Hell, for all I knew, Franklin Hines thought it was the best deal a man ever cut. A dollar could buy a sit-down dinner in any restaurant in those days, and he had only to show the old durability. Franklin likely loved every production of that show.
I didn’t have a cigar but leaned over to open the stove and reach in for an ember. I held it up with some difficulty at first but then got resigned to searing the nerve endings that never hooked a cotton boll. I heard the sizzle and smelled burning flesh but ignored the pain and tears; hell, that was physical, what every man and beast leaves behind sooner or later. No, I wanted to hold that ember just as Lord Jim stepped up to hold something at last. I don’t know that I ever thought myself a coward; I was more a young fool than anything, yet I watched that fire in my fingertips to see what truth might be there to see. You can’t just get what you want through self-affliction. I knew that and dropped that ember on the floor and hurried for the dustpan to get it back into the firebox. Then I sat with the pain, which cannot be conveyed in words. Maybe that ember facilitated my rural epiphany by revealing a truth other than what I sought. Pain feels like contrition but will not absolve the lasting hurt. In the end they’re not the same, pain and contrition. Pain distracts attention from the greater regret but cannot counterbalance guilt; no, physical anguish might provide a dramatic change of scenery, but that’s all. In the end there can be no substitute for good deeds in nature for a body seeking the greater absolution.
I never held with the Christian dogma; and here too I saw life as a series of behaviors with less than optimal results and a continuing source of regret, balanced in the end by compensatory behaviors, maybe.
Solitude, silence and order had become my bunkmates, and for all the truck I hauled out to that cabin I didn’t bring a tube of antiseptic ointment. So I bore my pain alone, except for Fern, who heard about it plenty. I did find a big brown spider in the hooch box and carried him outdoors, though he wouldn’t ride on the damaged hand but only on the unburned one. I don’t know that I hoped for a spider bite to top things off, but my indifference was profound. I returned to the box for the liquid antiseptic, reckoning on my first guzzle that the drink’s cash value came in between a dollar or three, which seemed a great bargain, things being what they were.
XIII
Aníse
You can’t make a long story short covering centuries, honing on decades and going macro on a few select moments. Suffice to say Aníse’s arrival on Wadmalaw occurred near the time of my own immigration. That she’d remained unseen was due in part to personal difficulties in her adjustment, which were not exactly parallel to my own but similar in a broader context. She moved directly on arrival down to Seabrook, where accommodation seemed more plentiful and in closer proximity to her own age group. She moved northwest up near Rockville when distance from Jmetta’s troubled mother seemed propitious.
Her specific ailments stemmed from a broken heart and shattered nerves, both of which compounded with the shocking difference in culture between Wadmalaw ’n dem French Windies; Jim Cohen’s prognosis, not hers. Coming home to blood family is one thing, while crossing thousands of miles of sea, moving to another country and finding yourself single is another. I knew.
I could only speculate on the depths to which Jim Cohen’s manipulative stratagem could be plumbed. I couldn’t help but wonder, despite his fundamental approach to life on an hourly basis, to what ends he was capable.
Aníse had changed her name from Claudia some years prior, after her Grandfather Mose enlightened and amused her with tales of his mother’s, her Great-Grandmother Julya’s, magical ways with soulfood, beginning with the spices, anise among the favorites if not the foremost. The most favored and certainly most consumed was garlic, but a girl can’t very well call herself Garlic, or even Garlíque, not when her boyfriend insists on calling her his own licorice stick. She resisted to the point of conjuring a name more suitable to her style and context, Aníse, which was acceptable to both her and her former boy, or man, who promised she would always be his licorice stick on their last encounter, a sad one for her.
