A Natural Woman

by Lori Johnson

  While Dante had always made a point of showing his aunt and uncle his appreciation for the lengths to which they’d stretched and sacrificed on his behalf, his cousin Reuben had spent most of his relatively short lifetime doing just the opposite. The last interaction between Reuben, Dante, and their Big Mama had been one full of unfounded accusations and unnecessary strife. Dante could still see the look of bewilderment and devastation on his Big Mama’s face as Reuben, pacing and snarling like a rabid dog, had launched into a hateful rant about what he perceived as his gross mistreatment and all the things in life that he felt he’d been unjustly denied.

  Dante glanced at the copy of The Metamorphosis on the car seat beside him. When had it had happened? At one point, had Reuben awakened and discovered himself transformed into something that on the outside appeared so hideous and nonhuman? Had it been shortly after he’d entered the ninth grade—when circumstances beyond everyone’s control had denied him an opportunity to further his education at the East Coast prep school he’d wanted so badly to attend? During that stretch of time after he’d dropped out of law school and broken off all contact with the family? Or had it occurred somewhere in-between? Say, at the tail end of his senior year of high school, around the time he’d commenced to flaunting his relationship with Laylah in Dante’s face.

  Determined to free his mind of both Laylah and Reuben’s haunting grasp, Dante turned up the Marvin Gaye drifting from his Jeep’s speakers and took in the budding trees, rolling hills, and outstretched farmland filling his peripheral vision. He loved the freedom of the great outdoors and took pride in describing himself as a country boy with small-town ways. Even so, that was hardly the whole story. Unbeknown to most, he’d always quietly hungered for a life larger in scope and grander in scale than the one available to him in Roads Cross. The same quiet hunger fueled his love of biographies and autobiographies, and quite possibly his attraction to a certain kind of woman.

  His type? Smart. Proud. Beautiful. Inquisitive. Complex. A natural woman with few pretensions and one owning a raw fragility beneath her noble air. He rubbed the dull ache in his side as Aliesha’s face bumped Laylah’s from the forefront of his mind.

  Dante arrived in Roads Cross approximately an hour and thirty minutes after leaving Riverton. After securing a place for his Jeep on Blessed Rock’s dirt and gravel parking lot, Dante spent an additional ten minutes greeting, grinning, hugging, and glad-handing his way across the church grounds and into the sanctuary. He still remembered how taken aback he’d been during his brief stay in Cali upon learning that people there didn’t normally bother to acknowledge one another unless they were engaged in a beef or a business transaction. The folks in Riverton were at least cordial enough to nod a greeting and speak in passing. But in Roads Cross, not only would folks look you square in the eye as they delivered a bright and boisterous, “Morning!” “Afternoon,” “What up, man?!” or “Hey now!” more often than not, they’d stop to inquire about your well-being, your past whereabouts, and if they didn’t already know, those of your mama ’nem, too.

  Given that the eleven o’clock service hadn’t yet officially begun, worshippers were still milling about, fellowshipping, gossiping, and finding seats. Dante stood at the rear of the church and scanned the pews until he spotted the familiar gray halo. Even with the added lift of her modest pumps and the three-inch-deep natural crown that graced her head, Dante’s Big Mama topped out at all of four feet and five inches. Had she not been standing and embracing the parishioner in the row in front of her, he might have had a more difficult time locating her.

  Politely waving off old friends and acquaintances and with an index finger pressed to his pursed lips, like a stuffy librarian of old, Dante walked down the right-side aisle and positioned himself in the pew directly behind Vivian Lee. But unable to contain his joy at successfully pulling off his feat, he burst into laughter as he leaned over and kissed his Big Mama on the cheek.

  Wearing a big grin of her own, Vivian Lee turned and seized him. After releasing her hold on his face and neck, she rose and said, “Boy! You could have at least warned me that you were coming this way. Had I known, I would have taken something out to cook for you. . . .”

  “Why you always worried about cooking for somebody?” he said. “That’s why they have restaurants, cafeterias, and takeout available every day, Sundays included, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Tell her, Dante,” chimed in Irma Bell, the gray-haired friend of the family who tended to Vivian Lee’s needs in Dante’s absence and who wasted little time in rising from her seat on the pew next to his Big Mama in order to get a kiss and hug from Dante, too.

  “Ain’t like I hadn’t already told Vivian Lee that I’ve got a whole mess of pork chops, okra, gravy, and rice, plus a big ole coconut cake she’s welcome to come by and help me get shed of.” Miz Irma squeezed one of Dante’s thick biceps. “If your appetite is anything like it was when you was playing ball, I don’t suspect I’ll be having to ask you twice.”

  “No, ma’am!” Dante said. “The way you got my stomach growling, we can leave now if you want.”

  After service and a laugh, lie, and story-filled dinner at Miz Irma’s, Dante drove his Big Mama back to the small but sturdy wood frame house his uncle Mack had built for his new bride on the little piece of timber-rich land he owned. It was Dante’s understanding that his uncle had intended on adding to the house, if not build a bigger one, when all of the children he and Vivian Lee planned on having started arriving. But the Good Lord, in all of His wisdom, had only seen fit to bless them with two, Reuben and Dante, and both of them the abandoned offspring of others.

