Perfect Peace

by Daniel Black

  Some mumbled “Amen,” assuming the dedication complete, but Reverend Lindsey continued: “None of us is perfect, oh Lord. No, not one.”

  Emma Jean turned her bowed head and peeked from one eye.

  “Give us the humility, precious Savior, to know that all have sinned and fallen short of your glory. No one,” he shouted, “can be called perfect in your sight, oh Lord. No one!”

  The crowd affirmed his vehemence with a hearty “Amen!”

  “Don’t let us forget, Lord, that when we exalt ourselves, you bring us low to remind us of our place. Our job, Great Master, is to keep our heads bowed that you might exalt us in due season. Give this child the ability to accept her own imperfections”—Reverend Lindsey peeked back at Emma Jean—“so that she won’t think more highly of herself than she ought. I pray this precious little girl good health, prosperity, and godspeed. Let the church say amen.”

  “Amen.”

  Emma Jean rolled her eyes at Reverend Lindsey. “My little girl is Perfect!” she hollered, stomping back to her seat. How dare he, she thought, imply that Perfect had been misnamed. The gall of some people! “If you wuz so spiritual, Mr. Preacher Man,” she burbled from the pew, “you’d know that God gave me that name anyway! You ain’t been called to preach! All you want is money! And, anyway, it ain’t yo’ business—”

  “Shhhhhhhh!” her neighbors hissed.

  “Shush yourself!” Emma Jean grumbled, and fell silent. Everybody ain’t gon’ understand the ways of God ’cause everybody don’t walk with God, she told herself. That includes some preachers.

  “That baby ain’t right!” Sugar Baby screamed. “That baby ain’t right!”

  Emma Jean turned. She would have cussed him out had they not been in the sanctuary.

  Everyone usually ignored Sugar Baby’s outbursts. He hadn’t been himself since he was a child. Homeless and alone, he had snapped, folks said, the day his mother died. Then, when his father passed, Miss Mamie said he went completely off the deep end. If he agreed to act right, families would shelter him for a day or two, then Sugar Baby would disappear for weeks without a word. No one ever knew where he went. How he survived without money or food was the unsolved mystery of Swamp Creek, and children were often told that he was somebody’s spirit returned from the dead. Reeking of smoke, liquor, and piss, Sugar Baby was usually avoided, and once he reached adulthood, people disregarded him altogether, especially whenever he opened his mouth. When he was a baby, his mother named him Walter Lee Fletcher Jr. but called him Sugar Baby because he was so sweet. Others adopted the nickname the moment they beheld his smile, and most forgot his birth name by his first birthday. He never cried, his mother boasted. If he was hungry or wet, he simply whimpered, and even his whimpering was soothing. She killed herself, folks said, because her husband questioned Sugar Baby’s paternity. She couldn’t prove it one way or the other, and she was too afraid to know the truth. At the funeral, Walter Sr. bellowed, “I woulda loved ya anyway, honey. I sware ’fo God I woulda,” but it was too late. No one ever said who the real father was. They simply said, “Sugar Baby and W. C.’s oldest boy sho do look alike, don’t they?”

  Too emotionally distraught to care about the needs of a child, Walter Sr. left the boy to heal his own ten-year-old heart. Rumor had it that Sugar Baby found his father’s moonshine and began drinking his cares away. By thirteen, he was a bona fide alcoholic. He and his father ate most days only because sympathetic churchwomen brought them food. The deacons repaired their dilapidated house once, free of charge, but refused to do it again. On August 17, 1903, Walter Sr. died, and Sugar Baby drank so heavily thereafter that folks thought he’d drink himself to death. But he didn’t. The old house caved in, so Sugar Baby moved out. Or, rather, he left and wandered the woods, stealing food until folks started giving it to him. Occasionally he’d talk to Gus—the only person he trusted—but Gus never shared the content of their conversation. “What you and Sugar Baby be talkin’ ’bout?” Emma Jean asked once, but Gus only said, “Li’l bit o’ this, li’l bit o’ that.” Emma Jean shook her head and murmured, “Two peas in a pod.”

  “That baby ain’t right!” he slurred again, more loudly. “That baby ain’t right!”

