“Forty-four, forty-five,” she croaked, and looked around for Mrs. Allecto’s husband because she had seen him once before, a fat man with greasy pants whom Uncle Ed called a junkman and Aunt Annie b called a bum. But still there was no one and nothing: no smells of burnt bacon, no sprinkle of chicken feed, no clothes steaming in wash buckets with hot water and soap. She was approaching fifty and nowhere near the school, and after five and zero Helene knew she was lost. So she cried, cried that Aunt Annie b had let her down, cried that Mrs. Allecto wasn’t to be found, cried that fifty lay on her tongue but she couldn’t say it because she wasn’t sure what came next. So she dragged out forty-nine as far as it could go.
* * *
Helene’s memory fell to the floor in a heap, its place taken by her mother’s voice and the hem of her housedress, her wrinkled knees, mimicking the grandmother Helene could only remember as a tall shadow. “So Mama says to Pastor, ‘If God sees all, like I think He do, then He seen how I walked out of slavery with this here walk of mine. It done served me then; it gone serve me now.’ ‘Now, Sister,’ Pastor say, ‘you ain’t old enough to be no slave. You confusing yourself with your mama.’ Mama say something back real fast and low, I didn’t catch it at all, on account that Duck was blocking all the hearing, but she musta said something like, ‘Ain’t confusing myself with nobody. If I tells you I was a slave, then that’s what I was. Not for long, though. Soon as I found out what I was, I left. This here walk gets me all the way to this church to praise God, and you gone condemn it? It’s you who ain’t decent, Reverend.’”
Queen Ester brought her empty hands to her face, and pinched her brows together. In the middle of the floor, she stood bereft, grieving. Helene called softly, trying to fool her mother and herself into pretending that nothing had happened, but some suckling memory had come to Queen Ester, who had let it pull at her, thinking it was toothless, some harmless remembered thing with no bite. But it had turned on her. Helene walked over and did what she had wanted to do in the living room. She cupped her mother’s elbows, surprised at their softness. “Mama,” Helene said, but Queen Ester did not make a sound. “Mama,” she said again. Just when Helene thought her mother was dozing, Queen Ester’s hands dropped away from her face and revealed that she was seething.
“You don’t know how he kill everything. Why? That’s what I want to know. Mama had something. When we were down to the quick, Mama had a walk that got us out of anything and everything. And he took that walk. The walk couldn’t nobody figure out, he took it. Chess yanked those beautiful legs right out from under.
“He kept bringing his evil self back to our house cause I guess he got tired of being out wherever he was without a roof over his head.”
“He had nowhere else to go?”
“Look around, folks round here only take care they own. Chess the only somebody who ain’t kin to nobody. So pretty he take every breath away, even Mama’s. Didn’t have no shame, Helene. Just walked in and tried to steal something that wasn’t his. Then we start living like there wasn’t never no time when Chess wasn’t with us; like the café Mama ran in the living room wasn’t Mama’s no more, it was Chess’s. He was running the house and running the café and all was left for me and Mama to do was cook and sweep everything Chess crashed. You can see that, can’t you?”
“Oh, yes, Mama. Yes, yes, I see.” Helene felt a hiccup coming. “This man had four legs, not two. Maybe, Mama, maybe he even had two heads.” Queen Ester didn’t laugh.
“Maybe when he trying to move everything around I should of said no. Like when he come in trying to run something we should of said, “It’s ours.” But we didn’t, and Mama act like she ain’t known no man fore Chess. When he should of been outside like the dogs, like anything that’s wild and don’t know how to mind in a house, Mama tell him, ‘Stay on in here with us.’
“Then Mama turned into something I had to take care of and Chess keep coming back and tearing up the house. He pick fights with the men that stop by at the café, look women all in the mouth. When he ain’t trying to pick fights or eating us out of house and home, he sleep for days on end and then he go off. After a while everybody asking after him, and I don’t know what to say. I can’t say a word to nobody without shaming Mama. I ain’t gone shame my mama. We give him all we got and when he give it back I can’t tell that it’s ours no more.
