Bliss

  “Is that your last name?” I ask her.

  She nods. “Jolene Roach. Isn’t that lovely?”

  Thelma giggles. “I would die if my last name was Roach. I would seriously die.”

  “Shut up,” Jolene says.

  “Roaches are vile, but we let Jolene hang out with us anyway,” the redhead says, hugging her friend. “For the record, I’m DeeDee.”

  “DeeDee’s daddy used to work at the paper mill, but then he made it big in property development,” Thelma says, as if this has relevance to the conversation. “Now, down to business. You eat. I’ll talk.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. I obediently take a bite of my fried chicken, which is out of this world. I’m not missing Mom’s unleavened bread one bit.

  Thelma directs my attention to the entrance of the cafeteria.

  “That’s Lacy,” she says of a slender girl talking to a broad-shouldered guy in a letter jacket. “She got her ears pierced over the summer. Her mother made her take the earrings out, but if you look closely you can see the holes.”

  I look closely. I see no holes.

  “And that’s Burt, her boyfriend. So dreamy. He’s the captain of the football team, of course.”

  The black boy I saw earlier strolls in—alone, I notice—and Thelma gets animated. “Ooh, look, there’s Lawrence. He’s here on scholarship. Everybody absolutely adores him.”

  DeeDee jumps in, saying, “Other colored kids? At public schools? My cousin says you have to do whatever they say. Like if they say, ‘Give me your lunch money,’ you give them your lunch money, no questions asked.”

  “They’re rough,” Jolene agrees softly. “Even the girls.”

  “Especially the girls!” DeeDee says. “My parents sent me here just so I wouldn’t have to go to Northside, now that the coloreds are being bused in. Did you know all the Northside girls have ulcers?”

  “They do?” I say. “Why?”

  “Because they’re so scared. Of the colored girls. And they have bladder infections because they’re too afraid to use the school bathrooms.”

  I glance from DeeDee to Jolene to Thelma.

  “They do,” Thelma confirms. “Dr. Roberts told my mom, when she took me for my annual check-up. He said he sees so many public-school girls with ulcers and bladder infections, and it’s too bad the integrationists didn’t think of that before they stirred things up.”

  “People are happier with their own kind,” DeeDee says. “It’s just a fact of life, and I mean that for coloreds and whites.” She lifts her drumstick and tears off a bite. “If you were colored, would you want to be in a class full of whites? I don’t think so.”

  “But . . .” I’m confused. I look at the front of the cafeteria, where Lawrence waits in line. His skin is darker than anybody’s I’ve ever seen. “What about Lawrence?”

  They regard me blankly.

  “He’s different,” Thelma finally says.

  “How?”

  She looks at the other girls as if to say, Isn’t she too funny?

  “For starters, his parents are educated,” she says. “His dad even went to college, and you just don’t see that a lot.”

  “Hold on, I don’t think that’s—”

  “And he’s clean, and he dresses nice, and he’s not lazy,” Thelma continues.

  “He’s as close to being white as a Negro can be, even though he’s just about as dark as they come,” DeeDee says. She claps her hand to her mouth. “Oh my gosh, can you imagine if my father heard me say that?”

  “Usually the light-skinneds are more intelligent,” Thelma agrees. “I guess Lawrence is the exception.”

  Jolene, who’s watching my face, pulls her eyebrows together. She’s the only one who realizes I’m struggling with this, I think.

  “My daddy says most Negroes are fine folks,” she says hesitantly.

  “As long as they stay in their place,” finishes DeeDee.

  Jolene nods. “Segregation’s better for everyone. That’s why I go here too.”

  I want to like these girls, but I can’t comprehend them. Are their brains made of wool?

  “Lawrence is black,” I say.

  “It’s nicer to say ‘our colored friend,’” Thelma says.

  “Yes, but that means Crestview is integrated,” I say. I don’t want to be confrontational, but good heavens. If a black boy goes to a white school, then the school isn’t segregated.

  Thelma, DeeDee, and Jolene look puzzled. Then comprehension dawns on Thelma’s face. She giggles.

  “What?” I say.

