Bound for the Outer Banks (10 page)

Chapter 11

During Ella’s last semester at Savannah College of Art and Design, she wrote to her Aunt Madelyn and informed her that she had been accepted to graduate school and would be spending another twelve to eighteen months in school. Ella figured since the will indicated that as long as she was in school, her tuition, room and board and a small living stipend would be paid to her, she would get a master’s degree in design and ensure that she would be taken care of for at least one more year.

Ella didn’t bother walking during her graduation ceremony. She knew no one would be there for her anyway. Certainly Aunt Madelyn had no intentions of attending. So Ella stayed in Savannah for three more semesters taking the minimum number of semester hours to be considered a full time student. None of Ella’s design friends were staying for the master’s program. SCAD tuition was an expensive proposition and none of her friends’ parents were willing to spit out another year of tuition for another “artsy” degree, as her friend Dawn’s parents had put it.

The semester Ella was to graduate with her advanced degree she wrote and informed Aunt Madelyn. Madelyn wrote back on her engraved stationery and advised Ella that she would receive five hundred dollars the week before she graduated “to do with what you will” she wrote. Her aunt also told Ella that per the instructions of the will Ella would not receive her full inheritance until the age of thirty. Ella was furious. Her aunt knew the cost of living in New York City and that five hundred dollars would not cover the cost of the first month’s rent and a deposit there in the tiniest apartment.

The day of college graduation, having no family to attend a luncheon or party with, Ella boarded a Greyhound bus and took the long ride to Biloxi, Mississippi. Ella opened the door to the little yellow bungalow and was overcome by the musty smell. She raised all the windows and left the back door open. Biloxi was not a town in which you wanted to sleep with the doors open but the bungalow had a small backyard surrounded by a mid-height, white-washed fence. Ella had contacted the property management company in charge of renting the Barrantine’s old beach house. She informed them that their services would no longer be needed as she would be moving in.

The current tenants were given notice and had moved out the month before. All the revenue made from the rent was considered the estate’s money so it went to the executor, Aunt Madelyn.

After buying the bus ticket and paying the deposits to turn on all the utilities, Ella purchased a new bed, new bed linens, and a chair from the Salvation Army. The other furnishings were fraught with grime, a bad smell, and some type of pet hair, ferret hair Ella suspected, given the foul odor of the place. She now had a total of one hundred dollars left. One hundred dollars until she could apply for jobs, interview, land a job, and receive her first paycheck. For the first time in her life Ella was truly scared. Even after her parents’ death she knew that while she was in school she would always have a monthly stipend, but now it would be several years until she received her inheritance.

Ella immediately got down to business and the day after arriving she began to scan the internet for jobs. She googled “fashion design Biloxi” and came up with zero hits. “No surprise there” she thought. She then typed in Biloxi, Mississippi in the location cell of the jobs board and left the type of job untouched since the default entry was "any.” Ella was anxious to see what would pop up. McDonald’s crew member was posted the largest number of times. She filed this away in her mind knowing that she wasn’t too proud to work there if she could find nothing else. “A girl’s gotta eat,” she thought.

Ella continued to scroll down through numerous truck driving, part time retail jobs, and welding jobs until she came to seven screens full of nursing jobs. “Damn it!” She cursed herself for not studying something more practical. From now on Ella vowed to plan for the best but prepare for the worst. She had always hoped she would return to New York and live with BeBe and Joseph until she could land a job at a New York fashion house. BeBe would have been delighted to have a college aged boomerang child. Ella never dreamed that her Aunt Madelyn would refuse to give her an advance on her inheritance as executor.

Ella could hear BeBe’s voice right now whispering, “Ella honey, hope is not a strategy. Take it from me. Hope does not pay the bills.”

Ella laid the computer down beside her on the bed, rested her head on the large pillows, and closed her eyes. She thought about how Blythe Beatty must have felt when she left Roanoke Island at eighteen with nothing but a small bag with a few changes of clothing, a tube of lipstick and mascara, and eighty dollars in Christmas and birthday money she’d saved since she was a kid. Ella thought about how scared she must have been. At least Ella had a paid for place to live until she could find a job. Her mother had hitchhiked into New Bern with a couple of old lesbian tourists and taken a bus to Atlanta where she knew no one.

After arriving in Atlanta, BeBe went in to the restroom at the Greyhound station and took what she referred to as a tits and ass bath, brushed her hair, put on mascara and lipstick and took a big, deep breath. She walked to the infamous Kitty Club she’d heard all the guys talk about.

One day after school back on Roanoke, two senior boys who’d turned eighteen were talking about how their Dads had taken them to the Kitty Club in Atlanta to celebrate. BeBe piped up and said, “I can’t believe you boys would go watch a bunch of white trash girls with no tops on.”

“Oh no BeBe, these girls ain’t white trash,” said Anderson Brady. “These girls are high class, and if you tried to touch one they’d rip you up five ways ‘til Sunday before one of those big Samoan bouncers could even get to you.”

Vince Tatum also contributed his two cents defending the girls he’d just seen the weekend before at the Kitty Club, “Some of these girls are just doing it to pay for their education BeBe. Not every girl was born with a silver spoon in her mouth like you.”

How could these boys speak so highly of these strippers in Atlanta? BeBe wondered if any of the girls really were just trying to earn money to get an education beyond high school. This conversation with Anderson Brady and Vince Tatum set the wheels in motion for BeBe Beatty to make her great escape from the unfathomable future her mother had laid out for her on Roanoke.