“So then I wait. I thinks maybe Other might say something, maybe Other might stand up and say, ‘Wait now. Just wait, this ain’t natural.’ But everybody go bout they business and Chess mess up our house from floor to rafter.
“Children grow crooked when they live in a house that’s unnatural. Chess had this place colder than a motel lobby.”
“I’ll remember that,” Helene said.
“I’m serious. Children can’t grow somewhere unnatural.”
8
HALLE HAD COME and gone by 1950. After a short decade of birthing children, she grew a tumor into the size of a cantaloupe in her left breast and it killed her. Chess remembered the day well. “I need to lay down,” she had told him. “All this running around is getting to be too much.” Sure a better life could be found three towns over, for years they had moved from state to state, making babies all along the way. Halle’s mother would always arrive and rent a room nearby in time to help deliver her grandchildren. Rose, their eldest daughter, was born in Guymon, Oklahoma; Joseph and Betty in Jefferson City, Missouri; James in Humboldt, Tennessee; John L in Yazoo City, Mississippi; and then Arthur was born as they prepared to leave De Ridder, Louisiana. Their travels never took them beyond a day’s ride from Lafayette County, either by train or car. They needed to be close to Halle’s mother’s house; when fighting Chess, Halle always managed to maim her husband just shy of needing a doctor and then she headed back home.
Despite her predilection for violence, it hadn’t taken long for Chess to decide to marry Halle. That she denied him almost everything made her irresistible. Food, sex, and her kindness were strictly rationed. Waiting in the dark to stab him through the lip, however, didn’t keep him faithful. As soon as he married Halle, he met Morning. She had followed Chess whenever she had the money. Aberdeen, Monroe, Idabel: she’d rent a room no more than six blocks away from wherever Chess had decided his family would live until the lack of work moved him to another town. Otherwise, Morning would stay in Lafayette County, knowing that every six months Halle would return to her mother’s and, four days after her arrival, Chess would be back in town clutching a wound.
Often Morning wondered how long she’d have to wait until Chess came to his senses and left his knife-wielding wife. The end of every six months held the same promise: “Soon, baby.” But when Halle dropped dead at the end of 1949, Chess and his mistress were none the better for it. Without Halle to mete out punishment when Chess came home late or not at all, their affair soured. Over the years, constant adoration lost its power. Morning’s homemade pancakes, though eaten, were insulted; her birthdays forgotten. When Chess finally landed in jail for three months, she thought she had had enough. Blue, her neighbor, had tried to court her for two years, bringing her flowers and groceries for no particular reason. She overlooked the neck spasms that caused him to turn his head uncontrollably. Certain afflictions could be forgiven when a man promised the attention Chess had stopped giving. Maybe I’ve been too good to him, she thought, as she made overcooked meals for his children. With the threat of Blue, perhaps she and Chess could work things out. Get him to keep his promise and marry her.
She was surprised as anyone when, after ninety days of jail, Chess came home and beat her from sundown to sunup. His children stood wide-eyed while the door thumped. True, they had run to tell him all they knew about Morning messing around with Blue, that tall man with the runaway neck. True, with humble hands clenched they had said to themselves that they had to tell on Morning because she’d cheated and had the nerve to bring Blue and pie to their house while Chess was away. And true, with lips biting and runny noses, they heard
their dead mother say, “Tell him.”
But they didn’t think Chess would open Morning’s face in the most vicious way. They didn’t know Chess could turn the bed the color of roses and smash thunder. And who could have known that the door would thump like that?
“Ain’t scared of you!” Morning screamed. Almost contrite, all six of Chess’s children prayed that by the time the chickens had to be fed, their father would be tired.
“Don’t want you to be scared, want you to mind!” Chess screamed back, just as desperate. His hand rose in the air, landing with a heaviness that brought Morning clattering to the floor. On her back, on her cheeks, on her stomach Chess made rhythm: Blue, Blue, Blue, that no-good nigger Blue.
