by Daniel Black
“What?”
“It’s true. You get to have girlfriends and flirt with each other, too.”
“Shut up, Eva Mae! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh really? I watched you dance with Christina and make eyes at Johnny Ray—all at the same time. She didn’t even notice!”
Paul couldn’t deny it.
“And is somebody gonna tell Violet about Johnny Ray?”
“Tell her what?” Eva Mae couldn’t know, could she?
She began to chuckle again. “Everybody ain’t dumb, Paul. Most people ’round here is, but everybody ain’t.”
If she didn’t mention anything specific, he certainly wasn’t going to.
“Oh, don’t worry. I ain’t gon’ say nothin’ to nobody. I just think it’s funny.”
“Just leave it alone, Eva Mae. It’s none of your business.”
“Oh! I see! You’re my best friend, supposedly, but who you love is none of my business?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It don’t matter.” She patted his shoulder. “I’m a woman, so I ain’t supposed to know anyway. That’s how it works, right?”
Paul huffed. “Why are you doing this now?”
“ ’Cause it’s just so crazy! Everybody wants a man—men and women—but women think they’re the pretty ones. Ain’t that crazy!” Her chuckling evolved into uncontrolled laughter again.
“I’m going back inside.”
“Yes, you should. I’m sure Christina’s waiting for her man!”
Eva Mae howled. Paul walked away more frustrated that he couldn’t counter her claim than irritated by what she’d said. Before he reached the entrance, he bumped into Johnny Ray.
“Oh . . . hey,” Paul stammered.
“Hey,” Johnny Ray said.
“I like your jacket. It’s really nice.”
“My jacket? Man, everybody’s talkin’ ’bout your suit! Where’d you get it from?”
“Momma made it.”
“Wow. That’s cool. I didn’t know Miss Emma Jean could sew like that.”
“We didn’t, either.”
They endured ten seconds of awkward silence, unaware of Eva Mae’s lurking eyes. Then, without thinking, Paul reached out and lightly touched the lapel of Johnny Ray’s jacket, like one attempting to smooth out a stubborn wrinkle. And Johnny Ray didn’t stop him. In fact, Johnny Ray sighed and closed his eyes at the touch, unaware of the return of Paul’s budding erection.
Eva Mae’s laughter broke the trance.
“Oh . . . um . . . I’m sorry,” Paul said, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay. It’s nothing.” Johnny Ray smiled warmly. “I’ma just go to the outhouse for a minute, and I’ll see you back inside.”
“Okay.”
Paul studied Johnny Ray’s strut, noting his thick buttocks and extra-wide shoulders. Why couldn’t Johnny Ray love him? Mister could have anybody he wanted. Everybody said so. Paul would have done anything—anything—for Johnny Ray’s heart. Like Eva Mae had done for his. But I guess you can’t make nobody love you, Paul told himself. The more he imagined Johnny Ray in his arms, the more clearly he saw the hurt on Mister’s face.
“Your girlfriend’s waiting,” Eva Mae snarled. “I’ll see you later.” She began walking home in the dusk.
“Why you leavin’?”
“ ’Cause I don’t wanna walk home in the dark.” Over her shoulder, she shouted, “By myself.”
Chapter 33
Gus and Bartimaeus missed Woody’s wedding announcement in the spring of ’57 because of the rains. It had never poured like that, people said. One moment the sun was shining brilliantly, then, suddenly, dark clouds gathered and unleashed as they must have in Noah’s day. Gus rushed to the Jordan when the rains commenced, and Bartimaeus followed, losing his way among the monsoonlike winds. The rain fell all day, as if from a waterfall, then, as abruptly as it began, it stopped, and the setting sun was instantly unveiled. Gus and Bartimaeus heard exultant rejoicing as they approached home that Saturday evening, and Authorly intercepted them down the road with dry clothes and news of Woody’s engagement.
“He said God came to him the other day and told him he needed a helpmate,” Authorly explained.
“Well, good for him,” Gus said. “Good for him.”
Bartimaeus asked, “Who’s the girl?”
“Puddin’ Jenkins,” Authorly chuckled.
