In West Mills

by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

  “Got tired of that, though. Quick. One day I say to Ma Noni, ‘I’m through cleanin’ houses with y’all. That’s women’s work.’ She was sittin’ at the table, mixin’ stuff up to make cornbread. She say, ‘Come here and taste this, see if it’s sweet enough.’ And, Pratt, when I bent over to taste the spoon, she went upside my face so fast—great day in the mornin’!” Otis Lee held the side of his face as if he still felt the sting.

  “She got ya, ain’t she?” Pratt asked.

  “Yeah,” Otis Lee said. He relished the memory. Essie’s visit had almost ruined all his memories of Ma Noni. Otis Lee knew most of what Essie had told him was probably true, but Ma Noni had never shown him anything but love.

  Ma Noni had told him to never again say women’s work in her presence. She had dared him to try and imagine the things she had done when she was a young woman to keep a roof over her head and over the heads of her younger brothers and sisters. Ma Noni had said that cleaning up after people had been a breeze in comparison.

  “Pratt, after that wood spoon went upside my jaw, I ain’t say that shit ’round her no more.”

  Otis Lee had waited two weeks after Ma Noni hit him to tell her and Rose that he and Brock were definitely heading north. Rose objected and worried. “She said, ‘People act like the North is heaven or somethin’,’ ” Otis Lee told Pratt. “I believe she was sad ’cause she was tired of losing folk she loved.”

  “Who she lose?” Pratt asked.

  “What you mean, ‘who she lose?’ ” Otis Lee said. “She lost Essie, she lost my father, and she was gon’ lose me ’cause I was movin’ away.” He looked at Pratt and saw that he was working his mouth around. “You want some more water, Pratt?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You ain’t fine,” Otis Lee said. “Here.” Otis Lee passed the jar of cool water to Pratt, and he watched him drink two gulps before he start talking again. “Ma Noni was cookin’, sweepin’ the floor, or wipin’ somethin’, seemed like.” Ma Noni came around to the idea of Otis Lee going off into the world, and she trusted Otis Lee with Phillip and Brock. “Ma Noni say to me, ‘Them is good boys you want to go ’long with. Y’all been taught to look out for one and each.’ ”

  But Ma Noni hadn’t liked his plan to find Essie.

  “Ma Noni flew hot! She come walkin’ to me quick. I step back ’cause you never know what she was gon’ do. Ma Noni was swift, man. Great day!”

  “She go upside your head again?” Pratt asked.

  “Nah,” Otis Lee said. Ma Noni had asked him if he was crazy. “She look at me and say, ‘What you think Essie gon’ do if you turn up talkin’ ’bout ‘Essie! Essie! Big Sista Essie!’? Think she gon’ invite you in and hug ya?’ ” The memory of Ma Noni’s anger when speaking about Essie reminded him of the talk he’d had with Essie at his kitchen table.

  Otis Lee told Pratt that it was his aunt Gertrude who had told him that Essie was in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Pratt said he remembered Gertrude and that he had always thought she was strange. Pratt said he’d once thought Ma Noni and Gertrude were sisters. It had been a common error, Otis Lee said. “Ma Noni had Gertrude when she was real young. Fifteen or sixteen. Somewhere ’long that age.”

  And when Pratt asked how Gertrude knew where Essie was, Otis Lee was reminded of the fact that he never knew the truth about that. “Gertrude ain’t tell me. But I know she come back to West Mills with a whole lot of money. And I mean a lot, Pratt.” He held his hands apart, as if he were holding a big pot of gold. “But my mama tol’ me that Gertrude used to tell folks lies ’bout they future, and they paid good money to know. She made a killin’ from it, too.”

  Gertrude had advised Otis Lee to go north, make money, and come back. Think of your future, and the children you might have one day, she said. She thought his plan to look for Essie—who she referred to as being blood but not family—would only lead him to troublesome times. But Otis Lee should do what felt right for him, she said. Then she poured him a cup of a strange-looking tea. It would clean him out before his journey, she said.

  “Looked like some ol’ ditch water to me,” Otis Lee recalled. “But I drank it, and I was back and forth to the outhouse all night!”

  Pratt roared with laughter.

  “Well, Pratt,” Otis Lee said, “I’m goin’ on indoors. It’s time for my before-lunch nap.”

