Got to go, Brother said again. He got up, kissed the baby-child.
Will you pick me up some books? asked Vy.
I got to hurry, said Brother.
But I don’t got no books, Vy said.
The child began to cry. She raised plump arms to Brother. He lifted her up and spun her around, holding her under her arms, until she squealed with the delight of going in circles. Brother sat her on his head; held her there with his hands around her waist. She wrapped plump fingers around his thumbs and sat there, kicking her legs and rubbing her pink feet on his face. Brother swung her down into her mama’s lap again. The child’s face broke into little pieces. The biggest, grandest tears rolled down her face out of shiny eyes.
Got to go, Sweet, Brother told the baby. He was going, leaping from the porch and into the car. He blew the horn at the baby as he backed out. She stood up on her mama with a finger in her mouth. Big tears, falling. Vy Sweet had to laugh. Brother looked sad himself at having to leave the child. And her about to have a fit because Brother had to go.
Don’t you upset your pretty self, Vy told her, and held her daughter close. She kissed her wet cheek. The baby-girl buried her face in her sweet mama’s neck. And they glided back and forth and back and forth on the porch swang. And Vy dragged one sandaled foot along the floorboards and sang:
Oh, sinner man, you’d better repent!
Oh, sinner man, you’d better repent!
Oh, sinner man, you’d better repent!
Or God’s goin’ to get you on the judgment,
Oh, sinner man, you’d better repent!
She didn’t know why she sang that particular song, except that she felt like it. It came from somewhere, out of some hot Sunday after a long sermon in church. She sang it until the baby, Sweet, had fallen asleep.
Gently Vy carried her into the house where all was dim, with window blinds drawn against the hot day. The child was growing, getting heavy. Vy held her close all the way up the stairs, feeling the warm breath on the side of her neck and feeling the soft baby face against her flesh. There was nothing on earth as dear as a fresh, sweet girl baby child.
Bless it! thought Vy. Thank thee for the worthy and good. Take that boy out of my life!
She thought of her firstborn, wretched son, her cross to bear through life. And as she climbed the stairs, she could hear the thump-thumping of that boy. She had to pass the room where she kept him on her way to put the baby to bed. She had tied him to one bedpost, had his hands wrapped good behind his back. He had deliberately got grass stains on his pants. And now if she allowed his hands free, he would pull down whatever he could get his hands on. All the perfumes and powders and lipsticks and combs and brushes—everything he could pull off the dresser and dressing table. After untying his ankles, he’d take everything out of the drawers and dump everything into the bathtub and run hot water over it.
The thump-thumping was the boy Dabney’s foot opening and closing the closet door. He’d pry it open with his toes. Then he’d swing it shut with the flat of his foot and open it again with just his toes.
Vy stopped before the room where the boy was tied. The door was open. She saw him, licking under his nose where yellow snot hung in a glob. And swallowing it when he collected enough of the glob on his tongue.
Okay, okay, she told him, as softly as she knew how, still holding the Sweet baby by her neck and around her soft back. I ain’t comin in there yet, she told him. But when I do, that be the last nose snot you ever eat!
After that, Tree separated from the woman. She felt she was looking down on the scene. All at once, she saw the baby girl, the woman, and the poor sad boy.
Vy had the baby down in her crib when she heard the front door open downstairs. She was sure it was Brother come back with new numbers books for her.
Carefully she placed the baby down and hurried to the top of the stairs.
Brother? Brother, I hear you. Just puttin the baby to bed. Be down in a fast minute.
She was whispering loud, hoping to goodness she wasn’t waking the child.
A voice called back: No. No, Vy, it your cousin, Junior. It Junior, Vy.
Junior? Junior? she said, still remembering to keep her voice down. What could bring Junior off the job in the middle of the day? Junior? she called, more anxiously.
There was silence as Junior climbed the three steps to the landing. Vy was standing at the top of the stairs with her hands outstretched, touching the stairwell.
What? she said.
