“You just as well to go ’head and tell her,” Rose advised from her rocking chair. She was rocking and biting her nails. “She’ll just worr’ ya half to death ’til you do.”
“Shut up, Rose,” Ma Noni said. And when Otis Lee told them what the private matter was, Ma Noni said, “Well, I s’pose I’ll make you a lil pound cake for yo’ guests. Y’all gon’ need somethin’ to sweeten them up.”
“Knot gon’ be there?” Rose asked, rocking.
“I think I oughta talk to ’em first, just me and Pep,” Otis Lee said.
Later that evening, after the plates were cleared, there they all sat bunched around the small, rectangular table: Otis Lee, Pep, Brock, Ayra, and Breezy. Everyone had had a piece of Ma Noni’s pound cake, and it was time for Otis Lee to send Breezy upstairs to write his name and his numbers. He promised Breezy that he would give him two pieces of candy if he wrote everything nice and neat.
“I’ll come help ya,” Pep said to Breezy.
“Penelope,” Otis Lee said. Pep went up the steps with her son. It was as though she hadn’t heard Otis Lee call her name. Before the Mannings had arrived, Pep had warned Otis Lee that he’d be on his own after dinner.
Brock and Ayra sat looking at Otis Lee as if he were a pastor and they were waiting on the Word.
“Y’all get enough to eat?” Otis Lee asked.
“Uh, if I know you good as I think I know you,” Brock began. He had picked up the habit of saying uh when he spoke. “I b’lieve you, uh, got some, uh, bad news for us or something.”
“Depends,” Otis Lee said. Brock asked Otis Lee if he needed a loan. “You know damn well I don’t need no loan, Brock.”
“Well, uh, how I know that?”
“What’s the problem, Otis Lee?” Ayra asked.
“Another baby’s comin’.”
The Mannings both smiled, and they congratulated Otis Lee.
“Noooooo. Not us,” Otis Lee corrected. “Knot’s got another one comin’, and I—well, she was wonderin’ if—hell, y’all already know what I want to ask. Same thing she wanted from Phil and Lady.’’
Brock pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his forehead and the rolls on his neck. Then he rested his hands on his large stomach, which Otis Lee felt Brock was far too young to have. Otis Lee was ready for the many questions and the many uh’s Brock would have for him.
“Uh,” Brock said. “What I, uh, want to know is, uh, why do Knot—’’
“Hush, Brock,” Ayra broke in. Otis Lee couldn’t be happier with Ayra at that moment. Of Otis Lee she asked, “When?”
Ayra was a straight-to-the-point kind of person, which Otis Lee respected, but sometimes he wished she’d allow a conversation to take what he believed to be its natural course. She was a self-made businesswoman, Brock often said; Otis Lee never quite understood what that meant, especially since Ayra—born and raised in West Virginia—had grown up as a sharecropper, much like him and Brock. Many times he’d heard Ayra say, “Time’s money, and money’s lost when time’s wasted.”
Otis Lee had always hated that expression.
Like Knot, Ayra had been taught to read at an early age, and she was even better at arithmetic. Ayra’s father hadn’t cared much for Brock at first, Brock had told Otis Lee and Phil years ago. But when Brock had convinced Leland Edgars Jr., a white shopkeeper, to sell him the general store, Ayra’s father had changed his tune.
Otis Lee felt confident that Ayra would be a great mother, especially to a child who would likely be born smart.
“Pep say the baby’ll be here ’round the end of April, early May, by the looks of things,” Otis Lee told them.
“Tell Knot my answer’s yes,” Ayra said, and she got to her feet.
“Uh, uh, Ayra,” Brock said, looking up at her, “we gon’ need to discuss this, ain’t we?’’
Otis Lee didn’t know how much discussing they would do, because Ayra seemed to have already made up her mind when they left his house, which did not surprise him. When Breezy was born, Brock had told Otis Lee—and he’d made Otis Lee swear on his life that he’d never tell a soul—that Ayra was of two minds about motherhood.
“She, uh,” Brock had said, “she don’t want to ever be in the family way. Said she wish the baby’ll just show up without it needin’ her body to get here.”
