In the Kingdom of Men (2 page)

How many times did I rouse from some nightmare, call out for my mother to save me? I might have left the trappings of my old life behind, but my grief had packed up and moved right along with me, shaped and weighted as though it had a life of its own. I woke one night so sure that the devil had found me that I ran to the cot in the kitchen, told my grandfather that I could feel
that grief lying right there beside me like a panting black dog. He lit a candle, took a vial of oil from the corner of the cupboard, made the sign of the cross on my forehead, and pressed his palms to my ears. “Demon, by the authority given to me by the Lord Jesus Christ, I command that you leave this child!” He gripped my head tighter, shook it like a gourd. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, come out of her, I command you!” He drew his hands away so quickly that the suction nearly deafened me. When I opened my eyes, I saw the tears pooling in the dark shallows of his face, his mouth arched as though that demon had leaped right out of me and into him. I went back to my bed, now cold, and wished I had never left it, had kept my hurt to myself. Silence was a lesson I learned well—how to mute my body, my voice, my heart.

That fall, my first day of school, my grandfather rode me to town on the mule because the pickup had broken down and no amount of prayer would fix it. As we approached the playground, I saw all the white children pointing and laughing until the pretty young teacher came out to scold them. If I hadn’t understood it before, I knew it then: we were different,
I
was different, not only a member of the Holy Roller church but an orphan from the south edge of town who lived where most whites wouldn’t. I slid from the mule’s broad back, kept my head down, and followed the teacher into the room, where she showed me my desk and placed a picture book in my hands. “You can read for a while,” she said kindly, and left me to lose myself in the pages even as the other students filed in and began reciting their numbers. From that point on, books became my solace, my escape. I brought them home from the library, hid them from the eyes of my grandfather, who believed that only the word of God had a place in his house, that stories outside of the scripture might lead me astray.

I completed elementary, kept growing, went with the junior high nurse to buy what my grandfather called my unmentionables—soft-cupped brassieres, panties, sanitary belts
and napkins—then stood in my bedroom, confounded by the hooks and straps, ashamed that my grandfather would no longer meet my eyes when I came in from the outhouse. From him, I learned that I was the daughter of Eve, a danger to myself, a temptation to those around me. Couldn’t wear pants, only skirts that covered my knees. Couldn’t wear makeup or jewelry to draw the attention of men. Couldn’t cut my hair, which was my veil of modesty. Couldn’t preach because Paul said so. Suffer not a woman. When revival came and the Spirit descended, the sisters who were slain fell flat on their backs, arms raised to heaven, ecstatic in their possession, and I was the one whose charge it was to hasten forward and cover their legs with the lap cloths that they themselves had sewn so that their modesty might be maintained. What would it feel like, I wondered, to give myself over so completely, to fall under such a spell? But not even the fear that I would spend my eternal life in hell brought the call that would lead me to kneel at the altar, lay myself at the feet of the Lord, and the church people noticed. I learned to pretend the conviction I did not feel, to pray with my mouth open, my eyes closed, my hands raised to heaven. I was saved—couldn’t they see? Born again. It was a lie I didn’t realize I was living, a way to survive the surly dictates of that thing called faith.

Who knows what gives rise to our sensibilities? Maybe it was some seed of resistance sown in me by my grandmother that allowed me to keep my soul to myself. Maybe it was just the way I was—
turned funny
, I heard them say. They didn’t even bother to hide their mouths. No matter the color of my skin, I was the kind of girl they watched from the corners of their eyes, the kind of girl that brought them to predictions—headed to ruin if I didn’t get my head straight, my heart right with God. I wasn’t like them, wasn’t like anybody I knew.

It was the characters in books who spoke to me, reflected some secret part of myself. When the librarian handed me
To Kill a Mockingbird
, I read it straight through, then hid it beneath my bed.
“I lost it,” I told the librarian. “I’ll work check-in and checkout during recess to pay.” She was satisfied, and so was I. It was a sin that I was jealous of and wanted to keep—the worst sin of all.

