He can’t kill me. The Lord take me when it’s my time to go.
The following Sunday, he and Mamma walked out of the church, into the blazing shimmering sun, and there was Pop, in the square, his wooden leg blazing fire. Pop had dropped his bottle. Or it had spilled from his fingers. He had doused himself in alcohol. The hot sun had ignited it. A hot wind whipped Lee’s pants legs. The heat beat into his back and legs. Mamma took off after Pop. Lee shielded his eyes from the sun, which sprayed like buckshot in his face. Maybe the fire would burn Pop’s entire body.
Mamma tackled Pop. He fell backward, slipping on an invisible banana peel. Mamma smothered the flames with her short torso, no longer than Pop’s leg. From where he lay, Pop punched Mamma in the face. The blow threw her off the smoking leg—maybe fingers of flame had pushed her hot—onto the square’s pavement. Lee walked home, alone.
That night, Lee changed the cotton gauze he had placed over the gash above Mamma’s eye. Withdrawn so far into his own space, even the smell of wintergreen couldn’t reach him.
Lee?
Ma’am?
You a man.
Yes, ma’am.
Do something for me.
Ma’am?
Remember. Give your heart to Jesus.
He tried to kill you.
Yes. And a person can be a fool for only so long. Her voice exploded in Lee’s mind. He concentrated on his space.
The following morning, Lee discovered Mamma had buried a hatchet in Pop’s head. The red blade indistinguishable from the red of the head. Mamma had slit her throat with a knife, the butcher knife that had cut bread gripped firm in her hand, to prevent it from slipping away. Blood swam in Lee’s head and red-hot fish swam in the blood.
Lee put the bodies in two liquor crates. Buried them in the yard behind the house. Took the money from the safe. Slipped inside the blue truck. Drove north.
The city didn’t surprise Lee. But the light was different. Every day he could taste the sun on his tongue like salt.
To save his money, he got himself a small studio apartment, drank water, and ate peanuts and liver sausage. Managed the Red Rooster, a greasy chicken joint, while attending business school at night. Concentrated on accounting and systems analysis. Finished school. Found employment with BAM, Black Accountants on the Move, and, when the opportunity came, bought the Black Widow Exterminating Company. Thought sharp. Dressed sharp. Slapped on the best cologne. Knew he could impress no one with his face. Then he met Loretta.
She was nineteen.
Stood, dark, behind the cashier’s counter at the Lucky Seven, a small grocery store. (As he would learn, she lived in a small room above the store. Slept on a bed with a thin mattress. Stacks of spirit-filled books crowded the room from floor to ceiling.) Yes, dark. Almost black. Had she survived a fire? Her hair short. Her body thin. Even thinner in baggy men’s chinos. She had large black eyes that made you want to look into them.
As a first step in resurrecting his new company, Lee developed new products that could be sold to the average customer. His chemists had started a new product, Rat Hotel—it would soon spark the public’s interest and put the company back on its feet—and Lee was personally bringing it to stores and asking store owners to give free samples to customers.
Is the owner in?
No.
Lee explained his product and purpose.
Why do you want to kill rats? Loretta asked.
It’s what I do for a living. Lee laughed. A genuine laugh for a genuine joke.
Don’t you know that every rat has a soul?
He could tell that she was serious. Large black eyes, two little pools of oil. He caught himself. He was slipping in. That’s one I never heard before.
Everything has a soul. Don’t you know about reincarnation?
No.
Why not?
I don’t believe in God.
Why not?
I’ve never seen him. He chuckled, hoping to lighten things up.
Don’t waste your time looking for a Christian God. He don’t exist.
Well, what kind of god are you talking about? Are you a Buddhist?
I ain’t no Buddhist. But I know a little bout that too. We live in a multidimensional universe. God is all the dimensions.
Lee had to consider this.
Here, I got a book for you. Her hand disappeared under the counter. Emerged gripping a worn paperback. Slid it toward him.
He read the entire thing that night. Found it totally unconvincing, but it gave them something to discuss the following day. She gave him another book. He read it. The pattern was set. Their conversations continued. Reincarnation. Soul mates. Astral traveling. Demon possession. The eternal validity of the soul. Ghosts. He felt warm whenever she was near. When she spoke about a subject, her deep black eyes held a small but intense light. Lee warmed by the glow of her body beneath the baggy men’s clothes. The feeling was strange and good. But there was also a feeling of desperation and separation. He was glad that she led the conversation; however, about her past, she formed an impenetrable wall. All he knew: she’d had a difficult childhood. Or so he figured. She never discussed her family. One day they came close to destroying the barrier:
My mamma, she say that death is in our pocket all the time, Loretta said.
What else does she say?
Not too much.
Is your mother alive?
Maybe.
Is your father alive?
Maybe.
How come you won’t tell me? Don’t you trust me?
No.
Why not?
I don’t know. She sounded sincere.
My parents are dead.
Don’t tell me.
My mamma—
She put her hands over her ears. Don’t tell me.
And he never did.
It was more than three months after they met before they made love. The romance started with Lee giving her chaste kisses on the cheek. And she loved to hug. Started wearing dresses and tight-fitting pants. Tried to grow her hair long.
