“Well,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her, “at least ya sistas still nice to ya.” Then he sneezed. They lay there silently for a few minutes, passing the flute back and forth. “You know what, Knot? I think I’ll join the service. Air Force.”
Knot rolled her eyes at him and said, “Boy, please. You ain’t joinin’ shit. Hand me that glass.”
“It’s a flute,” he retorted. Before he handed it to her, he examined it closely. “Where you get this flute, Knot? It look like—”
“Yours,” Knot affirmed. She had taken it from his apartment the last time he’d written and asked her to go and make sure he had emptied all the food from his icebox. Then she said, “Don’t be a fool like Pratt. With this service talk, I mean.”
“Military ain’t foolish,” Valley shot back. Then he sneezed.
“We probably live in one of the few places in this whole damn country that live our lives the same, war or no war. Why can’t folk live well enough alone?”
“See, now you the one talkin’ foolish,” Valley said. “We all takes a hit some kinda way when there’s war.” He sneezed again, then took the flute from Knot’s hand.
There had to be some truth in what Valley had just said, she imagined. But since he’d said he didn’t want to discuss it any further, which was fine with her, she decided not to tell him.
Just as Knot was about to turn onto her back and close her eyes, she looked up and saw Fran coming toward them. She probably heard his loud-ass sneezin’. The child came with a purpose. Knot could see it in her walk.
“Miss Knot!” Fran shouted. She had on a cute pair of overalls to match the ones Phil wore when he worked in his garden. And Lady had put two pretty ponytails on both sides of Fran’s head. White ribbons on each. “I got a idea.”
“Well, hurry up if you gon’ tell it,” Knot told her. “Me and Valley talkin’ grown folk business. And he don’t feel good. Don’t you hear him sneezin’?”
Fran narrowed her eyes at Knot and Valley and sucked her teeth.
“Never mind,” she said, walking away.
Valley laughed and sneezed.
On any other day Knot would have let the girl go back home without a word of protest. But there was something about the way Fran didn’t seem to need Knot to hear the idea that made Knot want to hear it. She found herself wanting to hear it badly.
“Don’t ‘Never mind’ me, lil woman,” Knot said. “Tell me your idea.”
Fran turned around, but it didn’t look as though she planned to walk back over to them. Her two ponytails were swinging just enough for Knot to notice.
“Let’s us be best friends,” Fran suggested. “Like you and Mr. Valley.”
When Knot glanced over at Valley, he was looking at Fran as though he wanted to pick her up and kiss both her cheeks. Where’d the sneezing go?
No one had asked Knot to be their best friend since she was a small girl herself—around Fran’s age. Even Valley hadn’t proposed best friendship to Knot.
At least half of Knot’s childhood flashed before her as she lay there looking at the first little girl she had carried inside her, pushed out, and given to the neighbors.
“Tell me one thing,” Knot said. “How many grown womenfolk you know that’s got a lil girl for they best friend?”
Fran looked at Knot as though she were waiting for a point to be made. Valley covered his face.
It was evident by the little girl’s frown that she would not be leaving until she’d heard Knot’s decision.
“Listen,” Knot said. “If I’m still livin’ when you get to be grown, and if you stay outta my business, maybe we’ll see about bein’ friends. How’s that?”
Fran propped her hands on her tiny waist and declared, “That’s too long.”
She skipped away as though she had better things to do.
Valley passed the flute to Knot. There was enough for one more swallow. “She got her own mind, don’t she?” he remarked. “Just like somebody else I—”
“Go to hell, Val,” Knot said. Valley laughed and sneezed again.
The cool soil felt wonderful beneath Knot’s toes when she dug them past the warm grass. Seeing that girl mighta been what I needed today, she thought.
“What you got goin’ on in yo’ head, Knot?” Valley asked. He had lain flat on his back and put his hat over his face. Knot didn’t answer him. She had lied enough for one day.
That’s too long, Fran had said to her. But Knot knew it wouldn’t be very long at all, with the way time passed so quickly.
