Gold, Fire & Refinement

Chapter Six

"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment; full effort is full victory." ~Mahatma Gandhi

They were going to Clarksdale, a town called "the home of the blues." Harvey was speeding along, and all Zarah could think about was how awful it felt. How wrong. To be going to a town with a nickname like that when you actually had the blues. She wanted to go home. Back to Jackson, to the comfort of their life together, but ... instead, they were speeding into the unknown. 

Topping off her misery was her wardrobe problem. She'd made the mistake of wearing shorts, and her thighs were heating up the leather seats, making them slippery. Wanting to scream, she put her hand over her mouth to fight the urge. She wanted to tell Harvey she'd been wrong earlier. She wanted to yell at him, to beg him to turn the car around, after all, and to head back south, back to Jackson. Instead, she adjusted her sunglasses and pushed her head back hard against the softest leather money could buy and slapped her palm against her forehead. The glasses were hiding her eyes. The part of her he always found easiest to read.

In another world, Harvey wasn't paying her any attention. The news Grandma Betty delivered that morning had him driving way too fast in a car that was all wrong for the three-hour trip they were taking. She looked at him. Sometimes the little boy in him wouldn't let him use good judgment. He owed two Mercedes sedans, a Bentley, a Jag, a Lincoln Town Car, a Silverado truck, Audi and Land Rover SUVs, and an eight-passenger, chauffeur-driven limousine—and today they were driving to Clarksdale in a jazzed-up Corvette. A collector's item. And even though Interstate 55 North was clear at three-fifteen p.m. he'd turned it into the Indianapolis Speedway. All the big vehicles he owned were in his ten-car garage at home, and he was out here on a nerve-racking day, playing around with his newest toy.

She pulled her hair into a ponytail, and as she was tying her red scarf around it, a harsh realization pounded into her head. She wasn't going to ask him to turn around. They were actually going to Clarksdale. She lifted her legs again to let the breeze flow underneath her thighs. To cool them off. It felt good. 

She stared at Harvey for a quick moment just as he turned his head from her thighs and back to the highway. As soon as she turned away from him, she felt him looking back in her direction. Her anger must have reached him. He had on dark shades too, so she couldn't see his eyes, but she felt them. They were pleading with her to understand. To relax. To just let him give one week of their lives to his biological mother's overbearing mother, without question, and the only question in her head now was how she was supposed to do that. 

She leaned back and tried to relax. Grandma Betty was his living reservoir of memories. His treasure chest of the remnants of his mother's life. Filled with misty memories he cherished, without Grandma Betty, all that was left of his birth mother would fade away into the night, the same way his mother left, when he was almost four. It had been hard being estranged from Grandma Betty since his Uncle Drake delivered the note with the insult. And even though the woman had apologized many times for the vicious message, Harvey had forgiven her only in the last several hours. Only after he got the news the old woman might have breast cancer.

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"You sure you're okay?"

"I'm okay."

She wasn't okay, but he was glad to know she was trying. He was concerned about her, but, in the moment, his thoughts were of his grandmother. About how he wanted more than just to make up with his mother's mother. He wanted to restore to Bettina McNeese the equilibrium her life had before their estrangement.

He couldn't say it to Zarah, but he wanted to do anything he could to bring back the old Grandma Betty. Not the owner of the sad, pitiful voice he heard on the phone that morning. He wanted the woman back who was well and healthy, and if that meant having her being unapologetically racist and opinionated, then so be it. He didn't have to like her. He didn't even have to visit her, but he wanted her to live as long as possible. 

If there were ever a woman who enjoyed being obnoxious and in control as she charmed or shamed others into doing her bidding, whether it was getting them to deliver a hateful, nasty note, or to give money or used clothing to her carefully chosen charities, or even to side with her on some hot political issue—that woman was Bettina Beauregard McNeese. That was the grandmother he wanted back. The tall, skinny, pompous, condescending, superior one with a larger-than-life personality. The one who proudly lived life her own way. Who believed she was right, with no uncertainty, even when she was dead wrong, and even when the two of them weren't speaking. He hoped maybe she'd changed a little. Maybe she was truly sorry for sending the insulting note to Zarah, and maybe she now wanted to make up for it. He hoped his visit, and the idea of him getting married at her estate, was giving her something to look forward to; something to live for.

Zarah would come around. And she would do it for him. She might even come to like the idea of getting married in the place where his father married his biological mother. After all, she was a romantic and a trailblazer, just as he was. They both loved love as much as they loved slamming punches into the face of Mississippi's racist past. Once she calmed down, he believed she would see that's what they'd be doing if they got married where, no matter what else it stood for, was still his grandmother's home, and was once his mother's home.

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Zarah felt sick to her stomach. Thoughts of Grandma Betty and her estate were making her sick. Thoughts of a mean-spirited, racist woman. Thoughts of a place with a despicable history. She had never met the woman ... never visited the plantation. But she knew generations of the estate's previous occupants had owned slaves, and she knew Grandma Betty was proud of that history. Once slavery ended, the next generations of occupants continued to abuse black people by taking part in the "near-slavery" practice of sharecropping. And now, the man she loved wanted her to have her wedding there. He wanted her to spend what should be one of the most joyous days of her life in the most despicable place she could imagine. Her stomach moaned. Feeling like her insides were about to erupt, she mumbled her first word to her fiancé in over ten minutes. "Stop the car," she said. Harvey was still lost in another world, so the next time she spoke, she yelled. "Harvey! Stop the damn car!"

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On the road again several minutes later, his sunglasses were now on the seat between them. She could see his eyes because he kept stealing glances in her direction. Probably thought she'd gone stark-raving mad. "Sorry," she said. "False alarm. But thanks for holding back my ponytail."

"Any time."

He looked her way several more times before settling back into his groove. A few seconds later, he was staring straight ahead, the car was zooming north again, and they were both back to where they were before he stopped. He was speeding, and she was squirming and twisting in her seat. Feeling nauseous and sweaty, she started hating every inch of the road as it brought them closer and closer to Grandma Betty's house.

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