Till You Hear From Me: A Novel

by Pearl Cleage

  “It’s a deal,” he said, obviously pleased at my suggestion. “Want to ask Eddie to join us?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to him enough last night.”

  The terrible sound of the Rev’s front doorbell blasted through the toast-scented air. I jumped about a foot in the air, but the Rev just smiled, stood up, and deposited his cup in the sink. “Good, then go on and ask him while I go grab my briefcase.”

  Like a lot of the older men in West End, Mr. Eddie liked Lincolns. When I opened the front door, he had parked his gleaming black Town Car out front and was standing there, tall and elegant in a charcoal gray pin-striped number and a dark gray homburg. I knew from years of traveling with him and the Rev that his overcoat was neatly folded on the backseat until they reached their destination, but he always wore his suit jacket. It used to cover his holster. Now it was probably just habit.

  In the bad old days, Mr. Eddie was armed when the Rev would go around to these little towns like Moultrie and Americus, trying to let people know they hadn’t been forgotten; that they were a part of this great rush toward freedom, too, the same as anybody in Atlanta or Montgomery or Birmingham. The small towns were the most dangerous, but they had always been the Rev’s special constituency. He was as close as most of them would ever get to a Martin Luther King Jr., or a Malcolm X, and when he raised that magnificent voice of his from the pulpits of these tiny churches at the edge of some isolated two-lane road, he made just the possibility of freedom irresistible. I’ve heard my father give a hundred speeches, preach a thousand sermons, and at the end of every one, I wanted to jump up and join something, march somewhere and demand something. At the very least, I was ready to shake my finger in somebody’s face.

  These days, all he was asking people to do was register to vote and the person who still made sure he got there on time to deliver that message was Mr. Eddie. When he saw me, he immediately took off his hat like the gentleman he always was, even when I was just a little girl. He’s the first man who ever pulled out a chair for me at the dinner table. He still does it.

  “Well, good morning! The Rev didn’t tell me you were going to be joining us today!”

  “I’m joining you two for coffee only,” I said, giving him a hug. “After that, you’re on your own.”

  He put his hat on the table by the door where we always toss our keys and followed me into the kitchen. “The Rev will be right down.”

  I knew Mr. Eddie drank his coffee black, so I poured him a cup. He leaned against the counter and took a long sip.

  “You doin’ all right?”

  I nodded. “Can’t complain.”

  “We’re all very proud of you.”

  Would it never end? “Thanks, but nothing definite yet.”

  He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  Maybe I should have some cards made up that I can just hand to people with a picture of the White House in a red circle with a red line through it.

  “Well, it’s going to take some time before anything’s official.”

  Mr. Eddie frowned. “It’s official now, isn’t it? They swore the man in twice, what more do they have to do?”

  That’s when I got it. He wasn’t talking about my job working for the president. He was talking about my role in electing the president.

  “Nothing,” I said, smiling and patting his arm. “Not a thing. I misunderstood you.”

  Relief flooded his face. “All right, then! For a minute there, I thought we were going to have to march on Washington one more time!”

  I laughed. “They don’t want that!”

  He grinned at me and sipped his coffee. “Not if they know what’s good for them. Me and the Rev don’t cut the mustard so good anymore, but we can still spread the mayonnaise.”

  Mr. Eddie was the calm ballast to the Rev’s more volatile personality. Think Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, without the women and the gangsters and the booze.

  “The Rev told me about the schedule for the next couple of weeks. Aren’t you ever going to slow down?”

  He shook his head. “Not likely. Your father thinks he’s got to show up at every one hundred percent church in the same month. I told him, that’s a great idea, but there are one hundred of them and only twenty-eight days in the month. We gonna do four or five of ’em a day? And you know what? He actually stood right there and thought about it. Like we could physically hit one hundred churches even if we went eighteen hours a day!”

  I had an image of my father and Mr. Eddie looking like two sped-up cartoon characters, tearing up and down the road in a cartoon car that lengthened out like a long black train as they barreled from Macon to Moultrie, Savannah to Statesboro, barely stopping for sustenance as the shortest month of the year blew by in a sepia-toned rhetorical rush.

  “How’d you talk him out of it?”

  “I didn’t.” Mr. Eddie laughed. “You see me standing up here at the crack of dawn, don’t you? I might as well be back on the Crescent if I’m gonna be keeping these hours.”

  Mr. Eddie was a Pullman porter and then a sleeping car attendant for over forty years, and by his own account, really loved his work, although he never liked having to regularly rise before the sun came up to get things ready before his passengers slid open the doors to their tiny roomettes, yawning and sniffing the air for coffee.

  Glancing at his watch, Mr. Eddie frowned slightly. “Speaking of which, we need to get out of here if he’s gonna make this breakfast on time. He’ll be the main one fussin’ if they start without him.”

  The food reference reminded me. “You’re invited for dinner tonight when you two get back,” I said. “I’m cooking.”

  He shook his head. “Too late. I’ve already got plans for dinner, and so do you.”