  Given that his Big Mama had napped and nodded through the bulk of the fifteen-minute drive, upon their arrival at the house Dante tried to coax her into lying down and resting in earnest. But on climbing out of the Jeep, she scoffed, “It’s too pretty of a day to be sleeping it away. ’Less you in a big hurry to get back, why don’t you come on out on the porch and sit with me for a while?”

  Dante, who still kept several changes of clothing in the bedroom he and Reuben had shared as youths, assured his Big Mama that he didn’t plan to depart until the following morning, unless she’d already invited some other man over to spend the night.

  She swatted at him. “Boy, hush your mouth. Your uncle Mack hear you say that and he’ll be stumbling and bumbling around here all night long.”

  Dante laughed and kissed the chuckling Vivian Lee on the forehead. His uncle Mack had been dead going on five years. But the joke, which was more like an understanding, particularly in light of how the house creaked, rattled, and moaned at the oddest times, was that the old dude’s spirit still kept a close watch over the house and all of his loved ones who still opened and closed their eyes within it.

  After an obligatory tour of the raised flower beds gracing the front and back yards, Dante joined her on the front porch where she already sat, clad in her favorite duster, with the ads from the Sunday paper in her lap, a tall glass of ice water on a little stool beside her, and rocking in one of the four big, white rocking chairs her dearly departed husband had made for his family’s use in the years prior to his debilitating stroke.

  “There’s some Cokes and a pitcher of ice tea in the refrigerator,” she said.

  “Naw, I’m good right now,” he said, while examining an orange-colored flower he’d plucked from the yard. “I’ll probably have a glass of that ice tea later on this evening when I get another slice of Miz Irma’s cake.”

  The pair rocked in silence for several minutes. Vivian thumbed through the sales ads, while Dante pulled one petal after another from the flower in his lap until all that remained was the naked bulb and stem. After collecting the orange-colored bits and pieces and tossing them into the yard, he fell back into his rocking chair and heaved a sigh, one that inadvertently led to a slip of the jovial front he’d been wearing on his Big Mama’s behalf.

  She stopped rocking and said, “Something on you mind, son?�
�

  He closed his eyes and folded his hands behind his head before deciding to tell her the truth. “Uh-huh . . . a woman.”

  They rocked in silence for several more minutes before his Big Mama said, “If it’s worth anything to you, I talked with her the last time she was in town. I think she’s serious about moving back here to help Mr. Jessie and ’nem with the funeral home.”

  The woman who’d been on Dante’s mind for the past couple of days and the one in the center of the tale his Big Mama was piecing together were not one and the same. But rather than address the difference, Dante stopped rocking and opened his eyes in order to let his Big Mama know she had his full attention.

  “She come by the house,” his Big Mama went on with her gaze buried somewhere among the papers in her lap. “I asked her to so that I could give her that piece of money Reuben left me. I told her I wanted the boy to have it. Why Reuben could never see fit to do right by that child, I’ll never know.”

  In the brief silence that followed, Dante shut his eyes again and pushed the rocker back as far as it would go without toppling over. He hated how much it pained his Big Mama that Reuben hadn’t done better by the son he and Laylah had conceived. The boy, now a big, strapping thirteen-year-old named Ozzie, had been blessed with a blended version of both his mama and his daddy’s good looks and intelligence. But rarely had Reuben ever even made an effort to see the child, and as far as Dante knew, his cousin had never offered up so much as a single dime toward his care. Still, he lacked the heart to tell his Big Mama that Ozzie wasn’t Reuben’s only child. He personally knew of at least two others, by two different women.

  His Big Mama puffed a sigh of her own and wrung her hands. “I thought, if nothing else, surely he’d leave the baby a little something in his will.”

  Dante grunted and resumed his rocking. In keeping with his spiteful and contemptuous nature, Reuben had used his last will and testament as a vehicle for one final, reckless act of vengeance. A cheap bastard all of his life, his frugal ways had enabled him to amass a small fortunate in both his savings account and his stock portfolio. He’d also had the foresight to secure a lucrative life insurance policy for himself. But at the reading of his will, Dante had been among those left aghast by his cousin’s decision to leave no provisions for Ozzie or, for that matter, any of his other unclaimed heirs.

  A miserly $2,000 is all he’d seen fit to leave their Big Mama, while to Dante he’d bequeathed his books—all seven dog-eared, paperback copies of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. After covering his funeral expenses, the remaining portion of his estate had been earmarked for the coffers of the East Coast prep school he felt he’d been wrongly denied an opportunity to attend as a youth.

  “Anyway, she wouldn’t take the money,” his Big Mama said. “She assured me that all of Ozzie’s financial needs were being met. Then she had the nerve to turn around and try to write me a check for even more than what Reuben give me. She said I ought to put it all together and go somewhere nice. You know, somewhere in the Caribbean or else way overseas in Italy, Egypt, France, or Greece somewhere.”

