Necessary Lies (7 page)

The rest of the colored help ate dinner at tables outside the Gardiners’ house. Every once in a while, Mr. Gardiner’d ask me and Nonnie and Mary Ella to eat inside with him and Henry Allen. Me and Henry Allen always acted like we hardly knew each other when we ate together. We was careful not to look straight at each other’s eyes, afraid we’d start laughing. It was the same when I hitched a ride to church with them on Sunday morning. Nonnie and Mary Ella was too shamed to go to church ever since Baby William came along, but the Gardiners took me with them, and me and Henry Allen sat in the backseat of their old Ford as far apart as we could get, acting like we didn’t know each other’s name. I liked that nobody knew I understood that boy inside and out. Mr. Gardiner wouldn’t take kindly to that news. I was a tenant on his land. Nothing more than that.

“Pay attention to your work, now,” Lita said to me, quiet so Nonnie wouldn’t hear and start yelling at me. I’d slowed down on my looping because I was too busy watching Mary Ella, making sure her eyes didn’t light on any particular boy—or man—out in the field and give her ideas.

Then Lita started singing “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” and we joined in. Nonnie liked this one and she sung it out as loud as she could, though she didn’t have much of a singing voice left. I could remember when I was little, I loved listening to her. She’d sing her hymns around the house. That was before everything went wrong and she was happy and didn’t have the sugar and the rheumatism and Mama and Daddy was still with us and harvesttime was me and Mary Ella running around with Henry Allen and the Jordan kids, throwing the hornworms at each other and feeling important as we made our few pennies picking up any leaves that had dropped. All of us was playmates and workmates. White and colored, didn’t make no difference. But one day when I was about ten, we was at the Gardiners’ store when Eli brung in a package for Mrs. Gardiner. I asked him, “You want to fish in the crick later?” in front of other shoppers and Nonnie grabbed my arm and pinched it so hard I had a bruise for a month.

“Don’t you talk to that boy,” she snapped in my ear, like me and Mary Ella didn’t talk to him every single day. Eli understood. Didn’t even look at us. Pretended he didn’t hear nothin’. He’d already learned what we was only learning: colored and white didn’t mix in public. Especially not colored boys and white girls. We got the message that day. We could be friends at home, but out in the world, we didn’t know each other.

I watched Lita while she worked. She looked out at the field the same way we all did, and I wondered if one of the men out there was someone she knew well.
Real
well. Maybe Rodney’s daddy? People said every one of her children had a different daddy. “They can’t help themselves,” Nonnie told us. “They’re still like animals in the jungle.” But Lita didn’t make me think of no animal. I was jealous of all them boys having a mama they could count on.

*   *   *

After dinner it was so hot that Baby William was as cranky as the mules. He sat crying in the dirt or he wobbled around, hitting us on our arms to get us to pay him some attention. By then, every one of us was pretty wrung out and thirsty, and I couldn’t wait for Mr. Gardiner to bring out the drinks. Baby William headed for the water bucket next to the barn. He reached for the green gourd ladle leaning up against it and Nonnie ran after him quicker than I thought she could move and swatted his hand. “That’s the colored gourd!” she said, handing him the yellow gourd we used. He started hollering and no one could hear themselves sing, so we all went quiet for a while and Nonnie said, “That’s enough. I’m taking him home,” and she set off down the dusty road with him yanking on her arm and kicking his feet at the air.

After a while, Mr. Gardiner came around the side of the barn and up to me. “I ain’t got enough Nabs for everybody,” he said. “You go on over to the store and get a box full.”

He hardly ever asked one of us to go to the store for him because he couldn’t spare us, so I was surprised. I thought he was staring at me right hard, and I looked down at my hands, pretending to peel the tar off them. When he looked at me like that, I was afraid he knew about me and Henry Allen.

“Why’re you going red in the face, girl?” he asked me now. “You ain’t gonna have no heatstroke on me, are you?”

“No, sir,” I said, “I’m fine. I’ll be back right quick.”

The bike was tossed in the dirt a ways from the barn and I climbed on and took off for the store. I wasn’t sure what Mr. Gardiner’d do if he knew about me and his one and only son. Henry Allen said his parents told him, “No girlfriends till you’re done with school,” but what boy pays attention to that kind of thing?

