“Mama.” The word comes out sharper than I intend. “I got this,” I say again, softer this time.
It’s quiet for a while, even more awkward than when Hazel and my mother were getting into it. I can see Hazel pull out her phone. She’s probably not even doing anything on it, just biding the time before we get up out of there.
My mother comes in again to break the silence, like the conversation had never lapsed. “I hear you,” she says. “But just know you don’t need to prove anything. Come home, and look from home. I don’t want to bind you there, I know you have your own life. But you’ll feel better, Ava, if you’re looking from a place of power.”
THE REST OF THE WEEK MOVES SLOWLY. KING IS STILL mad at me for mentioning moving, but there’s an end-of-semester ceremony at his school, and he takes home the Model of Excellence award for achievement. After the program, I rush to the back to meet him. I notice that Harper is standing with another boy, a white boy with blond hair and braces, taking photos. The two use their bodies like dividers, and King and Claire skirt the edge of the group. When the photo is done, Harper asks King if he wants to go to Reginelli’s with them, and he says no, he’s tired.
We walk to our car and head home. Several times at red lights, I look back at him.
“I couldn’t be prouder of you,” I say more than once.
“I know,” he says.
“No, really, it’s a new school, a more rigorous one at that, but you didn’t let it faze you. You went in and you shined, in every way,” I add, but he still faces the window.
I start to ask him if something’s wrong, if it’s the move or something else, but I can tell he’s not in the mood. When we get to the house, I expect him to go straight upstairs, but he doesn’t. He and I sit in the living room for a while. Finally he turns to me.
“I was thinking maybe I could go to the skating rink, with Harper, just me and her, and you could drive us?” he asks.
I want him to feel better, and I know more change is waiting in this corner of his life, so I nod.
“This weekend?” he asks again.
“Okay,” I say, and he kisses me on the cheek and runs upstairs.
AS THE WEEK PLODS ON, MY MOTHER IMPROVES AND even drives herself to the East to visit Hazel on her own. Grandma Martha has been in fine spirits, reading during the day, dressing the way she did, and combing her hair back and snapping barrettes into it. It’s not that I forget what has been, but her condition, my proximity to it, seems less pressing, and I wonder if I can’t wait a little while longer. It would improve my prospects.
King and Harper firm their little plans. I half hoped a conflict would turn up. Taking my son on a date, sitting beside the girl’s mama, making conversation, well, it’s not the way I would want to spend my Saturday. Still, the morning of, he’s as excited as I’ve ever seen him.
He walks downstairs in a Nike track suit I got him for Christmas and new True Flights that are still flashing white.
On the way to Metairie, he asks me to play his favorite songs: “Bad and Boujee,” “That’s What I Like,” and I do, and we sing along the whole ride.
I’m talkin’ trips to Puerto Rico
Say the word and we go
You can be my fleeka
Girl, I’ll be a fleeko, mamacita
I will never make a promise that I can’t keep
He’s always been a talkative child but he’s even more so today, rehashing the plot of Baby Driver and telling me about the bowl he carved for me in the woodshed at school, that it’s still drying, but when I see it, I’m going to think a professional made it. He starts to whisper like somebody’s listening: “I made something for Harper too, I have it with me.” He roots through his pocket and pulls out a chain with a royal-blue glass pendant on the end of it.
“It’s beautiful, baby,” I say into the rearview.
He nods. “I’m going to give it to her today.”
I pause. “You sure?” I ask. “It’s so nice, you could keep it for—”
He stops me before I can finish. “I already decided, Mom,” he says. “I’m going to give it to her today.”
And when we pull into the parking lot, he runs in ahead of me, pointing to a white SUV Beamer behind him, shouting back, “That’s them. That’s her mom’s car. She’s already there.”
