by Tim Sandlin
“You opened my letter?”
“’Course not. I’ve got morals, unlike others in this room.”
What I needed was coffee. Unfinished blow jobs always make me crave coffee. For some reason I can’t explain, I’ve had a number of unfinished blow jobs in my life. It’s like the women get down there and start making lists of places they’d rather be.
“You need these grounds, Gus? I want to make a new pot.”
“Don’t you go throwing out my grounds.”
“That’s why I asked. I never throw out old coffee grounds without permission.” I spread a New York Times Book Review on the counter and dumped out this morning’s grounds.
“So, if you didn’t open my letter, how do you know it’s from a black woman?”
Gus went into her apron pocket and sailed the letter across the room. “Handwriting’s a black woman’s.”
The address was in blue ink—large letters with big loops and carefully dotted i’s. There was no return address.
“You can tell a person’s race and gender by their handwriting?”
Gus slammed a pie onto the counter so hard the other pies jumped. “I should get paid extra for working with a handicapped boss.”
“Just wondering.”
“’Course I can tell black from white and man from woman. I’m not blind.”
I turned the letter over. A Christmas Seal picture of a tiny angel and star held down the back flap. “Is my handwriting black?”
“No.”
“Part black?”
“Your handwriting’s Chinese.”
Mr. Callahan,
I wish to speak with you regarding the matter you broached at my home Saturday afternoon last. If it is convenient, would you meet me after Sunday services at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Benbow Ave. I shall be on the front lawn around 11 a.m.
Mrs. Atalanta Williams
19
The trouble—besides guilt over Atalanta Williams, anxiety over Gilia, confusion over sex with Katrina, and the perpetual sorrow of being alive because my mother was group raped—was sleep. I couldn’t do it. Or, I couldn’t fall asleep until dawn, but once there, I couldn’t wake up until it was time to go to sleep again.
The entire week I stumbled around with swamp water on my brain; trance movements from home to Tex and Shirley’s to work to the Ramada to the Exercycle 6000, and then, more exhausted than I thought humanly survivable, I lay in my bed and zing—the swamp turned into a beehive. My skin itched. Someone else’s rock video lit up the backs of my eyelids and I thought of everything that had ever happened or would happen anywhere in the universe. I dickered with God.
***
Sunday morning, twenty minutes after I drifted into the blessed relief of sleep, Ivan Idervitch leaned on my front porch doorbell. Ivan Idervitch is the nine-year-old from across the street and down a couple, and when you first see Ivan what you notice is his horn-rimmed glasses. They make his eyes big as Ping-Pong balls, but for some reason I don’t notice the eyes, just the glasses. I always try to be nice to Ivan because his parents make him wear suspenders. My mother made me wear dickies in Wyoming when none of the other boys wore dickies, so I know how it can be.
Ivan Idervitch rang the doorbell for like ten minutes before I managed to pull on a bathrobe and stumble down the stairs. Shannon and Eugene were still doing whatever disgusting thing they did, and Gus was nowhere near. She only takes one day off a week and she chooses which day based on whenever she feels the urge.
“Here.” Ivan thrust a pink paper at me.
“What’s this?”
“Stuff about you. The man’s paying me two cents apiece to give them away to every house in the neighborhood.”
“Everyone in the neighborhood will see this?”
“All the neighborhoods. My whole Cub Scout pack signed up. It’s our weekend project.”
“I’ll give you a dime apiece for what you’ve got there.”
Twin lights went on behind the glasses. The boy was a born MBA. “Fifteen cents.”
“Twelve. And if you go back for more, I’ll buy those too.”
“How about the other kids?”
I wondered how many fliers had been printed compared to how much my reputation was worth. “Okay, twelve cents, but the man can’t find out where his fliers are going.”
Ivan blinked behind his glasses. “Ten cents for the other kids and I get a two-cent fee for bringing them in.”
“When you grow up, come see me and I’ll give you a job.”
“No, thanks, Mr. Callahan, I’m going into the insurance field.”
***
The flier was about what you’d expect. A Xeroxed photo of me sat in the upper right hand corner. I don’t know when Mike Newberry took my picture, but the graininess made me look like a man who robbed gas stations.
The left side had a big headline that read PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD PERVERT and under that, in slightly smaller letters: Sam Callahan on a rampage against God, decency, and Southern values.
Then it listed twelve major social blunders:
Impregnated a 13-year-old girl
Arrested for copulation on a carnival ride
Writer of pornographic children’s books
Had simultaneous sex with twins
Frequent drug user including LSD and Double Humpies
Contributor to left-wing radical organizations
Gambles on cockfights
Frequents Oriental brothels
Commits perversions involving oral sex and food
While married, carried on an adulterous relationship with his colored maid
Tells slanderous lies concerning his parentage
Spat on the Confederate flag
At the bottom of the page it said: If you love your family, you will rise up and drive this blasphemous sex fiend from your midst. Then it gave my address and phone number.
Gus wasn’t going to like number ten. Any problems Skip and Wanda thought they had with me were diddly compared to what would happen if they pissed off Gus.
