Finding My Thunder

by Diane Munier

  Mama had left the house and land to Lonnie. He seemed shocked. I guess he would be, but what did he think she would do? She didn’t need it no more. It was the one thing she’d had to use as a weapon in her life and now….

  But there was a stipulation, a loss. Naomi was given the patch of ground her house sat on. She had a fenced yard and that was hers.

  Well, he didn’t like that. “The neighbors are gonna tear it down and carry her off,” he said pointing at Naomi. “A Negro will never own property on Willard Street. They was somewhat appeased knowing she didn’t own the land, but now…now you have done it,” he pounded his middle finger on the top of the table. That finger held straight. I’d been waiting for it to break for years but it never would.

  Well, he would sue. He would. He went on and on. Durr told him to quiet down and Don opened the door.

  Lonnie didn’t like Don opening the door. He stood then, his finger pointing at Naomi, pointing at me. We were all in cahoots according to him.

  I was on my feet and words were flying out of my mouth. “You’re not going to do anything. Not to anyone, you’re not,” I said. Then I told them all, “He’s already moved a new family into the house.”

  “That’s my business,” he yelled at me. “You’re the shame. Tell her,” he pointed at Naomi again, “you got that boy up in there spending the night? Bet she don’t know about that.”

  I was leaning over the table toward him and he was pulled back some.

  “Don’t you even speak of him. You don’t know anything,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t know? I know what you are…I know that. You are black as her, black all the way in. Always have been. I want you out of my house…just like I said.”

  “Lonnie,” Mr. Durr said standing, “sit down and shut up.”

  “I will move out…I will go peaceable,” I said to Lonnie. “But you have to agree to leave Naomi in peace.”

  “You won’t tell me what to do.”

  Naomi was pulling on me.

  “No,” I said to her, but I did not take my eyes from him. “I got you in me you sick Mister, much as you’d deny it. You’re the black in me. You. If you make a move against Naomi I will come after you for support. I can be as crazy as you I got nothing else to do and I’ll start with your new family. I’ll fill their ears to bursting. From my room. You can’t get me out I don’t go willingly. Not without a big shameful to-do.”

  Then to Durr I said, “He has never been a father to me. But if he tries to hurt Naomi in any way I will bring his shame upon him and the whole town will know.”

  “You ain’t mine,” he sneered back. “You ain’t ever’ been mine.”

  “Mr. Durr,” I said, looking at the sweating lawyer, “please write him a paper saying he will not sue Naomi and that he will do nothing against her.” Then I looked at Lonnie. “You will sign that paper and I will move out of your house and leave you alone.”

  Mr. Durr sighed and scribbled on the back of one of his papers. He read it back to me in a monotone and it sounded better, more cleaned up. “You don’t need this Hillary. You’re a minor child. By law you’re his responsibility.”

  “Now sign that paper,” I said to Lonnie.

  “I told you girl…you don’t tell me what to do. Not ever.”

  “Think of it this way then. I am telling you what you better not do. You better not miss this chance. You sign it…I move out of Mama’s house.” It’s at this moment I became aware of my legs. They were shaking.

  “He still needs to support you, Hilly,” Mr. Durr said.

  “He never has. He never will. I will have more without him. That’s what Mama knew. I can get a job….”

  “Not after throwing that rock through my window. The whole town seen what you are and there’s no one to blame but yourself.”

  “I can get a job,” I repeated to Mr. Durr. “I don’t need him. But he don’t sign that paper…I’ll be on him everyday. From my room.”

  He stared at me, such hate, contempt. It was out.

  I slowly started to realize Naomi held me by the shoulders. All at once she released me and slumped to her chair, her face in her hands. I ceased to care about Lonnie. Mr. Durr and me were around her. She asked for a glass of water and his secretary entered quickly with a cone shaped paper cup and handed this to Naomi and she drank.

  Lonnie was almost quiet…almost…his mind calculating his good fortune if my grandmother would keel over and go to the shanty town in the sky that lurked behind the streets of gold reserved for the white folks.

