“Pfftsst!”
The warm wet spittle sprayed Mae’s face. She looked down and her veil dropped over her eyes.
“Stop it!” she finally cried out. “Stop it! You’re all crazy! Crazy!”
She got up and brushed past Reverend Stiles in the aisle as she rushed out of the sanctuary. The fans and hands continued to bang on the pews to accompany her exit.
The moment she reached the pavement a stiff wind blew and knocked her hat off. Her once carefully coiffed hair loosened and blew about her face. No one from the overflow crowd ran after the hat for her. A little boy laughed.
Mae looked around. Her car was nowhere on the crowded block. All she saw were faces staring blankly at her. She moved to get out of sight and stumbled in her high heels. She regained her footing and tried to walk straight and tall. But Mae felt shrunken and vulnerable, even older. A single tear ran down her cheek.
She wrapped her arms around herself and walked away down the street and around the corner.
CHAPTER 54
Cecily
Anselm, 1948
Aunt Pearl’s voice slipped through Cecily’s postlabor drowsiness with the clarity of a small beacon. “Let her sleep,” she said. But then Cecily supposed the light piercing through her eyelids could just have easily been the full moon shining through her window that Friday night when she gave birth, April 23. The only other pieces she remembered were the baby’s crisp and lusty cry, and its thick tuft of black hair that felt slick beneath her chin when Aunt Pearl tucked the tiny girl into Cecily’s arms. Her aunt repeated those three words of grace many times in the ensuing days. With those words she midwifed Cecily into motherhood much the same as she’d helped her bring the baby into the world. Because of this tender attention Cecily never sank to the too-tired depths where she would have felt blue about nursing throughout the night. She could surrender to the cycle so necessary to them both: feed the baby. Sleep. Feed the baby. Sleep.
One morning Cecily awoke to the scent of crabapple blossoms wafting through the bedroom’s open window. And because she didn’t want to miss the rest of the spring she rose carefully so as not to disturb Sam, padded downstairs, and, for the first time in ten days, went outside. Her belly felt large and heavy as though she were still pregnant. The soreness between her legs made her move slowly. But the wet fragrant air revived her and the dew on the grass soothed and cooled her bare feet. She walked along the clothesline in the backyard. Her fingers reached up and slid along the white cord and she watched the sky blushing pink with the impending sunrise. Then she turned and made her way back to the house where she settled herself on the steps. She didn’t notice the light on in the kitchen, but she wasn’t surprised when Aunt Pearl opened the door and handed Cecily a glass of water with a lemon slice floating to the bottom. She lowered herself onto the step next to her.
“I like being outside,” Cecily said. She sipped from the glass.
“Hmm. It’s good for you too.” Aunt Pearl rubbed her hands together. “Well, I should get some breakfast started.”
“Aunt Pearl.” Cecily’s left hand grasped a piece of the woman’s red flowered housecoat between her fingers. “Am I ever gonna want to be with Sam again? In bed?” She shifted uncomfortably on the step. Aunt Pearl leaned toward Cecily and kissed her on the forehead. Her thick lips felt pillow soft on Cecily’s skin. “Oh, honey, you’re gonna heal up just fine,” she said. “Give it time.”
The time did pass and the time did arrive when she could be with Sam and have it be pleasurable. Still, Cecily worried about him. She could see he loved the baby. He even surprised Aunt Pearl with his willingness to change a diaper or walk the floor rocking the child when she was fussy. And he didn’t give Cecily a moment’s trouble about naming her Valerie Rose when he could have demanded she be Samantha or Samuelle. Then there was the matter of where they lived. When she and Sam moved to Anselm they didn’t buy their own house, though they very easily could have. Val Jackson, as it turned out, had left a will bequeathing his wealth to his child and Cecily. But when she made it clear she wanted nothing to do with Val’s clubs or businesses, Aunt Rose took on the task of having her lawyers dismantle the estate and transferring the funds as they came in to Cecily in Anselm. So they could easily afford not only a house, but land of their own. Aunt Pearl offered them a lot to build a house on just down the road so they would be “in spitting distance,” she said.
