A Long Time Comin'

by Robin W. Pearson

  “Well, Jesus taught me just ’cause it’s a tradition don’t make it right. Goin’ to that grave ain’t ’bout committin’ to yo’ daddy. That’s ’bout you and ’Lis’beth, just like this here party. Now, case closed. I ain’t goin’. If you plan to stick round here, then get to work. You can start by sweepin’ up in my room.”

  “While you do what?” Evelyn knew her Granny B just wanted her out of her hair, but she refused to disentangle herself so easily.

  Without missing a beat, Granny B reached into the corner to retrieve a wide-brimmed hat hanging on a hook over the washing machine. “Whilst I sweep the backyard. You didn’t do too good a job at it this mornin’.” That said, she pushed through the screen door into the backyard, letting the door slap shut decisively behind her.

  “All this family talk probably got her thinking about Milton.” Evelyn moved the wooden ladder-back chair Granny B kept beside her bedroom door, swept the area, and replaced the chair. “Will it ever get better?”

  Granny B had had it hard, and there was no way her granddaughter could ever separate her from an ounce of her pain and suffering, not that anyone could. Evelyn believed that every morning, before Granny B got dressed, she put on this suit of armor—not her full armor of God because that never came off. Her past. And she buttoned it up tight. It protected her from all kinds of nasty things, such as healing, redemption, or a cool balm for those festering sores of resentment and sadness. And it also prevented her from taking much pleasure from the faith that she set such store by.

  Besides Henton’s check, Lis and Evelyn were the only parts of the family who regularly stopped by. Even Kevin kept his distance, despite Beatrice’s view that Evelyn was glued to her husband’s hip. Under the guise of “settin’ things right,” she stopped by just to spend time with the crusty piece of bread that was her grandmother. Sometimes during her visits Granny B related some memory of the past, providing small details about this event or that. Evelyn often pictured all those people from her grandmother’s past, banging their tiny fists on the inside of her lips, begging for air, but not even Little Ed could pry them open with his strong fingers. Her Granny B wouldn’t set them free until she wanted to, and then only for a short spell.

  Knowing that what Granny B wanted was a clean bedroom, she checked inside the closet for dust balls. Spying none, Evelyn started to slide the door closed when she noticed a box on the shelf, partially hidden under some of Granny B’s sweaters. Now what could that be? After spending a moment or two staring at it, Evelyn shrugged away her curiosity and moved on, sweeping by the steamer trunk that had belonged to Granny B’s own grandmother and around the heavy cherry dressing table.

  In less than five minutes, about three minutes longer than it should have taken her to clean Granny B’s pristine floors, she finished. Looking around the room, Evelyn’s gaze settled on the closet. Even though she couldn’t see it, the partially covered box niggled at her. She’d cleaned Granny B’s room so often she knew what belonged in that closet: her dresses hung on the far right and next to them her skirts. Then the shirts and the blouses. At the far left end her one pair of bleach-stained denim overalls. On the shelf at the top of the closet, her sweaters. At the bottom huddled her shoes, placed according to style and season. That was it. Or at least that should have been it. No shoe boxes and no boxes on the top shelf. Except for this odd box pushed under a stack of sweaters, a box that hadn’t been there last month or the month before. Granny B’s life maintained a certain order. Everything and everyone had a place. Hence Evelyn’s curiosity and her sense of . . . something.

  Evelyn didn’t consider whether she should peek inside the box. She wondered only if she could, if she had the mettle. Never before had she considered invading Granny B’s closely guarded privacy, but for some reason that tucked-away box whispered, “Evelyn Beatrice Lester,” using her whole name like her mama did when she wanted her immediate attention, no questions asked. Or maybe it was simply fallout from the truth-seeking missile that had wreaked havoc in her own home the night she happened upon Kevin’s phone.

  Holding the broom, Evelyn tiptoed on sneakered feet to peek out the back door. Granny B was still sweeping the farthest portion of the yard. After scooting back to the closet, Evelyn used every bit of her five feet three inches to reach up to the shelf and push aside the sweaters. She placed them in the same order on another part of the shelf, and she picked up the box.

