Girls Like Us Read online

  After the last visitor left Bible study, or prayer, or supper, or service, Ola curled her knees into her chest, vomited, and moaned. Low, guttural sounds would come from the depths of her diaphragm. Real pain existed there. Not only the pain of pregnancy, but the pain of denying it. That type of denial took work.

  Izella would ease the bobby socks from her sister’s feet and massage them until she cried more. Izella knew not to speak or inquire about feelings. That wasn’t the Murphy way of doing things; love was a verb in that house. But Izella also knew that Ola needed to cry, and an unprovoked foot rub always did the trick. That night, she noticed the skin of her sister’s feet was holding extra fluid. Her pinkie toe looked like a tiny Vienna sausage.

  Through her crying, Ola winced at the foot rub.

  “Don’t squeeze too much.” Ola pushed the words through her teeth like they weighed a thousand pounds each. “Can’t … get … no … relief.”

  She didn’t have to say it. Izella could look at her usually breezy older sister and see the pain. Izella felt it, too. When Ola moaned, Izella’s stomach did a flip. When the tears fell from Ola’s almond-shaped eyes, Izella’s nose began running. When Ola hurt, Izella did, too. While gently pressing tiny circles into her sister’s feet, Izella closed her eyes to silently pray. She started the prayer in her head. It was a prayer that Evangelist would’ve been proud of, channeling the Holy Spirit with full force and zeal. But the prayer evaporated halfway through, never reaching its amen.

  Eyes closed in their small dark bedroom, Izella saw her sister as she had been. Every button fastened, even the one at the very tip-top. No stray hair or lint or wrinkles in her gloves. A sure bet for homecoming queen of the class of 1972. Her head was practically made to wear a crown. And then there was Walter. The blood ran hot in Izella’s body when she thought of Walter.

  A gentle snore vibrated from Ola so Izella eased her own pillow under her sister’s feet, leaving her without one to lie on herself. She fell asleep with her head in her hands.

  * * *

  The next morning, Izella woke to an unfamiliar sound—throaty and deep with occasional high-pitched tones like a cat with a hair ball stuck. Izella was floating somewhere between being awake and asleep. She couldn’t tell if the sounds were happening in real life or in her head. She was angry at the sun shining onto her face so bright that through closed eyes her lids glowed red. She was also angry at her dream, which she couldn’t fully remember, but she knew it was about Walter. The sound grew and grew until she couldn’t deny that it was real and opened her eyes.

  Ola crawled across their bedroom’s hardwood floor, the bib of her nightgown covered in the egg-yolk throw up and pee running down her leg. The sound was the sister she loved more than she loved herself. Still, Izella didn’t jump to help her. She just watched, frozen.

  She watched her sister’s crushed pin curls coming undone and crusting with vomit. She watched the remnant drool on the right side of her face. But mostly, she watched the slow creep of her sister’s urine. In that moment, Izella knew she’d never be able to forget what she was seeing. She imagined herself, old and gray, waking in the night to see her sister crawling like a kicked stray bitch, making noises she didn’t know existed within the human body.

  Ola reached for her, hand sticky and foul, but Izella hesitated to take it. Ola noticed the small but significant moment of pause, and it was as if the string that had been holding her up on all fours snipped. Ola fell into a pitiful heap. The string had also held together the two sisters, and in that very moment, they both knew it was severed forever.

  That’s when Izella leaped from the bed to her sister’s side. She’d scrutinize that hesitation for decades, if she lived to see it. Why hadn’t she acted quicker? How could she allow her sister to crawl in her own vomit without helping her? And even worse, how could she let her sister see the judgment in her eyes? She’d almost convinced herself that she didn’t know the source of that hesitation, but deep down, she knew that it was Ola’s weakness she hated. The vomit and pee didn’t bother her, not one bit. Most people might find those things disgusting, but to Izella, the defeat was disgusting. Izella made up her mind that she’d never allow herself to fall so far so fast. Not for a boy or a man or a woman or anybody, not ever. If sweet Moses himself set out his staff to lead her out of Egypt, she’d dig a way out her own damn self. No one deserved the power to take down a powerful girl or woman like her sister, she decided. Especially not one as batty as Walter.

