Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Reverend Schell looked up all at once. “You don’t have a problem, my dear Sister Noon.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You don’t. You won’t lose Liz either.”

  “Are you sure, Reverend?”

  “I’m certain. The lawyer will file his paperwork to get a stay. That way Children’s Court can’t take action even if it takes you longer than the fifteen days.”

  “Longer than the fifteen days to do what, Reverend?”

  “Well, that’s the next part. You got to get the child’s aunt to sign over guardianship to you and Herbie. Then it’ll be permanent and legal.”

  Noon hung on to his every word as if they were diamonds falling. Her eyes brimmed over with trust when she looked at him. As if the inked symbols had just been interpreted by the Lord himself. She was so glad that she’d had presence of mind to bring this to him instead of schoolteaching Next-Door-Jeanie. Jeanie would have advised her all right, but only after she’d lectured her about how the system is always gonna work against colored people unless we organize, and how the system keeps poor whites and colored apart, for control, keeps them at each other’s throats. Noon didn’t need that kind of talk right now. She needed Reverend Schell’s silky assurances.

  “So, so you mean, it’s just that simple, get a lawyer, and then find the aunt.”

  “Just that simple, Noon.”

  “The lawyer will be the easy part, except for his fee, but we’ll manage. The hard part will be finding the aunt. We don’t even know where she is, Reverend. She sends money every month like clockwork, but it never has a return address. Lord knows I don’t want no parts of her anyhow. I come up against the likes of that woman, the Holy Spirit might not want to live in my heart no more I might act out so.”

  “Now, Noon.” Reverend Schell chuckled. “To forgive is divine. But to be on the safe side, just get Herbie to handle the aunt.” He pulled the glasses from his face and folded the arms in and slipped them in his breast pocket. “Herbie can find her; I trust him that far, to be able to find the aunt. He probably knows those clubs where she’d most likely sing.” He controlled the smirk that wanted to race across his face. He talked in his smoothest voice. He didn’t want to let on that he knew about Herbie and Ethel. Bow had told him years ago. Bow even wanted him to do something about it. Confront Herbie, make him stop. He’d tried to explain to Bow that he couldn’t get involved in all the sordid details of people’s lives. Too much. Under those big Sunday hats and wide-lapeled suits with perfectly folded bleached white hankies, some were just plain not interested in changing their ways. Best to let it sit. Until they were ready to change. If he tried to stir things around before they were ready, it’d be like a swirling cesspool. “I just pray for their souls,” is what he’d told Bow. “When they ask me, I give them counsel; otherwise I just pray that the Lord don’t let Satan lay permanent claim.”

  “But her daddy’s a preacher, just like you,” Bow had insisted. “Upstanding, well-respected, well-off colored folks. We from the same county. She married down; you know that bag-toting husband ain’t of the social standing she’s used to.”

  Reverend Schell was struck by Bow’s anger that time, and every time after that when Bow tried to convince him to intervene. Finally Reverend Schell hinted that if he didn’t know better, he’d think Bow had designs on Noon himself.

  “Just promised her people I’d look out for her,” he’d insisted. Then Ethel left a year ago, and Bow let it drop.

  So to keep the smirk from giving him away when he talked about Herbie finding Ethel, he smiled his slowest, brightest smile.

  Noon looked at his face, his white teeth showing as he smiled. She melted again when he smiled, showing the whiteness in his mouth a little at a time. She shifted in the red-cushioned seat and rubbed her hands along her dress again.

  He leaned back in the chair and smiled completely now. He talked to Noon soothingly, telling her not to worry about a thing. He suspected that was all Herbie needed to do. Talk to her low and smooth. He suspected Herbie didn’t even know how to look at her. Like she was the prettiest gem God set breath to. Reverend Schell had never ever touched Noon in indecent places or in indecent ways. But he guessed that he could stir her passions more with a look than Herbie ever could. Herbie was young, impatient, going straight for the treasure without taking time to admire the chest, dust it off, work the lock until it opened easily. He reasoned that Noon wouldn’t even need healing prayers if Herbie were a more patient man.

