Knot couldn’t seem to stop weeping. No matter what good times she tried to conjure in her mind, she could not stop weeping.
Pep came back with a glass of cool water and a hot biscuit that looked like it could be melted down and used to make a necklace and a pair of matching ear bobs. Knot watched Pep set the food and water on the nightstand that her pa had built for her when she was a child. Otis Lee and Valley had, separately, spruced it up some since she had moved to West Mills, but she had warned both of them that if they made it look too different from the way her pa had made it, she’d use the nightstand to beat them.
Pep picked up The Old Curiosity Shop and flipped through its pages.
“How many times you done read this same book, Knot?”
“Find me a sip of what I like and maybe I’ll tell ya.”
Pep began to read from the first page. She read it smoothly, the same way a longtime teacher would read at a schoolhouse. Then she closed the book and set it back in its place.
“Tell me one thing,” Knot said. Pep sat on the bed, and Knot saw how tired Pep must be. She can barely hold her eyelids open. “How come you ain’t taught yo’ husband to read?”
Pep looked at Knot as though she had spoken in tongues.
“He can read,” Pep retorted. “Enough to get by, anyway.” Pep rubbed her own left hand with her right one. “It ain’t all that important to him.”
“Well, it ought to be. He’s a worrisome sumbitch, but he smart. My pa always said, ‘A smart Negro can go a long way. But a smart Negro with book learning can go all the way.’ ”
“All the way where?” Pep asked.
“Up, I guess.” Knot said, and she yawned. Pep giggled. Then she yawned, too.
“He got his reasons, Knot.”
“Who?”
“My husband,” Pep clarified. She stood from the bed and stretched her arms above her head. Knot asked what his reasons were. Pep fluffed Knot’s pillows and said, “He say readin’ ought to be something folk do ’cause they enjoy it. Not ’cause they scared of what might happen to ’em if they can’t.” I don’t know what in the hell she talkin’ about, and I don’t feel like askin’ no more questions, Knot thought.
“Eat that biscuit and drink that water,” Pep said. “I’m goin’ home for a lil while. I might have me a drink of moonshine.”
“I knew y’all had some.”
“We do,” Pep said. “Yo’ moonshine.”
Knot rolled her eyes at Pep, at the glass of water, and at that pretty golden biscuit. But she was grateful to have all three.
For two weeks Knot drank, cried without trying, and stuffed cabbage leaves in her bra to stop the milk. If the thought of leaving her bedroom wasn’t enough to piss her off, the thought of leaving her house was.
Otis Lee and Pep were the only two people who could convince her to open her door. Pep came to be sure Knot was healing properly. Otis Lee, often with Breezy trailing behind him, came to bring plates of hot food, of which Knot ate little. On other days Otis Lee came just to make sure she had gotten out of the bed. After that, Knot stopped letting him in. But she wasn’t able to refuse him entry for more than a couple of times.
“Azalea Centre!” Otis Lee had yelled from her porch one day. She had drunk so much, she could barely walk. “I gots my sledgehammer wit’ me. I’m gon’ give you a few minutes to come open up this here door. And if you don’t, there ain’t gon’ be no door for you to come and open. I mean ev’ry word of it, too!”
Knot had somehow made her way to the door, and she opened it. She remembered collapsing into Otis Lee’s arms. He had dragged her out onto the porch for air and sunlight. He had told her the next day. She had not remembered that part.
One afternoon Knot lay across her bed, miserable—but not from a night, or a morning, of drinking. She did not know why she was miserable. One hour she was crying, the next hour she was angry. So angry, she threw dishes around the kitchen. Then she’d broken into a strange laughter that she later felt embarrassed about. If anyone asked Knot to list all the feelings and thoughts she’d had that day, she’d be afraid of being taken to one of those places for the insane. So she lay down. Best if I just lay here.
There was a tapping on her door. She decided to ignore it. Then she heard someone walking outside of her bedroom window.
“Miss Knot!” It was Breezy.
“What?” Knot said.
“Can you please come to yo’ window, Miss Knot?”
“For what?”
