One Mississippi (18 page)

I pretended to take her advice. I rode away knowing that tomorrow I would come back and try again.

1
3

T
IM HAD BEEN BURNING
some kind of fruit incense, grape or blackberry, and he had Elton cued up on the eight-track singing “Daniel” in my honor as we drove off to
Christ!
rehearsal. He smacked my knee. “How’s it going with your little girlfriend?”

“You know what they say. Love is strange.” I laid my arm down the side of the car and told him about our visit from Red. I told him that Arnita was examining her memories of Prom Night, and our Lie was beginning to outgrow the original crime. “Any day now she’s gonna remember. Only now she’ll truly hate me. With good reason.”

Tim said, “Oh Skippy, don’t tell me you’re still feeling the urge to confess? I thought you had gotten over that.”

I shrugged. “Sometimes when I’m with her I think, Why not just tell her? It was an accident. She’ll forgive you. But it’s too late. I’ve been lying to her from the very beginning.”

Tim said, “For her own good, Skippy. Don’t forget that. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Stay close to her. You’ve done great so far. Don’t screw it up.”

“I have this feeling she’s gonna break up with me,” I said. “Maybe I should wait and tell her when she already hates me.”

Tim said, “You don’t think you’re actually in love with her, do you?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t lie, not about this. “Yeah, I am. Or at least I think I am. I don’t know how I feel. Did you ever feel like that?”

“You’re the one that goes around
feeling
everything all the time,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out how to get rid of Red.”

“School’s out,” I said. “You mean he’s still bothering you?”

“He never stopped! He drives by our house all the time with that super-duper muffler of his, it shakes the glass in the windows. The other night he took these sacks of garbage and tore ’em open and scattered ’em all over our yard! Can you imagine how crazy that made my mother? You know what a clean freak she is!”

“You saw him do that?”

“No, but I know it was him.”

“I think you’re being paranoid,” I said. “What if it was some dogs that got ahold of your garbage? And anyway, doesn’t Red have to drive past your house to get to school? They live up on Bluff Park Drive.”

“I should have known you’d take his side,” Tim said. “Just forget it.” He put the Pinto onto I-20, heading east.

“Why do you let him get to you so bad?” I said. “He can’t do anything to us. He’s the one in trouble. I called him Dudley to his face the other day, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.”

“He’s not human,” Tim said. “He doesn’t deserve to be called a human being. If you wiped him out you would be doing the rest of mankind a favor. Like killing a mosquito, or a poisonous snake.”

“But his mama loves him,” I said, “and he’s kind to the furry little creatures of the woodlands.”

“I’m not joking,” said Tim. “I don’t joke about Red. He’s the enemy. The spawn of Satan.”

“Well he’s not exactly my best friend,” I said, “but I don’t think I’m quite as obsessed as you. He leaves me alone more, because I tend to ignore him.”

Tim frowned in disgust. “You’re like my mother. You think the solution to any problem is to ignore it.”

“Thanks. I always did want to be more like your mother.”

“Your lips are all chapped from making out with that girl,” he said. “You ought to get a ChapStick. They only cost like fifty cents.”

I rubbed my lip, thinking, What a weird thing to say.

“Wait, shut up, what was that?” He lunged for the volume knob.

“. . . to the capital city for a very special concert,” the deejay said, “Saturday, August the eighteenth — by special arrangement with Ruffino-Vaughn Promotions — tickets on sale today — it’s our great privilege here at WDSU, Today’s Hottest Hits —”

“Come on, asshole!” Tim smacked the dashboard. “Who?”

“— live and in person, one night only, at the Mississippi Coliseum . . . Sonny and Cher!”

Tim veered off the road and back on. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“Hey, don’t get us killed.”

He jammed on the gas. “We’re going to the Coliseum.”

“Now?”

“Hell yes! You got cash?”

“Like, four bucks.”

“I think I can cover both of us, as long as they’re not more than twenty apiece.”

“What about
Christ!
?”

“Skippy, think! What if it sells out and we can’t get tickets? Can you even imagine? We would have to die. We’d have to kill each other in some sort of ritualistic fashion.”

