The Improper Life Of Bezellia Grove Part 1

Susan Gregg Gilmore.

The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove.

O, be some other name!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,.

Romeo and Juliet.

GROVE BABY GIRL MAKES DEBUT.

FIFTH-GENERATION NASHVILLIAN.

Friends and Family Celebrate at Grove Hill.

Dr. and Mrs. Charles Goodman Grove V, of Nashville, welcomed their first child, born on March 26. The proud parents officially announced the birth of their daughter, Bezellia Louise, yesterday at a festive luncheon held at the family's Grove Hill estate.

More than one hundred friends and family enjoyed a lavish meal featuring lobster-style eggs Benedict, quiche Lorraine, and cheese strata. The tables were covered with pink damask and decorated with arrangements of pink and white sweetheart roses.

Mrs. Grove wore a one-piece, pale pink linen dress with a coordinating short-sleeved jacket detailed with a pink grosgrain ribbon. Her baby daughter was the center of attention wearing a smocked, white cotton gown accented with soft pink rosettes and trimmed with a pink satin ribbon. Dr. Grove gave his newborn daughter a strand of heirloom pearls, a necklace that was once worn by his great-grandmother.

Guests said the Groves were radiant as they introduced their infant daughter to Nashville society. Mr. and Mrs. George Madison Longfellow Hunt V, Dr. and Mrs. Richard S. Miller, Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Lawrence Hayes, of Birmingham, Ala., and Mr. and Mrs. Albert Lyle Patterson II, of Atlanta, Ga., were among those in attendance.

The Nashville Register.

early edition.

MAY 1, 1951.

chapter one.

Apparently among those who consider their social standing some measure of importance, I am to be admired, for I am one of the few Nashvillians who can claim with infallible certainty that a blood relation has lived in this town since its inception. My mother, although a Grove only by marriage, never tired of sharing this piece of family trivia at c.o.c.ktail parties or morning coffees, convinced that it elevated her own social position far beyond what her birth parents could have guaranteed.

And whether or not she exaggerated the details of our family's history in the hope of impressing her friends, the truth remains that a poor Carolina farmer packed his bags some two hundred and fifty years ago and set out to cross the Appalachian Mountains, heading west with his young bride, determined to claim a few acres of his own and a better life for his family. He probably didn't have a penny to his name by the time he stumbled into Fort Nashborough begging for a hot meal and a place to sleep, but that doesn't seem to matter to the Grove family anymore.

Legend has it that when the Chickamauga Indians attacked the Nashville settlement, they killed my ancestral father as he fearlessly fought to protect his young wife. She grabbed the musket from her dying husband's hands and continued the fight, killing three Indian warriors herself. Then she fell on top of her husband's cold, b.l.o.o.d.y body and held him in her arms throughout the night.

Her name was Bezellia Louise, and for generations since, the first girl born to the eldest Grove male has been named in her memory. Although most official historians dispute any claims of her heroics, my father donated thousands of dollars to the Nashville Historical Society with the belief that eventually some fresh, young academic would see the past more according to my family's advantage. But whether fact or fiction, I have believed in her courage and pa.s.sion and was always proud to share her name.

Sadly, the Bezellias birthed before me never cared for this designation, preferring a monosyllabic moniker-like Bee, Zee, or Zell-to their formal Christian name. My own mother disliked it so much that for years she refused to let it cross her lips, calling me only Sister, a generic subst.i.tution that summed up her distaste for my name and her inadequate affection for me. I, on the other hand, always wanted to hear it in its entirety, never caring what others thought of it.

But long before I had memorized the details of my family's story, I understood that I was a girl unlike most others. I had a pony to ride and a closet br.i.m.m.i.n.g with neatly pressed dresses. My bedroom was decorated with teddy bears that were handmade in Germany and dolls with porcelain heads that I was only to admire and never to touch. And, most important, I was always cooked for and attended to by people other than my mother, by people with dark skin and families of their own.

Maizelle Cooper was a short, round woman with bits of white hair highlighting her forehead like a jeweled crown. She wore the same short-sleeved, light blue work dress every day, summer and winter. And she always kept a stiff white ap.r.o.n tied around her waist. When she hugged me and pressed my face into her full, round tummy, I could smell a faint perfume of flour and cinnamon and grease. Maizelle spent most of her time in the kitchen, keeping a careful watch over a collection of pots endlessly simmering on a hot black stove. She cooked b.u.t.tery biscuits and sweet, creamy oatmeal to warm my stomach in the mornings and greeted me after school with a cold gla.s.s of milk and a piece of homemade pound cake.

