Page 25 of Junie
Chapter Twenty-Five
Stories about balls never appealed to Junie the way they did to Violet. She’s always preferred an open forest over the claustrophobic halls of a faraway castle. And yet, when Junie steps into the Montgomery Christmas Negro Assembly, her jadedness melts away like butter between fingers.
It is not a castle, of course. The chandelier is no grander than that in the formal dining room at Bellereine, and the decorations, crimson and green ribbons with holly and pine, are no finer than those she and Bess hang for the holidays.
What strikes Junie is not the finery of the ballroom, but the people in it. The room brims with at least two hundred Negroes, more than she has ever seen at once, each dressed grander than the last. They swirl together about the room like the spinning tops Granddaddy fashioned for Junie and Minnie one Christmas when they were children. She is certain they will collide at some point, like moths all drawn to the same flame, and yet, just as it seems they will crash together, they glide apart. The music, laughter, and diction draw her mind back to sitting next to the hearth with her grandparents. She wishes Minnie could be here to see this.
“What do you think?” Mary says, gesturing around the room.
“It’s something,” Junie says.
“Maybe if you’re from the country. Ain’t nothing compared to last year if you ask me,” Martha says, flicking her fan.
“And nobody did, Martha,” says Mary. “I’m praying you’ll ignore my sister. The ball is something. It’s our little slice of something, ain’t it? Let’s go get a drink and a dance card, shall we?”
As she starts to follow Mary, Junie catches a man looking at her from the corner of her eye. She turns to look his way. He’s older, nearly as old as Granddaddy, wearing a far more common suit than the rest of the men in the room. She’s sure she’s never met this man before, and yet the slope of his nose seems as familiar to her as the laugh lines on Muh’s cheeks. The man holds her gaze, brows knit together. Junie’s palms begin to sweat and she rushes to catch up with Mary.
“Now, like I said, there are rules here,” Mary says, taking a sip of her hot cider. “Gosh, ain’t no whiskey in here, is there? Darn teetotalers.”
Junie enjoys the warmth of the liquid running through her body.
“Yes, the rules, of course,” Junie says.
“There are ten or so planned dances, but I ain’t seen a year yet where they haven’t done a few extra. The gentlemen, although that word might be a bit generous, will come and ask you for a dance, and you’ll have to mark ’em on your card.”
“Can I tell ’em no?” Junie asks.
“I wouldn’t. It’s very rude to refuse a dance. You do know how to dance, don’t you?”
Junie nods.
“Least that’s something. Anyway, once you’re ready, we can go and sit over there, then the gentlemen will come over and ask us.”
“Mary, is there any chance they won’t ask?”
“Not for a girl as handsome as you. Even if you ain’t proper light-skinned, you still ain’t no stand-up-in-the-corner. Now c’mon,” Mary says, motioning toward the ladies’ area.
Junie does her best to keep up with Mary’s quick steps in her heels. By the time she reaches the ladies’ area, Mary is hugging and double-kissing the other young women, ignoring Martha’s glances from the other side. The other women seem to be around Junie’s age, each balancing on the razor’s edge between childhood and adulthood. Their hairstyles are a detailed weaving of curls, twists, and braids, making intricate updos that far surpass what Violet created on Junie’s head. Their posture is long and languid, where Junie’s is awkward, and their voices are sweet and refined, where hers sounds like the croak of a country toad. They stare at her with suspicion, even after Mary introduces her. Junie crosses her arms over her chest, unsure if she should have come.
When the men approach, the girls go silent and coquettish, and Junie swats away the urge to run like the field mice who come upon Critter in the garden. Each man is elegantly dressed and perfumed, hiding years of labor underneath layers of sharply ironed fabrics. They add names, scribbles, or shapes to each of the ladies’ dance cards, before bowing and moving down the line. By the time they finish, Junie has five marks on her list, and can hardly remember which face goes with each.
“Miss, I beg your pardon.” Junie looks up to see the old man standing in front of her. Martha and the other girls start to giggle. Junie winces, praying for the return of her dirty fingernails and sweaty maid’s uniform.
