And when I pressed you for your life, you’d say that you grew up in a boy’s shelter, that it was hard, working your way through Columbia and getting set up in your own business. You’d mention a woman named Mrs. Jackson sometimes. The world lost a lot when she died, you said. But you’d never talk about your feelings surrounding any of that. “Only the present has potential” is how you’d brush me off. Deal with the man in front of you. I was trying, George. But what you didn’t understand is that I thought you didn’t trust me enough to share those feelings. A person is made up of much more than the “now.” I had opened up to you about the frightened little girl inside of me because I’d finally come to believe that you would never hurt her. And the more I did that, the more you shut yourself off. I wasn’t going to beg you to trust me. And since I refused to think of my life anymore without you in it, this was just the way it would have to be. But it was a bitter pill to swallow. I have to admit, sometimes it went down better than others. And the day I dropped by your office was not one of those better days.
It was so weird, walking back into that lobby, thinking about how it felt the first time. It seemed as if I’d changed so much since then and it was only five months later. The next day you were going to Philadelphia for the playoffs and from there to San Diego, so you were working late to tie up loose ends. I was bringing you the T-shirt as a going-away present. I forgot who you said was playing who, or whose side you were on, so I just had printed up: HE’S MY FOOTBALL BABY. The broken elevator should have told me to turn around and go home. No need to meet you after work, you were coming over anyway. And your guilt about not spending a single day of your vacation with me would make you extremely nice. When I thought about how nice, I figured I’d meet you halfway and climb those steps.
I was out of breath by the fifth floor, and that’s when I got my second warning: the exit door was locked, and I was trying to decide if it was worth it to go down one flight and try the other end of the building when a woman with curly red hair opened the door from the hall. Short and pretty. Blue-green eyes. And fine sprays of freckles over her nose and forehead. She said I was lucky she had worked overtime because the janitor always locked this stairwell door after a certain hour. I thanked her and stood there, looking at the stairway where she had disappeared, for a long, long time. When I finally made it into your office, the bag holding your T-shirt was small enough to fit between my fists.
“Why didn’t you tell me Shawn worked in this building?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant. How did you find out?”
“It’s not relevant. But I’m sure that’s the least of what you’ve been keeping from me.”
“I’m not going to start with you, Ophelia, okay? That part of my life is over—she knows it, I know it, and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything, George. Not one goddamned thing. You see, nothing about your life is relevant to me. I’m just someone you fuck when you have a mind to—I should start charging.”
“You’ve got a dirty mouth, and I don’t like that.”
“I don’t care what you like. Since when do you care about me—you sneak around and hide things from me, you—”
“Ophelia, what difference did it make where she worked? If I still wanted to see her, I could see her.”
“I’m not talking about her.”
“Then what are you talking about, or is this some new kind of tantrum to take up my time because I’m going to the games?”
“Forget it, George. Just forget it. Here, I brought you—”
You ignored the bag on your desk. “No, I don’t want to forget it. What do I hide from you? You know as much about me as anyone.”
“Then that’s pathetic—because I don’t know anything.”
“This is getting us nowhere.”
“That’s where we’ve been for a while.”
“Okay, Ophelia, what could you possibly need to know about me that I haven’t told you—my age, my background, you’re standing in the place where I work. The only thing left is my social security number and shoe size. So come on—ask me a question. Any question. You’ve got my undivided attention. Ah, I see we have silence. That just shows you how ridiculous you can be with absolutely no effort.”
“And you can be one sarcastic son-of-a-bitch.”
“You know I hate that word.”
“Yeah, that I do know. And here’s a question for you—why, George? Why do you hate being called a son-of-a-bitch? A pompous, snide, uptight son-of-a-bitch?”
Your face was unreadable as you put on your coat, picked up your briefcase, and walked out. You had left my T-shirt on your desk. I walked out without it as well. You were nowhere in sight when I got to the outer hall. You didn’t call me that night, and you didn’t answer your phone. I knew not to try the next day, you were in Philadelphia. And from Philadelphia to San Diego. Come hell or high water, you were going to the games. And when you got back I would have to make the first call anyway. I suppose I owed you an apology, but there was something that you owed me.