  “Is it supposed to be like this for every girl?” Izella asked.

  Ola didn’t answer. She didn’t even lift her eyes from the floor. An abject shame clothed her from head to feet.

  Izella raked her pin curls loose. “Can you make it to the wash?”

  Again, Ola didn’t lift her eyes.

  “Sister?” Izella asked, beginning to feel the butterflies. “Do I need to get a doctor called?”

  Ola forced herself into a sitting position. “Walter,” she said. “Get Walter.”

  Izella felt her nostrils flare, and her blood began to run hot and fast. “I can’t stand Walter. He did this to you, and I ain’t doing it.”

  Ola didn’t show any emotion at the grandstanding. She simply whispered, “Well I guess I ain’t got nobody, then.”

  Ola and Izella locked eyes as they’d done a thousand times before. Sister to sister. Best friend to best friend. But everything had changed. Loyalties had shifted. Ola’s to Walter and Izella’s to her single-minded fight for her own future—one she swore wouldn’t involve egg-yolk vomit.

  “Gals.” Evangelist knocked on their bedroom door. “Time for devotion. Come on here.”

  Izella answered. “We’re finishing up cleaning, and fixing up the bed. Be out before you get started.”

  “Ten minutes and I’m coming back.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Izella called out, then turned her attention back to her sister. “All right, now you don’t worry about this mess. I’ll mop it up while you wash that yellow out your hair. And stand up straight or Evangelist will know.”

  Ola looked at her like a doe would its mama. “What about Walter?”

  “You need to be worrying about Evangelist first,” Izella said. “Go in there and wash your teeth, too.”

  Izella lifted Ola to the edge of the bed and propped her like a toddler just learning to sit up. She tiptoed across the hall to get a towel big enough to sop up the yellow and wet another, smaller one to clear the crust from her sister’s face. Ola sat there and let Izella wipe her off like a child.

  “I need Walter.”

  “Fine.” Izella relented. “I’ll get him after devotional. Go get you on some clean panties, now.”

  * * *

  Devotional was quicker than usual. Ironically enough, Evangelist needed to get across town to feed another expecting teenager, named Mississippi, or Missippi for short. Evangelist had found out about Missippi from a mealymouthed church member.

  Evangelist was warm toward the baby. She called it “God’s” and “little” and “precious” and “innocent.” She was, however, much less generous to Missippi, who she unaffectionately referred to as “that ole nasty thang” and “she should’ve known better” and “was raised better than that.”

  Izella and Ola always only listened. Even though Evangelist was technically talking to them, any discussion of sex or pregnancy felt like grown-folks’ business that they weren’t welcome to comment on. Evangelist had no close friends who weren’t parishioners, so the sisters were a dumping ground for her personal woes and angry rants. At times, Evangelist lamented about never having any sisters of her own to talk to and confide in about things. She never missed an opportunity to tell them how blessed they were to have each other, and how so very disappointed she was in her own mother for not providing her at least one sibling.

  Izella thought about this often. Analyzed it. Turned it over in her mind, and every day she’d come up with something different. One day, Evangelist had it right and having a
sibling was a blessing—instant friendship, someone to talk to, and someone to help warm her freezing bed in the winter. And then on the next day, Izella decided she’d rather be alone in a cold bed than witness her sister’s knees knocked out away from underneath her. She usually reached the same conclusion—there would be pros and cons either way, and in the end, everybody wants the thing they don’t have, even if they’re blessed not to have it.

  “Ola, what’s the matter with you, child?” Evangelist asked after an especially brutal lashing of Missippi. “You look like hell walking earth.”

  “You talking about that poor girl all the time,” Ola said into her untouched eggs and biscuits. “Girl can’t defend herself.”

  Raw rage filled the kitchen. “What you dare say, gal?” Evangelist said, spitting a mouthful of gravy-soggy biscuit into the air.

