It was all very exciting to me. I had never felt more free. I was truly a woman now. On Sunday mornings if we were in the city, I went to church. I couldn’t get Flynn to go with me. It wasn’t that he had never been religious. He had once been a Catholic, but now did not believe in organized religion. On those Sunday mornings I left him at the apartment and took the car. When I returned, he was usually gone, but was back by midday and ready for Sunday dinner at Justine’s or at the Peñas’. Sunday evenings we returned home early to ready ourselves for the next week. This was our life as the new decade began in 1950.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
In the short days before Flynn and I married, I had written Mama, Papa, and Big Ma and told them about Flynn. I told them that by the time they received the letter I would be married to Flynn. I couldn’t call to tell them since they had no telephone, but I did call my cousin Oliver in Jackson and asked him to go to the house on Saturday, so Mama, Papa, and Big Ma would know about the wedding before I married. I also called Toledo. None of my brothers were happy with me. “Why so soon?” Stacey asked. “Can’t you wait?”
“Don’t worry,” I said, knowing what he was asking. “I’m not in trouble.”
“Well, then, why are you rushing this? You know Mama and Papa always expected you to get married at home, at Great Faith.”
I didn’t tell Stacey that the rush toward marriage, despite my first objection to the idea, was now all very exciting to me, for within the week I would be Flynn’s wife. Instead, I said, “You didn’t get married there. Or at Dee’s church either.”
“Well, that was different.”
“How come?”
“It was wartime,” he attested. “I thought I’d have to go to war.”
“Well, anyway, you were in love and you got married. Well, I’m in love, so we’re getting married because Flynn doesn’t want to wait and I don’t either. Besides, we can’t afford to take off work and make that long trip across country to get married down home. There’s no reason to wait. Just be happy for me.”
“Can’t you just wait long enough for Uncle Hammer and Aunt Loretta to get down there? Have some family there with you.”
“I’ve already called them. They’ll be here on Saturday. Uncle Hammer’s going to walk me down the aisle and give me away. It’ll be a church wedding right after services on Sunday. Aunt Loretta says she has got the perfect dress for me. It’ll be floor-length and white.”
“Well, at least that’s all good.” There was quiet on the line, then Stacey said, “You know Moe won’t be happy to hear this.”
I already knew how Moe would feel and it had weighed heavily on my mind. “Well, I’m sorry about that, Stacey, but I always told Moe he wasn’t the one.”
I heard Stacey sigh. “You sure you love this man?”
“I’m sure.”
“You sure he loves you?”
“I’m sure about that too.”
“Then, Cassie,” said my brother, “be happy.”
I wrote Moe. It wasn’t an easy letter to write. Moe did not write back.
After the wedding, when I got the letter from Mama, she said basically the same as Stacey had, and added that they were hurt and disappointed that I had not married there. They had hoped I would marry someone from down home, someone they knew, but they trusted I had good sense about the kind of man I chose. They all wished me happiness and hoped that I would bring Flynn to meet them soon. As always, their letter ended with their love for me. I wrote them back and told them not to worry about me. I told them I was happy. And I was.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The only worry I had during the first days of our marriage was the resisting arrest charge against Flynn. But when Flynn appeared in court with a lawyer and told the circumstances of the arrest and that he had never touched either of the officers, the judge accepted his statement and the charge was dropped. Since then, nothing else had marred our happiness. I was, in fact, gloriously happy. Still, I wanted more. I wanted a place to stretch out, a place bigger than the tiny space of our cramped apartment. I knew it would take a few years to save for a down payment on a house, but I figured we could afford a bigger space than what we had, a place I could make more homelike. I began to look in the classifieds and one day saw an ad describing an apartment I thought we should see. It seemed perfect, both in pricing and in space. I called the number listed and the apartment manager gave more details about it. I was really excited, but when I told Flynn about it, he looked at the paper and shook his head. “We won’t get it, Cassie.”
“Why not? We can afford it.”
“You know where this street is? Westwood.”
Westwood was certainly not our neighborhood. Memories of police and the carload of white boys flooded my mind. I looked again at the ad. “It sounds really nice though, and the lady was friendly.”
“The lady was friendly . . .” Flynn repeated, “and the lady probably did not realize she was speaking to a black woman. She probably thought you were white. Keep looking, Cassie. We’ll find another place.”
I stared at the paper. “I want to see this one,” I stubbornly insisted. “Woman won’t rent it to us, she can just say it to our face.”
“It’s a waste of time.”
“Well, it’s our time to waste.”
Flynn was right, of course. When the woman opened the door to us, her face changed from pleasant to startled. “I’m afraid you’ve made a trip for nothing. The apartment’s been rented,” she said.
“You told me earlier there was no chance of your renting it before we had a chance to see it,” I said.
“Well, I was wrong,” countered the woman. “Good luck finding a place in your own neighborhood.” She shut the door.
I started to knock again, but Flynn stopped me. “Let it be, Cassie.”
“I want her to know we know that apartment’s not rented and why she’s not renting to us.”
“I’m sure she already knows we know. There’s nothing that says she has to rent to us.”
“Well, there ought to be.”
I shouldn’t have gotten so upset about not getting the apartment, but I did. Flynn tried to calm me down and promised he would give me a house of my own. “I’ll build you a house on the land one day,” he said. “But before then, you’ll have a house.” Soon after he made that promise he began working weekends. He told me that he had gotten a job remodeling a house with a friend in San Bernardino, more than sixty miles away. In order to start working at eight on Saturday morning, he left immediately after work at the construction site on Friday evening and made the drive to San Bernardino, where he spent the night sleeping in his car. He worked full days both Saturday and Sunday but did not drive back on Sunday evening. He said he was too tired to make the drive. Instead, he spent the night in San Bernardino and drove directly to work early Monday morning. It was lonely without him over the days and nights we were apart, but I knew that what he was doing was in the best interest for our future. Flynn said it was for only a few months and we were young and could endure that. He was right. The time we did have together became more precious. Surprisingly to me, the fact that Flynn and I were apart made me feel truly married, maybe for the first time.