The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  After the service, they went to the apartment he shared with his mother. For dinner, Miss Opal had put on a spread. There were greens and candied yams and macaroni and cheese. None of the dishes had enough seasoning, and the fried pork chops were too greasy. But Lydia praised the food and ate her fill, after Dante said a lengthy grace. His friend Tim was there, in his jeans and sweater and tennis shoes.

  After dinner, Lydia offered to wash dishes, and Miss Opal smiled, flashing a gold incisor. No, Lydia was company. Maybe another time, and the three young folks sat in the living room and watched Sixty Minutes. During a commercial, Dante slid over, nuzzling her neck. Come to his room, he urged. Spend the night, so he could make her feel good. Tim was looking at them, smiling, and Lydia flushed. Her temper rose: she could feel her bear shifting in its cave.

  “I don’t know what you think this is,” she said. “But this ain’t that kind of party.”

  He tried to shush her, a finger to his lips. His mama was right there, keep it down. When Tim laughed, Lydia picked up her purse, and walked in the kitchen.

  “I’m headed out, but I just wanted to say, I appreciate the hospitality, Miss Opal.”

  Before she took Lydia’s hand, the older woman wiped her hands on a dish towel.

  “We gone see you next Sunday, baby?”

  “Um . . . no, ma’am. I got to study.”

  Miss Opal held out her arms, and when Lydia hugged her, Miss Opal whispered, don’t pay her son no mind. He was just trying to show off for his friend. Lydia knew how men could be when they got together. Come back another day, when Dante was by himself.

  He tried to walk Lydia to her car. It was dark out there. It wasn’t safe, but Lydia told him, that was all right. She’d been taking care of herself for a long time. She didn’t need a Johnny-come-lately. That evening, when the hall phone on her floor rang and her name was called, Lydia opened her door and hollered out, tell that guy on the phone she wasn’t in. Then it was time for winter break, and Lydia drove her car up to the City. She kept dreaming about Dante but tried to put him out of her mind.

  * * *

  When Lydia was almost twelve years old, her grandfather lost interest in her. It was the day that her period began, which occurred during one of their bath times.

  “What did you do?” A look of disgust on Gandee’s face. Her bleeding wouldn’t stop, and he climbed out of the bathtub and left Lydia there, as the water turned pink. She climbed from the tub and put on her clothes, and when Nana returned from shopping, Lydia told her, she thought something was wrong. She couldn’t stop bleeding, and her grandmother informed her, this was the burden of being female. She was surprised that the girl’s mother hadn’t told her what suffering meant.

  The next morning, Lydia’s baby sister asked, why was there blood on her pajamas? Before Lydia could stop her, Ailey had run crying from the room. Calling for their mother. Something was wrong. Lydia had hurt herself. Her mother came into the room and saw the sheets. Wait just a minute. In a while, she came back with an aspirin and a glass of water. She brought a bulky pad with adhesive and pulled new underwear from Lydia’s drawer. She should go to the bathroom and wash up, but don’t ever try to flush a pad. That would be a sure enough mess.

  Mama spoke to her daughter in a low, sad voice. When Lydia came out of the bathroom, her mother told her she was sorry she hadn’t talked about this before. It was her fault. Mama had thought she’d have more time. In an hour, Ailey was crying again, because her mother and eldest sister had dressed up to go to the department store, and she couldn’t come. This was a ladies’ trip.

  “But I want to go!” Ailey held on to her sister’s leg, and Lydia stroked her head. Don’t cry, please. Don’t cry.

  “You’ll go some other day,” Mama said. “Soon enough. Lord have mercy.”

  She was dressed in church clothes and so was Lydia. They drove in the station wagon to Worthie’s to pick up some brand-new lingerie. Daddy was back home, watching her sisters, because he needed to do something other than sleep on his one day off from moonlighting in the emergency room. He needed to know there were no servants in his house.

  In Worthie’s, Mama didn’t say much as she pulled through the lace panties, camisoles, and small-cup bras. It was only when she rode with her daughter on the elevator to the basement café that Mama brought up boys.

