Yeah, I am a bad man, he thought. I did lots of bad things. He couldn’t stop seeing Louis’ face kept turned away from him, the Suzuki pumping out music, and these faces all turned to watch him in silence, the purr of expensive motors lost in the racing air.
He’d done bad things. He’d taken Louis up that same highway where cotton laced the barbed-wire fences, up I-5. A small state college in Northern California had offered Louis a basketball scholarship, a free ride, and Roscoe drove him there in the truck, motor rattling loud in the cab. Louis had never been past L.A., and Roscoe hadn’t gone anywhere since riding with Claude years before. Hawks sat on fenceposts along the road, and Louis’ head swiveled to look at each one. His voice grew higher, excited, while he ignored Roscoe’s talk about basketball and the team. “Look,” Louis said, “the hawks guarding those fields. Like each one is saying, okay, this is my thirty-nine posts, and don’t none a you come near them. I wonder if it’s thirty-nine…”
He chanted words to Roscoe, to the window, all the way north. “Egrets,” he shouted, and Roscoe hadn’t heard him so loud, sitting so close to him, ever before. “I can’t believe it, a crane, look, standing in that water by the field!”
Mud nests were mounded on the cement overpasses, made by swallows, Louis said, and once they saw a shimmering tornado of blackbirds rise from a plowed section of land, bodies turning and twisting in perfect unison, swirling and riding to fall and curve back against the sky. Louis was silent for a long time. And when they came closer to the college, Roscoe told him to forget about the bird foolishness and start thinking about practice. It would be harder than high school, and he didn’t want anyone telling him his son was lazy and absentminded.
Like his own father had told him, all day, every day, in Palm Springs. Roscoe couldn’t stop himself, though, his voice deep and harsh, saying, “You want to see some birds, buy a canary. Put him in your dorm room, and he can sing to you after you win.”
On the way back down, after he’d seen the coach, shaken hands a couple hundred times and left Louis in the gym office, thick fog had settled near the college, and all the way down the interstate. Tule fog, he remembered Claude calling it. He could barely see the fences, the hawks hunched down into their thick necks, feathers puffed ragged against the cold wind. They were too close together on the posts, he found himself thinking, watching, and quickly he was angry. Who gave a damn about how close the birds were to each other? But when he passed the exits for Bakersfield, the sun came back, and he stopped to stretch. One of the big white birds that had made Louis’ voice jump high in the cab stalked near a pool of irrigation runoff. Was that an egret? It was clean, stark white as the new socks he’d bought for Louis, and with a long, curved neck held high, the bird looked tall as a child.
Roscoe dropped another orange bag. People were still staring at him, he knew, but then he saw a circle of clear, blue-green water ahead, sparkling, wavering in the heat. He almost ran to be closer, and came to a mound of broken windshield glass in a small turnout, aqua chunks that were so greenish moss could be under their surfaces. He didn’t even look at the strips of tire nearby, the burned car seats. He laid the new plastic bag down and sat on a rock near the glass, imagined it water. Not much water in Rio Seco; dry river, that was what the city had been named for. But Louis went to the man-made lake with the other boys, and they told Roscoe that while they fished and caught crawdads to boil for dinner, Louis watched the ducks, the geese. They laughed at him, said to Roscoe, “We told him he can’t eat no duck, but homeboy wanna feed them ducks. Don’t come home with nothin, either.”
Louis lasted only a year at the college. He came back to the Westside loud and telling everyone he didn’t get enough playing time, in a hick town anyway. No soul, nothing to do. Shit, Roscoe thought, listening to the plastic bag ripple near him, what would he have done learning about birds? Be a professor of birds? What was that word—he’d known when he worked at the university. It came to him after a few minutes—ornithology. Yeah, and what was Louis going to do with that? Look through some binoculars?
He could have been a dope dealer anyway, taught trained pigeons to deliver bags of rock cocaine that Lester and Jimmy sold. Hell, I don’t know.