  They shook hands, and Otis Lee walked toward his porch. The cat walked in front of him as if it thought Otis Lee had forgotten the way.

  When Otis Lee was about to step inside, Pratt called out to him.

  “What you gon’ do Thursday mornin’?”

  “What ya mean?” Otis Lee asked.

  “’Bout them butterflies?”

  Otis Lee looked at Pratt for a second and said, “I ain’t got the butterflies no more.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was the thirteenth day Knot had been in the hospital, if she’d counted correctly. One thing was certain: she’d been hooked to the dialysis machine five times. Five times she had felt as though she were freezing to death—it was summer—while her burgundy blood moved out of one arm, through the clear wide tubes, into the machine, and back into her body through the other arm. Five times.

  The doctors had managed to get her stomach working well enough that she could eat solid foods, and the fever had subsided. But if I could just lay in my own bed, breathe in the smell of my own house, my own stuff, my own self, I’d be a lot more comfortable.

  “When y’all gon’ let me outta here?” Knot asked the brunette nurse who was there taking her vitals. Those were the first words she had spoken in hours. She was surprised by her own whisper.

  “We’d have to get your strength up quite a bit first, Miss Centre,” the nurse said. “Not to mention your kidneys. Those kidneys of yours are misbehaving. Dr. Taylor is going to want to see some improvement with them before he—”

  “Dr. Taylor can go to—”

  “May I have one of your arms?” the nurse asked. Knot used the little strength she had gathered from breakfast to pull her left arm from under the top sheet and the store-bought quilt Pep had brought to her a couple of days after she was admitted. She had asked Pep to bring the yellow quilt from her closet. Pep had also purchased a new book for Knot—a gift. On the front cover there was a half-naked couple looking into each other’s eyes.

  “Why you bring this?” Knot asked.

  “’Cause I ain’t seen you read like you used to.”

  Knot thought about asking Pep if she remembered what she had once said to her years ago about reading, and life. But instead she said, “Thanks, Pep.”

  Knot felt a tightening around her arm as the nurse squeezed the black rubber ball. Four squeezes, pause, four more squeezes, pause.

  “Y’all keepin’ me here for the money. I ain’t gon’ get well. Shit. I can die at home.”

  A couple of days after Fran had brought Knot into the emergency room—Fran had carried her just as a groom carries his new bride across a threshold—the doctor told them that Knot’s kidneys weren’t pulling their weight, which explained why she often went more than half a day without urinating. The coughing had taken its toll, too. It was one of the coughing spells that had caused her to faint. When she had come to, Fran was lifting her from the bathroom floor.

  “If I hadn’t walked over there to take you a plate,” Fran remarked an hour after Knot had been admitted, “ain’t no tellin’ what would’ve happened.”

  “Well,” Knot said, “what was on the plate?” Fran rolled her eyes. Pratt told Knot to be quiet and rest.

  Knot didn’t want to hear Fran’s account of how the ambulance took too long to get there, forcing her to take Knot to the hospital herself, worried sick all the way there. Knot didn’t care to hear Fran say how limp Knot had been when she’d lifted her. Knot had heard it three times too many. But it was the terrified, serious look Fran had on her face that haunted Knot most of all. Pratt sat next to her bed, showing her the same terrified, serious look. It was the same
look Pratt had given her when she told him to get out of her house, that morning in ’41, after they had made Fran.

  It was a good thing, Knot thought, that Fran had Pratt—that they had each other. The two of them got along well—so well that Knot had become jealous. She had felt that same jealousy when Fran took her to Ahoskie during the week of Leonard’s funeral. Iris showed Fran more attention than she showed her own grandchildren.

  Since Knot had been admitted, it seemed to her that everyone who visited sat around with serious looks. Fran, Pratt, Otis Lee, Pep, Valley, Breezy, Cedar, and Lady Coy. Even La’Roy had been by to see her for a few minutes; he brought the look too, as well as a friend.

  “I must not have but a few minutes left to live if you come to see me,” Knot said to La’Roy as he stood at the foot of her bed.

  “You’ll outlive all of West Mills, Knot,” he replied. The red roses he’d bought for her were pretty. She didn’t care a great deal for roses. But these here roses come from La’Roy, she thought. He looked a lot like what Knot could remember of Delaware William.

