Agnes scooted under TJ, held his precious head in her lap, and put the ice on his battered forehead.
The room was filling with neighbors.
“ ‘Open your eyes,’ ” Agnes crooned to TJ. “ ‘Open your eyes to Jesus. He loves you.’ ”
She watched TJ’s eyelids flutter and open. But his face was a mask of pain. She tried to blot out the raw flesh image before her eyes with the memory of her husband, unhurt, holding the bat cocked over his shoulder, his face confident that he could hit a home run like Jackie Robinson.
THAT NIGHT, FAR BACK in the closet, Agnes hung up her dress with the bloody lap. In front of the bloody dress, she hung an older dress, like a drape, so she wouldn’t see the stains. Though she never looked at the ruined dress again, many years later on the day of her death, her bed surrounded by three grown children she had raised to safety, Agnes knew the dress with TJ’s blood still hung in the back of her closet. She felt again how it had been to insert the wire coat hanger into the shoulders of the dress, the act of hooking the hanger over the wooden pole.
WHEN MAGGIE BECKONED, their friends carried TJ to the bed. Maggie smeared his wounds with yellow Unguentine from a squat, square canister. She sent for her blue houndstooth ice bag, told Agnes to screw off the lid, which resembled the cap on a car gas tank, and to fill the rubber-lined bag with more ice. All Agnes could do was notice little things; she was afraid to look at TJ. She admired how the fabric was neatly swirled and gathered like a pinwheel into the metal rim around the opening to the ice bag’s stomach.
She heard herself whispering, “Is he crushed?”
She whispered the sentence louder and louder till Maggie heard her and answered matter-of-factly, “Naw. He be all right.”
The neighbor men left “to talk.” Two women said they would sit up in the living room, for Agnes to go on to bed. Maggie needed to go to the hospital for the night shift, but she instructed three of the men to sit on the porch. Yes, ma’am, they said, eyes lowered respectfully. Maggie was the power who saved a man—that was acknowledged; she was short and squat, but she had used the power of quick wit and practical-nurse knowledge.
Alone in the bedroom with TJ, Agnes turned out the light and got into her sleeveless summer nightgown. Though it was her familiar thin cotton, printed with small green stars, she found it alien. Trying not to jiggle the bed, Agnes lay on her back beside TJ. He wasn’t unconscious, just asleep. He, too, lay on his back, and she took his hand, the good one. The other one was encased in white gauze, already stained yellow where the Unguentine had soaked out. She knew his head was wrapped, too, like an Egyptian mummy, but she couldn’t bring herself to look toward his face.
She feared to sleep, to wake, to find him—not wounded—but with his spirit defeated.
She felt so nervous that fire seemed to travel her veins. Usually, they cuddled together when they slept, though her friends told her they themselves never slept cuddled; it made men too horny. She had said, “I always make my man welcome.” Many a night, he was gone to work. Every night he was home, after he’d gotten a bit of rest and sleep, he came to her. Sometimes twice or even three times in the night. Always, he was welcome and always she prayed after his pleasure that she might conceive, but she never did.
It was strange to sleep so straight—her lying there trembling—instead of cuddled with interlaced arms and legs. She felt that they were laid out like the dead, only she had the jerks. She could still hear the thud of the blackjack against TJ’s head and shoulders. He be mighty sore for a week, Maggie had said. But he ain’t broke. He got a good hard head.
Agnes heard again the moment when her lie “I done called the police already” became true, when the Holy Ghost screamed through the siren of the police, and the four brutal white men ran away. Now her hands were shaking like leaves on a cottonwood tree. She tried to picture the night riders individually, but she could not. One wore a white robe, belted at the waist by a stout white twisty rope; his hood was off, and his neck and head had looked naked. He had the blackjack. One had on a blue denim work shirt, with red thread writing on the pocket. But she had been too terrified to read, and she couldn’t envision it clearly—just red writing on a blue shirt.
