No Daughter of the South Read Online Free PDF Page A

organizing it all in my head, everything I knew, and what Sammy had told me. I started to get a picture, or more like a feeling, for what I was doing. It was like one of my articles, a story I was investigating, and I knew that I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had a tale worth telling about Elijah Wilson to take back to Sammy.
    What else could I give Sammy. Except my body, of course, but, hey, I’d given that out like some cheap party favor in my time. I had a feeling that Sammy thought she was giving me a taste of family life, and stability, some kind of special warmth and love she thought emanated from the life she lived. Kind of like I was a stray she was taking in.
    I got a lot of good meals at her place, but it’s not like New York City isn’t full of good restaurants. And even though I’m not much of a cook, I am an expert at city food. The best hot dog, the best knish, cheap Indian food, pain au chocolate, fresh bread in any of a hundred varieties—I knew where to find it all. So it’s not like I was starving or eating out of cans when I met her.
    But she did give me something, something that felt real good. I could tell she was happy about this, that was what she wanted to do. Problem was, we both knew I’d be moving on. When that happened, I’d be stuck with the memory of this feeling, and where in hell in the big city—or any other place on this earth, for that matter—was I going to find it again? For a moment I felt pure, intense anger directed towards Sammy. Hadn’t she thought of that? What she was setting me up for?
    Truth was, I felt like a visitor in her life. When we were alone, I’d give her what I thought was the best I had to give, my skills as a lover. But others had done that for her before, and three men had given her daughters. Even her patients gave her more than I did. They listened to her, and trusted her. Followed her advice. They labored and pushed out the babies she caught in her warm, competent hands. Pictures of babies she’d delivered were stuck all over the bulletin boards in her apartment hallway.
    Sometimes I’d breeze in, with my latest article or photographs, to show her. I’d walk into her living room, and there she’d be watching Sarah draw with her crayons, or listening to Annie practice her violin. I’d stand there and think, I’m nothing but another one of her kids, an overgrown child she’s nursing.
    So I was looking out the window of the airplane and wondering, where do I start with this investigation? A black man fell off a bridge and drowned thirty-five years ago. I just wanted to find enough of the details of his life so that Sammy could put him to rest. She suspected there was something unsavory about him, but she was ready, she said, to face the truth about him.
    I was born not long after it happened, a few miles from where Elijah Wilson had drowned. But black and white lives were so separate back then. Even after the schools were integrated, there was little connection between the communities. The black boys in our high school were well-respected for their football and basketball playing skills, but they didn’t come to our parties. And I couldn’t remember a single black cheerleader.
    Even now, Port Mullet remained relentlessly white. How could that be? I remembered my American history teacher firmly assuring us that there was no longer a viable Ku Klux Klan in the South. Had not been for a long time. “The automobile did it,” he explained. “And folks are more nosy today. Back then, a bunch of guys would ride on out in the country on horseback. These days, your neighbors would see guys getting out of their cars dressed in sheets and wonder what was going on. That’s why there’s no more Ku Klux Klan.”
    I don’t know if I believed it at the time or not. The same teacher showed us the movie that claimed one puff of marijuana would lead us to becoming heroin addicts. My English teacher claimed that a woman who engaged in premarital sex would