Otis Lee, having heard Pep tell several stories about her line of work, hadn’t pressed any further and just replied, “Yeah.”
Brock had also said, “Yeah.”
An hour after the dinner with the Mannings, Otis Lee sat downstairs in the kitchen, thinking about Knot. He would walk over to her house soon to tell her that her second baby would have a home.
I can’t make good sense of any of it. What she want? Pep had told him time and time again that Knot’s wants were just that—Knot’s wants. And he agreed. But she my neighbor. She my friend. And her people put her down and all. I got to look after her.
He heard a knock at the door. He thought it might be Knot coming to ask how the meeting had gone with the Mannings. But it wasn’t Knot; it was his mother.
“Get a coat on and come walk with me,” Rose said.
It had been so long since she had invited him, or anybody, to join her for a night walk. When Otis Lee was a little boy, he would hear her get up in the middle of the night, three or four times each week. He’d ask where she going, and she would tell him to go back to sleep. It wasn’t until he was seven years old that she first let him bundle up and walk with her. On the night of one of Otis Lee’s birthdays—he could not remember whether it was his eleventh or his twelfth—she had cried quite a bit while they walked.
“What’s the matter, Mama?” he had asked. She didn’t answer him, but he figured that it had something to do with a note that had come in the post earlier that week. Otis Lee remembered that Rose and Ma Noni had fussed about it. He had heard Ma Noni say, “I don’t want to hear nothin’ ’bout you scared. You ought to never went ’long with that lie from the first!”
Otis Lee never got a clear understanding of the argument. He had asked Rose about it, in the days after that birthday, but she had said, “Grown folks’ business, baby. You not s’pose to ask about grown folks’ business. Let that be the last time you do. Hear?” So, all these years later, when Otis Lee’s mother knocked on the door that belonged to him—a grown person—he still felt it wrong to ask: What’s the matter, Mama?
“I think what you doin’ to help Knot is real good of you,” she told him, “but you got to let her look out for herself, and her own business. She a grown woman that do grown woman thangs.” She rubbed her hands together and put them in her coat pockets. “You don’t want to be caught up in other folks’ lies and secrets. Ain’t a good feelin’ to keep stuff in ya.”
She reminded him of the pain he had felt when he went off to New York to find Essie. Otis Lee had cried to his mother because he felt as though he had failed her. Rose had asked him how he could fail her at something she hadn’t even asked him to do.
“If Knot stay in West Mills to see them babies grown,” Rose said, “people gon’ be mad with her, and maybe mad at you, too.” But, Mama, why you never say nothin’ ’bout your daughter runnin’ off to pass and leavin’ us like she did? “Secrets don’t stay that way forever, Otis Lee.”
Otis Lee tried to remember a time when he had heard his mother speak so much at once, but he couldn’t; he could not recall a single instance.
“Faithful Otis Lee,” she called him before she kissed his forehead the way she had when he was a boy. “You still my Faithful Otis Lee. Your daddy’d be proud if he was here to see you.”
From his mother and grandmother’s house, he walked toward Knot’s. But before he arrived, he stood on the lane’s shoulder thinking. She ain’t said nothin’ about my daddy in years.
In May of ’43, Otis Lee sat on Knot’s porch and waited for her second child to be born. When he heard the healthy cries, he felt his shoulders relax. Otis Lee did not ask for Pep’
s permission to enter the house. From the porch, he’d heard her cooing along with the newborn.
“Boy or girl?” Otis Lee asked, his back turned toward Knot’s bedroom door. He heard Pep coming toward him with the baby.
“Another lil woman,” Pep answered. “Here. Hol’ her while I go finish up with Knot.”
“Ev’rything’s all right, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” Pep reassured him. “She just got to do the last part. Sit down there.” She pointed at a chair in Knot’s kitchen. “You can finishing cleanin’ her.” And a minute later Pep brought Otis Lee a pan of warm water and a clean rag. “Wipe her gentle, now. Not too—”
“I remember,” Otis Lee said. “I sure do remember.”
This baby girl was smaller than Frances, but she was strong. Her arms and legs moved as though she were trying to leap from the blanket and run away.
“You got yo’ mama’s chin, lil gal,” Otis Lee whispered.