  She falls back into teacher mode, only I sense I’ve been demoted from clueless to downright dim-witted. “Okay, see, the board of trustees always planned on Crestview being white-only,” she says. “That’s the whole reason Crestview was founded. After the public schools went mixed?”

  “After they were forced to go mixed,” DeeDee puts in.

  “But then one of the board members—”

  “Who gives heaps of money and who works with Thelma’s dad,” says DeeDee.

  “—decided it would be smarter to go on and let a few select Negroes in, just ‘cause of all the outside agitators coming to Atlanta and working people up. They didn’t want Crestview to be a target, so they handpicked Lawrence, and we all think they made a real good choice.”

  “So . . . he’s your token black person,” I say.

  “Exactly,” she says, and there’s not one ounce of embarrassment. She doesn’t realize there’s any call for embarrassment.

  “Are there more?” I ask.

  “More what?” DeeDee says.

  “Token black people.”

  “I heard that last year there was one other, a girl, but kids kept tripping her and dumping her lunch tray. She didn’t last long.” DeeDee frowns. “She had that awful name. What was it?”

  Thelma titters. “I think it was Floydzella.”

  “Eeuh,” DeeDee says, shuddering.

  My stomach is tight, and if I don’t say something, I’ll hate myself. Only, I don’t want to draw lines between me and these other girls on the very first day.

  But if I don’t stand up for what’s right, what kind of person am I?

  I clear my throat. “Before I moved, the person I was closest to—other than my mom and dad—well, she was black.” My heart thumps. “Her name’s, um, Virginia. Her two little girls are the cutest things. They shared a tent with me.”

  “You slept in a tent?” Jolene says.

  “With colored girls?” DeeDee says.

  “What was their hair like?” Thelma asks. “Did you touch it?”

  I look at her, baffled. “Um, I braided it sometimes, sure.”

  “In cornrows?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Their eyes widen.

  “Hope you washed your hands,” DeeDee says.

  “DeeDee, that’s not nice,” Jolene says. I’m figuring out that DeeDee’s the catty one, Jolene’s the nice one, and Thelma’s the boss lady, so to speak. Or at least, she wants to be. But all of them, even Jolene, are making me feel awfully uncomfortable.

  “Oh my gosh,” DeeDee says. “What if you did it to us one day! Put our hair in cornrows!”

  “DeeDee,” Jolene says.

  “Dr. Evans would flip,” Thelma says. “Oh my gosh, it would be the biggest scandal.”

  “Well, almost the biggest scandal,” DeeDee asserts. “Have you told her about the girl who died here?”

  I think of the blood voice. My drumstick’s halfway to my mouth, but I lower it. “Someone died? Here on campus?”

  “She didn’t just die,” Jolene says, making a cringing face as if apologizing for what she’s about to say. “She killed herself.”

  “She threw herself out of a window,” Thelma says, and her tone holds no apology whatsoever. “There was a lot of blood—or so the story goes.”

  “Was it in Hamilton Hall?” I ask with a sense of foreboding.

  “How’d you know?” Jolene says.

  “It’s
not like it’s a secret,” DeeDee says to her. “It’s pretty much common knowledge.”

  I put my chicken on my plate and push the plate away. “Who was she? Why did she jump out the window?”

  “No one knows,” Thelma says. “Just that obviously she wasn’t right in the mind, because she decided it would be a really super idea to fling herself headfirst out of a third-story window.”

  I wince.

  “Some people say you can see the bloodstains,” Jolene says. “Um, I never have.”

  “Nor me,” says DeeDee.

  “Me neither,” says Thelma. “If a girl really did kill herself, it was a really long time ago, back when the school was full of nuns. So maybe the blood wore off. But it’s probably just a ghost story anyway.”

  “I don’t know,” I say slowly. Can I tell these girls about the voice I heard, or will it simply brand me as more of a weirdo?

  “What?” Jolene says. “You’re thinking something, I can tell.”

  I look at her kind brown eyes and decide to risk it. She’s not the type of girl just to turn on someone for being a little different. “Well, this morning as I was—”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Thelma says, squeezing my arm. “There’s Sarah Lynn. Look!”

