While Belle sat on the sofa, feeling like a dead cat on the line, the maid brought in new guests. The older brother, Lawrence, was on summer break from Amherst, taking his Volkswagen bus on the road. He’d popped up with his new wife, a long-haired brunette: a white girl. He and Diane had eloped, he announced. His voice was loud, a combination of voilà and take that, but his parents seemed fine with it, especially his mother, who had hugged Diane at the door, patting her back gently as if the white girl had the hiccups. His parents’ lack of chagrin seemed to bother Lawrence.
It was 1966, and Belle knew about interracial couples. There was one who attended Red Mound, a white man and Negro lady who had lived as husband and wife for over twenty years, though they couldn’t marry under Georgia law. And Belle’s own lineage was mixed, though it wasn’t mentioned outside of the family. But a white female with a Negro male? That just wasn’t done where she came from. Geoff’s brother would have been lynched for something like this, down in Chicasetta—he could be killed for even looking too long at this white girl. And why was she with Lawrence anyway? Was something wrong with her, something not readily noticeable? The mother-in-law was pleased, though. That was clear.
“Excuse me,” Belle said. “Could you direct me to the powder room?” Minutes later, she flushed but lingered on the toilet, sighing many times. As she washed her hands, she looked around for a regular towel, but there was only one as fancy as the soap. This was a caution, washing all this money down the sink. When she came out, the white girl was waiting on her.
“Hi!” Diane said.
“Oh,” Belle said. “Hey yourself.”
“I’ve been so nervous! Lawrence told me Claire would be tough, but she seems really nice.”
Belle noticed that the white girl didn’t even think to put a handle on their mother-in-law’s name. She’d automatically moved to first-name basis with an elder.
“Not to me,” Belle said. “You know that woman asked me ’bout birth control? Here I am expecting, and she want me to stop ’fore I even get started.” After her efforts to speak properly all morning, her speech now thickened into sap.
Diane blinked in confusion. “What woman?”
“Who the hell you think I’m talking ’bout? Besides you, me, and the maid, ain’t no other woman in this house. I’m talking ’bout Miss Claire.” She didn’t care what this white girl did—she hadn’t been raised to call her elders by their first names. Belle might be up north, but she hadn’t left her home training behind.
“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry!”
Diane’s lower lip trembled. If this white girl started crying, Belle knew she would, too, so she laughed.
“I fixed that heifer, though. I said, ‘Miss Claire, could you tell me what birth control is? ’Cause I ain’t heard of such.’”
“Good for you! Give ’em hell!”
Diane put her arm around Belle, who tolerated the embrace only seconds before pulling away.
*
Regularly, Geoff drove her to her obstetrician, Dr. Moorhead. He was one of Zachary Garfield’s fraternity brothers, and he approved of the advice of her mother, that walking would cut her labor time. In that year, the neighborhood was safe. Not fancy like the Gold Coast area, where Belle’s in-laws lived, where well-to-do Negroes were lighter than brown paper bags and welcomed the sight of fine-tooth combs, but not dangerous, either.
Belle wasn’t afraid to walk by herself, but she was lonely. There wasn’t another woman to keep her company, an older female who could advise her about this and that. Not only did she long for her relatives, she craved the food, the offal of home: chitterlings side by side on a plate with collards. Peppers in vinegar, and a cake of hot water corn bread fried in bacon grease. For dessert, a slice of watermelon, a fruit that her mother-in-law forbade in her house.
One day on a longer walk, Belle found a corner store. There were bright turnip greens sitting outside in a bushel basket and an old lady behind the store’s counter. She was walnut brown with pressed and curled white hair. There was a space between her teeth like Belle’s, what everyone down home called “a lie gap,” though Belle didn’t know why. Folks with a gap didn’t seem more dishonest than anybody else.
The old lady came from behind the counter and touched Belle’s pregnant belly without asking.
“It’s a girl! I can tell by the way you carrying.” Her name was Martha Clyburn, and she was from Boone, North Carolina, but her late husband had been from Macon, Georgia. Pretty as all get out, but a no-good skirt-chaser dropping outside kids everywhere, and cheap with his money, too. She was grateful for the four boys that he gave her—all grown, alive, and not one on the chain gang—but she hadn’t been upset when the husband passed away. That insurance money had come right on time. She’d bought the store with it.