Third Girl from the Left

by Martha Southgate

  He was back behind his counter in a matter of minutes, polishing, polishing. Joe sat at his stool, nursing his Coke and carefully not speaking. The marble surface of the counter gleamed. It needed no more effort. But Johnny Lee kept polishing. It was easier if he kept his mouth shut and never stopped moving.

  18

  BY THE TIME ANGIE WAS FOURTEEN, MILDRED couldn’t do anything with her. All she did was fight with Jolene and Otis and stay up in her room doing God knew what for half the day on the weekends. That is, when she wasn’t trying to go down past the ice cream parlor and switch her little fast butt past all those no-’count Negroes that hung out by the pool hall. It wasn’t like Mildred didn’t have enough on her mind. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what happened when you let things get out of hand.

  It had been seven years now since she’d said goodbye to William. She’d chosen what she knew was right. Johnny Lee was broken in two, but he didn’t leave. And he didn’t beat her. And he didn’t make her leave. He was a good and loving man. Mildred hung onto that for her life. For a long time after that first night, he slept on the sofa; they told the children he wasn’t feeling well. He went to work early in the morning and came home minutes before dinner every night. He talked very little and the children looked from one parent to another at the dinner table with the hunted look of young fawns, Angie especially. Only once, not long after the scene she witnessed, had she ventured to ask about that day. “Mama, where was you that day I broke my arm? Why was Daddy so mad?”

  “I did some things I wasn’t supposed to do, punkin. That’s all. You know how me and Daddy get mad when you don’t do like you’re supposed to do. That’s how Daddy felt. Just mad, that’s all.”

  Angie studied her seriously. Mildred knew her daughter didn’t believe her. “Well, he sure was mad” was all she said, though. Mildred watched her daughter skip off, her arm still tethered to her side. Wasn’t slowing her down none. But her mama hadn’t been there.

  That’s what she told William when she told him that she had to end it: that she’d failed her baby. She was so terrified making her way to him for the last time that she thought she might faint. When she saw his face and considered what she had to say she thought she might die. Could words be so hard to say, that you’d die saying them? That day she wondered. The look on his face. “So he found out?”

  “Yes, he did, William. And I . . . you know I love you, but . . . I got the kids and he’s a good man. I love him too. And what folks would say . . . the kids.” She had trouble making sentences. He looked at her steadily. Not touching her. “Did you tell him it was me?”

  “No.” For some reason she couldn’t fathom, Johnny Lee had not insisted that she tell him who her lover was. She was baffled but grateful. William nodded.

  “I guess we gonna have to go on with our lives from here,” he said.

  Her chest hurt so much she could barely speak. “I don’t know if I can.” She was crying now. William stepped to her and took her hand. “You can. You have to. I will too.” There were tears in his eyes, but they didn’t fall. “You go on now.”

  “William . . .”

  “Go on. I love you.” He gave her a gentle push toward the door. Before she knew it, she was on the other side. She left the theater and walked up the street as bold as you please. Johnny Lee was at work and she had nothing more to hide.

  She sent the children to the pictures without her for a while. She thought she might die between missing the pictures and missing William, but somehow she went on. After about the seventh or eighth time they innocently reported that the man who used to always be out front before the pictures was gone. “You know, Mama, the one who goes upstairs and shows them. Mr. Henderson,” said Jolene. Mildred nodded. Johnny Lee just kept eating. She thought she might have seen a brief movement from him, a look in his eye. But later she thought she’d imagined it. The next day, after everyone was gone to work and school, she found a package wrapped in brown paper on the doorstep with her name on it. It was William’s copy of The Migration of the Negro, with a note inside. This belongs to you. So do I. I couldn’t see no way to work it out. But I meant what I said. You live in my heart. And if the time ever comes, I'm yours. I’m yours. Love, William. Lord, how she cried as she hid that book in her wedding chest. Johnny Lee never ever looked in there for nothing. Every now and then when she was in the house alone, she’d get it out and stroke the cover. It still felt like silk under her fingers.