He heard Knot grunt. Then a sigh of relief.
“Well done,” he heard Pep say.
Now walking slowly around Knot’s kitchen table, he said to the baby, “Did ya mama see that chin she give to ya? Hmm?”
Pep bathed Knot, and when the room was back in order, Otis Lee went in. Knot looked much better. Not as tired and sad as she had the first time. If she’d said she was happy, he’d have believed it.
“Bring her,” Knot said.
Otis Lee didn’t understand. But Knot had asked for her baby. Thank you, God!
“I say bring her,” Knot said again. But he couldn’t move. Why can’t I move? Had the happiness caused his knees and legs to lock?
In disbelief, Otis Lee watched his wife as she laid the baby next to Knot and covered them both with a sheet. Otis Lee heard the child feeding. But when she was finished and had belched—she belched on her own—Pep picked her up.
“Go get Ayra and Brock,” Pep said. Otis Lee almost gasped for air. “This lil woman’s ready to go home.”
“Knot?” he said.
She slid to the edge of the bed and looked at him. If she had blinked, he’d missed it, but he was almost certain that she hadn’t. The assured look on her face made it difficult for Otis Lee to swallow.
“You got somethin’ to say?” Knot asked.
Damn right I got somethin’ to say, Knot! You can be a good mother. I know you can! You got all the help you need, right here in this room, and in ya heart.
He looked at Pep and thought about what his mother had said to him on the night he’d had the Mannings over for dinner.
“Naw, Knot,” Otis Lee replied. “I ain’t got nothin’ to say.”
Up-bridge at Manning’s General Store, Otis Lee found Brock sweeping glass from the porch. Another window had been shattered.
“You, uh, you don’t look like you come with good news,” Brock said.
“Look to me like you the one got bad news,” Otis Lee retorted. “What happened here?”
Two teenaged boys had come into the store to buy candy that wasn’t sold on the east side of the bridge. One of them, a Pennington, told Ayra one too many times that she was beautiful. The boy said that if he were older, or if Ayra were younger, he’d visit her store every day of the week.
“So, I, uh, tell the boy to take the candy, and his money, and go on somewhere ’fore he start somethin’ I got to finish,” Brock said. The boy who had not been flirting with Ayra told the Pennington that they had better leave, Brock told him. “Course he, uh, called us ‘nigger’ a few times on their way out of the store. And, uh, ’bout ten, fifteen minutes after that, a pop bottle come right through this window.” He shook his head. “Some of ’em still mad ’cause Leland Jr. sell me this place. If they ain’t breakin’ the window ’bout one thing, they, uh, break it ’bout somethin’ else. Comes ’long with the territory, I guess.”
Otis Lee thought it awfully sad that a fifteen-year-old flirting with a man’s wife, calling that man and his wife niggers, and disturbing their business “came with the territory.”
“What ya know good?” Brock said.
“They’s a strong lil girl waitin’ on y’all,” Otis Lee announced. He wished he could say it with a little more joy.
“It’s here!” Brock shouted, leaning the broom against the wall. It fell and made a popping sound on the porch. “Ayra!”
Otis Lee heard Ayra running through the store, her shoes’ heels sounded as if they would break through the floor. She flung the screen door open and it hit Brock on the knee. Neither of them seemed to care. Brock took both of Ayra’s hands in his, and the two of them danced in a circle just like small children. The customers came out and stood around them.
“Didn’t I tell you them two crazy?” one customer said to another. Otis Lee heard that and it made him smile.
“Y’all gon’ dance all day, or we goin’ to the lane?” Otis Lee asked. They ignored him. He didn’t bother them again for a few minutes. Seeing his two friends hopping and skipping around gave him more joy. And he hoped that his other friend, Knot, would soon find the thing or person to give her joy.
NINE
If cleaning houses, selling bread pudding, and reading long novels and the occasional letters she received from Iris took up half of Knot’s time, drinking and watching the two baby girls grow took up the other half.
Did she watch because she wanted to? No. Why, then? Because it’s West Mills. Every once in a while she invited a nice, handsome man to her home after an evening out at Miss Goldie’s Place. But fearing a third pregnancy, she’d asked Pep for advice.