She washed and ironed all of my clothes, even my undershirts, and prepared my baths in the evenings, and somewhere in between sang me songs about freedom and grace, swaying from one hip to the other as if the rhythm of her voice kept her body in perfect balance.

I asked her once why she sang those songs considering it had been almost a century since President Lincoln had signed the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. Maizelle just shook her head and said that in all her years on this earth she had seen enough to know that there were many ways one man could make a slave out of another. Then she slowly wiped her brow and pointed to the crooked scar above her right eye. She never told me how it got there, and somehow I knew better than to ask. She imagined it was hard for me to understand all that she was saying from where I was standing, but the good Lord, she said, would make things right one day. She just hoped she'd be here to see it.

Maizelle slept in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Her bedroom was small and poorly lit. The gray stone walls always left it feeling cold and damp down there, no matter how hot the temperature was outside. It was furnished very simply, with a single bed, a chest of drawers, a small wooden chair, and a creaky old nightstand with a reading lamp on top. A toilet, sink, and shower spigot were set a few feet from her bedroom door with nothing but a heavy plastic curtain hanging from an old metal rod for privacy. Mother said that was all Maizelle needed, that she was here to work, not to lounge about. And if she didn't keep a close eye on her, then that's exactly what that woman would do. At least that's what Mother said.

I never asked Maizelle how she felt about living in the bas.e.m.e.nt either. I guess I already knew the answer to that too. And even though I believed that she truly loved me, when she rode the bus home at the end of the week, I knew she loved her own family more.

Nathaniel Stephenson took care of the house, the grounds, and Mother's midnight blue Cadillac. He was a tall, lean man whose skin was so wonderfully rich and dark it looked like night, and when he smiled, his teeth shone like the stars in the Milky Way. His eyes were a deep brown but sprinkled with bits of emerald green. His mama said that the day he was born he had been kissed by an angel. Maybe. He was certainly one of the nicest men I ever knew, and definitely the strongest, and not just because I could see the muscles rippling beneath his cotton work shirt.

Nathaniel was no more than eight years old when he was hired to clean the stables and feed the horses at Grove Hill during the summer months. As soon as the weather turned warm, his father would drop him off at the end of the drive just before daybreak. He'd gently push his small son out of the front seat of an old red pickup truck, so rusted in spots it looked as much brown as red, and then he'd toss him one last wave and go to work for another white family on down the road. When he came to pick his son up at the end of the day, smelling like manure and hay, he'd find him sound asleep on a cot left on the back porch. Nathaniel always said that hard work was good for a man, but a child ought to be left to play.

My own father used to call Nathaniel Bubba, for brother, and in a way I guess that's what he was. He taught my father to saddle a horse and to ease a fish off a hook without even flinching. Nathaniel said Mr. Grove used to follow right behind him from dawn to dusk, more reliable than a shadow on a bright, sunny day. But that was a long time ago now.

According to Nathaniel, Grove Hill was once the prettiest place in Nashville, maybe in all of Tennessee. The earth was green and sweeping, and centuries-old oak trees peppered the landscape, providing plenty of shade from the hot summer sun. And nestled among a thick grove of trees stood my home-a big, gracious house built of deep red brick with a large porch that wrapped across the front. Legend has it that my great-grandfather drank too much whiskey one night and painted the brick a creamy white. He had been to Washington, D.C., only the week before and said if President Grant was going to live in a white house, then d.a.m.n it, so was he. But now the finish was chipped and worn, and you could see the red brick peeking through its tired old coat of paint.

Six large limestone columns lined across the front of the house seemed to act as strong, stoic guards, not only reminding our guests that Grove Hill was an important place but to this day quietly protecting the family that lived there. You can even see where Union gunfire blasted those columns, nicks and cuts in the stone proof of their effort to stop one bullet after another as it sped toward the house.

