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  After dinner we went into the living room and drank brandy and listened to Nina Simone and the phone continued to ring. Lawyers called and politicians and reporters. Derry would listen very intently, then answer in a low voice, then hang up and the phone would ring again. Around eleven o’clock I remembered to call my mother and give her the phone number. “Have you been drinking, Rhoda?” she asked. “Have you been drinking again?”

  “No, I haven’t been drinking. Are the babies all right?”

  “Malcolm called you twice. Your husband. He wanted that number but I didn’t have it to give to him. Do you want the number he gave me? Do you want to call him?”

  “No.”

  “Wait a minute. Your father wants to talk to you.”

  “Sister.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That boy’s been calling here all night. Now, Sister, Judge Pointer’s about got these papers ready. They got it all straightened out so your mother and I can adopt those children while we’re at it. Now wait a minute, it won’t change your rights. It’s just so if anything happens to you in an accident we could have them to raise. I wrote and told that boy about it so that’s probably why he’s calling you. Just leave it alone until you get home and we’ll call him together. Don’t go calling him on your own.”

  “What’s the phone number, Daddy? Where is he?”

  “Just wait until you get home and we’ll straighten all that out. You don’t need to go calling him up late at night when you’ve been drinking.”

  “I want the phone number, Daddy. Give it to me.”

  “I’m not going to do that, honey. I know what’s best about this now. Don’t go getting in a hurry. Don’t—”

  “Daddy, give me the number Malcolm gave you. I have to call him back.”

  “We’ll see you Sunday,” Daddy said and hung up the phone. It was always how he ended conversations he didn’t like.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Derry. I had been talking on the living room phone. “I have to go and make a call. I’ll use the phone in the bedroom.” I went into Derry’s bedroom and called Malcolm’s mother in Martinsville and got his phone number in South Carolina and called him. “Daddy said you called me,” I said. “What did you call me for?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Montgomery with Charles William and Irise. We came to see his cousin.”

  “Oh, my God. You’re with them.”

  “They’re my friends. We came to see a house. An unbelievable house with glass walls and a pond that runs through the living room. They’re my friends, Malcolm. I love them. What did you call me for?”

  “Your father’s lawyers sent me some goddamn papers. I’m going to sign them, Rhoda, because my father’s sick and my mother and father can’t even pay their rent. I have to help my parents. I can’t pay child support to you and help them so I’m going to sign this goddamn thing. I just want to make sure you know why. Whatever your old man’s up to.”

  “I wish I could see you. I wish I could talk to you. Little Malcolm asks about you. He said—”

  “Rhoda.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is your divorce. You’re the one who wanted to divorce me.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? You don’t love me. You don’t care a thing about me. What do you want me to do? What are you doing? You’re fucking someone, aren’t you? I know you’re fucking someone. That’s why you don’t care what happens to the children. You never even picked them up.”

  “I’m hanging up. To hell with it. To hell with you.” He hung up the phone. I sat with the phone in my hand and listened to the operator come back on the line. “If you are finished with your call, please replace the receiver on the hook. This is your operator. If you are finished …” I put the receiver down on its cradle. I looked around the room. A room where a man and woman slept together and loved each other and made love. I will never have that again, I thought. Now it is all over for me. Now I will be alone forever.

  “Rhoda. Is anything wrong?” It was Derry. She came into the room and sat down beside me on the bed.

  “Everyone’s hanging up on me.” I looked up at her and laughed. “My father hung up on me and now my husband did. I don’t know what to do, Derry. I’m so confused all the time. I never should have married him. We don’t have anything in common. We don’t even like each other, but the children belong to him. The oldest one asks for him all the time. He says, where’s my daddy? When’s my daddy coming back? I don’t know what to tell him.” I looked up at her. I had never had a grown person listen to me with such intensity. She moved into me.