  “This is your period, Lydia. It’s going to happen every month, like it does with every woman. I get these, too. And what this bleeding means is, you have to start watching yourself. Don’t let boys get too close to you. Because a boy can put a baby in you now. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mama.” Lydia wasn’t paying much mind to what her mother was saying. She was eating ice cream and thinking about what her new panties would look like when she tried them on, in a few days, when the bleeding stopped. Mama had warned her, don’t wear her good underwear when she was on her cycle.

  For a time, Lydia hadn’t needed her mother’s advice. She was still in junior high school, and she wasn’t interested in the gangly boys who tried to talk to her. And up in the City, her mother didn’t let her date—not until she was sixteen, Mama said—so Lydia didn’t need to watch herself. Her mother did that for her. But there was a relaxing of the watch in Chicasetta, during the summers. There weren’t expanses of concrete and police lights constantly flickering, and her mother wasn’t as careful of Lydia. She didn’t hover in Chicasetta, and so, three years after her period started, when Tony Crawford had caught her that Sunday as Lydia was leaving the outhouse out back of Red Mound Church, she didn’t think about any warnings. Tony seemed so nice, and he told Lydia he liked her.

  Lydia said, thank you, sir, and Tony said he was only thirty. He wasn’t nobody’s sir, not yet, and he talked to her. He wanted to hear about her life. For six Sundays he managed to catch her alone, when she came out of the outhouse. For three Sundays, it had been a surprise, but then, when he told her she had the body of a full-grown woman, she made his nature rise, Lydia caught on. Their meetings had been planned.

  The next Sunday, he asked to kiss her, and jammed his tongue in her mouth. It didn’t feel good, but she liked the attention. How, when she returned to church, and then, after a long time, Tony did, too, he watched her. The following week, he put her hands on the place at the front of his pants, put his hands over hers, and what she touched began to move and lengthen and grow, and she remembered when her grandfather Gandee’s penis had done the same. But Tony didn’t force her to keep touching him. He didn’t threaten to kill her and her whole family. Tony begged, please, girl, please, he was crazy about her, and Lydia felt powerful. People always told her what to do, even when they loved her. She liked that she had a choice of what she wanted to do. Nobody ever was going to tell her what to do, not again, and it made her want to see what else she was capable of.

  She knew enough to keep Tony a secret. Even though he wasn’t a boy, he was in the male category, and her mother had warned her to be careful. Even more, he was much older than Lydia, and Mama was fond of pointing out men in Chicasetta who chased behind young girls, because they couldn’t handle a woman their own age. She didn’t know why Black folks in the country acted like that was okay, when it wasn’t. It was nasty and against the damned law and they needed to put those niggers in jail and throw away the key.

  So Lydia began to make plans with Tony in their short time in the church outhouse. She would wait for him at the creek on Sundays, after church, and then every day after that, until that afternoon when he begged her to let him stick it in. Just the tip, he said. Not the whole thing. He wasn’t good-looking, but his begging made him handsome. When she told him yes, he changed from a tender, begging man. He put his full length inside her, ignoring her cries, and then shot a white stream onto her stomach that she remembered from bathing with Gandee.

  But afterward, Tony told her he loved her, and she felt strong again, and she consented to ride with him in his truck, crouching down on the seat so nobody would see her as she left he
r granny’s farm. He drove them up the highway to a motel, and got a room, and Tony begged her again. Even when she said no, he begged, and she relented, and soon it was early morning. Lydia was scared to go home to her granny’s home and face her mother, but she didn’t have anyplace else to go.

  When Tony dropped her off in front of her granny’s house, he kissed her, and then Mama was down in the driveway and screaming and crying. A few days later, she overheard her uncle Norman tell her mother, he’d fixed that sumbitch Tony Crawford. He’d beat his ass good, and if Uncle Norman weren’t scared of going to the chain gang, he’d have cut that bastard’s dick off and let him bleed to death. And before Lydia and her sisters rode back north to the City, she pleaded with Mama not to tell Daddy, and her mother said, of course she wasn’t about to tell. Did she look like somebody’s fool? Even in a few weeks, when Lydia discovered she was pregnant, Mama kept the secret from Daddy. And after the abortion, Mama said she hoped her lesson had been learned about what men and boys would do, and now, it was time she got on some birth control.

