Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  —I swear, Lou, it's like we was living in—

  —You need to tell me what Daddy Malcolm said. You ain't tell me everything.—Reaching over to the bedside table for a cigarette.

  —Well—

  —Go on.

  —All right. He said—get this, now, this's Daddy—he said, “Boy, if you don't marry Renee I'll blow your head off myself. You will marry her,” he said. Sounding all white. Daddy!

  —Lord Jesus. He got to know about me.—Blowing out a thick smoke stream.

  —He do. What you think? He been knowing. Why the hell else you think he been pushing me all up in Renee's face?— Looking out into the June sunlight. Turning his face to the day and noticing how the air is free, humid; how bugs are chattering between birdsong.

  —I don't want to marry that girl, Lou.

  —Why you so sure she want to marry you? She must have something to say. It ain't like you the only one out here seen her. And no matter what folks say I don't think she stupid. We know Renee.

  —Well, she don't know nothing about us.

  —She don't know nothing about us cause we ain't never done nothing in her face and we watched that anyway. Daddy Malcolm, now, that's a different story. He always did look at me funny. I ain't messing with that.

  —Evil, you mean. You got that right. He thinks you switch. Plus you ain't never had no girlfriend.

  —Ain't never wanted none.

  —You should've, Lou Jay. You coulda saved us a whole lotta trouble that way. Maybe Daddy wouldn't be breathing all down my neck now if you did.

  Lou Jay smoked for a while in silence, then turned his face to the freedom of the day and the birds singing and the trees looking so peaceful, quiet, beneath the bright wheeling sun.

  —Can't nobody make me to nothing I don't want to, Ricky. Not even Daddy Malcolm.—Not quite believing his own words, but they sounded brave.—Anyway, answer my question. Why you so sure she want to marry—

  —She do. Lou Jay, she do. You know Renee always liked me! Anyway her mama said she better and Renee ain't gone hardly go against her mama.

  —She can't—she can't do nothing to get rid—

  —Hell, no, Lou Jay! What you saying? If she even opened up her mouth to say something like that Miss Gaines would kill her with the switch before she could even say jump up. And Daddy—I don't even want think about what Daddy would do. Besides, we ain't got all that kinda money. I don't even know where we could get one. We ain't never known nobody who did that.

  —Far as we know.

  —Far enough.

  —Goddamn! Her mama, your daddy . . . — Falling silent once more. Turning his eyes down to Ricky's hands at rest between them on the sheet.

  —I just don't see that y'all got much choice now. You know Daddy Malcolm ain't playing. I think he would rather see you dead. He don't want him no sissy son no matter what. And Renee gone have you a kid. You gone be a daddy.—Pausing. Those eyes raised again to Ricky's face.

  —How could y'all do that? Practically right in my face.

  —Lou Jay—

  —You wasn't even thinking about us when you did that, Ricky. You wasn't thinking about Renee, neither. No you wasn't. And all this time you and me been making plans and whatnot. Talking shit. And now you gone come back in my face telling me you love me and how we gone do so much.

  —Baby—

  —I shoulda—I . . . that was just stupid, that's all. Don't look at me all innocent! Y'all was wrong. You was wrong—I can't really say too much against Renee. And I know you know y'all was wrong.—Pausing once more. Taking in the tender curve of the neck, eyelashes.

  —I know you know, Rick.

  —But I told you—

  —You just wanted to see what it felt like? It ain't all that different. I coulda told you that.

  —No, you couldn't.

  —Well, maybe not.—Sucking on the cigarette.—But that don't change nothing. And now you gone have you a wife and a kid. I'll be damned. Ain't that something!

  —Don't take the Lord's name—

  —I didn't.—Smoking some more. Frowning.

  —Lou Jay.

  —What?

  —You don't understand . . .

  —What . . . what don't I understand? Tell me! Since you got all the answers.

  —Just . . . damn, Lou Jay! She don't mean nothing to me. She ain't—she ain't shit.

  —I told you to get your hands off me. Oh, so now she ain't shit, huh? That's nice. Real nice, baby. You the one, I tell you.

  —What you mean?