We sang along with Cher on her latest hit, “I Saw a Man (And He Danced With His Wife),” and before it was over we were taking the exit for the Mississippi Coliseum. Ours was the only car crossing the vast parking lot. “Obviously we’re their only real fans in this whole stupid town,” I said.

“This is truly pathetic,” Tim said. “Let’s face it, we are trapped in a time and place where we do not belong.”

I had to agree.

One box-office window was open, occupied by a lady with beehive hair, filing her nails.

Tim said, “You have tickets for Sonny and Cher?”

“Sure. How many?”

“Two, I guess. Two, Durwood? Or should we get four and take somebody?”

“Who, the Frillingers?”

He laughed. “Purest vessels of the most holy virginity? No thank you, there’s got to be somebody we actually like. Who do we like?”

“You don’t like anybody,” I said. “You mean girls?”

“Of course girls. Don’t look so alarmed.” He bent to the window. “How much are they?”

The beehive lady sawed away with her emery board. “Eight-fifty, general admission.”

“If we’re taking girls, I’m taking Arnita,” I said, “but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

Tim lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, right, I forgot. You can make out with her every afternoon, but you can’t be seen in public with her. I knew that complexion of hers was gonna get you in trouble sooner or later.”

“Her complexion has nothing to do with it.”

“What is it, then, the fact that she’s a little whacked in the head?”

“Are you trying to piss me off?” I snapped. “Cause right now you are doing a really great job.”

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “Arnita is black but that has nothing to do with why the two of you are the biggest secret since the atomic bomb?”

He had me. I talked a great game of equality, I looked down on Mississippi’s backward ways with my good superior Indiana Yankee attitude — but had I ever treated Arnita like a real girlfriend? No. I hid her. I took her up under the bridge to kiss her. I made her swear not to tell anybody. Every time I kissed her, I found myself thinking — All this and she’s black too! Beautiful, smart, damaged, and also exotic, forbidden, makes me want to kiss her even more!

I doubt that any interracial couple had ever walked the streets of Minor. Call me a coward. I did not want to go first.

“It’s obvious. You have to take her.” Miss Beehive peered at me through her tortoiseshell glasses.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Take the girl to the show. It’s your business. Who’s gonna care?”

Tim cocked an eyebrow. “What are you, Dear Abby?”

“No, but I’m from Chicaago just like Dear Abby,” she said, “so take my advice. I’m a great believer in doing what you want to do. Down here that makes me like a Commie subversive. Take the girl to the show.”

“Chicaago,” I said with a smile. “Come aan, let’s go drink a paap.”

Her face lit up. “Oh my Gaad, where you fraam?”

“Indiana.”

She beamed. “I haven’t heard ‘paap’ since we got down here!”

We bought four tickets and went to the car. “So who are you gonna take?” Tim said.

“Arnita, I guess.”

“Uhm . . . are you sure about that, Skippy? I mean, forget what the Yankee woman says.”

“She was right, who’s gonna care?”

“Somebody will,” Tim said. “There’s still people around here who care about that stuff, believe me.”

“Nobody will even notice us,” I said. “Some friends going to a show, so what? It’s no big deal. Unless you turn it into one.”

“You know what this means, don’t you,” Tim said. “I gotta find a girl who will agree to double-date with a
Negress.
Imagine what a howling barking dog
that
will have to be.”

C
HRIST
!
was really coming together, thanks to radical surgery performed by Eddie at Mrs. Passworth’s insistence. He howled every time she made him cut another song. It took plenty of howling to get the show under three hours, then under two. Eddie insisted at each step that every song was crucial to his Overall Vision.

He kept putting in (and having to take out) a swinging gospel-style number called “Bless the Devil.” The idea of the lyric was, it’s a good thing the devil is around to tempt us, since the temptations remind us how much we love Jesus. It was a risky song for church — what if somebody came in late and just heard the chorus? — but Eddie pleaded for it long after it was obvious it would never go in.

“Take a deep breath, Eddie,” Mrs. Passworth said. “The show’s getting better. I do think we should make the rest of these cuts now — painful as they are. Then we can concentrate on the songs we’ll actually be performing.”