  Izella jumped to her feet, grabbing hold of the attention. “We need to take Mrs. Mac her loaf. Can we be excused, Evangelist?”

  Evangelist gathered the dishes. “I need to get them cheese grits to that hussy Missippi or they’ll get all lumped up in the icebox. Poor innocent living in that gal’s belly won’t take nothing but my cheese grits. Y’all get on to Mrs. Mac’s and be back to cook for afternoon prayer.” Evangelist paused to glare at Ola, who was still eyeballing her plate. “We’re expecting six today. All men, too. They stopping in to be prayed over and eat a good meal on the way over to Tuskegee. Special place in hell for what they did to those men up there. Ola?”

  “Yes, Evangelist?” Ola said, trying to insert bass into the two words to make them sound normal, but to Izella, they still sounded sick and abnormal.

  “Look at me when I speak to you.”

  Ola winced, forcing her back straight.

  “God don’t like ugly one bit, gal,” Evangelist said sternly and full of woman-of-the-house wisdom. “Honor your mama. Honor your pastor. And above all things, child, honor Him.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ola said dutifully.

  “I make up two of those three, you hear?” Evangelist grabbed Ola’s chin with such force that she nearly fell back in her chair. “If you test me like that again. In my own goddamn house. I swear I’ll smack you. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jumbo tears fell from Ola’s giant eyes. “I understand.”

  Only then Evangelist released Ola’s face and went to wash dishes.

  “You’re both dismissed,” she said. “And Ola! Only the big chicken pieces today for them poor men. Leg quarters, whole breasts. Leave the wings for us, you hear?”

  “Yes, Evangelist,” Ola said, drained and void of strength.

  Evangelist scooped up the container of grits and waved a quick goodbye before stopping herself. She turned around slowly, sending fear through both Izella and Ola. She knew. She’d noticed something. Put two and two together. Now that Izella knew the truth, the signs were so obvious she’d be shocked if Evangelist hadn’t figured it out, too. Besides, she’d spent a half hour howling about Missippi’s condition, and if she’d just replaced her name with her own daughter’s, there you’d have it.

  Evangelist’s eyes doubled, and she said, “Ola.”

  “Yes, Evangelist?”

  Both sisters were sure. The question was imminent. Three little words: Are you pregnant? But instead, she said …

  “Only the biggest pieces, gal. I mean it. These men have been to hell and back, and their families, too. The least we can do is feed them the best we got.”

  “Yes, Evangelist.”

  And as Evangelist left, a breeze of both relief and disappointment blew through the small kitchen. Relief was obvious. Of course they didn’t want their mother, the prophetess/evangelist of the neighborhood, to know that ultimate sin slept in the next room. Disappointment, however, was a surprise. They almost wanted her to know. They wanted her to scream and cry and even slap as long as she needed to until she was done, so she could tell them what to do. She was, after all, everyone’s adviser. The sisters felt like two baby ducks lost in a mangrove—directionless, knock-kneed, and ripe for picking. The longer Evangelist didn’t know, the longer they didn’t know what to do. Especially Ola.

  Even before the pregnancy, Ola could hardly tie a bow without Izella to pull at one of the strings. Now she was a useless waste of space. The best she could do was build a human inside her body; the rest was up to her little sister, Izella. And whether she judged her or not, they both knew it.

  Izella gently placed the back of her hand on her older sister’s forehead. “Hot. You gone on back in that bed. I’ll get Mrs. Mac her bread and send Walter, too.”

  Ola perked up as much as a sickling could. “You mind telling him?”

  Any other sister might have been surprised, but Izella knew Ola would need her to tell the child’s father that he was about to be a father, because she knew her sister. Dread filled up inside her, and the weight sent her into a hunch that a fifteen-year-old girl should never have. “I’ll tell him,” she said.

  As Izella walked out the screen door, she began practicing her speech to the boy she hated. The boy with the shaky hands. The boy who disappeared for months and came back smelling like unwashed hair. The boy who used to be popular and fine, and now parted hallways. The boy who Izella used to love more than life, and now feared. The boy who got her sister pregnant. The boy who left Georgia wearing cuffed jeans and came back from Vietnam wearing dirty everything.