  “Shut up, Sugar Baby!” Emma Jean shouted. “You ain’t nothin’ but a ole drunk heathen!”

  The crowd snickered.

  Sugar Baby exited as congregants pinched their noses. Emma Jean was glad. Her worry was that most of what he said was true—or later came true—and left people embarrassed and uncomfortable. Miss Mamie said he had the gift of Insight. Others mocked her observation until the summer Sugar Baby shouted to the congregation, “A flood is a-comin’! A flood is a-comin’! It’s gon’ raaaain!” Nobody believed him. It hadn’t rained in weeks and there were no clouds in sight. Yet, in the middle of the night, droplets began falling, and by morning the Jordan had swelled past its banks and swallowed many of those who had ignored Sugar Baby’s prophecy. More than thirty people drowned. Even after that, folks didn’t heed Sugar Baby’s words, but Emma Jean didn’t dismiss him quite so easily.

  That’s why she couldn’t stand him. She hated his untempered declarations, and she hated even more that her cursings didn’t stop him. Whenever she told him off, he laughed as though she were making a joke. Her inability to control him left her nervous that one day he’d say something for which she’d have to hurt him. Maybe this was the day, she thought.

  After the benediction, she found Sugar Baby slumped against the outside wall of the church, chugging Jack Daniel’s and puffing homemade cigarettes.

  “Hey you!” she called, marching toward him.

  He turned slightly, clearly inebriated.

  “You stay out o’ my business, you hear me! You don’t know nothin’ ’bout my baby. Heal yo’self befo’ you start talkin’ ’bout somebody else!”

  Sugar Baby chuckled with indifference.

  “My baby’s just fine. She’s exactly what she’s supposed to be. Now mind yo’ own damn business!”

  Emma Jean almost reached the front of the church before Sugar Baby reiterated, “That baby ain’t right!”

  Others heard him and awaited Emma Jean’s response. “Stupid fool!” she hollered.

  Mamie intercepted her. “Emma Jean! Oh, Emma Jean!” she called in her scratchy, screechy soprano.

  Yes, hussy? Emma Jean wanted to say, but smiled instead.

  “You know I couldn’t let you git away without seein’ that pretty li’l girl o’ yours. Come here, baby!” she babbled, reaching for Perfect.

  Emma Jean resisted, but Mamie pulled Perfect from her grasp.

  “Ouououwee!” Mamie sang. “Jes’ look at her! Lookin’ jes’ like . . . like, um . . .”

  Emma Jean’s fist tightened in case Mamie said the wrong thing.

  “. . . like her daddy. I see Gus all ’bout de eyes and de nose. Yep! He couldn’t deny this one. At least not this one!” She laughed, then turned to her deaconess comrade. “You ever seen a girl look so much like her daddy? Almost look like a li’l boy, don’t she?”

  Emma Jean snatched Perfect from Mamie’s arms. “I . . . uh . . . gotta get home and get supper ready. Dem boys gon’ be real fussy if they ain’t got nothin’ to eat after church.”

  But before she could escape, Mamie asked, “And you said her name’s Perfect?”

  “That’s right. Per-fect.” Emma Jean over-articulated each syllable.

  “Oh dear,” one lady said.

  “My, my, my,” another offered.

  Only Mamie was bold enough to ask, “What kinda name is that? That don’t sound like no name I ever heard of.”

  “Well, that’s her name,” Emma Jean sassed. “I named her what she is.”

  “I see,” Mamie said, and grimaced.

  “Good,” Emma Jean returned, rolling her eyes and walking away. Over her shoulder, she added, “Then that settles that!”

  Mamie chuckled and whispered to her comrades, “If yo’ name is what you is, then Mae Helen s
houlda named her Stupid-ass!”

  The women roared.

  Gus’s aim had been to exit the church from the rear and disappear before the deacons caught him, but it didn’t work out that way. They were huddled in a circle as though awaiting his arrival.

  “Whatcha say there, Mr. Gus!” W. C. hollered playfully. Woodrow Wilson Cunningham was his formal name. Folks said he was going to heaven not because he had accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, but because he had tolerated Mamie fifty years, and even Jesus couldn’t have done that.

  “Doin’ fine,” Gus returned, trying not to stop.

  “Where you rushin’ off to?” another deacon asked.

