“Well, I ain’t yours,” she said. She looked up, folded her arms across her knees. “And this ain’t your bed or your house neither. If you think any different I reckon it’s time you move on.”
She heard his hand slip from beneath the sheet. Instead of closing her eyes, she stared at the wall where the light moved across it. She was prepared for a slap or a punch, so it was only the surprise of his hand reaching around her to caress her belly that made her flinch.
“Come on,” he said, “you’re my girl.”
Ella wasn’t afraid of him any more than he was afraid of her. They’d gone at it before. He’d hit her. She’d hit him. Two weeks ago he’d shown up drunk in the middle of the night, looking for her ex-husband, a man she hadn’t seen in over a year. Charlie had pulled a knife on her when she’d come outside, and she’d chased him off into the woods. Charlie was the kind of man to which nothing good could happen. He was a rough sort. She knew that she was a rough sort too, but she worked hard and took care of her children, and she deserved some measure of softness, a moment of kindness, to be touched softly and kindly every now and then: Charlie Shope was the only measure of those things that she could find. They were both nearing thirty, both mired down in the kind of poverty they’d never see the end of. She’d been married before—she reckoned she still was—and she had four children she’d managed to keep alive.
Charlie’s finger traced a circle around her navel as if branding her, and she thought of the tiny life taking root on the other side of his touch.
“You’re my girl,” he said again.
“I’m nobody’s,” she said.
“Come on,” he said, “sing me a song.”
“I’d rather you just get the hell out of my house,” she said, but even as she said it she knew it wasn’t much of a house: more like a two-room shack with a cookstove over in one corner of the crowded front room. In the chilly back room there was nothing but a low skid and a window always left unlocked unless she was mad. No, it wasn’t much of a house, but it was hers as long as she could make rent. That was something to be proud of.
“Did you know the communists think whites and coloreds are the same?” he asked.
“I know we’re all poor, if that counts for anything,” she said. She stood from the bed, curled her toes into fists. “And I work with coloreds, and you used to. And you go to them for liquor and who knows what else.”
“It ain’t the same,” he said. “It ain’t the same as believing it.”
“Well, I got to believe in something,” she said. “Might as well believe in the union.”
“Union ain’t going to save you,” he said. “There ain’t no kind of life in these mills.” He leaned on his elbow and propped his chin on his fist. He watched her dress. “Music’s how I’m going to make my name.”
She smiled, laughed just so he’d hear it.
“Keep on,” he said. “You’ll see. You won’t catch me running around with communists. And you won’t catch me making the rich man richer by working in his mill.”
“If we could all just make the big bucks strumming an old guitar like you, Charlie, we’d close the mills down, wouldn’t we?”
“Keep on,” he said again, “but I’m telling you, your voice and my music, we could make a damn sight of money. Leave this old place, go to Nashville.”
“I ain’t going to Tennessee,” she said. “I ain’t crossing those mountains again.”
“St. Louis then,” he said. “Hell, anywhere but Bessemer City, North Carolina.”
She pulled her dress over her head and stepped into her shoes and cinched the buckles. He watched her until she picked up his overalls from the floor and tossed them at him where he lay. He dodged her throw, and his overalls sailed over his head and fell to the floor on the other side of the bed. He pointed to his guitar where it rested against the wall in the corner of the room.
“Let’s play something,” he said.
She picked up the guitar by its neck and raised the window. Charlie watched her from the bed. She leaned out the window and lowered the guitar until she felt it touch the earth. She dropped it with a hollow thud.
“That’s just being ugly,” he said. “Ain’t no reason to be ugly.”
A few hours later, Ella stood alone at the crossroads of West Virginia Avenue on the edge of downtown Bessemer City. The sun shone directly overhead. There were no clouds. The American Mill sat just one block over, and she couldn’t help but wonder what Goldberg’s brother would think if he happened to drive by and see her standing in the sun on the side of the road waiting for a group of strikers to take her to Gastonia. She doubted that he’d even recognize her, although he’d just seen her the day before. On the other hand, Dobbins would know her for sure. She’d be fired for even thinking of attending a union meeting.
She stepped away from the road and stood in the shaded, high grass beneath the trees. It was spring, and it felt like spring. The limbs above her were thick with bright green leaves. Ribbons of wisteria twined through the branches, the heavy fragrance mingling with the damp, musky scent of the wet earth. Across the street, clumps of azaleas lined the road into downtown, the pink and purple flowers already beginning to wilt. The sight of the withering blooms and the scents of wisteria and mud laid a delicate finger upon Ella’s memory. Something stirred inside her as if attempting to fire a childhood recollection, perhaps something she’d promised herself she would never forget. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, took in the scents, but all she could think of was what might happen next, and she could not uncover the shadow of nostalgia that lurked in the corner of her mind.