Glorious. Bernice L. McFadden
throat. Easter felt her mouth go dry and she reached for the water glass and brought it carefully to her lips. As she drank Easter wondered what in the world was wrong with her, because she was sure she’d left that thirst miles behind her, somewhere along the banks of the Savannah River. Regaining her composure, she set the glass back down on the desk and began the morning roll call.
“John Appleby?”
“Here.”
“April Botwin?”
“Here.”
Easter moved slowly down the list of names, aware of the cherub’s eyes boring into her. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, and felt her tongue begin to wither behind her teeth. By the time she reached his name, her voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper and it tumbled out in a gale of dust.
“Getty Wisdom?”
“Present.”
Have you ever heard a sweeter-sounding name?
Week in and week out she covered penmanship, arithmetic, The Mayflower, Washington’s cherry tree, and honest Abe. She tended to scabbed knees, knotted lose shoelaces, broke up scuffles, read her books, and wrote her stories. When she was alone in her room she thought about Getty and admonished herself in soft whispers. “Shoot girl, you done lost your damn mind.” Standing before the mirror she’d wave her hand at her reflection and ask, “What he see in you? He just a—”
She would stop herself from saying that he was just a child. She’d convinced herself that if she didn’t say it … if she didn’t even think it, then it couldn’t be true.
Her mirrored reflection smiled back at her and said, He gotta be eighteen if he’s a day.
Harvest time came and the class thinned. All hands were needed at home, Getty Wisdom’s included. Just the littlest ones remained and Easter’s mood turned gray.
Getty Wisdom.
She would open a book to read and his name jumped out from between the lines of the story.
Getty Wisdom.
When she sat down to write, it was his name that spilled from her fountain pen.
Getty Wisdom.
When the harvest season came to an end, Easter was giddy with excitement and went out and bought herself a new pair of nylons and made sure that the scented powder she’d dusted her neck with was visible above the collar of her blouse. She was sitting at her desk looking expectantly at the doorway when he finally appeared, and her heart stopped. He was taller than she remembered, his arms were bigger, his neck wider. He smelled of fresh-turned earth and was scrubbed so clean he shined. He took his seat and gave her that same look he had the first time they laid eyes on one another, and just like that their dance resumed. Her heart came to life again and the thumping sound transformed into a throbbing, aching thing that was quickly inching south.
Easter pressed her knees tightly together and tried hard to think about something else, something other than him, but a lot of good it did because all she got for her effort were bruised knees.
And so it became stunningly clear to Easter that if she didn’t get out of Sweet City—and quick—she would buckle under the weight of her desires, so she claimed fever, dismissed the class, and ran home beneath a fat lazy sun.
The suitcase lay open on the bed, with her best dress, a blouse, and a skirt neatly folded inside. She had a brassiere in one hand and a hairbrush in the other when the knock came to her bedroom door. Easter yanked it open and there he was, long, lean, and glistening.
“Ma’am, you left this behind,” Getty’s mouth said, but his eyes whispered something different.
He held her notebook out to her and when she reached to take it her hand caught hold of his wrist and she pulled him into her and pressed her lips against his. His nectar was intoxicating and Easter knew that she was lost. They stumbled clumsily to the bed and as they worked to free her from her brassiere and him from his trousers, she told herself that she would never again become that dried tuber, that first autumn leaf—that this time she would toss herself in wholly and completely as if Getty meant survival itself and she would drink from his cup until her passion floated. She would drink until she burst.
He buried himself inside her and Easter became a bud in spring. He lifted her legs and placed them over his shoulders and she blossomed and vainly preened for him, for the horsefly that watched from the wall, and the humming bird fluttering outside the open window.
Afterwards, they lay very, very still and before Getty drifted off to sleep he was aware of many things—the damp smell of their bodies, the darkness, her chin resting in the indented space beneath his Adam’s apple, and the heaviness of her leg against his hip bone. If he had remained awake just a few seconds longer he would have seen Easter’s eyes moving over him, claiming every young inch of him, and he would have felt her arms become clutching roots and his ears would have buzzed with the sound of her heart beating out one steady song: gettywisdom, gettywisdom, gettywisdom …
***
They carried on like that through autumn, first frost, winter, and straight into the madness of March. The lie she told when he stole from her room that first magical night had to do with books and study. The landlord’s wife, Miss Abigail, scrunched her face up and Easter did not miss the doubt glowing in her blanched cheeks, so she kept her distance from Getty for a week and waited for the talk, but none came her way and people did not turn to salt when they looked at her.
And so they began to meet in out-of-the-way places.
When the weather permitted, a favorite spot was along the riverbank beneath a cluster of tree roots that formed a cave. There in the darkness she fed him scuppernongs and licked the sweet juice from his lips while they made love. Another place was a barn, long abandoned by its owner, where the sky seeped between the rotting wooden rafters and the air still held the scent of the young mares that once lived there. When the nights turned frigid, Easter borrowed a truck from one of the old roomers; they drove two towns away, parked off of a rarely traveled road, and she climbed on top of Getty and indulged herself while the engine grumbled angrily beneath the battered red hood of the cab and the steering wheel pressed half moon—shaped welts into the small of her back.
By April, though, he had milk in his eyes.
Sara Lee.
She was beyond high yellow, closer to alabaster in color, with a thick tail of black hair that dangled down her back. Easter imagined its weightiness and visualized how she would coil the braid around Sara Lee’s pretty little neck and choke the light out of her eyes.
In class, Sara Lee sat beside Getty and it was all he could do to keep from staring at her. During recess he showed himself up, strutting like a cock and grinning like a minstrel-show buffoon. Easter watched the display and tiny explosions went off in her chest.
Getty began walking Sara Lee home from school, carrying her books in the crook of his arm—where Easter’s head used to lay.
Two, three, and then five weeks went by and Getty avoided Easter’s advances and pretended not to see the little notes she left between the pages of his copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Easter’s anger festered and her jealousy turned into a mite beneath her skin that kept her up at night pacing the floors and clawing at her flesh.
Well it looks like my handwriting, she thought, but it definitely isn’t. I don’t write my e that way, or my s or my a.
The letter was an accumulation of her unraveling that had started on the school day when Easter looked down to find that she was wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe. And there was that Wednesday when she was snatched out of her sleep by a loud banging at her door. When she opened it, she was met with the fretful face of Miss Abigail.
“The minister sent word to check on you. Are you sick?”
“No,” Easter responded, dragging a hand through