Aníse’s physical bearing seemed inextricable from her recent past, in which she’d ended the love of her life (her words), an eleven-year, live-in relationship with the most notable disk jockey in Guadeloupe, a man so known and, if you will, powerful, he had only to schedule a dance party to have it sold out in no time and a full head of steam pumped to the rafters or the stars, depending on the venue, by the spin of the first disc. The man was essentially energetic, bordering on vibrant; he was, in a word, anticipated. That is, she was bereft, slouched, slumped and otherwise personifying depression.
To me, the boyfriend was pumped up beyond the magnitude or fortitude innate to any man, and so was the so-called bliss she still swooned over. How could she miss someone with the personality of a Tesla coil?
No marriage and no children led nonetheless to undying devotion on the one hand and insatiable sexual appetite on the other, which would have been fine, or at least comprehensible, or short of that, something plausible for working through, as they say. But Aníse’s boyfriend suffered extraordinary libido to begin with, and that burden compounded with so many volunteers to assuage its demands. Said libido led him astray in behaviors common to most stories told of men. Not a bad man, she said, nor unlovable nor significantly changed from when they first met, except of course for his growing appetite, unless he’d been philandering all along, but she didn’t think so, or at least she hoped not, not that she would have cared, not really, she said. At any rate, she had no recourse in time but to leave him, or else engage in the ménage he longed for, which wouldn’t work with such a steady change of players, so she moved out. That didn’t work either but led to a further reduction in recourse, suggesting her removal to distant shores.
She didn’t fault him or the shameless girls, hardly old enough to be his daughters, offering him sweets of marginal quality and questionable freshness but with such easy access and, she supposed, youthful vigor. She turned forty and sought refuge and salvation for the good years left to her, coming to the place her grandfather had never ceased calling home, though he had left it seventy years prior.
I’d seen the Lowcountry’s homing effect on people who leave, but never over such a span. But then nostalgia is among the easiest of human emotions, things always seeming so much better back in those days and places. The summary was hers, warranting doubt in the details, once observing her general state of anxiety. She seemed naturally nervous, not knowing what to do, down to sitting or standing, looking out the window or out the door, or walking over to either one for a better look, or away for perspective, not knowing if she could ever love again. I suspected the hormonal imbalance and mood swing common to the change in life. She seemed young for the menopause, but then physiology varies from one race to the next in certain things, so maybe that was one of those things, except that it wasn’t. She was plain damn lovesick.
This had nothing to do with me. That Jim Cohen had maneuvered me into meeting his cousin was surprising and a bit disappointing. An ambush with a blind date at the end would be unwelcome in the best of circumstances. To set me up, as it were, as a likely suitor to a woman blacker than the proverbial ace of spades left me with critically less recourse in the realm of polite interaction than she’d been left on her island in the middle of the ocean. She’d migrated elsewhere to be with family; but where was I to go?
Letting Jim and his niece down easy became the task of the hour. I had a mind to put on my khaki suit and oxford-cloth, button-down shirt and penny loafers to underscore our common ground, which shrank quicker than a sand bar in a storm flood. I did not change clothes, having come to see that former mode of dress as depressing, post partum or mortem either one.
Aníse’s charms were apparent in any light. Her broken heart and culture shock could not hide her fundamental happiness, which often defaults to stereotype in her race, but not in her. She was not predictable, though her curiosity and opi
nion were incessant. I understood in my open-minded, magnanimous view of the world and its lonely seekers that a woman with a spark and appetite for life, leading, perhaps, to dinner, intrigues most men. In the past, dinner could be taken out, with table service and atmosphere.
As it was, we met at Jim Cohen’s for a supper of fried mullet and okra gumbo. Aníse filled the room with an energy unlike what I’d seen thereabouts, understandably anxious over her instability. Busily arranging and rearranging her few things, she rearranged them once more, anxious to get it right. She smiled cheerfully and attempted social nuance by saying her move was such a “hassle,” a tiresome word so common to hip language then that it flared up and died like a struck match.