I rode the bike down Deaf Mule Road to where the store stood on the corner of Deaf Mule and Gardiner Store Lane. The store wasn’t much, just an old wooden place with
GARDINER’S CORNER STORE
painted on a board, the “Gar” near worn off the wood. Inside, the fan was going strong in the window and there was a colored woman and a white boy in there, most likely doing the same thing I was: getting afternoon snacks for the farmworkers. From behind the counter, Mrs. Gardiner waved to me. “Hey there, Ivy,” she said. “Ain’t you working at the barn?”

“Mr. Gardiner asked me to get some Nabs,” I said.

“He probably wants a whole box, don’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what he said.”

“I’ll get that for you. You pick yourself out a drink. Too hot to ride out here today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, heading for the icebox. I opened it up and took out a bottle of Pepsi Cola. I wished I could of stood in front of that icebox the rest of the day, the cool air felt so good, but I closed it quick. Didn’t want to get yelled at for leaving it open too long, although there was nobody around who’d yell at me. Not the boy, who I knew from seeing him at school. Not the colored woman, who wouldn’t yell at no white child. And Mrs. Gardiner wasn’t no yeller. “She’s a saint, that one,” Nonnie always said to me and Mary Ella. “A real fine Christian lady. We can all learn a lot from her, girls.”

I carried the Pepsi Cola to the counter and she had a box of Nabs all ready to go. My mouth watered looking at them cheese crackers. Seemed like dinner was forever ago.

“Things going good at the barning today, Ivy?” Mrs. Gardiner asked as she put the box in a paper sack. She was so pretty. Real white skin you didn’t hardly ever see around a farm. Shiny, soft dark hair in a bun at the back of her head. Blue eyes, like Henry Allen’s. The only thing that kept her from being beautiful was a mean-looking scar that ran from her temple to her chin. It was a thing that was hard to look at, but you could sometimes forget about it when she smiled.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “A little short in the field today, but it’s going okay.”

“That’s good to hear.” She handed me the bag, then leaned toward me. “Sometime you need to cool off, you just come over here and put your head in that icebox.” She smiled at me, and I smiled back.

“I will. Thank you.”

I walked out to my bike and fit the bag into the basket. I finished my drink, then climbed on the bike and started pedaling back to the farm, thinking about what she said and how sweet she was. You’d think she would of treated me and Mary Ella mean, but she never did, even though she sure had a right to. No one would blame her if she did, because that scar across her cheek? Our mama was the one who put it there.

7

Jane

Charlotte Werkman’s car was a surprisingly dusty 1954 Chevy, and we rolled the windows down as we headed out of Ridley. It was my first day of work and I’d been twenty minutes late, because I got lost. I never would have guessed the Grace County Department of Public Welfare would be above a Laundromat, but that’s where it was. Four small rooms, and a floor that vibrated with the hum of the washing machines below.

I would share an office with Charlotte for my two weeks of orientation. She introduced me to the director, Fred Price, a big, balding man who looked happy about his upcoming retirement, as well as my fellow caseworkers—a dour older woman named Gayle, who seemed very tired of the work, and an effervescent girl named Paula. I thought Paula and I actually looked a bit alike, with our blond pageboys and brown eyes, and I was excited to find someone closer to my age. She seemed equally thrilled, peppering me with questions: Where did I live? Was I married? Was my degree in social work? Hers was in English, which she called “utterly useless!”

Gayle was probably around Charlotte’s age and her smile looked bored as she greeted me, as though she’d seen many staff changes over the years and this was nothing new. She was very pale, made more so by her short jet-black hair, and she wore red lipstick that was creeping into the fine lines above her lips. She was telling Paula and me about one of her clients, a newly widowed woman who wanted to put her five kids in foster care, when Charlotte called me into her office. She handed me a thick department manual full of rules and regulations. “For the nights you can’t get to sleep,” she said with a smile.

Now I sat in her car, my new briefcase at my feet and my purse in my lap, hoping she’d turn west and not east on Ridley Road.

She turned east, though, and my heart gave a thud.
It’ll be fine,
I told myself. Charlotte was talking about the different regions I’d be covering, but I barely heard her. I remembered an earlier time on this road, a happier time when Teresa and I were kids, driving to the beach with my parents. I remembered my mother saying, “This is where Ava Gardner’s from,” and Teresa, next to me in the backseat saying, “She’s actually from Brogden,” and me kicking her leg and my father asking her how she knew that and Teresa shutting up, because she wasn’t supposed to read those movie magazines. She thought Ava and Frank Sinatra had the best marriage. Teresa would never know about their divorce. There was so much she’d never know.

