by Cheryl Reid
Two days before, on the second day of August, Marina had entered my house with Elias. She said she had come to see the baby’s layette, but she and her father wanted the business with Orlando Washington to stop.
She spoke as if she were the mother and I were the child. “You’re going to tape your mailbox shut and go to the post office like a respectable person.”
“You’re the only one,” Elias said calmly. “He won’t last another day if we shut him out.”
Marina fingered a baby gown.
I said, “He’s doing a job. It’s no different from your gardener.”
Marina rubbed her forehead. “He’ll handle important papers and know your business.” Then her eyes locked with her father’s. “They can’t be trusted. You give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.”
Elias nodded, nudging her on.
“He’s taking a good man’s job.” She folded the gown and patted the stack of white cotton clothes.
“I don’t want him on our front porch every day,” Elias said. “Especially when I’m not home.” He stood to leave us. “It’s not right.” That was how he operated when Marina was present. He seemed reasonable until we were alone. He walked out on the porch and lit a cigarette. The smell drifted in.
“Listen to Daddy,” she said. She shifted in her chair to balance the weight of her belly. “It’s not safe here by yourself.”
“Marina, I have lived in this town my whole life.” Elias listened from his spot on the porch. “No one is going to walk in and rape or murder me, especially not Orlando Washington. Your gardener comes in your basement every day.”
“It is different. My gardener knows his place.” She was cool and collected, like a trial lawyer working through each position. “That Washington crossed a hundred boundaries when he walked on your front porch. If he wants something, what’s to stop him?”
“Nonsense,” I said. “He’s not a criminal.”
“Maybe he is. Suppose they gave him the job to slip him up.” She raised her dark eyebrow like a question mark.
“I know him,” I said. “He’s Thea’s son.”
“It does not matter that he’s your maid’s son.” She smirked. “My gardener has a son. Should Michael get him a desk job at the firm?”
“She cared for me,” I said. “I want to do good by her.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. She ran her long, swollen fingers over the baby’s things. “Ever since you said you were going to do this, I’ve been trying to understand.” She leaned in and took my hand. “Mama, you are the only one. She’s gone, and you’re not helping her. You are hurting him by making it seem possible. The town is not going to let this go on.”
Elias turned his ear toward the open window, like a cat sensing prey in the bushes.
“He’s a good person,” I whispered.
“I know you have lived on both sides of this town and you feel familiar with his people.” Marina’s voice was stern. “But your affiliation will embolden him and others. They will take advantage of you.”
I hated her embarrassment of me and where I was from.
“Daddy’s store will suffer.” Her voice hit a shrill tone. “Michael’s law partners worry this could hurt the business. Our livelihood is not worth that man and his pipe dream.”
There was truth that the store could suffer, that people would gossip about me and it would affect her and Michael. “Eli said this is the right thing. He said people will come around.”
She shook her head. “Mama, you are stirring up a hornet’s nest.” Irritation mounted in her voice. She did not want to deal with any of this, not Orlando Washington or her father or me.
I said, “It will pass.” The same as my father said. “He’ll show them he can do the job.”
“You don’t know what’s being said.” Her green eyes widened. She lowered her voice. “You don’t know what they’ll do.”
“You are smart, Marina,” I said. “You must know these people are wrong to deny him a job that he’s earned.”
Marina whispered. “Things have been good lately.” She looked out the window at her father’s silhouette and then at me. She touched her belly. “Don’t make more trouble for yourself.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at me sternly. “That is the only thing you’ve accomplished.” She stood slowly and her voice resumed its normal volume. “I hope you decide to listen to reason.”
She was warning me against her father and the town. I wanted to make her sit and admit what was right.
“I have to go now. Michael will be worried.” She gathered the layette and gave me a tentative smile. “The baby’s things are beautiful.”
She stepped outside and I listened to her and Elias. She said, “Be patient, Daddy. Let her sleep on it and she’ll come around.” She kissed him on the cheek, goodbye, and I was jealous because she had not kissed me.
Marina’s front door opened and shut. “Mama?” Eli’s deep voice resonated through the grand rooms. He entered the kitchen with a stack of table linens in one hand and a golden-tipped meringue pie in the other. One of the church ladies must have given it to him.
Eli’s long face looked weary and his shoulders slumped. He put the linens and the pie on the counter and walked toward me. “I saw your car out front.”
I reached out for him. My face was hot and wet from tears.
He took my hand and unwrapped the bloody dishtowel. “Are you all right?” Dark circles ringed his eyes, the same as Marina and me. We were all so tired.
“It’s nothing.” I touched his hair with my free hand. “A cut.” No good would come if Eli knew Ivie had pushed me around. Eli would defend me to the end and that would put him in harm’s way. Eli was still a boy in some regards, innocent and soft, and Ivie was a cold-blooded snake.
Eli led me to a kitchen chair. His green irises, the same as Marina’s and his father’s, darted back and forth. “I know what Ivie and Grandmother are saying.” His voice was tender, forgiving.
I felt a pang of guilt.