“I was hoping to get a spot on your dance card,” he says. Junie glances over at Mary for a reprieve but does not find one.
“Yes, of course,” Junie murmurs.
He signs his name, a simple letter G, on the line for her sixth dance.
“My card’s all full,” Martha gloats from the other side of the ladies’ area. Mary narrows her eyes.
The master of ceremonies comes to the front of the room, hitting his cane on the ground. The attendees all come to attention, as the gentlemen walk over to take their first partners by the hand. Her first partner is a man about five years older and five inches shorter. She accepts with a curtsy before he leads her to the dance floor.
They start with the waltz, a dance Junie is thrilled she practiced with Violet in preparation for this moment. The music is lovelier than any Junie has heard played at Bellereine, besides Caleb’s, and despite their differences in height, she allows the song and rhythm to wash over her body like a wave. Before she realizes it, the song ends, and her next partner, this time a much taller man with sticky palms, takes her into his arms for the polka. She spins around joyously, a feeling akin to running through the woods on an early spring morning. The next three men are each more handsome and skilled at dancing than the last. Junie swirls around with each one until the pinching in her feet and the tightness around her waist disappear. Her fifth dance partner, especially, is carved from black marble; she feels the delicate ripple of his muscles beneath his suit as she holds him. And yet, his sepia eyes remind her of the painting of a bowl of oranges that hangs in the McQueens’ breakfast room—beauty with no feeling.
After a sip of water, she checks her dance card. The old man is next. Is now the time to run into the street, just long enough to conveniently miss the next song? Before she has time to decide, he approaches to lead her to the floor. She sighs, steeling herself.
“I hope you’ll excuse a man of my age asking a young woman like yourself to dance,” he says.
“No mind to that,” Junie says, looking away.
They go to the dance floor as the music starts. He bows dramatically, and she curtsies in return. They start their dance, another waltz. Junie wants to look away, resistant to seeing the uncanny face before her again.
“I needed a reason to see you up close, is all,” he says.
“If you’re going to say something impolite, sir, I believe it’s best we stop,” Junie says.
“That didn’t sound right. I suppose I ought to tell you why, but, well, there ain’t any good way of really saying what I’m thinking, I suppose.”
Junie raises her eyebrows.
“See, it’s that! That right there. That’s Charlotte’s face.”
Junie’s blood runs cold.
“Who are you?” Junie asks.
“George. My name is George.”
George. That’s why the nose is so familiar. It’s Bess’s nose.
“Are you my Uncle George?” Her knees begin to weaken underneath her.
“Don’t fall on me, Baby. If you’re Charlotte’s daughter, then I am. Now, you must be Minnie, then? I can’t imagine that Charlotte’s other baby is old enough to be around here.”
“I’m Junie, actually,” she says.
“Great day! My goodness, you’re all grown. And just the same color as your daddy. Goodness, and all that long hair, just so pretty like your momma’s when she was young. Where’s your sister, then? She about here, too?”
“Minnie died about a year ago,” she says, her voice dropping to a low mumble. “A fever took her.”
Uncle George goes quiet.
“Lord have mercy. Bless her spirit,” he says in a whisper.
“You must work in Montgomery, then?” Junie asks to change the subject.
“Not quite. See, I ain’t in a normal circumstance no more. That man the McQueens sold me off to, well, he gave me my freedom when he died. But, how is…how is Marilla?” he trails off, as though he is afraid to hear the answer.
“Auntie is good, she works in the cookhouse.”
“And my Sweet Cake? Is my Sweet Cake still there?”
“Do you mean Bess?”
His face lightens. A small tear falls on his cheek. He quickly reaches to wipe it away.
“Yes, my Bess. Is she…”
“She’s all right, too. She’s a maid with me.”
“I ain’t ever stopped, you know. I ain’t ever stopped thinking about them. I ain’t stopped lovin’ them, neither.” His eyes lower to his feet. “Anyway, Baby, that’s not all I wanted to say, and we ain’t got much time.”
“Time for what?”
“Keep your voice down. Not everybody here is a friend.”