But Cecily liked being with Aunt Pearl and Uncle Menard again. Their house was big enough, warm enough, and she was certain her child would better thrive in this fertile ground with plenty of loving family around her. Cecily knew herself well enough to know she couldn’t make a home. Yes, she remembered or relearned everything Aunt Pearl taught her about ironing, baking, and growing snap peas, collard greens, and tomatoes. But Cecily sensed it took more than housework to make a home feel safe and full of love. It wasn’t something she could learn like the number of eggs you used to make corn bread. She had to grow into it—grow into it until it was just who she was automatically. Aunt Pearl was like that, and Cecily was willing to stay under her roof until she had acquired this grace herself.
She could tell Uncle Menard enjoyed Sam’s company. Ever since they arrived in Anselm that January he would drive Sam around the countryside, acquainting him with the property, the farm animals, the town. And when the spring work began Sam accompanied him still. But Cecily didn’t know how long he would last. Sam was no farmer. She didn’t want to see him dissolve into uselessness. This would be the burden, she thought, that would prove too much for him.
Then one day, like an answer to her prayers, a dirty panel truck with markings that read “Gianelli Brothers Moving” rolled to a stop in front of the house. Sam and Uncle Menard went out to see what the driver wanted and Sam returned with a small blue envelope he handed to Cecily.
“It’s a piano!” he said before running out again. He jumped off the porch steps and yelled to her. “Your mama sent us her piano!”
Cecily saw the men opening the back of the truck. She pulled open the envelope and drew out the sheet of paper.
I thought you might want this. It was only sitting up here gathering dust. I know you and Sam will get some enjoyment out of it like you did before.
Love, Mama
She was pleased to let Sam take charge of the process of assembling and placing the piano in Aunt Pearl’s living room. Then he drove into town to buy the tools to tune it. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the task and was ready to play it for them after supper that evening. He played and sang for them every evening and there was no end to Uncle Menard’s pleasure in hearing him. “You know,” he said one night after Sam finished singing “Nature Boy,” “there’s not a lot of places where our people can go and hear music like that.”
“I know.” Sam sighed. He pressed a key with his index finger. “But they’re here. Louis Armstrong plays in North Carolina. Ella Fitzgerald too. Places like Asheville.”
Uncle Menard sat up and waved a hand through the air. “But not in places we can go. As a matter of fact, Ella Fitzgerald performs in those places, but they won’t even let her walk through the front door.”
Cecily sat on the couch with Aunt Pearl, stitching a small quilt for Valerie. She stopped and looked at Sam. His fingers had grown still over the keys and his forehead was creased deep in thought. “Sam—” she began.
“It won’t be like one of Val Jackson’s clubs,” he said quickly. He spun around on the bench to face her. “I can make a nice joint, like the Swan, a classy place where people know they have to behave themselves, where musicians like Lena Horne or Louis Armstrong would thank the Lord they can have a nice place to perform, and even stay—we could have rooms for them.”
She thought about Sam’s hands. They weren’t meant to be blistered and calloused like the mottled landscape of Uncle Menard’s palms. And here she had taken him from what he knew, given him a child not his own, and asked him to love her and the baby just the same. It wasn’t fair.
He deserved his bit of sunshine and if this club was going to be it, she couldn’t deny it to him.
Cecily smiled. Aunt Pearl said, “As long as you don’t sell moonshine, I gather it would be all right.”
Cecily laughed and went to Sam and put her arms around him. “Yes. I think it would be all right too.”
Uncle Menard leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Then I guess Sam and I need to take a drive into town and see about where you might want to make this club!”
“Yes, sir!” Sam turned and ran his fingers along the keys in a rising riff. “I know just how I want it. It’ll be really pretty and simple, like the places I saw in Paris. Something fitting for a new decade.”
Cecily blinked. Her sense of time had dulled in Anselm. She hadn’t given a thought to the decade soon coming to a close. She only paid attention to the seasons—when to plant what and whether the baby would be warm or cold, when they could next walk down to the river with Rex ambling along with them.
