The Day's Heat Page 10

  Somehow Ray’s distress was laughable. It was what Lee had felt those first few weeks, frantic, a victim.

  “I can handle it, Ray. It’s just the money, the Bettlemains paying the bills—and Charles. He doesn’t know yet.” All the things that Lee had worried about before. Funny how those problems had menaced, thunder-bank large, just a week earlier. Now it was only David Palmer who really mattered. Thank goodness, tonight she would at least be in the same room with him.

  “And here I thought you were upset by the grass. All the time you’ve been sweating this pregnancy thing. How far along are you?”

  “About seven weeks.”

  “Do you want an abortion?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Okay, okay. I understand.”

  But Ray didn’t. Lee could read the questions in her sister’s wandering looks that kept returning to her cigarette and then up to Lee’s face. Why not make it easy on yourself? Why go through another pregnancy? she seemed to be asking.

  “Would you have wanted me to abort Cassie or Lill?”

  “It’s not the same thing, Lee, and you know it.”

  “It is. And it is for me.”

  Before Ray left, she gave Lee five twenty-dollar bills, tucking them into Lee’s pocket when she refused to take them into her hands. “There’s plenty more where that came from, kiddo. I’ll call and be back in two months for sure.”

  This time, it was a relief with Ray gone. Lee could follow the day’s course of sewing, naps, and dinner, all the while holding onto the idea of David Palmer at the meeting, after evening Mass.

  Father Palmer had removed the chasuble and alb and come back to the altar when the service was over in a plain black cassock that snapped up the front. Lee saw him as though Monday in the rectory belonged to some long ago past instead of a two scant days gone by. He seemed thinner somehow, his face broader, paler than she remembered. Throughout the short Mass—he’d explained there would be plenty of talk afterwards in place of the sermon—he had not looked in Lee’s direction, to where she usually sat at the back of the church.

  There were some thirty people scattered along the empty pews, not many out of the hundred or so families that belonged to St. Anthony’s parish. And there was a hint of disappointment in Father Palmer’s voice as he started to speak. He kept glancing toward the back doors of the church, as if hoping for more people to arrive at the last moment. The why of so few in attendance was obvious; the congregation instinctively knew and dreaded the building of a new church. Father Kennedy had explained it to Lee.

  “There’s a procedure about these workings, my girl, and let me assure you, Father Palmer is an expert. The land is there, the convent is there, the school is there—not that I’ll ever get any credit for my work in purchasing the property and erecting those buildings. But His Eminence’s years of grace are at an end, and it’s now or never that a new church must be started. Build, or slip into the mediocre herd with the rest of us.”

  It was obvious that Father Kennedy had once planned to build a new church himself, but when or how was never mentioned.

  Father Palmer began his talk by bouncing his fist lightly on the front railing in time with his words. “The Diocese of Savannah and St. Anthony’s of Strickland, Georgia, is missionary territory. Many towns in south Georgia don’t have but one church service a month, and some communities don’t even know that Catholics exist. No wonder Southerners view the Catholic Church the way they do, as a foreign Papal dictatorship. They have no idea of our diversity, of our humanity, that we are not the same as other faiths. That is why we must have visible signs of our presence, that we are not just another religion, that we are the leaders in all aspects, especially in social reform.”

  There was more, much more: Father Palmer spoke of church history, of attitudes, of what was expected by the Bishop, which Lee didn’t quite follow because she was watching the priest’s gray eyes, his lips closing on the words, his large beautiful hands. He moved through the corridors of the Catholic Church’s 2,000 years and linked them with the future in what he saw as God’s plan. The words “God’s plan” tempted Lee to whisper her mother’s halfway joking, halfway angry response to anyone’s mention of God: “I’ve got news for you, hon. God’s gone out for lunch and a Coke.” But Father Palmer radiated comforting continuity between the past, what the twelve Apostles had done, and the now, what this parish could do. Lee forgot her mother’s quip, forgot the immediate—David Palmer’s silence for two days—and now felt carried along by the priest’s hopes and enthusiasms.