  “‘I spit on the grave of my twenties.’ H. L. Mencken. I think it was Mencken who said that. These are hard years, Rhoda. They are hard for everyone, no matter what they’re doing.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-eight. It’s better later. It really is. It smoothes out.”

  “I wouldn’t think your life was very smooth. Not with the things you’re doing.”

  “But that’s my work. Work is the main thing, Rhoda, if you can find something worth doing, something that adds to the good of the whole. It’s how you define yourself, how you create your meaning. No, I mean my emotional life is smoother now. Charles and I have gotten through the hard parts.”

  “I don’t think Malcolm and I could get through the hard parts. I don’t think it would ever work. He won’t talk to me. But I miss him. I want to, well, I’m tired of sleeping by myself.”

  “Do you go out with other men?”

  “I can’t. My mother won’t let me. She won’t let me do it until I’m divorced.”

  “Do you feel like going back with the others? I think Jim has to leave soon. Would you like to tell him goodbye?”

  “Sure. I’m okay. Thanks for coming in to see about me.” I covered her hand with mine. Our hands lay together upon the counterpane. Her long thin fingers, scrubby unkempt fingernails. My fat smooth young hands, one wearing a class ring, one still wearing a diamond engagement ring that had belonged to my grandmother and the plain gold band I had bought for myself so we could get married.

  “We’ll talk some more later,” she said. “After Jim leaves and the others go to bed. I have something I want to show you. A book of poems I think you might like to read.” She took back her beautiful busy hand. A hand that cooked and typed and planted flowers and touched a man she loved, a hand that was being used up and consumed. We got up from the bed and went back out into the living room. Jim was standing by the fireplace. “There’s a Celestron telescope mounted on the roof of this house,” he said. “Has Charles shown it to you?”

  “No.”

  “Take her and show her the moons of Saturn.” Charles laughed. “Jim can’t stay away from that telescope. I think that’s all he comes over for.”

  “I do not. I come for Derry’s cooking. Come along, Rhoda, come see the stars. Charles William, you and Irise come too.”

  “Not me. I’m going to bed.”

  “Me too,” Irise answered. “I didn’t sleep a bit last night. I was so excited. I never sleep before I go on a trip.”

  “I never sleep anyway,” I said. “My mother says I’ve never been asleep in my life.” Derry and Charles looked at each other. A strange dark look passed between them.

  “The unsafe child,” Derry said. “Charles is writing about that.”

  “Tell me, Rhoda,” Charles asked, “was your mother sick when you were small?”

  “She almost died having me. She had uremic poisoning. She said I almost tore her up being born. They had to give her something to make me come fast.”

  “I want to talk to you some more about that, if you’ll let me. Well, take her up on the roof, Jim. Make him let you see the moons, Rhoda. He never shows anyone the moons.”

  “Charles is obsessed with the moons.” Jim took my hand. “Stars behind stars behind stars. A zillion light-years of celestial lights and he looks at the moons of Saturn.” He pulled me from the room and up a flight of cir
cular iron stairs onto a balcony overlooking the living room. A door opened from it onto a covered porch with a telescope set up. He removed the cover and made adjustments in the lens and pulled me over close to him. He adjusted the lens again and showed me how to look through it. “That’s the universe,” he said. “We’re only a dot in all that wonder. It looks like we would learn something from that after all this time, doesn’t it?” He took my hand and held it. He was very close to me. “What can you see?”

  “Infinity. It’s all so cold and far away, and beautiful. But we’re not nothing in all of that, Jim. I think our minds are very much larger than we know. Much much larger. I think our minds have the memory of everything that ever happened to the human race. Every one of us has the entire memory back to the first spark of electricity that started life. Why would we lose it? Why would we forget? Just because we didn’t always have words for it doesn’t mean that knowledge isn’t there. If it isn’t there, how can we recognize truth when scientists find it? Or writers write about it? How can we know what is true unless it’s in our brains waiting to be said. I told my English teacher at Vanderbilt that, and he said it made sense to him. Well, he said it was brilliant, to tell the truth. I shouldn’t have quit Vanderbilt. Now I’ll never finish college, I don’t guess. I’ll just have to be illiterate.”

