Authors: Kibler Julie
“Better, Mother.” I sighed and shifted the rag to a new position. I’d observed her sick headaches long enough to know what to say. “What I need is dark and quiet. Sleep. I’m sure I’ll be good as new tomorrow. Don’t worry about me.”
“Fine, then, dear. I’ll leave you alone.” She kissed my cheek and left, though she paused in the doorway and watched me in silence, her face void of its perpetual fussiness—a suggestion of what she could have looked like. Her softened gaze made me want to call her back, pretend I needed her after all. But I allowed my eyelids to droop, and before long, she tiptoed away.
The hushed noises of my family scattering to their various rooms finally dwindled into silence, and I slipped out of bed. I plumped up the bedding and pillows to make it appear as if I were curled on my side, my face hidden beneath the covers. I prayed Mother wouldn’t venture beyond the door if she happened to check on me again.
I shrugged off my summer nightgown and pulled on trousers my brother had outgrown years before. I tucked a tailored plaid shirt I thought could pass for a boy’s garment—at least from a distance—into the waistband and cinched up the trousers with a belt. My school oxfords were obviously girls’, but the trousers almost covered the toes. Last, I gathered my bobbed hair as tight as I could and stuffed it under my brother’s frayed fishing cap, then studied myself in the mirror. Anyone close enough would realize immediately I wasn’t a boy, but I didn’t plan to get that close. Already sweating in the stifling, stagnant air of my room, I wondered how men could stand wearing long pants every day in summer, as if the seasons hadn’t even changed.
I rolled up the trouser legs and pulled my bathrobe over my ensemble. Carrying my shoes and the cap, I tiptoed to my door. I knew where and how to hold it—from years of experience and from practicing that afternoon while my family was in the yard—applying pressure in the right spots to keep it from groaning as I opened it only enough to slip out. When I returned, I’d shinny up the latticework on the side of the house and crawl through my window, but I could leave the conventional way if I was very quiet. We rarely locked doors, but no telling who might be up and about later, in the hallway bathroom or down in the kitchen for a cool drink. My brothers might have left, and if so, who knew when they’d return.
I managed the stairs without telltale creaks, and the back door closed neatly, without its ever-shifting threshold sticking. I leaped off the back steps and raced down the drive and away. I paused only to stuff my bathrobe under a shrub. It was reminiscent of another journey I’d made recently, only this time, I hoped, I would be running toward Robert instead of away from him.
Near Main Street, I slowed and unrolled my trouser legs and stuffed my feet into my shoes. Downtown, I hugged the buildings, slipping from one dark entryway to the next. The street was deserted except for huddles of young men smoking and shooting the breeze. Younger boys hung at the edges of some groups, hands deep in their pockets as they dreamed of being invited into those circles. Whenever I passed too close, I sped up, pointing my chin at my chest and pulling my brother’s cap low in case someone should recognize me. I breathed easy when the buildings thinned and turned residential again. At the city limit, I slapped that ugly sign hard and let out a whoop. It seemed dressing as a boy had given me permission to act like one, too. It never occurred to me to be nervous about what might lurk at the dark edges along the road. Lightning bugs flickered, but always off in the distance ahead, as if they were leading the way—though my feet knew the direction even in the purple darkness.
The preacher’s voice and the rhythmic, almost singsong responses from his congregation reached my ears long before I arrived. I slowed at the unfamiliar chorus, my intentions cloudy now. It wasn’t as if I could simply duck under the arbor and become part of the congregation, no matter what the church’s sign claimed. What a commotion I’d cause, a skinny white girl dressed in her brother’s trousers.
So I crept around the side of the church, careful to hide in the shadows. I scanned the small crowd gathered under the arbor, searching for familiar silhouettes. I could see only the backs of most of the congregation, sitting or standing as they were, facing the preacher, except for those seated in a few rows of benches behind him. I spied Nell’s profile there in the makeshift choir loft. She was gazing at the preacher and, along with the rest, responding with nods, amens, hallelujahs, and longer phrases I couldn’t distinguish from where I watched. The preacher was younger than I’d expected—no more than a few years older than Nell—and I understood her enchantment. Not only did he speak apparent truth but he was quite a handsome fellow, too.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I leaned against the church’s weather-beaten clapboards. Then I started at the discovery of a young woman seated on a tree stump less than three yards away. She held a bundle close, and in a rare pause in the sound from the arbor I heard the unmistakable noise of an infant releasing from a mother’s breast and then soft baby sighs while the mother lay her over her shoulder to burp. I knew immediately I’d interrupted a private moment, but I also, by then, saw the gleam of her eyes, wide and gaping at me. A young white man hidden in the shadows of a Negro church was probably not only far from ordinary but also threatening as a general rule.
