Say I'm Dead by E. Dolores Johnson

Author:E. Dolores Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2020-03-09T04:41:30+00:00

10

Deep South

Back in 1973, I spent the Fourth of July weekend upstate with my best friend Valerie and her new husband. It felt good to get out of New York City’s noise and dirt, where I lived and managed a large call center. They didn’t tell me, but her husband had arranged for his best friend to escort me for the long weekend. Luther, a delicious African American gentleman, was like me, a first-generation college graduate with a new master’s degree. He was six years older and six inches taller, with a Chevron mustache of thick hair. Smart, fine, and sincere.

After just the first evening, his moon-shaped eyes shimmered in pursuit. He and I stayed up late talking, long after his IBM guys’ Friday night poker game ended in my host’s rec room. We shared our dreams of climbing the corporate ladder with the right partner at our side, me in marketing and Luther in engineering, where he hoped to be promoted soon.

He came back each day, to teach me to bowl (a ruse to put his hands around my waist), to play badminton with me at an afternoon BBQ, and to show me his moves at a late-night party.

That Monday night, rather than take the bus back to Manhattan as planned, Luther drove me the three hours home. Then he turned around to drive the three hours back so he could get to work the next morning. After that, our romance was a runaway train.

We partied with our best-friends’ couple, learned to dance the rock at New York’s Copacabana night club, and went to civil rights leader Wyatt T. Walker’s Baptist church in Harlem, where talents from Broadway shows played and sang the real, real gospel music.

When the promotion he wanted at IBM didn’t come through, Luther applied elsewhere. An attractive offer was made, but it was in South Carolina. Rather than live apart, he asked me to marry him and move down there together. After six months of dating I said yes, and our parents gave us their blessing.

Our decision was still secret at work the night Luther accompanied me to my office party. We sat with my boss on wooden stools, watching the stream of red taillights inching forward on the crowded street outside while the two men made small talk. When the boss asked about his work, Luther said he was moving out of state for a better job and taking me with him. I scrunched my forehead at him, unprepared to tell yet. Not only did the boss enthusiastically congratulate us, he and Luther immediately began strategizing on how to get me a company transfer to the South Carolina office.

We took our vows under a floral arch in the church where I grew up, then moved to Greenville, South Carolina. Despite the beautiful weather and more relaxed southern lifestyle that allowed us newlyweds to sneak out of work and be together for an hour during the day, we were regularly confronted with racist situations. My

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