The third warning was my crushing disappointment when the phone rang the next evening and it wasn’t you. An old boyfriend. No, I wasn’t doing a thing. And sure, I’d like to have dinner. His place? Why not. Yes, I remembered where it was. Those seven blocks were long ones: four over to Riverside Drive, and a left turn to go north. I pushed all of those warnings out of my mind as I was passing Riverside Park. So when I reached his building, I didn’t hesitate before going in.
I came back from Philadelphia that night to answer your question. And to ask you to marry me. Enough was enough. If we kept on like this, there wasn’t much hope for us. Somebody had to take the first chance. I had understood what you were saying in my office perfectly, but I didn’t want to deal with it. I wasn’t going to let you manipulate me into opening up my guts before I was ready. But the point was, when would I ever be ready? How frustrated would you have to get before I had this elusive guarantee from you that I was seeking? It’s funny, I was losing you because of my fear of losing you. Star-crossed. Yeah, that’s what we were. Always missing each other. That weekend was a total bust. I didn’t have the spirit to be racing to a plane out to California—it was hard enough concentrating on the game in front of me. It didn’t matter that the Eagles had won. They were coming up against either Oakland or San Diego in the Super Bowl, and either of those teams could beat them with their hands behind their backs. Yeah, in two weeks it was going to be an AFC victory in New Orleans. I was charmed by that city, and maybe I could enjoy it again, once I got all of this straightened out with you.
New Orleans. Tampa. Miami. None of those cities seemed like the real South. Nothing like the place you came from. I was always in awe of the stories you told so easily about Willow Springs. To be born in a grandmother’s house, to be able to walk and see where a great-grandfather and even great-great-grandfather was born. You had more than a family, you had a history. And I didn’t even have a real last name. I’m sure my father and mother lied to each other about even their first names. How would he know years later that I might especially wonder about his? When the arrangement is to drop twenty bucks on a dresser for a woman, you figure that’s all you’ve left behind. I had no choice but to emphasize my nows, while in back of all that stubbornness was the fear that you might think less of me. But I was going to be a lot less without you in my life anyway. So here goes nothing, I thought, as I walked up Broadway toward your street.
I decided to phone from the corner first. I could have walked in with my key, but I wanted to give you a chance to invite me up. At that moment, I needed all the encouragement I could get. No answer. I was about to redial when I spotted you across the avenue, heading west. I recognized the red cashmere coat I had given you for Christmas and that undeniably proud strut. Was she taking a walk? I thought. Going out to meet friends? By the time I’d made it across Broadway myself, you were turning the corner two blocks ahead onto Riverside Drive. Perhaps it was glimpsing the side of your fa
ce or a certain angle of your shoulders that gave me the feeling something wasn’t right. I started to speed up. I turned the corner and was just about to call out when that door closed behind you in the lobby.
I waited all night.
It was a gray and cold morning when I came out of that building and saw you standing there across the Drive, leaning against the promenade wall, your trench coat buttoned to the neck with the collar up. It didn’t matter how you got there. All those months I had wondered, and this is how it ends. I was too drained to feel anything—shame, fear—when you finally walked over. Your face was still unreadable. And your voice was matter of fact when you took your hand out of your pocket and slapped the living daylights out of me.
“My mother was a whore. And that’s why I don’t like being called the son of a bitch.”
My eyes were still blurred. My bottom lip had been slammed against my teeth and was starting to bleed. Your fingers were like a vise when they gripped mine as you began dragging me up Riverside Drive to Harlem. We reached the pier at 125th Street. Still crushing my hand, you pointed to a brownstone across the way.
“I found out that’s where I was born. She was fifteen years old. And she worked out of that house. My father was one of her customers.”
A deserted, crumbling restaurant stood near the pier. The side windows had been broken, but across the front in peeling letters I could read, Bailey’s Cafe. And I could hear the cars moving above us on the overpass, the muddy water hitting against the rocks, the sound of gulls.