  “I do?”

  “Wes is home. You and the Rev are invited to my place.”

  It’d been years since I’d seen Wes Harper. I had a massive crush on him when I was a teenager, but he left West End for boarding school in the wilds of New Hampshire when I was eight and he was twelve. Aside from catching him kissing on his back porch, my most vivid memory of him was at the going-away party his parents threw to let the community express their collective pride in his achievement. He spent most of the evening looking alternately bored and restless while people who had known him all his life pressed envelopes into his hand with Hallmark cards and hard-earned twenties enclosed to help him on his way. He had seemed to me then to be one of those people who think they deserve better without ever realizing that everybody deserves better.

  “Great,” I said, actually a little relieved that I didn’t have to deliver on my well-intentioned promise to have a meal waiting when the warriors returned from the road. “Do you want me to bring something?”

  “Just your own sweet self,” he said. “I’ve got some lovely catfish fillets I’m gonna bake with some lemon. We’ll make out okay.”

  “Make out okay on what?” the Rev said, carrying his briefcase, wearing his coat and hat like he was already halfway out the door and could therefore not be accused of holding up progress.

  “You’re both invited for dinner,” Mr. Eddie said, putting his cup in the sink beside the Rev’s. “Wes is staying at the house for a couple of days.”

  “At your house?” The Rev looked surprised. “Who’s he hidin’ from?”

  “He didn’t say. You can ask him yourself at dinner.”

  “Well, if you don’t, I will,” the Rev said, giving me a quick peck on the cheek and heading for the door. “Come on, then. Let’s hit the road.”

  When she used to be the receptionist at The Sentinel, Miss Iona would finish every exchange by telling the caller to “do something for freedom today,” and that’s exactly the way the Rev lived his life. Come hell or high water, the Rev was going to do something for freedom every day God sent him. I watched them head down the walk, laughing and joking like they always did, and all of a sudden, I wanted to go, too, but before I could throw up
my hand, the Rev put his coat in the backseat beside Mr. Eddie’s, opened the passenger-side door, and got in without looking back. He never saw me there, standing in the doorway, waiting for a wave.

  I watched the car until it turned the corner, fighting back a powerful rush of déjà vu, and then realized my phone was ringing. I dashed inside and snatched it off the key table. “Hello?”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  My mother was not known for her flowery salutations. It was a trait she shared with Miss Iona, but even for her, this was a bit abrupt.

  “I’m in Atlanta,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  It was four o’clock in the morning in San Francisco. My mother was an early riser who did group tai chi in the park every morning at six, but nobody calls this early unless there is a crisis.

  “Nothing’s wrong. What are you doing down there?”

  “I’m spending a couple of days with the Rev,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Why are you calling me so early?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now,” I said. “It’s no big deal. Now why—”

  “I’m in D.C.” She sounded annoyed. “I was trying to surprise you and when I got to your place, your landlady was kind enough to tell me you had gone to Atlanta. Imagine the egg on my face!”

  “It was a spur of the moment kind of thing.”

  “You saw it, didn’t you?”

  There was no use pretending I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “I saw it.”

  “That’s why you’re there, isn’t it?”

  Both my parents could have second careers as mind readers.

  “Don’t deny it,” she said. “Tacos and sangria! Has he lost his mind? I hope that’s what you went down there to ask him.”

  “His mind is fine,” I said. “What are you doing in D.C.?”

  “National Women’s Studies Association. Big doings.”

  “Yeah?” My mother loved to gossip with me about the latest goings-on in the rarified world of feminist scholars even more than she liked to critique my dad.

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  She was forever swearing me to secrecy about things I had so little interest in or information about, I probably couldn’t have remembered them under torture.

  “Absolutely.”

  She lowered her voice conspiratorially. Sometimes with all the sotto voce going on, I felt like I was surrounded by spies. “I’m on the short list for the Director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman.”

  I was shocked. Not that Spelman, a women’s college with a nationally celebrated Women’s Studies program was looking for a new leader to replace their founding director, who was retiring, but that my mother would even consider moving back here. The only thing that made possible the uneasy peace between my parents was the fact that my mother had had the good sense to relocate herself two thousand miles away when she left the Rev. Spelman College was smack in the heart of West End. It was literally in the Rev’s backyard.

  “Surprised, right?” my mother said. “That I would even allow myself to be considered.”

  “You know they’re going to offer it to you,” I said. “Are you going to take it?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she said, as if I had questioned her right to do so. “It’s a great program and it would be an amazing opportunity to build on a strong foundation.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I interrupted her before she could launch into her spiel. “And you know it.”

  She sighed loud enough for me to hear. “The problem is, it’s not like I’d be across town. I’ll be right up the street.”

  “You don’t have to live in West End,” I said, glad the Rev wasn’t here so I didn’t have to lower my voice, too. I wasn’t prepared to be the messenger on this one if I could possibly help it.

  “I love West End,” my mother said. “I helped create West End. Why should I come back to Atlanta and not live in West End?”

