“For heaven’s sake,” Phoebe said. “You never said a word.” Both of the women stared at Jeff.
“From the marriage?” Willa said.
“Oh, yes,” Melody said. “I had to pick him up at the airport, and I was late and so worried — I can’t tell you.” She pressed her hand over her heart. “Talk about anxiety.”
Melody did not wear a wedding ring, Jeff noticed, but she wore two silver rings with pieces of turquoise set in them, on one hand. On the other hand she wore a big ring with a dark red stone in it and a plain pearl ring. Her fingers were delicate.
“We’d better get going on this, if we want to do a mailing tomorrow. Jeffie will help, won’t you? It’s women’s lib material,” she teased.
“Sure,” Jeff said. “It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
Melody’s laugh floated over the table. “But it will, Jeffie, it will. You just wait.”
They folded the letters into envelopes. This was the second of five mailings, “and we’ve got all the facts and figures,” Melody said, her hands working.
“For all the good it does,” Phoebe said. “I don’t know, sometimes I think women just don’t care.”
“What do you expect?” Melody asked, “when we’ve all been brought up to get married and let a man support us.”
“Well, it serves them right,” Willa said. “Sometimes I think I’ll do just that, it would certainly be easier than — earning the money and keeping the house too. Especially when I think of the men who earn more than I do and don’t work as hard. Or as well. It’s just what they deserve, some woman hanging like a leech off them. Then they complain about women.”
“The trouble with that,” Melody said, her voice serious and sad, “is that it’s bad for you. Bad for women to do that, bad for themselves, because it just perpetuates things. We have to fight for our self-respect, don’t we?”
The other two women nodded in agreement.
“And if we don’t do something,” Melody went on, “if people like us don’t try to do something to change it — then we’re contributing to it. If you think about it, we are. Why, I wouldn’t take a job working for a man for — all the tea in China.”
“Yes, but you’ve got family to live with,” Willa told her.
“And an ex-husband,” Phoebe said.
“My goodness, you don’t think I’d take a penny from him,” Jeff’s mother said, angry. “I’m insulted. Yes, insulted that you’d think that and then work with me on this campaign. Why, I have more self-respect than that. And so should you.”
They apologized, and after a few minutes Melody’s voice resumed its ordinary tones, lazy, full of subdued laughter. Jeff relaxed.
It was late when they left, the streets deserted, most of the little houses dark. They got back onto the expressway and drove for several miles. Melody yawned and asked Jeff how he had liked the two women. He said he had liked them all right. “They’re so young,” she said, “barely over twenty, both of them. It’s good for the young women to learn from the beginning the fight they’ll have to make if they’re not going to be taken advantage of. It’s worse here in the South,” she said, “‘it’s much worse.”
“I guess so,” Jeff agreed.
Sleep hung on his eyelids and pulled at his shoulders. He barely noticed when his mother parked the car in front of a tall house, he noticed only that he stumbled on uneven bricks as they walked to the front door. Inside, she led him up a broad staircase and opened a door for him, with her finger on her lips. “We don’t want to wake them up, they sleep lightly,” she said. “Oh Jeffie, I’m so happy to have you here with me. Sleep well. Until the morning,” she said softly, and kissed him on the forehead.
Jeff peeled off his clothes and stripped back the spread from the bed before lying down on it in just his underpants. He was too tired to look for his pajamas, too tired to see where he should put his clothes away. He turned off the bedside light and lay dazzled and bemused in the darkness before slipping into sleep.
He woke early, but without any sense of strangeness. His room — he sat up in the bed and looked around him — was large and square, airy. All four windows were open, and the gauzy curtains hung still in the motionless air. He heard, beyond the silence of the house around him, an occasional motor, an occasional bird, no human voices. He had to go to the bathroom — badly — but he didn’t know where it was. He sat up and curled his legs underneath him.