One night, in her book-crowded room above the store, she clutched him tightly. He was amazed at her strength. Was she trying to squeeze his spirit into her body? She smelled like a woman. Especially when he buried his nose in her short hair. He didn’t know how long they’d been hugging, but after what must have been at least a half hour, her hug hadn’t weakened.
I’ll always be here for you, Lee said.
All men say that.
Well, I just ain’t all men. He laughed. I love you.
I don’t need your love.
Everybody needs love. He hated saying this. Loved her but hated saying it.
You just want a hole to stick your dick in.
Lee felt a tug in his chest. Loretta had never used such language before. No. I love you, he said.
Well, keep your love. Tender feelings are pointless.
He kissed her forehead.
Keep your kisses.
He kissed her cheek.
I don’t need your kisses.
He kissed her neck. He continued. His kisses soft and slow, and searching. Following the soft curves of her body until they found her lips.
The first time Lee and Loretta made love, she wouldn’t let him get on top. She got on top of him and moaned down in his face. He kept his eyes open. He didn’t want to miss anything. Afterward, their bodies were covered with sweat as light as dew. He could taste the salt.
A month later, they married. Without ceremony. They got three witnesses—three of Lee’s employees—and said their vows before the justice of the peace. So Loretta wanted it. Not that Lee had a single friend.
Life flowed fine during the first months of their marriage. The business was coming along. Lee purchased his first buildings. They leased a large apartment. Loretta quit her job at the grocery store. Lee ran the business during the day, while Loretta explored her interest in the paranormal. One day, Lee arrived home from work and saw Loretta in the kitchen with a glas
s of tea.
Lee?
What?
I need your help.
Anything for you, baby girl.
Help me find somebody.
A strange request. She had never mentioned any friends.
Who?
Phil.
Lee’s skin got hot. Who?
Phil. He dead.
Lee laughed until his stomach hurt.
He dead. Loretta sipped her tea. Her eyes black stones in her face.
Dead?
Got killed in a car accident.
Lee didn’t say anything.
On Easter. Four years ago. I need to find him.
Now I heard everything, Lee thought. He decided to play along.
We was in love.
Something kicked inside Lee’s belly.
But he was married and had a child.
So you want me to resurrect your dead lover? Lee avoided her black eyes. He could taste the bitterness in his voice.
Don’t be jealous.
I’m not jealous.
I love you.
Oh, I see. But you love him too?
That was a long time ago.
Not long enough.
Don’t be that way. I love you.
Right.
I just need to find him and find out if he all right.
He dead, ain’t he?
I love you. Don’t be jealous. I need to know if he all right.
Jesus.
Sometimes when a person dies so badly, their soul can’t rest.
Which book is that from?
He ain’t no danger to you. I was fifteen. He was twenty-five. A grown man.
Lee didn’t say anything.
It was a long time ago. He was married and had a child.
Did you fuck him too?
Now, don’t be like that. We never did anything but kiss. A couplea times we grinded. But he was married and had a child.
Lee actually felt a little better.
It was a long time ago.
Okay. What do you want me to do? He would play along. Stupid to be jealous of a dead man. What harm could it do? She’d see that all this talk about the soul was just that, talk.
We need a Ouija board.
The next day Lee bought a Ouija board. For months they held hands and tried to make the pointer move. Nothing happened. They attended séances and consulted mediums. Nothing happened. Loretta would lock herself in a closet and read for hours.
One night they spread molasses on the Ouija board. Loretta had read that sweet sticky food helped to attract spirits. Lee had to fight to keep from laughing. They held hands before the board. Nothing happened.
That night, Loretta lay curled in his arms, as always. Her teeth were clicking. A sound like abacus beads knocked together.
The following morning her black skin glowed.
I saw Phil last night.
What?
He came to me in a dream.
Oh.
He said something to me, but I couldn’t understand it. His voice was all muffled.
Didn’t God, the Overlord of all the dimensions, teach him how to talk? She had gone just too far.
She looked at him. I don’t need your sarcasm.
Who’s being sarcastic?
His voice sounded like a growl, she said. Like it had to come up from his belly.
What are you telling me, that God put the man’s mouth in his belly?
It had a lot of pain.
Lee didn’t say anything.
That night, Loretta’s teeth made the same sounds. In the morning her skin was radiant.
Lee, Phil’s going to teach me how to talk to spirits.
Wonderful.
Now, don’t be that way.
What? Carry on your dialogue with the dead.
Now—
He can’t talk himself. How is he going to teach you to talk with the dead?
She just looked at him.
How can you understand what he says?
Don’t ask stupid questions.
I’m not asking stupid questions.
You’re just jealous.
Fire moved over Lee’s skin. Why should I be?
Don’t play games.
You’re the one who’s playing games. He left for work.
He returned that evening to an apartment smelling of gasoline and burned rubber. The smell led him to the bedroom. He heard Loretta moaning. Lee opened the door. He saw Loretta with her legs spread and a man between them. A strange-looking black man. With long red hair that hung to his shoulders. Standing up, he was probably as tall as Lee. But skinny. So skinny that his bones showed beneath his yellow skin. His back glistened with sweat.