  La’Roy hadn’t visited Knot at home more than six or seven times in his entire life. And those visits only happened when he came with Breezy to fix a pipe or to patch up a soft spot on the floor. But Knot hadn’t expected visits from La’Roy. Ayra and Pep are the grandmas he know.

  Knot glanced over at La’Roy’s friend.

  “You can come away from the wall, young man,” she said. “It ain’t gon’ fall in on us.” The friend and La’Roy looked at each other and smiled. She saw La’Roy gesture with his eyes for the friend to come closer to him, but the friend did not move.

  “Y’all got girlfriends?” Knot asked, having already decided what the true answer was. She wanted to have a little fun. It’s borin’ in here. Shit.

  Knot had asked La’Roy how his schooling was going. He was enrolled at the college—mathematics. He’d said it was all going well. The news made Knot feel proud. She knew her pa would feel proud, too.

  “Do as the doctors tell you, Knot,” La’Roy advised after sitting with her for half an hour. He kissed her on both cheeks and then on her forehead, all while he held her hand. He said he would visit again in a couple of days. And on his way out of her room, he said, “My mama sends her get-well wishes, Knot.”

  That might have explained the dreams. In a couple of Knot’s dreams, Eunice, too, had come and stood next to the bed with a serious look. That dream reminded Knot of the slap. She never got a chance to apologize, face-to-face, for that, or for anything. If it had not been for Otis Lee getting Brock to talk to Eunice, and getting Eunice to agree to a brief phone call with Knot, there probably would have never been a talk at all. Eunice was quiet on the phone. She told Knot she was sorry, too, for speaking to an elder person the way she had, and for calling her such an awful thing. Knot didn’t want the apology. “But thank you, Eunice,” she said.

  Knot was tired of serious looks. And now this nurse was back again with that goddamn blood pressure thing and a goddamn thermometer that had been God knows where. The nurse was wearing her own serious look, too. Writing stuff down on those papers.

  “Have you thought about what we discussed, Miss Centre?” the nurse asked.

  “Ain’t I already tol’ you I’m saved?” Knot replied. “I sure do wish you’d let up ’bout that. Shit.”

  The nurse giggled and said, “Close your eyes, Miss Centre. Let’s have a word with God.”

  “Lord, have mercy,” Knot said, rolling her eyes. The nurse put her hand on Knot’s shoulder.

  “Heavenly Father, we call on you today to ask for healing …”

  Where the hell is Valley when you need him? She was sure Valley would tell the nurse to do her job and leave.

  “In Jesus’s name we pray,” the nurse ended, “Amen.”

  “Did Valley come to see me when I was on the machine?” Knot asked. The nurse did not know who Valley was. “The one in the wheelchair. Bald on top, white cornrows ’round the sides and back of his head.” The nurse said she hadn’t seen him.

  The senior living center that Valley lived in was next door to the hospital, separated only by an alley no more than ten feet wide. An orderly had been pushing Valley over to see Knot. He had come just about every day.

  “Enjoy the hospital luxury, Knot,” he said in response to her wanting to get back to Antioch Lane. “Pretend it’s a hotel.”

  “Bring me some of what I like and we can pretend all you want.”

  The next afternoon, when a different nurse pushed Knot back to her room after dialysis, she came back to find Pep there, looking as though she wanted to fight someone. Pep was wringing her long, skinny hands as if they were dishrags.

  “You knew Otis Lee was goin’ to New York, didn’t ya?” Pep accused.

  “No,” Knot replied. “And good mornin’ to you, too.”

  When Pep arrived home from yesterday’s visiting rounds, there had been a note from Otis Lee.

  “He got Cedar and Coy with him,” Pep relayed. She was angry. She had called Breezy and Fran, she said. The two of them knew nothing about the trip, nor did they know the reason for it. “I know he tol’ you, Knot.”

  “I swear ’fore God he ain’t tol’ me nothin’,” Knot insisted. Pep didn’t believe her. Knot could tell.

  “I don’t believe you,” Pep said.

  “I don’t give a damn what you believe.”

  “You oughtn’t curse like that, being so sick and all,” Pep grumbled.

  Then Knot asked Pep to lay the quilt over her legs and to set the TV on Channel 3 so that they could watch the soaps. It seemed that Pep had forgotten all about Otis Lee’s mystery trip after Knot mentioned Katherine Chancellor.

  During the first commercial break, Pep looked up at the TV for a couple of minutes, then she looked at Knot.