“My pop say he want me to see yo’ face and he say for me to keep talkin’ to you ’til you come to the window so I can see yo’ face.”
Knot went to the window and raised it. To her surprise, she enjoyed the coolness that came in.
“You seen me,” Knot said. “Now go on.”
“My pop say for you to come to suppa at half past six,” Breezy relayed. After delivering the summons, he told Knot things she hadn’t asked to know. He told her he had learned to write his whole name and that he had helped Pep bring in the eggs. “I ain’t drop a single one of ’em, Miss Knot!” Then he told her all about how he and his grandma Rose played catch with a pinecone. “And, Miss Knot, my hands was hurtin’ and my mama put some saff on ’em, and I—”
“Tell Otis Lee I’m too sick,” Knot interrupted. I damn sure hope he outgrows all that damn yappin’. “I’ll come another night.”
Breezy ran home to deliver the message, but he was back at Knot’s window in less than five minutes. Knot didn’t need to look at her clock to know that.
“Miss Knot!” Breezy shouted.
“Lord Jesus,” Knot whispered. She had lain back across her bed. If the empty liquor jar had been closer to her, she would have thrown it at the window. “What, child?”
“My pop tell me to say you best have yo’ hind parts at his table at half past six.” Knot got up from her bed and went to the window. Breezy was not alone this time; a posse of kittens was around his feet.
The mother cat stood nearby grooming herself. But she looked up every few seconds. And the kittens looked at her. It was as though they knew she was there if or when they needed her.
Knot looked back at Breezy. He had been waiting patiently for the next message to take home.
“Seem like yo’ pop think he’s my pop, too.”
Breezy shrugged. Knot thought of Otis Lee and his sledgehammer.
“Okay,” she said. Breezy walked back toward his house, and his furry friends followed.
Knot heated water and sat down in the bath. It was the second tub bath she’d had since giving birth; the first one was a week after. And it was the memory of that first bath after the birth that reminded her of the birth itself. And recalling the birth reminded her of the precious, dangerous glimpse.
Knot sat in the tub until the water was nearly cold. At one point she was sure that it must have been the warm tears that dripped from her chin that kept the bathwater from freezing.
It ain’t so bad, Knot, she wished someone would say to her. Maybe her pa would say that if she had written to him and told him the truth about everything. You just not ready for motherhood yet. And I think it’s mighty smart of ya to know that ’bout yourself. Knowing she wasn’t ready didn’t mean she liked not being ready. But it felt safe to her—the only kind of safe Knot felt all right with. Safe by not having to worry about hurting a child’s feelings, the way her mother had hurt hers. Safe by not becoming someone’s wife just to figure out, years later, that she didn’t want him. Safe to get a bit of joy from the moonshine—something that couldn’t hurt her or be hurt by her.
SIX
After supper, Otis Lee helped Breezy into his light jacket, gave him a small lantern, and told him to go and visit Ma Noni and Rose. Breezy was happy to go, because Ma Noni always had a treat there for him. Otis Lee knew Breezy would come back with crumbs around his mouth. And there would likely be a piece of something else, wrapped and tucked into his coat pocket, to take to the schoolhouse the next day.
Oti
s Lee stood on the back porch and watched the lantern move through the big backyard, en route to the other house. He remembered the day Breezy was born. Five years old. Old ’nuff to carry his own lantern. A hint of sadness moved through Otis Lee. Time don’t wait on nobody.
When Otis Lee saw that Breezy had made it to the other house safely, he went back to the table where Pep and Knot sat, neither one of them saying a word. Pep got up and cleared their plates.
Otis Lee told Knot that he had run into the schoolmaster earlier that morning, and he had given Otis Lee a message for Knot—a message Otis Lee was more than happy to deliver.
“He say if you all healed up from the pox, and if you through drankin’,” Otis Lee said, “him and the children want ya back at the school. He say the lil ones miss ya a whole lot, Knot. Ain’t that what he say, Pep?”
“I wasn’t there,” Pep replied. Now it was her turn to go off script, he supposed.
