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

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  Yet Lydia sat there and kept raising her hand as people approached. She laughed and let her proper grammar slide away. She’d never let a male see her as she truly was. That it didn’t matter how light her skin was or how shiny her hair, she wasn’t really siddity, and Chicasetta was her town. These were her folks, and anybody who wanted to know her, needed to know that. But because she hadn’t planned this afternoon, she wasn’t ready to take him the few blocks to the house of her mother’s great-uncle or on the longer drive out to her granny’s farm.

  Lydia didn’t know why she didn’t drive back to campus, why she drove to a motel instead. It had been an afternoon of surprises and lessons, but here she was ruining a perfect day. It was twilight when she pulled into the parking lot. She told him, wait, and Dante touched her hand. If she was sure, if this was what she wanted, he had the money. They bantered back and forth about who would pay, and underneath the teasing was the knowledge that this would lead to a change. They didn’t speak about what was to come, and finally, Lydia said she would compromise. Dante could give her the money, but she would go get the key.

  At the door to the room, he said they didn’t have to do nothing, but she thought he was lying. That she would rest underneath him, making false sounds to speed him along, but she wanted to get this out of the way. To see if what she hoped for would come after, but when she took off her clothes, Dante stopped her from unhooking her bra. He had taken off his shirt and pants but left on his underwear and T-shirt. Let’s slow this thing way down, he said. They slid underneath the covers and he held her, her head to his chest.

  “Lydia, I love you.”

  “Already?”

  “Yeah, woman, and I’m scared.”

  She shifted away, and then sat up. Put her feet on the carpet. She didn’t know why she started talking about Gandee, what he’d done to her in the bathtub when she was little. She didn’t like to think about it, how it made her bear crawl back into its cave. It weakened her to return to the memory, when everything she’d done afterward was about trying to be strong. Lydia started crying. Her arms and legs went numb. Even her blood was too tired to crawl through her veins, and she couldn’t tell Dante the rest. There was too much: Tony and the abortion. All those other guys, how she couldn’t remember most of their names. She was afraid that if she confessed everything, Dante would make her feel even worse.

  He put his hand on her back. “Lay down with me, baby.”

  She shook her head.

  “Please, Lydia. Come on.”

  She couldn’t face him: she was too ashamed, so she curled on her side and he held her that way, his belly to her back. His breath moving the hair on her neck, while he told her somebody did bad things to him, too. His uncle, a man that he had loved like a daddy, because Dante’s own father had killed himself after he came back from Vietnam.

  Uncle Warren had helped to raise Dante. He taught him how to play basketball and fix a car, but then Uncle Warren had pounced and raped him when he was ten. He said that Dante was the faggot, taking it while his uncle was giving it. The raping kept happening, over three years’ time. The only reason it had stopped was Dante’s friend Tim, when they’d been in junior high school. They’d known each other since kindergarten, and he had protected Dante growing up. When the other boys at school had called him skinny and soft, Tim had beat them down, and told them, don’t fuck with his friend. Because Dante was more than Tim’s friend. He was his brother, and he showed it, too. One night in junior high, when his uncle was watching Dante while his mother was at work, Tim and his friends let themselves in with the key that Dante had slipped them. They whipped this uncle’s ass good, and Tim told the uncle they’d kill him next time.

  “You think something’s wrong with me ’cause I couldn’t fight for myself?” Dante asked Lydia. “’Cause I let Tim do it for me? Tell me the truth.”

  “No, you’re just fine,” Lydia said.

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with you, neither.”

  They didn’t make love. That would take two more weeks. That night in the motel, they only held each other tightly. They talked until they fell asleep, and when Lydia woke up, Dante was still there. That was enough for her.

  * * *

  The semester ended in May, and Lydia had a month before her mother and sisters came south for the summer, time enough to get her story straight. To think about what and how to tell her mother about Dante. For Lydia to explain that their love was different from anyone else’s. She knew something that other women didn’t, and Dante was different than other boys and men. He was good and kind and she couldn’t let him go.

