Leigh (10 page)

Bette threw her hands upward. “All right. She can write Frank. I’m just trying…” She burst into tears and Ted folded her into
his arms.

The phone rang.

Chloe walked to the wall phone and picked up. “This is the Gaston residence.”

“Grandma?” Leigh’s voice came over the line—tentative.

“
Leigh,
where are you?” Chloe felt a rush of relief.

“I’m calling from Ivy Manor. I got here about an hour ago.”

“You shouldn’t have left home like that, Leigh,” Chloe scolded. “No matter what your mother said or did. Carlyles don’t run.
They stand and fight.”

“I’m tired of fighting, Grandma. Aunt Jerusha told me to call you,” Leigh sounded defeated. “If it’s all right, I think I’d
like to stay here with her for the night. And I think she would like me to stay, too.”

“You’ll have to ask your mother.” Chloe handed the phone to Bette. “Your daughter wants permission to stay the night with
Jerusha.”

Bette took the phone as if it were a cobra. “Leigh, honey, are you all right?”

Leigh felt relieved her mother didn’t sound angry. She just didn’t have the energy to face any more of her mother’s displeasure.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry I cut school today.”

“You know the president’s been killed?” Bette’s voice was gentle.

Had the assassination overshadowed everything else—even her mother’s anger? “Yes. Please, may I stay with Aunt Jerusha tonight?
I don’t want to have to walk back to town.”

“That’s fine,” Bette agreed. “Call tomorrow and we’ll make plans for you to come home.”

“Okay.” Leigh paused and then guilt made her say, “I love you, Mom.” Then she waited for more scolding. Whenever she showed
any contrition, her mother always followed it with the “you are such an ungrateful daughter” lecture.

“I love you, too, honey.”

Surprised that the lecture didn’t come, Leigh hung up and walked into the large country kitchen. She opened the refrigerator
door and the phone rang.

Oh, great. What now}
She hurried back into the hall and picked up. “Hello?”

“Hello, this is Frank Three. Is that you, Mrs. McCaslin? Could someone ask my great-grandmother to—”

Leigh heart stuttered. “Frank, it’s me, Leigh.”

“Leigh.
Leigh?
What are you doing there?”

“I ran away today and came here.” Leigh held onto the phone as if it were an extension of Frank. “My mother found your letters
to me.”

“And you’ve been forbidden to write me again.” He sounded disgusted but not at all surprised. “I knew that
would happen. I’ve been waiting for it to happen. I’m sorry for putting you—”

“It was my decision to write you.” Leigh made her shaky voice firm. She recalled his large black eyes and thick black lashes.
“I could have just kept your first letter and left it at that. I wanted to write to you. I still do.”

“I’m too old for you, and you’re white and I’m black,” Frank spoke the words like a familiar litany, “even if this is the
1960s,
not the
1860s.”

Fear nearly choked her. “Frank, we can’t let… nonsense like that spoil our friendship.”

“This isn’t friendship. We know that. You’re so sweet, so innocent, so passionate about life. You attract me like no other
girl ever has.”

His words went through Leigh like a lightning bolt.

“And I shouldn’t have said that, either.” Frank sounded disgusted. “I won’t write you again, Leigh. I’m… sorry.”

“Frank,” Leigh clung to hope, “isn’t it possible for a white girl and a black man to be friends?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

She felt her throat tightening. “Frank, I—”

“Please tell my great-grandmother,” he interrupted, “that I called to see how she was in light of the president’s assassination
and tell her I’ll write her soon. Good-bye, Leigh.” The line went dead.

Shaken, stinging, yet faintly relieved, Leigh returned the receiver to its cradle and made her way back into the kitchen to
get on with making Aunt Jerusha a snack. As she worked and pondered the days’ events, a line from a Langston Hughes poem about
hope came to mind: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

Leigh felt hemmed in on all sides, trapped, smothered.
My mother’s spoiled it all.