Walking home from school one afternoon, the September air thick with gray aphids,
Anne of Green Gables
open in my hands, I found a girl asleep on her sack, cotton tufting her hair. Fall harvest meant more hours in the field for the black children of South Town, the season’s sun beating down, the long, long sack trailing behind like an earthbound anchor. Maybe that was when I began to understand that, no matter how different I was, my life would never be as hard as hers. I sat at the edge of the patch and watched her for a long time, then tore away one page of the book and then another, planting them in the soil beneath her bare feet as though they might sprout like Jack’s magic beanstalk and carry her aloft, as though I were feeding the girl her dreams.

When the librarian discovered the ruined book, she said that two was too many and sent me home with a bill. That was the first time I lied outright to my grandfather. Ignoring any lessons I might have learned about false accusation, I described in detail how Tug Larson, the schoolyard bully, had knocked the novel from my hands. “He grabbed me,” I said, “and pushed me down.” I cried and showed my grandfather the bruises I had pinched on my arms to convince him how wounded I was. He grew solemn, said he would talk with the boy, but I insisted it would only make things worse, that he was already being given detention, and shouldn’t I forgive? My grandfather was placated, and I felt a surge of relief and tingling possibility. I had transgressed, might confess and be forgiven, but I had discovered something that intrigued me even more: I could lie and not be struck dead in my shoes.

I remembered my grandmother’s ways, used the last of our flour and lard to bake half a batch of sugar cookies, told my grandfather I was taking them to Sister Woody, an elderly parishioner who lived down the road, and he nodded his approval at my charity. I felt like skipping as I made my way out the door. I had no
destination, only a desire to be free. I walked an easy two miles, ate half the cookies, fed the rest to the crows, turned around, and came home happy with the news that Sister Woody’s health was improving.

I became braver, told bigger lies, and walked the farmland for hours or hid with my book in the neighbor’s barn. In gym class, I let my body have its joy, leaping and sprinting ahead of my classmates. When my teacher suggested I try out for girls’ basketball, I forged a careful note home that said I was helping clean the blackboards after school. I made the team and for the first time felt part of something, like I might be someone’s friend, running up and down the half-court and hollering back and forth like it was a normal thing for a girl to do. I skipped the communal showers, unable to imagine letting myself be seen naked, left my knee-length trunks and sleeveless top in my locker, and ran as fast as I could, hoping to beat my grandfather home. He would sit down to the dinner I made him and never say a word about my wild hair, my ruddy skin, and I believed I had fooled him until the evening he rode into town on the mule and appeared at practice still in his farm clothes, pulled out the worn Bible, and filled the gymnasium with his voice. “ ‘The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are an abomination unto the
Lord
thy God!’ ” He clapped the good book closed, pointed me to the door, and I slunk out, shamed not by my sin but by the looks of pity on the faces of my teammates. Once home, he sent me to my room and sat at the foot of my bed, studying me with intense sadness, as though he might see the workings of my deceitful soul. “I can’t let you burn in hell,” he said, and raised the leather strop. The fierceness of his whipping came up through my bones, rattled like dry seeds in my ears. After, he held me and cried. Maybe that’s why I can forgive him. He only meant to save me.

Why couldn’t I just obey? Drinking, smoking, dancing, bowling, playing cards, going to movies, wading with the Butler boys
down at the creek—all sins. To question my grandfather’s rules and the law of his God was mutiny, any plans to rebel an act of treason. Yet even with the punishment I knew was coming, I’d slide open the sash I’d waxed with paraffin, drop to the ground, and walk to Chester’s Drug, where I would sit at the end of the counter and watch the boys peacock, the girls preen while the jukebox played Elvis, Roy Orbison, the Miracles.

The only one who paid me any mind those times was Juney Clooney, a white girl too pretty for her own good, the church ladies said, but I envied her grace, the way she tipped back her soda, ponytail hanging down like a plumb bob. She would pour me a glass of her Nehi, something in her smile almost sad. Maybe I was the only one who wasn’t surprised when her place at the counter came up empty, one of the few who knew the truth of what had happened between her and Baby Buckle.