  “Nowhere, I guess.” Gus hated himself for giving in so easily.

  “You got chu a daughter now, huh?” W. C. said.

  Gus didn’t know how to respond. Of course he had a daughter, but W. C. already knew that.

  “You and Emma Jean ’bout to overpopulate de whole county, ain’t cha?” he teased.

  The other deacons laughed. Gus didn’t.

  “I thank God for all my kids,” he said.

  “Oh yessir! Chillen is a blessin’ from God shonuff! I got eight o’ my own, twenty grands, and four great-grands! But I thought de last time we talked, you said you wuz through.”

  “Well, I wuz,” Gus said, then decided not to attempt an explanation. “De Lawd do thangs mighty strange sometime.”

  “De Lawd? De Lawd did that?”

  The deacons screamed while Gus grinned sheepishly. Never able to think quickly on his feet, he always left the male gatherings feeling belittled. “Naw, I guess I did it, didn’t I.”

  W. C. screeched, “I guess you did! ’Less Emma Jean done become de Virgin Mary!”

  Since he couldn’t outwit them, Gus decided to laugh along. Maybe that would quell the emotion rising in his chest.

  “Now how in de world did y’all come up wit’ de name Perfect?” W. C. finally asked.

  “I didn’t have nothin’ to do wit’ it. Dat was all Emma Jean. By de time I seed de baby, she had done already named her.”

  “You didn’t say nothin’ ’bout it?”

  “Nope. What could I say? Emma Jean de momma.”

  W. C. nodded. “You right about that. Mamie did de same thang wit’ my oldest boy.”

  “You mean E. J.? I thought his name was just E. J.”

  W. C. shook his head. “That’s what we call him, but his real name is Ecclesiastes Job.”

  The deacons screamed and scattered in every possible direction.

  “Shiiiit! Stop lyin’, W. C.!” one man said, bent over with laughter.

  “I ain’t lyin’!” W. C. hollered.

  “Did you say ‘Ecclesiastes Job’?” another man asked. “Dat boy’s name is actually Ecclesiastes Job?”

  “Dat wuz some o’ Mamie’s bullshit!” W. C. said. “I thought his name was just E. J., too. Hell, I didn’t find out ’til de boy was damn near grown!”

  “Aw, get outta here, W. C.,” Gus said. “You didn’t even know yo’ own son’s name?”

  “No!” W. C. frowned and lifted his right hand. “This de God’s honest truth! Mamie said she had a dream de night befo’ she went into labor, and in dis dream she was readin’ ’bout Job in de book o’ Ecclesiastes.”

  “Job ain’t in no Ecclesiastes!” one of the deacons said.

  “I know dat! Shit!” W. C. defended. “Dat’s why she said somethin’ wuz special ’bout it, and I guess she thought that wuz s’pose to be de baby’s name. Hell. You know how womenfolk think.”

  Gus was glad another man had a wife he didn’t understand. He was relieved, too, that someone else was the butt of the joke for a change.

  “Well, wit’ all dem brothers, dat li’l girl o’ yours sho ain’t gon’ have no trouble. Dat’s fu sho,” W. C. said.

  Gus smiled, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Dat’s why de Lawd told men not to let women run nothin’,” W. C. commented, “ ’cause they get a idea and go crazy wit’ it.”

  “I know dat’s right!” the others agreed.

  “You gotta keep a woman in check, boys. Don’t chu neva thank you don’t. Else she’ll start thinkin’ she runnin’ thangs, and then you’ll look up and have a big ole mess on yo’ hands.”

  “That’s right!” one deacon said.

  “But I’ma tell you what,” W. C. said, pointing to each of them. “A woman don’t respect no man who won’t put her in her place. She lookin’ for a man strong enough to tell her when to shut up.”

  Gus’s head dropped. He tried to imagine controlling Emma Jean but couldn’t.

  “B’lieve what I’m tellin’ you! They ack like they don’t like it, but really they love it. God made ’em dat way, and He made de man to stand up and take charge. How you thank I done stayed wit’ Mamie fifty years? ’Cause she do what I tell her, that’s how!”

  “Aw, come on, W. C.,” the deacons bantered. “Don’t nobody run Mamie Cunningham! Includin’ you! If she tell you to jump, you go ta hoppin’ ’round like a black-ass jackrabbit!”