And the sex with twins charge wasn’t true. I’d fed that one to Mike Newberry Friday night. I once had sex with a twin, but I didn’t know whether she was Melissa or Melinda. They were always switching clothes and personalities to fool people. I wanted sex with the other twin but I was afraid to give it a shot because I didn’t know which one I’d already been with.
The left-wing radical group and spitting on the Confederate flag incident happened at a Charlie Daniels concert in Georgia. I paid a girl wearing an Earth first! T-shirt five dollars for what she said was genuine Macon County moonshine but was actually Coleman fuel and mint leaves. I spewed on the biker in front of us, whose leather jacket had you-know-what sewed on the back. He would have beat the crap out of me if the Earth first! girl hadn’t lit a match and torched him. In the ensuing confusion, we ran and hid in her van.
Ivan brought in 3,500 fliers before ten-thirty. When I left to meet Atalanta Williams, Shannon was at the kitchen table, passing out money to a steady stream of Cub Scouts. Eugene sat on a stool, reading the flier over and over and asking questions that began with “Did you really…” I think I’d finally impressed the dork.
***
I waited in the park across from Atalanta’s church, watching the weather, the traffic, and squirrels. The weather was mixed, puffy clouds and cool. Traffic was light to none. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” wafted from the red brick church, across the neat lawn and juniper hedge, and past the Signs on Wheels sign that read Have God, will travel.
I was more than a little uneasy about this meeting with Atalanta. I’d hurt her unnecessarily and deserved any scathing accusations she wanted to hurl. But, sitting in the Sunday morning quiet of the park, I was even more uneasy about the direction my life was headed.
People who mattered—Maurey, Shannon, Gilia—were being shortchanged, emotionally speaking, while people who didn’t matter—Katrina, the fathers, Wanda—were taking control.
I’ve had this recurring dream ever since college, where I’m in the backseat of a speeding car with no driver. I fight to reach the wheel as the car careens through crowded streets, killing people and animals. It flips children up onto the front hood where their faces flatten against the windshield and I can see their mouths open to scream. Real life was beginning to ache like that dream.
The double doors opened and people began coming out of the church—men in dark suits and women in shiny dresses. The worshipers were all black except two older women who seemed to be dressed alike. They had on blue hats and white gloves. A lot of people lit cigarettes. That’s one of the big differences between North Carolina and Wyoming. Most everyone in North Carolina—black and white—smokes cigarettes. Not many white people in Wyoming smoke, and there aren’t enough black people to tell what most of them do.
Atalanta Williams was one of the last ones out of the church. As she made her way through the groups of people, the thing I noticed was her posture. I imagine Eleanor Roosevelt had posture like Atalanta’s. Nearly everyone she passed smiled and said something to her. Atalanta said something back, but she didn’t smile.
I met her on the edge of the church parking lot. She held her white leather Bible in both hands. The red ribbon marked a place toward the back of the book, one of St. Paul’s letters or Revelations or something.
Atalanta looked toward the church. “I have to apologize for the way I behaved toward you and the young woman last week. It was inhospitable and un-Christian.”
“I’m the one who should apologize, Mrs. Williams. Had I known about your husband, I would never have come to your house.”
“Let’s find a bench.”
Atalanta didn’t speak again as we crossed the street back into the park and sat on a wooden bench next to a sumac. The amazingly bright leaves gave off a shimmery bonfire effect.
“The fall of our junior year, Jake played in a Guilford County all-star game,” Atalanta said. She sat very straight with her eyes not focused on anything present. “Jake had played against white boys before, but that was the only time he ever played on the same team with them. He thought it was a great opportunity, even though the Negroes had to come to the game already in uniform because they weren’t allowed in the white boys’ locker room.”
I decided not to say anything. My personal apology had been lame enough, without trying to apologize for the entire white race.
“After the game, Jake started spending time with some of the white football players. I didn’t like it much, and I must admit we had words. Jake seemed to think it was modern or hip or something. He bragged about introducing the white boys to John Lee Hooker.
“That Christmas I spent with my grandmother in Asheboro. The entire family went down and I had a fight with Papa over inviting Jake. Papa didn’t approve of Jake.”
“Fathers never like their daughters’ boyfriends.”
Atalanta didn’t comment, but you could see the past playing through her mind like a home movie. The fight with her father. The trip to Asheboro. I’ve had long periods of living in memories and it’s hard. Too many booby traps.
“When I came home, Jake had changed. He no longer spent time with the white boys, but he didn’t say why. I always thought they hurt him somehow—treated him like a human one minute and an animal the next. Those things happened quite often back then.”
She lapsed into another memory. I tried not to look at her for fear of intruding on her privacy. “We never talked about it and in a few months Jake was back to normal.”
A squirrel hopped toward us through the fallen leaves. He stopped about five feet away, cocked his head at an angle, and watched us through his left eye. The last of the cars pulled away from the church. The only car left in the parking lot was a gray-and-green Chevrolet that must have belonged to Atalanta.
Her eyes shifted from the past to her hands holding the Bible in her lap. “I think I could accept it if he’d only had sex with her.” Her right hand started to shake. “But I cannot bring myself to forgive him for rape.”
