The Improper Life Of Bezellia Grove Part 8

Mother confessed that, after her dear Charles died, she had desperately tried to talk to her own daddy about the sadness she had endured for so long. And for once I wondered if her running away from home had more to do with her parents than with any heartsick boy or small country town. I even overheard Mother ask if they felt any regret for treating her the way they had, the three of them whispering in the den late one night, their voices growing louder and louder with every word spoken. Nana finally stormed out of the room just like I'd seen my own mother do at least a hundred times before.

The next morning, Pop told his only daughter that all her grieving had worn him out and he needed to get back to the lake and rest before his heart gave out for good. Before he left, though, he handed Mother an old leather-bound Bible, said it had been her grandmother's but it looked like she needed it more than he did. Mother admitted that at first she thought about throwing it at him. But instead she opened it squarely in the middle and started reading. She read for hours and then fell to her knees and found she really liked it there. With her head bent in prayer, she poured all of her hurt and grief and anger out on the one Father who, by the very nature of his job description, had to patiently listen.

For months after that, the Bible was the only book Mother ever read. And when she dared to pick up the afternoon paper, she promptly tossed the society page aside and read only Billy Graham's "My Answer" and "Hints from Heloise," one suggesting she cleanse her soul, the other her kitchen cabinets.

One morning I saw her in front of the house, sitting awkwardly behind the steering wheel of the Cadillac. I'm not really sure where she was headed, but she looked afraid, frozen in place like a block of ice. She finally s.h.i.+fted the car into reverse and pulled it back into the garage. The very same day she started redecorating the house. But this time, she said, the Lord was directing her. She was on a holy mission of sorts to make Grove Hill a haven from Satan's influence in the world, which apparently included everybody and everything from the Beatles to short skirts and go-go boots.

First she repainted the front parlor a heavenly blue, at least that's what Mother called it, but, to be honest, it looked more like the mold that grows on an old piece of cheese. Then she ordered a new rug for the library, reupholstered the sofa in the living room, bought new curtains for the kitchen, and had Nathaniel rearrange the furniture in my bedroom, even though I told her I liked it the way it was. And when she found an old Magic 8 Ball, a birthday gift from Cornelia, stuffed under my mattress, she had Nathaniel put on his heaviest work gloves and throw it away for fear that her even touching it would invite the devil into our lives.

Finally, one evening as the sun was turning a soft amber-red, Mother announced that the house was in perfect order. Then she promptly invited Reverend Foster and his wife over for Sunday lunch. She said she wanted a man of G.o.d to sit at her dining room table. Only then, she said, after we had bowed our heads and asked for the Lord's grace and protection, would the house feel truly blessed.

And while Mother was preoccupied with G.o.d, my little sister hid in her room. Mother thought nothing of it at first, a grieving daughter mourning the loss of her loving, devoted father. She just needed some time to herself, Mother said. She would snap out of it before long now. The Lord would heal her daughter's wounded heart. But when Mother found Baby Stella's head in the trash can, even she thought it might be time to call for help.

Maizelle said she knew a woman on the other side of the river who, for no more than fifty dollars, could rid Adelaide of all the evil that was haunting her, not to mention the darkness that Maizelle was absolutely certain was lurking about the stairs. Mother hesitated, as if she was genuinely considering the offer, but then thanked her and said Reverend Foster suggested she take Adelaide to Atlanta, where the medical care was surely more sophisticated. And more important, Mother added, the doctors did not belong to the Nashville Town and Country Club.

Reverend Foster came by to check on me every day while Mother was away. He said he was worried that my father's death and Adelaide's delicate condition might just be too much for one young girl to bear and thought I might need some comfort at this difficult time. His skin smelled of cheap cologne, and his yellowed teeth looked ghoulish, almost evil. He would touch my shoulder, letting his hand linger there longer than he should have. Today, he said, I looked particularly sad, and then he stroked my cheek. I tried to talk. I tried to scream. But I couldn't catch my breath. He pressed his body into mine, pus.h.i.+ng us both against the living room wall, and I felt his hand slither down my thigh.

