by Pearl Cleage
“Is that Louie?” Abbie said.
“Sure is,” I said. “Did you know he was coming?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Did you?”
“Nope.”
Her signifyin’ look returned. “Maybe he wanted to surprise you.”
“The more, the merrier,” Victor grumbled, watching Louie starting up the driveway.
Victor worked hard, but he complained hard, too. And continuously. I hoped his disposition would improve as we all got to know each other, but so far, he seemed to move between sullen and surly with equal regularity.
I waved at Louie and so did Abbie, but his hands were full with the cooler so all he could do was nod and smile.
“What’s all that he’s carrying. Lunch?”
“Cross your fingers,” I said, mentally crossing mine. “This brother can burn.”
We headed up the lawn to the house as Louie gently deposited the cooler on the back steps.
“Welcome to my wreck,” I said.
“It’s a work in progress,” Abbie said. “I’m so glad you came.”
He smiled. “Since my services are no longer required downtown, I thought maybe you might be able to put me to work.”
Victor was looking at the cooler, and suddenly I wondered if he was hungry. Was seventy-five dollars a week enough for him to feed himself? Maybe I should make it a hundred.
“I think we’ve got a rake with your name on it,” I said.
“I’m your man,” Louie said. “I’m a rakin’ somethin’ when I put my mind to it.”
We were taking entirely too much time with chitchat to suit Victor. We had already agreed that noon would be our regular break, and it was eleven forty-five. Louie turned to Victor and held out his hand.
“I’m Louie Baptiste.”
“Victor Causey.” They shook hands. “What’s in the cooler?”
“A little of this and that,” Louie said, popping off the top to reveal a veritable feast. He had thick sandwiches in plastic bags, deviled eggs, potato salad and cole slaw in Tupperware, and a jar of huge red dill pickles. Everything was neatly packed on a bed of ice. We had been raking and hauling since early this morning and I was suddenly so hungry, I almost swooned. “Anybody want lunch?”
“Now you’re talking,” Victor said, with his first smile of the day.
“You look like a roast beef man,” Louie said, handing Victor a hearty sandwich that could have fed a small family.
Abbie had a blanket in the trunk of her car and she spread it on the ground like we were guests at a Sunday school picnic. Abbie and I both had turkey and we split the biggest pickle between us. Louie said people in Louisiana and Mississippi soak the pickles in red Kool-Aid and then eat them. It started off with kids and now everybody was eating them. He couldn’t resist trying it. This was his first batch, and while it sounded awful, the taste wasn’t bad at all.
The weather was cooperating with enough sunshine to warm up the afternoon like it was already spring and we ate like we never would again. I suddenly missed Howard. He would have laughed to see me sitting on an old green blanket, in front of a broke-up house, eating red dill pickles, and loving every minute of it.
“What are you planting?” Louie said, looking down the lawn at the plot we were clearing.
“Sunflowers,” Abbie said. “Maybe some roses since that’s what used to grow here.”
He looked surprised. “Nothing to eat?”
I shook my head. “Not this time.”
“Not even some herbs?”
He sounded like the idea of having a garden that didn’t feed you even a little bit was inconceivable.
Abbie looked at me. “We hadn’t really thought about herbs.”
Of course the idea appealed to her. I had to nip this in the bud. If I let Abbie start adding things, my whole budget would be spent at the nursery buying tiny little tomato plants and a few sprigs of basil.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “We’ve already got our hands full, don’t you think?”
“They grow real easy,” Louie said. “Some basil, a little sage, maybe some rosemary.”
It sounded like that Simon and Garfunkel song.
“That would be lovely,” Abbie said. “Especially since it’s a peace garden.”
“What do herbs have to do with peace?” I said. “I thought the flowers were symbolic.”
Abbie smiled and turned to Louie. “Do you think herbs have a place in a peace garden?”
Louie smiled back. “Well, I never saw anybody fighting when they’re eating good.”
“Amen, brother,” Victor said, and looked at me. “You weren’t kidding when you said he could burn.”
Louie glanced over at me, and suddenly I felt embarrassed that I had paid him a compliment.
“So how much is it going to cost me to grow these exotic spices?” I said.
Abbie laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Louie and I can work something out.”
Knowing them, they already had.
FORTY-FOUR
Friday morning when we got to the house, a city inspector had already come by to drop off a stop-work order. Zora scanned it quickly while I read over her shoulder.
“It says we aren’t displaying the necessary permits for the work we’re doing.”
“You gotta have a permit to clear out the trash?” Victor said.
“You have to say where you’re going to dump it and tell them what’s in the bags.”
I looked at the big green Dumpster half-full of bags already. Some we had filled with trash from inside the house, but the ones other people had just left here, we were tossing in with no intention of exploring the contents. This was a classic case of letting sleeping dogs lie.
“That’s crazy,” I said. “I’m not opening the bags.”
“It says we have to prove that there’s no lead or asbestos involved before we can dump it anywhere,” Zora said.