  It was solid, a little bigger than a standard shoe box, but not by much. It might have held a pair of boots at some point, not that Evelyn had ever seen Granny B in boots. It was unmarked, a plain, brown rectangle with a slightly nubby texture. She knelt on the floor and shook it a tiny bit, testing its weight and feel. Something inside, several somethings, shifted and moved. Paper, some kind of paper, she concluded. Aloud, she hissed, “Why don’t I just open it, or am I going to stand here sniffing and shaking?”

  Again, the or did the job.

  Evelyn sucked up some courage along with a deep breath and slowly lifted a corner, half-expecting something to snap off a finger or shower her face with blue paint. When neither happened, she cast a final furtive glance over her shoulder before she removed the lid and set it on the floor. Sitting on her haunches, Evelyn stared at the contents: a leather-bound book with a rubber band encircling it . . . and envelopes. More specifically, letters. Moving aside the book, she picked up one, then another, and saw that they were all addressed in the same neat scrawl, with all the letters straight and skinny and leaning to the left side. She did not recognize the handwriting, and none of the letters had a return address. Quickly leafing through them, Evelyn determined that they were addressed to her aunts and uncles and some to Granny B herself.

  Some of the oldest dated back almost fifty years. One was opened, and very carefully, for the seal was neatly broken, with barely a ripple in the surface of the envelope. Read it? In answer, Evelyn pulled out the delicate sheets of paper and scanned the last page. Henton.

  Granddaddy Henton? Evelyn didn’t know he could write his name, let alone a letter! Hastily, her fingers shaking, she turned back to the first page and began reading the letter postmarked June 15 . . .

  “What in hades do you thank you doin’?”

  She froze. Granny B glared down at Evelyn from the door of her room.

  “Did you hear what I . . . ? I cain’t believe . . . Who told you . . . ?” Granny B strode to where her granddaughter was planted on the floor. She snatched the letter, ripping it. As brittle in her fury as its delicate pages, she didn’t seem to notice.

  Somehow, Evelyn dislodged her voice from where it had curled itself around her toes. “Granny—”

  “You get yo’ fill?” Granny B muttered between clenched teeth. A tear, unchecked, dripped from her cheek onto her right breast pocket. “I hope so, ’cause I figure yo’ bus’ness is done here.”

  Evelyn tried to formulate a reason for her presence in her grandmother’s room, for reading her private things, but all she managed was, “Granny B, I just—”

  “You just what?”

  She did not, could not, reply.

  “Yeah, I just bet ‘you just.’” She turned from her. “Get up and get out.”

  Still, Evelyn crouched there.

  “What I say? Do you thank I don’t mean it?” Granny B quivered from the ends of her gray hair to her dirt-smudged walking shoes. Suddenly and forcibly moving into action, practically knocking Evelyn down, she snatched up the rest of the letters scattered about her granddaughter’s feet. As she gathered them, Granny B murmured, her voice icy taut with emotion, “Cain’t I just have somethin’ to myself? A little part that’s mine? I shoulda burned ’em. That’s what I shoulda done. Burned ’em with the rest of the trash all them years ago.” Granny B dumped the letters back into the box on top of the leather-bound book. She crushed the lid, stepping on it as she moved to reclaim her possessions. She tucked the box under her arm to keep the lid closed.

  “But you didn’t burn them. You kept
them—and you read them.”

  Turning in the direction of the voice, Granny B looked surprised to see Evelyn still there and as shocked as Evelyn that she had the nerve to speak. “Who say I read them?”

  Evelyn reached out tentatively, but Granny B twisted away, much as Evelyn had fled Kevin’s touch a few days before. She was sure, though, that her grandmother had enough composure to keep from throwing up on her feet.

  “Granny B, I only—”

  “I bet you only . . .”

  Even though she had Granny B by at least ten pounds and “towered” over her by two inches, Evelyn recognized and acknowledged the implied threat. Her clasped hands covered her mouth as if to hold in the faltering words explaining the attack on Granny B’s privacy, the assault upon Granny B herself. How could Evelyn say that she’d known what she was doing, but she’d thought it was important to do it anyway? It was that same inexplicable compulsion that had led her to Kevin’s phone, but what unknown truth had this latest reconnaissance mission revealed?

