South of Broad by Pat Conroy Read Free Book Online

Lafayette.”
    “I’ll watch out for you two,” Mr. Lafayette said, looking back toward the library entrance. “I can help you in a million ways.” He then walked back toward the main hall.
    When I got up to leave, Starla Whitehead surprised me by saying, “Hey, four-eyes. Didn’t anyone tell you how ugly your glasses are? They make your eyes look like two busted bungholes.”
    I blushed deeply, the blood rushing up to my face, soon to be followed by a blotchiness that would make my appearance all the more comical. I had inherited my father’s shyness, his chalky paleness, and his tendency to redden from throat to crown when he was caught off guard. I learned the harsh lessons of being unattractive very early in my career as a child, but I never grew accustomed to it being highlighted or laughed at by my peers. But now I surprised even myself by tearing up, the most infantile and unwarranted reaction I could think of, and not the course I would have chosen in front of these newcomers to my life. I wanted to run and hide from my own face.
    Then Starla surprised me by bursting into tears herself, crying hard, realizing the damage she had inflicted on me. It was the first time I think she truly saw me. “I’m so sorry, Leo. So sorry. I do it every time. I can’t help it. I do it every time someone’s nice to me. I say something hurtful, something no one can forgive. Something bad, evil. I don’t trust it when someone’s nice to me. So I say something to make them hate me. Tell him, Niles. I always do it, don’t I?”
    “She always does it, Leo,” Niles agreed. “She doesn’t mean it.”
    “Look,” she said, pulling her long hair away from her eyes. “Look at my left eye. What a cross-eyed bitch. Look! What an ugly cross-eyed jerk bitch I am. It was because you were nice—but if you hadn’t been nice, I would have said it anyway. It’s what I am,” she added helplessly, with a shrug, as if she couldn’t properly explain.
    I took off my glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief, then I dabbed at my eyes and tried to compose myself. Putting my glasses back on, I said to Starla, “I know an eye surgeon. The best in the city. I’ll ask him to take a look at your eye. Maybe he can do something.”
    “Why would he look at her eye?” Niles said, protective of his sister. “She doesn’t got a penny.”
    “Have,” his sister corrected. “Quit talking redneck.”
    “She doesn’t have a penny.”
    “He’s a wonderful man, this doctor,” I told them.
    “How do you know him, big shot?” Niles asked.
    “Because I’m a paperboy, and I know everybody on my route.” I glanced at my watch and, with my mother’s list in mind, stood and told them in farewell, “I have to go, but I’ll get my father to invite you for dinner, okay? I’ll call you about the time.”
    Both of them looked frankly astonished at something as simple as an invitation to dinner. Niles glanced uneasily at his sister, who offered as I turned: “And Leo, I’m sorry about what I said. I really am.”
    “I said something mean to my mother today,” I admitted. “So I deserved it. It was God getting me back.”
    “Leo?” Niles said.
    “Yeah, Niles?”
    “Thanks for this.” He held up his wrist. “When we met you, we were in handcuffs. When you’re leaving, we’re not. My sister and I won’t forget it.”
    “We’ll remember it the rest of our lives,” she said.
    “Why?” I asked.
    “Because,” Niles said, “no one’s ever nice to us.”
    •   •   •
    O n the leisurely bike ride home, I congratulated myself for handling Sister Polycarp and the unruly orphans with some diplomatic skill. I was running an hour ahead of the schedule I had set for myself, and was thinking about the kind of cookies I would make for the new neighbors moving in across the street. My mother had ordered chocolate chip, but I was thinking of making cookies with more of a Charlestonian heritage and flavor. I was surprised to find