  He put the blue-backed papers on the desk. “Promise me you won’t worry, Noon.”

  “Promise, Reverend.” She blushed.

  “Let’s join hands and have a word of prayer so we can leave here on one accord in the sight of God.”

  Noon took her hands from her lap and placed them on the center of the desk to meet his. She was embarrassed that they were cold.

  Reverend Schell cupped his large dark hands around Noon’s. “Such a warm heart has she whose hands are cold.” He pressed his hands tighter around hers. “Such small, gentle hands, Noon, but I can tell the Lord has picked these hands for large works. They’re already doing large works, giving love to those two girls that you didn’t even birth, being a good sound member of this congregation, cooking and sewing for the ones that can’t do for themselves. What great works for such small, gentle hands.”

  He prayed a short prayer asking for a quick resolution, for guidance, and for a home in heaven when this life is done. When he finished praying, he drew Noon’s hands to his mouth and blew into them. “They’re nice and warm now,” he said with the satisfaction of one who’d just gotten a stubborn piece of coal to glow.

  Noon squirmed in her seat. She could feel that thin line welling up that always welled up during her healing prayers. The line never grew wider than a slither. Right now it was dangerous. Right now it wasn’t supposed to happen. Stretched across the altar under God’s sacred watch, it was supposed to happen. But no prayer had just gone forth summoning up her miracle. He had only blown his breath into her hands. She pulled at her hands; she needed them for support. She needed to plant them on the red-cushioned seat next to her hips. She needed to ball her fists and will the line away. The devil, that’s all it was. The devil trying to mess with her, trying to block her miracle, trying to keep her mind in a fog over this situation with Liz. Trying to scare her off from her Reverend Schell.

  Herbie got home before Noon. He was in the back bedroom with Fannie on his knee and Liz still holed up in the closet. Fannie was talking fast. Pouting. Telling him all that happened with the mean son of a bitch who came to take Liz away. Herbie got madder the more she talked. He was so mad that he didn’t even stop the cursewords that peppered her tirade.

  “He did what, Fannie?”

  “Called Noon a nigger, I heard him when he was leaving saying ‘fucking nigger.’”

  “You did the right thing locking him in the cellar. He didn’t have no right talking his way into this house anyhow. You just a child; by right he should have come back later. I just wish I had been here, I’d have kicked his you know what.”

  “His ass! Right, Herbie, you’da kicked his natural ass.” Fannie jumped off his knee and ran to the closet door and cupped her hands around her mouth and pushed her voice through the thick wood. “You hear that, Liz, Herbie woulda stood up for you, I told you he would.”

  “Why she always hiding in the closet like that?”

  Fannie picked up the agitation in Herbie’s voice and jumped back on his knee and rested her woolly hair against his starched white shirt. “She’s scared, Herbie; she’s just a scared little girl.”

  “Well, you a little girl too, but you not always running and hiding the least little thing that happens.”

  “’Cause I know my big, strong daddy will fend for me, I don’t have to let nothing scare me.”

  Herbie hugged Fannie and tried not to laugh out loud at her too-obvious attempts to charm him. At the same time, though, he blushed with the warm flo
od that he always got with Fannie from the time he lifted her out of the cardboard box. This was true love. For this little girl pushing her woolly hair against his chest, thinking him a hero, as he sat on the pale pink bedspread with the evening sun falling through the pink and green flowered handmade drapes, he’d go to hell and back, and fight fire-breathing dragons, and even kick the shit out of white men with badges. For this one, whom he didn’t make in the way a father makes a child but who was made for him as his barometer of goodness—as long as she trusted his worth, he was worthy indeed—he might even let a thought slip through pertaining to Liz that was a nice thought.

  “Tell her to come here.” He exhaled as he said it, not hardly able to believe it himself. Until Liz stood in front of him, white lines on her face where the tears had dried to ashen streaks. Red hair sparkled with dust from the closet. He tried not to look at the hair. The hair would remind him of Ethel and he’d ache for her. He looked in her eyes instead, brown eyes almost as brown as her skin. He had not looked in her eyes since that night she shocked him in the hallway. Fearful, pleading eyes stared back at him.