Yet she was different, young, compared to me, and enjoying the mysterious characteristic common to many Oriental and Negroid persons, making her look younger still; I guessed early thirties, or late twenties showing some stress, but she happily proclaimed that she’d “made forty-one already,” as if her years were a source of pride by virtue of survival. That was a switch from what I’d been accustomed to, but certainly in keeping with her family tradition.
Whether her values derived from her forbears is conjectural, but I think they did. I found her straightforward, engaging and refreshing, compared to Eudora’s apoplexy over birthdays, questionnaires, driver’s licenses or any of society’s hateful ruses to pry a woman’s age from her, when she doesn’t look nearly that old and doesn’t have to be that old if she doesn’t want to. Eudora was sixty-one but looked only fifty-nine and swore she was forty-eight. Near the midpoint in our marriage I developed a sustained embarrassment for her vanity. I warned her that in time a forty-eight-year-old woman looks foolish, married to an eighty-year-old man, which was the predicament we were headed for if she didn’t fess up and grow up and old with grace. She assured me we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
But I dabble in the stream at the foot of a bridge ready for crossing. Aníse suffered a vanity or two, as most people do; a person weighing in at two hundred will admit to one-sixty, like she and Twiggy are peas in a pod. Aníse wore a wig when I met her, medium-length, wavy brown hair that blended well with her other features. I saw it was a wig right off, though she did seem more familiar with it than the local women.
I’ll concede that I counted her figure prominently among her charms, her body language a fluent articulation of the universal tongue. Assessing her sparkle, shape, and apparent happiness, I found her curious. My curiosity seemed a natural response to her interest in me; we are often drawn to what we draw. Getting acquainted was easy; she had fun in the kitchen and seemed comfortable explaining how things should be, as far as she could tell. She was exotic, not strange, and equidistant from the local black women and the women I’d known in town, more open-minded and lyrical than either even hinted; quixotic and elusive with a salacious savoir-faire that a blind man would have sensed.
I mention these traits and behaviors as typical requisites, what is common to many relationships between men and women, which this came to be. Given the social barrier, we couldn’t pass square one without some natural magnetism anyway, so the flirtatious aspect shouldn’t seem surprising. What she saw in me beyond stability, I can only speculate. Did she wonder what in hell I was doing out there? She seemed preoccupied with her own situation, but I cut a decent profile with urbane demeanor, which must have been exotic for her as well, or at least as different as her usual fare. She liked that I presented a difference, I think; I didn’t even own a Hi Fi, much less know how to work one, and I could have called a dance party to the four winds with no response. She told me in the way that private thoughts are shared, once intimacy is achieved, that she’d been drawn to the way I looked. At average height with even proportions and my hair mostly intact, I thought she merely liked what I liked, which was something to engage there in the outback of the hubbub. An unlikely proposition loomed between us, with a dare, an act of rebellion and a fantasy as well titillating the air. She assured me no, no, no, that she was taken by the high cheekbones and firm chin, by the silver hair combed back regally, the square shoulders and flat stomach, but mostly by the steely green eyes offsetting the warm smile. With each accolade I responded, chin out, gut in, hair pushed back, eyes steeled and so on, till I couldn’t move, and she laughed, perhaps at me, before making amends as only she could, perhaps assuring me in her way that she was putting me on, or maybe she wasn’t.
The first time I saw her without the wig was our second meeting, by chance, in Rockville, at the store. I browsed pharmaceuticals for some antiseptic ointment and perhaps to discover a holdover inventory of laudanum. She was out and about, such as it was. I didn’t recognize her so I didn’t look twice, beyond my general smile and hello for anyone in passing, but then I looked again when she gazed at me. Did I know this woman? I didn’t think so, until the eyes caught, and I saw what several bulky layers could not hide, that yes, I knew her, or had met her at any rate—“Ah! Aníse!”
“Arthur,” she moaned, offering her hand in another unimaginable gesture, or at least one thoroughly unpracticed there between parties of the first part and parties of the second part. Transcending taboo with practiced momentum, she took my hand naturally, lifting the bandaged fingers with alarm and continuing curiosity as to the source of my injury.