It was amazing to me that there were rules that could keep us from cleaning up the place, but none that had seemed particularly effective in keeping it from becoming the dangerous eyesore that it was.
Abbie was reading over Zora’s shoulder, too. “It says we can come down and file the necessary papers and if it all goes through, we can start up again on Monday.”
This was ridiculous. The last thing I wanted to do was twiddle my thumbs all weekend. “So what are we supposed to do until then?”
“It says stop work on the house and unauthorized removal of trash,” Abbie said, looking at me without the slightest sign of stress or agitation.
“So?”
“It didn’t say we couldn’t work in the garden.”
FORTY-FIVE
I knew that kimono was perfect for you,” Howard said, waking me up on my first day off in the last five. We had been working like dogs, but we could finally see a tiny little dent in all we had to do. I gave everybody a day off to rest. “You looked fabulous!”
“You saw me?”
“Not all of us are living in the Stone Age, missy! Of course I saw you. You’re all over the Internet.”
“I am?” I sat up and tried to focus on what he was saying. Had Zora put us out there already? Was I floating around somewhere in cyberspace in my beautiful kimono talking about Miss Simpson and promising to save my house from urban blight or else?
“You are, in the finery I sent, thank you very much, as well as working away in those ridiculous T-shirts that I assume are required for reasons which remain mysterious to me, but it all works, sweetie. Stroke of genius. People are already addicted to it.”
Addicted to us on our knees ripping up old carpet and scrubbing out the bathrooms?
“We’re pretty much working all the time,” I said, “so I haven’t had much time to really look at it.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that people in Amsterdam would see it.
Was this what they meant by a global community? It was a little too early for me to comprehend it all.
“Are you kidding?” H
oward said. “People here are loving it. They’re quoting what you said about the mysterious, private unknowable nature of human beings in acting classes all over town.”
“Maybe I can be a good teacher after all.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “Those who can do, and you will be able to do pretty much whatever you want after the board meeting next month. That demonstration shook them up bad, and this rescue mission is only adding fuel to the fire. It’s such a noble mission, sweetie. Very Princess Diana. Nothing about it smacks of ugly American. Miss Zora is a genius. Nobody here can understand why all the streets named after Martin Luther King aren’t national shrines or something.”
“That’s what Abbie keeps saying.”
“I know. It’s all on there. She looks great, by the way. I could practically smell the patchouli.”
That made me laugh through a great big yawn. “I’ll tell her.”
“Here’s my news and then I gotta go. I’ve fallen in love.”
“Howard!” Howard’s last great love had broken his heart in about ten different places and taken off for parts unknown. Nursing him back to some semblance of sanity had taken the better part of a year.
“I know, I know. I swore I would never do it again, but he’s not an actor. That should count for something.”
“Is he a designer?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“He’s an acrobat.”
“An acrobat?” Even for Howard, this was something new.
“A Chinese acrobat, thank you very much. He’s in one of those acts where there are like a thousand of them on one bike.”
As a kid, I remember wanting to do that for about ten seconds. The amount of trust, athleticism, and smiling required struck me as daunting. “Is this the part where I’m not supposed to laugh?”
“I know, I know, but who would have thought you’d be planting sunflowers on the lawn of the ruins of your family home?”
He made it sound like I was Scarlett O’Hara coming home to rebuild Tara after the Yankees had marched through with Sherman on their way to the sea.
“Point well taken. Is he nice or just beautiful?”
“I didn’t say he was beautiful.”
“He’s a Chinese acrobat. They’re all beautiful.”
Howard laughed. “He’s a god. And really funny, and he thinks I’m as fabulous as you and I know me to be. What’s not to love?”
“What indeed,” I said. Howard may as well have been calling from another planet. The presence of Chinese acrobats was not unexpected in my other life. In this one, it would have been like saying, Look at the T. rex coming up Cascade Road.
“Well, that’s all the news from here. Keep doing what you’re doing. It adds to your overall fabulousness and makes my job as easy as falling off a log.”
“Or a bicycle.”
“Go to hell. Love you!”
“Love you more!”
For at least thirty seconds, I was tempted to turn on the computer downstairs and look at what we were posting. The feeling was strong, but then it passed. We still had a lot of work to do, and watching myself do it didn’t make it any easier to scrub down those walls and cart those bags of trash to the Dumpster. But this was my day off. I turned over and went back to sleep. When I dreamed of Howard on a bicycle, holding tight to the back of his new lover, the only little chocolate face in the midst of all those smiling Chinese acrobats, I wasn’t even surprised.
FORTY-SIX
Zora and I used our first day off to compare notes on our progress. The cleanup was going great, and when I told her about Howard calling to say we were a hit in Amsterdam, she just grinned an I-told-you-so grin at me.
“Abbie’s already gotten more than a hundred requests for information about the garden,” she said. “How cool is that?”
Abbie and Victor had almost cleared the garden space of trash bags, but they were still a week away from putting anything in the ground.
“What kind of information?” I said as we walked down to the pool.