Now she remembered the one with the rope belt had had his hood on, when he came in. That he was the first through the door. And then he had pulled his hood off, and she had known even then that he removed it so he could see better to attack TJ. When the four men ran toward the back door, that one had held his hood by its point, and it had streamed behind him like an empty ghost head.
Agnes closed her eyes so she could be in the darkness with God again.
She began to move her lips, thanking God who could read soundless lips and hear her song even from beyond the stars. Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, Lord is my Shepherd, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Blessed are the meek, Jesus, I thank you for hearing my prayer….
She fell asleep praying and would awake with a prayer on her lips, but in the night, TJ opened an eye and spoke to her—“I love you, Agnes,” he said—and she heard him, and heard the old surety in his voice. He still knew who he was.
An idea just cleft her mind like striking lightning: tomorrow night she would go back to her night school. She must. She wouldn’t back down any more than TJ would.
She thought of the two women in the living room, one probably asleep on the sofa, the other probably dozing in the matching easy chair, two angels, old friends who were guarding her house for all their nodding off. The men on the front porch were like cherubim and seraphim.
…Sweet Jesus, Blessed Savior, with all my heart, I thank Thee.
IN THE MORNING, she finished her prayer, lying beside TJ, thanking God and muttering Glory to God, Most High. Then she got up, telephoned the Bankhead Hotel, and asked to speak to Mr. McCormick.
“Mr. McCormick,” she said, “this is TJ’s wife, Mrs. Agnes LaFayt, and last night four Klan men near ’bout beat TJ to death, so he not coming into work for a week. Then he be back to work, that all right with you.”
She listened to his silence. Because she knew the man’s mind, though she had never seen him, soon she would hear his inevitable reply. Like fingers in a sock puppet head, God would move his lips, start up his voice box.
Not the content but the tone of the man’s voice surprised her: he felt shame. “Two weeks,” he said. “With pay. Thank you for calling.”
“Thank you,” she said, and then she hung up the phone.
She saw TJ looking at her with his one good eye, the other covered with gauze.
“That was Mr. McCormick called, woke me up,” she explained. “He say he sure need you to come back in a couple weeks, and I say ‘Thank you.’ ”
Resurrection
“LISTEN,” STELLA SAID TO CAT AS SHE PUSHED HER wheelchair across the campus at dusk. “Somebody good is playing the piano. Chopin.” She stopped the chair. “My mother used to play that,” she said excitedly.
“Why don’t you go see who it is,” Cat said. “I can wheel myself to class.”
“It’s a little Chopin prelude. I used to call it the ‘Raindrop,’ but my mother said it was another piece that had been nicknamed ‘Raindrop.’ ”
“Go on, see.”
Leaving Cat on the pavement, Stella cut across the grass to what she supposed was the music building. Suppose a budding André Watts were to be discovered at Miles College? Through the window, she saw the back of a pianist who was wearing a wild red wig. Now he was playing a Chopin Nocturne, and though she had not heard the piece for eighteen years, she anticipated and predicted every familiar note of it.
The window was open six inches or so, but Stella boldly grabbed it and sent it on up. At the sound of the rising window, the pianist did not turn around but broke off the Chopin and began to play and sing part of a Christmas carol: “Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oria in ex-cel-sis De-o!” Then he turned and saw Stella, with the upper part of her body thrust through the unscreened window, still standin
g outside.
“You’re not Gloria.”
“Oh!” Stella replied. “You’re white.”
“Come right in,” he said. Right pronounced with the diphthong in the middle of it—ie. He was not from the South.
“I’ll come through the door,” Stella said, and she withdrew her upper body to walk around. Across the greensward, Cat was rolling steadily toward the portico. How brave Cat looked, making her own way. Just then Cat’s purse tried to slide off her lap, and she moved one hand from the wheel to catch it. The chair curved out of line, but Cat caught the purse and straightened her course. Stella had noticed the purse was curiously heavy tonight.
The pianist had launched into the fanfare from Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” from the incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When Stella came into the door, he stopped.
“And you are?”
“Stella Silver.”
