Africaville

by Jeffrey Colvin

  “We told them to be careful, but did they listen?” Adelle Platt said to her husband after learning that Matthew and Zera had been arrested for mischief at the governor’s houseboat. “Now look what happened.”

  The judge took less than an hour to decide the death sentence for both Zera and Matthew.

  While Adelle and Stetson waited on the appeal of the death sentence, Adelle could hardly contain her anger at Zera. Why hadn’t Zera corrected her lawyer when he told the judge that Matthew had talked Zera into going to the governor’s boat? Heavens, no, Matthew had been a perfect child, dutiful with his music lessons, excellent at schoolwork, a little gentleman. Why hadn’t they sent him to one of the more conservative schools in Tuskegee, Nashville, or Washington, DC? If they had, perhaps their son would not have met her.

  Stetson Platt said he regretted not letting Matthew get aboard the steam train along with his uncles C. C., Tommy, and Chevy. At the time, he’d felt Matthew was too smart for digging coal. But what lapse of thinking compelled Matthew to join those crazies, the New Confederates, on a lark to vandalize the governor’s houseboat? There had been a previous lapse that led to a shoplifting incident during his first year of college. But since then, Matthew had been a model son—until he met Zera.

  The day after the governor commuted both death sentences, Adelle walked the three blocks down Farish Street and put the long key in the front door of Zera and Matthew’s two-bedroom bungalow. The sleeve patches and written material from the New Confederates were thrown in the trash cans, but the rest of their belongings were distributed to the few relatives still speaking to Adelle and Stetson. With each item handed over, Adelle reiterated her opinion—Zera was the bad influence. How else to read the matter? Remember all that talk of apparitions? That nonsense should have been a big clue that Zera’s head wasn’t sitting right on her shoulders.

  Warner drives off the rental car lot at the airport in Jackson, eager to finally meet the person who has for months been a near phantom for him, an image conjured up from letters and two short phone calls. Several hours later, in Unit 6-C at Peace Correctional Facility, seated on the green two-cushion sofa wearing a thin cotton dress is his great-grandmother—Zera Bradenburg Platt in the flesh.

  Her silver hair is pulled back and held with a plastic hair clip. With her ankles crossed and tucked close to the sofa, she looks much younger than her ninety or so years. “I’m afraid I can only give you a few minutes,” she says, “I’m old and tired, you know?”

  “You don’t look old and tired,” Warner says, from the small kitchenette, where he dumps the bag of apples he has brought into a bowl on the Formica-top table. “You look good to me. You must be eating well.”

  “Too well, if you ask the governor.”

  Is she being serious? Warner wonders as he searches his book bag. Or is she just being as difficult today as she was on both phone calls they have had since Eldridge Littlejohn made the breakthrough that allowed them to meet?

  The guard has completely disrupted the contents of the bag Warner packed before leaving the house this morning. Zera’s copy of the legal engagement letter is here, but two other documents are missing. He probably should not have been short with the guard during the security search. But his nerves were still frayed from the argument he had with Minerva before he left the house. That woman has been quite irritable lately.

  “I had some more papers for you to look at,” Warner says, taking a document out of the bag. “But it looks like they’ve gone missing.”

  Zera uses a hand to smooth back a few errant strands of hair. “I don’t accept the lawyer’s phone calls,” she says. “Is that why he keeps sending me papers?”

  The coffee table holds two saucers next to a small bowl of cantaloupe cubes. Zera spoons a few cubes on a saucer. “I’d offer you a fork,” she says, handing him the saucer of cantaloupe, “but all I have is plastic. The forks are so flimsy you may as well use your hands.”

  Warner picks up several cantaloupe cubes and drops them into his mouth. “You know I’m Omar’s grandson,” he says, chewing on the fruit.

  “So you tell me.”

  “It’s the truth. You know I’m married and that I have a daughter. Tell me something about you.”

  “Didn’t you read about me in the papers?”