Get your dead ass off my wife, Lee said.
Phil—who else could it have been?—stopped pumping Loretta. Turned his head and looked Lee in the face. He was beautiful. You aren’t speaking to just anybody, you know, he said, in a voice so deep that it might have come out of a cannon. A tear brightened his eye. He evaporated, steam on a mirror.
Lee saw Loretta’s black eyes. She pulled the bedsheet over her face. Lee fled the house. Found a room in a motel, and there he remained.
Only in that room did it dawn on Lee that he had seen a ghost. He didn’t fear it. The ghost’s existence contradicted the world as he knew it. But this wasn’t the important thing. He had other fears, and he had anger too. He didn’t understand what the ghost saw in Loretta. He was beautiful. She was ugly. That’s all there was to it. And he loved her enough to return from the dead. And Lee loved her too.
A week later, he ret urned home. Loretta was sitting in the kitchen with a glass of tea. Lee looked at her shadow, quivering on the wall.
I swear on my mother’s grave that I love you. How could you do this to me?
Loretta poked at a lemon slice. I had to know if he was all right.
What?
I felt so bad. I had to know if he was all right.
Lee felt her reaching out for him. What do you mean? He lifted his eyes to meet hers.
I just felt so bad inside.
Loneliness washed over Lee, burning his body. He took what she said with a glad heart, even if she didn’t love him. Without her, life would run out of him.
I just felt so bad.
Lee didn’t say anything. Her words were concrete. He could weigh them in his hands.
Come here.
This he did.
About a month later, Loretta discovered that she was pregnant. She began to want ice cream for every meal. A month later, she bought a ten-pound bag of candy. Lee attributed this strange diet to maternal craving. The next month, she purchased a bag of balloons, filled them, and taped them everywhere in the apartment. Next, she filled their bedroom with stuffed animals. Once, Lee tried to kiss her, and she moved away, giggling. And when he tried to stroke her breasts, she replied, Unh. That’s nasty. You mannish. Each month brought a new element. In the ninth month, Lee caught her jumping rope with her full belly. As it was, on her skinny frame her belly was so large that Lee wondered why she never fell forward. And here she was, skipping rope. Lee spent more than an hour chasing her through the apartment. Catch me if you can, she said. He cornered her. Eased her into a chair.
The day she entered the hospital to deliver their child, she entered a world he didn’t belong to.
Lee moved to another city. The business and the buildings—he bought more—were really making money now. Money in his hand—as common as day and night. He bought a house. Hired a servant to care for Samantha (raised by one servant or another until she was thirteen—each year bringing a new slab of fat and a new servant to tend it—when Lee felt she was old enough to care for herself). Loretta’s death left a hole inside Lee that he didn’t know how to fill. He read her books, attended séances, consulted mediums, worked the molasses-sticky Ouija board. Loretta never returned to him. Never visited him in dreams. He had to suffer alone with a fat ugly daughter who never asked about her mother. It was only when Samantha ran away from
home that he decided to cut loose from the past. He still loved Loretta. But maybe he could grow to love Peanut too.
And there he was, on a shady side street right off Turtle Avenue. This isn’t a real avenue, Lee thought. Days before, driving Peanut home from the Southway Lounge, he had tried to explain this to her.
You know, this isn’t a real avenue. Lee had had both hands on the steering wheel.
What you mean?
Like I said. It’s not a real avenue.
Can’t you spell? The signs say it. Turtle Avenue. A-v-e—
I know. But it’s still not a real avenue. A real avenue is made like a horse shoe.
What are you talkin about?
I’m tryin to explain.
God. Sometimes you talk about the most boringness stuff.
It isn’t boring. Lee didn’t mean to let his anger slip out.
Oh yeah?
Why don’t you let me explain?
I don’t want to hear about no avenue.
Okay. The hot feeling still moved over his skin.
Another night on the avenue, they discussed Boo’s father.
His father always be tryin to come by and see Boo and whatnot.
Why don’t you let him?
Lee could feel her eyes on him. Boy, you is really dense.
Lee laughed.
I told you. I don’t believe in messin wit no butt hole.
Lee didn’t know if she was calling him that or Boo’s father. I see.
He buy Boo clothes and toys and whatnot. Give me money. Bring some food by sometimes.
Well … Lee watched his words, careful not to say the wrong thing. That’s good.
Yeah, but that’s all I let him do. I make Boo go in the bathroom when that butt hole come by.
I see.
A week ago, Lee had first learned of Boo. He had taken Peanut to his office. He leased the fiftieth floor of the Garden Tower, one of the most distinguished office buildings in the city. The Black Widow Exterminating Company at one end of the hall, and Archer Realty, his other company, at the opposite end. His office was the size of a four-room apartment. A glass-and-steel box that projected out from the side of the building. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Marble floors. His desk centered on a single rug. As long as a dining table. With an ivory inkstand with a pen, and a telephone on its top. (Lee never used the phone or the pen. Rarely came to the office. A group of lawyers and executives ran the company. For years, Lee had spent most of his time searching for Loretta.)
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