  “You aren’t illiterate. Here, let me adjust that. You can make it reach farther back in space on a night this clear.” He played with the telescope for a few minutes, then directed my head down to the opening. “See that? I don’t have names for any of that. Look at the myriads. It seems more of that light should reach us, doesn’t it? Once I dreamed it was coming our way.”

  I looked at the vast clusters of stars, the unbelievable space and beauty of the universe. I looked as long as I could bear so much truth, then I stood up and turned to Jim. He put his hands very very gingerly on my waist and moved nearer to me and finally I was standing very close to him and we were both completely still. After what seemed like a long time I raised my head and kissed him on the lips and he returned my kiss. Shyly at first, like a very young boy, he very very carefully began to kiss me. I had never imagined kissing another man while I was married. But I was doing it. It was very strange, very gentle and hesitant, very different from the passion I had with Malcolm. It was as hesitant and quiet as a question about the stars.

  “I want to see you again if I can,” he said. “I have to be in court all day tomorrow but if you’ll be here tomorrow night I’ll come back. When do you leave?”

  “Sunday. Come tomorrow night. I’ll be waiting for you. I want to see you too.”

  “As soon as I can get away. A man’s life depends on me right now, Rhoda. I’m in over my head down there. So I don’t know what time. It might be late.”

  “That’s okay. Whenever you get here.” I moved back, I was still in his arms but already I felt the cold encroachment of parting. Always it was this way. Love drew me near, then whatever I loved went away. Sometimes I just pushed it away and got it over with.

  But Jim Phillips wouldn’t be pushed away. He kept hold of me. “You’re a very special girl, Rhoda. There’s a light inside of you, a vibrancy.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I’ve never had anyone talk to me like that.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. Everything doesn’t have to happen all at once. We have this night and these stars and then tomorrow night we’ll have something else.”

  “Jim.”

  “Yes.”

  “Kiss me again please. I want you to kiss me.”

  Later that night, after Jim left and everyone else had gone to bed, I sat in the guest room with Derry and talked to her alone.

  “What do you think of Jim?” she asked.

  “He’s so nice. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man that kind. God,” I started giggling, “he’s so messy. Is he always that messy?”

  “Ever since I’ve known him. This is a critical case he’s trying, Rhoda. He’ll probably lose it here, but we hope it will go to the Supreme Court. The courts are our only real hope. The people can rise up and they can march but only the courts can create justice. We can’t win justice on the streets.”

  “He’s coming back over tomorrow night.”

  “I know. I’m glad. I want to give you this book to read when you get in bed.” She reached behind herself to a shelf of books and took down a very small gray book and handed it to me. “It was written by a young white girl who helped with the boycott. She died in an automobile accident shortly after that was over. We published this as a memento. I think you’ll like it.” I took the book and held it in my hand. I Play Flute, the title said. I opened it and read.

  I am yellow crocus

  In the morning fog

  I am ball and socket

  Of your shoulder bone

  I am breath and if you kiss me

  I am universe

  and water

  All flowering springs

  This intense cool fragrance

  “So complete is happiness.”

  “What a strange beautiful poem. You knew her, the girl who wrote it?”

  “There are fourteen poems. We printed a hundred copies. Well, I’d better get to bed. It’s wonderful to have you here, Rhoda. I hope you’ll want to come again.”

  “I want to live here. I told you that.” I settled back against the pillows, the book in my hand. “I meant it. I’ll just move in.”

  “I think you have enough parents,” Derry said. She stood in the doorway looking down at me. I think now how much it must have pained her to watch me suffer and be dumb, to know how very far I had to go to even begin to understand. She came back into the room and kissed me on the head and said goodnight. After she left I settled down to read the book, which made me sick with jealousy. I could write these poems, I was thinking. There’s nothing to this. I could do this anytime I wanted to. I could write poems a thousand times better than these.