“Well, that’s exactly what he say to me, Knot,” Otis Lee said. “And I think it’s—”
“I ain’t goin’ back to the schoolhouse,” Knot announced. And Otis Lee could tell that she meant it. Her eyes looked dead, which was far different from the way her eyes looked when she was drunk.
Knot looked away from him, and she began fingering the hem of her dress—the black dress.
“I thought you enjoyed workin’ wit’ the young’uns,” Pep said. “You used to tell me how quick they learn. You loved it.”
“Never loved,” Knot said. “Didn’t even like.”
She had told Otis Lee that before, but he hadn’t really believed her. She’d said that she had become a teacher only because her father told her that she would be good at it, since she loved to read and work out math problems.
“I just did it to get the hell outta Ahoskie,” Knot had told him a few years ago. “Pa made me teach his patients. I got tired of that shit.”
Otis Lee looked across the table at Knot. She was still fiddling with her hem and looked as though she’d burst into tears at any moment—or fall asleep.
“Well, we got to find you some work,” he affirmed. Knot showed no interest.
Otis Lee knew that if Knot were well, she would have told him that she could find her own work. She would have told him to go to hell and to mind his business.
While Pep spoke to Knot about things she had missed on and off of Antioch Lane, Otis Lee sat thinking and worrying. He’d seen what could happen to people who let sadness get locked inside of them for too long. When he was seven years old, his father drowned in the canal. An accident. Rose had taken it awfully hard. Ma Noni had let Rose sit in her sadness for a long while.
“People got to feel it and get it out,” she had said. But she believed that Rose had fallen too deep into the grief. She used to make Rose get out of bed and out of the house. That’s where Otis Lee had gotten the idea with Knot. Ma Noni had told Rose to come to work with her in the fields, even if she cried half of the time they worked. And that’s what Rose did. Cried and picked. Over time, Rose cried less and less, but she was never quite the same again.
When Otis Lee lived in Brooklyn, working in Essie and her husband’s brothel, he would often see Essie sitting in a corner of a room, crying. And when she’d see him, she would hold her handkerchief over her face. One day he’d seen her weeping, and he walked around the brothel to make sure her husband was away. He made sure everyone else in the house was gone or busy. The coast was clear, so he went to Essie and kneeled in front of her. She had looked nervous until he told her it was safe for them to speak.
“Sista, you ain’t got to stay here if it’s hurtin’ ya,” he had said. “You got a whole mama, and a grandmamma that loves you. Even with runnin’ off like you did, we still love ya, and we be mighty glad to have you back. Let’s go on home, Essie.”
Essie had sat up straight in her chair and looked as though she wanted to thank him. All the weeping had turned her face as red as a rash. Her long, shiny, pitch-black hair hung almost to her knees.
“I wish it was that simple, baby,” she had said to him. Essie moved as though she were going to cup his chin with her palm, but she stopped. She stood up, smoothed her dress, and tossed her hair behind her shoulders.
“Go on back to your work now, Otis Lee,” she had said softly as she dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief. “Please.”
It seemed to him that Essie was choosing sadness. And now, here Knot was, sitting at his kitchen table, looking sad about something he knew she had a choice in.
“If you want your baby back, just go on over there and get her,” Otis Lee said. “She’s your’n!”
“Otis Lee!” Pep shouted. She gave him the same look she gave Breezy whenever he passed gas in the kitchen.
“That’s why she sad, ain’t it?” he asked.
Otis Lee looked at Knot, hoping she’d look back at him with something happy in her eyes, something alive in those eyes of hers. Anything to let him know she would be all right if she just went to the Waterses’ house and told them she wanted her baby girl. But Knot only stared at the table. Pep mumbled something, but Otis Lee kept his eyes on Knot, still hoping. Make her want that child, Lord. It’ll be all fixed up if you just make her want that child.
Finally, Knot looked up from the table, but she didn’t turn her gaze to Otis Lee.
“I thank y’all kindly for the nice meal,” Knot said. “Both of ya.”
After Knot had put on her shawl, she touched Otis Lee’s and Pep’s shoulders. It was the closest thing to a hug Otis Lee knew he would ever get from Knot. He wondered what she might do if he just stood up and hugged her.