“The man who owned this place found me one morning, lying on a stack of newspapers. He called the shelter and they picked me up. I was three months old.”
We went past Bailey’s Cafe to the edge of the pier. You finally let my hand go, put yours back into your pocket, and stared into the water.
“Later, her body washed up down there. I don’t have all the pieces. But there are enough of them to lead me to believe that she was not a bitch.”
You then looked me straight in the face.
“The last name I have was given to me at the shelter on Staten Island where I lived until I was eighteen—Wallace P. Andrews. And how do I feel about all this?”
You smiled. I guess I could call it a smile.
“I feel that men will often grow up thinking of women in the same way they think of their mothers. You see, when I was growing up, there was no reason for me to neglect her on the days that would have been important: her birthday, anniversary, or the second Sunday in May. I didn’t forget to call now and then to ask her how she was doing. I didn’t find her demands annoying, or her worries unnecessary. I was the kind of son who didn’t refuse to share my friends, my interests, or my hopes for the future with her. Yeah, that’s pretty close to the kind of son I was.”
I don’t know how long I closed my eyes, but when I opened them, I asked you to marry me. Next week, you said, if I didn’t mind spending my honeymoon in New Orleans.
Usually, there ain’t much happening here between Candle Walk and the first spring planting. Folks that keep gardens putter around, spreading a little manure, wood ash, and fish waste on their soil. They may sharpen some hoes, scrape the rust off the teeth of their rakes, or do a bit of pruning in their fruit trees. Them that still gig and fish will use the days to repair their nets and haul their boats up on shore to oil the rudders or slap a new coat of paint on the sides. But none of that takes but so long, and even with the shorter days there’s a good spell of time to fill between making up a bed and getting back into it at night. Parris and Reema see a lot of their customers in the barber shop and beauty parlor this time of year, while not seeing a lot of business. Folks will wander in and talk about what ain’t been brought into the general store for them to buy if they had the money. Will even get into hot arguments about the quality of goods that ain’t on the shelves. Small places live on small talk, but sometimes the happenings can be too lean for everybody to get enough fat out of it to chew over. It gets kinda depressing the winters when nobody’s bothering to fool around with somebody else’s wife or husband, when nobody’s wild boy got picked up beyond the bridge on a drunk and disorderly or a wild gal’s done got herself in the family way. Even Reverend Hooper gets down in the mouth them winters. All that hell and brimstone in his sermons don’t carry the same kinda sparkle when there ain’t no likely candidates to feed the fires.
This year is gonna be way different. And the word is speculation. More than talking about what is, folks love to talk about what might be. They got Cocoa Day and the widow Ruby to thank for that. Cocoa went off and got herself married about a month after Candle Walk. Hooked up with a city boy—a big-time railroad man, some say. An engineer and all—owns his own train. Some argue back that an engineer only runs a train. But Miss Abigail says—and she should know—that the boy has his own business. What other kinda business would an engineer be into? Into the business of lying, half that’s standing by the store answer back. New York City is full of con artists. Muggers, pickpockets, and God knows what else. Why didn’t Cocoa come home and get herself a husband, somebody she could trust? Now, if that don’t beat the band—come home and get a husband. Who was she gonna marry here? This sorry lot in Willow Springs can’t even spell train, no less run one. Whatever the boy is into, Mama Day says he’s all right. And you know, they don’t make enough wool—even up in New York—to pull anything over her eyes. But Mama Day ain’t seen him, has she? Nobody down here’s seen him yet. Awful suspicious, you up and marry somebody folks ain’t met. Awful smart, if you ask me. Get him first and then let him see the mess you had to grow up around. One look at this place and there wouldna been no wedding bells. But Ruby’s bringing plenty of wedding bells here come spring. Plenty of everything—mercy, mercy.