  Keeping everything in wore her out. It was like having a light on in the basement all the time; the drain on her energy was slight but constant. She would have liked to tell everything to a girlfriend, but she really had only church-lady friends. She could not have said what was in her heart, especially since they all went to the same movie theater where her lover had worked and bought their menstrual pads and aspirins and stomach remedies from the man she had betrayed. Sometimes she cried. Hard. She missed the sparkly conversations, the shooting-star feeling of being with William. She and Johnny Lee found their way to a bruised truce: not much sex, not much talking, but a hard-edged communion that she took as her due. Sometimes she caught him looking at her over the dinner table with shattered wonderment, and she knew that it was right that she’d stayed but also that he’d carry the pain she’d caused him to his grave. And she had to live with that. But usually she was all right. Except where Angie was concerned.

  Today Jolene came home from school and said that everybody was talking because they’d seen Angie out back of the school kissing on Calvin Wiley. “And, Mama, my friend Clara said that they go back there every day and she seen him feeling on her titties! What you gonna do, Mama?” Jolene had to know anything bad that was going to happen to Angela. She almost seemed, in her prudish way, to relish it.

  Mildred dropped the sponge she was using on the dishes into the sink with a sigh. “Me and her daddy will talk to her, Jolene. Now I know you got some homework to do and them chores to get to. So whyn’t you go on. You bigger than her anyway—you got enough to do.”

  “I know that, Mama. That’s why I don’t spend my time kissing boys in back of the school. You know, if you got on her more, she wouldn’t be so fast.”

  “I’ll thank you, miss, to let me talk to her as I see fit. Ain’t nobody made you the mama around here, last I checked. Now get on.”

  Jolene stomped up the stairs. Mildred sighed. I wish I liked her better, she thought. Must be a sin not to like your own child. She wondered what she would say to Angie. Nothing she said seemed to work.

  The door slammed, announcing Angela’s arrival. She had never in her life entered a room quietly. At fourteen, she was all legs and arms and shockingly pretty. “Hi, Mama.” She threw her books down on the kitchen table.

  “Put those away, child. And get upstairs and get to work on your homework.” Not yet. She wasn’t ready yet. She went back to washing dishes.

  The Edwards family sat down to dinner at 6:30 that night, as always. Johnny Lee led the prayer and then they all tucked in to their food. Otis never had much to say. At eighteen and in his senior year of high school, he was already engaged to a nice steady girl from his class and had plans to get a job out in the oil fields outside of town—they were hiring coloreds occasionally now. Things were changing. If there had been any farming left to do, it would have suited him well. But there wasn’t. And he was turning into the kind of man who would happily take what he could get. Jolene took precise, fussy bites of her food, dabbing at her mouth delicately. She sat up very straight. Angie ate eagerly and talked a blue streak, until Jolene said, “Did Mama speak to you yet, Angie?”

  “Speak to me about what?”

  “’Bout how you actin’ out back of the school.”

  “What?” said Angela. Her voice went up in a nervous squeak.

  Johnny Lee stepped in. “What’s she talking about, Angie? Do you know, Millie?”

  “It’s not something I want to talk about at the table, J.L. Let’s you and me and Angie talk later.”

/>   “What’d I do?” said Angela with the indignation of the caught.

  “Yeah, Mama. She didn’t mind having everybody looking at her. Ain’t you gonna say nothing?” Jolene again.

  “In God’s name, woman, what is this child talking about?”

  In the face of her father’s persistence, Angela suddenly changed tactics, jumping up from the table. “I was kissing a boy, OK? That’s what Miss Priss here is so upset about!” Looking right at Mildred, she shouted, “It’s not like you’ve never done it.” Then she ran from the room. Mildred and Johnny Lee didn’t even look at each other. Then Johnny Lee stood up, and said, “My God, woman. My God.” He pushed roughly back from the table and walked out the front door. Otis kept eating. Jolene sat without moving; the look of terror on her face made it clear that this had gone further than she’s intended, that she was on the verge of knowing things she didn’t want to know. Mildred rested her head on her hands, moaning. Then she got up and went to speak to her youngest daughter.