Vy, he said, his voice unsteady. He looked up the dark stairwell, searching her face.
She could see his expression plainly by the light from a small window on the landing.
Vy, there was an accident. An accident. It happen so fast. But he is killed. Vy, Brother be dead.
She couldn’t hold on. Hands pressed on the walls simply gave way. She toppled over, like someone had pitched her headfirst down the stairs. Junior broke the fall with his body. But the impact of her dead weight knocked him backward from the landing down the three steps to the living-room floor. He was knocked unconscious when he hit the floor, but only for a moment. Vy had fainted, was like a rag doll sprawled across him.
Junior came to, hearing a tearing, crashing sound outside. He couldn’t place the noise. Dazed, he moved Vy over and got up. Looked out, seeing the house on the corner. The front of it facing the street was covered with ivy. Always had been for as long as he could remember. But now the ivy was tearing loose and falling, crashing down with dirt and a few bricks to the ground. He stared at the extraordinary sight and felt shivers up his spine.
Brother be dead, he thought. The day the ivy fell.
Chapter 4
WITHOUT MOVEMENT, WITHOUT A sound, Tree came back. She found herself seated at the round table in the little room, with her elbows propped up on it. There was no ghost through the table now. She was sitting there, she didn’t know how long a time. She felt she had come back from someplace, and then she remembered the place where she had been. It had been full of smells and sounds. Full of people she didn’t know but who, nevertheless, seemed close to her, seemed familiar.
She heard a noise and gazed around the little room. She felt panic, for fear the ghost had returned. But quickly, she recognized the sound as Dab’s feet shuffling toward the door. She hadn’t noticed it was closed. But as Dab came nearer, she could see his lights. Yellow lights shining beneath the door.
He opened the door, came in in his shuffling shoes. “Do a little dance,” he moaned. “Sing a little song.” He did a little dance, grinning at her. She didn’t smile; it was as if she’d forgotten how. She watched him bobbing his head. She leaned over to see the shoes with the little electric lights built into the toes. She and M’Vy had gotten the shoes for him in a novelty store. “Now you always be light on you feet,” M’Vy had told him.
“Light on my feet,” he said now. “See me, Sweet?”
“See you,” she said, her voice coming husky, as though she hadn’t spoken for days. She cleared her throat. “What time it is?” she asked him.
He shuffled around the table close to her. A man’s watch face was pinned to Dab’s shirt. M’Vy had given him the broken watch. He’d taken the timepiece and put it through a pin and pinned it to him. Dab remembered to unpin the pin when he changed his clothes.
“Five thirty!” she said. “I been sittin here two hours. Ain’t even started supper.”
She didn’t know where the time went. Dab took her hand, his eyes shining on her.
“Whyn’t you tell me what time it is?” she said before she thought. He hung his head. His shuffling shoes shone brightly, but they did not move now.
“No, that’s all right. It my fault,” she told him. “Been sittin here like a fool. But Dab, guess where I been?” She looked into his eyes and she knew he wouldn’t understand.
“Like a dream,” she said. “Next time I go someplace, I’m gone take you with me.” It didn’t matter whether he understood every word she told hi
m. Dab liked having her talk to him, to have sound between them.
“I figure, since you was there, too, then both of us can go there,” she said. “Dab, it was so pretty there! It was country and a nice house and lots of people knew us.”
Tree refused to put it all together. She knew that if she thought about it, she would maybe figure out more about the other place than she was ready to know. She knew the woman was Vy and the baby was herself, Teresa, and the boy whom she hadn’t yet seen was Dabney. She knew what she had seen. But she had no more thought that it was true than anything inside a ghost place could be true.
“It’s what it was,” Tree said. “Right down inside a little oval space. It not possible, but it happened.”
Dab wasn’t listening to her. Sometimes he had bad days. On those days, he wore his shuffling light shoes. He was in his bathrobe, and she guessed he didn’t have much of anything under it. His bare legs were ashy gray. He stood there, holding her hand, saying, “Owh-n, owh-n, owh-n.” It was a monotonous one-note, almost a questioning that Tree could recognize even in her sleep, like a stray cat sounding miserable in the rain.