  “I read somewhere that red and gold were your favorite colors. I thought of that this morning when I put on this shirt. See, it’s red and gold.”

  “What else can I tell you?”

  “When were you born?”

  “Too long ago to remember.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “Here in Peace Correctional.”

  “All right, then, I imagine you won’t like this question, but I’ll ask it anyway. Why did you go with the men to the governor’s boat?”

  “You expect a ninety-year-old woman to remember that far back?”

  “You’re not yet ninety. I’m only asking because I’d like to understand.”

  “You would understand if you were colored and lived in Mississippi when I grew up.”

  “I am colored.”

  Warner can see Zera’s tight jaw slacken, and a few of the sharp lines around her gray eyes seem to melt into her pale skin. She’s not as light as he is. If he had been asked to guess where she was from, he would have said Eastern Europe. He takes a photograph out of a small compartment of the book bag, thinking he needs to choose his humor carefully. Had Zera appreciated his joke about being colored? Or is she getting ready to tell him it is time for him to leave?

  “My daughter, Jennifer, gets an odd rash on her neck,” Warner says, handing the photograph to Zera. “You can almost see it here. Don’t know what it is.”

  “Sunflower measles,” Zera says. “My son Omar used to have outbreaks. Folks used to say it came from river water.”

  “Jennifer’s a lake girl,” Warner says. “And I don’t remember my pop ever having a rash like that.”

  Zera leans over and touches a spot near Warner’s elbow. Warner inspects his arm. “Well, what do you know?”

  “The next time the child breaks out,” Zera says, “tell your wife to put a warm damp rag on the baby’s neck.”

  Warner takes out another set of papers. He does not believe that Zera agreed to see him simply because he is her great-grandson. If she had cared that much about her male heirs, she would have sent for Omar or made an attempt to contact her grandson, Etienne. Her feelings for her deceased husband are another matter. The stapled pages he holds are for Zera’s cemetery plot. Eldridge Littlejohn says Zera is eager to sign them because she wants to be buried next to her husband, Matthew. Eldridge had the brilliant idea to tell her she had to sign them in Warner’s presence. “Warner could contest the decision after your death,” Eldridge told Zera, “and not put you next to Matthew. You do not want that.” But if Zera is so eager to be near her deceased husband, Warner thinks, setting the papers on the coffee table, why then has she not mentioned him once?

  “Did you know I’m the oldest resident of any correctional facility in America?” Zera says, accepting a ballpoint pen.

  “Yes, ma’am. You told me that on the telephone. You didn’t say too much else.”

  “On my seventy-fifth birthday, two reporters came to talk to me. The colored gal was country-sounding, pretty without a stitch of powder on her face.” Zera inspects the pen, as if she has never seen one like it. “I didn’t answer a single one of the gal’s questions, but she claimed I did. On the television that heifer stood right in front of the cameras all made up—Afro all puffed out, eyeliner, lipstick—and said she had a long conversation with me. Said I was doing well and that I said I was sorry. I told her no such thing.” Zera shakes her head. “I guess I won’t have to worry about any of that after they put me into the ground.”

  Warner is reaching for another cantaloupe cube when a knock at the door startles him. One of the friendly guards, no doubt. Still, Zera seems startled, too. After looking around the room, her eyes har
den again. “Why do you keep at me?”

  “I won’t need to come here as often if you return the papers the lawyer mails to you. Will you agree to do that?”

  “Depends on the papers.”

  “I mean the ones that’s got your name on them.”

  Zera laughs and rises from the sofa. Her shoulders are pushed back, but her head is bowed as she leads Warner to the door.

  “I’m going to try to get you released,” Warner tells Zera after he has stepped outside onto the cement landing.

  Zera points at the female guard nearby. “Did you hear that, Nadine?”

  “I heard, Miss Zera,” the guard says, scratching her chin with a long, painted fingernail. “I heard Eldridge Littlejohn’s on the case. With that man working for you, something just might happen.”