  He bent over quick and sudden and scrawled his name beneath Durr’s writing.

  When he straightened he started again and I said, “You got what you wanted, now leave.”

  “Just a minute. Renata left Hillary her clothes and her records,” Durr said.

  “They will be on the porch with the rest of her shit. I want it off there by tonight or it goes in the garbage.”

  Lonnie was ushered out, cajoled out by Don. He was already exonerating himself, building his case for Loreena and the children tonight, for his cronies at the shop, for anyone who would listen. He was poor picked on Lonnie Grunier.

  But me…what was I?

  Finding My Thunder 24

  Naomi wanted to drive me home, but I wanted to walk. I was wishing I hadn’t made that deal with God about not drinking. Now after the day’s events, I expected to be as low as I could go…but I wasn’t. I didn’t know what I was feeling I just knew I needed to get away from Naomi so I could figure it out.

  She had been talking pretty much non-stop once she got that water and Mr. Durr had a fan brought in. We talked for over an hour there.

  Mama had no life insurance, well it hadn’t been kept up. Mr. Durr didn’t seem to understand how we lived on nothing. We’d sold all Granma’s jewelry. We sold her silver. One by one if any of the antiques had any worth, they went. The Oriental rugs. Once a stained glass window right out of the dining room wall. It had been boarded over since sixty-two. An old piano and a clarinet. Urns, old tools, old fishing equipment, typewriter, suitcases, paintings, lamps and lots of dishes and glassware, the mantle right off the fireplace in the dining room, and the little green tiles around the opening and all the hardware…and a year later the one in the living room.

  Not all at once…just a slow leak. We took in six dollars a month from Naomi. Sometimes Lonnie threw us some cash, we’d get caught up some, pay taxes, pay electric. One time Mama considered selling her hair. I’d grown up hearing Mama on the phone with bill collectors. Sometimes we unplugged it just so it would stop ringing but sometimes it got shut off and we’d live in peace for a while.

  Sometimes bill collectors came to the house. If I was out playing and I saw one making the rounds, I’d run home and tell Mama and we’d hide until he was gone.

  Most time we couldn’t go in certain shops on the square until Mama paid some money.

  She sold Avon for a while. She raised silkworms. She got lectures regular from folks about paying the bills, or what Lonnie needed to do. She sold Stanley home products. She sold Tupperware. She sold magazines, bibles, encyclopedias. She took in ironing. And once she sold pies to Mac.

  She didn’t do any of it very well for very long. She got bored easy, she said. And every time she went belly-up if Lonnie Grunier knew about it he held it up like a victory banner. She couldn’t do shit, he said.

  We ate more from Naomi’s kitchen than our own, and the things I had came from cleaning the Temple or babysitting for one of the sisters, but that wasn’t so much, and I didn’t mind the cleaning, but I hated babysitting.

  In Durr’s office, Naomi was full of questions about Mama’s state of mind when she made her will. Mama had been firm, he said. Didn’t want advice or guidance. Told him if he couldn’t handle her business she’d find someone who could.

  She called it pretty right, Mama did. And like Mr. Durr said, how would I take care of such a place with no income? She hadn’t held a regular job besides that time at the di
mestore so forget Social Security even.

  He sympathized but he did not agree with me letting Lonnie off. As a minor child we could take Lonnie to court. I didn’t need to live in fear of Lonnie, he said, and I thought, wasn’t he in the room? Didn’t he witness how it was with Lonnie? I had to protect Naomi. Period. And Lonnie Grunier give me money? I had my whole life flashing like a neon sign to tell me how that would come out.

  I asked him, “What about your bill?” Cause it always came down to that.

  “I’ll send it to Lonnie,” he said.

  Either way, he wasn’t getting paid any time soon.

  After, when we were standing on the sidewalk, Naomi wanted to go over the whole sad story with me. I asked her to please just go home and rest and she said she would, but she was worried about me, and I said if I could walk it would help me, it always did, and she said not to be late and I said, I’m pretty used to looking after myself, and she said if we were going to be living together we’d have to get used to letting each other know more. I said I’d work on it.