  —She our friend, you dumb mother—Jesus! We all growed up together, you and me and Miss Girl, fool! That oughta mean something. Like more than just she ain't shit. I got to say I feel kinda sorry for her, laying up in bed with somebody she don't even know don't want her ass cept for what she got tween her legs.—Still watching Ricky, of course still watching him. Feeling the sadness rising up in him again, in that place, like the peepers' dying sundown calls: there, right at the edge of the shore, where most of the time he feels, deep inside, only Ricky. Then gathering all of it, the dusk and the shore, as they rise out of him, hover between them, joined by that lonely something else of lowered eyes, as Ricky moves closer to him on the bed. Putting first one hand, then another, on those big old shoulders. As Lou Jay rests his cheek on one of the hands. Closes his eyes.

  —You know what the worse part is, Lou?

  —What?

  —It's like now—now I feel like—

  —Yeah?

  —Like I hate her. Renee.—Whispered.

  —Like—like I ain't never hate nobody in my life—not no girl, and—

  The eyes, opened.

  —I know, I know. Don't look at me like that, Lou Jay! You know what—

  —What you saying?

  —I—I don't know. I don't know why cept I know I been laying up in bed at night thinking about how much I—

  Lou Jay looking at him.

  — . . . how I hate that girl now, Lou. Can't even stand to look in her face no more. That—

  Lou Jay looking at him.

  —Don't look at me like that, Lou Jay! I can't—

  —I guess you want me to say something.

  —I can't—

  —What you going on hating her for? She ain't done nothing to you. Last time I heard takes two to make a baby. And she settin up in that house knowing she gone have you a kid and her mama looking at her all cross-eyed and you settin up here talking about some you hate her. What you doing hating folks?

  —You don't like her neither.

  —I don't like what y'all did but I don't hate nobody. I hope.

  —She so proud, walking around telling everybody, “Yup, we getting married!” Just yesterday she was up the road telling folks, “He so fine, wait til y'all see him in his wedding suit.”

  —Well, you are.—Very quietly. But I swear to God I won't never tell you that too many times, he thinks, 'cause you just too hardheaded for words.

  —Uh-huh. But just watch me wear some tennis shoes to the church.

  The other silent.

  —Why can't we go away, Lou? Up to New York—even Atlanta! What I'ma do, married to some—

  —What you did the night you got you a baby.

  —Lou Jay—

  —You do what you got to do. Like I'm going on to college. U.A.'s waiting.

  —You really gone do that, Lou? Go on and leave me here with her and Daddy?

  —You left me.

  —I didn't! Listen, Lou. Listen to me. Whyn't you leave Alabama for school so we could go away? I could work.

  —And get Daddy Malcolm up on my ass to come on and shoot me dead. Uh-uh. No, thank you.

  —Coward.

  —No. See, now, listen. Try I don't want your mess all up in my business, fucking with my shit again. Try that.

  —Oh, bitch—

  —No, baby, no. We ain't gone have that, now. Didn't I tell you how long ago now to go on and get dressed? You gone stick around here all day, when
you getting married in—what is it now—twenty-two hours? Besides, Mama and Daddy'll be back in a few.

  —Where they went to?

  —Probably out with your daddy, looking for your ass. You need to go on home.

  —They know what we was doing last night?

  —When did we ever tell em? Do they know. Do they know.— The disgust in his face and voice cruel enough to slash cane. Hiding from the slash or seeking to conjure the face of the water and the reeds, Ricky put his own face in his hands.

  —So I'm just gone ruin my life, and you ain't gone do shit to help.— From between fingers.

  —Help you ruin your life? You don't need no help. Gimme one a your cigarettes.

  —I ain't got but two left. You don't even care, do you? Bitch?

  —Excuse me? Ain't nobody your bitch up in here. I got to buy me some.

  —I said, you don't even care, do you?

  —I heard you. What you expect? You want me to drop dead?

