Coming of Age in Mississippi (31 page)

Everyone in the room would participate. They all tried to outdo each other and come up with something more original than the last person had come up with. One of the boys in calling his turn said, “Stand up, turn around, do the twist, sit down.” He let us twist about fifteen minutes before he called
the other move. Some of the students did some nasty cuts. Mrs. Evans, taking part in the games too, was so upset that she threatened to have the boy expelled. After that, the boys stopped attending the socials and the girls were very unhappy. Soon the socials were cut out altogether because didn’t enough girls go to them. Now the only time girls with boyfriends on campus got together was on Sunday from four to six. Then they sat up in the lounge with the door open and Mrs. Evans sat right across in the next lounge knitting.

The boys weren’t too upset over the campus rules because they could go anywhere without permission, spend the night off campus, and do just about anything else except openly tamper with the girls on campus. And most of the boys had no desire to mess with the campus girls because they had three or four girls in the city.

The majority of the girls living in the dorm came from homes with real strict Baptist parents. And a lot of them had been sent on church scholarships. They were some of the most backward girls I had ever seen. They had lived a sheltered life of Baptist fantasy. They were the girls who had courted the nice boys at church, who sneaked kisses in parked cars on the church lawn, who had never spent a night away from home except with relatives who were just as strict as their parents. For them, it was a big thing to be away from home even in a place as prison-like as Natchez College. Once away from their parents and relatives, they were also the girls most likely to end up pregnant—because at home sex was a big mystery, tabooed in conversation and bitterly condemned in church.

With the exception of Bernice and her three or four friends, the basketball girls were the healthiest girls on campus. Most of them had boyfriends, loved sports, had a good sense of humor, and didn’t care too much about anything. I didn’t particularly consider myself in their class. But if it was necessary for me to be in a class at all, I would have chosen theirs. Instead, I was a loner just as I had been in high school. The only thing I had in common with them was basketball.

When the basketball team started traveling, I really saw how hypocritical everyone at the college was, especially Mrs. Evans. Even though we had a lady coach, Mrs. Evans came along to chaperone us. She was as glad to get away from Natchez as we were. As we boarded the bus on campus to leave, she came on the bus in her long dark “mourning” dress, all plain-faced and motherly. But as soon as we got to the college we were playing, she pulled off that long black dress, put on a short stylish one, and made herself up with powder, rouge, and lipstick. She shocked all of us. She didn’t follow us everywhere like she did at Natchez. Neither did she speak in her little proper speech. She was an entirely different lady and the girls liked her because she let them dance and do anything they wanted to—just about. But as soon as we got back to Natchez College, she put on her old self again.

By the time the school term ended, I was so sick of Natchez that I was sure I wouldn’t return the following year. But the schools in New Orleans cost just too much money, so a few weeks before the new term I decided to go back.

That second year at Natchez, I discovered that I had changed. The year before almost every boy on campus had tried to make it with me, especially the basketball boys, and I had turned them down one after the other. Now I found myself wondering whether I should have been so rude to them. When I saw girls and boys sneaking kisses out under the trees, I got curious. Sometimes I wished I had a boyfriend. I was twenty years old and I had never been kissed, not even a smack on the lips. I wanted to know how it felt.

There was a new basketball player on campus named Keemp, whom all the girls and boys were talking about. He was tall—six feet five—and slim. Besides being tall, he had a “cool” about him that most girls liked. So they all went around talking about how handsome he was. It was early October and we hadn’t started practicing yet, so I didn’t know whether he was a good player or not, but I certainly didn’t think his looks were anything special. He looked just like my daddy without a mustache and I never thought Daddy was handsome. I used to see Keemp walking around on campus and wondered what was it that all the girls saw in him. Then too
he made me wonder what all the women had seen in my daddy when he was young.

One Sunday after church, I was leaving chapel when Keemp walked up to me and said, “So you are Anne Moody, huh?”

“Yes. Why?” I asked, and kept walking.

“I heard a lot of talk about you,” he said, walking beside me. “Where are you going now?”

“To the dorm,” I answered.

“If you’ll slow down, I’ll walk you over there,” he said coolly.

For the first time in my life I slowed down for a boy. I was a little surprised at myself.

As we walked together, Keemp didn’t try to force the conversation. He hardly said anything and whenever he did it was like a brother to a sister. When we got to the dorm he asked if he could walk me to dinner. I again surprised myself by answering yes.

Because Natchez College was so small, most of the relationships between girls and boys were a public thing. Everybody knew everybody else’s business. The students were all shocked when I started going with Keemp, especially the sophomore boys who had tried to make it with me the year before. A couple of the guys who had tried hardest came up and bluntly asked me what did I see in Keemp or what did Keemp have to offer me that they didn’t. I was a little surprised at the girls’ reaction. Most of them seemed glad that I had finally decided to join the club. So much so that they started giving me all kinds of advice about how to handle men.

When Keemp started playing basketball, I really began to like him. He had the longest limbs I had ever seen. As he moved down the basketball court, he was so light he looked like he was flying. He could just walk up to the goal and dunk the ball with ease. Through basketball, he became the most popular boy on campus.

Keemp tried to kiss me many times but I wouldn’t let him. I always told him that I had a headache or something. When
we traveled to play other teams, all the other boys and their girls on the team kissed around on the bus. Keemp, the best player on the team, sat beside me begging me to kiss him. Everyone else on the bus knew that Keemp wasn’t getting anywhere with me, and most of the boys began to tease him.