Nathaniel told me that Grove Hill was actually considered one of the most beautiful antebellum homes still standing, and it was his job to keep her that way. Her formal parlors filled with expensive antiques, an impressive grand staircase with detailed carvings, and a mahogany-paneled library were often featured in ladies' magazines from Virginia to Alabama. Mother spent enormous amounts of time and money decorating and redecorating the house, always selecting the newest French fabrics and silk-screened wallpapers even before the old ones had a chance to age. To me, though, Grove Hill looked kind of tired and lonely no matter how much attention she was given.

But it was here that my father's father, and his father, and at least his father before him developed one of the best Thoroughbred nurseries in the South. That's right, better than any in Virginia, Tennessee, or Kentucky. Robert E. Lee was even known to visit here every spring just to sip a little sherry and inspect the new foals. Grove Hill was a plantation of sorts really, just without the cotton or tobacco or slavery. In fact, my family prided themselves in saying that a Grove never owned another human being. Yet somehow they managed to run a prosperous horse farm with the help of countless black men and women who barely made enough money to buy the shirts on their backs. I guess Maizelle was right. It was just a matter of definition.

Of course by the time I was born, there weren't many Thoroughbreds left, or any other kinds of animals for that matter, most having been sold to settle some unpaid debts my grandfather generously left for his firstborn son. Thousands of green, tree-studded acres that had once belonged to my family had been neatly packaged into neighborhoods of small, three-bedroom homes-Grove Hills, Grove Park, Grove Woods. They all looked the same.

And even though Nathaniel now cared for the house, in reality his most pressing a.s.signment became pleasing my mother-waxing the hardwood floors, sweeping the front porch, washing the windows, polishing the silver tea service, or whatever else she demanded. My father and Nathaniel never talked about fishing anymore. They never talked about much of anything anymore. Truthfully, my father could barely look his old friend in the eye. But Nathaniel always managed a sweet smile on his face, even when my mother talked to him as if he was a child.

"Bless it, Nathaniel, were you dropped on your head when you were a baby?" she'd snap when she found a dirty windowpane or the porch needed sweeping. Mother, it seemed, was convinced that any black man or woman who did something she didn't like had been dropped on the head at birth, a.s.suming that the same men and women she trusted to care for her children were unusually careless and clumsy with their own.

"I'm not paying you to sit around and wait for the stars to come out. Now get that window cleaned so I can see out of it. That strong arm of yours is the only reason you've still got a job here."

Mother never really knew how smart Nathaniel was. He could quote Scripture as easily as he could Shakespeare. She just never took the time to notice. He said his own mama had taught him to read when he was no more than three. She told him that in a book, her son could be anybody he wanted to be.

Maybe so. But by the time I was no more than four or five, I had already figured out that there wasn't a white man in Nashville who would let my mother talk to him the way she talked to Nathaniel. Of course, he always said that when you're right with the Lord n.o.body's words can hurt you. But I didn't know about that. Neither the Lord nor Nathaniel had to live with my mother day and night.

Poor Maizelle, on the other hand, had to work extra hard to hold her tongue when Mother acted hateful and sharp, like the day she fed one of Maizelle's prettiest pound cakes to a bunch of old, hungry crows poking about the yard. Mother stood on the back porch and crumbled it up into little pieces, said it was too dry for human consumption, said she wasn't even sure the birds would be able to choke it down. Maizelle bit her tongue till it bled, and when Mother wasn't looking, she spit blood right in her coffee. I'd only seen her spit like that once, maybe twice. But I hoped she did it all the time. Truthfully, I was feeling so hurt for Maizelle that day that I added a little of my own expectoration to my mother's face cream. The next morning, I spied her sitting in front of her bathroom mirror, admiring her milky, smooth skin.

Even though my mother was unpredictable at best, Maizelle and Nathaniel always managed to maneuver through the days with such a wonderful sense of sameness that my life felt unaccountably safe and secure. Every morning, at half past seven, Nathaniel would back my mother's Cadillac DeVille out of the garage and drive it to the front of the house. He would pull a white rag out of his back pocket and wipe the car's hood, collecting any dust that might have settled during the night. He said he was caring for more than three hundred horses now, each one of them galloping under the hood of that car, and he had to keep their stable shiny and clean.

A few minutes later, Maizelle would push me out the front door with a lunch box in one hand and my sister's little fingers, sticky from eating a grape-jelly biscuit, clutched in the other. Even when Adelaide was too young to go to school, Nathaniel let her ride along with us for fear she'd stand on the front steps and cry herself into a breathless tantrum, disturbing my mother's morning ritual of sleeping past nine and then sipping her coffee in bed.