Buckle was a childlike man, rolled flesh at his neck, rounded shoulders and soft hips, waist cinched by a wide leather belt and a brass buckle the size of a saucer. He worked right there at Chester’s Drug as a delivery boy. Chester and his wife always said that Buckle showed up one Christmas Eve, abandoned as a baby on their doorstep, cold as slab marble, but rumor held he was Chester’s son by Hazel Twig, a young mixed-race woman from our side of town who cleaned the store once a week until she up and disappeared. Because that is what happened when girls got themselves in trouble. They were sent to the home for unwed mothers or simply sent away, anything to erase the family’s shame, absolve the father’s guilt.

It was Juney’s twin brother, Jules, who came stumbling into the store one day, his shotgun loaded, hollering that he’d gone home for lunch and found Juney crying. She told him that Buckle had come to make a delivery, caught her alone frying gizzards, and dragged her into the pantry. I sat stone still as the other boys piled into their pickups. They found him beneath that big walnut tree at Bowman’s Corner, asleep with his pants at his ankles. They didn’t
stop to ask, just noosed him up with his own belt, buckle splitting his mouth like a bit. It wasn’t but a few days later that I came in on Juney’s mother, confessing to my grandfather that it wasn’t Buckle who had raped her daughter but Juney’s own daddy, who told her to blame Buckle or he’d kill her and her mother too. All that Buckle did was pick the wrong tree to do his business behind. But what good would it have done for me to tell, and who would believe me? I had read the stories of courage and conviction, but sometimes the truth seemed worse than the lie. I sat quiet at the counter, kept my secrets to myself.

What I remember of high school: not the football games and dances I wasn’t allowed to attend, not overnights with the girlfriends I didn’t have, but the romances and mysteries that kept me company. My grandfather demanded from me humility, modesty, and temperance, but when I read
Little Women
,
Gone with the Wind
,
Murder on the Orient Express
, I entered into the realm of everything knowable, anything possible, if only I were smart enough, pretty enough, and brave.

In my imagination, I had traveled to that place of dark-haired princes and veiled sultanas, knew the thousand and one tales that kept Scheherazade alive, dreamed that I might do the same, weave a web of stories so enthralling that the man I loved would be spared the agony of having to kill me, but if someone had told me that I would soon be living in Arabia, I would have laughed. And no matter the number of romances I read, I never dreamed that someone like Mason McPhee would kiss me—my long skirt, those awful shoes, straw from the henhouse tasseling my socks. But Mason. Highest-scoring point guard, on full-ride scholarship to Oklahoma State, once and former prom king, the pride of Shawnee! Homecoming, the first parade of my life, Mason an honored guest riding high in a convertible Chevrolet, everyone calling his name. Only our hometown astronaut, Gordo Cooper, had a bigger crowd, and he’d orbited the Earth in a spaceship.

I wore my best wool skirt, rolled it up just a little. If my grandfather
had seen me that way, he’d have whipped me into next Sunday. I thought I might look like Rita Hayworth, auburn hair to my waist, loose and undone, and maybe I did. Maybe that’s what Mason saw. “Virginia!” He cupped his hands like a megaphone. “Ginny Mae Mitchell!” I was struck dumb, as though he were the first ever to call my name.

Here’s the truth of it: watching him smile and wave from that car, I made the decision right then. When he asked me out for a Coke, I thought, This is it, my one chance with a man like Mason McPhee. I waited until my grandfather was asleep and slid open my window, not a creak or scratch to betray me.

That Coke was the sweetest thing. I couldn’t believe I was there at the soda fountain with Mason, the other boys slapping his shoulder. The girls looked at me like they’d never seen me before. Maybe because I didn’t know what to say, Mason talked and talked. About basketball, all the hours he had practiced in back of his house, a bicycle rim bolted to a pine. How his sharecropper father would come in off the tractor, challenge him to a game of Horse, and they would play past dark, nine games, ten, until Mason’s mother called that she was feeding their dinner to the hogs. Mason always knew he would go to college and was studying prelaw, meant to be the finest public defender to come out of Pottawatomie County, maybe even a judge. He was sure that he could make a difference. He railed against the war in Vietnam and segregation, told me about the marches and protests he attended. “This world right here isn’t real,” he said, and tapped the café table. “You,” he said, resting his hand over mine, “you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. We’ve got to think bigger, do bigger things, like the Reverend King says.”