  So I was walking and thinking and just being. I wanted to go back to the library and look at the picture of that painting again. I wished I could keep it with me to look at all the time, but that book couldn’t be checked out.

  So I brought it up in my mind. The way he held her, the Dutch man, the way she leaned against him. Danny. I loved him. He’s the only thing that I couldn’t bear to have taken away. That’s what was knocking in me. The most valuable thing…Lonnie couldn’t take. Danny.

  Even when Danny left it wouldn’t change, this big, wide, high and deep love in me.

  Danny pulled up pretty soon. I knew he would, I knew he’d come looking and he’d find me. We were that close. Supernatural.

  “Hilly…um, honey, get in,” he said pulling beside me, pointed in the wrong direction again, like he had to break the rules just to talk to me. I saw it right off, the pity in his face, heard it in his voice. Not him, too, bringing me bad news.

  “What is it?” I said, afraid.

  “Get in, baby.”

  I went around the front and got in. Gene Pitney was singing “A Town Without Pity,” on the radio.

  “Pretty,” Danny said running his dirty fingers over the ruffle on my dress. I grabbed onto him and his arms were around me. The oil smell cause he was coming from the shop, but I didn’t care.

  “I love you,” I said.

  He squeezed me tighter and just held me, the engine rumbling the seat, Danny’s salty neck under my lips. I felt such love for him I thought I’d fall apart. “You know about it?” I finally asked.

  “Some,” he said. He pulled back now. His lips were stacked, kind of pouty for me, maybe for himself.

  “I have to move in with Naomi,” I said. “Now we can’t be together…in my room. I don’t have it…I don’t have a home no more. Not my old one.”

  “I know it,” he said. “But that’s what you care about? Me and you getting together?”

  “Yes,” I answered, pretty amazed. Being with Danny was the main thing.

  He shook his head. “You’re such a strange girl. You think that’s gonna stop us?”

  His lips were warm when I kissed them. I didn’t want to ever stop. But when I sat back he was just opening his eyes. “Strange in a good way,” he smiled. We kissed a little more.

  “I knew you’d come,” I said.

  He laughed now, but it didn’t last. I knew he had something bad to tell me and he sat up straighter. “He’s thrown your stuff on the porch. He came in crowing about it. He told me I couldn’t have my job unless I ended it with you. He wasn’t going to let me work there when I was spying for you…or some shit.”

  “He’s just mad. Mama left Naomi her yard. Did he just throw my stuff around? My records?”

  Danny pulled a u-ie with the car. “Yeah. I drove by. They’re trying to clean it up…the new people.”

  It hurt. It made me so angry. “Guess they saw the real him,” I said lamely.

  “That’s not all, Hilly. He um…I guess Sooner got goin’…,” he pulled the car over, pretty much where we’d been, only going in the right direction this time, “and the new people called Bixby. They were trying to pile up your stuff and she attacked them they said. I guess…with the pups…and Sooner needs…a license and Bixby was gonna call the dogcatcher…well it’s his cousin Fred. I talked to him, Bixby, and he said if we got her a license and that means she’d need shots, well it would be about forty dollars. We’ve got to do it by tomorrow or…he’s gonna have her put down and the pups too…them being so young.”

  “No,” I whispered, feeling the door behind me where I plastered myself. He pulled me into him and I kept saying no.

  “I talked to him, honey. Listen now, we have to get her out of there and she wouldn’t let me do it. I thought if we could get her in Naomi’s yard…but she won’t let anyone in there.”

  “Oh…okay. Let’s go. We have to get her. I mean…can you go…with me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just took off when Lonnie got back to the shop slammin’ things around. He called out, ‘Where you think you’re goin’?’ and I flipped him off and left. I mean, he told me to choose. He was standin’ on the walk and he shouted, ‘Don’t come back.’”

  We looked at each other. “What will Paul say?”

  “I don’t care. Robert said earlier I can live at his place. The commune.” He laughed then but…Lord.

  He was driving in the direction of Willard Street.