  —Whyn't you try? Ricky said, but the laughter returned. Later, Lou Jay would remember that just then he had noticed neither the glimmer in Ricky's eye nor its presaging the speed that followed as, with the barest shifting of a thigh, Ricky leaped onto Lou Jay's chest and farted loudly and squarely on the most sacred spot, just below the neck. A way of possessing it, the victor knows; the surest way of leaving behind his most private smell where before only the mouth and skin had been. Then feeling the strong hands attempting to push him off, but the feeling of those fingers about his hips once more, even in protest, nothing compared to the victim's grimace and the victor's delight.

  —Now see if I give a fuck about some Renee, Ricky said, purring—for, like many, the foul gifts of his own innards entranced him.

  —Well, thank you, you nasty—

  —Aw, you love it, honey.

  —Take your hand off me.

  —Lou—

  —Come on.

  Ricky moving lower over him, then closer.

  —Let's just run away.— Whispered.

  —Aw, shit. Here we go again. I swear—

  —You could cook. Make me chicken in dressing. Pear preserves and biscuits. In our own house. You could cook, Lou Jay.

  —I know I can.— The beautiful smile at last emerging in full.—Did I or did I not ask you for a cigarette?

  A reach over to the table, a cigarette pulled from the pack. Lit, then placed, ever so gently, into that mouth.

  —See, Lou, I could light your cigarettes for you.

  —Uh-huh.

  —We could get married.

  —Boys don't get married. To each other.

  —You need to look at the news, girl. Boys be marrying each other up in Oregon—

  —I ain't moving to no Oregon. And if it's boys marrying each other, you know it's white boys.

  —Or in California where it don't matter. Where don't nobody know nobody.

  —Fuck that bullshit. U.A. U.A. You got it? September, now!

  —Why you acting like—damn, hold still, boy! Can't I even get me a kiss? What you scrunching up your mouth all stupid for?

  —You got your kisses from Miss Renee.

  —Lou Jay—goddamn!—I told you—

  —Speak the truth and shame the devil. Now! Tell your Daddy I said that.

  Ricky silent. Watching those lips move over the cigarette.

  —It ain't even like that, Lou.—Very quietly.—You know I just—

  —It's time for you to go. Now I ain't—

  —I'm serious. You think I'm playing?

  —I'ma say one more time—

  —Just one kiss, baby. Please? Then I'll go on. Please? Open up.

  This is one hardheaded fool, the other thinks, the kind that sooner or later—

  —Don't you love me, Lou Jay?

  A look at those eyes, asking; a look away. And now Lou Jay, lying on his back, feeling what's on the way, doesn't have to say anything, not a word or even a tune, because it's all there—yes, right there beneath the watcher's curling lashes that match his own, there in the neck's curve, where the veins are exposed, where the look is hot silk, where you can't even hardly stop it cause you are

  —What you doing, Rick?—But all at once his voice is all water.

  —Get up offa me, he says, but how the silt of the smooth river glides, glides across his moving sand.

  —You can't say nothing now, Ricky says, sucking air where there is none.

  —Get your hand out from all up under me, Lou Jay whispers, but how the waters have already parted, a circle of ripples pushing gently where the weeds are thickest.

  —Ain't nobody gone be back for a while, neither, Ricky says, wetting his face where it is warm.

  —See if I marry that girl.—Straining the weeds, the soft grasses, through his teeth.

  You will if your daddy makes you, Lou Jay thinks, running his fingers up and down, up and down a single blade.

  The bugs, still conversing. The jaybirds, over the water, darting. Everywhere blue, black to blue, blueblue.

  Renee will be there soon. Lou Jay, remembering. But moving now faster against the weeds, pushing more deeply into the sand, up to his buckling knees, until the entire river, its source and moan, rises and swells, swells and flows, wetting his sand, soaking his weeds. Filling every space of that warmth in his open throat.

