I nodded. “Thank you,” I said, palming the card. “That makes me feel safer,” I added, and I meant it.
* * *
The night before I was to leave, my mother received a phone call as we were cleaning the kitchen. She said nothing after “hello,” and I watched her face go pale. She hung up without another word, then turned to look at me where I was drying the dishes.
“It was a man,” she said. “He said, ‘Tell your commie bleeding-heart daughter she’d better watch her step this summer. You never know what might happen in those darkie neighborhoods.’”
I shivered. Who would make a call like that? Who even knew what I was up to? Aside from telling Uncle Byron, my parents had kept my plans to themselves, and I doubted Buddy or Reed or Garner or Brenda would have told anyone. I thought of Lucy Baker at the bank. Would she have spread the word? I felt a stab of guilt that, because of me, my mother’d had to receive such a phone call.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I said. “I wish I could control the outside world, but I can’t.”
“You can still back out,” she said.
I set the dish towel on the counter and walked across the room to wrap her in my arms. “I hope that’s the only call like that you have to get,” I said. I doubted it would be, though. Lucy Baker had a very big mouth, and Round Hill was a very small town.
Chapter 12
Buddy stood in the doorway of my bedroom as I finished packing my suitcase. I was aware of him there in his blue coveralls, BUDDY HOCKLEY stitched above his pocket. I felt disapproval running like a thread from him to me.
I snapped my suitcase closed and looked across the room at him. His expression was sad but resigned.
“I’ll miss you,” I said. It would be my first summer without my brother. Without my parents. Without Reed and Brenda and Garner.
“You can still change your mind,” he said. “Even once you’re … wherever they stick you, you can change your mind. I’ll come get you. You need me, call me here or at the car shop. Day or night. All right?”
He was such a sweetheart. “You’re the best big brother.” I crossed the room to where he leaned against my doorjamb and wrapped my arms around him. “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “And don’t let Mama and Daddy worry, either, okay? It’s not like I’m going a million miles away. Hopefully they’ll assign me right back here in Derby County after the orientation in Atlanta.”
“It’s a big county,” he said dryly, not returning my embrace.
I let go of him. Gave him an annoyed look. “Stop it,” I said. “You’re being silly.”
“I wish I was,” he said. “You’ve led sort of a protected life, you know? The world out there ain’t as kind as you seem to think it is.”
I lifted my suitcase off my bed. “You better get going,” I said. “You’ll be late for work.”
“I love you, little sis.” It wasn’t like Buddy to say those three words, and his cheeks were pink. I never doubted for a minute that he loved me, but I didn’t think he’d ever actually told me before.
“I love you, too,” I said. “Now, skedaddle.”
He hesitated a moment longer as if he had more to say, but then he turned and I listened to him clump down the stairs.
I’d already said goodbye to my parents that morning. Mama only mumbled a goodbye before she left for her job at the library. Daddy had barely been talking to me ever since I’d told them I was definitely going, and he was gruff when he hugged me goodbye. I didn’t think he’d really expected me to go through with it. He said pretty much what Buddy’d just said. “You can come home any time. If you find this is a mistake, don’t feel like you have to stay there just to save face.”
I was frankly glad when all three of them were out of the house. Now all I had to do was wait for the New York students to come pick me up. I was told they’d arrive between nine and ten that morning and I had my suitcase, a backpack with the recommended books and my camera, and the sleeping bag we’d been told to bring “just in case” on our front porch by eight. I assumed the students would be tired from driving all night, so I’d made some lemonade and a pound cake. I was as nervous about meeting them as if they were some sort of alien creatures instead of college students just like me. UNC had plenty of Northerners, I reminded myself, though I couldn’t say any of them were among my close friends.
The blue and white Volkswagen van didn’t pull into my driveway until just after eleven. I’d worried they’d forgotten about me. I stood at the front door in my skirt and blouse and watched as the two guys and one girl climbed out of the van. The girl wore shorts and it occurred to me that, for the long drive to the orientation in Atlanta at least, I could have done the same. Too late now.