  Before Evelyn could formulate any further response, Granny B stalked from the room, still holding her box of letters. Evelyn moved to follow her, but then she spied the corner of something white peeking out from under the bed. Evelyn gave maybe one second’s thought to returning the letter addressed to Beatrice Agnew before slipping the envelope in the waistline of her jeans, in the small of her back. She ignored the clamor of her conscience as she ran to catch up with her grandmother.

  “Granny B?”

  Again, Evelyn didn’t look hard or long in the four-room, one-bath house. She found her holding open the front door, facing away from Evelyn, staring outside.

  “I just want to say . . . I mean, I know I shouldn’t . . . What I mean is, I’m sorry.” As Evelyn moved toward the open doorway, a corner of the letter she’d tucked away stabbed her—and Granny B—in the back. “Really, Granny B, I am sorry—”

  “Just what is you sorry for, gal? That you got caught? ’Cause I know that you ain’t sorry ’bout what you done.” Granny B cut her eyes at Evelyn, her voice rising barely above a whisper. “No, you might be sorry, but you ain’t really repentant. I can see it all over you. But that’s all right. I ain’t got to worry ’bout seein’ nuthin’ else where you concerned. Get out, Ev’lyn.”

  “But—”

  “I. Said. Get. Out.” A small piece of her icy facade melted. “I thought you was a bit different, Ev’lyn. I thought you understood what it meant for me to have somethin’ of my own. But fo’ you to come here . . .” Granny B swallowed and tightly wrapped her composure around herself. “Well, if you gon’ treat me with no respect, then I ain’t got no time for you. Get out. And don’t come back here. Them’s some words you don’t have to slip somewhere to hide and read ’cause I’m sayin’ ’em plain to yo’ face.”

  When Evelyn remained there, Granny B spat, “Is you glued to that spot? Ev’lyn. Get out this room. Leave my home. Don’t never come back here again.”

  Chapter Four

  “SO, EVIE . . . LYN,” Kevin stuttered, “you’re home early. Did you get kicked out?”

  Evelyn hung her large pink-and-black flowered Vera Bradley satchel on the hook beside her drafting table and pulled out her chair. She slid out of her low-heeled mules and tucked her feet under the desk. “Not hardly,” she answered woodenly.

  “I expected you to stay at the library most of the day.” Kevin looked at his wife over his computer screen. “What’s that? Is that the mail?”

  Yet again, Evelyn had lost her nerve before reading the letter she’d taken from Granny B’s house a few weeks before. She slipped the envelope into the thin top drawer of her three-foot-tall table and pushed the drawer closed. Although Granny B was right at the time about her lack of repentance, she was starting to feel convicted about taking it.

  Evelyn spared Kevin a glance before turning toward the mahogany chest of drawers hugging the wall on the left. “Why did you hope I’d be gone all day?”

  “I didn’t say I hoped you’d be gone all day.” Kevin spoke slowly and carefully as if he had to fit a quarter in a penny-size slot to pay for each word. “I just thought you’d stay until the library closed, doing research.” He glanced up at his computer. “It’s barely two thirty.”

  Evelyn sat down and reached beneath the desktop into the recess holding her manuscript about a boy named Peter. “Any calls?”

  “Just Yolanda. We talked about your mom’s birthday party until one of her kids broke something and she had to go.” He paused for a moment. “She was disappointed that I wouldn’t make it.”

  “I guess you’ve disappointed a lot of people lately. She should get in line.”

  Evelyn heard his exhalation as she arranged the colored pencils on her desk, but she resisted the urge to look up. Instead, she persisted in lining up her pencils by brightness and hue, a part of her writing routine. Giving him the silent treatment was a habit she’d recently adopted.

  Her life had always closely revolved around God and Kevin. Her day dawned and set with Him and him. Usually she and Kevin started the day with a couples’ devotional, even when he traveled. They checked in on each other throughout the day, whenever he had a moment between clients at his marketing firm or when she could pop into the teachers’ lounge at Bostwick Elementary. After work and school they met in their home office, where he’d fill her in on his outrageous conversations with clients and she’d bounce ideas off him about Peter and his antics with his imaginary dog, Dominick. They dedicated Sundays and Wednesday evenings to worship and Bible study and ended each day with prayer.