Adelaide looked like a little fairy with her soft, curly brown hair and bright blue eyes. She was small for her age, and her features were tiny and delicate. Even her voice was small and gentle. She had been born too early, Maizelle said, but she'd catch up in time. Sometimes Adelaide acted just as sweet and tenderhearted as I imagined a fairy would be. But most days she was cranky and ill-tempered, and it was best to leave her in her own secret world playing with her baby dolls, especially the one with the wiry blond hair she called Baby Stella. Maizelle said Adelaide was just being four. But I was not so sure. Besides, she was almost five.

With my sister and Baby Stella neatly tucked in the backseat, Nathaniel took his position behind the steering wheel and carefully guided the car onto the main road. And while my mother drank her morning coffee and made phone calls from her bed, I'd press my nose against the car window and try to melt into the world on the other side of the gla.s.s.

My mother, Elizabeth Mabel Morgan, was the only child born to Mabel and Macon Morgan, simple people whose family tree was rooted as deeply in the Tennessee dirt as the Groves'. But since none of the Morgans had shared a bottle of whiskey with Andrew Jackson or hunted bears with Davy Crockett, no one cared about their family tree, which had been thriving on the same small spot of earth about thirty miles outside of town. Some years ago now, the Army Corps of Engineers had dammed the c.u.mberland River, turning their family homestead into valuable lakefront property. And almost as quickly as the water filled that valley, leaving my grandparents' house sitting on the southern edge of Old Hickory Lake, my mother's disdain for her childhood home grew into a much more treasured respect.

Mother never said much of anything nice about her parents until the first of every August, when she announced that my sister and I would be spending the month with Nana and Pop. We ought to be by the water during the hottest days of the summer, she'd say, trying to sound as though she was genuinely concerned about her daughters' welfare. It was good for our lungs and our complexions, she'd say and then hold my chin in her hand, searching for any imperfections. Mother must have truly believed in the healing powers of the water, because the minute Nathaniel loaded our suitcases into the trunk of the car, she packed her own bags and headed to Sea Island, alone.

Actually, I could not imagine my mother, who taught us to recite the rules of etiquette more fluidly than the Lord's Prayer, ever running barefoot in the gra.s.s and catching lightning bugs with her bare hands, all the things Nana claimed her daughter did when she was a little girl. Before, my grandmother would say, she turned angry and bitter. All I knew was that my mother ran away from home when she was barely sixteen years old. Nana said she left nothing but a shoe box filled with old letters from her boyfriend and a tearstained note taped to her bedroom door. She said she was going to Paris or Hollywood, but she got only as far as Nashville.

Apparently she was working as a salesclerk at the Vanderbilt University bookstore when a fourth-year undergraduate with a handsome smile and an expensive watch on his wrist came looking for a chemistry book. My mother quickly added it all up and told him that she had taken the semester off to pursue an independent study in Renaissance art and that the chemistry books were on the top shelf in the back of the store. My father bought the book, but I'm not sure he ever looked past my mother's hazel eyes and generous bustline. They were married only seven months later in an elaborate ceremony attended by hundreds of Nashvillians eager to meet the beautiful girl with a supposed interest in art and an obscure past who had mesmerized the future Dr. Grove.

And while my father went to medical school, my mother joined the Junior League and the garden club and anything else she deemed worthy of her new position as Mrs. Charles Goodman Grove V. Nathaniel told me that when Mother first came to Grove Hill, she didn't even know how to set the table properly, hadn't even seen a real cloth napkin. He showed her where to put the fork and the knife and how to sit at the table like a real lady. And in no time at all, she learned to host the perfect luncheon, write the perfect note, raise the perfect children, and all the while, maintain the perfect smile. In the end, she probably worked harder than my father.

At some point along the way, Mother exchanged her afternoon coffee for a gin and tonic, served with a fresh slice of lime and freshly crushed ice that Nathaniel hammered into small pieces on the back porch. He guessed that my mother's volunteer work was real demanding and that she needed a little gla.s.s of relaxation in the afternoon. But we both knew that Mother with a coffee cup in her hand was not a particularly kind or attentive person and that Mother with a gin and tonic in her hand was simply mean and withdrawn. I didn't really care for either but learned to tolerate both.