“Sleep in yo’ own bed by yo’self,” Pep had told her. “That there’s my advice.”
The two arm babies, Frances and Eunice, quickly grew into hip babies. Then they were walking babies. And before long the two walking babies became schoolgirls. I’m glad I ain’t workin’ at the damn schoolhouse. Shit.
When Knot heard people say that six-year-old Frances—Phillip and Lady called her Fran—could play the piano as though she’d had lessons before birth, she remembered Pratt sitting at Miss Goldie’s piano and playing until he’d nearly fall asleep or until his hands began to hurt. He would ask Knot to rub and squeeze them for him. That damn Pratt. Seem to me like he’d at least write to the Lovings and let ’em know something, if he’s livin’.
After hearing that five-year-old Eunice Manning sang hymns just as well as Gertrude Ward, she knew why. Course she can. Delaware William hummed or sang me to sleep every night that week.
I done right by them lil girls, she thought to herself one night on her way home from the juke joint. Who gon’ argue with that?
Sometimes, when Knot happened upon the Mannings’ up-bridge on Busy Street, she’d see Eunice jumping rope or reading a book outside on the store’s porch. On one occasion Knot walked close enough to Eunice to see her own chin on Delaware William’s face. Knot laughed quietly—or so she thought. It turned out to be loud enough for Eunice to hear. The girl had given Knot a mean stare. That’s Dinah Bright right there. Since Knot lived close to Fran, she saw her several times a week—every day, almost.
“Hey, Miss Knot,” Fran often said when Knot passed the house. Knot tried her best not to draw the girl’s attention, but Lady and Phillip had raised Fran with good manners. The little girl greeted everyone she saw.
Pa would have loved her.
On a summer afternoon in ’48, a few days after Knot had received yet another RETURN TO SENDER‒stamped envelope from her pa—it had been the thirtieth, or the thirty-first, she’d lost count—she and Valley lay in her backyard on the yellow quilt Iris had given to her. They shared a glass of the red wine that Valley had brought home from D.C. Knot only had one flute, and Valley refused to drink it from a jar.
On a whim, when Valley had arrived in her yard earlier that day, Knot decided to tell him that another returned letter had arrived. Just as he had years ago, when returned letter number twelve had come, he’d said, “It’ll be all right. You watch and see. He’ll get his senses back together. You
gon’ always be his baby girl.” Otis Lee had said the same, which made Knot think it was sad that he and Valley were so estranged.
As much as she appreciated their condolences for the continued loss of her relationship with her pa, she wanted them to stop. The lashing out at little Breezy for talking back to his pa, the drunken lectures she’d given up-bridge about how her father did every little thing Dinah Bright told him to do, and the ripping up of letters from her sisters—who still had daily contact with her pa—had stopped. Knot just wanted to move on from that pain. So today, already regretting that she had even mentioned the returned mail, she thanked Valley and asked him to kindly shut up about it. And he did.
“This here’s good wine, Knot.”
“Go ’head, Val. Say it a third time.”
“Well, it is,” he said. “Like what the rich folk drink.”
“Says who?” she asked.
“Says the man I got it from, for a dollar.” Valley laughed at his own joke.
While the warm grass tickled her feet, Knot endured Valley’s chatter about the war, of which he seemed to know very little. And if his war chatter wasn’t offensive enough, there was his sneezing. Pollen.
“So you all right, you say?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Knot insisted. “Please don’t ask me again. Please.”
“I’m gon’ ask as many times as I feel the need to,” Valley told her. “He’s ya pa. You got to have some kinda feelin’ about it. Hell, I would. All them damn envelopes.”
She had more than a feeling about it. There were three: confusion, betrayal, and guilt. They weren’t new. Just back, like old friends you didn’t miss.
But if Knot had been asked to name a winning feeling, it would not be confusion, betrayal, or guilt. Hurt. Hurt is the winner. The same hurt that urged her to spend less time with Valley, less time visiting the Lovings, less time talking with the friendly people in town who had shown her nothing but kindness. To spend more time at her kitchen table with a bottle and a chilled glass.
“I do wish you’d let up ’bout me and my pa, Valor.”
In West Mills Page 9