  As usual, he walked back and forth in front of the altar, bending his dark head down, pausing with his hand to his beard, his sermon seeming to come to him even as the people in the pews watched. Lee saw the idea take hold: here, the number was three times over twelve, the twelve Apostles who had changed a world. Anything was possible.

  But as the priest spoke, a watchful, critical mood seeped into the congregation, and like rising water there were coughs and sliding of feet when it became absolutely clear what Father Palmer was proposing, spelling out exactly: St. Jerome’s Church on Branche Street would be closed and the colored parish would be invited, cajoled—whatever was necessary—into attending St. Anthony’s.

  “It will be a hard at first,” Father Palmer said. “The congregation of St. Jerome’s will have to give up their church, give up what they’ve worked for, and all for the sake of an idea—the idea that a divided church is not a true place of worship. We must show them that the only reason for closing St. Jerome’s is that their building will not hold both parishes. And when they join us, we will, together, build a new church on Anthony’s Acres.” The priest paused and took a breath as though to give the idea of mixing the two congregations a chance to sink in.

  “For the rest of the school year, I will be saying the eleven o’clock Mass at St. Jerome’s. There will be no late Mass here at St. Anthony’s. I ask you, if it’s been your custom to attend the eleven o’clock Mass, to start attending at St. Jerome’s.”

  With this announcement came a full silence, no coughs now, no shifting of feet. The waters of change had risen completely.

  Lee knew that Father Palmer was wrong about Catholics not being the same as people of other faiths. They were exactly the same. For the most part, they all would listen to their ministers quietly, even attentively, and then outside the church, on that same quiet level, they would take what they wanted from sermons and church doctrine and twist and bend it into a shape useful in their own lives.

  Lee knew that this selective independence did not come from the church father, Thomas Aquinas, for few Catholics were aware of his doctrine of the final authority resting in the individual conscience. She was only aware of this concept having taken four years of theology at Mount De Sales from Sister Agnes, who taught Paul and Aquinas as almost equals with Jesus. And perhaps a certain amount of individual freedom was generated in the confessional, where, as often as once a week, the slate of the soul could be wiped clean. And perhaps it came from the moving, sooner or later, of any particular priest with his viewpoint. For the parish knew that no matter how long a priest stayed, no matter what changes he brought, they would not have to put up with him or his peculiarities forever.

  Of course, there was always gossip about a particular priest’s character and personality. There could even be open fights between him and members of the school board or the women’s club or the Knights of Columbus. But that’s as far as it went. Except in very rare cases, aberrant ones, the disputes never went beyond the boundaries of the parish.

  Lee’s father Abram often repeated what was said late at night over the poker table in the back of the K of C hall: “Priests come and go, but we, the people, we’re here to stay.”

  Lee had never heard of a priest being replaced or of a parish breaking off to form another church. Priestly rotations and replacements were left up to the Bishop in Savannah, and who knew what motivated him? In many ways he was much farther away from the parish
than God. Actually it was the Protestants, to Lee’s mind, who were different, daring, starting with the Reformation. They fired their ministers and their congregations broke apart and formed new churches—a habit they couldn’t seem to break. In Lee’s seven years in Strickland, Camilla City Baptist had already, amoeba-like, split and formed a new church twice.

  Father Palmer asked for a show of hands, of those who would be attending the eleven o’clock Mass at St. Jerome’s. For a second no one’s hand went up. The idea of going to a colored church had a desperate, ridiculous edge to it. Lee, alone, in the moment, made brave by a need to make David Palmer look at her, raised her hand. She was not thinking of what it would be like to go to St. Jerome’s, to drive to the bare concrete building on Branche Street and kneel in the midst of colored people. She ignored that future. Only the need—Look at me, Look at me—raised her right hand high above her head. Then other hands went up, maybe ten in all, and David Palmer did indeed look to the back of the church. It reminded Lee of what had passed between them when she was putting the tooth back in his mouth.