  The boy by the name of Walter.

  * * *

  Izella walked into the recreation center where Walter worked at the basketball check-in. She held back and watched for a few moments. There he stood, in army fatigues, filling and organizing basketballs into perfect lines. He cared too much about the meticulousness of those basketballs. Izella inched toward him like a jungle cat, intuitively cautious not to make any sudden movements.

  After he’d returned from the war, no one except Ola wanted to speak to Walter. When Izella, Ola, and Walter were little, he was puffed up like a peacock. But when he came back, he was as deflated as a kicked mutt.

  Walter was the first boy Izella knew to drink from the white fountain in front of the white folks. He’d done it on a dare. None of the other children thought he would, but he did. Those white folks called him everything but a child of God that day, but he did it and puffed right along with his chest out. Then all of the other boys formed a line and took a drink to see if the water tasted better.

  Even before that, everybody followed Walter’s lead. He was a natural at leading, and that’s why no one was shocked when he volunteered to go to war at only seventeen. His mama signed his papers one day, and his seat was empty for the next ten months. While he was away, stories about his valor circulated around.

  “Walter’s taking out that whole fleet by hisself.”

  “I heard Walter shoot straighter than anybody over there.”

  “You know Walter gone get that special medal, being brave as he is.”

  “I think I’ll volunteer, too.”

  Those were the stories. Then when he came home, smelling and shook, nobody was talking about volunteering anymore. Once, in the full lunchroom, he hit the floor at the sound of a freshman girl dropping her tray. It took a call to the principal to get him up. After that, he sat alone. It was as if he wasn’t Walter at all anymore. Everybody was scared of or repelled by him. Everyone, that is, except Ola, who seemed to love him more broken than fixed.

  “Walter?” Izella asked to see if he was still inside his body or elsewhere.

  “You been watching me,” he replied, wide-eyed. “Ola okay?” He looked older than he was, but young, too. Young enough to believe in ghosts and old enough to have actually seen them.

  “Not too okay,” Izella said, not sure how to tell him his girl was pregnant.

  He jumped away from his basketball keep, accidentally leaving the latch undone. Dozens of freshly pumped basketballs fell onto the court. Walter cringed at every bounce, and he almost took off running but stopped himself.

  “
What’s wrong with my girl?” he asked frantically. “I can’t lose … Where is she now?”

  “She at home,” she said, pitying. She and her schoolmates were terrified of what had become of Walter in Vietnam. He was proof that the boogeyman existed, and they’d rejected him for it. But not Ola. In that moment, Izella realized that her sister, with all of her naivete, saw Walter deeper than she had. She also realized that he loved Ola more than life itself. “She’s going to have a baby, Walter.”

  Walter sunk into himself.

  “Walter?” Izella said, but his eyes were blank. “You all right?”

  “I’ll…” he started. “I ain’t right, though. I can’t take care of no baby. I ain’t right.” He locked eyes with Izella. “Tell me what to do.”

  He grabbed her shoulders too tightly and shook, as if attempting to release the answers from her tiny frame. Pain shot through Izella’s upper body. He was strong, wild, almost rabid. Izella decided to take it—the pain, the fear, the haphazardness of the basketballs, and Walter and Ola, all of it.

  Izella. The youngest of Evangelist’s girls. Fifteen years old. Hadn’t even gotten her period yet was again being asked to solve the problems of her elders. Everyone thought her capable, even Evangelist. Even though she wouldn’t let her cut the vegetables, she occasionally asked her for advice about her parishioners. She’d never once asked Ola.

  The truth was Izella didn’t know what to do. Ola was expecting, Walter lost his mind in the jungle somewhere, and Evangelist was too busy saving the world one meal at a time to notice any of it. There was no one to turn to except Izella. She had to step up. She had to be the strong one. Her stomach was turning from the pressure, but she had no choice. She was the only one left with good sense. She stood there, firm in Walter’s uncontrolled grasp, equally flattered and petrified. She forced her chin up.