“Oh, here we go again.” He rolled his eyes. “What do you want to cut now?”

Mrs. Passworth glanced at her clipboard. “‘Fishes and Loaves.’ I’m sorry, but that dancing part seems to go on forever. If we cut that, and ‘Flowers in the Rain,’ we’ll be close.”

“‘Flowers in the
Rain?
’” Eddie squealed as if she’d stomped on his toe. “You want to cut the Crucifixion?”

“Well it’s so depressing,” said Passworth. “Do we really need it? If you go straight from ‘Not That Kind of Girl’ to ‘When He Wakes Up,’ you keep it on a positive note. I mean, just go straight to the Resurrection. That’s the happiest part of the show, and believe me, by this point we are really ready for a little bit of happy.”

“This is crazy,” Eddie said. “Don’t you understand the concept? Each song expresses a chapter in his journey — I can’t believe I’m having to
explain
this! You can’t just drop songs left and right and expect people to be able to follow the story!”

“People
know
the story, Eddie. You’re not the first one to tell it, okay?” That was Passworth near the end of her rope, a voice I remembered from the outer reaches of post-Christmas algebra.

Eddie would not be moved. “You cannot skip the Crucifixion! That’s like saying Jesus lived happily ever after. Next you’ll have him dancing off down the yellow brick road.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “He still arises from the dead. You’re just cutting the one song.”

“I don’t want to cut that song,” he said, “or any other song. You cut any more, it’s not my show. And while it still is my show, this is my decision and it’s final.”

“Not exactly,” said Mrs. Passworth. “Eddie, I don’t want to hurt your feelings — the songs are wonderful, there’s just too many. Let me see a show of hands, how many of you kids think there’s too many songs?”

Every hand in the chorus went up. Some people raised both hands. Even Matt Smith voted yes, and it was his song she was trying to cut.

“Eddie, we love you.” That was Carol Nason / Mary Magdalene trying to soften the blow.

“Yes, Carol, I see that, you can put your hand down now,” he said bitterly. “Apparently you love me thirty-five to zero. I’m just
drowning
in love up here. I mean, call me insane — I happen to like the show as it is.” He whirled on Mrs. Passworth. “You want to cut it? Go ahead. I don’t want to stick around for any more of that.” He swept himself up in an invisible cloak and strode from the room.

Everybody groaned,
Eddie, wait!

We glared at Mrs. Passworth, though we’d all just raised our hands to vote against Eddie. We loved him in spite of his crankiness and his tendency to quit in a huff whenever he got upset. We had learned to send a couple of kids after him, beg him to come back, give him a big round of applause when he returned — as he always did, after a decent interval. The welcoming cheer always seemed to take him by surprise.

He clasped his hands together like a victorious boxer. An odd smile played on his face. “Okay, let’s get on with the show. Irene, how about I give you the dancing, and you let me keep the Crucifixion.”

“Deal,” Mrs. Passworth said. “Children, see how mature people behave? Eddie and I disagreed, he offered a compromise, and we worked it out.”

“And now since we have all this extra time to play with,” he said, “we can put ‘Bless the Devil’ back in.”

“Don’t push it, buster.” Passworth wasn’t smiling.

Eddie was determined to show her a thing or two about pacing. He whipped us through
Christ!
in eighty-two minutes, shaving twelve minutes off the previous land-speed record. “Short enough for you, Irene?” he cried at the end.

“Getting there!” she sang, handing out permission slips for our first performance, an overnight bus trip to Harold P. Wayne Bible College in Itta Bena, up in the Delta. “Now you people get these signed and back to me by the end of this week or you’re not getting on that bus, understand?”

1
4

F
IVE O’CLOCK SATURDAY
afternoon. I was snoozing under
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
when Janie banged on my door and said phone for me. I hadn’t even heard it ring. I shambled out in my undershirt and jeans, my hair all bent and stupid-looking. I didn’t come all the way awake until I was holding the phone, saying “Hey Tim” to a dial tone. “Janie, was that Tim? He hung up.”

“Not the phone, you idiot!” she yelled from the kitchen. “The door!”