Roscoe heard a low noise, knew the flatbed, the outhouse, the guards were coming up the shoulder of the road, passing the stalled traffic. I don’t give a shit, I ain’t getting up. Crow time was long over, it was almost lunchtime. But cat time would be the hardest—when the afternoon turned purple and he was back at the facility, when the evening was coming fast and Louis used to say, “Why do the cats come out now? How come they all sit on the porches at the same time? How do they know what time it is?”
Roscoe pulled at his eyebrows, listened to the flatbed with his eyes trained on the glass. The mockingbirds would have a songfight again tonight. He closed his eyes to keep the heat inside them. He’d never known what to answer when Louis asked, when he sat at the edge of his father’s bed. “Why’s the mockingbird singing now? It’s three in the morning.”
“He’s drunk.”
“No, Daddy, he ain’t singing like he’s drunk. Like he’s sending a message.”
“Message is go to sleep.”
When he woke again, Louis’s eyes were shining, reflected in the streetlight. An hour had passed, and he was still listening, trying to decipher the song.
esther’s
ESTHER / SEPTEMBER
ESTHER FLICKED SALT INTO the pie dough and gathered up the sticky ball to roll out crusts for the two quiches. Fitting them into the pretty crimp-edged dishes, crumbling bacon onto the bottom of each, she didn’t even have to look at her hands. From the kitchen window, she saw the baby’s wet clothes hanging on the drying rack she used specially for them—the tiny squares were all fit together like a quilt, pale in the sun. She sprinkled onions onto the bacon. Quiche Lorraine. She couldn’t even remember where she’d first seen the recipe, or why she’d made it, but now everyone on the Westside expected it when they came to the house. Dense, creamy stuff with flaky crust, something no one else she knew ever made.
Quiche Esther. With greens folded in thick, soft strips through the eggs and cheese. She pulled the collards from their pot to press the water out; chicken spattered in the frying pan next to her. Cole slaw already chilling in the refrigerator. Rich green water trailed from under the wooden spoon when she pushed at the greens, and then she saw a square of red blur past the window. A slow blur. Yeah, there she went again—the woman driving the sportscar. What was it? A Triumph, Joe had told her. Esther’s husband Joe loved him some cars. And this woman driving past loved her some Joe.
“She’s out there again,” Esther called toward the living room, where Regina was keeping Arlene company, but they must not have heard, because they would have run into the kitchen in a minute to see what she looked like.
She cruised by slow enough that Esther met her eyes. Cinnamon skin, straightened hair in a bob, and Esther could tell just by the way she held her head that her nails were long and perfect, her eyelashes curled and thickened to fans. Esther smiled into the glass. And the woman’s hand came out the car window, graceful as a nodding flower, to rest on the edge of the door; wrist smooth, thin, no strong pushing-out veins and long blunt fingers like Esther’s. The car crept away slow as a pillbug, Esther still smiling, but when it was gone she felt nervous warmth in her chest.
“This girl wants my husband bad,” she said out loud, pressing the greens one last time and laying them over the bacon. She paused at the sink, staring at the lime tint from the greens water—was that the baby crying? No. But she heard Regina and Arlene from the living room. Now how in the world did they get started talking about that?
“Uh-uh, she had extensions. That girl’s hair was real thin, you could tell. Them pale, pale blondes don’t have no thick hair, not enough for all the braids she had in that movie.”
“I don’t know, Regina. I saw her on TV later, and her hair was pretty long.”
“I didn�
�t say it wasn’t long. I said if she didn’t have nobody else’s hair put in we wouldn’ta seen nothing but ten braids and a whole lotta scalp.”
“And after the movie came out, all the white girls started wearing cornrows. Talking about Bo Derek created the look.”
Regina snorted. “Shit. Esther was doing some bad braids years before Slow Bo ever showed up.”
Esther walked into the living room, laughing at Regina bent over a magazine. She’d figured—Regina read every magazine Esther kept for customers, and thought it was her job to tell them what was important. “Arlene, you come all the way from L.A. just to listen to this crazy woman, or you want me to do your hair?” Esther laid the hair she’d bought for Arlene on the table.