“Ain’t scared of you, Chess,” Morning repeated, because everything else that was common sense had been knocked out of her head.
“Don’t want you to be scared, want you to mind.”
“Ain’t scared of you.” It took till the sun came up for Morning to realize that, more than obedience, Chess wanted the last word. So she gave it to him. She held her quivering fingers up to her face and thought, If I can stand up after this I’m gone walk, Lord. Ain’t scared of you, Chess, was suppressed easily. With his fists and feet, Chess made the small house sway.
But who would have known what was happening in Chess’s house, except for the children? All the houses in Lafayette County tilted in one direction or another. They held to the Lafayette earth as if they were clinging for dear life, as if the people inside them wished only to shove the houses away because they were tired of living trapped in sagging wood with no windows, doors with no knobs, just holes to stick your fingers through and pull or push. And because of the door situation in Lafayette County, no one was ever able to make a flashy entrance; your fingertips announced your coming. Chess’s children knew he was done with Morning when his long fingernails showed through the door.
It was early, and outside the children were murmuring to one another about the quiet in the house while they spread chicken feed. Despite their different ages, they all feared that their prayers the night before had been ineffective. “God gone get us for this,” said Arthur.
“But Mama said—” John L tried to defend their actions.
Betty spoke quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the clatter of fodder striking the ground, but they made sure to listen because she might tell them something they did not know. Betty kept secrets under her clothes, and everyone wanted to be there when she decided to lift her dress. “Y’all shut up, we done it already. Might as well just go in and tell her we sorry.” Silently, the children opened the front door, wondering whether Morning would roll her eyes. John L risked a look. Her eyes were too swollen to do any such thing.
“What y’all standing here for? This ain’t none of your business,” Chess said.
Rose spoke. “We know, Daddy, we just wanted to tell you how much we done missed you since you been gone. Me and James and Joe and them got some money together cause we know you ain’t got none considering you been in Texarkana.” Smoothly, Rose sidestepped the word jail and everyone, including Chess, was thankful. Mind, no one was ashamed that Chess went to jail. Everyone over eighteen had gone, but in Chess’s case, something special had landed him in the penitentiary: a leg washed in lye.
The leg went back to 1919, which had been a good year for the Hubbert family. Mr. Hubbert stood only fifty dollars away from repaying his debt to Mr. Sillers, Mrs. Hubbert had been asked to sing at the Seven Mile three times in a row, and late one evening their small Mississippi house couldn’t contain the joy. Yelling, laughing, Chess and his parents tumbled around the room. “Come here, little man, come here,” his father called to Chess. He dashed under the washing table and Mr. Hubbert’s eyes fell on his son’s small leg jutting out. He stumbled as he reached out for his son, crashing the table, the water, and lye that was to be soap the next day onto Chess’s leg.
That same leg, not quite arrested in growth, dragged behind Chess as constant reminder of his father’s wayward happiness. His limp and the possibility of sitting down had landed Chess in jail by tempting him to listen to Five, his friend. Five, who had grinned to the gums and told Chess that moonshining was easy money and no work. The law closed its eyes where illegal liquor was concerned; they could sell it out of Five’s shack because no one came down that way; making moonshine was as easy as sleeping, so there was nothing to lose. But the revenuers came. Five ran, losing himself in the trees, leaving Chess in his wake of dust with four bottles of freshly made moonshine, looking at his lame leg in disgust.
Ninety days he spent in the Texarkana prison, jail fat collecting at his waist, staring at the wall in his cell, thinking about Five and watching his nails grow longer than any woman’s. For three months, Chess had been imprisoned in the only brick building in Texarkana. Two stories tall, the jail had the deceiving look of a house, complete with wooden shutters and shrubbery on either side of the wooden double doors. Directly inside were wooden floors, and you didn’t know where you were until your steps resounded on concrete stairs. Every Thursday, Morning came down with his children. They followed Morning up cement stairs, creaking in their Sunday clothes.
