Good Negress
Page 26
The man has to know Margarete lied about not knowing where Luke edward lives. Anxiously, I pull the money out of my pocket and catch a ten bill caught by the early air. Three tens and a five. Thirty-five dollars. There is one hundred ten dollars in my pouch. I take one of Margarete’s tens and push it down into the bottom of my shoe. Something to help me start again. I look down the block in front of me and behind me for the white house with the black gas lamp that is across the street from the brick house where I make the right turn.
All around me are houses with high-shaped hedges. Damn. I have walked clear across town. How many times have I walked to Christine’s! If I could yell at myself, I would. J would be running his mouth, me running mine. He would be tugging my arm as I walked straight past the brick house and he turned right. Only alone would I get so turned around.
I don’t think twice about what to do. I turn on my heels and walk double speed in the reverse direction. I am so disappointed; I jam my hands into my pockets and recrumple Margarete’s remaining dollar bills. That’s when I discover my carelessness with my coat. I have buttoned it wrong and so one side hangs incoherently below the other. I am so concerned with protecting Margarete’s money, with protecting Margarete’s son.
WHEN I REACH Dexter Boulevard, the street Christine lives on, many things have happened. People are out being swallowed up by buses. I hurry by. They stare at my anxiety and pinched face. They see me walking fast on my way. They don’t know how dumb I am about directions. Not even for her brother’s sake can she find her way around. Alone, I feel conspicuous on the street. The barometer in my panties quivers. All this frenzy and this fear. Five or eight blocks back, the ache in me erupted. J has taught me what this feeling means, but I am confused and displeased by it now.
Turns out, I had not missed a turn. In the long ago of my leaving the house in the hurry and stupor of door-banging and huddled, crumpled money, I had made the turn and forgot about it. Once I recognized where I was, I rushed ahead and clambered up the steps to 78 Dexter, my panties and Margarete’s money both nearly wringing wet, the one wrung from worry, the other wet from breaking open. I had to knock hard to rouse the house. I called and knocked on the window, a nervous woman with thin knuckles: “Luke edward, Luke edward, Luke edward.” No answer. I didn’t leave, didn’t go round back; I stood stock still yelling on the porch. Christine pulls the door open just a little, sees it’s me, opens it wide. Her eyes are nearly plastered closed and her hair stands every which way. “Luke edward here?” I bellow. Out of breath but arrived.
“Yeah,” she answers me, and we both walk to the bedroom where she rolls his top half, and I shake his naked and protruding red-berry legs.
“Whatsa matter?” he wants to know, recognizing me in this his other house.
“You in trouble,” I tell him and rush on. “That man owns the gas station came by to find out where you are. He say you lifted some money last Friday night.” Christine wilts. I see it from the corner of my eye. It is sad.
“What you talking about, Neesey?” Luke sits up in the bed and the sheet he had swirled around him fell. His swathe, his holy rope.
Christine props herself up against the wall. She sits in a small chair. Her hair is an irate halo.
Luke edward sits up in the bed. He alerts a smell of musk and last night’s dance and today’s ferocities all around us in the room. He is a man, and the breath of his sleep-mouth insists, “Neesey, stop dreaming and tell me what happened.” I wish this unpleasantness was sweet. The hair on his chest is soft and straight and reddish-blond. Fine like something on a baby’s butt. Both his feet break the color of the bedclothes: they are long and well-shaped and neatly kept. His veins and thin bones make a nice map across the top of his feet.
Abruptly the sheet jerks back, and the long, red-sienna man with cherry-blond hair steps out of bed. He reaches over near Christine to grab his pants. The belt buckle clinks. I realize by his sudden movement that I have been silent, stumped, transfixed. But if I was transfixed then, I am cast, a statue now. Mouth an O. I have not seen Luke edward without his pants and shirt and socks and shoes since we all got into the big washtub one after the other down home. Then, he had no hair on him. His peter did not swing; it was not plum. I imagine I hear it flap and smack against his thighs. I turn myself around and sit down at the foot of the bed. Luke edward is a man.