Late at night, when the gin had fully consumed my mother's heart, she would scold me for merely walking past her on the way to my bedroom. She said my feet were too heavy on the floor, and I needed to walk like a lady and not one of those d.a.m.n horses loafing about in the field. I'd tiptoe to my room and throw myself across the bed, pretending to be a beautiful princess waiting for some handsome prince to rescue me from the wicked witch who slept down the hall. But the prince never came, nor did my father, who stayed at the hospital long after dark, preferring to save people he knew very little about.

Actually, I was never really sure if my parents loved or hated each other. One New Year's Eve, I saw them kiss fully on the lips, but most days they merely lived side by side, sharing the same s.p.a.ce and nothing more. Father seemed almost awkward around my mother, never quite certain of what to say or do. So he usually said and did nothing. And when he died, I couldn't help but wonder if my mother's tears were from knowing that she would never feel his touch again or from missing the daily habit of disliking him.

Had it not been for my cousin Cornelia, who was three years older to the day, I would never have learned anything about true and lasting love. By the time she was twelve, Cornelia was wearing lipstick and mascara to school and had already kissed several boys behind the coatrack. She didn't have a mother-well, not one that really cared about her. In that way, we were very much alike. She said that she learned all she needed to know about being a woman from reading Seventeen and that I would surely benefit from her wisdom and experience. My cousin never threw away an issue of that magazine. It was like some sort of Bible that was specially delivered by the United States Postal Service, one chapter at a time, every word sacred and holy.

Fortunately, Cornelia and her father lived just five miles from my house on ten acres of land that my grandfather left his younger son when he died. It may not have seemed as grand a gift as Grove Hill, but the land came with no liens or judgments attached, leaving some to wonder if Uncle Thad had truly been his favorite. Our fathers were brothers but only thanks to a similar genetic code. Uncle Thad was strong and broad-shouldered with rough, callused hands just like Nathaniel's. He wore his hair long, almost to his shoulders, and laughed and cried freely, never once worrying what somebody else might think.

He went to college in the North Carolina mountains, spending most of his days writing poetry and walking in the woods, searching for the earth's inspiration-at least that's what Cornelia told me. Mother said all he was doing was living in some filthy commune and wasting his father's money. Either way, he met a girl and fell in love, and nine months later Cornelia was born. But Cornelia's mother was an artist and had already planned to study painting in New York with Rothko and Motherwell. She wasn't sure she could care for a newborn as long as her artistic spirit was yearning to be nurtured. So after Cornelia was born, her mother and father parted ways, and Uncle Thad brought his baby girl back to Tennessee, genuinely believing that someday the great spirit of the universe would see fit to reunite the three, who were always bound by a never-ending love-at least that's what Cornelia said.

Uncle Thad always seemed to have plenty of time for his daughter, reading to her at night, taking her on long walks through the woods, catching frogs in the creek. Nothing ever seemed more important to him than being with her. But a man's got to make a living, he said. And before long, he started raising some kind of fancy chickens with a funny name. Buff Orpingtons, I think. Cornelia and I called them Buffy Orphans because they acted more like wayward children, wandering all over the place, even in the house. When they started laying these big brown eggs, Uncle Thad called them his golden geese. At first he gave more eggs away than he could sell or scramble, but before long he was shipping cartons of them all over the country, mostly to California.

A few years later, he started keeping bees and harvesting honey. He called that liquid gold and mixed it into fancy soaps and pretty-smelling lotions. He said he learned that if he could put the word organic on the label, he could find some overindulged fool to pay top dollar for it. People called my uncle strange. I knew they did. But I thought he was wonderful. And when Cornelia wanted to wear makeup, Uncle Thad said it wasn't his place to limit his daughter's creative expression, although he always added that she was beautiful just the way G.o.d made her.

So needless to say, when I kissed a boy for the very first time behind the coatrack in Mrs. Dempsey's sixth-grade cla.s.sroom, it was Cornelia I trusted with my secret. Oh, it was not a pa.s.sionate kiss or an enduring kiss. It was not much more than a quick peck on the right cheek, stolen between recess and reading. But it was the first indication that I would lead my life guided by my heart and a fierce determination to know something other than what circ.u.mstance surely would have allowed me.