  Lydia packed her belongings from her dorm room, placed them in her car, and hugged Niecy. She drove to her granny’s house, unloaded the boxes onto the back porch, and gave her the story she’d worked out with Niecy, that Lydia was staying with her roommate in Atlanta. Niecy’s parents had a big house and didn’t mind company, but she didn’t want to bring all her junk to Niecy’s house. Here was the number, in case of emergency. Lydia would see her granny in June.

  Dante had moved into a smaller apartment, further down the road from where Miss Opal lived. He told his mother, please don’t be mad, but he was twenty-two. He needed his privacy, and business at the convenience store was good. He was working more hours. Dante told Lydia he didn’t want to hurt Miss Opal’s feelings and make Miss Opal feel like he was trading her for another woman. That was his mama and he’d always love her. But Miss Opal wasn’t mad when she came by one evening in the middle of the week, after Bible study, and there was Lydia cooking dinner. Miss Opal laughed and told Dante she understood that her son was a man; this is what she raised him for. She didn’t want him living up on her until he was fifty, and besides, her sister wanted to move from Macon to Atlanta. And she told Lydia, come hug her neck, when Lydia asked her to stay for dinner.

  By then, Miss Opal was calling Lydia her daughter-in-law. Teasing her every time Lydia came to church and ate dinner at her apartment after services. Miss Opal’s sister and Tim joined them, but there were no more ungentlemanly displays. After dinner, Dante would bid his friend and family goodbye, and he and Lydia would leave. He wanted to spend some quality time with his lady.

  In the new apartment, there was a plaid couch Dante had found by the side of the road. Two television trays made a coffee table. A TV rested on an orange crate, but Dante had splurged for cable. In the bedroom, sheets covered a mattress and box spring. Beside the makeshift bed, another crate topped with a pillowcase and a lamp. Lydia used some of her emergency money to make some purchases. A see-through shower curtain with fishes, and a fluffy mat and toilet cover and towels in bright pink. A visit to the thrift shop, where she bought a scarred chest of drawers and used pots and pans that reminded her of Mama’s, streaked with the residue of grease and soot. Metal already seasoned, used in a happy kitchen.

  “Woman, keep your money. I can take care of you.” He’d started calling her that regularly—“Woman”—and it gave a thrill. Her father called her mother that, and hearing Dante say it made Lydia feel solid in her love.

  “This is to keep those other girls away.”

  It had been scary when they’d stopped using condoms weeks earlier, because that meant a real commitment to Lydia. Dante told her he wanted to feel her. And she was his lady. He trusted her—he loved her—and didn’t she trust him and love him, too? She told him that didn’t have anything to do with her protecting herself. But they went down to the health clinic and got tested for all the diseases, including HIV. They both were nervous, waiting the two weeks for the tests to come back. And then euphoric when they found out it was okay. The test results were mailed to Dante’s apartment during the week, and when he called her at the dorm, she told him she was skipping classes that day. She wanted to see him right now, and when she arrived at the apartment, Dante had put on his Luther Vandross cassette and had candles lit, though it was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was still shining.

  When they made love, Dante s
topped Lydia from pleasing him before she took her own satisfaction. He would withdraw and say, slow down. It was her time. He wanted to make her happy, and he would move his mouth down and lick slowly and touch her with his fingers until she shivered. He’d watch her face, begging her, please don’t lie. Was she satisfied for real? Once when they were finished, she asked, how had he learned all that? What to do with a woman, and he kissed her. He smiled and said, let him keep a few secrets. He couldn’t tell her everything; otherwise, she’d stop loving him. Then he asked her to marry him, as he’d done several times before, both in and out of bed, but no, Lydia didn’t want to spoil things. They could talk about that another time.

  There was a month of playing house and settling in. Making love until the early hours, so that Dante only had three or four hours of sleep. Cooking for him in the morning and packing him an equally big lunch, because she didn’t want him eating fast food during the day, or worse, chips, candy, and soda from the convenience store where he worked. At the door, Dante couldn’t bear to part from Lydia. I love you, woman. Give me a kiss. I’ll call you on my break. Just one more kiss.