I gulped once, twice. How could I ease her mind without giving away my hiding place to the others? “Don’t—don’t worry,” I whispered, at a near loss for words and stumbling over the few I could find.
She pulled the infant closer, and her eyes opened wider, if possible. She shrank back as I stepped near. “Don’t hurt my baby. Please, just leave my baby alone.”
Her terror that I might do some unimaginable thing to her infant knocked the tie out of my tongue, and I rushed to reassure her. “I’m not going to hurt your baby. I’m not going to hurt anyone. I’m here for the service, like you.” I yanked off my cap and closed the gap between us, leaning to study the baby. The woman hurried to cover her bosom. Some of the young mothers in my town fed their babies by breast, but always in seclusion, never acknowledged aloud, as though it were a dark secret to be concealed. I harbored a hope that one day I’d be a mother, too, and that I might feed my child that way, yet the sight of an exposed breast still flustered me. I’d never even seen my own mother’s naked chest.
“It’s a beautiful baby,” I said, hoping to diffuse her tension and my embarrassment.
“Oh, you’re just a girl,” the woman said, clucking now that she could see and hear me clearly. “She’s a girl, too. My baby girl.” She held the baby away from her, beaming at the tiny face. The little one had already fallen asleep in the peaceful shadows, and her mother dabbed a line of milk pooling at the corner of her rosebud mouth. In spite of her relaxed pride, though, I knew I still puzzled the woman. I knew what question would come next before she spoke it. “What you doing here? I mean, you said you come for the service, but—” She shook her head.
“Well…” I paused, giving myself time to come up with a better reason than the ones I’d thought of so far. I settled on two truths. “That sign out front? It says ‘All Welcome Here.’”
Her eyebrows rose, but she shrugged. “Can’t argue that one, I suppose. Just never been tested before, far as I know. Course, here you are, hiding in the shadows.”
“Well, yes. But”—I took a breath and plunged ahead—“that girl in front, in the choir? The one on the left in the pink dress.” I waited to see if she followed me.
“Nell Prewitt?”
“Yes! Nell. She works for my family. She told me she was singing tonight, and I wanted to hear her. She practiced her song at my house one day, and, oh, it was like an angel on my front porch. I wanted to hear her sing at church, where I’m guessing it will be even more heavenly.”
The woman pondered my answer, then nodded, and her shoulders relaxed fully. It seemed my explanation contained too many inarguable details to be a lie. I didn’t tell her the third reason—that I also hoped to glimpse Robert, and, if it wasn’t too much to ask, to speak to him. I’d missed him so much.
“Well, you’re not too late, and it won’t be long now. Preacher’s almost done.”
“Do you know Cora? Nell’s mother? And her brother?”
“Course I do. All the Prewitts been coming to this church long as I remember. We’re all raised up here. Baptized and married and buried. Their family, mine, plenty others.”
“Have you seen them tonight? Cora?” I hesitated. “And Robert?”
She pointed. “Cora’s there on the front row, her and her man, Albert—Robert’s and Nell’s daddy. Probably sat down an hour early to get the best seats so they can hear their girl singing like an angel.” She smiled as she echoed my compliment of Nell. “Robert, I don’t know. Either sitting with the boys in the back, cutting up and being obnoxious like they do, or off somewhere doing something Preacher asked him before service. Probably that. He’s a good boy. They’re kind of tight, and they’ll be in-laws soon, if I guess right. Brother James and Nell got their eyes on each other more than strictly necessary lately.”
My powers of observation weren’t half-bad. I smiled for Nell. She loved her church, and I couldn’t imagine a better life for her than to be a preacher’s wife instead of doing domestic work forever like her mother. We’d both been hiding things from each other—though the fault was all mine.
