The Pages We Forget (2 page)

Inez, dressed in a lavender silk gown, got out of the burgundy Bonneville. Her fingers spoke for her. “You're beautiful, Junie.”

She signed back, “So are you.”

“Reverend, get one of him opening the car door for Junie,” Lucy Kaye suggested, taking her by the hand and guiding her down the steps and across the mulch-covered walkway.

“Mom, don't you think that's—”

“Do what your mother says,” Reverend Adams told Keith.

“Turn around, Junie.” Kathryn was already positioned to take the photo that Lucy Kaye suggested. “Smile for the camera.”

She turned slightly so that she and Keith were facing both her mother's and Reverend Adams' cameras. As she turned, she glimpsed his face. He was smiling, beaming, laughing almost.

Almost in that instant, the same unpredictable and unannounced way they began, the memories ended, but not before picking away the scab of a wound that would not heal.

June's life was over after that night, but she didn't stop living. Not at all. She left for college two months later. Within a year of leaving town, she hit it big. Really big. But that didn't surprise the folks in Hampton Springs. They always knew she was going to be the one who put the once famous North Florida community back on the map.

When June was eight, she strolled into the kitchen one Sunday morning as Kathryn was dicing an onion to go in a bowl of potato salad for Mt. Nebo's first Sunday fellowship. She announced her new career plans. She no longer wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. “I'm going to be a star,” she foretold.

“What kind of star?” Kathryn asked without bothering to look back at June, who was wearing an afro-puff wig too big for her head, a pair of two-inch-heeled bare backs that were three inches too long, and a yellow and white ruffled skirt that fitted like a maxi-dress.

“The kind in the movies,” June answered, grabbing a wooden spoon off of the counter. “I'm gonna be like Diana Ross.” She sashayed around the counter, snapping her fingers to get a rhythm. She turned to her mother, who still hadn't looked around. “Cause wherever my man is,” she belted with a voice well beyond her years. “I'm his forever…”

The jar of pimentos fell out of Kathryn's hand and the sound of breaking glass brought her first performance to a sudden halt. Kathryn couldn't believe her ears. It was the first time she, or anyone else, had paid attention to June's captivating voice. “Don't stop! Keep singing,” Kathryn cheered her on.

“'Cause wherever my man is, I'm his forever more,” June sang. Then she turned to her mother and said, “That's all I know.”

“Junie, when did you start singing like that?”

“You promise you won't get mad?”

“Mad about what?”

“Well, last night after you told me to go to sleep, I slipped back up so I could finish watching this movie on TV with Diana Ross in it called
Lady Sings the Blues.
You ever seen it, Ma?”

“Child, I done seen that movie more times than I can count. Now go on.”

“Well, I really liked it and I decided I wanted to be a singer like Diana Ross and the lady she was playing, Billie… Billie something.”

“Billie Holiday,” Kathryn informed her.

“Yeah, that was her name. Anyway, after I finished watching the movie, I started practicing.”

“You started practicing last night, and you already singing like that? Move over, Miss Ross! My girl's on her way!”

June knew it and her mother did, too. She was going to be a star like she said she would. And it wasn't because she had what Lucy Kaye, Mt. Nebo Baptist Church's choir director, described as a blessed voice after hearing her sing later that day. It was more than mere talent or even desire. It was something else. Something preternatural. No one understood what made her so special, but everyone recognized that she was.

Me,
her first album, released when she was nineteen and a sophomore at the University of Florida, proved how special she was with worldwide sales in the millions. That was followed by two other platinum CDs, two movies, both box office hits, and a multimillion-dollar promotion contract with a leading cosmetics line. The world loved her and watched her every move.

Junie Thomas became June, one of the entertainment industry's brightest stars. As she sat in the parlor of her lakefront mansion in Grosse Pointe playing Joy, the black enameled Baldwin piano
she received on her thirteenth birthday, she quietly sang a song from her upcoming CD,
The Pages We Forget.
“Our eyes tell stories, of how we used to be. Memories locked inside, never to be free. And now after all this time…” She paused and studied the piano's keys. “We pass like we've never met. Neither wanting to remember the pages we forget.”

