Foster had known that girls like Sarah Stanton Miller went to Hollins. Surely if they had, they would have prayed a bit more diligently, waited a bit more patiently, for an answer that would have led me to a more
traditional
campus.

Sarah was nothing like the girls I had known at Miss Harding’s Preparatory School. She was interested in politics and equal rights and men like John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Norman Mailer. I’m not sure whether she wanted to make out with them, practice writing their names, or dream of their wedding day, but she loved them all the same. In fact, sometimes I wondered if Sarah really liked boys at all.

“Bezellia, have you ever done it? I mean sex. Have you ever had sex?” she asked me late one night while we were lying in our beds, our faces hidden in the room’s darkness. I told her that I had. Once.

“Did you like it?” Sarah seemed uncomfortable with her questions and asked them slowly, as if the pace eased her apprehension.

“Yes and no. It wasn’t what I expected entirely. I mean it was a little uncomfortable at first, but then again I don’t really have anything to compare it to. The best part was just being that close to someone. I guess you just can’t get any closer than that. I’m hoping the sheer pleasure of it comes with more practice. At least that’s what my cousin Cornelia says will happen. She’s had a steady boyfriend for a year now and has had sex lots of times. She even takes those birth control pills.”

I could hear Sarah breathing as if her body was slowly absorbing everything I had told her.

“I guess I don’t know if I want it that much,” she said at last. “I mean the practicing and all … for what really?”

“Maybe you’ve just got your mind on other things, bigger things, more important things,” I reassured her. “Maybe later it will seem worth it. When you’re ready.”

“Maybe.”

And that was all we ever said about boys, both preferring to keep our fantasies and our realities to ourselves. But I faithfully signed her petitions, mailed her letters to Washington, and posted her flyers from one end of campus to the other. We were, Sarah said, merely foot soldiers, sisters on the battlefield, in this fight for equality, and Gloria Steinem was our long-haired, braless leader, forging our path to liberation. Sometimes I think I did what Sarah wanted as much for Samuel as I did for myself … and my sisters on the battlefield. And although some days I felt like I was trapped in the middle of a never-ending political protest, I have to admit that I learned more from this girl from Troutville, Virginia, than I did from any of my professors who were determined to teach me the differences between Rousseau and Voltaire and Hemingway and Faulkner.

One cool, breezy evening in October, Sarah asked me to go to a lecture across campus. I begged her to let me stay in our room and study for a French test, but she said French was inconsequential to a woman who couldn’t even claim dominion over her own body. Gloria Steinem had come to Hollins, and she had brought a friend. And Sarah was, of course, determined to stake out a seat on the front row.
“Quel dommage,”
I whispered to myself and obediently followed my roommate to the chapel.

Gloria Steinem was already there, talking to young girls eager to say something smart and impressive. Sarah had taped so many pictures of her over her bed that she almost seemed like an old friend to me by now. Standing next to Ms. Steinem was a woman I didn’t recognize, a beautiful black woman with a large Afro that perfectly framed her face. Her smile was kind and accepting—even if she was surrounded by a hundred white girls chanting for change and wearing little Bobbie Brooks blouses and coordinating pleated skirts.

Back home, I knew a lot of black women. But they were all like Maizelle, maids who worked long hours for white families or who were neatly hidden in the kitchen at the country club or who came to our church on Sundays to tend to the white babies while their mothers worshipped in the sanctuary.

I remember when I was a little girl shopping downtown with my mother and we approached a black woman and her two little girls on the sidewalk. This mother, nicely dressed in a wool skirt and silk blouse, obediently moved out of the way, pulling her two daughters along with her and allowing my mother and me to pass without missing a step. I’ll never forget the expression on her face, the weary look of frustration and humiliation as she turned her head, certain not to stare at the white woman and her little girl. But this Dorothy Pitman stared right at me as I took my seat on the front row.

She had come to Hollins, she said, looking for a true humanist, for the young woman who understood that racism and sexism are inexplicably bound. She smiled and then clapped her hands to further punctuate her point, and the crowd let out a thunderous roar, as if they already knew this to be so.