He’s right. Harper’s mother is inside helping Harper lace up her skates. After I pay for King, I sit with the mother at the refreshment stand. She talks more than I do. She’s looking for private schools for Harper. The high schools in the area get questionable is the thing; she works hard, and Harper deserves the best. I watch the kids as she talks—King is a better skater, and he laps Harper, then when they’re together again, he takes her hand and leads her. King dances while he glides, and Harper covers her mouth, pointing at him and giggling. I settle into the scene after a while. The mother wants to know what I do, and I tell her about Grandma, my old job with Mr. Jeff, that I’ve been trying out work as a doula.
“You’re kidding,” she says.
I shake my head.
“You’re kidding,” she repeats.
“No, why?” I say. “Are you one too or something?”
She shakes her head. “I wish,” she says. “No, it’s just that I had a doula with Harper. She lived with us for six weeks after too, took care of the baby. She was a saint. Her sister had committed suicide and she was a tough woman. She’d tell me what to do and I’d just respond, ‘Yes, ma’am.’” She laughs. “I could see you being like that too,” she says. “If you do become a doula, let me know. My younger sister is in a mom’s group now. They’re all looking for someone to night nurse.”
I’m about to tell her that’s not the kind of work I’m imagining when King walks back up, less animated than he was. He wants a soda so I hand him some change. He comes back, gulps it, then says he’s ready to go.
“Where’s Harper?” I ask, and he nods behind him. She’s still on the rink. Some other little boy has rolled up. He looks familiar. I squint at him and realize it’s that same kid from the program. I turn to Harper’s mother for an explanation but she seems just as confused as I am. King is at the door before I can say goodbye and I hurry out to meet him in the parking lot. I know better than to ask questions this time.
I play his songs on the car ride home but he doesn’t sing along. There’s traffic, and the ride back to Grandma’s is slow. We are about to turn onto St. Charles; I think he’s gone to sleep when he speaks.
“How do you know if someone likes you as a friend or as more than that?” he asks. He’s twisting his dredlocks like he does.
I was expecting something along those lines but I still hadn’t prepared for it.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s a feeling you get I guess,” I say after a while. “A special spark, a chemistry.” I’m talking slowly. “A tender spot in your heart that’s special for only that person,” I go on.
“Well, then I guess I can’t trust myself,” he says. “Because I thought we had that.” He whispers that part. “The whole time she had a crush on that kid, Eric; she told me just now. You were right about the necklace.” He throws it down on the seat next to him. “About the whole thing I guess.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” I say. I pull up at Grandma’s and hurry out of the car. I try to beat him to the house but he’s ahead of me, bolting up the stairs.
I check on him twice, but he says he needs his space, and I pour myself a tall glass of wine to wait it out. Juanita is there tonight so I don’t even look in on Grandma; though I feel guilty about that, I drown it out with Cabernet. A part of me wants to call Harper’s mama and curse her out for letting her daughter lead my son on, and why wouldn’t she want him? He is handsome, bright, hilarious. Everyone thinks so. It was probably his race, and a part of me is sad about that, but a bigger part is glad it’s over. I had known that the situation wasn’t headed anywhere safe, and maybe this is the best-case scenario, the least amount of hurt I could have expected.
It takes me a while to get upstairs, I feel so heavy and leaden, and when I do, I fall into a slumber so deep that when I wake up it feels like I’ve been out for many hours. It’s still dark out though. I can see from the light filtering in from the hallway that Martha is in my doorway. I hear her shouting before I can make out what she says. And then it’s clear.
“Thief,” I hear her shouting. “Thief,” she repeats. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust but soon I can see she’s holding the necklace, the one she gave me when I first moved in.
“You gave that to me,” I say, my voice groggy.
“I never thought it but there it is.” She points at me. “The ladies were right to tell me to keep an eye on you.”
She walks toward me and I cover my neck.
“Grandma, you gave that to me,” I repeat. “Remember?”
“And to think I trusted you. To think I treated you like family and you betrayed me. You made me look like a fool.”
“Grandma, get out,” I yell.