Junie looks over her shoulders at the crowds of dancers, and the few couples with their eyes on her. Are they listening?
“It’s like I said, I got my freedom now. And I’ve gone off and gotten myself a little plot of land north of Montgomery, just a ways up the river from here. It ain’t much, but I’ve built myself a little cabin and got a garden growing and such. Now I just need my family.”
Junie’s muscles stiffen as she remembers Minnie’s demand in the woods. Muh’s story about the whipped man flashes through her memory.
“There’s a man I met, you see,” Uncle George continues. “White man, if you can believe it. Rows a boat up and down the Alabama River, coming from Lowndes County out to where I live. Last night of the month, he rows his little boat along the banks, picks up as many slaves as it can hold, and rows ’em round to some safe house. Boat only holds three or four. It ain’t much, but I saw you, and I thought that maybe, with Bess and Marilla, you could.”
This is her sister’s dream. Her mother’s dream. And yet, somehow Junie’s nightmare. Three or four. The boat won’t be big enough for them all.
“I know it’s a lot to think about. But look, I live in the place where the three rivers meet. You’ll see my cabin just there off the riverbank; you can’t miss it. I’ll be there waiting for y’all, anytime.”
As the song draws to an end, Uncle George bows, but Junie’s knees are too stiff to curtsy in return.
“You do look just like Charlotte,” he says with a smile. “Be blessed, Junie.”
—
Junie snatches her skirt into her hand and moves as fast as her pinched feet can take her, past the crowd of ladies with their turned-up noses and through the wall of gentlemen smiling their way to a spot on someone’s dance card. She pushes the door open and lets the cold air burn against her cheeks like coals. It is impossible to sit in this dress. She leans back against the brick facade, praying no dust or dirt finds its way onto the fabric. It doesn’t matter, anyway. She will be the one responsible for cleaning it.
She drinks the fresh air in teaspoons, though she longs for bottles.
Her eyes burn, and tears spring anew. She hates crying, hates the predictable weakness of her body against the ebb and flow of life. Uncle George was supposed to be long gone, meant to be a specter like her mother or sister. Instead, he is flesh and bone, and even as part of her warms knowing he’s survived, he’s still another figure telling her to abandon her family. She will not leave them. They are not perceptive enough to see the glimmers between the darkness like she is. They are not brave enough to seize life along the edges. She will have her life, and keep it, too.
Even in the night, Montgomery is filled with bodies shuffling and men yelling. She stretches her ear for the sounds of home, the whisper of wind through the trees, the scurry of a mouse through the bush, the snap of a branch underfoot. There is no way home now, no way out of this place, this mistake.
The door to the hall swings open as a few men step into the cold, and music floods into the street. Junie’s pulse stalls in her chest.
The music is slow, nothing suited for any sort of dancing, but instead the type to linger over in a parlor. The piano’s sound is as intimate as a kiss, as familiar as the scent of her pillow. Junie pushes past the men, who jump back in surprise, and rushes into the main room again. The guests have all left the floor, most standing on the sides while a few straggle near the front to listen.
He’s playing something different this time. Not the tune from the parlor of Bellereine, but a song with the languid cadence of November leaves rolling across the earth on a breeze. The music stays in Junie’s ears; each note sticks to her like honey between her fingers after she’s reached into a beehive. As she pushes closer, she sees his face. He is lost in the song, eyes closed and head bowed, glowing in the candlelight. The impatient tapping of the guests’ heels at this slow music makes Junie smirk. They do not hear the sweetness of the notes or the perfection of the melody.
This is a song only for her.
Caleb plays to the final crescendo, fingers hitting the keys like fat summer raindrops. When he finishes, the room claps politely, before the master of ceremonies takes the stage to announce a short break. Caleb steps away from the piano, puts his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket, and marches away into the crowd. She is certain he will mingle among the people, falling into the bodies until hers is nothing more than a detail in the background. Instead, he spots her from across the room. He lifts his eyebrows and tips his head, and Junie’s knees give from underneath her again, unsure this time if it is hopelessness or love. She curtsies quickly before walking back over to her place among the other ladies.