  Chapter

  25

  I woke at dawn and went into the kitchen and sat at the table and began to write. “Alabama is not a place you’re from,” I wrote,

  Not a shadow you roll up in a drawer

  It will follow you to Boston on the train

  You are my brother whether you want to be or not

  Gandhi said. Sometimes I think I am underneath

  A song, looking up.

  Derry appeared at the door. “What are you writing?” she asked.

  “An answer to the book you gave me.”

  “Let me see.” I handed her my poem.

  “Oh, Rhoda, that’s lovely. Very lovely.”

  “It’s because of the book. It’s only an answer, that’s all it is.”

  “Where did you learn about Gandhi?”

  “At Vanderbilt. I was going to write a paper on him when I went back. Well, that was a long time ago.”

  “Let’s have breakfast. I haven’t had young people in the house in so long. Oh, this makes me happy.” She began to pull bacon and eggs and bread and butter from the refrigerator and the pantry. She went into what I would always think of as Derry-gear, very very fast and hot and busy. I sat back and watched her cook.

  That afternoon Charles William and Irise and I went antique shopping all over Montgomery. He was looking for new things to make into sconces for the grotto. At five-thirty we got back to Derry’s house and she said Jim had called and said not to wait dinner on him. “He said to tell you he was sorry,” she said. “He said he’d be here as soon as he could.”

  At seven we ate dinner without him. At seven-fifty he called and said he’d be there as soon as he could. At ten-fifteen he showed up at the door with a Justice Department lawyer in tow and bad news about the trial.

  “Did he do it, Jim?” Derry asked.

  “He says he didn’t.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s going to be hard to get it reversed if they convict.”

  “This one’s too hard,” the Justice Departmen
t lawyer said. “This isn’t the one we want to take all the way.”

  “He lied to me,” Jim said. “Ten convictions I didn’t know about. We were blindsided all day.”

  I waited while they talked. Several times Jim looked at me as if to say, I’m sorry, so sorry the evening turned out this way. Finally we got away from the others and walked out on the porch. It was colder than it had been the night before. I stood shivering beside him and he took off his coat and put it on my shoulders. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You won’t trust me after this.”

  “Why would I need to trust you? I’m married. I shouldn’t even have kissed you. I shouldn’t be out here.”

  “Oh, Rhoda.”

  “You should have been here for dinner. We had baked red snapper. Fresh fish from down on the coast. We went to a fish market to get it.” He took my arms and pulled me into his body. “It won’t always be like tonight,” he said. “My life isn’t always this way.”

  “I don’t let people stand me up. My mother was the most popular girl in the Mississippi Delta. My aunt was Maid of Cotton. I don’t get stood up, even by Yankee lawyers who went to Harvard.” I was half serious, half joking, completely scared to death. I was pulling away from him, away from his strange gentle power, but he wouldn’t let me go. He kept on holding on to me.

  “I need you, Rhoda. Stay with me tonight. Talk to me. Stand by me.”

  “I’m married to someone, Jim. I have a husband and two children.” I pulled away from him then and went back into the house and told everyone goodnight. Then I went into Derry’s bedroom and tried to call Malcolm, but his line didn’t answer. It was Saturday night. He’s out with someone, I decided. He’s screwing someone somewhere. This goddamn Yankee lawyer stands me up and Malcolm’s got another girlfriend, or two or three or four. He’s representing a black man who raped a white girl. My daddy will kill me if he finds out I’m with these people. They’ll put me in a jail. I went into my bedroom and put on my nightgown and took a sleeping pill. Doctor Freer had given me a bottle of tranquilizers and a bottle of sleeping pills to counteract the sleeplessness caused by the diet pills he was again supplying me with. I climbed into the bed and waited for the drug to reach my brain.