  Fannie was at Liz’s side, nudging her on. “I told you Herbie won’t let anything happen to you. Didn’t I tell you, Liz, huh? Tell her, Herbie, tell her you’ll protect her.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  Liz’s mouth hung in disbelief. He had never said more than two words to her since she’d been dropped off on their steps. And when he did, it was only at Fannie’s reminding him that he hadn’t said good morning to Liz or how do you feel? Even then his words were like the bark of an old dog that didn’t want to be stroked. But now his tone was soft, and that line that always came up in the middle of his forehead whenever he looked at her was gone.

  Liz leaned on Fannie, who pushed Liz to Herbie, gently, until Liz was right at Herbie, her hand on his knee.

  “Well, are you going to tell me?” Her fingers with the nails gnawed to the cuticle rested on his knee and almost burned through his pants. Just a scared little girl, he told himself. Still, the hate that he felt for her started to rise up and stopped as a lump caught in his throat. He tried to swallow, tried not to think of all the times she’d gotten in the way of his enjoying Ethel. And over the past year even got between him and Fannie. Whether it was a walk to Pop’s to get a coloring book, or a water ice, or a trip over to Forty-fourth and Parkside to watch the Negro League’s Philadelphia Stars play, or a trolley ride to the train station to get red licorice, or even a sit-down on the front steps to count the lightning bugs at dusk, Fannie wouldn’t unless Liz could too. He watched the eyes glass over and then spill down, following the ashen tracks straight down her cheeks. She tried to talk. No words, though. Just sobs that made her whole body seem to crumble. He did swallow then. He lifted her small hand from his knee and squeezed it and pulled her to him and sat her on his lap and told her not to cry; he wouldn’t let anyone take her from Fannie and Noon.

  Fannie pushed her hands to her mouth to muffle her gleeful squeals. Even with her seeing eye she didn’t notice that Liz’s back was straight as a board, and Herbie’s arm was stiff even as it circled Liz’s back.

  Noon’s thoughts beat her home. Her focus was back to Liz and convincing Herbie to help Liz stay. She knew he wouldn’t protest finding the aunt. A chance to ogle over the aunt at a club with a shot of gin and a beer chaser, he wouldn’t protest at all. It was the money for the legal work that bothered her now. If she had to, she’d dip into the money her mother had wrapped in palm and tucked in the bottom of the cedar chest with all the linen and cotton Noon would need for keeping house. And then there was what the aunt had been sending for Liz’s upkeep over the past year. It was growing fast. But she’d kept Herbie from knowing how fast. She was afraid he’d insist Noon use the aunt’s money for the expenses of Liz’s upkeep instead of the money he worked so hard for. Noon wanted a savings for Liz, though, maybe for a church wedding or college education, something to balance the great wrong done to her so early.

  She rushed through the street saying how do’s to the men on their way home from jobs at the navy yard, or on Dock Street, or the ones wearing ties who worked in town. She decided she’d need to appeal to Herbie’s basic goodness. Like a blind person that relies on smells and sounds and touches to see, she’d have to call on her other womanly ways since she couldn’t whisper in his ear late at night and move all over him and make him shout yes, yes, to whatever it was she wanted. She could appeal to his goodness, though, that part of him in every man that makes him yearn for the feeling he got when his mama told him how good he was, how proud he made her feel. Mother’s love, mother’s love. Raised up with all brothers, Noon understood that kind of power. It’d make a six-foot man humble his shoulders and blush like a schoolgirl, and a leaned-over man of seventy straighten his back and strut. It protected men from the commission of heinous acts that might have otherwise seemed like the natural thing to do. It was their conscience, their guilt, their goodness. For Mama, even when they weren’t aware, their best was always done for Mama.