“What to plant based on where they are. How to know if you’ve got enough sunlight. Basic stuff. We’ve got a link to the West End Growers Association so everybody gets a response in twenty-four hours.”
“I am almost ready to admit that the future might not be so bad,” I said.
“You know what else they want to know?” She slipped out of her robe and eased into the water. The smiling mermaid’s flowing locks seemed to ripple as the water lapped around the edges of the pool.
“What?”
I followed her with a sigh. A week of scrubbing walls and tossing trash bags had left me aching and exhausted. The warm water felt wonderful.
She grinned at me again. “Where have you been all their lives?”
“I told you I was an unknown quantity over here,” I said, lying out on my back and kicking lazily down the pool toward the deeper end.
“Used to be, not anymore. You’re becoming a cult figure, Mafeenie. Abbie, too, but with her, they want to know about soil samples. With you, they want to know about you!”
“So me and the old guy are taking the Internet by storm,” I said. “What do you tell them?”
She turned over in the water and started her easy breaststroke. “I tell them you’re a star.”
I held that thought as I did one lap to Zora’s four, and by the time we climbed out and toweled the water off, I felt like a star. Rested, refreshed, and almost fabulous. I took the chair beside Zora, closed my eyes, and sighed deeply. She did, too.
“Mafeenie?”
“Yes, darlin’?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with dumping permits and the rising cost of cleaning supplies.”
“Nothing like that.”
“Good, then fire away.”
“Have you ever had a female lover?”
The question didn’t surprise me. We had been talking about sex since Zora started her period in the middle of her visit with me the summer she turned thirteen. In response to her questions, we had talked about her body, her soul, caring for her clitoris, the challenge of the vaginal orgasm, and AIDS. She wasn’t sexually active yet, but she was curious and I was prepared to answer any question she wanted to ask. Knowing that discussions about sex are almost always about a lot of other things, too, I always kept my ears open.
“Yes,” I said, without opening my eyes. “I’ve had lots of lovers. Men, women, never children, and I was never into groups. Too hard to focus.”
“So how was it?”
I opened my eyes and looked at her. “Are you interested in a specific woman or are you just thinking of expanding your horizons?”
She laughed. “I should be taping this.”
“This is our day off,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. This guy from Morehouse called me up. I had some classes with him and he seems nice, but men are just so hard to deal with. There’s always so much drama. I thought maybe women would be easier just because there wouldn’t be all that man stuff.”
Like the woman stuff is any less complicated. “So you’re thinking about women as a kind of fallback position?”
“I don’t mean it like that,” she said. “Or maybe I do. What do you think?”
“Well, the truth is, the only time I had sex with a woman was when we were both going out with the same man and she hit on me. I knew it would really piss him off when she told him.”
“Why’d you think she would tell him?”
“Because that’s why she did it in the first place,” I said, remembering how awkward the experience had been for both of us. We would have done better to just have lunch and tell everybody we had sex. “My best sex has always been with men, but my best relationships have always been with women. Look at me and Abbie. We haven’t seen each other for a hundred years and our friendship picked up right where it left off. That never happens to me with men.�
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“Why do you think that is?”
“Because I could never get used to telling a man the truth.”
“Never?”
“Not if I could help it.”
“What about Howard?”
“Gay men are exempt,” I said, “because you’re probably not going to be having sex with them.”
“So are you saying you never tell straight men the truth?”
I shrugged, amused at her surprise. “Well, it’s different now, but in my prime, it just wasn’t done. My generation was trained to lie. Telling a man the truth is a very recent phenomenon. Like the Internet.”
Zora’s cellphone rang on the table beside her and she reached for it. I resisted an impulse to grab it and toss it in the pool. The mermaid would probably have jumped right out.
“I thought this was our day off.”
She looked at the caller ID and frowned. “It’s Victor. I gave him this number for emergencies.”
I sat up.
“Victor? This is Zora. Everything okay?”
The frown deepened, which was not a good sign.
“Did you see who did it?”
“Did what?” I said.
She held up her hand, listening. “Okay. Don’t touch anything. We’ll be right there.”
So much for an off day.
FORTY-SEVEN
We could see it from the street. A smelly mountain of trash where we had worked so hard all week to clear a space. Victor was standing near the house next to a neatly dressed woman who turned in our direction when we pulled up in the yard, but Victor said something to her and she stayed where she was as he hurried over to meet us.
“What happened?” I said.
Zora was already turning her technology toward the pile, but she was standing close enough to pick up Victor’s response, too.
“Somebody dumped a truck of trash on us,” he said.
I looked at him, annoyed at the obviousness of his answer. “I can see that,” I said, sounding as pissed off as I felt. “But who? When did this happen? Did you see anybody?”
Victor shook his head. “It was here when I got back. I went to church with my mother,” he looked embarrassed to say it. “And then…I wanted to show her what we were doing, cleaning up and everything, but when we got here”—he gestured helplessly at the mound—“there it was. They must have known I wasn’t here.”