  “Well, how you feelin’?”

  That shoulda been the first thing you said to me.

  “The same, I guess.” And after a minute: “Thank ya for comin’ to check on me, Pep. Hear?”

  Pep scooted her chair closer to the hospital bed and rubbed Knot’s legs, trying to warm them. The flesh on Pep’s used-to-be fat arms swung from side to side.

  “But ain’t it foolish, Knot?” Pep wanted to know. “What Otis Lee up and done, I mean.”

  Knot almost agreed with Pep, but then she remembered where she was, lying in the hospital. With Otis Lee getting close to eighty years old, she wondered if maybe he wanted to do something like that—a trip without his wife—while he still could. She shared the idea with Pep.

  “I shoulda known you’d side with him,” Pep said. She stopped rubbing. “The two of you always have sided with one another.” Pep looked back up at the TV and folded her arms over her chest.

  “Somethin’ you need to say?” Knot asked.

  “Nope,” Pep said. “I rest my case.”

  “Well, unrest it, and say what you need to say.”

  Pep looked directly at Knot.

  “I ain’t got nothin’ to say, Knot,” Pep said, “’cept for I’m sorry.”

  There was a time when Knot felt Pep had a lot to apologize for. But Knot and Fran had become so close. And Eunice didn’t seem to hate her anymore.

  “You all right wit’ me, Penelope Loving,” Knot said. “I been a pain in yo’ ass since I came to this lil town y’all got here.”

  Pep used a tissue to blot away both their tears.

  “You seen Val?” Knot asked. “Been three days. He ain’t been here and ain’t called.”

  “He restin’,” Pep said. “He’ll be all right.” She reached through the bed rails and started rubbing Knot’s foot.

  It was the He’ll be all right that let her know Pep was lying. Or was it the way Pep had looked off at the TV while she rubbed Knot’s foot? She rubbed Knot’s foot so hard that it looked and felt as though she were trying to start a campfire.

  Valley had suffered another stroke, Pep finally admitted. The doctors had told Otis Lee—since Otis Lee was l
isted as next of kin—that Valley might not ever come out of the coma.

  Until Knot heard the quiet rattling of one of the bed rails, she didn’t know she had grabbed ahold of it. The other hand was now a fistful of quilt.

  What would Knot do without Valley? Had he been the most dependable friend she had? No. Otis Lee had claimed that title on the day she told him she was pregnant for the first time and that she needed his help. But Knot had been able to tell Valley anything—whatever was on her mind. And as far as she knew, he had never lied to her. Even when she had suspected him of lying, he had generally been telling the truth. Yes, she could say most of that about Otis Lee, almost. But Valley had never asked her to be anyone other than who she was. Valley never asked her to even try.

  “When God gets ready for us to sit down,” Pep said, “he sure do know how to make us. Valley had him a good ol’—”

  “You said Otis Lee gon’ to Queens?” Knot interrupted. And when Pep reminded her that Otis Lee had gone to Brooklyn, Knot said, “Oh. You know Valley’s from Queens?” She coughed, and Pep poured water into the teal plastic cup. “Val used to say, ‘My mama had me in Queens, and left my ass in Queens.’ ”

  “He sure can tell a good story, can’t he?” Pep said, smiling.

  Knot lay thinking about what Valley had told her years ago, about Essie and Otis Lee. Valley swore her to secrecy about it—twice, if memory served her right.

  “Otis Lee ever hear from his sister after she was last here?” Knot asked.

  “Naw,” Pep replied, looking at the TV. “And I don’t ’magine he wanted to, either. Otis Lee made peace with all that. She probably long dead by now, anyhow.”

  Knot could feel her breathing get more and more shallow. For a moment it reminded her of the times she’d given birth to Fran and Eunice. Pep had said to her, “All right. You doin’ real good. Now, let’s wait for yo’ breath to steady for you to push again.” Knot was glad that Fran and Eunice had turned out to be good mothers. They had both proven to be far better at mothering than Knot believed she could have ever been to the two of them. Knot was even happier that they didn’t have her craving for liquor. If loving Breezy was their only trouble, she counted them lucky. Knot couldn’t stand that both her daughters pined for the same man. But they were doing things their way, Knot believed, just as she had. And she figured maybe she’d passed something good along to them after all. They’d be all right.