Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [83]
“But,” I interrupted, “isn’t Beatrice your first name?”
“Yeah, it is, and they know that, but no one ever calls me Beatrice. Except Daddy, when he says good-night to me on the radio. So I guess he couldn’t see himself calling me anything else.”
“So what happened after that?”
“Well, those three talked for a little while about the plans – you know, where everyone would be and when we’d meet up again. And then we left the station, and next thing I know Daddy and I were in his car driving out of the city. I asked him where we were going, and he said we were going up to Evanston for lunch, to a place he knew up there. I didn’t ask him why we didn’t stay in Chicago, because I knew. He couldn’t be seen with me there. Everyone would say, ‘Hey, isn’t that William Remmick, the guy on the radio? So who’s that little Negro girl with him?’ And the next thing you know, word would get around and his wife would find out, and she’d ask him who I was and he’d have to lie about it, or he’d have to tell her the truth. Either way, he couldn’t let it happen.”
She paused. I nodded, urging her to go on.
“We didn’t say too much at first,” she said, looking far off beyond the walls of my room. “I think he might have been nervous, because he turned on the radio and kept changing the station. I put the book on the seat between us, and he said, ‘You reading that?’ and even though I hadn’t started it, I said yeah, I was reading it. He said I was taking on a challenge, but he was glad I liked to read, and I said, ‘When I grow up I’m going to be an English professor just like you and maybe even a writer.’ For a minute I thought he looked kind of proud, like he was glad I wanted to be like him. But he didn’t say anything. He just kind of nodded and fiddled with the radio, and then he lit a cigarette. I didn’t even know he smoked.”
As Mara spoke, I tried to picture her sitting in the car with her father, the two of them stiff and formal, the tall white professor fidgeting behind the wheel, the little dark-skinned girl sitting prim in the passenger seat. I imagined her hair pulled back and tied with ribbons, her winter coat buttoned up to her chin, her patent leather shoes polished to a shine. Her gloved hands would be in her lap, her laced fingers kneading each other nervously.
“He was smoking the cigarette,” Mara went on, “and blowing the smoke out a little crack in the window, and he didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he finally just said, ‘You know, Beatrice, sometimes things just don’t work out the way we hope they will.’ He sounded real sad when he said it, and I thought maybe he was talking about our getting together, like maybe he hoped it would somehow be different or I would be different or something. But then he said, ‘I want you to know up front that if it’d been up to me, I’d have married your mother. I didn’t want to let either of you go.’ And I said, ‘Maybe you should have just married her then and kept us both,’ and he looked even sadder and said, ‘Sometimes things get too complicated, more complicated than you can imagine.’ I told him I didn’t see why it was so complicated to just go ahead and marry the person you love, and he said maybe I would understand when I was older.”
I was listening intently, my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands. When she paused to take a breath, I said, “Grown-ups are always saying things like that, just so they don’t have to explain.”
Mara lifted her shoulders. She was still fingering the locket around her neck. “Yeah, well, all I know is he couldn’t keep me and Mama because he’s white and we’re Negroes. I started thinking