  —A beautiful dress,—she was saying. The three of them walking out along the Stone Bridge Road that led down the long hill to the Creek Meadow valley just outside of town. And she was pretty, Lou Jay had to admit—the type who surprised you with that devil in her that came out when you least expected it. And when you most expected it because it didn't. The Gaines' least favorite girl, folks in town said, who from the looks of things spent half her time daydreaming and should have been quicker than she apparently was considering she was Elvira Gaines' girl, since you could see Elvira had known quick enough to get Renee off her hands and into Ricky's, whose daddy owned not only twenty acres here in town but fifty more too up around Decatur and his own house and business and had those seven boys, six of whom had already come close to doing the same. Nice girl, everybody said, but looked simple sometimes, too, like them Birthwright brothers up on the hill who fooled away the day playing with cats and whatnot—the kind who ought to see things she needed to and didn't, things that sure enough, please, Jesus! didn't bear mentioning. But then others said no, not simple just innocent—who wouldn't be, by force or His holy reckoning, raised under Elvira's switch? A few to whom almost nobody listened said naw, that girl was deep if you just looked. And—who knows?—maybe with that fury (the source of which they'd quickly forgotten or had never known) that in ever-shifting forms still took nightly and daily aim against them even as they slept, and which now firmly in their grip propelled them to devote the meaner, smaller parts of themselves to caring too much about some things, like the image of two boys pressing hands to each other's bellies in the slow velvet dance of a kiss—maybe with that same fury that moved them to cut their eyes and storm over policemen's bullets and marauding church fires in their midst, they'd never bothered to look very deeply into the most quiet part of that girl's eyes—or not far, anyway, beyond so many guesses as to the eventual worth of that girl and her kind as sweet fast pieces. Her gaze darker, deeper than ever today. Skin shining in the heat, hair permed and tied back in just that way that made so many of the other boys in town think nothing of going right up in her face to whoo-zop a little of the Bird they hadn't known they'd owned, za-bazz out some of the 'Trane they'd not suspected still seared in their veins, and say Miss Renee, hey, hey! All right, girl. 'Cause, well, uh huh. So, why don't you. And. Not that she couldn't handle them, Lou Jay thought. And Daddy Malcolm too had welcomed her into the Malcolms' with wide-open arms (a little too open, some said) because he'd always loved her anyway (a little too much, some also said)—like the daughter I ain't got, he'd said more than six times, and loved her even more these days, some folks murmured, now that she was marrying his baby son. Everybody s
wears Miss Renee got herself a man, Lou Jay thought, but I had him first, y'all, in places y'all couldn't even dream of. Shocked at how much it scratched at his heart to think of them having a baby together—what was a little baby, after all? But scratched even more to think of it now because they'd all been friends and he wanted them all still to be so long as he could just have Ricky and they could get far away from here and everybody and get that house, something, someday. Away. And none of it fair to her neither, he thought. She hadn't never hurt nobody, not once. But even harder now for him to like her when he almost wanted to. When the wedding was getting closer and they all were together here talking about (but what? please, Jesus) her wedding dress. Ricky! he cried out silently, what we gone do, Rick? Distant field noises coming drowsily across to them in the mid-afternoon heat. Lou Jay's parents having returned from visiting somebody's sick wife, and Renee come looking for Ricky (where else but at his best friend's? Boys would be just like that, getting married and couldn't care less about tomorrow). The Stone Bridge Road walk had seemed to suit all but the soon-groom. He would fidget, the other two thought, and be his sillyass self, but why looking evermore like he wanted to kill somebody?

  —What's wrong with you, Ricky? What you looking at Lou Jay all evil for?

  —Nothing.—Skipping stones in front of his shoes on the road.

  —I ain't paying him no mind.

  —Go on ahead of us, Lou Jay. Me and Ricky got to talk about something for a minute. In private.—Raising her eyebrows at Lou Jay and jerking her head toward the road ahead of them. The two young men exchanged startled looks.

  —Anything you got to say to me Lou Jay could hear, Renee. I don't know what you got to say that could be so—

  —Let me go on, y'all, Lou Jay said quickly. Moving ahead.—I'll wait for y'all on up some.—He was already gone by the time Ricky opened his mouth to protest, then turned back to face Renee standing in the road; her face grave, upturned to the source of light. The light in her eyes not golden, the face not smiling.

  —Well, what?

  Her eyes, looking at him.

  —Well?

  —What you taking that tone with me for, Ricky? You acting like somebody did something evil to you. What's wrong with you?