He stood up abruptly with exaggerated politeness. “Miss Stella Silver, may I introduce myself? Jonathan Bernstein Green. No kin to the famous Leonard, though I wish.”
“But do you prefer Bernstein’s Beethoven’s Ninth to Von Karajan’s?” she asked.
“No,” he said, soberly. “Though I fear the great Von Karajan may have had Nazi leanings.”
He was walking toward her, with his hand stretched out.
“Ooooh,” Stella said playfully, putting her hands behind her back. “I wouldn’t want to injure a pianist’s sacred hand.”
“You’re a musician.”
“I used to play the cello. I gave it up.”
They shook hands. His grasp was warm, the squeeze of it modulated to the exact pressure Stella liked best.
“And why did you quit?” He placed both hands on his hips, tilted his head to one side. Stella began to wonder if she had met him before.
She would tell the truth. Succinctly. He would understand. “I could have gotten a little better with a great deal of work, not a lot better. I had more talent in English. I might write stories someday. Or, I might go into psychology.”
He still regarded her, with his hands on his hips. He was rather tall, thin, with crisp red hair, almost kinky. His ivory face was sprinkled with reddish freckles, and he had a large nose that tucked down at the tip, like an owl’s. He wore pale glasses.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“In Birmingham? Voter registration. At Miles? I met a teacher who said I could come out here and practice.”
“I tutor in the evenings,” Stella said. “My friend and I. For the GED.”
“Then you might know Gloria Callahan.”
It turned out that Gloria had invited him to practice a Beethoven cello-piano sonata. “I didn’t know Gloria played the cello,” Stella said.
“Well, there’s two of you now.” He looked puckish again. “I’ll accompany both of you.”
“No, I’ve really quit,” Stella said. She felt sorry. “I always liked chamber music,” she said. “Just the right amount of importance for each player.”
“Let me see your fingers,” he said.
She held out her left hand, and he inspected her fingertips for calluses. “Not a trace,” he said.
“I know.” She took her hand away. “Would you be from New York?” she asked.
“I am.”
“I saw you buying gas at a station on Eighth Avenue. It was the day Kennedy was shot. A policeman walked around kicking your tires.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I know that Chopin prelude. The nocturne, too.”
He seated himself at the keyboard. “What would you like to hear, Stella?”
“The Ocean Etude.” The conversation was like somersaulting down a hill on Norwood Boulevard, and she was going too fast. She was five years old; it was summer, and her brothers were tumbling down the grass beside her, and she couldn’t stop.
Then his thunderous opening chord anchored the base of her being to the bottom of the sea. The music billowed out of the piano till she thought she would drown in it. She loved the excess of the piece, how it swept over the whole keyboard, starting with the deep notes in the base and running up to the high fringes of foam. Incessant, she thought, the waves are always incessant. And yes, a melody in all that roaring. She imagined her mother playing to her from the bottom of the ocean. Rivulets of salty tears stung her cheeks as they rolled down, and she thought how tears are distillants of blood.
“Don’t turn around,” she said, when he had finished. She fought to control her voice. “Now, play Debussy’s ‘The Engulfed Cathedral.’ ”
Only for a moment, his hands hesitated above the keyboard—“La cathédrale engloutie,” he announced, with a confident French accent—and then turbulence was replaced by solemn rising. She admired the back of his body, how his shoulders fetched the music up through the sea. The piano took on the resonance of an organ whose music was causing a whole cathedral to slowly ascend from oceanic depths. With the rich swelling of the music, massive stone arches shouldered their way through the water. Bells clanging, the top of the cathedral broke the surface of the sea.
Stella determined to remember only the triumph, not to anticipate the quiet sinking of the cathedral back into the depths.
After the murmuring waves at the end, he said, “Now, my little Christian. Whom did we resurrect?” He didn’t turn around.
“My mother,” she said. “I have to go.”
What’s the Matter?
CAT WATCHED STELLA, PALE AS A LILY, A THIN STALK BEARING radiant blond hair, glide into the classroom. Not afraid, she walks in here like this is home.
No. She’s upset.