  Jolene and DeeDee grow as animated as Thelma, and any interest in the girl who died evaporates into thin air. They’re far more fascinated by the girl entering the cafeteria. Their reaction makes something go sour inside me, and that sourness edges out my own thoughts of the dead girl.

  “Sarah Lynn, hi!” Thelma calls.

  Sarah Lynn turns, and so do the two girls with her. Sarah Lynn smiles and lifts her hand, but there’s something fake about it, like she’s going through the motions.

  Thelma beams. “Isn’t she perfect? She’s perfect.”

  I keep my opinion to myself, because I’ve had a one-minute encounter with her, and that’s it. Less than one minute. Thirty seconds. But in those thirty seconds, no, Sarah Lynn didn’t strike me as perfect. The way she was too distracted to say hello? The way she passed me off on Thelma? I’d call that self-absorbed at best, stuck-up at worst.

  Ms. Sturgess, the government social worker assigned to me to make sure I didn’t slip through the cracks, was young and pretty too. I had an appointment scheduled with her, an “appointment I couldn’t miss,” according to the authorities, and Mom sent me into the city with a friend who was heading to a craft fair. I was excited, leaving the commune to meet this important woman who wanted to talk to me. I wore my best dress.

  But Ms. Sturgess met with me for a grand total of five minutes before closing my file and pasting on a smile.

  “Beth, would you mind terribly if we cut this short?” she said. “I can tell you’re doing just fine, and I would really love to pop over and visit my grandfather before my next case.” She arranged her delicate features into an expression of worry. “He’s getting along in age, and he’s beginning to struggle. You know how it is.”

  “Uh, sure,” I said. “No problem. But it’s Bliss, not Beth.”

  “Mmm,” she said, nodding as if I’d said something deep. “Well, thank you for understanding. And don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, anything at all.”

  I left her office thinking how nice it was that a busy career woman like Ms. Sturgess would still find time for her grandfather. Then I turned on my heel and doubled back, realizing I’d left my paperback copy of Jane Eyre in Ms. Sturgess’s waiting room. I’d just discovered the existence of the madwoman in the attic, and I was eager to read more.

  I knocked lightly on the door; no one responded. I slipped in, recovered my book, and was on my way out when I heard Ms. Sturgess in her inner office. She was laughing gaily and seemed to be talking on the phone.

  “That sounds lovely, Gail,” she said. “I can be there in ten minutes. Let’s go wild and order Pink Ladies, shall we?”

  I clutched my book. Gail wasn’t Ms. Sturgess’s grandfather, and Ms. Sturgess’s grandfather surely didn’t drink Pink Ladies. After a pause, Ms. Sturgess laughed again.

  “Oh, I did, yes,” she said. “But I sent her away. A nice kid, I’m sure, but why bother with a full assessment? We both know she’s going to end up making goat cheese and popping out babies with the first long-haired freak who comes along.”

  There was more laughter. I hurried away with flaming cheeks.

  I know that Sarah Lynn isn’t Ms. Sturgess, and if she turns out to be as great as everyone seems to think she is, then terrific. But I’m not ready to join her fan club.

  Thelma props her chin on her palm. Still gazing at Sarah Lynn, she says, “She’s going to be a Snow Princess, I just know it.”

  “Thelma, the Winter Dance isn’t for months,” DeeDee says.

  “So?” Thelma says. “Sarah Lynn’s a shoo-in. She’s nice and smart and not at all full of herself, even though she has every right to be.”

  “Um, neat,” I say, as a response seems required.

  “But don’t worry. She’s not a square, even though last year she entered the junior high science fair.”

  “She was the only girl who did,” Jolene says.

  Thelma pulls her eyes from Sarah Lynn and gets to work on her mashed potatoes. “On the weekends, she volunteers at Good Mews.”

  “Good News? What’s that?”

  “Good Mews,” Thelma repeats. “It’s a cat rescue center. I signed up to volunteer there too.”

  “You did not,” DeeDee says.

  “Well, I’m going to.”

  “She’s been saying that for months,” DeeDee tells me. “She wants to be like Sarah Lynn, only without actually having to clean out cages.”

  “I don’t like cat poo,” Thelma says.

  “Who does?” Jolene says, giggling.

