"Nigger lover!"
The sound of my father's voice echoes up out the past to me as I drive past the state line for the first time in forty-three years.
I can still hear my mom crying after the slamming of the door, the loud shattering of glass from the other side of the closed door. I never found out just what was broken in such fury.
Fury I caused.
The miles roll past like the memories. Signpost after signpost. Everyone of them bringing me closer to the home I left.
Was sent from.
***
The year it began was 1962. I was a fifteen-year-old with dreams of following my family's footsteps and going off to war. My father and uncles had fought in World War II and Korea. My older brother was already part of the US deployment to Vietnam and there I was playing Army with my friends in the woods near the house with our B.B guns, eager to go.
I was such a fool.
In so many ways.
You see I had a secret. One I could tell no one.
I was in love.
***
"Huh. At fifteen what the hell did you know about love? About as much as you knew about war!" I tell myself as I drive past the green road sign showing me it's forty more miles to the house I was born in.
***
It was in October when I came to realize it. I had known her for most of my life. She was my nanny. My family's maid. A twenty five-year-old black woman named Maryloo. Maryloo... Post? No Potter! Maryloo Potter.
She had the most beautiful eyes. Not that a fifteen year old was aware of things like eyes. At that age my own eyes never went that far up her.
It was in October. We were watching the new TV that Dad had bought, gathered in the "TV room" watching as the President told us of the end of the world.
There were nukes in Cuba!
My younger brother and two sisters were sent out the room when they started to cry. Hell my sisters were both too young to even know what a nuclear bomb was. They were crying cause my brother started to.
I could understand how they felt though.
I wanted to cry as well.
After she got them up to their rooms and occupied with toys or schoolwork I saw Maryloo come back to by the door. Our eyes met as I watched her listening to the TV with us. She was as scared as I was. Hell by itself that made me more scared. Here was the woman I had seen stand down a rabid dog with a stick, catch snakes barehanded and carry them out the yard.
And she was afraid.
A desire to go to her and protect her came over me then. I had never felt it's like before in my life. Not like that anyway.
Whenever I had gotten into the scrapes that all boys do it had always been Maryloo who patched me back up. A bit of Mercurochrome, a Band-Aid, a cold Coke Cola and a slice of pie could cure anything this world could throw at me. That and a hug from my nanny. And now here she was. The one with tears at her eyes.
For some reason I didn't think a slice of pie was what she needed to help her get through this. Maybe a man's strong arms around her to give her some comfort. To make her feel protected. For some reason... maybe the memories of all those patched up scraped knees,... I felt that I should be the one to give her that.
***
At the time I didn't know why I felt that way. Now looking back I know. Know as well as I know the river under the bridge I'm driving across. It's because that was the day when I put the boy I had been away, and took my first true steps to becoming the man that I am.
***
Dad saw her standing there then and sent her to go make coffee. He disapproved of the nigra getting any kind of access to public news. Said it made them uppity. He would say it in front of them like they couldn't understand English.
Kind of like the way you would talk around a dog, or a small child. Like they wouldn't understand if you didn't say the words they knew.
He hated black people...hell the only reason Maryloo worked for us was Moma. She had grown up with a black maid and demanded one when she got married.
Leaving my family to listen to the news being repeated I got up and headed first I the direction of the bathroom then circled around and into the kitchen. I watched her bustling around the room making the coffee. I could tell with maturity beyond my years that she was putting her fear into her work so she didn't have to think of it.
"Maryloo?"
She looked up from filling the coffeepot at the sink, and seeing it's me, smiled.
"You okay, Willy boy?" she asked me, her throat tight. Her fear's only outlet.
I crossed to her side. Taking a glass down off the shelf, I held it under the water when she moved the pot out the way. I felt the warmth of her arm against mine. Something I never noticed like this before.
"Are you alright Maryloo?"
She gave me a nod of her head and went to get the coffee from the cabinet. I watched her spooning it into the percolator's basket.
Watching her moving about the simple task with the awareness of a man growing in me second by second, I saw a thousand little things I had never noticed about her come to light then.
Finishing my water, I rinsed out the glass and put it on the towel by the sink. As she plugged in the pot I moved over behind her.
She turned startled to find me that close.
I was holding her in my arms before she can protest.
"Willy boy?"