The Swan House (32 page)

During that whole time, you could feel that race relations in Atlanta, which historically had been a lot better than other places in the Deep South, were becoming more fragile. In Buckhead, Daddy and Grandmom and Granddad, and probably most everyone else, just could not understand why a black student was so adamant about attending a white college. After all, there were several very well thought of black colleges in Atlanta, like Morehouse and Spelman and Morris Brown and Clark. When I listened to the adults around me talk, I could see their point of view.

But then I'd go with Ella Mae to Grant Park and feel the tension and unrest in the air, like some impending storm. And the blacks in Grant Park sometimes looked at me with suspicion in their eyes. Or at least that's what I thought I saw there, and it hurt. It hurt a lot.

In early October Puddin' broke her arm, and we were pretty sure it was because a white kid yanked her off the swing at the playground at school. But she would never admit it, even though one of her friends saw the whole thing and explained how this big white boy sneaked onto the playground and started roughing up the kids. But the fear in Puddin's eyes replaced her carefree attitude, and she seemed to be forever looking over her shoulder. I think that stabbed me in the heart most of all.

Twice Miss Abigail found the windshield of her car painted with the words “nigger lover,” and I could tell that shook up Carl a lot. But she didn't seem one bit worried. I'll always remember what she said to me when I asked her about it.

“Mary Swan, I've got the army of the Lord protecting me, and I'll be just fine.”

“You're not afraid?”

She smiled that smile that made her eyes shine. “Sometimes I'm afraid. But haven't you heard the saying, ‘Courage is fear that's said its prayers'? I get down on my face before the Lord every morning before I leave my house, and I tell Him that He is in charge and that my day is in His hands.”

But Carl was afraid. And mad. Real mad. And I didn't know if his talk about peaceful protests would last. I could read in his eyes that if he ever caught up with the boy who had dared to hurt his little sister, that guy was as good as dead. And that scared me.

We'd barely gotten over the ordeal with James Meredith when the whole country went into hysteria over the Cuban Missile Crisis. If the blacks and whites didn't tear each other apart, then there was the real possibility that the Russians, with missiles in Cuba, would blow us up. And as for logistics, Atlanta was a lot closer to Cuba than, say, California. I think the whole country held its breath for about a week, fearing the worst and praying for a miracle. That miracle came at the end of October when the Russian Prime Minister Khrushchev agreed to dismantle his bases and withdraw all the missiles. So the country let out a collective sigh of relief.

Of course Mr. Jeffries, our history teacher, loved all this “history in the making,” as he called it. So not only did I hear about James Meredith and Cuban missiles at home on the TV, but at least an hour a day at Wellington, it was drilled into us about the racial pressures and the changes on the horizon and the menace from Russia.

In early November Rachel and I did get to meet the other members of Carl's band, and, man, could they play jazz! Nickie played the sax, like Carl, Leo played drums, Larry played the trombone, and Big Man played the piano. And we discovered that they could also sing. Nickie was as tall as Carl and skinny as a rail and had a gorgeous tenor voice. Leo, short, stocky, and full of muscles, sang bass. Larry reminded me of Fat Albert, a wonderful character that the comedian Bill Cosby described on one of his records that Daddy and Mama used to listen to. Larry was certainly wide and jolly, and he had the kindest eyes. And he could hit notes so low that Rachel and I could only shake our heads in admiration. Big Man was just the opposite of Larry. He looked like his body had forgotten to grow after the age of twelve, but it didn't seem to bother him one bit. And when he hit his high tenor note or sang falsetto, we knew that in spite of his diminutive size, he had a powerful set of lungs.

“Hey, guys!” I said after they'd delighted us with several renditions of songs from the fifties. “I've got this great idea. Would y'all be interested in playing for the Piedmont Driving Club's Christmas Dance?”

“The
what
?” Larry asked in his deep voice.

“Some fancy club in Buckhead, I suppose,” Carl said, nodding to me with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Right. It is this fancy club, and every year there's a dance for juniors and seniors in high school.”