His bed had four tall posts: four fluted, slender poles, each with an acorn carved at its tip. The walls of the room were white, faded to a kind of pearly color, the high ceiling had cracks running along it, the floor was broad boards of wood. A dresser stood next to one bare wall, with a mirror set on it and a large, dark wood wardrobe beside it. Under the windows on one wall stood a little writing table, with a chair pulled up to it. Jeff’s bed was placed between two windows. He saw only one door. He really had to go to the bathroom; he hadn’t been since he was on the plane.
Jeff got out of bed and unpacked his bag, hanging his trousers and dress shirts up carefully in the wardrobe. He refolded his underpants and T-shirts into the drawers of the dresser and made neat piles of his jeans and shorts. He placed his brush and comb on the dresser top, putting his toothpaste and toothbrush down beside them. He selected the drawer he would use for soiled clothing, dropped yesterday’s clothes into it, and dressed in flannels and a shirt. He wondered how early it was and where the bathroom was.
He went to a window and looked out, over little patches of bright flower gardens and bright green lawns to the backs of three other sleeping houses. The air hung moist and cool around him; it came sweet and warm into his lungs. Very early, he guessed. Two of the houses were brick, all of them had a second story veranda, and he wondered if he might push back the screen and pee out the window. Of course he couldn’t do that, and he wouldn’t, but the idea made him smile.
He forced himself to open the door of his room. His bare feet made no noise on the wooden floor of the half-lit hall. On one long wall, tall lace-curtained windows and two lace-curtained french doors opened onto a veranda. His room was at the far end. The broad staircase they had ascended the night before was at the center, where it turned to mount up another flight. There were two doors on his half of the hall and two on the far half.
One of them had to be a bathroom. Jeff stood, trying to decide which it might be. He thought the second door on his side of the stairs was closer to the staircase than the second door on the far side, which made him guess that was the bathroom. The closeness might mean a smaller room. If he was wrong, if, for instance, it was his mother’s bedroom, how would she feel if he opened the door and woke her up? Or, worse, her family’s bedroom door, some total stranger. Jeff silently argued with himself that perhaps he didn’t have to go to the bathroom after all, but he did, and badly. He opened the door next to his, gently turning the white porcelain handle, gently pushing the heavy door inwards. It was — he saw with a rush of relief that brought tears to his eyes and was immediately dominated by intense pressure on his bladder — a bathroom.
While he was there he washed his face in a quiet trickle of water. He would have liked to take a bath in the long tub, but decided he ought not to. He rubbed cold water over his teeth with a forefinger, until they squeaked, because he had forgotten to bring his toothbrush and toothpaste. Then he returned to his own room.
There he put on socks and shoes, brushed his hair, made the bed and sat down on it. Except for the items on the top of the dresser, nobody would know he was there. He hadn’t disturbed anything. The light in the room grew brighter as the sun moved up the sky, the sounds outside the window grew louder and more frequent. An odor of bacon rose into his room from somewhere below. He heard footsteps on the stairs. The temperature in his room mounted. He sat with his hands in his lap.
After a while the door of his room burst open. “What are you doing?” Melody asked him. “We’ve all eaten, why don’t you come down?”
Jeff looked a
t her. She wore her hair in one thick braid down her back, she wore sandals on her feet and a pink sundress. Her eyes looked cross, and her pink mouth was not smiling. “Just like your father, come on down, Jeffie. Gambo wants to meet you, we’ve all been waiting. Honestly. You goose.” She smiled at him then and held out her hand. Jeff hurried to take it and hold it. “Nobody will eat you.” She smiled into his eyes. Her perfume was fresher than the early morning air had been, sweeter.
They descended the broad staircase, and she led him into a dining room where a white-haired woman with liquid brown eyes and loops of pearls over the bodice of her lacy blouse stared at him down the length of the table. On either side of her sat two aged women, who also stared at him. They all had breakfast plates in front of them stained with egg yolk.
Melody pulled Jeff down the length of the table. “Gambo? He was awake and dressed. He didn’t know what to do, I guess. This is my little boy, Jefferson Greene. Jeffie, this is Gambo, my grandmother. It’s about time you two met,” she said, stepping back.