"Bezellia Grove, I am so proud of you," she said as she leapt onto her bed. "You're becoming a woman right before my very eyes. You'll be starting your period before you know it. You will. Just wait and see. Now that you're kissing and all, it's bound to happen soon." I honestly did feel more like a woman, even if I hadn't started buying pads and tampons.

"When you get a little older, guess what?" my cousin asked as she always did, never waiting for an answer. "You're going to kiss Tommy Blanton with your mouth wide open, tongues touching and everything. It's called French kissing and for a very good reason. You know why? It's very pa.s.sionate, like everything French. But for now, keep that trap of yours locked tight. You don't want to get a bad reputation before you even get started. Trust me."

I couldn't imagine kissing a boy with my mouth wide open, nor did I understand why opening my mouth would lead to a bad reputation or a love of anything French. What I did know was that Tommy's cheek had felt so soft under my lips that I wanted to kiss him again and again just so I could memorize the touch of his skin. I remembered pulling my head back from his face and standing perfectly still in his presence, afraid to open my eyes, afraid I had scared the boy who had seemed, until now, more interested in playing tetherball than in kissing a girl. But just as that moment of uncertainty lingered into awkwardness, I had felt something warm on my cheek. It was Tommy Blanton's lips, his rough, dry, cracked lips.

"Tommy and Bezellia sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes ...," sang a chorus of cla.s.smates who had suddenly swarmed behind the coatrack, not giving either one of us time to acknowledge the other.

Tossing my hair behind my shoulder, I turned and walked away, ignoring both the song and Tommy's embarra.s.sed plea to them to stop. I took my seat at my desk and opened my arithmetic workbook. Underline with a red pencil every equation on the page that contains a remainder. Red. The color of pa.s.sion and love.

At the end of the day, Nathaniel was patiently waiting for me at the front of the hookup line, reading the afternoon newspaper with one eye and watching for me with the other. Today I desperately wanted him to be the last car in the driveway so I could jump rope with the other girls and whisper in their ears about love and Tommy Blanton, the remnant of his kiss still warm on my cheek.

"Miss Bezellia," Nathaniel cried, his voice dragging me from deep within a cl.u.s.ter of girls gathered on the sidewalk. "Sweet Jesus, child," he hollered as I walked toward the car, "you not see me sitting right here? What'd you learn in that cla.s.sroom today anyway?"

"Same old stuff," I snapped as I climbed into the back of the Cadillac, slamming the door behind me.

"Uh-uh. Not believing that. You learned something new today. I see it in your face," he said as he leaned into the front seat, all the while studying me real hard like he was trying to break some secret code.

"Nathaniel! Stop looking at me like that!"

"Oh, Lord, I got it now. You're a girl in love."

"I am not."

"You know I've got three girls of my own, Miss Bezellia. I know the look. C'mon, what's his name?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Just drive the car, Nathaniel," I ordered, my tone suddenly sounding shrill and cutting, just like my mother's.

"Miss Bezellia, there's no harm in liking a boy or him liking you back for that matter," Nathaniel said, gently reminding me that he deserved more respect than I had offered. Then he turned his attention forward and steered the car toward the road. He let out a slow and steady breath and settled into a familiar position-one hand firmly on the steering wheel, the other relaxed by his side.

I had spent a lot of time studying the back of Nathaniel's head. He had thick black hair cut real short. But right on top he had a small bald spot, not much bigger than a quarter. He said it had always been that way, even when he was a little boy. His mother told him that was the very spot where the angel had kissed her son before delivering him to earth. So from where I was sitting in the back of the Cadillac, I wanted to believe with all my heart that this was a head that could be trusted.

I grabbed the edge of the seat with both hands and pulled myself forward and let my secret slide right out of my mouth. "It's Tommy. Tommy Blanton." There. There it was. Now my secret was floating out in the heavens for anyone to know it. I rested against the hot leather seat, feeling proud and breathless all at the same time, waiting for Nathaniel to recognize my truest confession.

He looked surprised at first, as though the name rang a bell. He put both hands on the wheel and drove all the way to Hillsboro Pike, squinting his eyes and occasionally tapping his left hand against the wheel. He must have studied that name backward and forward for three or four miles before nodding his head in revelation.