Maizelle was in the kitchen. She said there was corn needing to be shucked. I closed my eyes and started begging G.o.d for help. He must have been listening better this time, because suddenly I felt Maizelle's body force its way between me and Reverend Foster. And in that moment, I knew I was saved.

"She don't need any comfort from you," Maizelle's voice boomed.

Reverend Foster took a step back and, with a smirk painted across his face, looked at Maizelle as if she wasn't even there. "I'd be careful what you say, old woman."

"I only answer to one man, and that's the good Lord. So I suggest you go on and get out of here, Reverend Foster, 'cause taking you out of here myself might just be the biggest thrill I've had in a long time."

Reverend Foster picked up his Bible left on the table by the front door and turned around and smiled. "G.o.d bless you both," he said and then walked out the door.

Maizelle asked me if I was all right. She said that was a man sent from the devil himself, and then she spit right there on my mother's new imported wool rug. That was all we ever said about that day. Maizelle and I never spoke of Reverend Foster again. He still came around, always wanting something from my mother, but Maizelle always made sure she was nearby.

Mother and Adelaide ended up spending three whole weeks in Atlanta, and when they returned, Mother said the best the doctors could determine was that Adelaide had suffered some sort of nervous breakdown, although Mother preferred to call it an emotional disruption. Either way, sweet little Adelaide truly believed it was her fault that our father had tumbled down the stairs, and she was punis.h.i.+ng herself since no one else was willing to do it.

The night my father died, Adelaide never took the cold medicine Maizelle had given her. She had only pretended to be asleep. When the house was quiet, she slipped out of bed and started playing with her babies, bathing them and dressing them for the night. She could have saved him, so she thought, had she not been running the water in her bathroom sink. The doctors rea.s.sured her that she had nothing to do with her father's accident, and then they doped her up on Haldol and suggested she write in a journal instead of playing with dolls. A girl who would be thirteen soon, they said, should be chatting with her girlfriends, not bathing a plastic toy.

They told Mother that there was no medical reason for her daughter's immature development and asked if Adelaide had suffered some sort of childhood trauma, other than her father's recent death. Mother said she couldn't think of anything at all but was certain that her daughter would grow out of her childish ways in time. She appreciated their care and gratefully put their prescriptions in her purse.

But after a while, Mother tossed the pills down the sink. She said she had prayed long and hard about that, too, and the Lord did not want Adelaide walking around drugged and dazed. Then she gave her daughter a notebook filled with paper and a box of new ballpoint pens. Again, Adelaide hid in her room for days, this time hunched over her desk, writing until her fingers cramped. Maizelle soaked her right hand in warm, soapy water at night and rubbed it with lotion that smelled like lilac and jasmine. Mother let Adelaide be, figuring it was better that she write till her hand hurt than that she be secretly changing Baby Stella's diaper.

Late one night, I spied Adelaide sitting in front of the fireplace. At first I thought she couldn't sleep and was just watching the light dance across the logs. But then I saw her rip a piece of paper from her notebook and throw it into the fire. She tossed her entire journal, page by page, into the flames and watched her words, her truest confessions, burn to ash.

Adelaide got a little better after that. She went back to school before Thanksgiving. Her teacher thought it might be best, given Adelaide's long absence and still improving health, that she take the full year to recuperate and repeat the eighth grade next fall. But Mother wouldn't hear of it. She said it would be an embarra.s.sment her family could not endure at this difficult time, and besides, there was nothing wrong with her daughter, and a really good teacher would be able to see that.

Not long after Christmas, Mother finally persuaded Adelaide to pack most of her babies in cardboard boxes and store them in the top of her closet. She said they would only be napping and promised to retrieve them if Adelaide heard them crying. Maizelle even made little flannel blankets for each and every one of them, hoping she could convince my sister that her babies were cozy and warm.