  The time without him snailed along. She read her favorite book, The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Her English professor had urged her to try Toni Morrison, but it was too complicated for Lydia. She couldn’t yet grasp what she was reading. If she was feeling annoyed about what she’d seen on the news, she read an essay in her James Baldwin book. That man always seemed mad, but in a smart kind of way. It took Lydia longer to read than other people did; her teacher had told her mother that, when Lydia was in second grade. She was good at speaking, but she had to go back over a page twice and sometimes three times to catch the meaning. The letters raced from her until she caught them, but she still liked to read. When she finally understood what was happening, it was a puzzle she’d solved, and Lydia felt proud of herself.

  When she was finished with her book, she rolled a joint from the stash that Dante kept in the top drawer of the dresser. Then she watched public television. She didn’t want Dante to tease her, so she concealed that she loved the shows from her childhood. She waited for Mr. Rogers to relax her, while she enjoyed her weed high. His voice that told her the world didn’t matter. Mr. Rogers told Lydia that she could make it; every human being could.

  Sometimes Tim would come by and interrupt her reverie. He would sit on the couch and change the channel from Mr. Rogers and ask for Lydia to prepare him a sandwich. Tim wanted some red Kool-Aid with plenty sugar, too, and a squeeze of lemon in that special way she made it. He followed Lydia into the kitchen, watching as she pulled bread from the refrigerator and dropped it into the toaster, giving her additional directions. That was too much mayonnaise and mustard on the bread, and next time, maybe Lydia could fry his bologna. After sitting on the couch for a while, Lydia would tell him it had been nice of him to visit, but she had to go to the grocery store now. Dante would be expecting his dinner, and Tim would tell her, his partner had a good woman. But Tim never smiled when he said that.

  At the store, Lydia would pull out the coupons she’d clipped from the Sunday paper she’d subscribed to in Dante’s name. She’d pick up meat and smell through the plastic. She’d turn fruits and vegetables in her hand. Look for the smallest imperfection marring the colors. When Lydia returned, she would sit and watch more television. She would hear Dante’s key in the door, and she would run to open it. They would kiss and she would lead him to the bedroom, and they would make love, as if they hadn’t only hours before, and while Dante slept, Lydia started on dinner. Cutting onions and garlic and green peppers. Turning on the television to keep her company again. Then calling for him, as Lydia’s mother had called for her father on the nights that he wasn’t moonlighting in the emergency room. Dante, your dinner is on the table, and he would sit down to his plate and smile at Lydia. Woman, this sure looks good. Thank you so much for taking care of me.

  This was what she had been born for, to be with somebody who needed her love. There didn’t have to be sorrow or fearsome excitement, only a daily presence. This is what her parents had, even when they argued, and maybe what Miss Opal had with Dante’s father, before he had gone to Vietnam and come back saddened and shot himself in the head. This was what the Bible had failed to explain to Lydia. Because the Bible didn’t say, loving a man in the flesh took more devotion than loving a heavenly promise. And if you really loved somebody, they became greater than a god.

  Her month with Dante went too quickly, and then Lydia drove to Chicasetta to join her mother and sisters. She didn’t want to tell anyone about her love. She wasn’t ashamed of Dante, his bad grammar, his high school diploma but no years of college. But she was afraid of Mama and her prescient dreams, of what they might reveal about the man Lydia loved. Dante was too important to her. Lydia couldn’t give him up.

  And she couldn’t keep still, those summer days. In the garden, the weeds weren’t enough for her hands. She rushed through plucking her rows, and then asked her granny, was there something more she could do? Miss Rose set her to snapping beans for dinner, but Lydia would finish those quickly, too. So she’d sew a dress for Ailey to wear to church, because her baby sister was complaining that she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was almost an adult, and she didn’t want to wear pinafores and puff sleeves, and that was Lydia’s excuse to drive to Macon to the fabric shop. On the way back, she’d stop at a pay phone and use her phone card to call Dante at work.

  “When you coming to see me? I need you, woman.”

