The Secrets She Carried (8 page)

“She isn’t much on eating, either,” I say. “She’s so thin you can almost see through her.”

“It’s that stuff she takes, all them drops in her cup. It steals her appetite.”

I cock an eye at her, wondering how she knows about the drops. I’ve never seen her outside this kitchen, and maybe the dining room, but only for as long as it takes to serve and clear away. “You know about her tincture?”

Lottie’s nostrils flare like she smells something bad. “Course I know about her tincture. Who do you think gets to dose it out every time one of you girls up and leaves?” She shakes her head then and goes back to her pork chops. “I don’t like to talk, though—ain’t really any of my business.”

A few days later I’m on my way to the kitchen when I come across Susanne in the dining room. She’s wearing her pearls and that frothy lavender dress, drumming her thin fingers on the starched white tablecloth. I’m surprised to see her there. By now, Lottie generally has the plates cleared away. Henry must be late for supper.

Susanne’s head snaps in my direction, her ordinarily pale face flushed with impatience. Her eyes are narrowed, her mouth already open when she realizes I am not Henry. I tuck my chin and turn to leave, but Henry is there somehow, filling up the doorway. He’s as hard as a tree and planted just as firmly, as if he’s grown roots to the carpet, and I wonder, as I blunder into him and stumble back, how such a big man could have come into the room so quietly.

For a minute all I can do is stare up at him, inhaling his soap and his hair tonic. He’s handsome in a craggy sort of way, like a cowboy in the moving pictures, tall and lean, with a shock of dark hair slanting down over his forehead. There’s a brooding look about him, like he’s got a lot on his mind, but there’s something else too, under all
that sun-browned skin, a kind of quiet that softens up all those hard angles. Mama always said it was impolite to stare, but I can’t help myself. I would never have guessed the lofty Susanne Gavin would ever marry the man standing in front of me.

Susanne’s looking him up and down now, like she can’t believe it either. Her eyes scrape over him slowly, as if she wants him to know she doesn’t like what she sees. He’s got on a clean pair of overalls, and a worn chambray shirt buttoned all the way to his Adam’s apple. Her gaze lingers on his hands, tough as horn, the nails stained brown. She sighs then and waves a hand in my direction.

“This is my new girl, Henry, the one from New Orleans. Her name is Adele.”

Henry nods. “Pleased to meet you, miss,” he says. “We’re about to have some supper. You’re welcome to join us.”

I don’t have to look at Susanne to know what she thinks of this idea. I can feel the disgust boiling off her from across the room. Sighing, she tosses down her napkin. “It’s dinner, Henry. Not supper. And Adele eats in the kitchen, with Lottie. Not with us.”

Their eyes lock across the table full of silverware and china, and for a moment the quiet is so thick I think someone’s going to choke on it. I try to think of something to say, something to fill up all that awful silence, but nothing comes to mind. And so I just stand there with my hands folded in front of my apron, trying not to notice that Henry seems to have shrunk a little and that Susanne’s eyes keep darting in my direction.

Finally, she waves me from the room. As I turn to leave I cast one more look at Henry and feel a wash of sadness, because I realize now that for all Susanne’s talk, she’s ashamed of her very important husband, even in front of me—for his plain ways and plain clothes. I think about what Lottie told me, about the farmland Henry got from her daddy, and I can’t help wondering if he still thinks he got a good bargain.

I
must go to church.

I’ve been at Peak nearly two months when Susanne informs me I’m to start attending services with her on Sundays. It sets a bad example, she says, that some of her help don’t worship in a proper church, and asks if Lottie ever told me she’s a Catholic. She says
Catholic
with her nostrils all flared, like it’s something you’d catch at Maudie Raven’s place back home on Decatur Street, where four dollars buys a bottle, a girl, and a room for an hour. I don’t tell her I was baptized at St. Augustine’s. I just iron my navy blue dress and polish up my shoes for church.

Henry is to come with us, I learn when Sunday rolls around. I’ve never known him to go to church before, but the tobacco is in the barns now, hung up on poles to dry in thick yellow bunches, so he’s got no excuse to stay behind. He looks like a stranger in his black suit and shiny shoes. His hair is slick with tonic, and his hands won’t leave off his tie, like it’s a noose cinched tight around his neck. Susanne looks him over, picks something I don’t see off his lapel. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her touch him.

We drive to town in the big black Ford. Susanne sits in front with her arms folded, breathing hard through her nose. She’s angry that
Henry won’t let George drive us. George always drives Susanne and me into town, maybe because she doesn’t know how to drive herself, or maybe because she likes having someone drive her around.

Everyone’s already inside when we arrive. I can hear the organ playing. Susanne doesn’t bat an eye, just tucks her Bible under her arm and sails into the sanctuary like she’s Joan of Arc, marching down to the last open pew—the one behind the deacons. It’s odd to see it empty when the church is so full. Then it comes to me—no matter how full that church gets, no one’s ever going to sit in that pew unless their name is Gavin. Susanne slides in, then Henry. I duck in next, careful not to kneel first, my fists balled up tight to remind me not to make the sign of the cross.

