“More big-name entertainment coming to the State Fair in Jackson,” the newscaster said, “but first, a civil rights protest in Jackson enters its second peaceful week.”
“Aw great,” said Dad, “just what we need, another civil rights protest.” He cut his eyes over to see Arnita’s reaction.
She smiled. “I bet you think I’m black, don’t you, Mr. Musgrove?”
He peered at her, instantly suspicious. “You saying you’re not?”
“What if I’m as white as you?” She turned on her sparkly-tiara smile. “Never mind what you think you see. Let’s just say for the moment that the whole business of me being black turns out to be a big mix-up.”
Dad folded his arms. “Uh-huh.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against black people,” she said. “In a lot of ways I think they’re superior to white people.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Dad.
“But I can’t fit in with them,” she said. “I’ve tried. I can’t do it. I seem to be the only one who understands that I’m white. Nobody sees who I really am.”
Dad said, “I don’t know what kind of nonsense you’re trying to pull. And I don’t care how light-skinned you are. From where I’m sitting you’re still black as the ace of spades.”
“Lee,” Mom said.
“Well? She’s got a smart mouth on her. I’m just giving it back.”
Mom cleared her throat. “Linda, your mother told us you might say some strange things, and for us just to pretend you’re making sense. So that’s what we’re doing. I hope you don’t mind. Now y’all need to run wash up for dinner.”
I showed Arnita the way to the bathroom — she dragged me face-first through the door, gave me a good wet open-mouthed pop! on the lips, then shoved me out again, mocking me with silent laughter as she shut the door in my face.
I pressed against it, scratching and whimpering like a dog.
“You two cut the clowning and come on,” called Jovial Dad from the dining room. “Janie, honey! Dinner is served!”
“One more page till the end of this chapter,” yelled Janie.
“I said move it! Your mother has worked her fanny off here!”
It felt odd and too fancy to dine in the dining room, on a day that was neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas. Mom had lit candles and loaded the table with her specialties: celery sticks stuffed with pimiento cheese, Shake ’n Bake pork chops, Tater Tots, home-doctored baked beans, tiny green peas.
“Would you look at this feed!” Dad said, beaming at Arnita. “Everybody eat up, or we’re gonna have to pitch it to the pigs!”
I wanted to shout at him, Quit acting jolly! Goddamn it, you are not jolly! But I just kept eating and tried not to stare at Arnita’s nipples in her sweater.
“Unbelievably delicious,” she said. “Miz Musgrove, Daniel never told me you were a gourmet cook.”
Mom fluttered fingers in the air. “Oh goodness, Lee, you hear that? Gourmet cook! No, this is just our normal everyday food. But thank you so much.” She muttered almost scornfully, “Gourmet cook!”
“If it don’t come out of a can, she don’t cook it,” Dad said. “Does that make you a gourmet?”
Mom shot him a scalding look, and actually turned her chair to face away from him. “I’d be happy to share my recipes with you, Linda. Daniel told me how much y’all liked that lemon pound cake I sent you.”
Arnita looked puzzled. I changed the subject. I could see Janie thinking Arnita was the most beautiful glamorous thing ever to appear in our house, and she was. She brought life to the table; usually we just looked at each other and chewed our food. Janie kept asking how it felt to be Prom Queen, how heavy is the tiara, do the other girls hate you? Arnita acted as if all her questions were incredibly intelligent. “You can be a queen someday too, Janie, if you start preparing now. You’re definitely going to be pretty enough.”
That was when Janie’s little crush melted into total devotion. Even Mom and Dad were being nice to Arnita, pretending to like her. What more could I ask? If I invited her over more often, maybe they could get used to her. Maybe, in time, her blackness would come to seem like no big deal. And then . . . who knows?
No. Who are you kidding? Mom and Dad? In Mississippi? Never happen.
Arnita yelped and skidded back in her chair.
A weird cackle came from down around her knees. “Whoa there, nigger gal!”
I jumped up. “Jacko, don’t sneak up on people like that! This is Linda.”