He comes around and squats to face me. He is bare-chested and earnest. He persists. “What happened, Neesey?”
I repeat all the facts. “The man who owns the gas station came and woke us up early this morning. He banged so hard on the door we thought somebody round was sick or dying. Margarete answered, but me and Big Jim were standing right there with her. He says last Friday before you quit you took money from his register. You were supposed to put it in his safe. He says you planned to take it, that’s why you quit so fast. He says you slipped and mentioned it to one of his other boys. He says he can have you put in jail.” I looked dead center in Luke edward’s face. He did the same to me. Luke edward, did you take that man’s money? My voice is pinched up high. I can’t tell whether he looks hurt. I mean I can’t tell why he looks hurt. I can’t think. My sobs are breaking rain. This is when I melt into Margarete.
My eyes dart across Luke edward’s face in a frantic search for truth. It may be now that I do the melting.
Christine joins the conversation. “You steal money from the gas station, Luke?” she is asking.
Luke stands up from in front of me and continues to dress.
I want to yank him back to where I can watch and try to pry an answer from his refusing again to talk. Why does he refuse to talk? I remember I had decided before that it has to do with activity. It must. The way the boys are at war with activity. Their urges to move around always win. That is why they are so word shy, and book shy, and school shy. They can’t sit still for the time it all takes.
“Don’t swallow everything whole,” he says.
I can watch out for myself, Luke edward. I have found my way here to get you.
“Margarete told me to bring you this money.” I expect him to respond to my tone of voice. He does not turn toward me.
“Luke edward, do you want this money Margarete sent?”
“I don’t need Mama’s money, Neesey.”
“It’s one hundred twenty-five dollars, Luke edward.”
Christine says, “Luke, what you gone do?”
I think I see them decide to get rid of me. At least I think that’s what they decide. I try to think should I pull the money out. But it is too pitiful, even for me to do.
I want my Luke edward.
Luke has buttoned up his sweater and rubbed his hands over his hair. He pulls a coat from the closet and leaves a hanger swinging. “Come on, Neesey,” he says. Where is he going? Wherever he is going he thinks I’m going with him. Well, I’ll go with him. But not very far. I am as tightly stretched as a slingshot set to spring.
I have to take my mind to think on something soothing. Even as I stumble up the road. I recall myself learning. I remember when that sky opened up. I feel the new sensation of lightness over my head. I explore this endlessness that seems to be a part of the whole thing. I smile about all those many discoveries, new words. I learn to identify humidity and to predict the coming rain. I reach to where the freedom is. I put on an old coat and run out to the yard. We need greens for Sunday dinner. It is my responsibility to get them. There are not many rows to pick from at this time of the season so I do not linger choosing. By now, everything has fallen but the collards.
NEW YORK, 1994
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
©1995 by A. J. Verdelle. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“Epilogue” reprinted by permission of GRM Associates, Inc., agents for the estate of Ida M. Cullen. From the book Copper Sun by Countee Cullen © 1927 by Harper & Brothers; copyright renewed 1955 by Ida M. Cullen.
“Tears on My Pillow” by Sylvester Bradford and Al Lewis © 1958 by Gladys Music, Inc. and Vanderbuilt Music Corp. Copyright renewed and assigned to Gladys Music and Sovereign Music. International copyright secured. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Lyric reprinted by permission of
Gladys Music and Sovereign Music.
CONTENTS
This Rain Coming
Once I Start to Cleanin, It’s Hard for me to Stop
Where I Started
My Two Mothers
Hay Dreams
Girl Baby
Margarete’s Hugs Again
All Lined Up and Smiling
Gibraltar Jones
Hog Dreams
Them Washington Pigs
Days of Disbelief
The Window in My Mother’s House
Sailing the Black Slate
Bob
The Language of Mastery
Appliances Soldiered All Around
Cake in the Oven
So Plain a Thing
Everything has Fallen But the Collards
Sealing in the Meat Scraps
Years Like Riots