First Presbyterian isn’t anything like church back home. It’s all whitewash and wood, and it’s small—so small you could set it right down in the middle of St. Augustine’s. And like most things in Gavin—and most folks, too—it’s worn. The carpet is threadbare, starting to unravel along the center aisle, the old oak pews worn to a dull shine by countless generations of Presbyterian backsides.

There’s a choir up front wearing dark green robes, leading the congregation in song. I follow along the best I can from one of the thick brown hymnals. Next to me, Henry does the same. The pews are chock-full, but then Mama always did say churches fill up when pockets empty out. Most are wearing their Sunday best, dark suits and respectable dresses. But some of the children’s clothes are a bit short in the sleeve, and here and there, ladies fidget to hide the tatty fingers of their not-so-white gloves. Some, though, are just plain poor. They’re seated in back, mostly dark faces, but some white too, and a few shades in between, wearing whatever they had that was cleanest and least patched. They must be the folks I hear Susanne and her lady friends talk about—the folks from over the tracks.

When the plate comes around, there’s a lot of shifting and clearing of throats, a lot of eyes fastened to the stained glass windows. I
wonder if Susanne even notices; then I decide she couldn’t, or she never would have worn that new hat with all the feathers, or all those shiny beads around her neck. It’s a queer thing to be ashamed of someone who’s better off than you, but I am. And I see, as he cuts his eyes in his wife’s direction, that Henry is too.

Susanne wastes no time when the benediction is over. She heads for the door, leaving Henry in her wake. I hang back, watching the quiver and weave of her hat feathers up ahead, going still a moment as she pauses for a word with the preacher, then fluttering off again into a flock of ladies at the foot of the church steps.

Outside, I linger in the shade of one of the church’s white pillars, fanning myself with my program. I try to be invisible like Mama taught me, but it’s hard. I don’t fit with the women here, all wrung of color and wearing the weight of the world on their married faces. I feel their eyes crawling over me, wondering where I came from and why I’ve invaded their church. I see their husbands too, trying not to gawk too long at my ankles. But there’s nowhere to hide, and so I stand there, waiting for Susanne to crook her finger at me.

That’s when I finally find something St. Augustine and First Presbyterian have in common. If you want to know all about a town’s business, all you need to do is stand around on the church steps. That Sunday I learn all about Mary Farmer’s hernia operation, and how Gladiola Vicks had to send both her girls to her sister up in Pennsylvania after Lester lost his job at the mill, and how Bobby Grayson stayed out ’til all hours of the night and came home with a black eye and a torn shirt. But it’s Henry’s name that makes my ears perk up.

Two men in suits stand behind the next pillar, smoking cigarettes and looking out over the crowd as it begins to thin. The larger of the two is built like a bull, thick and dark, and there’s something in his face I don’t like the look of, something sharp and mean.

His eyes are narrowed on Henry, watching as he crosses the lawn, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries. “You hear Gavin’s been
hiring a bunch of coloreds to work out at his place?” He blows out a plume of gray smoke, spits a fleck of tobacco off his lip. “They say he’s working ’em right alongside the whites, too.”

His companion, a slight man in a brown suit, leans back on his heels a bit and takes a lazy pull on his cigarette. “Heard something about it,” he says finally. “Didn’t give it much thought, though, since it’s not really any of my business.”

“It’s everyone’s business,” says the Bull. “Man’s got no right giving away jobs to Negroes when there’s white men hard up for work.”

The man in brown gives the Bull a hard look. “Seems to me, a man’s got the right to give his jobs to whoever he damn well pleases. Just like you’ve got a right to do what you do on your own land.”

“May-be,” the Bull grunts. “But I don’t think there’s too many who’d compare running a little shine with giving away white jobs to coloreds.”

“They’re family men, Porter. Not black men, not white men—family men. And Henry Gavin doesn’t care what color they are. He cares how many mouths they have to feed. You’re standing on the steps of a church. Do you honestly think when Christ Almighty was handing out the loaves and the fishes he turned the dark ones away?”

Porter. The Bull’s name is Porter. He doesn’t answer, just stalks off down the steps. I’m glad to see him go, but his name won’t leave my head. It’s familiar to me, though I can’t recall right off where I’ve heard it. Then I remember the carload of boys that come around every Tuesday to bring Susanne her bootleg—brothers, I think, two half grown, and a little one who tags after the others like a puppy. I wonder if they might not be the Bull’s kin, wonder too as I watch the Bull climb into an old black truck and drive away, what Susanne thinks of this business of hiring Negroes to work so close to all her fine things, and how long it’ll be ’til there’s trouble.

As it turns out, trouble isn’t far off at all.

Tuesday is Susanne’s ladies club day. The Gavin Ladies Historical Society, they call themselves, though I never hear them do much talking about history, unless it’s the history of how a certain husband’s been seen driving around town with his new secretary, or how a certain house is on the verge of going back to the bank, or how the silver tea service has disappeared from a certain dining room on Grover Street. It’s all said with a great deal of head shaking and the woeful clucking of tongues, but there’s something hard and sharp in the powdery faces of those women as they serve and digest their bits of news, gobbling it all up as greedily as they do the little frosted cakes Lottie serves on white paper doilies.