“For What Nate Did” is the inspiration and foundation for my current novel-in-progress DANCING AT THE ORANGE PEEL. It also is the origin for the KENT CREEK CHRONICLES, a growing collection of stories, short and long, set in the fictional town of Kent Creek, North Carolina.
In “For What Nate Did,” fifteen-year-old Libby Billings contemplates the circumstances surrounding a serious and unquestioned accusation from five years prior. Looking back on the incident, she dispassionately draws some tragic conclusions about the people involved.
Author’s Notes
Although the main character in this story is fifteen and is retelling an incident that occurred when she was ten, this story isn’t middle-grade or young adult fiction. While not a centerpiece or primary focus in the story, sexual abuse and its effects are pivotal. Additionally, the language and attitudes in the story are representative of the cultural climate of the time (late 1960s) and place (the South); they depict the values, beliefs, and perspectives of certain characters, and are not a reflection of my own, nor of all characters. For this sharing of the story here, I made the choice to use a placeholder for one specific word rather than spell it out.
As an author, I’m in a complicated dance among (a) staying true to the story, the time and place, and the characters, (b) being aware that certain content can be, not just offensive, but triggering for some readers, and (c) feeling wholeheartedly that literature both unifies us and should make us think critically about our world and its realities, present and past, as harsh as some of them are. Since I have yet to decide the outcome of this dance in the final novel, I welcome honest perspectives from readers about your experience of the story. Be sure to leave a comment at the end.
For What Nate Did
Naturally, nobody in the family looked kindly on Mama taking up with a Black man. I say “naturally” now, looking back, because I see what people I come from.
What Mama never realized—still doesn’t—is that I was telling the truth. But that was five years ago. Now Nate’s gone, so it doesn’t much matter anymore.
The night before, Mama had sent Nate over to Aunt June and Uncle Ervin’s to get me home for dinner. I don't know why Mama sent him by himself because she knew Uncle Erv and Nate always got into it when she wasn’t there to keep them from fighting. And Aunt June and my cousin Pamela had left to go to the grocery. Nate walked in on us about the time Uncle Ervin put his hand up my shirt. Nate didn’t know it wasn’t the first time, but he tried to protect me like it was. He was a good man.
Nate was smart enough not to deck a white man in his own house, but he was plenty mad. When we left there together, I only had three blocks to convince him not to tell Mama. And he’d driven his Toronado rather than walking. Our neighborhood wasn’t a good place for a Black man to walk.
Nate opened the car door for me and went round to the driver’s side. “That son of a bitch. That goddamn asshole!” He hit the steering wheel with his fist. “We gotta tell your mama, Libby. How are we gonna tell your mama?” He put his head in his hands. “Are you all right?” He turned and looked at me, but I couldn’t look back.
“I’m okay.” He loosened up a bit when he saw I wasn’t falling to pieces. “You can’t tell Mama, Nate.”
“But Libby...” he started.
“I gotta tell her,” I demanded.
The rest of the three blocks was silent.
When we got to the house, Mama was unusually happy, singing as she pulled supper together.
“I'm not staying,” Nate told her right away. She looked disappointed. “You girls got things to talk about.” He smiled and kissed her. She gave him a wide smile and a bear hug back. He gave me a serious look over Mama’s shoulder, then left us to share our secrets.
The way things worked out, it was a long time before I found out that Nate had asked Mama to marry him earlier that evening. Seems before she talked about it that she had some more thinking to do to make sure she was okay with what was happening. I had some more thinking to do, too.
While we cleaned up the dishes, the doorbell rang. Mama answered and when I walked into the living room, she was already sitting on the couch with Uncle Ervin. I stood in the kitchen doorway.
“I was just taking a walk and thought I’d stop in to make sure everything was all right around here,” Uncle Ervin said.
“ ’Course, everything’s all right, Erv. What are you concerned about?” Mama twisted her face at him like he was being silly.
Looking at me, he could tell that I hadn’t told. He smiled.
“Well, that n----- came to get Libby. Since it’s Friday, I was worried he’d bring some of his hooligan friends around here, getting you into trouble with your neighbors.”
Mama’s anger started boiling. “Ervin Campbell, don't you call him that.”
“Aw, come on, Gwen. You know that coon’s no good and he’s only gonna get you into trouble.”
“We’ve been through this a hundred times, Ervin, and I don’t feel like getting into it again. Libby, go do your homework.”
I was happy to leave. I went into Mama’s bedroom and turned on the TV that was sitting on her dresser.
Later, Mama curled up with me on her bed to watch TV, too. I could tell she was still aggravated with Uncle Ervin. But then, she was aggravated a lot by Uncle Ervin so that night didn’t seem much different. Except that she kept trying to pull me close and hold me like a baby. She hadn’t done that in a long time. And later, she never even woke me to send me to my own room. She just let me sleep there beside her all night.