This song was special because she wrote it for Keith. Well, not exactly for Keith, but about him. She didn't know if he listened to her music, saw her films or even glanced at the magazine and tabloid covers she often graced as he went through the supermarket check-out lanes.

June stopped singing and peered out the window at the two men applying a fresh coat of paint to the exterior of the house. One of the men, a blond-haired, blue-eyed reincarnation of Paul Newman, was looking at her. She knew from the look on his face that he was excited about seeing her in person. He stopped painting and smiled at her. June straightened the sash on her white satin robe and then adjusted the hairpin that held her hair in an upswept twist. She smiled invitingly at the young man. Although his wide-toothed smile was nothing like Keith's timid smile, she was reminded of the last time she had seen Keith smile—the night before he ran away. No one saw or heard from Keith after he left except for his parents, who received an occasional letter or a brief phone call every few months. He made them promise to keep his whereabouts a secret and that they wouldn't come after him.

Three years passed before he came home again and then it was to attend his father's funeral. Kathryn called and told June that Reverend Adams had passed away as she prepared to perform in front of a sold-out crowd. She could not go on afterwards, so she canceled the show and caught the next flight to Tallahassee, which
departed at four-thirty that morning. A few minutes after sunrise, June was speeding along the two-lane stretch of highway between Tallahassee and Hampton Springs.

Only a stone's throw from the marshy coast of Florida's Big Bend, Hampton Springs' destiny could have easily been like those of its nearby neighbors. The coastal fishing villages of St. Marks and Apalachicola were havens of born and bred fishermen and their families struggling to make a living plucking oysters, shrimp, blue crabs and mullet from the gulf and inland bays. However, the sulfuric spring that gushed what was once believed to be medicinal waters out of a small enclave near Rocky Creek reversed the town's fate.

B & G Railroad owner John Bacon, who suffered from rheumatism, stumbled on the springs during a 1913 hunting and fishing trip in Taylor County's bountiful pine forests which were filled with deer, raccoons, squirrels, quail, and wild hogs. The creeks overflowed with bream, catfish, and speckled trout. After bathing in the spring and sipping its bitter brew, Bacon proclaimed himself healed of the stiff joints and muscle swelling that had nearly crippled him. Within a year, he constructed a magnificent 45-bedroom resort, the Hampton Springs Hotel, on the site. Then he placed colorful advertisements on his trains and in stations around the country touting the spring's healing waters, the forests' abundant wildlife and streams, and the fresh Florida air. The hotel's mineral-rich bathing pools began luring wealthy guests from across the country, many of whom settled in the area.

When the hotel burned down in March 1952, most of the town's three hundred residents were wealthy white landowners who made their living selling timber to the pulp and saw mills in nearby Perry and by harvesting and selling turpentine to medicinal distilleries.
June's family and the other six black families who lived on Bacon Street inherited their lavish homes and enough land to buy their dreams when Old Man Bacon died in 1956. He bequeathed most of the property to the indentured black servants who still resided in Brown Quarters, a shantytown of shotgun houses behind the hotel. This benevolence gave them a chance to rewrite their lives and their children's lives.

June longed to see her hometown after the two-year whirlwind of appearances and touring that followed the release of her first CD and the recording of her second. She pulled out a Newport as she counted down the ninth mile of her thirty-two-mile journey. She wasn't sure what made her purchase the pack of cigarettes because she didn't smoke, but she'd instinctively walked in a store at the airport and asked for a pack of Newports.

“Long or short?” the clerk asked.

“Short, I guess.”

“Box or soft pack?”

“Box,” she answered. “I also need a lighter.”

The clerk, who looked to be in his early forties, stroked his long curly hair behind his ear and stared over his wire-framed glasses at June as he rang up her purchase. “That'll be four dollars and seventy-nine cents.”