As sure as the sun rose in the morning and fell in the evening, twelve years later, in 1960, on a day that seemed to have gone by too fast, Knot sat on her porch and wondered how on earth she had lived long enough to see her girls become young ladies pretending to be grown women. Eunice was seventeen, singing in and directing three choirs. Fran was eighteen, the pianist for two of those same three choirs.
Lord, have mercy.
“There’s trouble,” Valley said to Knot one evening as she sat at the counter at Miss Goldie’s Place. “And since you ain’t mentioned it, I’m guessin’ you don’t know.”
“I wish you’d stop with the damn preamble and tell me, Val,” Knot said.
He had heard that Fran and Eunice’s cordial childhood camaraderie had come to an abrupt end.
“Why?”
“You mean to tell me you ain’t heard nothin’?” Valley asked. “Not one word of it?”
“Valor!”
“Well,” he whispered, “you ain’t gon’ like it one bit. But it’s over a boy.”
The idea that Fran and Eunice had reached an age for falling in love made Knot feel old. But hearing that Fran and Eunice had fallen in love with the same tall, slim, gingerbread-skinned man with eyes that looked like watered-down black tea made Knot hold her head.
All the boys in this town, and they both want Robert “Breezy” Loving.
Knot felt as though there were a Jane Austen novel being played out there on Antioch Lane. She went back to reading Dickens.
Part
Two
TEN
On an unusually cool day in June of 1960, Otis Lee, while at work, thought about how grateful he was that he and his family lived in a fairly peaceful town. He’d heard stories about the young colored people in Greensboro who had organized a sit-in a couple months earlier. “A terrible thing,” he’d lamented to Pep one evening, “the things that got said and done to them young folk. They ’bout Breezy’s age, you know?” And Pep had said, “I know, love.” Otis Lee hadn’t been called a nigger to his face since he was a teenager living in Brooklyn, New York.
While he knew his son had not completely escaped the harsh tongues and glares of some of the whites on the east side of the canal, Greensboro hadn’t come to them yet. And Otis Lee hoped things would get better so that it wouldn’t have to.
That day Otis Lee also thought a lot about getting home. It was his birthday, and Pep had told him that she would make him a very special meal.
“Got us some new seasonings from Ayra,” she had said that morning. “She say we gon’ want it on everything we eat after we try it.” She would use them on a hen, she said. She also promised him a bit of birthday loving, which he was most excited about. Pep had not required, nor had she seemed interested in, much bedroom time from Otis Lee in the past few years. So when she mentioned the birthday loving, he smiled so much that his cheeks were sore by the time he arrived at Pennington Farm.
“Mind if I knock off a lil early today?” Otis Lee asked Mr. Pennington. “My birthday.”
“I can do you one better, Otis,” Pennington said. Otis Lee had told Pennington many times that Otis Lee, for him, was like a first name, not a first and middle. “I’ll give you a ride right to your very door, if that’s what you need.”
During the ride, Pennington asked Otis Lee his age.
“I made it to fifty-two, sir,” Otis Lee answered.
“Well,” Pennington said, “If you’d waited just one mor
e week to be born, you and me coulda been twins. I’m a ’08 baby, too.”
Pennington began talking about how they were both getting on in age and how much times, and West Mills, had changed since they were boys. Although they had been born and raised within a mile of each other, Otis Lee had never met Riley Pennington until the day Big Riley hired him in 1927, just after Otis Lee’s return from New York.
“Otis,” Pennington said, lighting a cigarette and using his knee to steady the steering wheel, “you remember when West Mills had just one general store?”
“I certainly do. Leland Edgars’s store.”
“Yeah,” Pennington said. “He gave it to that boy and his wife.”
“He sell it,” Otis Lee corrected. His legs became restless.
“He do what?”
“Leland Edgars sell it to my friend Mister Brock Manning and his wife, Missus Ayra Manning.” Otis Lee kept his eyes on the road. But more than once he could see Pennington glance over at him.
“I suppose you’re right, Otis,” Pennington agreed. “Nobody gives away a business, do they?”