“I done finished high school, and I ain't neva' been invited to no dance at no fancy club,” Big Man challenged with a smile.

“Oh, hush up, boy, and let the lady speak!” That came from Leo.

“Every year the girls from several of the private schools invite the guys to this dance. Live band. Long dresses and corsages. Gourmet buffet. Stuff like that. Anyway, y'all would be great! And you'd get paid a lot!” I actually had no idea if this was true, but it made my argument sound more convincing.

“Go on and find out about it, Mary Swan,” Carl concluded after a brief discussion with his friends. “And keep us posted.”

So I called the club and talked to a Mrs. Appleby and found out that she already had reserved the main band, but that she was indeed looking for a start-up band for the evening. And money was involved. When I reported my findings to the jazz band, they all seemed interested in the idea of playing at a fancy white man's club.

So many things I thought were good ideas that year turned out to be not so good and even terrible, but in my heart, I kept thinking I was doing the right thing. Even with Carl, I thought it was right to be his friend, and I felt on fire anytime his hand brushed mine or he rubbed my shoulders or caught my eye. It was always so subtle that, try as I might, I couldn't tell what he meant. I wanted him to mean something deep by those moments of affection. I dreamed of him kissing me in the alley behind the church or when we slipped into Oakland Cemetery and no one else was around. Man, I wanted that! But all he gave me were hints.

Robbie did kiss me, almost every Friday night after the football game. I liked those kisses, and I liked Robbie. A whole lot. I honestly did not think I was two-timing him. Of course, I wasn't, except in my mind. But that kind of kept things exciting. I think the most unbelievable part of that fall was that one boy liked me a whole bunch, and maybe another one liked me too. It had never happened before, and after being jealous of Rachel and all her boyfriends, I finally got a taste of the knock-you-down fun of being with boys.

Rachel told me about all the best spots to go parking, as we called it, but Robbie wasn't like that. He liked to drive me home and kiss me good and hard in the driveway or walk with me out to the backyard, lean against the hickory tree and talk, with his arms wrapped around me. And since Jimmy's window didn't look out onto the back of the house, that was okay by me. And the thing I liked so much about Robbie was that we talked about all kinds of things. Some dumb gossip from our schools, and of course about his sports and my orchestra and the horses, but we also talked about church, and why he was an acolyte. I even got up the courage to tell him about going down to Grant Park and what I did there, and about Miss Abigail and Puddin' and Cassandra and Jessie and a lot of other people I'd met.

I never mentioned Carl, of course, but it felt great that Robbie knew about the things that were mattering to me. I even told him what Miss Abigail said about faith and what Cassandra had said about baptism.

I didn't talk to Daddy much. I still felt furious about his lying for all those years, and I wasn't about to broach the subject with him. And I loved him so much and hated him so fiercely that I found it easiest to blame him for everything that was wrong in my life.

Those women kept coming by to see him, and Jimmy kept being completely obnoxious, which pleased me greatly, and I kept acting polite but distant. Once in a while I'd throw out a comment to shock Daddy and his woman friend at just the right moment. And sometimes Daddy tried to explain to me that he needed a date to escort to such and such a function, but I never acted one bit sympathetic. I'm sure that hurt him.

I avoided Trixie like the plague. I couldn't bear to see her knowing that she knew that I knew all those secrets.

One day I caught Ella Mae bent over the sofa in the dining room, clutching her head and moaning softly. “Ella Mae! What's the matter?”

She jerked up quickly. “Mary Swan! I didn't hear ya come in the room.” She tried to smile. “Ain't nothin,' honey, but a bad headache. Been gettin' 'em lotsa times lately. Part o' growing old.” She started humming to herself as she dusted a coffee table, but I wasn't fooled.

“Ella Mae, you're sick! You look awful. Go lie down in the guest room for a while. Please.”

“Don't ya worry 'bout me, sugar. I'll be fine.”

But I was worried. I got her a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water and convinced her to take the pills, but she never lay down. The next day, her husband, Roy, called to say she was “feelin' mighty poorly” and wouldn't be at work. Ella Mae never missed work.