At the beginning of Harmony’s and BeBe’s senior year, BeBe’s daddy decided that BeBe could have a party in their parlor with some friends from school. He agreed that boys could be invited since he and Hadley would be chaperoning. Harmony helped BeBe drape crepe streamers from the chandelier to the edges of the ceiling, creating a circus tent effect in the parlor. They picked out all the 45’s they’d play during the party. The Beatles and The Beach Boys made up the majority of the music. Together, the girls made sausage balls, little cut out chicken salad sandwiches, and petit fours they took great delight in decorating with blue and white frosting, their school colors. Only seniors were invited to the party as BeBe touted it as a kick off to senior year celebration.

As the party wound down only a few students remained including Grant Goodson. Grant had told a few of his buddies that he’d become sweet on BeBe. Many of the students hung out in the same places during the summer as it was difficult not to share the same social spaces on an island the size of Roanoke. They’d hang out on the sand beach by the rope swing on the river, canoe the Shallowbag Bay, have lunch in the waterfront district, and have impromptu touch football games in one another’s back yards.

Grant Goodson was from the wealthiest family on Roanoke Island. His grandparents had owned many square miles of land on the mainland in and outside of New Bern and practically half the coastal land along Shallowbag Bay on Roanoke. BeBe had never been attracted to Grant. He did not possess the intellect that BeBe found herself attracted to. She was a true sapiosexual, turned on by a man’s intelligence more than anything else, and according to BeBe, a smart man was a specimen whose numbers were severely lacking in Manteo.

When Hadley Beatty got wind that the most eligible bachelor in Manteo and one of the most eligible bachelors in the whole state of North Carolina was interested in her daughter, she was absolutely giddy. She talked to Jackson incessantly about the possibility of BeBe marrying into the Goodson family.

“Can you imagine all the fine parties we’d be invited to in New Bern and possibly even Columbia?” Hadley would ask Jackson.

BeBe had tried to explain to Hadley that she was not going to date Grant Goodson. She’d told her mother that in addition to not wanting to date him, she thought he was a pompous asshole. Hadley scolded BeBe for using “filthy” language and that she’d better lay her claim on Grant before the other boys realized she talked like a harlot and chose to have nothing to do with her.

BeBe shocked her mother by saying that she could give less than five fucks about the boys on Roanoke at the moment because she was headed to Chapel Hill after graduation to study journalism. BeBe wanted to be a political columnist. She wanted to report on exactly what those representing the constituents of North Carolina and everywhere else for that matter were really doing in Washington. She’d heard her father speak of corruption on Capitol Hill and she wanted to expose any shenanigans going on and she wanted to report on the good leadership as well. She had a strong desire to keep people abreast of the actions of those they voted for to represent them. She also hoped to help bring more women in to the field of politics but she figured that would take a while. BeBe already knew that her fiery disposition and the on the fence stances that most politicians had to take would never fly so she ruled out any political aspirations for herself.

After all the party attendees left BeBe’s house that night, Harmony hugged BeBe and put on her brown wool sweater for the walk home. The nights had turned crisp. There were leaves already falling and most Southerners were excited about the arrival of football season.

When Harmony arrived at the end of BeBe’s block and turned to head down her street Grant Goodson stepped out from behind a big Camellia bush startling her.

“Hey girl,” said Grant, making it obvious that he was looking up and down, ogling Harmony’s body.

“Oh hey Grant, what are you doing out here?” Harmony said uncomfortably.

“I just wanted to know if I could walk a pretty little lady home that’s all. You know it’s dangerous you being out here all by yourself.” Grant Goodson’s breath smelled of alcohol, a smell Harmony knew well from living with Horace Beauchamp.

Harmony began to walk quickly, looking straight ahead. “That’s sweet Grant, but I’m fine. I’m running late and Daddy’s gonna be mad if I miss my curfew.”

Grant quickly caught up to Harmony and grabbed her upper arm so tightly it hurt. He swung her around to face him. “Your daddy wouldn’t be mad if he knew his poor little daughter was with Grant Goodson now would he?”

“Grant, you’re hurting my arm. Go home and sober up and I’ll see you at school Monday, K?” Harmony tried to pull her arm away but Grant Goodson squeezed his fingers more tightly in to her flesh.

Grant grabbed Harmony’s other arm and forced her to walk backward across the street toward the woods. She stumbled and fell but Grant lifted her back up squeezing his grip more tightly in to the deep tissues of her arms. The pain took her breath away. Grant Goodson forced Harmony several yards into the woods and muffled her screams.

When Harmony arrived home later, Horace was passed out and her younger sister, Melody, was fast asleep in her small bed in the room they shared. Harmony went to the bathroom and rinsed the blood from her panties in the sink. They had a rip in the elastic along the crotch where Grant Goodson had forced them to the side. Harmony had so few clothes she actually considered hanging them to dry and keeping them, but instead she crept into the kitchen and dug through some old butter beans, a cereal box, a butter wrapper, a liquor bottle, and morning coffee grounds and placed her torn bloodied panties at the bottom of the garbage pail. She was in charge of taking out the garbage while Melody washed supper dishes that week so she knew no one would find them. Harmony then drew a warm bath and scrubbed her skin until it was raw.