Gus screeched, “Puddin’ Jenkins? That ugly girl from Damascus? One o’ David Jenkins’s girls?”
“Yep! That’s the one!”
“He couldn’t do no better’n that?”
Authorly hollered. “He said God showed her to him in a dream and told him to go get her. I told him he was havin’ a nightmare!”
The men laughed heartily.
“She can’t be that bad,” Bartimaeus said.
“If you only knew! You better be glad you can’t see!”
“All right, boy. Ugly folk need love, too.” Gus tried not to laugh.
“He said they gettin’ married pretty soon.”
Gus and Bartimaeus congratulated Woody when they arrived home, and Gus confirmed that a preacher should have a wife. He wasn’t too sure about it being Puddin’ Jenkins, but, hell, why not? She needed a husband as much as any other girl.
At the wedding a week later, which lasted all of fifteen minutes, folks scowled when Puddin’ appeared before the opened double doors of the church. Her dress was pretty enough, but all the makeup in the world couldn’t alter what Emma Jean called “bone ugliness.” Her forehead protruded like a cliff, and her crazy left eye swiveled while the right one never moved. People didn’t know if she was looking at them or around them, so they smiled and waited until after the ceremony to voice their comments.
W. C. said, “If God had sunt me a girl lookin’ like that, I’d o’ told God, ‘No thank Ya!’ ”
Deacons hollered.
Miss Mamie said, “Woody Peace is shonuff a man o’ God ’cause nobody but God could o’ made him marry Puddin’ Jenkins. Seem like to me that girl just wants to be ugly! She could do better if she just would.”
The crowd marched to Emma Jean’s front yard to consume barbecued coon, squirrel, chicken, and rabbit that Authorly had slow-roasted throughout the night. People congratulated Gus on getting another son married off, and patted his back sympathetically for having endured the recent rains. Everyone had heard his and Bartimaeus’s strong baritones announce the arrival of yet another spring, but by the end of the day their voices had disintegrated into hoarse, scratchy cries of fatigue. They persisted, nonetheless, sure that if they didn’t, the residue of pain in their hearts would overwhelm them before the rains came again. Gus especially would’ve been honored to know that countless Swamp Creek residents sat on their porches and listened to the melodious lamenting until their hearts, too, were made clean and pure. When the wailing ceased, people returned their chairs to their kitchen tables and began revisiting those obstinate neighbors whose offenses they now forgave.
At the wedding reception, Paul told Eva Mae, “I think Christina wants to marry me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. At least I think so. Every time we together, she talks about wantin’ a husband and kids. She asked me what I thought about the possibility of bein’ her husband.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told her I hadn’t never thought about it. Not really.” Paul turned to see Eva Mae’s reaction.
“Paul . . . um . . .”
“What?” he said, smacking on a rabbit leg.
“I don’t want you to get hurt. Just take yo’ time. Okay? You ain’t like most men.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?”
“Just what I said. Don’t rush into nothin’. Most folks ain’t got nothin’ to lose. You got everything to lose.”
Paul grimaced.
“Aw, boy, please! Can we just tell the truth for a change?”
&nb
sp; “What truth?”
“The truth that you don’t know what you like. Not yet. You look at Johnny Ray harder than you look at Christina. Tell me I’m lyin’!”
Paul didn’t challenge her.
“That means you don’t know who you are.”
“I know who I am!”
“I don’t mean your name. I mean your spirit. Who you really are deep down inside, regardless of what other folks say. That’s what you got to figure out.” Eva Mae could tell Paul didn’t want to hear it, but she continued anyway. “Yo’ life has been crazy, Paul, to say the least, and figurin’ out who you is sometimes takes years. You gotta know what you think and what makes you happy and what you can live with, and some of that I don’t think you know yet.”
Her nurturing tone softened his guard. “You’re probably right.”
“Me, on the other hand, I didn’t have no other choice. Ain’t nobody never thought much about me, so I started thinkin’ about myself really early. Remember how I used to come to y’all’s house all the time?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it was only because my folks didn’t care where I went, so I had to pretend somebody liked me. That somebody was you.”
“Why me? I didn’t even know you.”