“What I’m gon’ do ’bout her, Pep?” Otis Lee asked after Pep had seen Knot out and sat next to him.
“Nothin’,” Pep said. “Knot ain’t yo’ wife.” And in the sultry, soft voice she used with him when she was feeling frisky, she said, “Whole lot of woman sittin’ right here beside ya. Need to be reminded? ’Cause I will. Right now. At my kitchen table.” She placed her hand on his groin. “This oughta get yo’ mind off her.”
“Always, baby,” he agreed.
“You sure ’bout that?” Pep teased.
“Course,” Otis Lee told her. “And you know it.” He kissed Pep’s lips, her neck, and he squeezed part of her ample thigh. “This here’s what I like. Knot ain’t got none of this. Blind man can see that.”
Pep laughed. And they kissed the way they had when they’d first met. She lay her head on his shoulder and said, “Knot ain’t Rose, Otis Lee.” She put her hand on his and she rubbed the top of his thumb with her own. “She ain’t Essie, either. Ain’t yo’ place to do nothin’ ’bout Knot. Worr’ ’bout me and our boy, if you want somethin’ to worry about.”
“But y’all doin’ better than I am,” he said. He saw a serious look on Pep’s face, so he smiled.
“Then be satisfied with us bein’ all right, and turn Knot and ev’rybody else’s mess loose.”
Breezy came through the door with something wrapped in a cloth. Otis Lee knew there would be at least two things, because Breezy always liked to have two. Two apples, two baby chicks to have as his pets, two chicken legs on his plate at supper. That boy always wanting two.
“Where’s the lantern?” Otis Lee asked. Before Breezy answered, Otis Lee guessed that Ma Noni wouldn’t let Breezy carry the lantern by himself. And he was right.
Breezy took off his jacket and dropped it onto the floor. Pep made him pick it up and put it on the back of one of the chairs. Then she asked him, “What’s that you got there?”
“Ma Noni give me some cake,” he said. “Look!”
Otis Lee watched his son unwrap the cake. Breezy went about it carefully, as if there were a sleeping kitten or puppy in it that he didn’t want to wake. In the cloth, there were two pieces of pound cake with something spread between them.
“What she put in the middle?” Otis Lee inquired.
A frown appeared on Breezy’s small, round face. It was clear to Otis Lee that the boy had g
rown tired of answering questions. Breezy sighed and replied, “Zerves!”
Otis Lee and Pep glanced at each other and smiled. Breezy rewrapped the cake sandwich just as carefully as he had unwrapped it, and set it in the middle of the table.
“Don’t eat my cake, Pop,” he warned.
“I’m gon’ eat it all,” Otis Lee joked. Breezy whined, before giggling and running up the steps. Pep told him to slow down so that he wouldn’t fall again.
Otis Lee and Pep sat quietly, still holding hands. Otis Lee said, “What he say that is spread in the middle?”
Pep took a deep breath, just as Breezy had. “It’s zerves!” The two of them were bent over in laughter.
Then Otis Lee asked, “You still ain’t sad ’bout us not havin’ more?”
And Pep said, “More what?”
“More babies.”
“You crazy?” One was enough, she said. And Otis Lee was glad to hear her say it. One’s enough for me, too.
“Ma Noni and Rose gon’ rotten that boy down to the core,” Otis Lee mused. “We ain’t gon’ be able to do nothin’ with him.”
Pep reached behind her head and released her ponytail from the light blue piece of ribbon that had been holding it. She scratched her scalp and said, “I ain’t too worried ’bout that. We can handle him. I feels sorry for the one who marries him, though.”
Otis Lee grunted in agreement, and he thought about Knot. He hoped she would come out of her sad spell soon enough.
SEVEN
Knot sent a letter home saying she had returned to West Mills from Pennsylvania and that she was going to visit Ahoskie as soon as she was settled back in and rested. Knowing her mother would recognize fresh motherhood on her if she visited too soon, Knot wrote that it would probably be a few months before she’d have a chance to make the trip. Just thinking about the ride gave her a headache and a backache.
In West Mills Page 5