She started kicking but couldn’t do much damage: she was only five feet and not even a hundred pounds. But after pushing her down on the front seat of his car and throwing her dress and crinolines into her face, Stanley couldn’t figure out how to pull off her merry widow.
“What’s going on here?” Stanley leaned back on the seat, puffing air. “I thought you knew the score.”
“What’s that?” Belle asked.
“I take you to the dance and you put out. That’s why I asked you.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen, Stanley.”
“Look, kid, you’d be pretty if you weren’t so black. But you are.” Stanley’s voice hardened. “And if I don’t get me some pussy, you’re walking back to campus.”
It wasn’t the first time Belle had been called that: “black” meaning “dark-skinned.” It was an insult, but her father liked to say, these niggers with little color shouldn’t be so proud. All light skin meant was that some cracker had forced his way up a poor Negro woman’s dress, and what kind of prize was that? Naturally, her father didn’t say that around Uncle Root and Dear Pearl, but it was no secret that Belle’s grandmother and great-uncle were partial to darker-skinned folks, too. Look at the people they’d married.
It was a mystery to Belle why Stanley was so color-struck. He wasn’t even fair-skinned. He was a meriney-toned fellow, and with that nappy hair, Stanley wasn’t passing nobody’s fine-tooth-comb test, neither—but she was sitting in this boy’s front seat. She should be careful about making him mad. She didn’t even know where Stanley had driven them, and these were the years when the white men in the area would drive up to the tall iron fence protecting the college proper. They would park and lean against their cars for two or three hours, watching. Just watching, before they climbed back in their cars and drove away. The college president was obsequious with the influential whites in the other towns, those worried something communist was happening on campus, so there was danger for Belle in the dark. Those white men might catch Belle walking back, her heels in her hand, her stockings ripped by snagging pebbles. Whatever they might do to her, she couldn’t go to the police. No one would believe a Negro girl or even care, no matter what shade she was.
Belle shifted in a crunch of crinolines. “No, Stanley, I’m not walking. And if you keep on, I’m going to tell my uncle.”
“You think I’m scared of some hick-ass farmer? Girl, I’m from Detroit!”
“You don’t know Dr. Jason Freeman Hargrace? The history professor? He’s my uncle, and unless you want him to get you expelled, you start this damned car and take me back to campus.” Technically, Uncle Root was her great-uncle, but the details didn’t matter. She was in a dill pickle here.
So Stanley started the engine and took her to her dormitory. Belle thought that would be the end of it, but some days later, she was in her room marcelling her roommate’s hair. Marie was difficult; she was tender-headed and always accused Belle of trying to burn her.
“Ouch!”
“You know better than to be hopping up when I got these irons in your head.” Belle pulled away and Marie turned around. There was a line between her eyebrows, the hurt of a scolded child.
“Why’re you being mean, Belle, when I have a secret for you?”
“What’s that?”
“Somebody told me something about you. Ask me who it is.”
But Belle continued curling for the next twenty minutes, patting Marie’s shoulder periodically to keep her from squirming. When she was done, she made swooping motions with her fingertips over Marie’s hair.
“Go see how pretty you look!”
At the mirror, Marie started back up. “I bet you want to know what I heard. Stanley Culpepper said that a certain someone had relations with him out in the farmer’s field. Twice.”
“Really?” Belle’s voice held no interest, but there was cut glass in her stomach.
“He sure did. You know who that certain someone is? You.” Marie laughed, a sound with a hungry edge.
“That’s what he told you?”
“No, he told Floyd. Floyd told Dennis. Dennis told Walter, and you know Walter and me are going steady.”
Marie lifted a chain from underneath her blouse. On it was a gold ring set with the tiniest of rubies, but Belle kept a straight face when she told her roommate that she’d planned on losing her virginity to Stanley—yes, it was true—but when he’d pulled down his pants, his “boy” had been tiny, and worse, it wouldn’t get up. She’d pulled on it for close to forty-five minutes while it flopped back and forth. Poor thing. Stanley was deformed, but even though he couldn’t do the deed, Belle had promised him that they’d always be friends.