  “It’s only been two weeks.”

  “You telling me you don’t miss me?”

  “You know I do, but I can’t come. Mama’s here.”

  “Baby, you grown!”

  “Not to her. I told you how she is.”

  They talked until their ten minutes were up. She wanted to save the minutes, because her mother would be suspicious. What had taken Lydia so long? But Dante wanted to know, was Lydia still his lady? Was she trying to break up with him on the sly? Was some nigger in Chicasetta trying to beat his time? Then Lydia had to spend three more minutes to tell him there was nobody else but him. She couldn’t think of another man touching her, not anymore, and she and Dante talked naughty for a few moments before offering their love to each other. You hang up first. No, you hang up. I love you. I miss you so much.

  When Lydia returned to the farm, Mama would ask her, had she been standing in the sun? Her face looked so flushed. Was she coming down with something? She would put a hand to her daughter’s forehead. Maybe Lydia needed to go lie down.

  What made her ache the most was Dante’s absence at her great-grandmother’s funeral. He should have been there when Dear Pearl was laid to rest. Dante had plenty church clothes, and he owned his own Bible. He would have fit right in with these people she’d grown up with. He would have put his arm around Lydia as she cried over the old lady who hadn’t smiled much and had always seemed in a bad mood, but she had made Lydia feel smart. Dear Pearl had taken away her shame without even knowing, before Lydia had to return to her grandfather’s abuse and suffer the shame all over again.

  It was Dante’s idea that they marry at City Hall, when the semester started in late August. He’d been without his woman for three months, and though Lydia spent the weekends with him, he missed her during the week when she was away at school. He wanted to make this thing permanent, and was happy when Lydia told him she felt the same way. She cut class and visited the Fulton County courthouse to fill out the forms.

  For the ceremony, she wore a green silk dress, and he wore a black suit he’d bought out of the trunk of somebody’s car. It would have been perfect for Lydia, if her family had been there. But she hadn’t been able to bear to tell them—not when she knew how disappointed Mama would be.

  And perfect for Dante, too, if his uncle and his wife hadn’t come. Uncle Warren was retired and had plenty time on his hands. When Miss Opal had called him, Uncle Warren had declared that he wouldn’t miss this wedding for nothing in
the world.

  There was almost a scene when the man insisted that he stand beside his nephew, as a witness. Miss Opal and her sister agreed. Family should do this.

  Dante pulled his mother by the arm, and Lydia followed.

  “This ain’t about y’all,” he said. “This about me and my lady. This our day. And why you bring him here? You know I don’t like that nigger.”

  “Boy, watch your mouth! And I don’t know why you acting like this. My brother ain’t never been nothing but good to you. You loved him when you was little.”

  Uncle Warren wandered over, an unlit cigar in hand, asking what the problem was. And Lydia looked at him, assessing him like she would a dress. How to take this man apart and put him back together in the way she wanted.

  She put a hand on Dante’s arm. “You know what, baby? Everybody’s going to Restaurant Beautiful later, and didn’t Tim say the best man should pick up the tab? And then we’re picking up that cake I ordered and some liquor, too, right? If your uncle wants to pay for all that, why don’t we let him?”

  Uncle Warren backed away. He told them that was all right. He didn’t have to be no witness, but he’d come to the after-party. At Restaurant Beautiful, he piled up his plate, and when he passed the cashier, he pointed at Tim to pay. When he sat, he smirked at the head of the large table the women had made by pushing several together. He called to the other end.

  “Nephew, you sure you can handle a fine redbone like that? That girl look too much for you.”

  Tim whispered, “This nigger here.” Dante kept his eyes on his short ribs, but his uncle kept on.

  “I’on’t know if you man enough. You always had a little sugar in your tank.”

  Uncle Warren gestured with his cigar, and his sisters laughed: he played too much. But Lydia called back, her husband was more than enough for her, and she could handle whatever he was putting down. She channeled her granny and the church sisters at Red Mound. The ridicule they heaped on men, when they moved into a whispering circle. How they talked underneath men’s clothes.