“When you getting out, Daddy?” Arthur said.
“Seventy-six days, boy. Seventy-six days.”
“Can’t they let you out no sooner?”
“I got ninety days, boy.” Chess became angry. “Where Liberty at?”
“Home,” Morning said.
“She can’t come down and see a body?”
“Chess, she got business to do, and she say that you in jail, not dead.”
“Well, ain’t that something?”
“She ain’t your mama.”
“I know that, girl. She send me any money?”
“What you need money for?”
“Cigarettes.”
“Chess, you don’t need no cigarettes.”
“Don’t tell me what I need. I need something to help me pass the time.”
“Still—”
“Morning, I don’t need you to come down here and tell me what I need. If you want to do that, you can stay in Lafayette.”
“Daddy, when you gone get out?” Arthur asked.
“Boy, if you ask me that one more time—Morning, why you let these kids come down here?”
“Cause they say they want to see you,” said Morning.
“Guess you take them everywhere they want to go.”
“Try to.”
“Guess you take them to see they dead mama in the grave, huh?”
“See, now, that’s uncalled for.”
“Do you?” The conversation, before either knew it, became serious and neither knew how to reel it back in.
“Chess, see, I don’t want to talk about Halle.”
“Answer my question. You take my kids to see my dead wife?”
“Can’t say I do.” It could have gone on, a conversation about the visitation rights of the dead; Chess was happy to talk about anything, even if it meant a fight; but Morning’s mouth had closed with no intention of reopening. They all waited, trying to think of interesting, painless things to say.
All the visits to Chess in prison went something like that, and by the time the end of the third month rolled around everyone was worn out and someone always walked away looking shamed. Things changed over the three months. Betty moved from the children’s room to Chess’s room, happy not to have to wait until she heard the sparse breathing of children’s sleep to whisper her fury. Rose could wake up in the morning and pretend that she was grown without some adult telling her to stop acting up and be a child.
Their sadness had turned into indifference, and with the arrival of a newly freed Chess they realized they had forgotten to think about him. Their old daddy turned new from three months of separation had bushy brows, big nappy hair, and fingernails that were long enough to remind them of a loose woman. When Rose said, “We done missed you since you been gone,” the words came too easily from h
er mouth, like a sneeze from a tickled nose.
Nevertheless, they gave him money. At thirty cents an hour, three dollars a day, all the children worked the cotton fields for Mr. Carthers. Filled with a sense of duty, each came up with dollars that finally equaled twenty. When they offered almost all the money they had, Chess smiled, not from the gesture but from what lay in their hands.
“You some good kids.” Morning spoke out of a broken mouth; her eyes, just slits since her lids were swollen, said different. I gone get y’all for this, she thought.
“Thank you,” the children said. Frightened by Morning, they scattered like birds and out the door they sought another place to nest.
“So what you gone do with all that money?” Morning said, testing her swollen mouth with her tongue.
“Spend it,” Chess said. He walked to the opened door the children had just run out of and propped his shoulder against it.
“What? Drinking? Gambling?”
“I think I might go spend it on some women,” said Chess, smiling because he knew the words he said lashed. “What? You think I’m gone spend on you?”
“I took care of them children when you was in Texarkana.” Why you got to be so dirty? she thought, as she looked down at her hands; they were the only part of her body that still seemed to belong to her.
“And I spose to feel bad about that now? I didn’t tell you to take care of them kids. What you think you is, they mama?”
“Chess, I know I ain’t they mama. But ain’t a one of them full grown. Them boys can’t even shave.”
“So you want me to pay you back?”
“Naw, I ain’t saying that.”
“Well, you know what I’m saying, Morning? Bye. Ain’t got time to fool with you.” And he was out the door, leaving behind not only Morning’s broken face but thoughts of her as well. He turned in the direction of Liberty’s house. Less than a mile he trudged, through the cotton field that separated their homes. In the middle of the field he looked around in disgust, softly brushing the waist-high cotton that was in bloom.
Knee-Deep in Wonder Page 13