  “Danny…where am I gonna get money like that?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got some. We’ll get it together.”

  I leapt across the seat and grabbed onto him and I felt him grab the wheel hard to stay in his lane. I was sorry right away, but not sorry I grabbed him, just that I’d nearly made him wreck Sukey’s car.

  When we pulled to my former house, my things were neatly piled pretty much. Sooner was so agitated that she came out from under the porch as soon as I touched the gate. She was barking and snapping. I told Danny to stay out and I tried to open the gate but she pounced on it and it slammed shut. For a minute I thought she caught herself and recognized me, but just as soon she attacked the gate again, barking vicious.

  “Mom wants to call the deputy back,” the boy said through the door.

  “No,” I said. “She’ll be fine. Just…go away from the door. She don’t know you,” I said.

  Then to Danny I said, “Get back in the car, Danny. I think it’s both of us. She doesn’t know what to do.”

  “You get in too. Let them call the deputy. You’re going to get bit.”

  “She won’t bite me,” I insisted, “but she doesn’t want you this close. I’m sorry. Please get in the car.”

  He went to the trunk and opened it and took out the tire iron. “I’ll stand here, but I swear if that dog goes for you I’m going in there.”

  Sooner still didn’t like it, but she started to calm some. She was panting hard and her poor teats were nearly dragging the ground. I kept speaking soothingly. She calmed a little more and went to the porch to look at her pups very worriedly. I stepped through the gate then. She ran out and barked at me a little, then seemed to realize it was me. She came closer with her head down and her tail wagged just a little. I kept reassuring her.

  “Hey Danny, go on and drive around to Naomi’s. I’m going to put the puppies in my skirt and walk them back there so she’ll follow.”

  “No you’re not,” he said. “She will take your head off.”

  “She won’t if you leave. She doesn’t like all the people. Go on. I’ll be okay.”

  “Damn it Hilly,” he said, but he got in the car at least.

  I went deeper in the yard toward the entrance to the porch. I kept talking to her. She went in ahead of me to the pups. I went under a little and pushed on her food bag pretending to be feeding her or something. She came next to me and nosed around, sniffing out the food. I put my hand on her and started to pet her and talk to h
er. She licked my hand, then my face. I stopped petting her, but now she was following me to the pups. She stood by while I started to sort through them and put them in the hammock I’d made out of my full skirt. I talked to her the whole time. She whined a little, and nosed over the pups, and took one and put it back and I laughed a little cause I had to take it and put it in my lap again. Well they looked as different as they could. Like there were a few different fathers for sure, or this dog had all the sizes, shapes and colors God ever made for canines in her blood like she was the Eve of all dogs.

  I was squatting, and I raised a little so I could walk awkward with all those puppies in my pouch and me a kangaroo. I remembered wanting to keep this dress clean this morning. I hoped it held now cause I had about twelve pounds or so in its skirt.

  I waddled awkwardly from under there and stood with a groan. Danny was waiting. “Go on,” I said, and he looked at me like I was the craziest girl he ever met, and maybe I was, but it felt so good to rescue these pups. Once he pulled away I just kept talking to my Sooner and she followed me along, sniffing and lifting her front legs off the ground trying to figure out what I was fixing to do with her brood.

  I stumbled along through the yard, my dress pulled tight against my legs in back, but lifted high in front and I didn’t even know if my underwear were showing cause it would just be my half-slip cause God forbid the sun should light a woman’s skirt and her form be seen. I didn’t care at all either. This was working.

  Danny waited at Naomi’s gate. He had it opened wide. I didn’t know what he was doing with me. But I loved him so much, standing there. He looked at my legs and looked away, “Hilly Grunier I swear to God,” he said, “there is never a dull moment with you.”

  “Huh?” I said, but I heard him, and Sooner was walking along with me. She didn’t feel so territorial here so she didn’t pay Danny much attention at all, and he put his hands on that pouch of dogs, that was my dress, so basically his big hands were up and under it and he was walking backwards and dragging me along and I stumbled after and he said, “Where?”