“Not until you admit it,” she says, and she lunges over to me but she hits the bed and doubles over in the process. She goes limp on the comforter and begins to wail.
I get up, slide my robe on, and lift her hand to walk her back to her room.
“I’m so sorry,” she whines as I hold her up. “I didn’t mean it, don’t leave me, don’t leave me. Promise me you won’t. Promise me you won’t leave me by myself.”
I tell her I won’t just to move her. When I get her to her room, I help her into bed, then rummage through her medicine cabinet for a sedative.
I sit beside her until she settles down.
“We were the prettiest girls in the whole county,” she says again.
“Um-hmm, Grandma,” I say, but I am tired and I tune out the rest.
She passes out soon midsentence, and I leave, but I don’t go back to my room. I stand outside King’s instead; he has always been a deep sleeper. I go in farther and watch his chest rise and fall. I can’t sleep, and as the sun’s coming up, I peer through his window. I look for the pigeon but it’s gone. There’s something else though, some sort of mass hanging from the oak tree, the height of a person, the depth of one too. I open the window. I can make out where the head would be, bent sideways; down where the legs would fall, whatever’s draped there seems to sway. I close the window back so fast I slam my finger, then scramble in the bed and pull King toward me. I lie like that until the sun is up. When King goes to pee and wash his face, I force myself back to the window for a peek. I pull the curtain, but it’s nothing; of course it’s nothing—thick clumps of dried Spanish moss dangling.
Josephine
1924
EVERYBODY WITHIN A QUARTER MILE HEARS THE TREE crack. I barely look up I am so engrossed in telling Theron about the dream I had the night before. “I saw her face,” I say. “I saw her face.” She’s a yellow old thing, with coal-black ringlets, but she opened her lips to cry, and my mama’s voice came out. I don’t remember her words, and the more I concentrate on the memory, the further it recedes, but that is okay because I heard her voice. Theron may care, or he may just enjoy the slick red syrup melting off the ice I froze for him. I only know he is content, and because we are both in our own ways being soothed, we don’t pay attention to the tree falling, not its fall nor our workers limbing from the branches’ base.
That night at Major’s, I am deep in the dressing and string beans I stewed, the chicken I baked in green onions, garlic, and orange juice when we hear the knock. Louis is there of course; he’s gained ten pounds since Eliza’s pregnancy. Not too much of my food he doesn’t return for seconds on, sometimes thirds. He talks even more than he eats, starting off most sentences with First of all and What you need to know is. He doesn’t do a whole lot else though. I’ve asked Eliza privately if he works, and I couldn’t get a straight answer from her, just some rumbling about yes and no at the same time.
“It’s Miss Link,” Jericho says about the noise at the front door.
I shake my head. “Can’t be Link, sounding like that.” It is too heavy a sound for it to be her, too jolting and sharp.
Major walks to the door, eases it open.
My back is to him, but I can tell by Major’s voice there’s a white man on the other side of him. By the way he drops the bass, dulls the edges around his words, and of course he calls him sir the way I taught him.
The white man’s words come out in sputters. “Uh, I hear tell, uh, one of your workers cut down my tree this morning.”
That’s when I stand up and turn around. It’s Charlotte’s husband.
“Is that right?” Major asks. It is like the white man’s nervousness steadies Major, and I want to tell him to slow down, there is strength in slowing down.
“Yeah, that’s what the people are saying, that that tree fell on my line.”
“I didn’t hear nothing about a tree. Mama, you heard something about a tree?” He doesn’t look backward when he asks me.
“Um-hmm, scraggly old thing. I didn’t think to mention it.” I walk to the door. “Only it’s on our line. I got the deeds at my house,” I say. “I usually carry them with me, sir, but I’m here taking care of my sick daughter-in-law, and I can get them as soon as I get home, carry them over to you.”
When I mention the deeds, he gets red in the face like they do. I look down at his feet—the shoes Charlotte’s mama said were so nice have seen better days.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. You say it was a small tree?”