“Stop that, Dab,” she told him.
“Uhn?” he said.
“You don’t know you doing it,” she said. She had an elbow still on the table, with her hand cupped under her chin. Sitting there looking at her brother, she had all the time in the world to know him and appreciate what little he was.
“You want to sit down? How long you been standing around?” Sometimes she needed to remind him to sit. He didn’t always remember to sit somewhere and would keel over from exhaustion. Sometimes she forgot to remind him.
She saw that his legs seemed weak, and she pulled out the chair next to her and sat him down.
Dab sat down primly, holding his robe together. When he spent too much time alone, he would soon seem unable to take care of himself. Tree had to remember to play with him and pay attention to him every day or he would become younger and unable to do much. She had learned a considerable amount about taking care of an older brother who was unlike anyone she’d ever known.
“You hungry?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. He spoke in his careful, grown-up gentleman’s voice.
She laughed with her hand over her mouth. “You don’t know if you hungry,” she said. “Dab, you can’t tell, really? Think about your tummy-tum. It feel empty yet?”
She poked him in the stomach and smiled at him. When she felt low, if she could smile, soon she wouldn’t feel so bad. “How you ole’stomach feelin, Dabney!” She laughed.
He thought about his stomach. He looked from her to his hand and put his hand over his abdomen. “Uh-huh?” he said. “Uh-huh? It hurt. It hurt me, Tree.”
“No, it don’t hurt you. You hungry is all. Right.”
“Uh-huh,” he said emphatically. “Got to eat.”
“Okay,” she said. She got a whiff of him. “Dab. Dab. Whyn’t you take a bath?”
“Huh? Uh-unh?”
“Listen. I’ll get some supper. Okay. While I do that, you get in the tub, okay?”
“Okay?” he said.
“You get in the tub, Dab. Do it. Now.”
They got up. Tree went in the kitchen. She watched Dab go down the hall. He looked back at her before he closed the bathroom door behind him.
Tree went about finding food. There was meat, but no frozen vegetables. She stood before the open refrigerator, her hand poised in mid-air, reaching for the meat. She saw she was holding her hand exactly the way she had held it when she’d reached for the oval space in the little room, when she had gone away, she knew not where she had gone.
Who will bring more food?
She wondered for the first time whether M’Vy would come back before all the food was gone.
She always has. How come I’m scared she won’t now?
Tree took out some hamburger. I’ll have to make spaghetti sauce, she thought. Hamburger too frozen for patties.
Tree listened. She could be doing something, anything, but always a piece of her mind was attached to the welfare of Dab. She heard no water running.
“Dab?” she called, dropping the meat on the kitchen table. She hurried down the hall to the bathroom. “Hey, Dab.” Knocking on the door. “Whyn’t some water running?” She eased the door open. He wasn’t there. Then she saw him lying in the bathtub. No water, just lying there on his back in his bathrobe, his hands behind his head.
“Oh, Dab, get on up from there.”
He got up.
I did tell him to get in the tub, she thought. “Now, get out of the tub, Dab. I’m gone run your water.” Obediently he got out of the tub and stood at her side.
She had the water running and made sure it was not too hot for him by taking his hand and letting the water flow over his wrist. “Not too hot?” she asked. “Not burnin you?”
“Not too hot,” finally he said.
“Okay. Now. You get in the tub and take a bath. No! You take the robe off first, after I go out. You get in the water without no clothes on. What the matter you today, Dab? What going on in your brain? You know how to take a bath. You ain’t no baby. You pretty smart, most the time.”
“Owh-n’t feel so good,” he told her.
“What the matter, then?” she asked him.
“Owh-n’t know nothin,” he said. He made crying sounds, although no tears came into his eyes.
“Now come on.” She took his hand again. “Everything okay. I’m here with you. You got to take your bath.”