  W. C. hollered, “Sheeeeit! I know y’all crazy! I runs my house de way a man s’pose to!”

  The jeering evolved from one topic to the next, and once the laughter subsided, Gus gathered the courage to say, “Well, I guess I’d betta be gettin’ on to de house. My folks waitin’ on me to eat.”

  “All right, all right,” the others said.

  “Take care o’ yo’self, Gus,” W. C. said. “The way you and Emma Jean goin’, this time next year you liable to have yo’self number eight.”

  “Oh no,” Gus said, and waved. “I’ll see y’all later.”

  “Tell them two oldest boy o’ yours to come by de house dis week and cut my grass if they wanna make fifty cents,” W. C. called to Gus’s back.

  “Sho will,” Gus returned over his shoulder. “I thank ya fu helpin’ my boys out.”

  A hundred yards down the road he collapsed against a huge white oak. Sweat meandered across his forehead, and his heart beat as though trying to escape his chest. He hated that his mind always proved inadequate when around other men. Instead of joking with them freely, he found himself reticent and afraid, as though they were men and he a boy. Sometimes, while plowing, he would rehearse things to say at the next gathering, but, inevitably, the men would talk about some topic he hadn’t thought about. Others’ spontaneous wit left him envious and desirous of a mind that moved so quickly. He was simply slow, his father had told him. He would never be smart and that was okay. Everybody couldn’t be smart anyway, Chester Peace Sr. had said. That was the same day Gus left school for good—not because, like other black sharecropping children, he was needed in the fields, but because his presence in the classroom was, in his father’s words, “a humongous waste of time and space.” Education was too precious, the sympathetic father argued, to waste it on a mind which, on a good day, comprehended an hour’s worth of basic information. “Let somebody wit’ a sharp mind have that seat,” he told Gus. “Some folks is cut out for school and some is cut out for work.” It took Gus a week to realize he was in the latter group, and instead of feeling dejected, he was amazed at his father’s incredible discernment. By fourteen, Gus could read most four-letter words—five-letter words gave him a headache—so Chester Sr. concluded that, as long as the boy worked, he’d make it in the world.

  Occasionally Gus had dreamed of being smart, but usually he never thought about it. Anyway, he didn’t understand how smart people make money and feed their families. “Who get paid to sit around thinkin’?” he asked himself on his last day of school. “Everybody I know git money after they done done some work.” He knew he’d always eat because he’d always work. He had neither seen nor heard of a male schoolteacher—the only occupation he knew of for smart people—so the mystery took its place among others in Gus’s mind and accompanied him to his grave.

  When Emma Jean first paid Gus any mind, he was picking cotton for Thomas Washington. Nothing about
Gus was the least bit attractive to her until dusk when his cotton sack weighed in at three hundred pounds. She had never heard of anyone picking that much cotton in a day, so she knew Gus had to be a work mule, and more than anything, she liked working men. However, his sharp African features disgusted her. With lips three times the size of her own, and big open nostrils that flared with each breath he took, Gus was rejected by most women, and Emma Jean most of all. Who would ever marry such an ugly, purple-black brute, she wondered. His smile and frown were barely distinguishable, and the first time Emma Jean saw his crusty, flat, fourteen-inch feet, she actually vomited.

  “You betta try to git dat man, girl!” Mae Helen admonished after witnessing Emma Jean’s repulsion. “What other choices you got?”

  Emma Jean was eighteen then and swore she’d never lay with Gustavus Peace. A year later, after having been ignored by every other man in Swamp Creek, she cried her way to the altar and married the man she loathed. They never talked about love. Their union didn’t require it. What Emma Jean needed, she told Gus, was the promise that he’d never quit working. Gus raised his right hand like a courtroom witness and said, “I promise.” The only thing he wanted was a son and Emma Jean said she’d try. They married on a Saturday afternoon, in Mae Helen’s front yard.

  Later that night, in the house Gus and Chester Jr. had built, Emma Jean asked, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  Gus stared at her sleepily and said, “I ain’t never really thought about it.”

  Emma Jean almost slapped him, but decided that, as long as he worked, she wouldn’t trouble him about such frivolous matters.