“Right here,” said a soft voice. My God! — it was my girl, my very own Arnita in our carport. A gorgeous smile. A blue suitcase in her hand.

I slipped out the door, shushed her all the way around to the front of the house. I set the suitcase on the porch and kissed her a good one, a straight-up electrical thrill — oh man it felt powerful kissing this girl!

I broke it off. “What are you doing here?”

“I should have called first, but I thought you might be mad at me.” She did that pouty thing with her lip. “I was afraid you’d tell me not to come.”

“You were the one acting mad. I’ve been trying to call you all week.”

She wrapped her arms around me. “She doesn’t tell me when you call. It’s impossible, Daniel — I can’t live with those people anymore. I’m going to stay here with you, okay? You said I could.”

“Are you kidding? No!” I had to laugh. “I mean — of course I would love it, but my folks? I don’t think so.”

She squeezed my arm. “They’ll learn to like me, if we give them time. I’ll fit in so much better here. Let me talk to your mother. I’ll help with the housework, otherwise she’ll barely know I’m around.”

I stroked her arm. “When did you decide all this?”

“The other night. When Ella hung up on you. You don’t know how horrible she is. She hates you. She says I can’t ever see you again.”

“She’s your mother,” I said. “She really cares about you. Your dad too.”

“No. You care about me. All they care about is Arnita.”

“Same thing,” I said.

She nibbled on the side of her index finger. “Logically, yes. But inside, I just don’t feel it. I’m the only one who can see it through my eyes, you know?”

I made my voice as gentle as possible. “It’s the injury that makes you think that way. It makes you confused about that one thing. I explain it to you fifty times, and you never remember. It’s like the tape keeps getting erased.”

“Don’t you want to kiss me?” she said.

How did she know? I couldn’t stand it. I grabbed her and kissed her.

Things sprang up, blood started rushing, new enormities began to develop. I cleared my throat and moved back. All I needed was Mom and Janie to come out and find me with Arnita and a raging boner.

I said, “How did you get here?”

“Jimmy brought me in his taxi. Why’d you tell Ella you were in love with me?”

I thought about it. I wanted to be really honest. “She gave me one of those looks, and it just came out. I think she already knew. She’s good at that stuff.”

“Yeah,” said Arnita. “So
are
you? In love?”

“I guess so.” I sighed. “It doesn’t make me very happy, okay?”

Her smile grew into a wide shining river, the kind you could fall in and drown. “Let’s run away, Daniel. I have a hundred dollars. I took it out of Ella’s purse.”

“You little thief! Be serious. Where would we go?”

“Anywhere. We can go a long way before anybody knows we’re gone. Just pack a bag. I’ve got mine packed, see?”

“I can’t just go off and leave Mom here, and Janie,” I heard myself saying.

“Why not?”

“Dad would be hard on them if he didn’t have me to pick on.” This wasn’t anything I’d ever thought before, but it felt true when I said it.

Arnita touched my face. “If we don’t go now, you know what will happen. They’ll find a way to keep us apart.”

“Look, we can’t run away,” I said. “We’re gonna be seniors, we have to finish school. And you’ve got that great scholarship —”

Her fingers stopped my lips. “From Jackson you can go anywhere on a bus. You can go to New York for thirty-four dollars.” In her eyes I saw skyscrapers, high-kicking Rockettes. I saw Arnita dancing down a crowded sidewalk in high heels and a translucent dress with spotlights behind her. The vision was so strong I leaned in and kissed her again.

The flash in the trees was the sun winking off a windshield. The car passed out of the screen of trees and materialized in our driveway, Dad’s steel-blue Oldsmobile Delta 88.

I pulled Arnita deeper into the shadows of the porch.

Dad drove almost to the carport, switched off the engine. He got out and walked straight over to us without shutting the car door.

I stepped into the sun. “Hey Dad. This is Arnita.”

“Go in the house,” he said.

I didn’t move.

His eye fell on Arnita’s suitcase. “What the heck is that?”

“I’m gonna be staying with y’all for a while, Mr. Musgrove,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Dad’s face knotted in anger. “Drive up to my house after I’ve been gone all week, to find you out here half undressed, with
her,
doing that in my front yard for the world to see? You get your hind end in that house!”