“And black southern women, my friends, suffer the most,” she said and struck her hand against the wooden podium. That was it. Nine simple words. And I knew Maizelle was that black southern woman she was talking about. She had lived in that dark, cold basement for years. She had watched the crows gobble up her pound cake. She had listened to my mother call her useless and lazy. And in that moment, I felt sad, a sadness that was so deep I couldn’t tell where it stopped or started.

Sarah and I walked back to the dorm in silence. I knew I had a confession to make, a declaration of sorts. I suddenly needed to tell her about the one woman who had genuinely cared for me since the day I was born but had been forced to sleep in a cold, dark basement. I needed to tell her about the woman who had loved me like a daughter—fed me, bathed me, dressed me, listened to my stories—but would never be called
Mother
. I needed to tell her about Maizelle, but nothing came out of my mouth. We walked on in silence, my shame and guilt making every step difficult and sluggish.

A few weeks later, a letter came from my mother. I started reading it aloud, wanting to share with Sarah something about my life back in Nashville. But as I began to grasp the meaning of every word, I fell quiet. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t cry. I think I was shocked into silence as Maizelle would say. Sarah demanded to know what was wrong, and I simply pushed the crumpled letter into the palm of her hand. She began reading it out loud, and then she, too, grew silent. The letter fell to the floor, but Samuel would soon be on his way to boot camp.

He shouldn’t be going, I cried, looking to Sarah for some sort of explanation. He didn’t have to go. He was going to college. He was going to law school after that. The war he needed to fight was right here, not on the other side of the world. He had said so himself a hundred times. There had to be a mistake. College boys didn’t go to Vietnam, not even the black ones. Sarah held me in her arms, never once trying to convince me that everything was going to be just fine.

But Mother said there was no mistake. She said that Samuel never showed up at Morehouse. Instead he had driven over to Mississippi to listen to some civil rights activist who preached on and on about the young black man’s duty to fight injustice at any cost. And even though she figured all this
fighting
talk must certainly have influenced Samuel’s decision not to go back to school, she thinks that, in the end, it had more to do with events that occurred after he left the state of Mississippi.

Somewhere west of Tuscaloosa, an Alabama sheriff stopped Samuel for
speeding
. He and his two friends were pulled out of the car and forced to strip down to their underwear. Nathaniel wouldn’t say what all happened after that, but his son came back to Tennessee a changed man. He said he was angry. He said he was desperate. He said he started rambling on and on about his moral obligation to defend his brothers whose voices were never heard. Nathaniel said he wasn’t making much sense, but he never thought his son would go looking for a fight.

Apparently Samuel came home just long enough to pack his bags and tell his mama and daddy good-bye and then caught a bus to New York City. He said his voice was going to be heard and that wasn’t going to happen as long as he wasted his time marching with a preacher singing songs and promising a better day. But Uncle Sam figured out that Samuel Stephenson was no longer a student and sent him a letter, personally inviting him to come and participate in the
conflict
in Vietnam. Nathaniel said if his son was looking for a good fight, then, sadly, he had found one.

I had watched the evening news. I had seen boys my own age, who should have been playing baseball and making out with their girlfriends in the backseats of their daddies’ cars, lying dead in a rice paddy. I had seen babies and their mothers with warm brown skin and almond-shaped eyes huddled together—crying, wounded, hungry.

When my father died, I knew that people expected to find me huddled in a corner, somber and red-eyed. I could see the surprise on their faces when I wasn’t. But now I couldn’t stop crying. Only this time, I knew no one would understand the brokenness I was feeling. The handsome men and women who had put on their well-tailored black suits and had carried casseroles to my front door would not want to see these tears. So I climbed to the top of Tinker Mountain and screamed Samuel’s name for the entire world to hear. I screamed until I had no voice, and I cried until I had no strength. Then I stumbled back down the mountain not knowing whether Samuel Stephenson would be alive at the end of the day or not.