Cat backed her chair a few feet from the circle of mismatched chairs to meet Stella. Almost Cat didn’t want to make the effort, but she willed her hands and arms to turn the big wheels. She was already beginning to sweat, and she knew she’d forgotten to put on any deodorant. She hated smelling uncivilized. And she’d worn sleeveless to try to promote air circulation.
Without any preliminary, Cat asked Stella, “What’s the matter?” She was surprised to hear sternness in her own voice, as though Stella had no right to be upset.
“I’ve just fallen in love.”
“What?” Cat thought that Stella was joking. Not a funny joke. Cat made herself smile, as though her own future and that of her brother were in no jeopardy at all. “With whom?” Only her careful grammar would have betrayed her to her friend, but Stella looked too harried to notice the clue.
“My mother’s ghost.”
“What do you mean?” Cat smiled broadly: Stella was joking. She had to be.
“With a redheaded, New York, hunchbacked genius pianist.”
“Why?”
“Well, I guess he’s not hunchbacked.”
Cat was disgusted. She shoved her chair backward, hard. “Yes, and I’m going to buy myself a motorized chair with my summer wages,” she said. “All three cents.”
She watched Stella slip into the empty desk in her circle. Not marry Donny! Stella had no idea how cruel her joke was, a capricious thunderbolt hurled from the Olympus of the able-bodied.
Even before she sat down, Stella was already teaching. What are the two main parts of a sentence? she asked, and quick as a wink, Agnes LaFayt was saying “Subject and verb,” and Stella was commanding Everybody say it, and they did. Cat felt fear rising from her stomach into her throat. And then Stella asked, What does singular mean? And they all said in unison, “One,” and Stella asked, What does plural mean? And they all said, “More than one.”Three, Cat thought, Us three: Donny, Stella, and me. And Stella was off again on the elusive agreement of the third-person singular pronoun and its verb:Not “He don’t” but instead, what, class? And they said obediently but without conviction, “He doesn’t.”
Not marry Donny? What did she mean? She’d promised. And then Cat had to smile at herself. Since when did life keep its promises? But her hands jumped in her lap like fresh-killed chickens.
“What are the bones”�
�she had to swallow hard—“in the backbone called?” Cat asked, but it was hard to pronounce each word of the sentence, hard to articulate one word into the next. She and Stella had agreed: always start with review, whether the other teachers did or not.
“Yes,” she said, “and the ones in the neck are (swallow) the cervical vertebrae.” She had appointed Charles her amanuensis and taught him the meaning of the fancy word. She liked Charles; he was her favorite student. Big, strong, and kind. Over the summer, he’d come to accept her and Stella. Cat knew her hands were getting worse; it took forever to write anything by hand. Now she spelled c-e-r-vi-c-a-l for Charles to print on a piece of notebook paper, to display for all to read. They all said it. Then he passed the ragged-edge paper to the person next to him, and each person copied, in turn, the new word. She waited.
“What is the largest organ of the body?” she asked. After review, she and Stella had resolved in their pedagogical discussions to pose an interesting question: step two. Step, Cat thought bitterly. The metaphor of the ambulatory.
Now the students guessed. They didn’t know. They hadn’t been taught. It had to be 105 degrees in the room. She was melting. She was afraid. Her future was melting, but she would keep going, keep up the teaching. She was determined. She had her gun in her purse.
It was good for them to guess; guessing excited the imagination, made the answer more memorable.
“It’s the skin,” Cat said. “The skin of an average person weighs sixteen pounds.”
“ ‘Sixteen tons, and what’ya get,’ ” a student sang, “ ‘another day older and deeper in debt.’ ” His voice was high and reedy, not at all like Tennessee Ernie Ford’s resonant bass.
“Sixteen pounds,” Cat insisted, “not tons,” but she smiled. Spontaneous expression, free association, were to be encouraged in a free school. Step three. Not suppressed, as Christine seemed to think.
“Skin ain’t no organ,” another young man said. And he killed a mosquito on his cheek, for emphasis. Blood lay splattered like a red seal on his dark skin.
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