She handed him a five-dollar bill.

“Out of five,” he said, and counted out twenty-one cents. He hesitated before handing her the change. “Are you…?”

“No.” She hurried her answer, hoping to halt the conversation before it continued.

“You could've fooled me because you look exactly like her,” he remarked, looking closer. “Did you know she was from 'round these parts?”

“I may have read that somewhere,” she replied, taking the change out of his hand. “Thank you.”

He nodded and watched as she walked out the store through a terminal full of pointing fingers and curious glances. She turned and headed toward the Enterprise Rent-a-Car counter.

An hour and five cigarettes later, she steered the Toyota Camry into a cramped parking space in front of her mother's downtown bakery. She had not been home in almost two years because she had been busy recording and promoting her first album, which she immediately followed up with the recording of her second album,
Feel My Love.
Still, she didn't expect the whole town to turn out simply to see her. The majority of Hampton Springs' 824 residents were gathered inside the bakery, next door in Inez's Beauty Salon, outside along Willow Street's wooden covered sidewalks, and in the shade of the moss-covered oaks and dogwoods that lined the street. No one had to tell the town folks June was on her way home. They knew she would be there as soon as she heard about Reverend Adams. Some came clutching yellowed scrapbook and grade-school photos, while others brought copies of her first album,
Me,
for her to autograph. The entire town was happy to see her. Everyone…except Keith.

It was early the next morning when she saw him. She was sitting in her old bedroom staring out the window when a black and white Toyota Corolla pulled into the Adams' driveway. Her heart stopped. She pressed her face against the window to get a better view of him. She gasped when she saw the forlorn look on his face as he got out of the car. “Ma!” June rushed out the room and almost fell running down the stairway. “He's home, Ma! He's home!”

Kathryn ran out of the kitchen just in time to stop June from running out the front door. “No!”

“What?”

“You can't just run over there, Junie,” Kathryn advised and closed the door.

“Why?”

“Because of everything that's happened.”

“But…”

“No buts, Junie! You can't rush this. You've got to wait for him. Give him time.”

June stared into her mother's eyes. “I can't, Ma. I've been waiting three long years. Three years that feel like a lifetime. I can't wait any longer. I have to see him now!”

“I know how you feel and I know—”

“Do you, Ma? Do you really know how I feel?”

“Junie, I'm trying to understand.”

“How can you, Ma? He was the first man I ever loved! The first one I made love to. And after I made love to him, he disappeared. He didn't say good-bye. He didn't say anything. He just left. Has that ever happened to you, Ma? Because if it hasn't, you can't begin to understand how I feel!”

June reached for the doorknob, but Kathryn stood firm. “No, that's never happened to me,” she tearfully replied. “But I'm your mother, and every time you hurt I hurt. My heart broke too when he left, and my heart is breaking right now because I see how much you're still hurting. But please, Junie, trust me on this.”

June reluctantly consented. During the next two hours, she paced back and forth through the living room and trampled up and down the stairway. In between the pacing, she kept staring out the windows hoping to catch another glimpse of him. She couldn't wait any longer. While Kathryn wasn't looking, she dashed out the front door, down the steps, across the yard and through a gap
in the azalea hedges separating their yards. Kathryn heard the door open and rushed out of the kitchen. It was too late. “Junie!”

Keith didn't see June coming up the walkway when he opened the screen door and walked onto the porch. When he did see her, it was like seeing a ghost. He stood frozen.

June stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Hi,” she said nervously, looking directly into his eyes, hoping they would tell her what she knew he wasn't going to. “I saw you when you got in this morning, but Ma told me I should wait until you got settled before I came over.”

His face turned stolid. Without saying a word, he turned and bolted back in the house. June ran up the steps and tried to snatch the screen door open, but he had already latched the door. She stared through the screen at him as he hurried through the living room and up the stairs toward his bedroom.

“Why? Why won't you talk to me?” she yelled as he disappeared up the stairway.