Arlene pressed a forefinger into Regina’s soft shoulder. “She is the news,” she said. “No, Esther, you know I’ve been waiting for two months for you to do me. I forgot you always take off with each baby.”
Esther bent to the bassinet, where the baby slept with her face crushed to the pad, fat cheek twitching. “Look, she’s smiling those fake smiles,” Esther said, and the women came to see. “Those little jerky ones in her sleep, where she doesn’t even know what’s making her happy.” The grins flashed and left the baby lips quick as sparks.
“Sweet dreams,” Regina said. “Dream ’em now.”
“Where you want to sit?” Esther asked Arlene. It would take all day and some of the evening to do what Arlene wanted—rows curving around her perfect forehead, all to the right side except three braids woven with gold thread around her left ear, those tiny tails hanging alone to sparkle.
“Start on the floor, I guess,” she said. “You comfortable on the couch?”
“I better be comfortable anywhere,” Esther said, “we only got an hour before the baby want to eat again.” She held up some of the bought hair to Arlene’s. The same brown, lit with copper way inside. She smiled. That was why women always came back to her, because she matched the hair perfectly, braided it so that their faces came first. Nobody left her house with hair looking like it belonged on somebody else.
“She keeps driving by,” Esther said, parting and pushing Arlene’s hair.
“Uh-uh. While you was in the kitchen?” Regina said, eyebrows jumping.
“I don’t know what she wants me to do,” Esther said.
“Who’s this?” Arlene asked.
“Woman from Oakland,” Esther said, knowing Regina’s eyes were on her.
“Yeah, she got a fatal attraction for Joe Killer,” Regina said.
“I never knew how he got that name,” Arlene said.
“You know that song, ‘Killer Joe…’” Regina hummed. “When we was in school, Joe was so pretty somebody called him that, and he said, ‘not me, I’m Joe Killer.’” She looked at Esther, checking, and Esther smiled.
“Everybody had big naturals then, remember?” Esther said. “And Joe’s was so big he couldn’t fit through the classroom doors sometimes.”
“Y’all telling some lies now.” Arlene laughed.
“No, now, serious. He was real light, had that hair—the girls use to fall out for him.” Regina touched the bassinet and sat down at the kitchen table, where the napkins and paper plates were arranged. “Joe Killer.” She looked at the TV. “Esther, Frank came by the other day and said that woman done bought her a condo up there in Hillgrove. She got a job at Rohr—some kinda executive secretary.”
“How Frank know?”
“His cousin works out there. I guess she talks a lot, this woman, I mean.”
Esther could feel by the strain in Arlene’s neck that she wanted to know more, so she said what she always did when she wanted to think. “I have to do this—lemme get it right, now.”
Arlene’s head tilted very slightly toward the TV, and Esther watched her own fingers splay out, pinch back again and again in the hair. The fingers were ashy up by the knuckles, from doing the baby’s wash, and glistening black at the tips from the light hairdress. You so black you sweat coffee. She and Regina and the other girls had been standing around the steps in high school, years ago, and when she’d tried to loudtalk Alvin James, “Shut up, Esther, you so black you sweat coffee” rang against the brick walls.
“Yeah, brother, and I’m so light I sweat cream.” Joe Killer said it with a warning in his gray eyes. The first time he’d ever acknowledged the time he spent with her—Alvin jumped back dramatically and said, “Joe Killer, is that you, man?”
“That’s me, brother.” Esther thought now that she hadn’t heard anyone say that in years. The boys told each other who they were attached to, in those words, who they had become. Joe was her.
They always waited for her to speak again first. “Arlene, you wouldn’t believe this woman,” she said. “Now Joe been had his flings, it’s a part of him, and I told myself I couldn’t mind. Tell me I’m crazy, but George Green, used to be the history teacher at the high school, remember him, Regina? He would talk about how in Africa, men had several wives because they had to—men got killed in war, hunting, and women needed a break between babies.”