Eli said, “I know they threatened Washington last night. I know Dad was there.”
I felt sorry for him to know his father’s actions. It would be a stain on Eli’s heart, when Eli had hoped to show his father what good he could do. “Who told you?”
“Ivie,” he said. “Marina doesn’t know, not about Washington in the house or about Dad going there.” It was clear she did not, how kind she was being to me. She hated that I allowed Orlando Washington to deliver. If she knew he’d come inside my house, that her father had gone there, she would blame me for causing her father grief and maybe his death.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and tried to calm the shaking feeling that Ivie might have told my son I harmed Elias. “Was Mr. Washington hurt?”
“Not physically. Not yet.” His deep voice was tentative, but he looked indignant. “I don’t know what that does to your spirit.”
I bowed my head. Soon Marina would be down and she would want to know why I had been crying. In her gut, she must know I would never shed so many tears for him. But I was in distress and I could not tell her why.
At the sink, Eli ran cool water over a dishcloth and wrung it out. “I told Ivie to leave her out of it for the baby’s sake.” He ran the damp cloth across my face as if I were a sick child. “He said he would, for now.”
“They can’t leave her out of it.” I wanted to protect him from their ugliness, but he was a man in the world’s eyes, one who would become a priest. I took the cloth from his hand. “If they want to run me out of town, Marina will know.”
“Your trouble will blow over.” His words were matter-of-fact. “But Mr. Washington’s won’t. He has a choice to make.” Eli sounded worried. Unlike Marina, he always shied away from fights.
“Eli?” Marina hollered down, her voice muffled from the top of the stairs. “Is that you?”
“It’s me,” he called out. His eyes did not leave mine.
“I’ll be down in a minute.” Marina’s feet padded acros
s the floor upstairs. “Since you’re here with Mother, I’m going to freshen up.”
“Take your time,” he yelled.
I wanted her to come down, make her sit and rest. I wanted to tell her in my own words what Nelly accused me of. Maybe, with Eli beside me, I could be brave. If she heard it from me with Eli near, if I showed her the bruises and she saw what her father had done, maybe she would side with me. “Nelly and Ivie are not to be trusted.” I went to the sink to change the blood-soaked cloth on my hand. “If it benefits them, they’ll do anything.”
Eli leaned against the counter. He sighed a long breath and hung his head in worry.
“What did Ivie say to you?” I was angry they would try to turn my child against me.
Eli straightened his shoulders. He ran his long fingers through his bristly, cropped hair. “What Ivie said is a lie.” He scowled. “Ivie’s no good, like Pop always said. He’s chomping at the bit to get his hands on the store. Marina knows that. He’ll go off again.”
“I should talk to Marina before they do.” I wanted to have been a better mother, the way I was with Eli, to have held her and bonded with her early on. But when she was born, when she was little, my mind was dark and I could not feel what I was supposed to. I let Nelly mother her, and when I realized what I had done, when I had Eli and my body and mind set back to right, it was too late. Marina knew my failure, not in words or actions, but in feeling. She had known in her small being that I had betrayed her. And now, I wanted to have her love me the way I should have loved her. “I want to stay here and help her with the baby.”
“They can’t make you leave,” Eli said.
I shook my head. “They can make it impossible for me to stay.” The water gurgled as it ran down the pipes from the bathroom upstairs.
He looked like a tall child, too innocent to know what his grandmother or Ivie would do. “I know you didn’t love him.” He spoke low and carefully and fixed his gaze on me. “But I know you didn’t hurt him.”
I studied my son’s eyes to see if he had a trace of doubt, if he were thinking, Did you kill my father? He stared back and gave no clue. He would make a good priest and confessor—someone calm, trustworthy, someone to tell one’s deepest sins.
“But I did love him,” I said. “If he ever loved me, I don’t know.” I sounded bitter, and I wanted to say, I’m sorry, but what would he think I was apologizing for?
“For what it’s worth, Mama,” he said, “your heart was in the right place. It’s the law that Washington can have that job.” Eli was an honest soul. “I know it wasn’t anything more.” His cheeks blushed. Eli touched the shining chrome trim of the kitchen table.
“I didn’t help him for the right reason,” I confessed. “Part of me did it to spite your father.”
“Don’t doubt yourself.” He touched my arm and looked at me earnestly. “Whatever reason—it was the right thing to do.”
“I should never have asked him in.” I felt uncomfortable sitting before Eli so disheveled. “I’ve always done what I was supposed to do.” I had not worried about the news of the bus boycotts or the arrests or the petitions on either side. I did not argue with Marina when she complained that Autherine Lucy had tricked the University of Alabama to accept her and had caused the white riot that followed.
Eli had taken notice of the injustices, and I’d read his papers from seminary and listened to his positions. He’d been incensed by the daily news and the rules holding people down. He did not hide behind the popular feelings, but Elias had no patience for his son’s views and the fact he was studying to be a priest. He said to us all, “He could do anything he wanted. He’s wasting his life.”
But Eli had told me he saw his father’s disdain for what it was—regret that Elias had been afraid to live the way he wanted. So Eli had taken pity on his father’s failures and withstood his father’s slights.