He had seen us kissing. This was all my fault.

Arnita turned on the full wattage of her Prom Queen smile. “Mr. Musgrove, maybe we could start over? I’m Linda. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“You be quiet!” he snapped.

That was my oldest fear coming true: Dad breaking the family code, which required that this side of him never be seen by an outsider.

“Whoa,” said Arnita. “Don’t yell at me.”

I shrugged. “This is what I was trying to tell you.”

“Go in the house!” he roared.

“No, Dad!” I cried. “
You
go in. You’re the one being rude!”

He wanted to hit me — his right hand jerked up — but he didn’t want to do it in front of her. He started to turn away, but then he couldn’t help himself — his hand shot out
smack!
— a quick slap
off the side of my head. Just hard enough to embarrass me in front of her. “Don’t you
ever
talk to me like that.” He stalked back to his car.

As always when he hit me, I had to talk back, to demonstrate that he hadn’t really hurt me. My face stung a little, that’s all. A roar in one ear. “Nice one, Dad,” I said.

He took his suitcase and his briefcase from the trunk, and carried them to the house. The door slammed behind him.

“It’s my fault,” I said. “I made him mad. I wish you didn’t have to see that.”

“Don’t apologize,” Arnita said. “You didn’t do anything.”

“He’s in a bad mood. I guess we should call the taxi to come take you home.”

“Daniel. I’m not going back there.”

I touched her shoulder. “It won’t work. I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here. You see how he is. My family is too weird for words, I tried to tell you.”

“I don’t care about that,” she said. “I’m going in to talk to your mother.”

“You’re going in there by yourself?”

“It’ll be better that way. You stay here. I’ll be fine.” With a cryptic smile she walked across the carport, opened the screen door, and stepped through.

I stood frozen in wonder, waiting for her to be blown back through the door like Wile E. Coyote in a cartoon explosion.

For the longest time, nothing happened. It was too quiet in there. I was afraid to go find out why.

Then I couldn’t stand it. I went to peer through the glass of the storm door. Things looked oddly normal in the family room.
I’m just a boy with two dads . . .
Dad in his recliner with his feet up, a glass of iced tea on the end table. Local news on the Admiral. On the sofa across from him, Arnita stretched out with her bare feet tucked beside her, as if she lived here.

I could hear Mom in the kitchen, a slew of pans clattering to the floor. Whatever she was cooking smelled vaguely toxic, a hint of electrical fire.

I didn’t want to do anything to disturb this arrangement. I went around to the front door, straight down the hall, to the Freak Annex. I took a shower, put on a clean shirt and jeans, and returned to the family room. “What are y’all doing?”

“What’s it look like?” Dad said. “We’re watching the news.”

I perched on the arm of the sofa beside Arnita. “So what’s the news?”

“Sonny and Cher are coming to the Coliseum,” she said.

“Yeah, I know! Timmy and me already have tickets. I was gonna ask if you wanted to go.”

“Whoa, hold on, you didn’t clear that with me,” Dad said. He winked at Arnita as if to poke fun at his reputation for strictness. He was trying to play the role of Jocular Dad. He wanted us to forget the fact that he had hit me a few minutes before.

Mom came out wearing an apron, a dusting of flour in her hair. I wondered what had brought on this sudden fit of cooking. She said, “Linda, I talked to your mom and she says it’s okay if you spend the one night.”

Arnita begged me with her eyes, Please play along, let me be Linda!

Mom said, “You can sleep in the other bed in Janie’s room, she’ll be thrilled to have you. But remember what I said.”

“Yes ma’am. Just the one night.”

Mom smiled at me. “Linda’s such a nice young lady, so well mannered. Why haven’t we met her before?”

It had never occurred to me that Mom might actually like Arnita — but of course she did, who wouldn’t? Arnita was so sweet, and oddly sure of herself. So changeable, quick as a smile. And here she was working her magic on the two least susceptible people in the world.