But that fall she ended up being absent two or three times. Whenever I questioned her, she'd just shake her head and say, “Jus' women's problems, Mary Swan. Not much ya kin do but put up with it.” I figured she was right, but I certainly hated it for her. I kept my mouth shut, because I knew she felt it wasn't her place to be burdening us with her problems.

But much of my life just went on as normal. Rachel and I rode our mares on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons and usually at least once on the weekends, and we went to flute lessons on Friday after school, and I spent Friday nights with Robbie and Saturdays at Grant Park and Sundays at church and the club. And I did my homework, which took at least an hour every night. But whenever I had a spare moment, I sneaked into the studio and painted. I never said one more word to Daddy about the sketchbooks or Resthaven or anything at all about Mama, because I was afraid he would lock up the studio or clean it out. And the studio, the
atelier
, was mine. Mine! It turned out that lots of those books Mama had on painting were pretty helpful, and so sometimes I'd read a few pages and get all inspired and then paint. Mama was right that it was easy to cover over the mistakes.

In English class, we finished
Wuthering Heights
and started reading
Jane Eyre
, so we were talking about the Brontë sisters for half the fall. But we also did poetry by Emily Dickinson, and I liked it so much that I didn't dare transform it.

Once that fall the Wellington orchestra played for the Atlanta Junior League, and we also went down to Savannah to perform for the DAR meeting (the Daughters of the American Revolution) to which Grandmom Middleton belonged. I enjoyed getting dressed in my orchestra attire: putting on my long black satin gown and pulling my stringy hair up into a bun, with Rachel's help of course, and applying Mama's rouge and mascara and lipstick.

But the Raven Dare was as good as dead and buried. I did not want to think about the black bird or Edgar Allen Poe or Resthaven or missing paintings.

It was Rachel who finally brought up the whole thing near the end of October. “I know you don't want to deal with it, and I know you're still mad at your dad and you can't talk to Trixie, but do you think I could just have a look at those sketchbooks with you and go through any other things your mom may have stashed in her studio?”

“I don't know, Rach. It just keeps turning into something bigger than I had planned. Every time I even think about it now, I get this low-level feeling of nausea. What else am I going to find out about my mother? About my whole family? No Raven honor is worth this misery!”

“I think you've learned the worst, Swannee. I really do. And can I just say something, as a not-so-objective observer?”

I shrugged.

“It's true that your dad lied, and that's unfortunate. Well, it stinks. But on the other hand, you had a pretty normal childhood and you loved your parents and they loved you and they loved each other. Lots of kids don't have that. And if your mom was as sick and depressed as it seems, well, I think it's pretty remarkable that your dad and Ella Mae and Trixie could keep things going the way they did. You weren't miserable, after all. Think of Samantha Logan's family. Her mom is an alcoholic, and everyone knows it, and other parents won't ever let their kids go to her house. She hangs out with her older siblings and smokes and cusses and has boyfriends twice her age.

“There are tons of families like that right here in Buckhead, even though they try to hide it. Think of Trixie and the gosh-awful junk she went through. And everybody knew it. I really don't think everyone knew about your mom. I certainly didn't. I never heard a soul whispering that your mom was nuts. Knock-you-down gorgeous, yes. Gifted, yes. But not nutty.

“And as for your dad, don't you think he was coping the best way he knew how? What would it be like to have a wife who was so depressed?”

I scowled at Rachel. “How long have you been planning that little jewel of a speech?”

“Ever since you told me about Resthaven. Ever since you started treating your dad like a scum ball.”

“But he is!”

“I've seen worse. So put it aside for a little while, and let's just concentrate on the Dare and the information before us. Okay?”

Dear, practical, pragmatic Rachel.

I gave a long dramatic sigh and acquiesced. “Okay.”

Once inside the
atelier
, Rachel knew exactly what to do. She watched me retrieve the Seven Secret Sketchpads and started snooping around for anything else that might be hidden. Over in the corner, Mama had an old desk crammed with papers and bills of sale. I had never even thought to open its three little drawers.