“Naw ain’t no Linda, I know who it is,” he said. “That’s ol’ nigger gal! Bout time you show up! Danum and me, we been waitin! We knowed you would come.”
Arnita’s smile froze on her face. “Why is he calling me that?”
“I’m sorry, you have to excuse Jacko,” I said. “He had polio when he was little. He lives with us now, he’s kinda —” I made my eyes do a jiggly thing to indicate a loose screw.
“Well if he keeps on calling me nigger gal,” Arnita said, “he’s gonna be missing more than his legs.”
I laughed. Even Dad had to resist a smile. Mom looked shocked. “Excuse me, Linda, Jacko is an elderly man,” she said fiercely. “He’s from out in the country. They have a different way of speaking out there. As you can see he’s very old and also he is crippled, so maybe you could be a little bit more forgiving.”
“Jacko, huh?” Arnita said. “How’d you know I was coming, Jacko?”
“Been waitin, Danum and me,” he said.
Arnita took in Jacko’s denim dress, his shriveled legs, his cowhide-covered scooter. “Are you some kind of witch? You got magic powers or something?”
He laughed. “Maybe I is.”
“I think so,” she said. “I’ve known some before, and you remind me of them.”
“Ol’ Danum just been a-pining for his nigger gal.”
“Jacko, stop saying that! God!”
Arnita said, “He’s just doing it to get me. He knows I’m as white as he is.”
“Yassum, you sho is,” said Jacko. “Snow White.”
“And he’s black, ain’t you, Jacko?”
He laughed. “Yes ma’am, I is.”
Mom said, “That’s enough! Linda, would you help me clear the dishes!” She grabbed up plates. The door to the kitchen flapped in her wake.
Mom let Arnita and me wash the dishes. Dad went to bed, worn out by the strain of being nice for that long a stretch. Janie took Arnita to her room and soon they were giggling like sisters. Mom put Jacko to bed and kissed me good night.
“She’s a very nice — she’s very nice,” Mom said. “But I’m afraid she’s not the right girl for you, Danny.”
“I know, Mom.” I didn’t know that at all, but I was not about to argue this question with her.
“The sooner you let her down easy, the better it will be.”
“Night, Mom.”
She went to her room.
I watched a few minutes of the Tonight Show, hoping Arnita would find a way to sneak out of Janie’s room. It didn’t take long to remember that Johnny Carson wasn’t as funny as he used to be. I turned off the TV and wandered yawning to the Freak Annex.
I stripped to my underwear. Being close to Arnita all evening without being able to touch her had made for a general throbbing condition, all that juice saved up for now. I snapped off my bedside lamp and slid under the covers to see about getting a handle on the problem.
A linoleum squeak from the kitchen.
Jacko was snoring in his room, beyond the partition. That was someone else in the kitchen, sidling up to my door.
Her shorty nightgown rose to reveal a flash of panties in the moonlight. My heart welled. I was hard, she was here, my God those are her panties, were we going to do IT? Were we going straight for the actual thing?
God help me. I’d never even been past second base.
Like any boy with a randy brain, I had lived for this moment and prayed that somehow I’d know what to do, my body would know how
to do it, I wouldn’t make a fool of myself. I knew you were supposed to save it for marriage but I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to marry me so if I was ever going to do it, better DO IT NOW while I had the chance here in my own skinny bed with my kissing girl, my most beautiful girl in the whole world — never mind Jacko on the other side of the wall, Mom and Dad sleeping forty feet away — oh I hope they’re all asleep —
“Daniel?” Her whisper was lighter than moonlight. “Are you awake?”
“Shhhh. What are you doing?”
“Janie fell asleep. I got lonesome.”
I mean, I had the basic idea, I knew what went into what and what to do once it was in, but who knew if everything would function as I had imagined?
When she eased down to the edge of my mattress, the heat of her hip against my leg worked all the fear up into my spine. She leaned in and kissed me. I went sproing, all the way up, springy-hard as a surfboard.
“Shhh, Jacko’s there. He can hear through the wall.”