Atalanta’s hands were small, like Maurey’s. The left hand clutched at the right to stop it from shaking; I couldn’t conceive of her making a fist.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Williams.”
“It changes everything.”
“I’m sure Jake was a fine man. He just made a mistake. Maybe the white boys called him chicken if he didn’t do what they were doing.”
Atalanta raised a hand to brush against her eyes, then lowered it onto the Bible again. “There is no excuse.”
“When you want to be accepted, you’ll do almost anything.”
“No.” She turned to look at me and I had to meet her eyes. “If you are Jake’s son, I want to know. You would be part of him and I cherish any part he may have left behind.”
“Do you think I am his son?”
She studied me a long time. “I don’t know.”
“I’d hoped someone would recognize something in me.”
She shook her head slowly. “I’ve held on as hard as I could, but after thirty years I mostly see him as he is in the photographs.”
She leaned forward a little bit and stared intently into my eyes. I didn’t look away or blink. After messing up so many lives, hers more than anyone’s, it seemed important to come to some conclusion, to discover who was my father so I could set the other four families free.
But Atalanta gave it up. She looked back across the street at the church and her eyes almost, but not quite, relaxed. “You could do worse than having Jake Williams for a father.”
“Of the five, he’s the one I’m hoping for.”
“If you find out, yes or no, will you tell me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I miss Jake every day.”
20
Gilia was the worst driver I’ve ever ridden with as a passenger, not that I’ve been a passenger too often. Her idea of merging lanes was to roll down the window, stick her hand out, and wave fingers at whoever she was cutting off, as if people don’t mind you barging in so long as you’re friendly about it.
“D.C. drivers are mythologically terrible,” she said. “Politicians and bureaucrats refuse to recognize the authority of the red light. I think that says something about our government.”
“The middle lane is for turning left.” She’d just pulled an illegal maneuver that caused a moving van to lock its brakes and honk and my testicles to leap skyward.
“I don’t make decisions that far in advance.”
We were driving to High Point in her Ford EXP in hopes of finding and stealing my Datsun 240Z.
“Why did you let Wanda take your car in the first place?” Gilia asked.
“She wanted it.”
“You always give women what they want?”
The answer seemed too obvious to say out loud. Besides, I thought one of us should concentrate on the upcoming intersection.
“Women must take constant advantage of you,” Gilia said. “I like that.”
We parked across the street from the address Wanda had given me several times as the place to send money.
“Kind of run-down, isn’t it,” Gilia said.
“I should save her from this dump.”
“She must have wanted to leave you real bad to move here.”
No 240Z or any other car was in front and the house looked dark and empty. Beyond empty, it looked uninhabited. There were no curtains or shades, no clutter on the porch that sagged vaguely southeast. Several windows were cracked or broken.
“Maybe she doesn’t live here but uses the address as a mail drop,” I said. “She was accustomed to a privileged way of life.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“You stay here while I check things out.”
“Don’t be silly, I’m with you.”
“If she comes home while I’m inside, things could get ugly.”
“I like other people’s ugly scenes. All that intense emotion, words spoken without t
hought, domestic violence—it’s neat if I’m not taking part.”
“But what if she expects you to take part?”
“I’ll slap her upside the head.”
I looked at Gilia in the late afternoon light. Her eyes sparkled, but I couldn’t tell if it was from resolve or amusement. She was either being supportive in my time of tension or making sport of my personal problems. Either way, it would be nice not to face Wanda alone.
As we walked toward the house, I said, “Sometimes I wish I believed in firearm ownership.”
She buddy-punched my shoulder. “Yeah, right, Wyatt Earp. In a showdown you’re more likely to pull out a credit card than a gun.”
***
The front door was locked and I was ready to give it up and head back to Greensboro, but Gilia reached through a broken window pane and flipped the bolt.
“You’ve got spine to spare dealing with my father and Skip, why turn into a whuss when it’s your wife?”
“Wanda’s meaner than your father and Skip.”
The living room wasn’t as bad as I’d expected—bare floor, single mattress up against the wall, overflowing ashtrays, pizza boxes with the one-two Domino’s logo. I’d expected rotting trash and human feces; this was no worse than the average freshman dorm. On one wall someone had painted a Harley-Davidson that was fairly good.
Gilia wrinkled her nose at the smell. “So what’s Grandma’s jewelry stored in?”
“A box covered with green felt; at least that’s what the stuff was in when Wanda took it. Desperate as she’s been for cash, I doubt we’ll find much.”
Gilia bent down and turned over a couch pillow next to the mattress. “This it?” She held up Me Maw’s jewelry box.
I nodded. “I don’t suppose—”
“Nope.”
I wandered down the hall and into the kitchen, where my baseball cards lay stacked on a linoleum-topped table. They were a mess. She’d mixed American League with National League and relief pitchers with starters. A sticky bottle of Log Cabin syrup was balanced on 1968. I guess she hadn’t had time to figure out how much the collection was worth or where to sell it. She’d only stolen it to hurt me anyway; I told her a long time ago it wasn’t worth huge amounts on account of Caspar burned all the pre-August 1963 cards, including a 1954 Alvin Dark that was the pride of my youth.