Pennington spoke about the handful of small businesses that had opened on the west side of the canal in the past four or five years: a new gas station for coloreds with a pool hall in the back, a bakery … The Mannings had changed the store’s name to Manning’s General Store, and the old schoolhouse had been enlarged. Otis Lee remembered that there was somewhere he needed to go before heading home, so he asked to be dropped off at the church.
“No problem at all, Otis. No problem.”
When Otis Lee was out of the truck, Pennington said, “I don’t mean to be rude, Otis, but can I ask you why you comin’ to an empty church on a Tuesday afternoon? And on your birthday?”
Otis Lee pointed toward a bevy of headstones set off in the back corner of the churchyard.
“Well, I wouldn’t be here to have a birthday if it hadn’t been for some people back there in them graves.”
Pennington and Otis Lee shared a look of understanding, and they shook hands.
Though it could not have been more than ten yards, the walk from the church’s front yard to the cemetery felt like a mile to Otis Lee’s tired legs and feet. First, he visited his father’s grave. Then he stood between his mother’s and grandmother’s graves. Time don’t belong to none of us. Don’t love us, neither.
Rose had been dead five years. An enlarged heart, the doctor had said. By that time, Ma Noni no longer knew who Rose or anyone else was. Going to the corner of his sitting room—which was where Ma Noni’s bed was set up when he and Pep had moved her in with them—and telling her that another one of her children had died before her would have been a waste of sadness, best saved for someone who could feel it.
A month before Ma Noni died, Otis Lee watched Knot feed her the bread pudding she had been asking for. After only one teaspoon, Ma Noni gripped Knot’s wrist and said, “Essie.”
“Now, I know you ain’t forgot me that quick, Miss Noni,” Knot said. “It’s me: Knot.”
“That ain’t Essie, Ma,” Otis Lee added. “This here’s our friend Knot. Remember Knot?”
Ma Noni stared at Otis Lee. She stared into his eyes as though they were speaking words that only she could hear.
“Come get this baby, Essie.”
Otis Lee could see that her hold on Knot’s wrist was tight. Knot was struggling to pull her arm away.
“Essie, come on here and get this baby. Hear?”
Once Knot had pried herself from Ma Noni and handed Otis Lee the bowl of pudding, she left his house without a word.
“Ma Noni,” he said. “That was Knot. You helped Knot wit’ her first baby. I think you remembers a lil of it today.”
Ma Noni looked off at the wall. “Tell Essie come get her baby.”
Soon after Rose was buried, Otis Lee received a sympathy card from Essie. The envelope read O’Heeney, with the address below. How she had learned of Rose’s passing, Otis Lee never figured out. Essie had written a brief note inside, simple enough for him to read on his own. She was the best mother in the world, the note read.
The two hundred dollars she’d placed inside the card infuriated Otis Lee, and he planned to return it. But Pep said, “You crazy? That’ll pay off most of the bill we got up there at Hobson’s. Caskets ain’t made outta flour and water, Otis Lee.”
Otis Lee wondered what Essie had told her husband about her family life. He had never asked her that question on their occasional quick talks when he worked in her house. He imagined that Essie must have told O’Heeney that she had been orphaned or something similar.
One morning in Brooklyn, Otis Lee was sweeping the brothel’s front stoop and O’Heeney came home from wherever he had been all night. O’Heeney rarely greeted Otis Lee, but when he was in a good mood he would do more than greet. He sometimes gave Otis Lee an earful about things Otis Lee did not understand. Senator So-and-so, and Congressman This-and-that.
“You know, boy,” O’Heeney said, “I swear I know you from somewhere, but there’s no way. I’ve never had much dealings with you all.” By then Otis Lee had been living in their brothel for more than six months.
Otis Lee looked down at the headstones. He missed his mother and grandmother more than he could ever put into words, even to himself. What I’d do to have me a piece of Ma Noni’s pound cake and to hear Mama complain ’bout how Ma Noni made pound cake too much. Otis Lee closed his eyes and whispered a prayer, thanking God for another year.
Otis Lee held two fingers to his lips, kissed them, and touched all three headstones. With his handkerchief, he dried his face of sweat and tears before turning toward Antioch Lane and walking home, where he’d find Pep, the only girl his mother and grandmother approved of. If Pep had decided not to bake a single crumb for him, and if she had decided not to touch him for another year, he would not mind. He simply wanted to get home to her.