“Yeah, but Miss Emma Jean adored you and that’s what I wanted. I used to walk by y’all’s house all the time, hoping she’d ask me to come over and play with you, and maybe then I might be important. At least to somebody. I thought it might work since you didn’t have no sisters.”
“Oh! So that day Momma saw you and Caroline in the road and asked y’all to play with me wasn’t the first day you walked by?”
“It wasn’t the second or third, either. Like I said, I just wanted to be your friend ’cause yo’ momma thought you was God.”
Paul laughed. “Yeah, right!”
“She sure acted like it. Wherever y’all went, you always looked like a doll. You had the prettiest dresses, and the part down the middle of yo’ head was always straight as a arrow. Me and Caroline used to talk all the time about how jealous we was of you.”
Paul sighed as his memory ran amuck. “I miss those days sometimes.”
“I’m sure you do. That’s why I’m sayin’ go slow with Christina. Or whoever. You gotta figure out what part of Perfect you want and what part you don’t. Then you gotta put that part with who you is now. It’ll all come together when you get clear about who you wanna be.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Well, just start by talkin’ to yo’self and admittin’ the truth. You ain’t gotta tell nobody else, but you gotta tell yo’self. Then you’ll be able to answer some of the other questions.”
“How do you know all o’ this stuff?”
“My grandmother. She used to say that a person gotta make theyselves, and I never understood what she meant.” Eva Mae paused long enough to speak to Emma Jean, then continued: “But now I see. Just don’t let what other people think and feel make you think and feel like them. If you different, be different. People’ll get used to it. They ain’t got no other choice.”
Paul smiled. “You right about that.”
“Don’t give people God’s power. Yeah, they have opinions and stuff, but they ain’t got no power to change your world unless you give it to ’em. Keep all the power you got. You’ll need it. I promise.”
Bartimaeus and Caroline didn’t want a wedding. They simply asked Reverend Lindsey to marry them and he did so—right in Gus and Emma Jean’s living room. The newlyweds then moved into Caroline’s grandmother’s abandoned house. It had been vacant for more than a year, and Mr. Burden said they could have it if they wanted it. It was just south of Highway 64, walking distance from the church, so Bartimaeus asked his brothers to examine the house and tell him what it needed. “Everything!” Emma Jean said upon seeing it. “That thang’s ’bout to fall down!” Gus rolled his eyes and said, “It’s not that bad, son. We’ll get it together for you. Don’t worry. I ain’t gon’ have you livin’ in no shack.” Emma Jean said, “Then you ’bout to build a whole new house!” Gus and the boys took a week and repaired what they could, and Bartimaeus and Caroline moved in.
Lying in bed with another person felt strange to Bartimaeus, who only now fully appreciated the security, silence, and confinement of the coffin. He wondered if there were double-occupancy models, or maybe triple, since Caroline consumed the space of two. But not knowing whom to ask, he dropped the notion and tried to adjust to a normal bed, complete with Caroline’s incessant shifting and monstrous snoring. Most nights, he lay awake long after her bestial growling began, or, upon the rare occasion of falling asleep first, found himself awakened in the middle of the night by the same. Sleepless nights came often. Lying there, staring into darkness, he couldn’t tell if it was two o’clock or five thirty. His mind wandered, from one topic to the next, until, one night, he found himself thinking about Paul. What kind of life would he lead? Caroline had told him about Paul’s feelings for Johnny Ray, making him swear never to divulge the secret. Bartimaeus promised he wouldn’t, but admitted he wasn’t surprised. He said it made sense for Paul to be that way since he had been a girl all those years. “But what about Christina?” Caroline asked. “Paul likes her, too.” Bartimaeus had no explanation. He said that maybe Paul liked both of them, although he’d never heard of such a thing. “He’s confused, honey. Anybody who’s been through all of that oughta be.” Caroline agreed.