“Baby girl’s happy now. It’s time I go sit with my family. Should I tell Nell or Cora you’re hiding over here?”
“Oh no!” I took a physical step back, and my heart hammered my ribs. “Cora would be worried if she knew. She’d probably feel like she had to tell my mother or my father tomorrow, and I’d be in bigger trouble than you can imagine.” I shook my head furiously, picturing any of the four of them if they found out. I almost regretted fibbing about being there after all. But I felt sure the young mother wouldn’t give me away.
“Okay, then. Don’t you worry. But you gonna be safe getting back home? Where do you live?”
“Shalerville.”
Now she shrank back. “That’s a good hike in the dark by yourself. What can you do, though.” It was not a question. We both knew what she meant. I wondered how she’d react if she knew Robert had walked me all the way through my town in the dark before.
“There is one thing you could do,” I said. “If you see Robert, tell him I’m here? I’ll wait around the corner there, near the building. After the service, perhaps he and Nell can walk me partway. But let him tell Nell. Don’t worry her by saying you saw me.”
Studying me, she pulled the baby tight again and pushed herself up from the tree stump with her free hand. I could envision the wheels turning in her mind as she contemplated my request, but eventually she nodded. “You be careful, young lady. I’ll tell Robert you’re here. Enjoy Nell’s singing.”
“Thank you,” I called softly as she moved away. “Your baby is lovely.”
The worry on her face vanished, and she beamed back at me.
She approached the arbor, slowing to study the young men grouped near the back. She whispered to a seated teenager. He pointed off to the side, and I spotted Robert then, leaning against one of the thick wooden posts that supported the arbor; he stood on the outside, not under its shelter. Hands deep in his pockets, he gave the appearance of listening to the preacher, except I could see his face, which wore a faraway expression. Was he thinking of me? Of our time in the arbor? I shook myself. He had more worthwhile thoughts than mooning over me—even if I mooned over him more than I cared to admit.
The woman eased toward him and tapped his shoulder. He reached back as if to swat a june bug, then realized she was there. She whispered, pointed toward the church and the corner where I’d promised to wait. His face flashed from distant to wary. The young mother squeezed his arm, then skirted the arbor to the other side, where she slipped past a man to sit beside a toddler, who covered her with kisses, as though she’d been gone for days. She might have argued, but she was the second person I could have compared to an angel in one evening.
I hoped Robert considered her a messenger of good tidings. More likely, he was fuming about my increasing boldness. He crossed his arms and hunkered against the wooden support, almost as if he wished to mold himself to it and blend in until he disappeared. I almost ran. Even if the dark seemed formidable now, his expression brought me face-to-face with how ridiculous I must seem—a careless, stupid child, sneaking here, placing not only myself in danger but also him, once more. I shrank into the deeper shadows, though, and backed toward the corner. If I left, he’d feel responsible to go looking for me along the dark road back to Shalerville. I leaned my forehead against the rough boards of the building to wait.
Eventually, though, hands still buried in his pockets, Robert strolled to the back of the arbor and cut diagonally across the property. Away from me. My breath caught. Would he simply leave, sidestepping my foolishness? Or had he misunderstood the young mother’s instructions?
I sank against the building and sighed loudly. If the preacher had paused then or moved into silent prayer, the whole crowd would have discovered me.
Then I heard a frantic whisper. “Isabelle!”
I jerked my head around, nearly losing my balance in the process. Robert shushed me with one hand and steadied me with the other. Then he stepped back and studied me a full five seconds before he shook his head. “You crazy girl.”
I clasped my hands behind my back and forced a smile. I hoped I could charm him, or at least disarm him. “You’re right. I am crazy. But you’re always tempting me into these silly situations. I must be losing my mind.”
“Well, if you’re here to listen to Nell, like the lady said you were, we’d best shut our mouths. There she goes.” I swiveled, and sure enough, Nell stood at the front now, mere yards from the preacher. He’d stepped closer to his congregation and was issuing an altar call, his arms reaching toward them. He nodded to Nell, and she opened her mouth. Then out floated the notes and words she’d practiced on my porch the week before, so pure and sweet they hovered in the air all around us, even here, so far from where she sang.