  The women inmates in Peace Correctional rarely report seeing apparitions walking the halls. But that is not to say Peace is without other oddities. In the dining hall, an inmate never places her spoon on the table before placing the plate. Inmates never fight following a day when it rains while the sun is still out. And never, under any circumstances, does a woman at Peace sign the first set of papers presented to her by a lawyer.

  Over the years, Zera has come to believe she had a good lawyer during her trial. The trouble was that the judge barely listened to him. But the judge seemed enrapt by the prosecutor who argued that Zera had in fact pushed the man who drowned in the lake off the pier. Ridiculous, Zera tells herself, carrying the papers Warner left to the chest of drawers near her bed. She was not even on the pier when the man fell off and drowned.

  Inmates also say that even if a sibling or a parent has ratted you out to the authorities, you should never place a family photograph facedown in a drawer. Putting the papers in the top drawer, Zera recalls that the photograph of Warner’s daughter, Jennifer, is somewhere in the drawer. She remembers putting it there but has no idea of how the photograph lies. When she put the photograph of her great-great-granddaughter in the drawer, she was distracted, trying to recall the last time she held a baby girl. While she was pregnant, she’d been certain she was carrying a girl. Throughout the long nine months she dreamed of bringing a girl into the world. When the midwife presented her newborn, she almost spoke the name she had selected: Patience Althea Platt.

  But the child was a boy.

  Zera has no pictures of Omar as a baby. But she had a few photographs of him as a young man. The photographs came to her in the short letter from Halifax, written by the wife of Chevy Platt. Zera had them in her possession for barely a day before a former cellmate scratched Omar’s face on both photographs. For years, she would stare at the pictures and reconstruct the face of her son. There were times when she wanted to tell him to come see her. But she knew that was foolish. His life was better where he was.

  Zera’s maternal relatives were scattered around the South, living nowhere she could find them. And though her father never liked his wife’s family, during the trial Zera wrote to those relatives anyway, asking if any were willing to look after her son. The only letter she got back was from her cousin Naomi, who lived in Arkansas. I wish I had a better answer, Naomi wrote, but we don’t have room to take in Omar.

  That was when she reconsidered the Platts. She knew it was useless to ask any of the Platts in Mississippi to care for Omar, and after getting no answer to her letter to Matthew’s relatives in Trinidad, she wrote to Canada.

  Zera appreciated the letters Chevy Platt and his wife wrote from Canada, saying Omar had graduated from the Adventist school, and later that he had been accepted at Fundy Technical School. She had done the right thing sending her son up to Canada. She never kept any of the letters he wrote to her, nor did she reply. Years later, when another letter arrived at Peace from Chevy Platt, Zera opened it near the mail pickup, intending to toss it into the aluminum trash barrel when she was done reading. But after she scanned the first few paragraphs, a word caused her to hesitate—accident? He drove a truck into a building in Halifax? How had that happened?

  Confused, she studied the postmark. Was this old news she had read about in another letter? In the hallway, she leaned against a wall and read the perplexing sentence again. When it finally made sense, she almost fell to the floor.

  Zera walked back to her quarters thinking of all the letters her grandmother Althea said she wished she had been able to read. But letters carry bad news, too. In her quarters, Zera searched for something that had once belonged to her son. There were only the photographs. She held them in bed that evening, trying to remember the last hug she had given her son. She told herself she was not disappointed at not having a daughter. She really had wanted Omar.

  Now Zera has a new baby picture. She wants some new thoughts to add to those about Omar and Etienne and Warner. Thinking about all these fathers and sons hurts her brain. Warner seems nice enough. Something about him may even have broken through the iron cage around her heart.