“Where are we headed?” I tried to sound casual, suddenly aware that being in Grace County was going to be harder than I’d thought.

“I thought we’d start with the Jordan family. Ordinarily, I’d see the Hart family at the same time because they live close together, but I don’t think we’ll have time for both today, since I …
we
”—she glanced at me with a smile—“have to pick up an elderly gentleman to get him to his doctor’s appointment by noon. Besides, it’s harvesttime for the tobacco, so everyone’s probably at the barn. I’m hoping we can catch Lita Jordan at home since she’ll be getting lunch ready for her boys.” She glanced at me. “‘Lunch’ is called ‘dinner’ on the farm, by the way,” she said. “The main meal of the day.”

We were coming up to the Ku Klux Klan billboard. It looked even bigger than it had that terrible afternoon two years ago. Red background. Hooded man on a white horse holding a burning cross.
JOIN
&
SUPPORT THE UNITED KLANS OF AMERICA. FIGHT INTEGRATION AND COMMUNISM.
Beyond it was the stand of tall loblolly pines that haunted my dreams. In an instant, we were past it, just like that. I let out my breath. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding it.

“Ava Gardner’s from here,” Charlotte said.

“Yes.” I smiled to myself. I wouldn’t argue with her. “Did you see
On the Beach
?”

“Wasn’t she marvelous in that! Depressing movie, though.”

On either side of us stretched tobacco fields, people toiling in a sea of green. Mostly colored. Some white. The sun beating down on all of them. The car windows were wide open and I was still perspiring. I couldn’t imagine how hot it was out there in the fields.

We passed an occasional house, the yards dotted with trees and shrubs, bicycles and trucks. Every farmhouse I saw was painted white and most looked well cared for. Tall tobacco barns, many of them buzzing with activity, were tucked into stands of trees. We turned off Ridley Road onto a narrow dirt road. Dust rose up around the open windows, but it was too hot to close them. I now understood why Charlotte’s car looked the way it did. I supposed mine would be just as dusty in a few weeks.

Charlotte looked at her watch. “All right now,” she said, as we pulled into a long drive leading to a white farmhouse with a red metal roof. Tobacco fields stretched away from the house in all directions. “Let me give you some background on your clients here.”

“I’ll have clients who live in this
farmhouse
?” I asked, looking at the broad front porch. I was astounded that anyone who could afford a home this nice would need welfare.

“No, not in the farmhouse. You’ll see.” She pulled to the side of the road and turned off the ignition and the car immediately filled with heat. “This farm is owned by Davison Gardiner. No relation to Ava.” She smiled. “Spelled differently. His family’s farmed this land for generations. The Jordans and the Harts live on his land, and
they’re
your clients. The Harts will almost certainly be at the barn, like I said, so tomorrow or the day after, we’ll come back later in the day and you can meet them. We have too much else to do today.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering how late she was talking about. I’d have to make sure dinner was ready to pop in the oven as soon as I got home. Robert had been very sweet about me starting my job, even buying the briefcase for me and wishing me luck when he kissed me good-bye this morning. But last night he said I seemed more excited about the job than I was about fixing up our beautiful new—well, new to us, anyway—house, and that was true. The house was perfect just as it was. I didn’t care if the drapes had been picked out by someone else or if the wallpaper in the guest bedroom was a little faded. He joked that I wasn’t a normal woman. At least I hoped he was joking.

“The Jordans live in that house over there.” She pointed to the end of the road where a tiny unpainted building stood out in the open. I’d thought it was some sort of outbuilding, but now I could see laundry hanging from lines strung between the house and a couple of small trees. A little building stood a ways behind it and I guessed it was an outhouse.

“No indoor plumbing?” I asked.

She looked at me kindly, the way you’d look at a child who had so much to learn about life. “Not many of your clients will have indoor plumbing,” she said. “Some don’t even have electricity. Mrs. Jordan has four boys and a girl. She sent the girl, Sheena, to a family up North about five years ago, so now it’s just the boys.”