Necessary Lies (6 page)

The man and woman—Bruce and Carol—were from New York City and they were in Honolulu to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. They were garrulous and energetic and within the first three minutes of the cruise, we learned that Bruce was a stockbroker and Carol was president of the PTA. They were big fans of John Kennedy, and we talked about our hopes that he might beat Nixon in the November election. Well,
I
talked about
my
hope. Robert stayed out of that conversation, and I could tell he’d had enough of it when he abruptly said, “What have y’all done so far on the island?” The question was so out-of-the-blue that Bruce and Carol looked momentarily lost.

I picked up Robert’s cue. “We learned to surf this morning,” I said. I knew he didn’t like conversations about politics.

“Oh, isn’t that fun?” Carol said. “We did that yesterday. I was terrible at it, but Bruce was a natural.”

“Wish we had those boards at Jones Beach,” Bruce said. The hard edges of his accent grated on me.

“Tell them what we did this morning.” Carol nudged him with her elbow.

“Skin diving!” Bruce said. “I think it was the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done.”

“We snorkeled,” I said. I’d loved how one minute you were in the regular old world, but as soon as you lowered your head, you were transported to an extraordinary new universe.

“Well, this is like that, only a hundred times better,” Carol said. “You feel like you’re a fish yourself.”

“Isn’t it a bit claustrophobic?” Robert asked.

“You get over that pretty quickly,” Bruce said. “We took a lesson in a pool first. You want the name of the fella who taught us?”

“Yes,”
I said. “I’d love to try it.”

Next to me, I sensed that Robert was less than enthusiastic, but Bruce pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket and wrote down the name of the instructor. He handed the sheet of paper to Robert. “You didn’t mention what kind of business you’re in,” he said.

“I’m a physician,” Robert said, and I saw their eyes pop open. I knew how Northerners thought. They didn’t expect a Southern boy to have the brains to become a doctor.

“A pediatrician,” I added. I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell them about the time I watched him stitch together a gash on a little girl’s leg while telling her “knock-knock” jokes to keep her mind off what was happening. I wanted to talk about his compassion, how he spent one Saturday each month working for free at a clinic for poor people. But he wouldn’t want me bragging about him that way.

“Well, my, my,” Carol said.

Bruce leaned forward, elbows on his knees, so he could speak directly to Robert. “Our son has a cut on the side of his ankle that won’t heal,” he said. “Our pediatrician’s tried a few things, but nothing seems to make a difference.”

We spent the rest of our sunset cruise with Robert offering free medical advice, his handsome face tan and sincere, while Bruce and Carol hung on his every word. I nearly burst with pride that I could now call him my husband.

*   *   *

After the cruise, Robert and I had dinner on the poolside patio near our bungalow. We sat close together on one side of the table sharing an enormous pupu platter.

“I’d really like to try it,” I said. “Skin diving.” I nibbled a shrimp from the bamboo skewer in my hand.

Robert shuddered. “Seriously?”

“It’d be so beautiful.”

“Not worth the risk of drowning or rupturing a lung.”

I laughed and held a sliver of pineapple to his lips. “You’re being overly dramatic,” I said, as he took the pineapple from me and chewed it slowly.

He leaned over to kiss me, then wound a lock of my hair around his finger. “Every once in a while, I worry I’m too old for you,” he said.

“Oh, that’s silly.” The nine years between us didn’t bother me at all. I didn’t see why it should bother him.

He let my hair spring free and smiled at me. “If you really want to skin-dive, we can skin-dive, sweetheart,” he said. “I don’t ever want to hold you back from something you really want to do.”

“Like my job,” I said, and instantly regretted it. I would start work the Monday after our return from Hawaii, and Robert wasn’t happy about it.

He raised his hand to stop anything else I might say. “We’ve settled it about your job,” he said. “You can try it for a while. I told you that, so you don’t need to bring it up over and over again.”