“Scraggly old thing,” I repeat.
“Well,” he waves his hand at me. “I reckon there are plenty trees on that property. Maybe next time just check in with me. If something like that ever happens again.”
“Yes, sir, we will.” This from Major, and I am proud of him; there is that ever-present shame too that it has to go down this way, but it is slight. If I wasn’t looking for it, I wouldn’t know it was there.
Eliza has already gone to bed. She only has two months left. She’s not sick anymore, but she is accustomed to being a small woman, and now there are twenty pounds pulling her forward. It is the newness of the weight, the suddenness, that could trip her up; a fall this late could take the baby out, her too. A pregnant woman steps one foot into a graveyard.
The whole while Louis is just sitting there silent. It’s unusual for him, but after a while of it, I assume for once he’ll sit out. Then he clears his throat and reaches for his pipe like that’s his mouthpiece. He lights it and takes a few puffs before he speaks.
“You let a man treat you like a dog too many times, you start to feel like one. Start barking. Scratching yourself, eating with your hands, roaming, growling. Might as well walk on four feet. Nah,” he goes on, “can’t nobody make you grovel. I don’t like to see any man grovel,” he repeats.
“Grovel?” I pause, searching for the right words. There are so many they want to rush out in misplaced order. “Grovel?” I repeat. “Lord, deliver me. Do you mean stay alive? You don’t like to see a man protect himself and his family? You have any idea what would have happened if he hadn’t done it like I taught him?”
He shrugs. Jericho is watching us, trying to see which side he falls on, and I want to make it clear.
He is with me.
“All that might work in New Orleans, it may work if you so yellow you appear white like you, but this here is Resurrection, and I don’t need to go to school to tell you with serious authority that you talk to a white man like you got some sense, and he’ll blow your head open.”
Jericho looks troubled, but he has to hear it that way. It’s what it is.
I wait for Louis to say something more so I can repeat myself good enough for him to hear me, but he doesn’t say a word, and after a while I get up and walk back to my own house. Charlotte is on her porch when I get there, looking straight ahead.
“I came by,” she says. “But you weren’t there. I figured I’d wait up, that you were with your people.”
I n
od.
“Vern told me about that tree. I hope he didn’t scare y’all going all the way out there. Vern is a weak man.” She is whispering now. “One of his friends got in his ear, told him he needed to stand up, but he’s harmless.”
I almost say That mark on your eye don’t prove he harmless, but I take the advice I just gave my son, and I nod.
“Thank you for saying so,” I say.
“So I hope he didn’t scare you.”
“We’ll be more careful next time,” I say. It is the first time I have talked to her outside my kitchen, and something about it doesn’t feel right. I am itching to get back inside.
“Maybe I can come by sometime. I been busy with my group, but maybe tomorrow.”
“That’d be nice,” I say, and I turn my back. I look out the window a half hour later, and she is still sitting on her porch, whistling.
THE NEXT MORNING, I AM CLEARING MY BREAKFAST when Theron runs up.
“Somebody tore out the greens,” he says. “There were two whole acres of ’em just sitting, ready to be plucked, and somebody ripped them out by the root, then shredded them apart.”
“Or some thing,” I say. My eyes are still on my food. I hadn’t gotten the plates cleared, but I was already thinking about lunch. Pulled pork with sweet tomato sauce, extra pickles, and I can taste the first bite.
“Can’t be a thing. Can’t be an animal tear ’em out that neat. Got to be a person.”
That idea sends a chill through me, but I remain calm. It was Isaiah who taught me that people don’t care what you do in a situation like this, only how.
“Go call Major,” I say. “Let me get to my lunch.” But when he is gone, and I am done stewing the meat and smashing the tomatoes, I have to set the sandwich aside. It’s not the crops. They’ll set us back to be sure, but it’s the smell of the whole matter, not even cloaked, reeking and foretelling rot.
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