When he got closer to the house, he heard Pep inside. She was not practicing “Happy Birthday to You.” He heard her say, “Boy, what’s ailin’ you?” He hadn’t heard her speak with such anger in all the years they’d been married. “And you best tell it right the first time!” Pep yelled to Breezy. “Why’d you have both of ’em in my yard, anyway?”
“What’s wrong in here?” Otis Lee asked. Pep was standing eye to eye with their son. As broad-shouldered and strong as Breezy looked, he appeared boyish in front of his mother.
“I ain’t have them in your yard,” Breezy replied.
When Otis Lee heard how Breezy had said them—with far too much timbre in his voice, and with his chest poked out a little too far—he knew Pep’s open right hand would soon find Breezy’s left cheek.
A few minutes after Pep’s slap, Breezy said, “I just invited one of ’em, and Eunice showed up startin’ trouble.”
Pep said she was sure it was him who had started the trouble.
“You always got to have two,” she accused. “Two of everything.”
“But, Ma, I ain’t—”
“Shut up!” she shouted. “Never thought I’d ever come home and see folk fightin’ in my yard like they crazy.”
When Otis Lee heard the part about a fight, he asked, “Who was fightin’?”
“The girls,” Pep replied. She hadn’t taken her eyes off their son.
“What girls, Pep?”
“Fran and Eunice,” Pep said. “Fightin’ out there in my yard over this one here.” She pointed at their son. She whacked him on the shoulder, and he winced.
Otis Lee looked at Breezy, not knowing what to say to the young man at first. Then he did. “Boy, is you lost yo’ damn mind? Ain’t you tol’ me all them dealings was done wit’?”
“He better put a stop to this mess right now,” Pep said. “’Cause I won’t have—”
“Hush up a minute, Pep, would ya? Please?”
Breezy tried to speak, but Pep told him to get out of her sight. And when he had gone out the back door, Otis Lee said, “How you know I ain’t want to ask
him a question or two?”
“Ought not be no questions,” she argued. “Ought to be orders.”
Her voice was trembling now, and Otis Lee knew she was more hurt than mad. He knew because he was hurt, too. Two girls whom he loved like nieces had been fighting. And they’d been fighting because his only son hadn’t learned to make a decision like a grown man.
When Otis Lee went outside, he saw Breezy sitting on the porch steps, looking as though he had been wronged. Otis Lee picked up his pail and began tossing corn to his cluckers, and Breezy came over to him, ready to explain, it seemed. It reminded Otis Lee of one of his last talks with Pratt. I damn sure wish Pratt was here. Maybe he’d ’tend to his daughter.
“Well,” Otis Lee said. “What you got to say for yo’self?” Breezy had folded his arms across the same chest he had poked out toward Pep. “Unfold ya damn arms when I’m talkin’ to you. I ain’t one of the fellas.” Breezy put his hands in his pockets. Then Otis Lee went on, “You walk ’round here like the world’s yours just ’cause you a lil bit pretty. Lot more things goin’ on in the world ’sides bein’ pretty and havin’ women.”
“Pop—”
“You know it’s young fellas your age fightin’ for rights? Gettin’ hot coffee poured on top they heads? Young ladies, too!”
“That’s what you want me to do?” Breezy countered. “Go piss off some white boys so they can pour coffee on me and spit in my face?”
“Naw,” Otis Lee said, “but open your eyes, boy. This world ain’t gon’ always give ya everything you want.”
Breezy said he hadn’t done anything wrong, which caused Otis Lee to set the bucket of feed on the ground.
“I love both of ’em,” Breezy professed.
“That don’t matter, Breezy. Whole lot of men love more’n one woman. Can’t have both the women you love.”
Otis Lee went back to throwing feed to his cluckers, and for a moment he wondered how his own father—who never got to see Otis Lee as a young man—would handle this.
When Otis Lee looked back up at his son, he found that Breezy had his arms folded across his chest again and was looking at Otis Lee as though he had caught him stealing.
In West Mills Page 10