She laid her lips on the smooth place behind my ear. “Then we won’t make a sound.”
“What do you want?” I said.
I felt her smile against my cheek. “I want to sleep with you.”
“You mean — sleep?”
“No.”
I grazed her arm with my fingers. “Now? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She kissed my ear.
“Don’t you think we should wait?”
“For what?”
“Well . . . until we get married?”
“What if I won’t marry you,” she said, “or you never ask me? What if we die young, and this was our only chance to do it?”
Oh God oh God she said IT the word came from her not just my imagination. Oh she wanted it too!
I shushed her again. The word IT was strong enough to carry through that flimsy wall. I wanted no sudden appearances from the other side of that wall.
“Maybe I should go back to Janie’s room,” she said.
“Wait. Come here.” I lifted the sheet. She slid underneath, into the warmth. I curled my arm around her.
I had enough of a bone on to make a definite impression, diagonally across the back of her thigh. She giggled and pulled away. I snuggled up to her, pressing it hard up against her so she could feel what she was asking for. What she was bringing on herself by coming to my bed in such a brazen manner.
I kissed her. Again. We kissed and kissed until our tongues felt like one animal.
She had that dusky strawberry taste, I mean this was a girl who smelled fleshy and alive like ripe fruit when you were licking her neck. Her skin was hot. She scratched her ankle with the ball of her foot. That motion brought her leg firmly up into my hot swollen crotch yes BAM we have contact, Houston we have contact! There is the white cotton of my Sears Best underwear and her white cotton panties, flimsy fabric. I am just seventeen. Overflowing with terror jubilation embarrassment pure horny goatish eagerness and this sudden fierce tenderness — this hot desire to make her pay for her boldness by treating her like the bad girl she is.
Is seventeen too young to have sex? Has Arnita ever seen a hard dick?
The sight of it didn’t seem to frighten her.
There’s a moment when your soul just floats up out of your body, up into the air over the bed looking down at yourself. I looked upon myself curled on that girl, tugging at the cotton that kept us apart, snuggling hard against her on the narrow bed, fully intending to insinuate myself into her gently because I knew it would hurt her the first time, I read that the man has to do it quick and hard to get past the barrier — but then it was so easy OH I slid in there I think I am in there, nothing stopped me — in the grip of the most marvelous velvet hand squeezing me OH man OH OH man BAM and it’s over.
That fast. I shot like a big old hot quivery cannon. Hey, I was seventeen. I managed to do IT about five seconds and then BANG BANG BANG!
I kissed her neck. We lay there sticky, breathing hard into each other’s mouth.
“Sorry,” I said. “Kinda fast, huh.”
“No — stay there, wait!”
“Shhh . . . what?”
She said, “That’s not all. We’re just getting started.”
“But I already — you know —”
“No. You can’t quit now. It’s not over yet.”
“How do you know?”
“Believe me on this,” she said.
Oh my God. She has done this before. I hadn’t considered that possibility.
Her eyes widened. “You mean — you never have? Oh Daniel, I just assumed, I mean you’re a boy —”
I slid out of her, startling myself with my wetness. Suddenly I was ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“What do you mean? We just did.”
“I’m serious, Arnita, it’s wrong. We’re too young. What if you — what if you —”
“I won’t.” Her eyes brightened with the beginnings of tears. “Damn.”
I was supposed to be seeing lightning flashes, hearing thunder and bells, glorying in the moment of losing my VIRGINITY, which is something you don’t even know you’ve had until it’s gone — now it was gone, and Arnita didn’t even have hers to lose. What was the big deal?
She groped at the foot of the bed for her panties. I felt sorry for her but I did not move.
I didn’t know what to do. The kid I used to be was gone, blown away, in his place a full-grown boy who has just learned the difference between jerking off and real sex, which is the difference between gazing up at the moon and going to the moon on an actual rocket.
“What are you guys doing?”
How long had Janie been in the doorway? — in her pajamas, outlined in the light spilling in from the kitchen, across Arnita’s bare leg and my naked condition, which I emphasized by yanking the sheet over myself. “Janie, you idiot! Go back to bed!”