I said, “I should not have married your father. I should never have stayed.”
“Mama, let’s don’t go down this road.” He grabbed my good hand. “You cannot question your whole life. What about Marina and me? Surely we were the good that came from your marriage.”
I saw the pain on his face. I kept hurting them when I wanted to be a source of love. The wounds ran so deep that I could not help myself. “He was not always bad to me, but he did not love me. Not me.”
“I’m on your side, Mother.” Eli’s wide eyes stared at me with pity. “This will pass.”
I had said it to Marina. Papa said those words whenever trouble came. This will pass. When crosses were burned. This will pass. When Mama died, I relied on the notion. This beating will pass, this loneliness and this marriage too. And now, from Eli’s lips.
“You know what your father did to the postman,” I said. My face was hot. Eli did not know all that his father had done to me. The toll had been more than physical, forcing me to play this strange game with my life, watching him for signs of his boredom or displeasure to keep myself safe, until finally I could play it no more.
The cut seeped warm blood. What I had expected with Elias gone—a quiet, peaceful house, my children around me, no worries, a chance to give them love and live without fear—was slipping like sand through my fingers. I was lonely and tired of being hurt, not in my body, but in my spirit. I had accepted my place and the place of others, but I was tired of the low regard in which Elias held me. That was why I had helped Mr. Washington. He was tired of his position and he was doing something about it. “This won’t pass,” I said.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said. He squeezed my good hand and straightened his shoulders.
My Two Children
Marina stepped into the kitchen. She wore a dress and had fixed her hair in a chignon. Before her, I had thought beauty was the creamy white skin of blue-eyed blondes, not what I saw in the mirror. But Marina had reminded me of my mother’s beauty, and even in Marina’s swollen state, the flesh of her feet spilling over the edges of her ballet flats, I was amazed at the loveliness of my child.
She eyeballed us. “Are you two plotting to save the world again?” Sarcasm dripped from her big voice.
“The world needs saving,” Eli said.
Marina waved him off and placed an iodine bottle and bandages on the table. She steadied herself to sit. “I figured I should put on a proper dress in case someone drops by.” She reached for my hand and unwound the bloody rag. “Now, you said you cut yourself on a piece of glass?” She arched one eyebrow in disbelief.
“Yes,” I said.
“Looks like you were thrown on glass.” She huffed. “Was it that man you are helping?”
“No,” I said, frustrated that she was hounding after Mr. Washington again.
Eli’s brow furrowed. “I am concerned for him.” His face looked like Elias’s when Elias was angry. I lost my breath, as if it were Elias, wily and tough, standing before me. I told myself, This is the son and not the father. The father is gone forever. He asked, “Do you know what our father did?”
She took my palm, dropped the iodine in the gash, and ignored his temper.
“He was part of a group,” Eli said. I could hear the restrained edge of anger in his voice. “They threatened to lynch that man unless he left town.”
I watched Marina’s face. Placid like still water.
I felt the urge to tell them their uncle had pushed me into broken glass at the store, but then I would have to tell them I was there to get money and explain why I needed it. I would have to tell her the accusations, that Grandpapa told me to go, and then it seemed tawdry that I had stolen my own money. Marina would never understand.
“They did not lynch him,” she said in a defensive tone and squeezed the dropper again. She looked coolly at Eli. More iodine rolled into the open flesh.
“No,” Eli said. “But he was threatened.” His voice shook.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Marina sounded matter-of-fact. “Those people exaggerate. Maybe the Riverton people went to
voice their honest concerns.”
“Honest?” Eli huffed and ran his fingers over his lips. “I’m sitting vigil at his house tonight and I’ll be witness to any more of their ‘honest concerns.’”
She blew on my palm to ease the burn. “Do you see what you’ve started?” She accused me with her eyes.
I felt the guilt she intended, but for different reasons. The more I thought about it, the worse my story sounded, that if I said one thing about her father beating me, then everything would flow like water out of a dam. Then everything I had hoped for—a chance to love my daughter and hold her child, a chance to live in peace—would be gone.
Her eyes fell on Eli and she deftly changed the subject. “Did you take the things from the church hall to Mother’s?”
“Of course,” he said. “Your directions were very clear.” He turned his back and slammed the counter with his fists. “It amazes me that you care more about dishes than a man’s life.” He hung his head. He was praying, maybe for us or Washington or his father’s soul.
“Eli, would you mind making some coffee?” Marina asked, giving him something to do, to take his mind off the unpleasantness she did not wish to discuss.
He let out a long breath and then filled her percolator with water. “What about Daddy’s soul?” he asked. “If he did that, his soul is in jeopardy.” The worry on his face aged him. He scooped the grounds and turned the pot on and the water bubbled up. The room filled with the warm, gritty smell of coffee.
“I have faith our father’s soul was clean.” Marina looked as if she might cry again. “I don’t believe that mumbo jumbo anyway.”
Eli’s pale face was red with frustration.
I did not want them to argue, but I could not settle it.