"That's the boy whose mama and daddy got a divorce last year after she found him with ... I mean after-" Nathaniel caught himself before he disclosed more than he figured a sixth-grade girl needed to know. "I mean they're the ones who got a divorce. Went and had some judge tear their marriage apart as if it never happened. I heard your mama talking about them on the telephone just the other day. Yep, they're the ones."

The wind suddenly lifted my day's work sheets from my lap. They swirled about the back of the car like confetti thrown at a parade. I started laughing and grabbing for my papers, quickly stacking them neatly in order on the top of my notebook. And there in front of me was a heart, a heart I had drawn when I was supposed to be searching for remainders, a heart that symbolized my love for Tommy Blanton. Tommy and I would never get a divorce. We would love each other forever.

Mother wasn't home when we arrived at Grove Hill. She was probably at the country club lingering over a bridge table with friends, so I begged Nathaniel to drive me to Cornelia's. I needed to tell her about my kiss. I needed to tell her about my newly discovered womanhood. I told Nathaniel we needed more eggs.

Even now I still remember lying on Cornelia's pink-flowered bedspread unraveling the events of my day like a kitten playfully pulling a piece of yarn from a skein. My cousin, with her legs folded beneath her, sat on the bed across from me. She was beaming with pride, as if this kiss had been a reflection of her own efforts. She asked if I had felt a little dizzy, and when I told her that I thought I had, she confirmed that this was indeed a true and lasting love.

She jumped off her bed and hopped over to her vanity, which was looking more and more like the cosmetics counter at Castner Knott. She picked up a tube of lipstick and then turned and stood right in front of me, staring into my eyes so intently I thought she was peering straight into my soul.

"Honey Bee Pink. Brand-new color. Just came out. It's kind of faint but very powerful." Cornelia hummed and then smeared the lipstick across her mouth. She handed me the white plastic tube and indicated that I was to do the same. Then she picked up a mirror with a long pink handle and admired her lips. She kissed the gla.s.s and handed the mirror to me, again indicating that I was to do just as she had done. "Remember, be careful, it's very potent stuff. I bet there's real honey in it."

"Thanks," I said in a hushed, appreciative tone, holding the lipstick tube carefully between my fingers. I slowly rubbed some across my own lips and then kissed the mirror just as Cornelia had, leaving a waxy impression of my kiss on the gla.s.s. Now this mirror knew my secret too.

At the dinner table later that evening, I sat straight in my chair and tried to cut my chicken without sc.r.a.ping the blade of my knife across the plate. Mother said food was not to be butchered, merely cut. Sometimes I left the table hungry because the thought of cutting anything in my mother's presence made my stomach hurt. And tonight, with the lipstick still hidden in my skirt pocket, I didn't want her scrutinizing my table manners. I just wanted to hide in my room and practice writing my name.

Mrs. Tommy Blanton, Mrs. T. Blanton, Mrs. Tommy and Bezellia Blanton, Mrs. Bezellia Blanton "Sister, your uncle called," Mother said abruptly, bringing my attention back to the meat held tightly under my fork and knife. "You left a workbook at his house today. He thought you might need it for school tomorrow."

"A workbook?" I answered, adding an appropriate dose of both confusion and innocence to my voice.

"Yes, a workbook." And then my mother stiffened her back and her tone became as inflexible as her body. "You come straight home tomorrow. We don't need any more of his d.a.m.n brown eggs."

"Yes, ma'am," I whispered, and my knife slid from one edge of the plate to the other, screaming as it made its way across the porcelain. My mother glared at me. She looked so stern and disapproving I was afraid she could see my heart was aching for a boy who kept a piece of gum tucked inside his cheek. I could only hope that, by this time of the evening, Mother's vision was too clouded with gin for her to know my most honest thoughts and that by morning she would have forgotten about a lost workbook.

Thankfully, she was still sleeping when I left for school the next day with Cornelia's lipstick neatly hidden in my pocket. I raced to Mrs. Dempsey's cla.s.sroom and found Tommy sitting at his desk. I abruptly stopped in the doorway to regain my composure and quickly ran my hands down my pleated blue skirt. Tommy glanced at the door and then lowered his head, choosing instead to focus on the comic book lying open on top of his desk. My eyes started filling with tears, and I was afraid everyone would see my broken heart dripping down my cheeks. But as soon as I took my seat next to his, his green eyes warmed and his blank expression turned into a rea.s.suring smile.