  Angie was face down on her bed, sobbing. Mildred came in but stood only just over the threshold. Somehow, she couldn’t go any closer. “Angie? Angie, why are you actin’ like this?”

  She rolled over. “I kissed him, yeah. He asked and I kissed him. I didn’t even like it that much, Mama.”

  “Well, me and your daddy, we’re just worried that you’re gonna get taken advantage of. That . . . well . . . that you’ll get to like it or you’ll get with some boy who likes it and you’ll be writing a check you can’t cash. We just don’t want to see that happen.”

  Angela wiped the tears off her face and looked at her mother fiercely. “I know why Daddy was so mad at you that time. I know now.”

  “Angie, it’s things between a man and a woman that a little girl just can’t understand.”

  “Well, I know. And I’m not so little. I understand more than you think I do.”

  “Oh, child, you think you do. That’s how it is. But you don’t know. Not yet.”

  Angela looked at her, her eyes hard. “I know what I need to know.”

  Mildred looked at her daughter and saw her slipping away. Not a thing she could do. She’d lost the right seven years ago in William’s arms. “Well, just don’t be out back of that school with any boys anymore. I ain’t having that in my house. You understand.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As soon as she left the room, she heard the tinny sound of the record player being turned on. Some of that Motown music Angie liked so much filled the air. Mildred stood alone on the other side of her daughter’s door, and listened. But she didn’t understand.

  19

  ANGELA WAS TWENTY, SHE HAD FINISHED HIGH school and started secretarial school. She was the best typist in her class. She never stopped shocking her mother. She had long curvy legs and a neck you couldn’t help but think about and hips that came straight from Mother Nature and invited some man to touch them. Mildred was her mother, not someone aspiring to be her lover, and even she could see how beautiful her daughter was. It scared her. She could see how this one was bound and determined to make her own way, and that her way wouldn’t be in Tulsa. Otis and Jolene had been grown and gone since Angie was sixteen. They each had children of their own and Angela was still here. She walked down Archer Avenue as though it were her personal property. And Mildred couldn’t do a thing to stop her.

  “Mama, you better get down here. We gonna be late.”

  “I’m comin’ girl. That picture ain’t going nowhere.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said that last week and we was late. Come on, Mama. It’s Katharine Hepburn.” Sometimes it seemed like their love for movies in general and Katharine Hepburn in particular was all they had in common. Today they were going to see The Lion in Winter down at the Dreamland. They still went every Saturday afternoon, even though the theater was dirty and smelled of rancid oil and the part of town the theater was in was not the safest and the movies had often been playing everywhere else long, long before they got to the Dreamland. It kept them together, though. They didn’t talk about it, but they both valued that.

  Mildred didn’t really understand The Lion in Winter. Oh, Kate looked good like always, her voice the sound of royalty and her face glowing, even with her hair all messed up. But everybody kept talking so sharp and brittle in sentences that no one would ever really use. And then that boy turning out to be queer and with the king of France no less. Pictures weren’t what they used to be. She expressed as much to Angela as they walked out into the evening sun. “Oh, Mama, you’ve got to change with the times. Everything’s changing. Can’t you see that? That movie was supposed to be funny. And when those two guys—well, some guys are like that. So are some girls. You know that.”

  “Sure I know that. But that don’t mean it got to be all up in your face in a movie. We don’t got to see every crazy thing people do in this world, do we?”

  “Mama, you so old-fashioned.”

  “Just got good sense, it seem to me. Seem like most folks done lost it. Don’t nobody know how to act anymore.”

  Angela was silent. “Well, I liked it,” she said after a while. “They was kind of crazy, but I liked it.”

  Mildred eyed her daughter speculatively. “You would.”

  As beautiful as Angela was, the only thing Mildred had ever said to her about sex was “Keep your dress down and your panties up.” Even after their confrontation over Angie’s first kiss, Mildred still couldn’t find a way to talk to her daughter—even knowing what she knew about loving a man, or loving two men. How could she explain that to her baby? She couldn’t. So she didn’t. She didn’t say anything. Mildred could almost see the wheels turning, see Angela working things out in her mind.