  Chapter 7

  Sons love your mothers, only she can tell you who your father is.

  Old Arab saying

  In all the mornings that followed, Ralph the janitor was a solitary figure out under the pecan trees. The sharp lines of leaves on the ground—between raked and unraked—drifted and disappeared. The small piles of burning trash dwindled to one smoldering heap, and the janitor standing beside it seemed almost as stationary as the trees around him.

  And after that first morning, the wanting to fall on the ground and cry, Lee didn’t question the old colored man again. Instead, she fastened her thoughts on if and when she would see the priest. After that Wednesday night meeting, explaining the changes in the eleven o’clock Mass, there didn’t seem to be an opportunity. That David Palmer might call her, might try to see her, didn’t enter her thoughts anymore. His absence under the trees told her all she needed to know—that he didn’t want to see her.

  And in the weeks that followed, Charles didn’t notice that Lee had stopped wearing her wedding rings: not that first evening when he came home from work nor in all the months afterwards. She had often taken the rings off before, leaving them on the counter before washing dishes or on a window ledge when working in the yard. For one two-day period, when they were first married, she thought the rings permanently lost, but then they’d turned up in a jacket pocket. Now, Lee saw her bare left hand as a sign of the domestic ghost she was to her husband. Were not ghosts silent, unobtrusive, transparent? Did she care?

  At nine weeks, the baby moved, butterfly stirrings, deep within the pocket of her hips: faint, tremulous, coming-awake quivers, and every few hours, Lee sat with her hand on her abdomen, eager for the tiny signals. They were akin to Cassie’s shy hand waves, good-byes at the kindergarten door, and to Lill’s head-bobbing agreements to whatever her mother suggested: a trip to the park, pimento cheese sandwiches for lunch rather than peanut butter, a bath instead of a nap, which always brought on a nap afterwards.

  Other than the secret of the baby and the rectory, everything else was the same, and, in some ways better, the loose freedom of no longer being committed. Lee didn’t care, did not demand conversation from Charles about his day, his plans, his earnings, and it freed her unthinking husband to the calm of his good nature and the television set. Now, in the evenings, finished with the hand sewing, Lee left Charles asleep in the recliner and sat reading in their bedroom. Books were her drug, her sleeping pills—three books a week pulled from the library shelves for the color of their bindings, for the whimsy of their titles. Her own books—Dante, Blake, Pope, gifts from the nuns—she read over and over. Pope’s couplets, chosen at random, she committed to memory:

  Teach us to mourn our Nature, not to mend,

  A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!

  Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade

  The choice we make, or justify it made

  She moved to Charles’s side of the bed by the lamp, and if he woke up in the recliner in the middle of the night, he crawled in on her side next to the wall, sleeping on top of the covers. The few times, half-awake, that he fumbled for her, she pulled her knees up under her night gown, anchored it tight with her feet, and guarded her breasts with her elbows. He patted her shoulder companionably, almost it seemed in approval, and turned away.

  And strangely, where before she had felt free to complain to Charles about his hours, his salary, his laziness on the weekends, his sloppy habits, now the secret of the baby and the sin with the priest caused an unlikely loyalty to seal her lips. She nodded silently when Charles said there would be a raise when the new shed at Bettlemains’ Plumbing was built and that he and Brother would eventually take over the business from their father Lon. She was silent when all Charles did was rest and fish on the weekends, silent when she picked up his socks and beer bottles from beside the recliner. She told herself: You’re the guilty one in this arrangement. She also told herself that they could be fighting like the couple, the Teflers, next door, screaming insults in the early morning hours, waking up the neighborhood. Perhaps anger would come when Charles found out she was pregnant again; maybe he wouldn’t even think the child was his. They’d had sex so long ago. Charles had been furious when she was first pregnant with Lill: slamming doors, kicking poor Furlough for no reason, yelling at Cassie to pick up her toys.