I’d never seen my family try to make any impression on a friend of mine, so I was surprised to see Mom bustling into the dining room, setting out cloth napkins and the Sunday china. Dad sat in his recliner talking to Arnita, tossing out witticisms, going to the trouble to pronounce the “g” on “talking” and “waiting” as he made conversation.

“More big-name entertainment coming to the State Fair in Jackson,” the newscaster said, “but first, a civil rights protest in Jackson enters its second peaceful week.”

“Aw great,” said Dad, “just what we need, another civil rights protest.” He cut his eyes over to see Arnita’s reaction.

She smiled. “I bet you think I’m black, don’t you, Mr. Musgrove?”

He peered at her, instantly suspicious. “You saying you’re not?”

“What if I’m as white as you?” She turned on her sparkly-tiara smile. “Never mind what you think you see. Let’s just say for the moment that the whole business of me being black turns out to be a big mix-up.”

Dad folded his arms. “Uh-huh.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against black people,” she said. “In a lot of ways I think they’re superior to white people.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Dad.

“But I can’t fit in with them,” she said. “I’ve tried. I can’t do it. I seem to be the only one who understands that I’m white. Nobody sees who I really am.”

Dad said, “I don’t know what kind of nonsense you’re trying to pull. And I don’t care how light-skinned you are. From where I’m sitting you’re still black as the ace of spades.”

“Lee,” Mom said.

“Well? She’s got a smart mouth on her. I’m just giving it back.”

Mom cleared her throat. “Linda, your mother told us you might say some strange things, and for us just to pretend you’re making sense. So that’s what we’re doing. I hope you don’t mind. Now y’all need to run wash up for dinner.”

I showed Arnita the way to the bathroom — she dragged me face-first through the door, gave me a good wet open-mouthed
pop!
on the lips, then shoved me out again, mocking me with silent laughter as she shut the door in my face.

I pressed against it, scratching and whimpering like a dog.

“You two cut the clowning and come on,” called Jovial Dad from the dining room. “Janie, honey! Dinner is served!”

“One more page till the end of this chapter,” yelled Janie.

“I said move it! Your mother has worked her fanny off here!”

It felt odd and too fancy to dine in the dining room, on a day that was neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas. Mom had lit candles and loaded the table with her specialties: celery sticks stuffed with pimiento cheese, Shake ’n Bake pork chops, Tater Tots, home-doctored baked beans, tiny green peas.

“Would you look at this feed!” Dad said, beaming at Arnita. “Everybody eat up, or we’re gonna have to pitch it to the pigs!”

I wanted to shout at him,
Quit acting jolly! Goddamn it, you are not jolly!
But I just kept eating and tried not to stare at Arnita’s nipples in her sweater.

“Unbelievably delicious,” she said. “Miz Musgrove, Daniel never told me you were a gourmet cook.”

Mom fluttered fingers in the air. “Oh goodness, Lee, you hear that? Gourmet cook! No, this is just our normal everyday food. But thank you so much.” She muttered almost scornfully, “Gourmet cook!”

“If it don’t come out of a can, she don’t cook it,” Dad said. “Does that make you a gourmet?”

Mom shot him a scalding look, and actually turned her chair to face away from him. “I’d be happy to share my recipes with you, Linda. Daniel told me how much y’all liked that lemon pound cake I sent you.”

Arnita looked puzzled. I changed the subject. I could see Janie thinking Arnita was the most beautiful glamorous thing ever to appear in our house, and she was. She brought life to the table; usually we just looked at each other and chewed our food. Janie kept asking how it felt to be Prom Queen, how heavy is the tiara, do the other girls hate you? Arnita acted as if all her questions were incredibly intelligent. “You can be a queen someday too, Janie, if you start preparing now. You’re definitely going to be pretty enough.”

That was when Janie’s little crush melted into total devotion. Even Mom and Dad were being nice to Arnita, pretending to like her. What more could I ask? If I invited her over more often, maybe they could get used to her. Maybe, in time, her blackness would come to seem like no big deal. And then . . . who knows?

No. Who are you kidding? Mom and Dad? In Mississippi? Never happen.

Arnita yelped and skidded back in her chair.

A weird cackle came from down around her knees. “Whoa there, nigger gal!”