The next morning, I ate my breakfast fast so I could get to the swimming pool. On my way out, I yelled, “Tell Nate he has to stay for supper tonight, Mama.”
“He'll not be coming over tonight, honey.”
“Why not?” I was disappointed. “I missed playing gin rummy with him last night.”
Mama pushed my hair behind my ears then pulled me to her. She almost suffocated me hugging so close. Then with a strained look on her face somewhere between doubt and worry, she sent me out the door.
I knew Pamela would probably still be asleep, but I wanted her to go to the pool with me. We had moved a cinder block under her bedroom window so she could climb out easier, and if I stood on it, I could knock on the window to wake her up. I wouldn’t have to go inside the house.
I had to maneuver my way through some rhododendron bushes to make my way to Pammy’s window. Thank goodness they were there, otherwise Uncle Ervin might have seen me.
I was right. Pammy was still in bed. But she wasn’t sleeping. She was laying flat on her back and Uncle Ervin sat on the side of her bed. His hand under the sheet, he rubbed her belly. I grabbed my mouth to keep from puking or screaming. I’m not sure which. Then I turned back into the rhododendron and ran hard and fast the full three blocks home.
Mama didn’t see me come in because she was in the laundry room, but she heard me close my bedroom door.
“What are you doing home already, honey?” she asked cheerfully as she walked in my room. I tried to hide the tears in my pillow but the bellow that came from my gut gave me away.
“Oh, my god. Oh, my god,” Mama repeated, coming to my bed. She scooped me in her arms and rocked. “My baby girl, what’s happening to my baby girl?”
“Uncle Ervin...” I sobbed.
“I know, I know, honey. He told me about it last night.” I swallowed hard to try to stop the tears, but they wouldn’t. I could hear Mama’s own tears welling in her voice, “I’ll take care of everything, sweetheart. Nate’ll never come round here again. I promise you.”
I couldn't get anything out but a bawling “NO!”
“You've got to calm down, Libby, honey. Trust your mama on this, okay?” Tears streamed down her cheeks. She tried to smooth my hair, but I didn’t want her touching me.
“No, Mama. No!” I tried again to make her understand, but yelps came out instead of words. I pounded my fists into the pillow.
“Doctor Jim. Yes, I'll call him and he can give you something to help you calm down.” Mama pulled my shoes off, took the blanket from the bottom of the bed and covered me. Then she started to leave the room.
“Nate,” I wailed.
Mama turned back. Tears dripped from her jaw to the front of her dress. “Oh, Libby, Libby, darling. I’ll take care of you, honey. I promise.”
By the time Doctor Jim got there, Aunt June, Uncle Ervin, Granddaddy, and Grandmama were already in the living room, and the pillow under my head was sopping wet. He gave me something that kept me sleeping till the next morning. That was good. Sleep was good. It kept me from thinking.
I never saw Nate again. Mama wouldn’t ever let me talk about him ’cause she said it got us both too upset. Pamela brags that before Nate had his car wreck Uncle Ervin and Granddaddy put him out of business for what he did to me. But she says nobody in town blames them. Actually, she says, people are glad his place isn’t there anymore. The music was too loud and there was too much drinking.
They say drinking was the reason his car ran off the road. But when we knew him, Nate was a teetotaler because of all the drinking and hurting his daddy had done. “I have to sell it in my place,” he would say, “because people expect to be able to drink while they listen to good music. But I never touch it myself.” I guess all the misery over me and Mama, and losing his business, made him change his mind.
All this happened five years ago, when I was ten. Since then, Uncle Erv, Aunt June, and Pamela have remodeled their kitchen and added a deck off the back of the house. Pammy has a new boyfriend that all the guys at school say only likes her because she gives good head. Mama quit her job at the chamber of commerce after Nate’s wreck and now she’s working as a check-out clerk at Uncle Erv’s grocery store. She and I don’t talk much anymore. She’s still not a very good listener. But it doesn’t much matter anymore.
“For What Nate Did” won Honorable Mention in the in the 2000 Seven Hills Short Story Contest. If you’ve read this far, THANK YOU. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to spend more time on my fiction writing. Subscribers make this possible, so if you haven’t subscribed yet, please hit the button below! Read along as I write Dancing at The Orange Peel and more KENT CREEK CHRONICLES stories.
Remember my invitation in the Author’s Notes above to voice your perspective? I’d love to know what impact this story had on you.
Excellent. Good writing makes us feel, and I came away from this angry and frustrated at Uncle Erv. Family secrets can be awful.
Gina, My heart breaks for your protagonist. I think you balanced the reality of the cultural times with her growing awareness quite well. It is hard to use language that readers today might find offensive, but that is the only way to stay true to the characters. I am looking forward to seeing how her story develops.