The next morning, the back of the station wagon was packed to capacity, with my new comforter and pillows for my dorm room, and sacks full of granola bars and tiny boxes of raisins. Most of my books would occupy Uncle Root’s downstairs library. Mama asked, had I remembered to pack my birth control pills? Because she wasn’t raising any more children.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not even sexually active.”
She released huffs of laughter. “Child, please. I found those pills three months ago.”
I was so embarrassed, I didn’t speak for an hour after we began our drive. She let me listen to National Public Radio instead of her Aretha mixtape, and she didn’t keep talking when I pulled out a book. But then we passed the Peach Butt in South Carolina, and the old excitement hit me. I put aside my reading, and she told unedited versions of stories I’d heard as a little girl. We gossiped about relatives in Chicasetta: that Uncle Norman never had been married twice; that fiction had been created to explain my cousin Lee Curtis, who was an “outside” child. When Aunt Barbara-Pam had learned of L.C.’s existence, she’d shown up to the mistress’s house and shouted through the door, threatening to cut her throat. For a fortnight, until my uncle received his paycheck from his second job, he’d worn the clothes his wife had ruined with splatters of bleach.
At the turnoff on Highway 441, Mama turned in the direction of Madison. She pulled into the gas station, and when she finished pumping, she knocked on my window and asked, did I want to drive? It was mostly open road from there on, she said, and I had my driver’s license, so unless I did something stupid, I wouldn’t kill us. We weren’t in the old station wagon anymore. It finally had died, back in March. My mother had cried a week over her car, then dried her tears and bought a used Volvo, identical to my aunt’s.
When I drove up to the house off County Line Road, I was proud. My elders gave looks of surprise when I opened the driver’s door. Uncle Root came out into the yard to hug me, and I missed the days when he had carried me in his arms.
That summer, my mother joined me in Chicasetta. She had taught my father to make his own breakfast: a bowl of oatmeal with skim milk and one patty of her homemade turkey sausage. And she had frozen his dinners. He would be fine for eight weeks.
Sitting on my granny’s porch, peeling tomatoes and peaches, I bristled at the circle of elders. They asked me what ailed me, but I didn’t tell them I was lonely. Even Boukie would have been welcome company. The summer before my senior year, he’d shown at my granny’s house; to my surprise, Boukie had apologized for his behavior that night at the creek. He shouldn’t have tried to do me wrong. And he informed me he’d started attending Mt. Calvary every Sunday.
But now Boukie was a settled man. He and Rhonda were living together and expecting a baby. As for David, he had an internship with a law firm in Atlanta and shared an apartment with two other students at Morehouse. And my granny told me he and that girl were still keeping company. David appeared at the family reunion, though, heading to the picnic table where the old man and I sat.
David was friendly with me, asking, how was I doing? And was I excited for college? I refused to answer his overtures, remembering how he’d moved on from me after pretending to be so in love. I was hoping he would leave the reunion, but he stayed. He and the old man talked and laughed, hitting the table in their mirth, while I sulked at their brother-man magic.
When Uncle Root rose, and said it was time for the three of us to visit his pecan tree, I told him I didn’t feel like it. I wasn’t finished with my barbecue. The two of them could go ahead without me.
We Sing Your Praises High
At the age of fifteen, Uncle Root had enrolled in Routledge College because he’d had no other choice for education in his town: the segregated school for Negroes at Red Mound Church only had gone to eighth grade. This was the excuse Big Thom gave him, at least, but truly his third child had confounded his white father.
First off, the boy was mean: he barely spoke to Big Thom, and when he did, it was only to ask for money. And Uncle Root had been discovered naked in the bushes with Negro girls （who also were naked）。 It was a good thing Uncle Root was a fast runner; otherwise, he would have caught more than one beating from an angry father. More than that, it was only dumb luck nobody had gotten pregnant. And Uncle Root was getting into fights with white boys, too, taunting them with big words. His father was constantly having to pass out cash and threats to keep his Negro son alive.