  DeeDee brings the conversation back to Sarah Lynn. “Her parents have a mansion on Habersham Road that’s straight out of Southern Living, I’m not kidding. Her daddy’s filthy rich.”

  “He owns a gentleman’s country club,” Jolene says.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “And like I said, she’s not the slightest bit conceited,” Thelma says. “Everybody absolutely adores her.”

  “Just like Lawrence?” I ask.

  “What?” she says, taken off guard.

  “Do they adore her just like they adore Lawrence?”

  She regards me as if I’m certifiable. “Not ‘they.’ We. And noooo, because she’s not Lawrence. She’s Sarah Lynn.” She keeps looking at me, and I notice a dot of potato on the side of her mouth. “What a nutty thing to say. Why would you even say that?”

  “Because . . . because you said, earlier . . .” I falter, looking from face to face. Does none of them get the irony here?

  Thelma regards me earnestly. “I would do anything to be Sarah Lynn,” she says. “Any of us would.”

  “True,” Jolene says wistfully.

  I study Sarah Lynn, who’s now sitting at a table across the room with a tray of food magically in front of her. She is different from the other girls, I admit it. Not different like me, but different like . . . well, like a porcelain bird placed high on a shelf. A beautiful, fragile creature who’s been given everything she’s ever wanted and, because of this, is untouched by the coarser aspects of life. I wouldn’t be surprised to find she’s never been touched at all, to be frank.

  She holds herself with such reserve. She smiles, but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, even in the company of the girls she’s chosen to eat with. Why?

  I have no clue, and I really don’t want to spend my time wondering about it. But my brain pushes at the question anyway.

  Why are people aloof?

  Because they don’t want to let others in.

  Why don’t they want to let others in?

  Well, sometimes because they’re shy, and sometimes because they’re convinced of their own superiority.

  But those aren’t the only reasons. Sometimes it’s because they have something to hide.

  dream about the com
mune more and more infrequently. I haven’t heard from Mom and Dad, but I don’t expect to. I miss Daisy and Clementine and Flying V, and it’s weird to think that their lives are spinning on without me, just as mine is spinning along without them.

  I do hope Flying V found a way to get Clementine some penicillin. Her forehead was so hot the day we left.

  I also hope (forgive me) that the pigeons have died, so they can no longer spread the infection.

  Today marks the second full week I’ve been at Crestview, and I have to laugh at how different it is from what I expected. On Andy Griffith, everyone is decent and honest, and there are always wholesome lessons to be learned, such as don’t throw rocks at birds, or don’t underestimate a child, as a child can teach a grown-up quite a lot.

  At Crestview, it’s not that people aren’t decent and honest, necessarily, but being decent and honest seems less important than wearing someone’s class pin or gossiping about who got caught smoking in the girls’ bathroom. Also, at Crestview nobody calls kids “young’uns” or says “Well, that’s a fine howdy-do.”

  I’m okay with that. Life in Mayberry sure seems perfect, but life at Crestview is a lot more interesting.

  I wish I could tell Flying V about Crestview, and I wish I could let her know that her worries were unfounded. Thelma and Jolene and DeeDee, they’re good girls. They can be small-minded at times, but their spats are short-lived and infrequent, tending to revolve around hairstyles or fashion. It’s Thelma and DeeDee who bicker the most, so I suppose Thelma and DeeDee are the two girls Flying V saw in her vision.

  Or not. I like Jolene better than either of them, so maybe there are three girls I’m destined to be involved with? Or maybe Flying V was wrong altogether. Her premonitions have surely been wrong before, though I can’t call up an example.

  I do think I’d feel a little more while in the company of the girl—or girls—whose lives are meant to entwine with mine. Sometimes Thelma and the others just seem . . . silly. But I suppose any friendship requires time to deepen and take root.

  As far as Crestview itself goes, I still get creepy vibes at unexpected moments, especially when I’m alone. It’s as if someone, or something, is trying to figure me out. I’m pretty sure it’s the spirit of the dead girl Thelma told me about, and I’m pretty sure something terrible did indeed happen to her long ago. That tends to be why spirits stick around, to right old wrongs and all of that.