  My mother is capable of arguing all sides simultaneously so I cut to the chase. “Does the Rev know?”

  “I certainly haven’t discussed it with him,” she said, sounding restrained and self-righteous, difficult to pull off, but she executed it flawlessly. “But you can tell him if you like.”

  I did that bridge of the nose pinching thing again. Still nothing. “Are you trying to make this as stressful as possible for me, or is it just something that comes naturally?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with you,” she said, as if she was amazed that I would think such a thing.

  “Exactly,” I said. “So why are we talking about it again?”

  “I just thought you might like to know I’m being considered,” she said. “Aside from all that other stuff.”

  “They would be lucky to get you.”

  “I’d die to have it, if it wasn’t for the Rev being right there, but even with that, I’ll have to give it serious consideration.”

  That meant she was going to take it. It never rains but it pours.

  “What’s your father doing these days anyway, when he’s not making a complete fool of himself all over the Internet?”

  “Uplifting the race, of course. It’s Black History Month, remember?”

  “You’re not riding around with him handing out flyers, are you?”

  “Not this time.” I didn’t tell her almost.

  She sighed. “I think the thing I could never forgive your father for is that he’s so good when it comes to race and such a fucking Neanderthal when it comes to gender.”

  I wondered if it was too soon to hang up. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but this conversation was bringing me down and the day hadn’t even gotten started good yet.

  “Listen, Mom, I’ve got to go.”

  “Me, too, but Ida B?” She lowered her voice again. “Is he really okay?”

  This was for a fine line. My mother’s concern was real. I knew that. But I also knew that anything I said could and probably would be used in future heated exchanges with the Rev without regard to pledges of confidentiality.

  “There’s nothing wrong with him,” I said. “That interview was a fluke. They caught him at a … bad moment.”

  No need to tell her he laid the blame for that moment at her feet.

  “Well, you keep an eye on him, that’s all. How long are you going to be down there anyway? Don’t they need you to help run things up here?”

  “I think they’ll be able to muddle through without me for a couple of days.”

  “Have you heard anything yet from the Great God Obama?”

  Both my parents voted for the man and in their hearts, they realize how lucky we are to have him, but it’s almost like they can’t admit it, even to themselves. Tavis Smiley syndrome. Easy to recognize. Impossible to argue.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then what are you doing down there? Shouldn’t you be up here lobbying on your own behalf or something?”

  “Haven’t you heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

  “Haven’t you heard that out of sight is out of mind?” she said. “Don’t forget to tell your father about Spelman.” And she was gone.

  SEVENTEEN

  Between the Lines

  “HOW DOES SHE LOOK TO YOU?” THE REV SAID WHEN THE BREAKFAST gathering was over and he and Mr. Eddie were back in the Lincoln, headed for Athens.

  Mr. Eddie shrugged and set the cruise control on sixty-five. “She looks great. A little tired, maybe, but she just helped elect a president. She’s supposed to look a little worse for wear.”

  “She’s too thin.”

  “Well, you know a lot of young women these days prefer travelin’ light.”

  “I’m not talking about how much luggage she brought. I’m talking about her health. She looked worried.”

  “Listen to yourself! All you do is worry. The girl is fine. She looks fine. She sounds fine. She’s here to spend some time with you before she
moves into the White House. She’s probably just a little preoccupied. Why don’t you relax?”

  “Why don’t you slow down? You’re going to get us a speeding ticket.”

  “Have I ever once gotten a speeding ticket?”

  “There’s always a first time.”

  Mr. Eddie looked at the Rev and kept his voice neutral. “Why don’t you just lean back and gather your thoughts?”

  “My thoughts stay gathered,” the Rev said. “I don’t have to do any special gathering.”

  “Good, then how about some music?”

  Mr. Eddie liked blues, and Albert King’s voice filled the car with a tale of unmatched, unmitigated woe.

  “Cut off my lights this mo’nin’,

  They set my furniture out doors …”

  “Now, that is a Negro with some bad luck,” Mr. Eddie said, falling in behind a cream-colored El Dorado with Florida vanity tags that said: 4UEthel.

  “What’s Ida B got to be preoccupied about?” The Rev turned down the music.

  “Every human bein’ has got a right to be preoccupied when they want to,” Mr. Eddie said. “She’s a grown woman, after all.”

  The Rev, like many fathers before him, knew this to be a fact, but he didn’t have to like it. “It’s all my fault.”

  Eddie glanced over at his friend. “What is? That’s she’s a grown woman? How’s that got anything to do with you? Time passes.”

  “That she might not get that job at the White House.”

  “I thought Iona said she already got it.”

  “That’s exactly what Iona said, but from what Ida B told me last night, your president is doing some more fancy backtracking.”

  “Did Ida B use the words ‘fancy backtracking’?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What exactly did she say?”

  “She said they are still going through the vetting process and she ought to know something in a couple of weeks, but I can read between the lines.”

  “That doesn’t sound like backtracking to me,” Mr. Eddie said. “It sounds like being thorough.”