“Okay,” he said. “But say that man he get out of my room.”
Tree felt herself go still inside. She felt her heart sink. “Wh-what?” She stood staring at him, “Wh-what you saying?”
“Owh-n’t like him in there,” Dab said.
She was pulling him by the arm, pulling him out of the bathroom and down the hall, until they were on the other side of the kitchen where they had bedrooms across from one another. She burst into Dab’s room, knowing if she paused for a moment, she would never have the nerve to do it. She didn’t think once about a robber. She thought only of Rush.
“Not a soul,” she said almost calmly when she had slammed open the door to find the room empty. “What man you talkin bout, Dab?” she asked him.
“Be a man,” he told her. “Can’t lay down in the bed. Be a man in it. Right chere.”
“Okay,” she said. “You got to take a bath. No man now. If he ever come back, you tell me, hear? You tell me real quick. Just come find me. We gone stick close these days, you and me, you hear? Maybe M’Vy coming soon. Hope so.”
“Me, too,” Dab said. He became more like himself on a good day. “The water runnin still in my bath,” he told her.
“Oooh!” she cried. “Almost forgot. Come on.” She rushed him back. She told him again what he must do. She turned off the water and made sure he had two towels.
“Don’t get no towel in the water. Use this yellow washcloth and this soap. You soap yourself good. Then you rinch off. After you rinch, you let all the soapy water out. You turn on water a little way until you got it just warm enough. Can you do that?”
“I can do it, Tree,” he said. “Thanks.”
“You feeling better now, ain’t you?” she said.
“Yeah, I want my bath now.”
“Okay. I’m gonna leave. You get in and be careful.”
She left him. “Did you take your robe off?” she called through the door.
“Yeah, I did,” came the softly muffled reply.
“I know you did,” she said to herself. “I know you did,” she called.
Went back to the kitchen, took the wrapper off the hamburger and tossed the frozen meat chunk in a skillet. She poured in some oil and set the skillet on the burner at medium low. She took an onion out, a can of broken mushroom stems and some dried parsley.
Got everything! Got it all.
And found more spices.
Oregano mostly gone, but it will do. Remind M’
Vy we need some more.
Easily, minute by minute, she made delicious spaghetti sauce, using a can of Italian whole tomatoes and two cans of tomato sauce. She slowly added ingredients to the steadily thawing meat. Only after all the sauce ingredients had been put together did she remember to look for spaghetti. She looked everywhere, but there wasn’t any.
How’d I let that get away from me? Well, there’s potatoes or macaroni. We put the sauce on our baked potatoes.
She washed two potatoes. She went back to the cupboard for two more, for she was starved.
Know Dab gone be hungry. Dab! She reminded herself. Tree! You got to always have him on your mind, else something bad could happen. She quickly dried her hands and headed for the bathroom just as Dab opened the door and came out. He had a bath towel tied at his waist like a sarong. The bathrobe was folded neatly in his arms.
“Put my robe ina washing machine?” he asked her.
“Sure!” she said. “You lookin all clean, Dabney.”
“I am clean,” he said. “What you think I took a bath for?”
She laughed, amazed as always, the way he could seem to recover his mind from something as simple as a bath or walking out in the rain. Dab might stumble in to wash his face and come out of the bathroom again with an expression of alert quiet, which hadn’t been on his face when he went in.
Dab walked through the kitchen, and Tree patted him on the back as he passed by. He looked like her big brother now.
“Proud of you, Dab,” she told him.
“Ever-thang gone be okay,” he told her. Dab always said, “Ever-thang gone be okay,” something he learned some time ago and couldn’t let go of. Other sayings of his he had had to practice long and hard so he could keep them in mind. Most of them had to do with his shucking and jiving with girls. Like, “You a pretty girl. Smart. No business bein out in the street. Ought to get back in school. I’ll take you back. I’ll stick with you.” That had taken him a month of Sundays. And he had to take his time with the words or he would get them mixed up.
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush Page 3