Raleigh continued the sentence. “We sold the Lincoln, got a good price for it. It’s in a check right here, made out to you. It’s on my account, but it’s from James. We just had to do it this way because of records, you know. But we are going to take care of you.”
Take care of her! For a moment, she imagined herself to be like her former mother-in-law, whose only responsibility in life was to be beautiful and speak proper English. To be taken care of was to not worry about not having enough love, not having enough money. It was like James and Raleigh were offering her the chance to be someone other than herself.
My mother looked to James, who nodded. “W-w-we want to do the right thing.”
Raleigh handed my mother the check. It was plain sea-foam green, the sort you get free with your checking account. Her name was neatly printed across the line at the top, and Raleigh’s sharp, but not fancy, signature was on the bottom. The “For” line was blank.
By the time she told me this story, the memory had gone bad like meat left too long in the freezer. She couldn’t remember the thril she must have felt at having her prayers answered so quickly, for the Lord to work in a way that was not mysterious but direct and clear. Tel ing me in 1986, she said, “Be careful what you wish for.” Now she can recal the tobacco odor of my father’s breath and the tang of his kiss. She remembers that Raleigh’s knees cracked as he was getting up. Wise with knowledge of the future, she wanted me to believe that she was apprehensive even then, but I knew she was lying. I envied her that moment. Who doesn’t dream of being rescued? Who doesn’t desire grand gestures?
AT THE HOSPITAL, Raleigh signed my birth certificate, to save me the indignity of being a bastard on paper. Four months after I was born, my mother, my father, Raleigh, and Wil ie Mae drove to Birmingham, Alabama, where they stood before a judge in a county courthouse. My mother was surprised at how little was required to become man and wife. Not once did anyone ask if either of them was married to anyone else. Raleigh signed as a witness, as did Wil ie Mae. I was present for the ceremony, dressed in my white christening gown, the lace train draped over Wil ie Mae’s arms. On my mother’s night table is a framed photograph. Picture me there, smal and clean, proof that al that went on that afternoon was both holy and true.
5
HEART DREAMS
BY FIFTEEN AND A HALF, I had become obsessed with my own heart. I dreamt about it several nights a week. Sometimes it took the form of a pear, bruised and slimy in the bowl of my chest. In another dream, it was anatomical y correct, pulsing with regular contractions. The only problem was that the valves were faulty; thick blood oozed out with every beat. These were the nightmares. Other heart-dreams were bright as summer. In one, my heart was a red-velvet cake, served by Mother on beautiful plates of polished silver. In a dream that was neither happy nor sad, the heart was a wine goblet, wrapped in a handkerchief and crushed under my shoe with quick mercy.
I HAD A BOYFRIEND, Marcus McCready, and he was the secret center of everything. He was eighteen and, technical y, the things we did were il egal. I looked up the word statutory in the dictionary, but I didn’t find anything helpful. “Jailbait” is what he cal ed me, his mouth sugary with Southern Comfort and ginger ale. “Who came up with the age of consent, anyway?” I asked him this, aware that the answer was unknowable and irrelevant. If I’d learned anything from my parents, it was that the law didn’t understand anything about what passed between men and women.
To my mind, there was nothing not to love about Marcus. He was handsome and a little bit cocky sometimes, but I knew it was just an act. Al the posturing, the pimp-dip in his walk, the arrogant up-jerk of his chin — that was just to cover up his shame about his age. Marcus started school a year late because he had whooping cough when he was little, and on top of that his birthday fel at the start of the year. That made him a little bit older than the rest of the kids in his class, but it didn’t mean that he was slow. He was just born at the wrong time, which is something that could happen to anyone.
The McCreadys were a good family. His mother taught music to grade-schoolers and his father was a tax accountant. Marcus Senior handled my father’s books, something I discovered quite by accident, but it gave me a thril to be so close to James’s real life. When Marcus’s parents had renewed their vows at Cal anwolde, my father drove the limousine at a reduced rate. His father cal ed mine “Jim.”
We snuck around a lot, Marcus and me. When I passed him in the corridors at school, he looked away. After a month, I learned to shift my attention first. It wasn’t personal. It was just that Marcus had gotten into trouble the year before when he went to Woodward Academy, so he wasn’t supposed to run around with underclassmen. I slipped easily into my role as unacknowledged girlfriend. When you already had one secret life, what bother was it to have another secret within that secret? I even changed my appearance to exaggerate the effects of my doubly double life. For my everyday self, I gathered up my hair into two Princess Leia buns over my ears and stopped lining my eyes. I asked my mother to buy me black saddle shoes like Olivia Newton-John wore in Grease, but they didn’t make them anymore. I made do with penny loafers, wearing them with white socks, marveling at my chaste ankles.
“What is wrong with you?” my mother wanted know. “There is nothing wrong with fixing yourself up. Is this a phase?”
She took me by the shoulders and searched my face for answers. The deal was that we were to tel each other everything. She touched my forehead and then my ears. “Where are your earrings?”
“In my jewelry box,” I told her.
“You never wear them anymore,” she said sadly.
But I did. I wore them when I was with Marcus.
It wouldn’t be right to say that Marcus changed me, that he took a sweet quiet girl who wanted to grow up to be a pediatrician and turned her into the freak of the week. I know that’s what some people said about me behind my back, but that doesn’t make it true. It was more like Marcus showed me new possibilities. I met him, of al places, in Kroger. My mother and I were there to stock up on canned goods — the weatherman had predicted up to four inches of snow and the city was going crazy. Mother had gotten home late and we had rushed to the store to see if there was any food left. She made herself busy snapping up whatever cans of soup remained and I was sent to find deviled ham. The store was packed with panicked shoppers, snapping up anything nonperishable, even oysters packed in brine. The deviled ham was long gone, but I did spy a few dented cans of Vienna sausages way in the back of the shelf.
I was cradling several cans in my arms when I felt a tug on my belt loops. I looked over my shoulder and saw Marcus. I knew who he was — there was no way you could go to Mays and not know Marcus McCready I I.
Stil holding me at the waist, he leaned toward me, resting his newscaster chin on my shoulder. His breath smel ed of orange rind and something spicy like clove. “Hey, pretty girl. If you wasn’t jailbait, I would ask you to give me a chance.” His hand moved up from my belt to my back. I stood stil and let him push his other hand into my hair. “You are some kind of pretty. Fine, too. Thick.” I could envision my heart like the tiny jingling bel on a cat’s col ar.
I locked my knees, even though I knew that locked knees were how girls made themselves faint when they didn’t want to dress out for gym, but stil , I tensed my legs to hold myself upright. This was desire, pure and uncut. I knew the word from reading Judith Krantz, but stil , trashy paperbacks hadn’t prepared me for Marcus’s fingers against my scalp and his potpourri breath. I leaned into his tug of my hair and he said, “You like it.”