Brenda turned the page, and the photographs of dresses gave way to the headline of an article: “Sexual Harmony and How to Attain It.”
“Don’t need that one.” Brenda laughed, patting her still-flat belly. She turned the page and if my mother hadn’t been sitting next to me, I would have turned it back, curious. I knew next to nothing about sexual harmony. It wasn’t that I was a prude. It was just that Reed and I hadn’t gone that far, by mutual agreement. I wanted to wait until I was married and although Reed did give me a bit of an intellectual argument about it, he said he admired me for my decision. I hadn’t criticized Brenda for her decision, though. Every girl had to figure out what was right for herself when it came to that sort of thing. What had shocked me the most about Brenda’s pregnancy was that I’d had no idea she and Garner were intimate. I felt hurt that my longtime best friend and dorm mate had kept something so monumental from me.
When I told Mama about Brenda’s condition and that she had to marry Garner right away, she expressed sympathy. “That poor girl,” she said. “She just cut her freedom short,” followed by a stern, “Learn from this, Eleanor. This is what happens when you let things go too far. You and Reed better behave yourselves.”
“Mama,” I’d said, “I’m not stupid. And we’re not as serious as Garner and Brenda are.”
“I’d say Reed’s plenty serious about you,” she said. “That boy adores you.”
Reed was a real sweetheart and I’d known him most of my life. He finished college in three years and now worked at Round Hill’s biggest bank. He wore a suit and tie every day—a blue tie, to set off his sky-blue eyes and dark hair. He was handsome in a suit, no doubt about it, but now that I was surrounded by college guys in their chinos and madras shirts, Reed sometimes seemed a bit stuffy to me.
I was touched that Mama was sitting with Brenda and me now, kindly oohing and aahing over the bridal gowns as if Brenda might actually be able to select one and wear it to her wedding. Mama loved Brenda, sometimes referring to her as her “second daughter,” and Brenda had called her “Mama” for years. Brenda’s own chilly mother would never look through Brides magazine with her. She agreed to come to the “ceremony,” as she called it, even though Brenda’s father refused, but she wasn’t about to indulge Brenda’s fantasies of a fancy wedding when it would be anything but.
“I love this one.” Brenda pointed to the sparkly bodice of a beautiful, silver-hued white gown. “I keep coming back to it over and over again.”
Mama touched the back of Brenda’s hand. “It must be very hard to know you won’t be able to have the wedding of your dreams,” she said.
I glanced at Brenda. I could tell she was holding back tears. I knew she was happy, though. She and Garner were madly in love.
“Listen to this,” Daddy said suddenly, and I shifted my gaze from the magazine to my father. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table by his side and began to read. “‘Reverend Greg Filburn, pastor of the AME church in Turner’s Bend, announced today that several hundred white students from Northern and Western colleges will spend the summer in the Southern states registering Negroes to vote. Derby County is expected to host a number of those students. Only—’”
“Oh great,” Buddy interrupted him without taking his eyes off the metal part in his hands. “Just what we need. A bunch of Northern agitators.”
“‘Only thirty-four percent of Negroes in Derby County are now registered,’” Daddy continued reading, “‘compared to ninety-four percent of the white population, Reverend Filburn said. The voting rights bill, soon to be signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, will hopefully change that disparity, and we need to do all we can to make sure our folks can register. The program is called SCOPE, which stands for the Summer Community Organization and Political Education project—’” Daddy interrupted his own reading with a laugh. “That’s a mouthful,” he said, then continued, “‘—and it will send more than five hundred volunteers into seventy-five rural counties with the aim of removing racism from American politics.’”
“What do you think of this bridesmaid dress?” Brenda pointed to a page in the magazine, but neither my mother nor I even glanced at it. Both of us had our attention on my father. Especially me, even though I wasn’t yet certain why.