  Even with the pills her mother gave Lydia and the daily, private reminders to take them, Mama kept up with her cautions about men and boys, but her warnings no longer carried a bite. Lydia already had been pregnant, had traveled the same road as a grown woman, and when she came to Mama in winter after she turned sixteen saying a boy had asked her to the movies, and was that all right, Mama said, okay. She guessed that was fine. She looked defeated as she told Lydia she hoped he was nice. Before the boy had rung the doorbell and introduced himself to Mama, she’d slipped Lydia a handful of condoms to put in her purse. The pills would keep her from getting pregnant, but the condoms were to keep the worst from happening.

  Lydia had her own condoms, and she’d already slept with her movie date. He seemed to really like her, though that didn’t matter to Lydia, only that she felt a power when he’d climbed on top of her. How his face had changed when he was inside her, and he made his weak noises, and she moved fast to get it over with. She was strong, like a bear that had awakened during a barren, cold season. She could hurt somebody. She could destroy, like she did her movie date when she told him they’d had a few nice times, but she’d moved on to someone else.

  The bear only roared for the time somebody was inside her, or when she was discarding them. When she hurt their pride. But that only lasted a short while. And then she was ashamed of herself. She hated herself, so every time a boy asked her, she let him climb on top of her, so she could feel powerful again. She didn’t have orgasms with anyone but herself. She faked and moaned with whoever was on top of her. They asked, you like that, baby? and she told them, yeah, yeah, that was nice, but really, she felt nothing. She thought sex wasn’t her thing, like how Aunt Pauline ignored the flesh in service of the Lord. She’d had a hysterectomy in her early thirties. The doctor had said the growths inside her were benign. Just leave them alone, but Aunt Pauline made him take her whole womb, and then she hadn’t felt the Devil’s urge anymore. What a blessing, she liked to say.

  The boys she screwed would pass Lydia in the school hallways or they’d see her on the bus and whisper to their friends that she was a whore, a slut who’d do anything. They gave her sly looks, but she acted like the stuck-up yellow heifer everyone thought she was. She flipped her long hair and pretended she didn’t know her betrayers’ names. Lydia asked her friends, did that Negro look like anybody who was good enough for her, who’d she even let sniff her drawers?

  Lydia knew how to make other girls love her, to tell them exactly what they wanted or needed to hear. What the lines around their eyes and mouths craved: girls needed love more than anybody else. She was popular at Toomer High, with plenty friends, and they protected her with their words, and in college, she never ended up on the Dirty Thirty list. One guy in her freshman year started a rumor that Lydia was a freak, but Lydia told her girlfriends he had an incurable disease. He’d even shown her the sores. No way would she get close to that guy. When she saw him again on campus, he looked at Lydia like he was a beaten dog, and she smiled at him and tossed her head. She was the bear, big and strong and wild. And he was only a dog who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  Lydia thought she was fooling her father, too, that Daddy didn’t know she was having sex, and though she loved her father dearly, that made her feel powerful, too. Her lovely, harmless daddy who worked so hard to provide for his family. He thought his oldest daughter was innocent, but one early morning in high school Lydia had crept into the kitchen, after a late night when she hadn’t even made it to the movie she’d been invited to. Her date had told her, he forgot something back at his place, and then propositioned her in the driveway of his parents’ house.

  Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of banana pudding.

  “Hey, darling.”

  “Oh! Daddy, you scared me!”

  “I bet.” He looked at his watch. “It’s a little late, isn’t it? I thought your mama gave you a midnight curfew.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. My girls and me were studying. I forgot the time.”

  “Studying. Huh. Okay.”