  A week later, in a flurry, Lee spent one of Ray’s five twenties: $5 went to pay Willie Mae, $5 instead of $3, and the next $15 went for hamburgers, fries, and cokes that she’d picked up after dropping the maid off. She certainly didn’t feel like cooking. Charles was obviously pleased, saying, “We should do this more often,” totally oblivious of where the money came from. The next $20 went into savings for the house payment and made up for the two days’ sewing Lee had missed: $10 for the rectory afternoon, and $10 for the next day when she was unable to do anything but pace the house and think about the priest’s disappearance from under the trees. On the weekend, with $40, Lee bought fabric from Gillbergs—beautiful cloth—to make maternity clothes. First, a piece of palest pink, her best color showing off her blue-black hair and olive complexion. The polished cotton would hang in soft folds, and she could see it as a full-length dress. Another piece, the color of oatmeal, was an embossed material with raised flowers and leaves. It was not her best shade, but Ray had brought samples of something similar from Jamaica. The fabric had flowers and leaves, embroidered in brilliant red, yellow, and green thread. Lee found a pattern with a wide yoke, knowing she could embroider it with those same bright colors, to make herself look Spanish, exotic. Finally, she bought enough fine white cambric for two around-the-house dresses and a smocked gown for the new baby—that is, if it was another girl. None of the material was on sale but taken full price from the bolts, and all with an eye to what would look good with her hair, her skin, and if it were as colorful and fluid as the clothes Ray wore. The wrinkled green twenties lay on the Gillberg’s counter looking shriveled and worn and not worthy of the stack of lovely folded fabric that the clerk gave Lee in exchange.

  In a vision of herself in new clothes, she vowed never again to look plain and drab, to keep her naturally curly black hair washed and fluffed out instead of pulled back tight into a frizzy ponytail. She’d put make-up on every morning and throw away the faded secondhand smocks she’d worn with Cassie and Lill.

  No wonder Charles was distant and a grouch, she thought. What man wants an oversized washer woman for a wife. Somewhere in the pain of the last weeks, Lee had decided to be beautiful, to make David Palmer, whenever and wherever he saw her, to take notice.

  With the remaining $20, she put two baby dolls, two doll cribs, and two Dolly Madison dolls on lay away for Christmas. The pink baby dolls were her daughters’ usual gift from Santa Claus, but the historical Dolly Madisons—Martha Washington and Abigail Adams from the First Ladies Series—were special, something Lee had wanted to buy ever since sh
e was pregnant with Cassie. How she would pay the remaining $78.70 due, she didn’t know, but there was an abandon in buying more material at one time than she’d ever bought before and in putting expensive gifts on lay away. The bags of fabric along with the groceries in the trunk of the car and the knowledge of the sealed lay-away packages, stored on some shelf in the back room of the Belk-Hudson Department Store, made her feel stronger, better somehow.

  That Sunday, Lee and her two children and ten other white people attended the first integrated Mass at St. Jerome’s Church on Branche Street. If she’d felt separate and darkly different before, because there were no glistening black heads of hair at St. Anthony’s, it was nothing compared to the sense of differentness that flowed through her now. St. Jerome’s seemed over-full, packed with at least seventy-five people of all possible shades of brown, black, tan, beige, coffee, and dusky-colored skin; smooth, wrinkled, young, old, mottled, freckled; all colored. Lee was overcome. She felt inundated with the contrast, the difference between them and her, but more so the difference between them and her two corn-silk-haired daughters.

  Their hair, the Dutch-cut strands, drew everyone’s attention, seemed sunshine itself, like the thick autumn beams that streamed through the single-paned pebbled windows of the gray concrete-block building. The light streaked across the colored congregation, the white altar cloth, the vases of yellow chrysanthemums, across a simple statue of the Virgin and caught in her daughters’ hair. One elderly lady, her own hair snow-white, reached out and touched Cassie’s head as she came down the aisle. “So pretty,” the old woman whispered to sighing agreement around her.