The next waltz begins, and the girls float away with their partners, leaving Junie alone by the wall. She feels a familiar brush against her arm.
“Delilah June.”
Caleb has extended his hand to her. She tries to conceal the relief and excitement behind a steely facade as they walk onto the floor. He places his hand on her waist, and she lifts hers to his shoulder. He does not have the musculature of her most handsome dance partner, but his hands are as soft as petals. He leads her into the first movements, and they begin to languidly twist and twirl around the dance floor.
“You have quite a pout on,” Caleb says. “No sign of the sublime here, then?”
“Afraid not,” Junie says.
“That can’t be the only reason you’re making that sour face,” he says.
“You’re late,” she says.
“I split a seam in my pants. Had to mend it. Didn’t want to hold y’all up, so I rode on my own.”
The excuse makes sense, and yet her cheeks grow hot with frustration. She looks up into his eyes, the color of the chocolate Auntie melts into her cakes. Her mind wanders to the gentleness with which he charms and listens to her grandparents in the cookhouse, his tenacity lingering over a book by midnight candlelight in the fields, the measured radiance of his music. Her cheeks flush. It has been too long since she last blinked, and she winces at the sting when her eyes close.
“You can’t be cross with me tonight, Delilah June. You can be cross with me tomorrow about whatever you like, but for as long as the sun is down, you and me are calling a truce.”
“I don’t mean to be cross with you, Caleb,” she says as the song ends.
“Then what?” Caleb says.
Junie swallows. “Some days, it’s easier to be cross than to be honest.”
The master of ceremonies calls the next song. Junie curtsies, letting the music end their conversation. She holds his hand a moment longer than she should. She lets it drop, and starts back toward the ladies’ area. After a few paces, Caleb tugs at her hand again.
“You didn’t sign up for my next dance,” Junie says, wrinkling her brow.
“Well, if anybody wants to come and claim it, they can take it up with me, can’t they?” he says with a chuckle. “We wasn’t done talking.”
He pulls her in, this time a bit closer than last, and places his hand on her waist once more. The warmth of his touch travels through the layers of silk and whalebone as though her skin were bare. Caleb’s polka dancing is wavering and stumbling, yet he seems to use all his strength to steady Junie, to keep her gliding along the floor.
“Tell me something honest, then, Delilah June,” he says with a smile.
“You’ve got two left feet dancing.”
“Something I don’t know,” Caleb says, laughing. “Watch it!”
Caleb lifts her with both hands by her waist, spinning her around and over a glass that has rolled and broken on the dance floor. A current of longing moves through her body like the wind against a sheet on a clothesline.
“Here’s something true. I met my uncle tonight. I thought he was dead all my life.”
Caleb’s eyes widen as she tells him about Uncle George.
“Is he gonna come back, then?” he asks. “If he’s free, he is coming back for them, ain’t he?”
“I don’t think so, I—”
Caleb drops Junie’s hand and waist, even though the music hasn’t stopped. He rubs his palms together, before pressing them to his face.
“I’m sorry, I gotta get some air.”
He rushes out of the hall, snaking between the dancing couples until Junie is alone again. Part of her wants to resign herself, to continue to accept these little abandonments as one of the many inevitable things people do. The bigger part has her starting after him into the night.
Caleb leans against the wall of the building, his face pressed to his palms. The wind is stronger now, and Junie longs for the shawl she’s left inside.
“What’s wrong?” Junie says.
“Junie, just leave it.”
“You just told me in that room to be honest. You say I’m the one who is cross, who keeps secrets, and yet here you are.”
Caleb stares straight into the night, unreadable.
“Why have you been avoiding me?” Junie says, her volume rising. A surge of heat courses through her body with the sharpness of her tongue.
“I ain’t been.”
“That’s a lie. You kept away from me around Bellereine. You hardly said a word to me at the house here in Montgomery.”
“I didn’t intend to avoid you,” Caleb says. “I just thought we ought to have some distance, is all.”
“You hadn’t seen me in months.”