Jeff smiled politely. “Hello,” he said. “It’s very nice of you to let me come and visit.”
She looked up at him, and he was alarmed to see all the sentiment in her eyes. “You may kiss me,” she said, and he bent to kiss her cheek. “Sit there” — she waved him to the seat opposite her — “since you’re the man of the house. You must be hungry.”
Jeff sat. Melody left the room to get him some breakfast. The table was covered with a white linen cloth. A china bowl in which pink camellias floated decorated the center. A long-stemmed glass of ice water was set at Jeff’s place and heavy silver utensils. Melody came back in with a plate for him and a glass of orange juice and a miniature rack where two slices of toast seemed to stand at attention. She sat at a fifth chair, beside one of the two aged women, a place where there was no silver or napkin set out. “Gambo is my mother’s mother,” she told Jeff. “Go ahead and eat, before the eggs get cold. And this” — she indicated the woman beside her, who twittered words Jeff couldn’t hear but seemed to be smiling at him — “is Aunt Booty and that” — the woman on the opposite side, who ducked her head in a nervous gesture — “is Aunt Dodo, and that is all the family.”
Jeff smiled and nodded and started to eat. Gambo, then, would be his great-grandmother. She didn’t look old enough to be a great-grandmother. Her hair was thick and healthy looking, her skin wrinkled but not with the same crepey look that the aunts’ faces had, her eyes seemed lively and interested as she stared at him. The other two wore sweaters, even in the warmth of the room, and peered at him through glasses as if even then they couldn’t really see him.
He ate two fried eggs, six slices of bacon, and fried potatoes. Melody reached out and took a piece of toast, buttered it, and put it on his plate for him. A white-haired black woman came into the room to pour coffee into three cups. His mother got up and followed her out of the room, to return with her own cup of coffee. Jeff guessed Melody had eaten breakfast in the kitchen.
When he put his fork down on the empty plate, his mother asked him, “Had enough?” She had watched him eat, as if she too were enjoying every mouthful.
“And what are you two children going to do today?” Gambo asked.
“I’d like to show Jeffie Charleston,” Melody answered. “And get to know him again.”
“That’s all right,” Gambo said. “We’ll talk later then, Jefferson. After all, I have some rights in you too, you’re the last of my line, and I expect you know very little of your family. Tell me, is that correct?”
Her voice was soft, low, and slow. Jeff nodded his head.
“I’m very glad to see you here in my house, at last,” Gambo said. “Except for — I don’t like to say critical things but — and at the breakfast table too, but — a gentleman” — she looked at him seriously down the length of the table — “always lowers the toilet seat. After,” she added, coughing gently into her napkin, rising from the table before Jeff had time to answer.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said as she approached him.
“We all make mistakes.” She smiled down at him and reached out one hand to touch the top of his head. She wore a thin wedding band and a big diamond on that hand. Her hand was gentle as a bird’s wing on Jeff’s hair. “I suspect nobody ever taught you any better.” She slid her hand under Jeff’s chin and lifted his face to study it. “He’s a handsome boy, Melody; he has the Boudrault look to him.”
“Yes,” Jeff’s mother said, pride in her voice. The two women looked at each other over the top of Jeff’s head. He knew he had done something right, and he was glad for Melody’s sake.
“Ready to go outside?” Melody asked him. “Don’t you want to see my old hometown?”
Jeff jumped up from his seat, said a general farewell, and followed his mother to the front door, where she awaited him, a broad-brimmed straw hat on her head. The streamers, like the flowers on her sundress, were pink. She took his arm as they stepped outside.
The air was moist and warm, filled with sunlight. Melody led him down a narrow brick path, bounded by Gambo’s house on one side and a tall whitewashed wall on the other, and into the street. They turned toward the sun and walked. The street was quiet, the houses — many of them, like Gambo’s, set sideways to the street — tall; their lawns were hidden behind walls. But the gates were left open and Jeff caught glimpses of tall trees with broad shiny leaves, hedges of azaleas, beds of rosebushes, and white wrought-iron furniture. His stride matched his mother’s, and they moved slowly down the shady sidewalk. The street — with those courtyard-like lawns and narrow alleys leading off unexpectedly, with the houses opulent even when they had fallen into disrepair, with the sun-drenched air — the street seemed foreign to Jeff, ancient and mysterious. He looked up at the shuttered first-floor windows and wondered about the people who lived in those houses.