  But Zera doesn’t know Warner well enough yet to want to get close to him. Oddly, she feels she might have gotten along better with Warner’s father. She never met Etienne, but she has little trouble believing he was her flesh. Warner told her Etienne hid the fact that he had relatives in the colored community in Canada. And what Warner had not said was that Etienne had also not visited his grandmother. Zera had no trouble with that. Etienne was sensible, like her. Etienne didn’t see the world as he wished it to be, as Warner and Omar and even Matthew had. Etienne saw the world the way it was.

  Heat wafting out through the back door of the house hits Warner in the face even before he has stepped through to the kitchen. After a cool shower, he finds a note taped to the refrigerator door.

  Minerva has gone to her parents? Why?

  “Minerva was here,” Pat says when Warner calls his in-laws’ house. “She’s gone up to the cabin. She said she needed a few days to herself.”

  This is becoming a habit, Warner thinks, hanging up the phone. In the living room he tries to watch television but cannot concentrate. Just before ten, he climbs into bed, suspecting that he and Minerva need to have another talk. What he will say, however, he does not know.

  A few days later, Warner sees Minerva’s car parked in the driveway at Pat and Clayton’s house. When he calls the house, though, Minerva refuses to come to the phone. The next afternoon, while Minerva is at work, he rings the doorbell at her parents’ house.

  “I’d like to let you in to see the baby,” Pat says, leaving Warner standing on the front porch. “But Minerva would knock me into next week.”

  “She doesn’t need to act like this,” Warner says. “We’re still married.”

  Pat pushes the screen door further open, looking out at Warner like he’s a stranger. “Does Pinky know that?”

  A few days later, after Pat tells Minerva that Warner has been by the house again, Minerva purses her lips and says, “I’m not surprised. The crazy fool called my job. To shut him up I agreed he could come see Jennifer.”

  “He didn’t ask to see Jennifer,” Pat says.

  “Why did he come then?”

  “He was after some boxes he says you took when you were over at the house.”

  “I’ll give everything back,” Minerva says. “It’s all junk. Why would I want any of it?”

  The box that Warner wants to reclaim sits in the garage at his in-laws’ house. The next afternoon, Minerva lifts the flaps on the box, feeling numb, not unlike how she felt when she drove off after seeing Warner with Pinky. The box contains items that Warner has been collecting from his trips to Halifax and Mississippi. She looks at a few things and then closes the flaps. She does not want to see anything Warner has deemed suitable to collect.

  But she does not deliver the box to Warner that day or the next. A few days later, she examines the contents more closely. Inside are two small boxes, one marked PELETIER and the other marked SEBOLT. A large manila envelope marked MISSISSIPPI is filled with copies of newspaper articles about Zera Platt. Minerva tries to
read one of the letters sent to Etienne from one of his relatives in Montreal, but her French is too rusty. She puts the letter back and takes out a few more items. She has never seen the swimming medals, the pictures of Kath and Timothee in Italy, or the yellowed announcement of Kath’s memorial service in Halifax. Where did Warner learn to be this organized?

  Sliding back the top of the marbled wooden candle box, Minerva half expects some little genie to jump out and tell her another story of her husband’s infidelity. She closes the top, reminded again of why she moved out. Yes, she was angry about the affair with Pinky. But there was more. Right or wrong, she had concluded that Warner isn’t that interested in their family.

  A noisy truck comes by on the road in front of the house. It’s one of the sanitation trucks now operating in Woodhaven. Minerva arrives at the window only in time to see the rear of the truck as it races away.

  Clayton says the truck will return a little later. She carries the box of mementos outside to the side of the road, agreeing with her father that Woodhaven is better than that colored town in Nova Scotia. At the road Minerva places the box near the garbage cans. Those pathetic bluff people probably never had this kind of garbage service.

  These latest decisions about her marriage have come on so quickly, Minerva has hardly had time to think. From the window, she watches a sanitation worker peek inside the box before tossing it into the garbage truck. As the truck rumbles up the road, Minerva has no misgivings about what she’s done. Warner seems to care more about those papers from Halifax and his trips to Mississippi than he does about his wife and daughter.