  Angela had been a fairly good student her senior year of high school. She was president of the Dramatic Society, had a solid B-average (didn’t want to be too smart, scare off the boys), and spent plenty of time helping the sick at Greenwood Baptist like her mother before her. Since the kissing incident when she was fourteen, she’d appeared to lead the life of a modest girl. But Mildred couldn’t help but remember that and, going back further, remember the way her eyes glowed like candles when they saw the revival of Carmen Jones together when she was ten and how that child pestered, pestered, pestered to be allowed to wear a flower behind her ear and a red skirt until Mildred lost all patience and shouted that no daughter of hers was going to walk the streets of Tulsa dressed like a common whore. Angie’s eyes got big and filled with tears and she never asked again. But Mildred knew that Angela had never forgotten the easy power in Carmen’s walk, the sway of joy in her hips; even if she did get her comeuppance in the end. She had so much fun before it came. So when she finally heard about Angie going too far with Bobby Ware, she wasn’t entirely surprised. She knew she had to put a stop to it—but she wasn’t surprised.

  At first she’d been happy when Angie started keeping company with Bobby a few years before. He was a nice boy with a good family. But then she started hearing things; just little things at church first, but finally Jolene (of course) confirmed the whispers. Folks had seen Angela going down in Bobby’s car to the edge of town, where it was well known that everyone went to park. She’d been seen emerging from his car with her hair mussed and her eyes shining. “Everybody knows about it, Mama. Folks talking all over town,” said Jolene.

  So she waited in her daughter’s bedroom after school that day, as she should have done long ago, for her daughter to come home. But this time, resolve was in her heart. This time, she’d be strong—the way she should have been all along.

  “Angela, I’ve heard tell that you’ve been seen all over the place with Bobby Ware and not just keeping company. You’ve been down where folks go to park and under the bleachers with him. I’ve been hearing things. Are they true?”

  Angela didn’t say anything.

  “Young lady, I am speaking to you. Did you hear my question?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I heard it.”

  “Well, then I expe
ct an answer and I expect it now.”

  Angela looked straight into her mother’s eyes. Her back was that of a soldier on parade. “Yes, ma’am. To tell the truth, I broke up with him two weeks ago—not that I told you. But before that, I’ve been with him in his car, under the bleachers, every chance I get—for years. That surely was me.”

  Mildred covered her heart with her hand like Anne Baxter in All About Eve and sank onto Angela’s bed. “What on earth were you thinking, acting like that with that boy?” she gasped.

  “Mama, believe me. You don’t want to know,” she said.

  Her mother looked at her, transfixed. “What. Did. You. Just. Say.”

  “I said that you don’t want to know what I’ve been doing with Bobby Ware. But I’ll tell you—it’s been good.” Her eyes were unwavering.

  Her mother got up and moved forward one step, then two. Her hand, when it hit Angela’s face, made a dull, flat crack. “I will not have a whore in this house,” said Mildred. She did not raise her voice.

  Angela touched her cheek for a minute, but she didn’t cry. “You didn’t raise a whore, Mama.” She turned away.

  Mildred spoke to her back. “That’s fine you broke up with him. If I hear another word about you behaving this way with anyone, you can pack your bags. You old enough to make your own way. It’s time you do it if that is how you’re going to act. I will not have a slut in my house.” She turned and walked out without another word.

  She did not stop walking until she had reached the backyard. Once the floor was no longer under her feet, she stopped and dropped to her knees. The ground was moist beneath them. The palm of her hand still stung. She had never slapped her daughter before. Angela’s eyes had been so murderously cold. But there was something else in them too. A departure. In that moment, Mildred knew that Angela was lost to her. That sooner rather than later, her daughter would be gone and she’d be left with her husband, who was kind to her, and the ashy taste of her memories and the dull glitter of her movies, and that would be the end of it. She knelt in the dirt, grateful no one could see. She knelt in the dirt and cried.