Willow Springs owes Ruby a debt of gratitude this winter. Since no one really knows Cocoa’s new husband, there’s a limit to figuring out what he is or ain’t—what did or didn’t go on up there in the city. Folks woulda tired of the subject long before spring. But Ruby and Junior Lee now, there was no end to what could be said. And as that wedding approaches, there’s something new each week to carry talk along. First of all, Ruby is planning herself a real church wedding. Those are rare in these parts, even for the first time around. Most of the young ones do it simple and quiet like Cocoa did. They’ll go beyond the bridge to a South Carolina or Georgia courthouse and take out a license, and then, depending upon their standing in church, Reverend Hooper will marry ’em in his office or they’ll go back over the bridge the next week and have the county clerk do it. The wedding dinner is a big thing, though. About six months after they start keeping house, their folks and neighbors will cook up one something of a feast. We wait half a year to make sure it’s worth going through the trouble—human nature being what it is and all. No point in barbecuing a whole side of meat, frying tons of fish from The Sound, and using up a barrel of flour making cakes and pies if she’s gonna be back home with her mama before the food gets digested good. So if this thing of Cocoa’s is going to last that distance, the pots and pans will be out when she brings him down mid-August.
Ruby and Junior Lee is another matter. Their wedding is gonna be BIG—beginning to end (in more ways than one, folks say). The church is to be decked out in flowers, Reema playing the piano, and Reverend Hooper in his Sunday robes. Ruby’s ordered Junior Lee a new suit from the Sears catalogue and bought a whole bolt of blue silk cloth for her dress. Talk had it that she needed three bolts of cloth, but that’s just being evil. One bolt will surely do it—it’s to be a short dress. And Ruby ain’t asked folks to cook her a single biscuit for the party she’s throwing right after. She’s gonna do it all herself: twenty chickens, a whole hog, and fifty pounds of drumfish. But what are the rest of us gonna eat? some ask. Oh, the jokes don’t end. There’s one for every pound on Ruby, so we’re talking about a lot of fun. And yet you couldn’t rightly call Ruby fat—she’s amazing. Nothing jiggles when she walks or gushes out of her clothes. Whatever she puts i
nto her mouth turns into solid meat and it’s distributed even-like on all six feet of her: arms and legs almost thick around as small tree trunks and spreading out from a middle that is as wide as the old oak down by Chevy’s Pass. Ruby made a bet with Parris years ago that one of her aprons could be tied around that oak tree. She won. And she’s gotten bigger since then. Folks done forgot the color of her eyes—they been pressed into tiny slits, but her face’s gotten lighter over time ’cause the skin keeps stretching out. Yeah, folks can say all the mean things they want. That them roots she’s working may have got Junior Lee to the altar for her, but Ruby being so much older than him, she’ll be dead before he finds his way into all of that. Or him having the reputation of being far less than ambitious; he’ll tire out on the wedding night just trying to roll up her gown. All that talk aside, that wedding’s coming this spring. And Junior Lee is getting more than a woman, he’s marrying himself an event.
While things are going on loud like that inside the beauty parlor or in front of the general store, other things are moving along quietly. And they can be the more important. See, we ain’t paid too much attention to the change in Bernice Duvall. She’s a lot less nervous than she used to be, and she’s walking everywhere now. That old green Chevy stays parked in her side yard and she makes it the three miles from the south end to the stores at the bridge junction on foot. She’s there once a week to pick up her special order of blackstrap molasses, brown rice, and brewer’s yeast. She’ll stand a while and exchange the time of day with folks, her packages hoisted up on them hips that are starting to fill out slowly but surely. And if someone asks her about her mother-in-law, she don’t get that funny little twitch around her mouth anymore. She’ll say real pleasant that she’s helping Pearl make her dress for the wedding—Pearl is gonna be Ruby’s matron of honor—and things are going along just fine. The only time Bernice will hurry along is when she’s got frozen meat in her bag: twice a month the store brings in a box of liver, beef kidneys, and beef heart for her. Nobody asks why she and Ambush is eating them strange things now, and Bernice don’t offer the information. But she’ll nod her head and agree out loud when for the hundredth time someone says they’ll be glad come spring. Her words hold a different ring, though—it’s like when the visiting choir sings they’ll be glad going on to glory come Judgment Day. Contentment is the last thing folks want around here in the winter, and so Bernice Duvall goes unnoticed as she quietly moves about the business of preparing for her miracle.
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