“There ain’t got to be no—”
“Tell me something honest, Caleb. One honest thing.”
“I’m scared to lose you, goddammit!” Caleb says, flinging his arms in the air before reaching back to warm his cheeks and dropping to a ball on the ground. His long legs roll inward like yarn left out of its basket.
He doesn’t want to lose her. How many times has she herself pushed the people she loves away out of the same fear? How could she make him see that maybe the only thing worse than losing is never having at all? She wants to be the one to hold him, to roll him back into himself. She tries crouching down, but her hoopskirt won’t allow it. Instead, she leans against the wall next to him, allowing her hand to brush the top of his head.
“I lost my mother when I was six, Junie. One morning I was waking up in her arms, and by that evening I was inside the bottom of a ship with men I ain’t never seen in my life, sailing to a place I’d never even heard of. I never got over that. I never—”
Caleb’s voice breaks, and he sniffles. A ball forms in her throat.
“I told myself a long time ago it was best not to feel things for people. Not to get attached, you know. You can’t lose something if you ain’t had it to begin with. And it was fine, Junie, it was fine, but then you went and put your hand in that beehive and…”
Junie’s breath stops. A crowd of guests come stumbling out of the hall doors and onto the street, their voices breaking the silence as they climb into their carriages and ride off into the night.
“I lost my momma and daddy, too. I lost my sister,” she says quietly. “I’ve lost everything, too, Caleb.”
“No, you ain’t, Junie. That’s the thing. Some days, it’s like you look at a lake of water and only see the dry sand at the edges. You got people, Junie. People who know you, who love you. You’re the first person I’ve loved since my mother.”
Loved. The word hangs in the air.
“You love me?” Junie asks.
Caleb raises his head from his hands and looks up at her.
“Yes. Of course I do. You’re my middle C.”
“Middle C?”
“The key between the lows and the highs, the balance of it all, the true center of the music. But it don’t matter, that’s the thing.”
“Love ought to matter, Caleb.”
“Not for people like us. Our whole lives can be swept away in an afternoon.”
“You’re wrong,” Junie says. “There’s a life in this. There’s a life in everything, even if you have to squeeze in to find it. And even if it’s on the edges, Caleb, it’s room for love. We just gotta carve it out ourselves.”
“There ain’t no way.”
“You’re being a coward, Caleb.”
“I ain’t a coward.”
“Then stand up. Stand and say you love me. Say it like you mean it. Say it like it’s honest.”
Caleb looks down at his knees. Junie turns to walk back inside, her attempt futile. But he grips her on both sides of her waist. She spins, facing him, taking in his copper-brown eyes and delicate, freckled nose in the candlelight. His hands are gentle and urgent as they trace their way to her cheeks. He cups Junie’s face in his hands, brings his lips to hers.
Kissing is more physical than she imagined, less a flourish of sparkle and music and more an overwhelming surge of blood through her body. When he pulls away, Junie can’t decide if she is drowning or coming up for air.
“The truth, then. I love you, Delilah June.”
She smiles, and he steps back, reaching into his pants pocket. He pulls out a scrap of paper, tattered but instantly recognizable to Junie.
“I carry this with me wherever I go,” Caleb says. “Learned all the words on it long ago, but couldn’t let this little piece of you go. Now that I have you here, I think it might be time to return it.”
He slides the page of “Snow White” into her hand. She reads the scribbles along the edges: CALEB, JUNIE, DELILAH JUNE, scraped in charcoal, just the way she’d taught him.
“My letters ain’t so good yet, but I was practicing.”
Their names, side by side. Even though it’s charcoal, it feels as though the words are etched on a monument, one Junie wishes everyone could see. He loves her. Caleb, the boy who sees her, all of her, loves her.
Junie slides the paper into the top of her dress, the only place to wedge it long enough to keep it safe.
“Now what about you, Delilah June?” he says, intertwining his fingers between hers. “Do you love me?”
Junie lifts her hand to run it along Caleb’s gently stubbled cheek.
“My love for you might be the only honest thing in this world, Caleb.”