* * *

A week later, Leigh sat on the bed in Mary Beth’s large turquoise-blue room. It was raining outside, and the leaves and branches
from an old oak outside the window kept dragging over the glass, adding a creepy haunted-house quality to the atmosphere of
the sleepover.

“So what’s wrong, Leigh?” Cherise asked. She sat near Leigh on the bed in a pink-flowered flannel nightgown.

Leigh’s spirits had been at low ebb since President Kennedy’s assassination and Frank’s good-bye call. “What?”

“You’ve been miserable all this week.” Mary Beth chipped in from where she sat cross-legged in blue pajamas on the floor.
“Is it because of the assassination?”

Leigh—to her horror—burst into tears.

Mary Beth leaped up and perched beside Leigh. “What is it?”

“You can trust us,” Cherise said, patting Leigh’s shoulder. “We won’t tell anything to anyone.”

Leigh wiped her wet face with her fingers. She had held it all in. Now, evidently, she wasn’t going to be able to go on without
trusting someone. “You promise?”

Mary Beth raised her hand as if she were taking an oath. “On my honor.”

Cherise nodded. “Come on. Is it a boy?”

“It’s a man. His name is Frank Dawson III.” Each word dragged at Leigh’s mood. “He’s in Officer’s Candidate School.”

“He’s in the army?” Mary Beth breathed in, looking excited.

Leigh again wished she’d been strong enough to hold it all in.

“How’d you meet him?” Cherise asked, looking wary.

“At my grandmother’s this summer. Our grandmothers
grew up together.” She looked into Cherise’s pensive face. “He’s Negro.”

“Negro?” Mary Beth echoed. “That’s why you asked us what we thought of interracial dating.” She nearly bounced with excitement.

Leigh frowned. “We’re not dating.”
We’ll never have the chance. “
We’re just friends, but I knew what my mother would say if I let her know we were writing to each other.”

“You’ve been forbidden to write him ever again,” Cherise inserted, nodding knowingly.

Leigh gave a half smile. “At first, but then it got weird and my mom said I could write him. But when I told him this, he
said he shouldn’t have written me and that he wouldn’t anymore. That we couldn’t be just friends.”

“Ah.” Cherise raised her chin.

“Well, if you understand this, explain it to me,” Leigh said, feeling out of sorts.

“He’s older than you, isn’t he? He’d have to be in order to be in service.”

Leigh nodded. “He’s twenty-two.”

“He’s twenty-two,” Mary Beth repeated reverently.

“He’s trying to protect you,” Cherise said. “He knows that no one will believe a man and girl can just be friends—especially
not when one is white and one is black.”

“What are they protecting me from?” Leigh asked, knowing she wasn’t being completely honest.

Cherise looked down her nose at Leigh. “Don’t give me the naive act. You know exactly what kind of trouble. He might not be
lynched these days, but if you went out with him…” Cherise shook her head and gave Leigh another knowing look.

“So that means you think I shouldn’t write him again.”
Leigh lifted her chin. “We should just bow to prejudice and I should just let it… him go?”

Cherise looked as if she were mulling this over. She propped her chin on one hand. Mary Beth sat like a hopeful puppy, waiting
for a treat. With her forefinger, Leigh traced the fancy stitching on Mary Beth’s turquoise satin quilt.

“Why couldn’t we all three write him a letter together?” Cherise grinned suddenly. “I mean, then it’s not just a twosome.
It’s three girls writing a soldier who will someday defend our country.”

“That’s right.” Mary Beth’s head bobbed. “It would be patriotic.”

Leigh did not like this suggestion, but what could she say? “I want Frank all to myself”? Impossible. “Okay,” she agreed reluctantly.

Mary Beth jumped up, went to her desk, and snatched up a clipboard and a sheet of stationery. “What’s his name?”

“Frank,” Leigh said.