Cecily felt most herself, the most content, when she had Valerie wrapped close to her in a sling Aunt Pearl had fashioned out of a swath of soft yellow cotton. When she helped Cecily put the sling on for the first time she rubbed her niece’s back, shook a nimble finger at her, and said, “Now, some of those prissy women at church might go running their mouths and say you’re gonna spoil that baby by carrying her so much. Don’t you listen to them. I carried my babies like this.” She stood back and examined the sling’s placement just below Cecily’s breasts. Then she picked up Valerie from the little bassinet by the bed and gently placed her into it. She adjusted the sling’s tightness and suddenly the baby pressed close to Cecily, snug and secure. Cecily walked around the room and was surprised by how much it felt like when she was pregnant. She could carry Valerie with her arms free, but even better, she could hug her or pull her close at any time.
Aunt Pearl laughed. “Humph, women been carrying their babies in the fields for years because there was no one else to hold them. Now they sit up there with their noses in the air and act like they know what it is to spoil a child. They too cold and stingy to have to worry about spoiling anybody! You carry her as much as you want. Right now you can—she’ll get too big for it soon enough. But she’ll remember that you did it. It’s good for her. It’s good for you. Blood on blood is the best medicine in the world.”
Cecily knew Aunt Pearl was right. She had felt something of this contentment before Valerie was born, when her belly had grown so the baby was unmistakably present and, with her frequent sharp kicks, eager to make her presence felt. When Cecily was still in Mama’s house she had hummed and walked around with one hand rubbing her belly while she prepared for her and Sam’s journey to Anselm. Cecily enjoyed the feeling of wholeness that came with having her baby, her flesh and blood, so near. She loved the complete security of knowing exactly where her child was. In sensing this Cecily grew a fresh compassion for her mother. She couldn’t imagine what wrenching of the heart had to be done, what wounds acquiesced to, in order to let a child go away. And here her poor Mama had to do it twice in as many years. Cecily showed her every kindness, writing to her often and reminding her of how much she would be expected and welcomed in Anselm for Christmas and any other time she could make the trip down.
Mama filled her letters with news and replies. She said she would come in the winter to escape the cold. Another time she said Mae had shut up her Harlem home. There were rumors she had moved to Paris for good, although, Mama wrote, “I don’t know what good can come of anything that woman does.”
“Still,” the letter went on, “she is family and so I pray for her.”
Cecily wanted to do the same for the sake of her own Christian spirit and, truth be told, her cousin’s machinations had brought Cecily back to Anselm, the place she loved most, with the man she adored. And having a baby had made Cecily able to look at grown-up faces and see the helpless innocents they once were. They were all somebody’s baby once, Mae too. But then Cecily thought about how beautiful Mrs. Townsend once looked in her blue dress and swinging a bat on the lawn at Mercylands. And she remembered Val’s smile and dark eyes and how her daughter would never see how his had originated her own, and her heart felt encrusted in stone. Its heaviness made her feel sad in a way she just couldn’t shake. Until she did she wouldn’t be able to forgive Mae Malveaux—or herself for that matter—for all that had happened.
She thought about it on her walks in the woods with Valerie. Once the weather got warm she went out every day just as she used to. Sometimes she went in the morning; sometimes she walked in the sleepy afternoon. The trees still enclosed her in a sky-filled room. The leaves still yielded with a satisfying crunch beneath her feet. Valerie’s cooing sounded just as soothing as the river flowing past them. But Cecily was aware enough now to know none of it was really the same. She could tell she was different, but not different in a way she’d expected, like being older or wiser. It wasn’t like that at all. Something inside her hurt from the hard edges of resentment she felt because of Mae. Something wanted to resist the hurt but didn’t know how.
Being back in Anselm, Cecily wanted to lay herself open to the world, to believe again as she once did in the kindness of people. The urge to leave Harlem had bothered her in the sense that she knew it wasn’t an evil place just because of the people in it. If that were true then Mae might doom Paris with her very presence. And Sam’s new nightclub might reveal the meanness of some of the people in Anselm. If moving from one place to the next were the answer, then the better life would always be somewhere else because she’d always be seeking nicer people somewhere else. People were who they were. Wouldn’t Aunt Pearl say that?