  She walked up her well-swept steps and into the house thinking about what a man wouldn’t do for mama, until she peeked into the soft pink haze of the back bedroom and saw Herbie leaned against a pillow. Both Liz and Fannie had their heads on his chest, staring into the oversized book that he read from in his softest voice. “For mama,” she whispered to herself. “Or for baby girls.”

  Back in the kitchen she put fire under a pot of greens and mixed flour and water for quick bread, brushed it with cinnamon for calmness, and sliced up the chicken. She set the dining room table, covered it over with her best white lace tablecloth, and pulled out her stark white handmade candles. She called them down to dinner and announced that they weren’t going to ruin their meal with talk of the devil of a man who’d been there earlier.

  Fannie agreed, but after grace was said, she blurted, “That man don’t matter anyhow ’cause Herbie’s gonna stick up for Liz, aren’t you, Herbie?”

  “Give it a rest, Fannie,” Herbie cautioned. “Didn’t your mother just say we’re not talking about that now?”

  Fannie made a face that Herbie didn’t catch from the corner of his eye. But Liz did, and she started to giggle. Noon looked up, amazed. Liz had never giggled or smiled, for that matter, when Herbie was around. Fannie knew that too. So she kept it up, exaggerated faces she made. Even Noon laughed. And then Herbie caught her, and he laughed too. All four of them doubled over, eyes watering they laughed so hard. Noon prayed, as she laughed, that Liz could stay, that they could be a family.

  FOURTEEN

  Noon and Jeanie hung clothes on the line in their adjacent backyards. The air was still pink with the new sun, and the subtle breeze of August held a tinge of coolness. Noon chattered on to Jeanie about how expensive that lawyer was that they had to hire to file the paperwork so Liz could remain. But she thanked Jeanie for recommending him. “Smart young colored man, worth every dime. Or should I say every dollar? Even though Herbie would have pitched a you-know-what if he knew just how many dollars.”

  “Well, I’m sure he’d work out a payment scale if you were really in a bind.” Jeanie wrinkled her nose at the sun and pushed her straw hat farther on her head and then smoothed a white linen napkin on the line. “One reason I like him so as a lawyer is that he’s sensitive to the fact that a lot of us can’t afford legal representation. That doesn’t stop him from giving his best service.”

  “Thank God I did have all the money for him,” Noon said as she reached into her apron pocket for a clothespin. “I guess I could have tapped into the special needs loan fund at the church. But I think they like to use that to help people with more basic needs, like coal for heat, food too if someone’s really down-and-out. So I just dipped into some of what my mama and daddy sent me up here with. My mama said, ‘Noon, no matter what, don’t you ever let a man know that you got a little money socked away; he’ll sweet-talk you into spending it just so you’ll be totally depende
nt on him.’”

  Jeanie laughed. “Wise advice, Noon, listen to your mama.”

  “Oh, I surely listened. Not that Herbie’s not a good provider, he brings in more in tips alone than some people make in salary, but I think there’s some wisdom to what Mama said. Definitely in this case. I could pay off the lawyer and didn’t have to listen to Herbie’s mouth while I was doing it. And now the lawyer’s got it all worked out, plus Herbie’s even going to New York this coming Friday to see that the aunt gets the papers and tell her when she’s to appear in court.”

  Then Noon went on to berate Ethel for leaving the child the way she had. “No preparation, just traumatized her, just left her sitting in the sun, wonder the bout of loose bowels hadn’t killed the poor little thing. But I brought her back around.” She pushed a stubborn clothespin through a washcloth to affix it to the line. “I do believe between me and Fannie, we saved the poor little thing’s life. Why, even that smart young lawyer said it was cruel the way the no-good aunt abandoned little Liz.”

  “There were other, better ways of leaving her, I suppose,” Jeanie said as she stood the prop to her clothesline straight up, making the line go high so that her clothes were cast in the sun like waving flags.

  “Of course there were, and then that turncoat Dottie didn’t help matters any.”

  “Dottie doesn’t know any better. She allows herself to be used by the powers that be.” Jeanie walked to the short black iron gate that separated her house from Noon’s.