Maizelle did not want to touch Baby Stella, who was still in two pieces and stuffed under Adelaide's bed ever since the night my sister tore that poor doll apart. Maizelle got down on her knees and prayed for her own protection, beads of sweat pooling across her forehead as she held her breath and reached under the bed, blindly grasping for Baby Stella's head and then her body. She taped the doll back together and placed her in a cardboard box, separate from all the other dolls, and carefully hid the box in the far corner of the attic.

And as for me, I smiled and told everyone I was fine, but most days I felt like I was suffocating. I missed Samuel desperately. Some nights I fell asleep wanting him so bad that my body ached for him, and some days I felt only numb. I wondered what my mother would consider my greatest sin-having s.e.x before marriage or having s.e.x with a man of a different color. The G.o.d she talked about certainly would not have cared for either. And sometimes, I wondered if I had done something wrong. As the days went by and I didn't hear from Samuel, I became more and more convinced that I had.

I called his house a couple of times, hoping that he would answer. But when I heard his mother's voice on the other end of the telephone, I hung up, never finding the courage to tell her who I was. He'd said he loved me, but he didn't call or write. I guessed he'd changed his mind.

Maizelle told me he was transferring to Morehouse College the first of September. The president of the school had personally offered him a full academic scholars.h.i.+p. It wasn't Grambling State, but he was excited to be going all the same. And even though Atlanta was only five hours away, I knew good and well that the distance that separated us could not be measured in miles.

I thought about Ruddy too. He did call once or twice after Father died. He said he loved me. He said he sure hated the thought of living without me. But he also said he knew I wouldn't be happy packed into a little house with a prizewinning bird for an alarm clock. But if I'd be patient, he would give me everything I ever wanted. He was going to be as famous as Johnny Cash someday. I wanted to love him; it just seemed it would be so much easier in the end. But I couldn't find my way there, and I still couldn't catch my breath.

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 cla.s.smates 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 inst.i.tution, 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 s.h.i.+fts 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d-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 s.h.i.+ny 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 st.i.tch 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.

Sc.r.a.ps of my old clothes-skirts, blouses, hair ribbons-were all sewn into the patchwork. Even one of my father's dress s.h.i.+rts 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.

Mother 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d.

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 b.u.t.ter 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, gra.s.sy 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 s.e.x. Have you ever had s.e.x?" 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 s.e.x 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 rea.s.sured 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 pet.i.tions, mailed her letters to Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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 pa.s.s 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 s.e.xism 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 bas.e.m.e.nt. 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 ca.s.seroles 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.

At first, I found it hard to concentrate, thinking any minute I would get another letter or maybe even a telegram, this time tersely informing me that Samuel had been killed. And without even needing to ask, Maizelle sent me his address, a secret the two of us kept to ourselves. I wrote to Samuel, reminding him to be careful, to come home alive, but I never heard anything back. And as the days fell into months, I became more confident, or maybe foolish, in thinking that my friend, wherever he was, would find his way back to Tennessee.

And while I waited, I pretended that life was normal. And peacefully tucked there against Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, I found it was easy to think that it was. I went to cla.s.s and listened as one professor lectured about Jefferson's influence on the Declaration of Independence and another about the Pythagorean influence on Platonic philosophy. And somewhere along the way, I always found an opportunity to voice my opposition to the war, whether it was relevant to cla.s.s discussion or not. I could see my cla.s.smates roll their eyes at my persistent protest, but I didn't care. Maybe they knew I was thinking only of Samuel, and not the thousands of other boys fighting in Vietnam. But I really didn't care.

I wrote for the school newspaper and even joined a new yoga club on campus, although I didn't dare tell Mother. She would insist that this yoga was surely some kind of devil wors.h.i.+p for no other reason than what she had read about the Maharis.h.i.+ in some magazine, and would probably send Reverend Foster to bring me home straightaway now that I had learned to bend and stretch my body into awkward and unladylike poses.