Bartimaeus rolled to his left side, trying in vain to sleep. Sometimes he buried his head beneath the pillow, and other times he simply endured. He loved Caroline—all of her—but the sleepless nights made his love less dreamy and more actual. He wanted his coffin back, yet, afraid Caroline might feel rejected, he kept the fading wish to himself. Only in these moments did he desire a slimmer wife, and that was only because he believed Emma Jean’s theory that “fat folks snore the loudest.” Authorly had proven it. At any given hour, when they were kids, he would begin hollering—as Mister called it—and none of the others would sleep again until Authorly rolled onto his stomach. Bartimaeus soon discovered that, by lowering the coffin lid, he could shut out most of Authorly’s noise and sleep dead to the world. Now, after months of marriage, he knew the days of sound, uninterrupted sleep were gone. Oh well, he thought. If this were the price he’d have to pay for living with a woman who cooked like Caroline, he counted himself blessed. He never knew a chicken could be prepared so many different ways. Their union also introduced him to foods he’d never heard of like broccoli, asparagus, and eggplant. Gus had told him that “any man who finds a cookin’ woman gon’ love her forever,” and now he knew his father wasn’t totally crazy. What Bartimaeus liked most about Caroline’s food was that she didn’t overseason and overcook the way his mother did. She could baste a coon so tender others thought they were eating roast turkey.
Food was also Caroline’s nemesis. She ate nonstop and, at every meal, cooked enough for ten although there were only two. Conscious of waste, she felt compelled to eat what Bartimaeus couldn’t, and fussed at him for making her eat all that extra food. Her escalating weight didn’t trouble him as much as her deteriorating health, but Bartimaeus decided not to complain. The last thing she needed was another man unsatisfied with her.
Chapter 34
How hard could sewing be? Anybody could thread a needle and cut out shapes of cloth from patterns, then sew them together. There was nothing difficult about that. The sitting would be the hard part, Emma Jean reasoned, and she’d simply have to stand whenever she needed to. Henrietta had offered the ultimatum as though believing Emma Jean would be tortured by the work. It just couldn’t be that hard, Emma Jean told herself as she walked. She had always worked, even as a child, so it would take more than physical labor to break her down. That’s what Henrietta wanted, wasn’t it? To break her spirit and make her regret what she had done? Emma Jean cackled. “Henrietta Worthy don’t know me! Shit, I’m a survivor. If I can live with Mae Helen Hurt and c
ome out alive, I can stand anything!” There was simply nothing she could foresee about sewing that would torture her into believing she had not done the right thing for Perfect. Well, Paul. She hadn’t meant to twist up the child’s mind, as Authorly had put it, until he didn’t know right from left. She had simply wanted a daughter, and she didn’t understand why she couldn’t have one. Since her days with Mae Helen, she had heard nothing but “no” and “you’re not good enough” and “you ain’t nothin’ ” and “you don’t deserve this or that,” so she promised herself that, when she got grown, she would have something she wanted and something she loved. And nobody would keep her from it. “Henrietta’s got another thing coming if she thinks I’m gon’ apologize for what I done!” Emma Jean declared, stomping her frustration into the dirt road. “She ain’t gon’ make me hate myself for lovin’ my child!”
The first day wasn’t so bad. It was actually pretty boring. Emma Jean’s hands ached from cutting out countless garments with scissors that Henrietta knew were too dull for the job. But it didn’t kill her, and because of that, Emma Jean left for home at 5:16 with her head held high. She was tired, of course. She couldn’t lie about that. Ironing cloth in preparation for cutting, then pinning patterns atop it, then bending and stretching around those patterns as she attempted to cut the cloth with precision had been far more exhausting than she had anticipated. A few times, Henrietta had glanced at her and burst into unbridled laughter, but Emma Jean didn’t let the ridicule bother her. She simply pressed on as though Henrietta wasn’t there. By day’s end, Emma Jean couldn’t hide her fatigue, and Henrietta said, “See ya in de mornin’!” as though knowing Emma Jean’s destruction was nigh.
Shortly after six that evening, the menfolk entered and saw Emma Jean asleep at the kitchen table. A light fire brewed in the woodstove, but Gus smelled no food.
“What’s the matter with you, woman? You sick or somethin’?”
Emma Jean lifted her head slowly, wiping saliva from the corners of her mouth, and blinked her way back to reality. “Lawd have mercy. I musta dozed off for a minute. Y’all ’cuse me.” She rose quickly and began cooking.