“Dear Frank,” Mary Beth began writing, “I’m one of Leigh’s friends, Mary Beth.” She proceeded to explain who she was and what
they’d decided and then handed the clipboard to Cherise who took it and wrote her own introduction. Finally, the clipboard
came to Leigh. There was much she wanted to say, but she limited herself to an explanation of why the three would be writing
him: “So that no one can say it’s a boy-girl thing.” Leigh wrote a few more lines and then Mary Beth folded the letter and
asked Leigh to address the envelope.

“This is so cool,” Mary Beth said.

Leigh tried not to look unhappy. She glanced at Cherise, wondering why the other girl had proposed this. Of course, no one
would be upset with Cherise for writing to Frank. But then Leigh felt small for thinking that. A pretty girl like
Cherise wouldn’t have any trouble finding guys to date. And her idea would make it possible for Leigh to keep somewhat in
touch with Frank.

Leigh didn’t want to examine how desperately she wanted to keep this channel open. Neither did she want to delve into exactly
what her feelings for Frank were.
We can only be friends. That’s what he wants.
Once again, she thought of Aunt Jerusha and how she’d said Frank’s mother had married Frank Two just to be… what? Different?
And that she’d left Frank Three to be raised by Minnie.
No wonder he doesn’t trust me. I’m white.

T
he organist played “Pomp and Circumstance.” In a black cap and gown, Leigh walked very straight down the aisle and up to the
row of seats on the platform reserved for the graduates. In the crowd, she glimpsed the top of Frank’s head among the proud
parents and relatives.
He came.

L
eigh made herself continue marching as the nuns had rehearsed them to do over and over on the day before. But her heart had
begun singing and she couldn’t stop it. Maybe today she’d be able to reconnect with Frank, get back to the way they were that
night he’d driven her home from Dr. King’s march two years ago.

She joined the two rows of black-garbed graduates on the platform. Mary Beth sat in the row ahead of Leigh, but Cherise sat
opposite them among the audience. She wouldn’t graduate until next year, but she’d come to see her friends cross the stage.

The three of them had decided to take a chance and invite Frank. Over the past two years, the trio had continued to correspond
with Frank, but only three or four times a year. Frank always took his time replying to their letters.

Leigh wondered if he stretched out the intervals between letters so she would believe he’d lost interest in her. Still, she’d
treasured the words he blurted out that awful day she’d run away to Ivy Manor and President Kennedy had been assassinated.
Frank had said, “You attract me like no other girl ever
has.” But then he’d said he wouldn’t write anymore and had hung up.

In the intervening years since the last time she’d seen Frank, Leigh had begun dating on and off. Her mother had backed off,
for some unexplained reason. As long as Leigh got good grades and introduced the young man to the family before going out,
Leigh had her freedom. But it was a hollow victory. She’d won her liberty on November 22, 1963, but she’d lost the reason
she’d wanted that independence.

The principal, Sister Maria, was peering through thick lenses, reading her welcome to the assembled friends and families.
Leigh was so happy that her days at St. Agnes were ending today and that everything, anything seemed possible. Today, Leigh
would find a way to let Frank know she still cared about him, but that she would never do anything that would cause him harm.
Somehow it seemed very important to tell him this, to put it into words so that the awful gulf between them could be bridged.
It felt like a debt she owed him.

At the end of the welcome, the organist switched to Bach’s “Ode to Joy” and Leigh felt the awesome significance of the day.
Today, childhood ended and adult life began.

Now, the black-and-red-robed monsignor stepped to the front of the platform and bowed his head to give the invocation. Leigh
started to lower her head, but then she decided to take the opportunity to look over the bent heads and scan the audience.
Minnie and Frank were the only dark faces in the crowd except for Cherise and her mother, of course, who sat nearer the front.
In dress uniform, Frank was sitting beside his grandmother Minnie. Grandma Chloe sat on Minnie’s other side. Beside Grandma
Chloe, Grandpa Roarke, her parents, and then Dory sat in the row along with Grandma Sinclair—all in their Sunday best. Her
mother kept frowning at
Frank. But Leigh refused to let her mother spoil this, her graduation day.