There were a couple of girls on the team who were having spasms over Keemp. One of them sat in the seat behind us and late at night she would start clawing on the seat like a big cat. When Keemp started answering her clawing, I went to one of my friends, seeking advice on how to kiss. She told me that I didn’t have to do anything but part my lips to Keemp and he would do the rest. For the next two months I thought of how I would part my lips. Then one night I dreamt that Keemp and I were kissing around nude on the back seat of the bus and just as we were about to have intercourse, I woke up screaming. I was so frightened by the dream, I began to think that if I kissed Keemp it might lead to something else. The mere thought of getting sexually involved caused me all kinds of anxieties. But I had a tremendous guilt about treating Keemp the way I did when another girl would have treated him better, so I made up my mind to quit him and let that clawing girl have him.

One night in November, when we were playing Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, I decided that this would be the night I would quit Keemp. Since the game was one of our biggest, I decided to wait and tell him after it was over. I knew we would lose if he wasn’t at his best.

Keemp shot forty-some points during that game. He played better than I had ever seen him play. Just about every time he raised his arms, it was two points for us. When the game was over, the rest of the boys hugged him down to the floor, then picked him up and declared him “King of Basketball.” As I watched him play and then saw how everyone loved him, it suddenly dawned upon me that he was a terrific person and that I was a fool to be thinking about quitting him.

When the boys let him go, he walked up to me smiling.
Without saying a word, he put his arms around my shoulders and walked me to the bus. As he touched me, a warm current ran through my body.

As I sat on the bus beside Keemp that night, a feeling I had never known before came over me. He held my hands, and it seemed like every hormone in my body reacted. Neither one of us said a word. As the bus was coming to a stop, Keemp leaned over and gently placed his lips on mine. They were like a magnet slowly pulling my lips apart. Once my mouth was open his tongue explored areas that had never been touched by anything but a toothbrush. I completely forgot where I was until one of the boys sitting near us started banging on the basketball and yelling.

“Jesus! Y’aaaall! It finally happened! Keemp done did it!”

The bus had stopped. The lights were on and everybody was looking at us. Keemp wouldn’t stop. He pretended that he didn’t even hear the yelling, that we weren’t on a bus surrounded by spectators. I tried to pull away but I was so weak I couldn’t control myself, so I just gave in to his kisses.

Didn’t anyone on the bus say one word or stir, not even Mrs. Evans. No one made a move to get off the bus until Keemp and I did. When Keemp finished kissing me, I saw that he had lipstick all over his mouth. My first reaction was to wipe it off real quick before anyone could see it. Keemp just smiled as I wiped it off. When I finished, he took me by the hand, pulled me up out of the seat, buried my head in his shoulder and we walked off the bus.

I was very embarrassed about the fact that my first kiss had been such a public thing. But I didn’t regret the kiss at all. Once we were back on campus, Keemp and I greeted each other with a kiss every time we met.

We never did hide behind trees or posts to sneak kisses like the other students. When Mrs. Evans blinked the lights for the girls to come in, I’d give Keemp a smack on the lips right in front of her. Soon most of the other girls started smacking kisses on their boyfriends in front of Mrs. Evans too. Finally,
one day Mrs. Evans called me in for a “conference” and accused me of leading the kissing game on campus.

During the first six months of our relationship I was happier than I had ever been. Keemp turned me on so much that I made the first straight-A average that had been made at Natchez in many years. Studying was a cinch and everything else seemed so easy. But that spring when the basketball season was all over and the excitement of traveling was gone and boys and girls began swarming all over each other like bees, I slowly began to drift away from the whole scene. I had gotten tired of being part of “the club.” There was something about the way couples were relaxing into relationships and making them everything that bothered me. I didn’t want to get all wrapped up in Keemp the way some of the other girls did with their boyfriends. My relation with him had gradually become a brother-sister thing. He could tell I was moving away from him, so he got himself a girl in the city. I wasn’t even jealous and I didn’t say anything. I just didn’t care. I knew I would be leaving him behind next year and figured he’d have somebody else. I pretended that I didn’t know he had another girl and went on being friends with him. He was the best friend I had had since Lola, and I told him everything.

I had spent all of my money buying foxy clothes when I was high on Keemp. Now I was down to ninety dollars, and I was beginning to worry about where I would go to college next year. It was about two months before school ended and I tried to hold on to that money. I figured I could make at least two hundred dollars at the restaurant the coming summer even if business was bad. But I knew that still wouldn’t be enough to get me into a good senior college. The closer it came to school ending, the more depressed I got.

One Saturday morning I got up feeling disgusted. I was sick of having to worry about where my next penny was coming from and how I would get to school next year. I looked at that ninety dollars in my drawer and thought to myself, “This time I’m gonna go out and have me a big steak and buy me a fifty-dollar
dress!” I went down to breakfast a little late, and when I got there I saw a whole commotion going on. I stood on the steps looking for a while wondering what in the hell was happening. A large group of students were standing around a table, talking and gesturing. Others were picking in their plates like they were looking for something. The noise was tremendous. As I headed down the steps, Inez, one of my classmates, who was sitting at the table where all the students were gathered, spotted me and called out:

“Hey! Moody, come here! Will you look at
this!”

Then someone else called, “Go and get yours, Moody, and see if you can find any.”

I walked over to Inez. She pointed with her fork to the half-eaten plate of grits in front of her. At first I didn’t see anything.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Can’t you see? Looka there!” she said, poking something in the grits with her fork.

“What’s that?” I asked, seeing a little white lump at the end of her fork.

“What’s that? A goddamn
maggot
, that’s what it is,” one of the boys said loudly.

“A
maggot!
In the
grits?
Where did it come from?”

“Don’t y’all get mad, that’s just a little present from Miss Harris, tryin’ to show us how much she love us,” somebody cracked; and we all laughed. I looked to the kitchen, and saw her standing in the door. I remembered the morning she used to sling those spoons at me because I wouldn’t Uncle Tom to her. I hated her guts.

“Oh-oh,” somebody said, as Miss Harris started to come over to us, “here come Mother Maggot now.”