I was, however, asked to join the Cotillion Club, something that I knew would please my mother immensely but that surprised me even more than Sarah, particularly given my new, more enlightened state of being. Apparently a girl's last name was still considered by some at Hollins to be one of her most important a.s.sets. And apparently my last name was still considered to be of value, although Sarah said she would be forced to find another roommate if I joined a group of girls who did nothing more than plan dances and other frivolous social outings so that we could parade ourselves in front of a bunch of salivating young men with absolutely no interest in our intellect. I told Sarah that my mother actually considered dancing to be one of life's most important talents. She rolled her eyes as if to say that I had proven her point.

Mother wrote me almost every day. She missed me terribly, she said, but knew the Lord would comfort her lonely heart. And as much as she missed me, she said Adelaide missed me even more. I wrote Mother back and suggested that my little sister come for a visit, that maybe a change of scenery would do her some good. Mother replied, offering no specific explanation, only to say that Adelaide was not able to travel at this time. I used the pay phone in the hallway outside my room and made a collect call to Uncle Thad. I needed him to tell me truthfully how everyone was doing at Grove Hill. He hesitated for a moment. And I told him if he didn't speak up soon, I was hanging up the phone and jumping on the next bus home.

He paused again and stuttered a bit but finally admitted that everyone was doing much better now, although it had been quite a difficult few weeks. He said Mother had been taking Adelaide to church on a regular basis for several months now, convinced that a perfect attendance record would somehow cure Adelaide of any of her peculiarities. But Adelaide finally told Mother she had had enough of her religion and neither she nor Reverend Foster, or even G.o.d himself, understood the pounding pain inside her head. This time Mother believed her, so she threw her in the Cadillac and took her back down to Atlanta. The doctors said Adelaide was merely screaming for attention, but they would be more than happy to admit her to a psychiatric hospital for therapeutic rehabilitation. Mother didn't care for their diagnosis much, so she brought her daughter, along with another very large bottle of pills, back home.

As soon as they returned to Grove Hill, Mother moved Maizelle upstairs, thinking it was better to have two sets of ears listening for her baby girl. Then she asked Maizelle if she still knew how to reach that voodoo witch on the other side of the river, the one who had been born and raised in New Orleans. I guess Mother was thinking that this was going to require the skill and expertise of someone more in touch with the underworld than her precious Reverend Foster.

Besides, she probably preferred he know nothing about this, even if she had convinced herself that it wouldn't really be contrary to any biblical teachings she knew if all you were wanting to do was rid your child of an evil spirit. Even Jesus had been known to do an exorcism or two. But she grew so nervous about this woman coming to her house, especially after the sky turned cloudy and dark, that she telephoned Uncle Thad at the very last minute and begged him to run over just in case they needed some masculine and, of course, discreet protection.

By the time he got to Grove Hill, not long before midnight, the cleansing ritual, as Mother preferred to call it, had already begun. Uncle Thad said the woman did in fact look like some kind of voodoo witch he had seen down in New Orleans. She was dressed in a ratty old cotton dress with a bright orange cotton cloth wrapped around her head and was comfortably settled on the living room sofa, right next to Adelaide, chanting some kind of nonsense and burning homemade candles that smelled like rotten eggs.

She kept a muslin bag filled with roots and herbs tied to her waist and told Mother to boil some water on the stove. Then she placed her hands on Adelaide's head and chanted and sang for more than an hour, filling the room with words that none of them understood. She gave Adelaide a bitter tea to drink. My little sister took one sip and promptly fell asleep. Mother screamed out loud, thinking she had gone and hired a witch to kill her baby girl.

The woman told her to hush and promised that Adelaide had been finally freed from the evil that had kept such a strong hold on her. She told Mother to put her to bed and keep a cool cloth on her head during the night. When Adelaide finally opened her eyes, a day and a half later, she said her head wasn't hurting anymore.

Adelaide did seem better, but Mother just kept trying to fix her, trying to turn her into something she was never meant to be. Maybe Mother felt guilty, or maybe she felt embarra.s.sed by her slightly awkward daughter. But either way, she never gave up trying to make Adelaide into a girl she was more comfortable knowing.