“I’ll make our meals on Sundays and we can heat them up in the oven each night.” We’d have a maid, of course, but cooking wasn’t supposed to be one of her tasks. “I’ll be sure to get home in time to do that.” All his Raleigh friends had wives waiting for them at home in the evening, showered and coiffed, with dinner on the table.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the meals.” He picked up something small and fried from his plate and studied it as if trying to figure out what it was. “
You
know what bothers me,” he said. “If you really want to work, I’d rather you found something … I don’t know. This is just the wrong job for my wife.” He set down the food, whatever it was. “It would be one thing if you were a teacher or a librarian like your mother. You’d still be helping people, if that’s what matters to you.”

I swallowed another bite of shrimp. “I’ve always wanted to do
this,
” I said.

“You won’t have to work with any colored people, will you?” he asked. “They have colored social workers for that, right?”

We had one lie between us already: the pills, buried deep beneath my lingerie in the bungalow’s bedroom dresser. I’d gotten them from Gloria’s doctor, who promised me I’d be protected from pregnancy by my wedding night.

“I’ll have some Negro clients, yes,” I said.

“That’s just … not right.”

“Oh why not, for heaven’s sake? They need help, too.”

“They should have their own social worker.”

“I don’t have a problem with it.”

“That left-wing church you grew up in put ideas in your head,” he said. “I’m glad our kids won’t be growing up there.”

I bit my tongue, not wanting to argue, and we ate in silence for a while. Finally, Robert took a sip of his wine and let out a sigh. “What am I supposed to tell my friends?” he asked, setting his glass down.

“About me working?” I asked, confused.

“None of their wives work. They’ll think I’m not making enough money.”

“Tell them I’m obstinate and you love me so you’re letting me do this.” I tried to sound lighthearted and leaned over to kiss his cheek.

“I’ll tell them you’re involved in charitable work. That’s really what it is, except you’ll get paid.” He laughed. “Not that a hundred and eighty-five dollars a month should really count as a salary.”

That stung. “It’s a lot to me,” I said.

He caught my hand on the table. “Sorry,” he said. “Really. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that you worry me sometimes.”

“I’m sure they won’t send me anyplace dangerous.”

“I’m not talking about the job.” He lowered my hand to his lap and held it there in both of his. “Look, darling,” he said. “I love you just the way you are, you know that, right? Stubborn and full of spunk. Right?”

“I’m not stubborn.”

He laughed. “Yes you are. You just admitted you’re obstinate. That’s all right. I love you, but you’re my wife now and you need to temper it outside the four walls of our house.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want people to like you, Jane. That’s all. It’s important for my career that we fit in.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“I want you to be yourself, but just … tame it down a little. Don’t talk politics like you did on the catamaran today. Definitely don’t talk about supporting Kennedy, for heaven’s sake. Especially not at the club.”

“But I do.”

“Oh come on, Jane. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, I do. He cares about the little people.”

“At whose expense?” he snapped, letting go of my hand and sitting back in the chair. “This is what I mean about you being stubborn. You say things like this just to shake me up.”

“I honestly think he’s the better choice.”

He sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I won’t talk about it in front of your friends, if it bothers you that much.” I already felt shy around his fellow physicians who looked at me as if I were a kid. We usually saw them at the country club, where no matter how many years passed with me as Robert’s wife, I’d never feel as though I belonged and I was certain everyone knew it. The wives had been welcoming at first, but when they realized I was not like them—not their age or their social class—they lost interest in me. Robert said it was me. I didn’t try to fit in, and maybe he was right. Now, with him telling me not to talk about my work—or politics—when I was with his friends, it was going to be even worse. “And if they ever ask me what I think about the election,” I said, “I’ll play coy. But at least I’d like to be able to be honest with
you.
” I looked away from him. The birth control pills taunted me. Who was I to talk about honesty? Robert thought we might start a baby on our honeymoon, and I didn’t say a word.

“Politics and religion,” Robert said as if I hadn’t spoken. “The two things we don’t talk about in public.”

“I told you. I’ll be careful around your friends,” I said, then added quietly, “But Robert … you knew who I was before you said ‘I do.’”

“You’re right.” He pulled me toward him and kissed the tip of my nose, and I wondered if I’d really known who
he
was.