  Lydia walked to the cabinet and pulled out a bowl. At the table, she scooped up a portion of pudding and pulled up a chair. Then she felt silly that she hadn’t seen what was coming, when Daddy told her, it was fine that she wanted her own personal life. He wasn’t going to pry. She was at an age where she wanted to explore, and as long as she wasn’t doing anything she didn’t want to do, he was happy. But also, he was going to write her a prescription for birth control pills and give her some money to buy some condoms at the drugstore. Lydia didn’t tell him she already had her own pills and condoms, as Daddy kept on. She needed to protect herself, and next time she wanted to study with her girls, she might want to take a brush along. Get her hair together before she headed home, because it was all over the place.

  Daddy told her that he was tired. The emergency room had been busy that night. Some crazy brother had come in there bleeding but didn’t want treatment. He only wanted painkillers. People were truly something else, and Daddy should get some sleep. But he stretched out his legs under the table and spooned up another bite of pudding. Daddy laughed and said he never thought he’d see this day. His little girl staying out half the night. He remembered his salad days of staying out. That’s how Mama and he had made Lydia. So please be careful, darling, and then Daddy laughed some more.

  * * *

  Spring was Lydia’s favorite time. Up in the City, the few trees on her block would whisper into buds. Waiting, defiant of the lingering chill, but in Georgia, spring shoved winter out of the way. It’s my time now, spring insisted. One night you could go to bed and the trees were plaintively bare. The next morning, every branch was sassy. Full of green and red and pink, and one spring afternoon, when Lydia returned from classes, there was Dante Anderson, sitting on the couch in the lobby of her dorm.

  When he’d stopped calling, Lydia had dreamed about him. There was no romance in these nightly reveries, only mundane events that they’d never experienced in reality: she and Dante shopping for groceries. She and Dante on her granny’s farm, walking up the road that led to her family church.

  But Lydia had not expected to see him again, not while she was awake. When she tried to treat him like she had boys that she’d discarded—cold, contemptuous—Dante only sat there. He looked different from the other two times she’d seen him. There was no church attire or expensive velveteen tracksuit. He looked ordinary, in his collared shirt tucked into ironed jeans. On his feet, penny loafers.

  “I was trying to say I was sorry,” Dante said. “But you wouldn’t take my calls.”

  “What you sorry for?” Her voice was harsh.

  “For not acting like a gentleman. I knew I was wrong already, and then my mama, she was so mad when you left. She told me she’d raised me better than that. I thought she was gone whip me. I really did, and the last time I got a whipping, Lydia, I was five foot three and in the seventh g
rade.”

  Lydia wasn’t going to forgive him that easy, but she sat on the couch beside him. They said nothing, until it was dinnertime, and then she stood. She held out her hand.

  “Come on. Let’s get some chicken. I know a place.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. “You drive.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I trust you.”

  On the way out of the dorm, there was her roommate. It was a warm day, but Niecy wore her Beta jacket. Lydia tensed and then slowed. She told Niecy this was her homeboy, Dante. She’d known him for a long time, and Niecy held out her hand. Any friend of her soror was a friend of hers.

  Dante’s car was an old one, a metallic green deuce and a quarter, but it was clean. The seats were uncracked, and he’d replaced the radio with a cassette deck. A fragrance card in the shape of a Christmas tree hung from the rearview mirror. He wedged against the passenger door, watching as she drove, then rolled down the glass. Gusts of warmth touched Lydia’s face as she headed toward Chicasetta.

  At the Cluck-Cluck Hut, he insisted on paying for their dinner. No, he had it. They sat at the only picnic table in front of the stand, and every minute or two, somebody stopped to speak to Lydia. She returned their greetings: Hey, y’all. What you know good? How your people doing? She introduced Dante to each person who approached the table. This was her friend. She didn’t know why she wasn’t afraid. Soon, her granny would hear the news that Lydia had been eating fried chicken with hot sauce, biscuits, and French fries with a handsome young man, though he shole was skinny. Looked like he needed some home-cooked meals, or at least more dark meat in that chicken box. Or maybe, the boy hadn’t yet put on his “man weight.” And then Miss Rose would call Mama in the City, and tell her, you know your daughter is courting.