I explained how I’d carelessly grasped the firebox handle when it was too hot. So with a headshake and renewed warmth she shook my other hand on the great chance of our meeting again. She proceeded directly to chitchat, like it was Broad and Meeting or Queen and Tradd Streets. And wasn’t it grand, out shopping and running into old friends like this? With any other woman I would have called romance forgone, but this was different, not yet shocking because of the overwhelming denial. This could not be.
“I need a pain reliever,” I said, making conversation as I might have done in town.
“Oh, yes,” she gushed, “I am very interested in that sort of thing, you know, pain and relieving. In my home of lately, I make a study of the tincture and the herb. Do you know these things?”
The mini-drama here was not so much a common interest, which was my pain and her study of tinctures and herbs, but the absence of the wig. Her naturally kinky do was like the Afros popular then, but she’d cropped it closer so it fit her head like a wool cap. Distinctively Negroid, she was yet again dissimilar to the local women, most of whom were scraggly-headed or wore their hair forcibly straightened so it hung stiff as quills on a tired hedgehog. Hers seemed groomed. Sensing her discomfort with my scrutiny, I said, “You did something with your hair.”
She touched her hair and blushed, yes. “Yes. I … I let it go.” She ventured a timid glance.
“It looks very nice,” I assured her, causing eyes to cast downward. She never wore the wig again, more from embarrassment than pride, I think.
At any rate, her natural hair was so different from wavy brown that I hadn’t recognized her. The store was warm, so she removed her sweater, reminding me otherwise what she looked like. So we took up where we’d left off, in animated dialogue with no direction or point but with apparent vigor. I too blushed at first, feeling flattered.
She didn’t know why she’d come out, she said, or what in the world she could buy at that little store; she just needed to get out, you know. So she joined my search for old laudanum. I told her that her great-grandfather had likely bought the remaining inventory of that very constabulary in the prior century. She said, “You know, that is so interesting.” I wondered what Luzon would say, to see his search continued by his great-granddaughter and a surly white lawyer from Charleston.
She patted her hair frequently, caught out, her correct impression undermined. I told her she should have no concern because she looked quite nice. I risked patronization, but she beamed, informing me that she was still influenced by cultural trends from the continent. That wig was an experiment, a silly thing to try, to see if she might like it, you know, because it was something different.
> We managed a pleasant exchange that led neither to lunch nor supper, nor to any suggestion of further engagement. We actually by-passed any mention of a next meeting by agreeing that the place was so small; we would surely meet again in no time, and until then, see you later, goodbye, ta ta, au revoir.
We met again that night, subsequent to my decline of supper at Jim Cohen’s, the invitation to which was delivered by Jmetta, the child. I stayed home in everyone’s best interest. I mean, what was he thinking? She was nice enough, and easy company by any standard. But her egregious availability was plain damn inappropriate and poorly timed. What did he expect, a romance? Or a one-night stand?
Aníse showed up at the Hunt Club cabin with a covered dish, which seemed unsubtle yet appreciably discreet and even touching. She also carried a thick stalk of aloe vera wrapped in a paper towel to soak up the viscous ooze, commonly known to remedy burns or skin disorders of any kind, and known by me too; but who thinks of such things? I suppose the evening livened up, as perhaps things would have done in any event, when she squeezed the stalk that emitted the goo and squealed at the awful, soothing mess. She dasn’t look up from her tender ministrations of my wounds, so sensual was the exchange.
In that softer, kinder light, she was a woman alone in a foreign place seeking friendship. That she came to me with first aid and something good to eat could only feel warm and generous. If I put self-interest, self-loathing and social conscience aside for once, nothing remained but hospitality and female charm. That she was black and a bit neurotic became quickly incidental in the privacy of my own home.
In a Sweet Magnolia Time Page 18