6

Ivy

It was Lita Jordan who started the singing, as usual, and she started early, right as me and her began looping the first load of tobacco, tying the leaves to the long sticks that would hang in the barn to cure.
“It’s been a long, long time comin’, but change is gonna come,”
she sang. Her voice was clear as birdsong, ringing out in the steamy early morning sun. It echoed off the tin roof of the shelter we worked under. It spread out over the field in front of us, where her two oldest boys, Eli and Devil, worked with Henry Allen and the day laborers, and it traveled behind us down Deaf Mule Road. It made my heart ache, though I couldn’t of said why. It was a voice made for singing in church. When I was little and we’d walk past the AME church and I’d hear a lady singing, I’d say, “That’s Lita,” and Nonnie would say, “Every colored lady you hear ain’t Lita,” but I was sure it was her.

She could sing light songs, too, the ones that made us laugh. She could get us going with “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” and the one about the old woman who swallowed a fly, but it was like she knew that this song was one to start the day. The other colored girls, the ones Mr. Gardiner brung in each day to help with the barning, they came in with the harmony and I did my bit, too. We all knew the words. It made me laugh watching Nonnie sing a few lines and then catch herself. She probably thought the song was some of that race music she hated, but sometimes you just had to give in to the feeling and sing along.

Nonnie couldn’t stand on her feet for long these days, so she worked a while at the bench, then went home to rest for a bit, off and on through the day. Baby William was nothing but trouble and he ran around our feet with Lita’s youngest, three-year-old Rodney, both of them getting in the way. Rodney was a good boy, but he loved Baby William like some kids love candy and together they was up to no good. We had to watch them every second.

I was already sweating in my oilcloth apron, but I didn’t dare take it off till the dew was dry on the tobacco or I’d get soaked and break out in a green tobacco rash, like I did last summer. We all wore aprons, especially in the morning. Only Lita’s boy Avery, who emptied the sled at the barn and carried the full sticks to the racks, refused to wear something. He was fifteen, like me, but he looked older. All three of the oldest Jordan boys looked like men already. Avery was plenty big and strong enough to work in the field with his brothers, but his eyes was so bad, that even with them thick glasses he wore, he wouldn’t know which leaves was ready for priming and which needed a few more days in the sun. He hated working at the bench, except for being near Mary Ella, who was one of the handers. Sometimes he’d even help her, standing next to her as they pulled three or four leaves at a time from the bench and handed them over to me or Lita. I thought he liked how quiet Mary Ella was—how she didn’t sing with the others or gossip. It was like she was peaceful and he needed some of that peace, since he was always getting picked on by his brothers and the kids at the colored school. Sometimes I’d turn and see him and Mary Ella talking quiet to each other, and I’d remind myself that my sister, for all her strangeness, could be a real nice girl. Anyway, Mary Ella’s mind wasn’t on the song. It was out there in the field, I was sure of it. All us gals, we was watching the field. Watching our men—Henry Allen, Eli, Devil, and the day laborers—as they walked through the rows of tall tobacco, disappearing as they bent over to snap the leaves from the stalks and pile them in the sled.

Some days the gossip came even before the singing. Other times, we’d complain about the heat or maybe worry out loud about how the machines was taking over on some of the farms. It was mostly Lita worried about that, since her boys worked the field and machines could work it much quicker. No way a machine could do what we girls was doing, though, looping the tobacco to the long sticks.

The colored day laborers liked working for Mr. Gardiner. He paid them the same as white folks and he sometimes brung all of us Desiree’s pimiento cheese sandwiches for a snack in the middle of every morning. At dinnertime, we’d go home, scrub off the tar, and eat like there was no tomorrow. The Jordans went home, too. They lived in a house just like ours, but clear at the other end of the tobacco field. Their house was right out in the open. This time of year, I thought we was the lucky ones, with all the shade around us. In the winter, though, that sun warmed their place right up while we near froze to death. I liked being in their house because of the cooking smells. Didn’t matter if I just ate dinner myself, I walked in that house and my mouth started watering. You could tell there was a mama living there. You could tell someone was taking care of everybody. My house never smelled like the Jordans’, even if we was cooking something good.