“Yeah, easy to say and hard to do,” Arlene said.
“But I had the first three babies all in a row, so quick, and I was always tired. I told Joe, serious, he was on the road driving the truck, and I told him go on and have some fun. I won’t lie, it hurt the first couple of times he told me he did something. Cause he always told me.” She swept loose hairs into her hand. “When he came home, I wasn’t waiting for it. I waited for him, but not the bed.”
“Come on, everybody’s love come down,” Regina said. “Shoot, Victor too damn tired to do anything when he come home.”
“Regina, I’m not trying to prove Joe’s a stud.” She shook her head. “Forget it.”
“No, come on with it.” Arlene’s head pulled against Esther’s fingers.
“That’s just the way things work. Except this woman from Oakland thinks she’s taking him away.”
Regina said, “The baby’s wakin up. I’ma get her. What you think Miss Oaktown plannin to do?”
Esther stopped and looked at the baby’s bobbing head. “I don’t know. Come in here and whup me? Drive by till I move? Huh.”
Stroking the baby’s shoulder, Esther felt those long pauses when the sucking slowed, the eyes flickered, and then the lips pulled again hurriedly like the baby thought she’d never eat again. She looked at Arlene, watching the first of the soaps with Regina, and thought that the braids were coming along nice. Esther felt tiredness fan out across her back, and she wished Green Hollows hadn’t been demolished. All the old people had lived there, and Miss Rosa used to walk up from her house in the hollow every day, to cook the chicken and do the salads, until she’d had to move. Now Esther had to start cooking before 7:00, and then do the wash and clean before people came. The baby dug her bare toes into Esther’s leg, and shoes walked across her brain. She’d had to buy new ones for the four older kids last week; Colette, the baby, no, not the baby anymore, Colette was in kindergarten now and wanted a backpack like the others.
Why was she up here thinking about money? She always made plenty between the braiding and the food; chicken was bulk at the warehouse; she bought cheap bacon because it was just the trace of flavor the quiches needed, and the greens were free. Her greens tree, the one Red Man had given her years ago, gnarled strong and thick up the fence in the back.
Two dollars a plate. Money wasn’t doing this to her scalp, itching and pulling worry tight around her ears. She could have gotten a job years ago, when she took clerical courses at the city college, but she liked staying home with the babies. Spending a whole hour staring at them: the tiny arms were so straight, only two deep wrinkles and a dimple for an elbow, the knuckles just dots where the fingers began. She felt this baby’s head heavy against her arm now, the thick folds of neck stretching when she lolled back. Joe brought home enough money. But he hadn’t called today, and lunchtime was coming. She drew her fingers backwards against her eyebrows, down her nos
e.
“I’ma put Porscha in the back room to sleep, so she’ll take a long nap,” Esther said.
Arlene walked over to touch the baby’s soft curls. “Look at that hair. She was sleeping so good in here, let her stay.” Esther dipped her head in a question. “She smells like baby so strong I get it all across the room,” Arlene said, embarrassed. “I always loved that smell.”
But Esther walked down the hallway. She knew the baby would sleep fine in the bassinet, but she wanted five more minutes with her. Sliding her onto the crib sheet belly-first, she laid a hand on the skin so perfect, so light. All the children were gold, with Joe’s neat small eyebrows and nose. What had they gotten from her? Only her hands, she thought, big and square. And the half she’d given to the gold, the darkness added to Joe’s light. Perfect skin—she loved to stare at them when they were too small to know she was looking—no scars on their cheeks, no lines around their mouths. Glossy eyes and unmarked as girls in the magazines on the coffee table, there for customers. I’m standing here thinking this way because of her, she thought. Because I know each baby comes home and people say, “Lucky it ain’t black as Esther. Blueblood kids got it hard.” And the women, all these years, talking about, “Why Joe Killer want to stay with old black Esther? Don’t know how he find her in the dark to make all them babies.” She put the heels of her hands to her neck and went back to the front room.
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