  At the first of the year he started spending more time in his home office, and they were together even more. As a young, childless, married couple they had nothing but time and energy for each other. They spent their evenings either one-upping each other in the kitchen or trying out a new eatery or jazz club downtown. Kevin helped her get past her fear of bugs long enough to hike with him one Saturday a month. She bribed him into watching classic movies on Sunday afternoons. At night, they exercised their passion for each other in more intimate, and just as fulfilling, ways. They had a good marriage . . . or so Evelyn thought.

  Six weeks ago, she had noticed Kevin’s phone charging in their bedroom. Just as she had disconnected it to take downstairs, a text message from “Samantha Jane” highlighted the screen: I know you said it was a mistake, but I miss you.

  Evelyn might have hesitated at Granny B’s, but she suffered no such compunction before typing in the password for Kevin’s phone, something she’d never before felt the need to do. Dread became horror as she’d followed the trail of messages: Meeting starts at 10 . . . Can you believe Jim? LOL . . . On for lunch? . . . What flight are you on? . . . Is that a new suit? Looking good! Then: Thanks for being there for me when I needed a friend . . . I’ve always loved talking to you, but I had no idea . . . If you ever need ANYTHING, including me . . . Last night was wonderful, and I have no regrets . . . Love, me . . . I miss you.

  Evelyn brushed away a tear and busied herself with the papers on her drafting table until she could steady herself and avoid Kevin’s eyes heating the curls on her crown.

  “Speaking of calls, when is the last time you talked to Granny B? You didn’t go last Saturday. How is she?”

  Her grandma had tossed away the title “Mrs. Agnew” years ago. She wore “Granny B” the same way she always wore her comfortable lace-up shoes and single hair braid. Everyone called her by this name, whether tied to her by blood, marriage, or community, from the county sheriff to the cashier at the fish market.

  But as far as Evelyn was concerned, Kevin cut all ties when he spent the night in Atlanta with Samantha Washington—Samantha Jane Washington. She wasn’t Granny B to him anymore. He lost that right—no, he spit on that right that “wonderful” night he spit on the right to call her Evie. Even if they had just come close to sleeping together before he’d remembered he had a wife at home.

  “Evelyn? I said, how is—?”

  �
��The same as always.” She finished arranging and rearranging her pencils and setting up her large manuscript pages on the tabletop. She adjusted the light so that it shone directly on the square of space where she designed her story. Evelyn studied her implements and opted for a blood red. A fiery red. The color of her anger and the hook-and-ladder truck Peter and Dominick were watching pass Peter’s house on Kirkpatrick Street.

  “And how is that?”

  She’s angry, righteously so. Betrayed! Evelyn raged, not sure if she was describing herself or her Granny B. But she only murmured, “Not different.” As far as she knew anyway. She hadn’t spoken to her since being kicked out, but Kevin didn’t know anything about that.

  There were a lot of things he didn’t know.

  Evelyn threw down her pencil and pushed away from the table. She dragged her eyes upward to meet his. “Kevin. What is it? What do you want from me? You don’t really care about my grandmother.”

  “As much as it hurts hearing you’ve kicked me out of the exclusive Agnew club, I’m grateful you’re finally talking to me. But, Ev, you can’t believe I don’t care about Gran—Miss Beatrice. Or you.”

  Before she could respond, they both turned toward the tickety-tap of their Yorkshire terrier’s nails on the hardwood floor, descending the stairs. Cocoa rounded the corner into the room and tickety-tickety-tickety-tapped over to her mama. She scratched gently against Evelyn’s bare legs. Evelyn reached down and scooped her up, nuzzling her under her chin, snuggling Cocoa close to her heart.

  Kevin did not wade across the deep, wide breach. Instead, he stuck a toe in the water, speaking quietly from behind the shelter of his desk, his face partially hidden behind his computer. “Of course I care about Granny B. I love her. She’s my family too.”

  Too, another tiny word that packed a powerful punch. “You don’t betray someone you love.” A little voice in her wanted to add hypocrite, but she smothered it—not because it would hurt him, but because it condemned Evelyn herself for her own crimes and misdemeanors. She cradled Cocoa under her left arm, and with her right she stuffed her pages into a portfolio and dropped her pencils into a carrying case. Why did I think I could get any work done here with him?