She looked at us, awestruck. “What are you doing?”
Arnita tugged down her nightie as she stepped out of bed, crossed the room in a flash to put her arms around Janie. “I couldn’t sleep, sweetie. Daniel was rubbing my back.”
“God, you let him touch you?” Janie inspected me. “Don’t you know he has terminal cooties?”
“I had my cootie shot,” Arnita said. “Besides, you were no fun. We were supposed to stay up all night telling stories, but you went out like a light. Come on, let’s go back to your room.”
She was so smooth getting out of there. She didn’t even glance back at me.
I couldn’t wait to get her alone, so we could do that again.
I would do better next time. I had the hang of it now. It was easy, really. Like falling off a log. Now I’d done it, now I was a man.
Going to sleep I felt electric stars sparking out to the very ends of my fingers. I pretended not to hear Jacko chuckling behind his flimsy wall.
That delicious long moment of falling asleep was my last moment of being young. I felt a little older the next morning when I woke up, and every morning since.
15
I WORE THE MIRRORED Foster Grants that made me feel like I was Burt Reynolds in a souped-up Camaro, instead of riding shotgun to Tim in his Starlite Blue Pinto. I reached for the volume knob to crank up Billy Paul wailing “Me and Mrs. Jones.”
The song had a different flavor. Everything tasted different today — the cool-edged warmth of the air, the vanilla perfume of Tim’s dashboard air freshener. As much as it pained me to admit that Mississippi could be beautiful, the roadside was especially vivid and green today. Spanish moss picturesquely bearded the trees along the Old Raymond Road. It felt like someone had polished the window glass on the world.
“What the hell are you so happy about?” said Tim.
“What? I’m not happy.”
“Yeah, you look real miserable.”
“I like this song,” I said.
“It’s not the song, Durwood. Where is Li’l Miss Cullid Gal this morning? Did she really spe
nd the night at your house?”
“Yup. She and Mom went to town before I got up.” One taste of my family and me, and she’d fled back to the Beechams. She hadn’t even left a note.
“So you two did the fucky-fucky last night?”
Can he smell her on me? I didn’t have time for a shower. “Oh sure, yes indeed,” I scoffed. “Right there in the house under Dad’s nose! We did it like bunny rabbits, all night long.”
“Seriously,” he said. “You and her have done the dirty deed, haven’t you, Skip?”
“None of your business,” I said. “And anyway, no.”
“You lie. Come on, Skippy. I see your face.”
“You don’t see squat,” I said.
“Come on. You can tell me. Did she suck your dick?”
“Tim!”
“You get a finger up in her? Ever get that stinky finger up in her pussy?”
“Would you shut up! Jesus! You are so bizarre!”
He had this strange look on his face — his ironic smile bent into a smirk, something panicky behind the eyes. “If it was me that did it,” he said, “you’d be begging for all the intimate details, and I would gladly tell you.”
“Too bad! I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Come on, Dagwood, we talk about everything. That’s what best friends do.”
“Forget it! Jesus Christ! Sometimes you are such a pervert!”
We rode in silence for a while.
“Meeeee aaaaand Missa — Missa Jones!” he sang, a weak attempt to rally the troops.
I would not be rallied. I gave him the cold shoulder all the way to the Full Flower parking lot.
The company of Christ! was assembled in front of a big silver Greyhound bus, along with a few parents going along as chaperones for the overnight trip. We were off to a college in Itta Bena, way up in the Delta, to put on the world premiere of Eddie’s show. I loved settling into the great Scenicruiser with its rumbling diesels, free-flowing A/C, and the steely Greyhound aroma of the upholstery, so different from the smell of a school bus. Never mind what Dad said, these Baptists traveled first class.
We hadn’t been under way half an hour when we had our first big commotion — somebody slipped a chunk of ice down Eddie Smock’s shirt. His piercing shriek got the whole bus laughing, and the uproar increased as he flew up the aisle doing this wild wiggle-watusi-herky-jerky, like a drug-addled puppet.