Mother continued to write. She said nothing about Samuel, only that Adelaide was always asking for me, even crying out for me in the middle of the night. I wasn't sure if that was the truth or if Mother needed me at home so desperately she was willing to say anything to get me there. She and Adelaide had certainly convinced themselves that life at Grove Hill would be better only if I was there. And by May, I found myself dreading the thought of going back home, where I would certainly be suffocated by their constant attention.

So instead of packing my trunk like the others girls excited about leaving for the summer, I found myself lying about needing to stay at Hollins. A visiting English professor, I said, had come all the way from Boston and selected me as his a.s.sistant. It was an honor, an opportunity I just couldn't forgo. He said my writing had promise. And if she would let me stay, I would even register for two additional cla.s.ses so that I might be able to graduate a full semester early. Mother wrote me a brief letter and said she hoped this was indeed a once in a lifetime opportunity. She and Adelaide would both be looking for me at the end of July.

Only a few hundred of us stayed behind for summer study; even Sarah went home. She said she was going to organize a local chapter of the National Organization for Women in Troutville. Well, she was going to try. And, to be honest, I was glad she would be gone for at least a few weeks so I could finally think about something other than equal rights and congressional legislation. Instead I took an English cla.s.s and wrote a short story about a wealthy family with an alcoholic mother and a doctor father who mysteriously died in his own home while everyone was sleeping. My professor thought it was brilliant, a rich and dark insight into the privileged American family. He gave me an A, said I should continue writing, and then asked if I'd like to join him for a cup of coffee.

Mitch.e.l.l Franklin was more of a graduate student from Boston University than a full-fledged professor. He was finis.h.i.+ng his doctorate degree in American folk literature and was spending the summer researching and teaching at Hollins. Before long, we were having coffee together every morning. And not long after that, we were meeting in his tiny apartment on the edge of campus every afternoon. He would open a bottle of wine and pour me a gla.s.s as if I was comfortable drinking the alcohol that made me feel both warm and slightly confused. We listened to Led Zeppelin and made out on the couch. And when our bodies started feeling relaxed and our heads slightly numb, Mitch.e.l.l would take my hand and lead me to his bed.

"Bezellia," he'd whisper in my ear, lying next to me with nothing but a thin, cotton sheet covering our bodies. "You are so intoxicating, like a sweet, sweet nectar on my lips," and then he'd pull himself on top of me and work his way inside. So instead of studying, I found myself wandering across campus and knocking on Mitch.e.l.l's door, every time discovering more and more about the sheer pleasure of s.e.x. He was always there, always eager to invite me in and show me to his bedroom, always willing, if only for a few hours, to take my mind off Samuel.

"Hey, Mitch.e.l.l, you in there?" I hollered late one afternoon, standing outside his apartment. I knocked again and again, banging my fist against the door until my hand started to ache. Everything about this day felt oddly the same as the one before except the stereo in his front room was playing Elton John, not Led Zeppelin. "Mitch.e.l.l, Mitch.e.l.l Franklin. Hey, it's me, Bezellia. Open up."

The door finally opened just wide enough to reveal a hint of Mitch.e.l.l's face, his bare chest, a towel wrapped around his waist. "I've been standing out here knocking. Were you in the shower or something?" But his hair was still noticeably dry.

"No."

"Didn't you hear me?" I stepped toward him, but he didn't move to the side making room for me in the doorway.

"I thought you were studying for your exam tomorrow," Mitch.e.l.l said with a blank expression smeared across his face. "You really should be, you know. It's going to be a tough one."

"I was. But I ... What's going on? Why are you just standing there all of a sudden acting like some kind of English teacher?" My voice began to tremble, and I was afraid I already knew the answer.

"Sorry, Bee. I wasn't expecting you. I made other plans today. I thought you'd be busy with finals."

"Other plans? I leave you alone for one day, and you need to make other plans?" I screeched, my voice sounding ridiculously high-pitched as a leggy brunette walked up behind Mitch.e.l.l and wrapped her arms around his waist. I tripped and stumbled as I stepped back off the front stoop. All I remember after that is the smooth sound of Elton John's voice calling after me.

"I hope you don't mind that I put down in words