They walked down to a broad park at the end of a tip of land. This park was ringed with trees, crossed by sidewalks, circled by a four-lane road. They passed a monument to the Civil War dead. “This is Battery Park,” Melody told him, “and this whole section is called the Battery; it’s the heart of the city. But you’ll get more than enough history from Gambo.” She laughed and her smile poured into Jeff’s eyes. They walked along one end of the park, ran across the road, and climbed a set of cement steps to an elevated walkway that ran along the harbor. “That’s the Ashley River coming in,” Melody said, “and over there” — she walked in that direction — “is the Cooper. You can see Fort Sumter.” She stood still and pointed. Jeff looked obediently to where he could see a brief, dark line on the horizon. They continued walking at a lazy pace, Melody’s hand tucked under his forearm. At the end of the walkway they leaned against the railing and looked out over the water. Here, a breeze stirred, blowing down from the land across the river’s mouth. “What do you think?” Melody asked Jeff.
He looked at her profile and couldn’t find words.
“You must think something,” she insisted. Her mouth curved up into a smile.
“Beautiful,” Jeff said. He was about to say more when she interrupted him.
“That’s Aunt Booty’s name, or rather Belle is, but when my mother was little she called her Booty, from Beauty and the Beast, and it stuck. It’s crazy, isn’t it? There is something crazy about the South, you know that, don’t you?”
“No,” Jeff said.
“The land of lost causes,” his mother said. “But what I really wanted was for you to look at the river here.”
Jeff looked down and across to where what seemed to be an aircraft carrier was moored, up river. “Is that an aircraft carrier?” he asked.
“Boys.” Melody sighed. “Yes, there’s a big naval base, carriers and nuclear subs go out of Charleston. I hope you don’t want me to take you over the boats; I hope you don’t expect that.”
“No,” Jeff said. He didn’t expect anything.
“What I wanted you to see was the water — see how green it is? You know
what that means. There are factories, refineries, too, up river, and they’ve killed the river. Killed it,” she repeated. “It used to be you could fish in this river, and it ran brown with mud, and turtles stuck their heads up, so many that they looked like grass. Herons lived in the marshes, crabs and clams. Not any more,” she said. “I don’t know whether to get angry or just weep. And I’ll tell you something else; the Chesapeake Bay is worse.” She turned to face him. “Do you know what Captain John Smith said about the Chesapeake Bay? He said it teemed with fish, so all a man had to do was step into its water with his sword out, and fish would leap onto it and he could feast. You’ve seen it, what do you think?”
Jeff thought about the harbor at Baltimore, where tankers lined up at piers edged by high brick warehouses, and he remembered Sparrow Point, where the air was thick with industrial pollution. “It smells much worse than this,” he said.
“Only because the air’s right today,” Melody told him. “When the wind comes down from the refineries and plants, it stinks — no, it really stinks. But you’re right, things are better down here, and do you know why? Because it’s a poor country, the South. Poverty may save it — that’s ironic, don’t you think? The only thing that saves what’s left of the ecology down here is because we’re too poor to develop. I think, if I didn’t know about the victims of that poverty, I’d be grateful for it. But I don’t think — in the long run — anything will save us.” Her hair hung long and black in the braid down her back, gleaming in sunlight. “Let’s sit down in the shade,” Melody said.
She led him back down the steps and across the street and across the park to a bench facing the row of houses that faced out over the harbor. These were mansions, with verandas on all three floors, with curved staircases leading up to their broad front doors. They were the kinds of houses that might welcome women in hoop skirts and gentlemen in tall boots. The ancient trees around them were twisted, broad-branched, and hung with spanish moss.