Cecily had to figure out how to make that better life within her. She didn’t know how she knew that or how to do it, but she did and would. Then she could take it wherever she went, the same as carrying Valerie with her now. If she could do that, she could teach her daughter how to do the same. Rich or poor, this was the best gift she could give her. She tried not to worry about it too much. She thought the person who might be able to help her learn what she needed to know might be nearby. Whenever she sat by the river she listened carefully for a frantic rustling of leaves, or for the explosion of a mighty splash in the water. But there was none. The closest sounds to her were the quiet sucking ones Valerie made while Cecily sat in the thick grass and breastfed her.
Then finally one day, the last day of June, when she went to sit by the water, Cecily saw the shoes, her long-abandoned shoes, placed at the base of a tree like they’d been waiting for her return all this time. She was almost afraid to touch them. The mud had been wiped from the heels and the tops were polished to a fantastic shine.
“They might be a little tight right now.”
The voice, still airy like a sigh, startled her. She turned. Mr. Travis was sitting on the riverbank with his legs crossed beneath him. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, perfectly pressed, with a light blue-and-white plain print. He shifted his seat to face her.
“I’ve seen that—women’s feet go up a size or two when they have a baby. But they’ll go back down in a year or so.”
Cecily stepped over to where he was and lowered herself to sit next to him on the grass. She settled Valerie in her lap. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “Ever since I got back I’ve been hoping to see you.”
His lips pressed into a kind of shy smile and he plucked at a blade of grass near his ankle. He looked younger than she remembered. But up close she saw now how his thinning hair and broad forehead had fooled her. He was older, but not as old as she had thought. Not much older than Val Jackson was.
“Why?”
She shrugged and rubbed Valerie’s back. The baby slept in her arms. “It seemed to me you needed a friend.”
He tilted his head back and seemed to contemplate the tops of the trees. “I thought the same thing about you.”
They sat a little longer in silence.
“I’m Cecily,” she sai
d finally. She touched his knee. It seemed right—right in a way that shaking his hand would not. It would have been too formal. “Maybe you don’t remember, but that’s my name.”
He nodded and looked at her with a straightforward, earnest gaze like, she thought, he wanted to get this right too.
“Cecily,” he said. She liked the way the soft Cs of her name slid off his tongue. “I’m Isaiah. You can call me Ike. And who is this?”
“Oh!” She pulled back the cloth of the sling a little. “This is Valerie.”
He reached into the sling and laid a hand on the baby’s head and looked like he would bless her. “Hello, Valerie.” He smiled and they were quiet again. They watched the water flowing calmly on the windless day.
“Ike,” she said after a while. Tears, a small and unexpected stream, stopped up her throat. She put her hand on his knee again. She shook her head and wiped her eyes. “Ike, I’ve got some sadness in me. It’s wrapped up tight, I think, but it’s in there.”
He tugged at his right ear in the thoughtful way she had seen when Aunt Pearl asked him for a pair of boots. Something about the motion made her feel a tiny crack had wedged open in her heart and she knew they were beginning.
“Well, Cecily, you just have to wait for it to come out. I’ll be happy to sit with you until it does.” He took her hand and squeezed it.
“Thank you,” she said through her tears. “I would like that. I’d like it a lot.”
THEIR MEETINGS CHANGED little from that first one. They talked in what Cecily thought seemed like a long, ongoing conversation. Each time, even if it was days later, they picked up where they left off as though they’d spoken only an hour before. The words didn’t pour out between them as they often did for her and Aunt Pearl. Sometimes they didn’t say anything at all. She never again discovered him thrashing about in the water or touching himself the way he did before. She didn’t know if he just stopped doing it or if he was careful to do it where she wouldn’t find him. Either way, she liked that he seemed to be considerate of her in this. She never asked him about it. Instead she focused on how she and Ike seemed like children playing with blocks, putting one on top of the other and then spending days considering the move before they added another. She liked it. She liked how the knot inside her untangled a little more each time they met.
Unforgivable Love Page 40