  The kindness of Laylah’s gesture brightened Dante’s disposition and put a hint of a smile on his face. Oddly enough, she’d always been Reuben’s exact opposite when it came to money, and Dante had long viewed her financial generosity as one of her redeeming qualities. But then again, she’d always had more of it to give. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Taking a trip somewhere just might do you a world of good.”

  His Big Mama snorted and started fanning herself with a handkerchief she pulled from a pocket of her duster. “Chile, what am I gonna look like trying to get on a plane and go somewhere as old as I am? And who am I gonna go with?”

  Dante reached over, grabbed one of her hands, and gave it a slight squeeze. “You can go with me,” he said. “I’ve got a little change squirreled away. Just tell me when.”

  She pulled away. “No, what I’ma tell you is the same thing I told that girl—you keep your money. Enjoy it, put it to good use, save it or whatever. Ain’t no use of wasting it on some old bird whose days on God’s green earth are just about done for.”

  “I wish you’d stop talking like that,” Dante said. He folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes again. “Anyway, for the record, Laylah Louise Thomas-Bryant was the furthest somebody from my mind.”

  “Oh? Now that’s a shock sho’ nuff. I don’t suspect I’ve ever known you to have any woman but Lil Miz Laylah Louise on your mind,” his Big Mama said in a voice rising and falling with amusement.

  His own voice hard and flat, Dante responded with, “Things change. People, too.”

  “I see,” his Big Mama said, readjusting her tone. “This new woman—she got a name? Could be I know some of her people.”

  Dante’s face softened. “Eaton. Aliesha Eaton. I think she’s got some people in Riverton, but she moved down her from Chicago. She’s a professor at Wells.”

  “A professor, you say? That’s nice . . . real nice. She ain’t married, is she?”

  Dante’s eyes snapped open and he glared into the yard. “No, Big Mama, she ain’t married. What? You think those are the only kind of women I know how to get involved with?”

  “Well, don’t go biting my head off, chile. I’m just asking is all. Must be awfully serious, the way you carrying on.”

  Dante grunted and lowered his lids again. “She’s on my mind is all.”

  “She know how you feel?”

  “No . . . not yet.”

  “What about Laylah? She know about your feelings for this here other woman?”

  Dante laughed. “Wait a minute, whose side are you on? Don’t tell me you’re rooting for Laylah all of a sudden. How much money did you say she gave you?”

  “Hush now!” his Big Mama said. “You know good and well I ain’t take that girl’s money. Just like you know I ain’t never been one to choose no sides. Even if I don’t approve—what goes on between you and your lady friends is y’all’s business.” Her face somber, she reached over and placed a hand on Dante’s knee. “All I’ve ever wanted is the best for you, Dante. Always have. Your uncle Mack felt that way, too. We always wanted the best for you and Reuben both.”

  He nodded. “I know, Big Mama. I know.”

  She tightened her grip on his leg. “Then know this. If you’re serious about this Eaton woman, you need to be honest with her. You need to be a man and do right by her. Tell her how you feel. If you don’t know what to say, open up your Bible. There’s always an answer or two in there somewhere.”

  Dante laughed again. “Is that how Uncle Mack got you? Yeah, I can just imagine that Ole Devil coming by to court with the Bible tucked under one arm and a mack daddy rap straight out the New Testament rolling off his ole forked tongue.”

  His Big Mama laughed with him before she said, “I ain’t studyin’ you, boy! Make fun all you want to, but me and your uncle Mack had a love that was built on something solid, something that stood the tests of time.”

  CHAPTER 26

  After her second missed hair appointment, Aliesha slipped into a noticeable funk that Monica appeared determined to extricate her from late one Saturday afternoon.

  “Hey, if you’re not doing anything, and I know you’re not, I need you to come by here and watch something with me.”

  “Something like what?”

  “Just something I TiVoed earlier this week and I’ve been saving for the right time.”

  “Can’t you call Jesus? I’m working on my Sunday school lesson right now.”

  “Like that’s really going to take all damn night. Bump that, girl, and just bring your sanctified ass on.”

  “Well, since you asked so nicely, the answer is NO! Me and my sanctified ass are going to stay right here with our Bible and pray for you and your heathenish one.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Seriously, Aliesha, this is something I’d really prefer not to watch alone or with Jesus. I need your company.”

  The earnestnes
s Aliesha heard in Monica’s voice broke her resolve. She knew over the past several months Monica had been working at reconciling the strained and difficult relationship she’d had for years with her Amer-Asian mother, Mina. Monica still held Mina accountable for a lot of the pain she’d endured in her life, including her molestation at age nine by one of Mina’s sorry-ass boyfriends and having to flee, at age fourteen, to Riverton in order to protect herself from some other fiend Mina had married. Aliesha put away her Sunday school material and without bothering to change out of the T-shirt and sweats she’d been bumming around in, she drove over to the east side of town where Monica lived.

  On her arrival, she found her usually bubbly friend subdued and her always tidy abode cluttered with what looked like the discards and remains from the previous week. Piles of clothing, randomly tossed books, stacks of unopened mail, and a variety of empty fast-food bags and containers were strewn everywhere. Aliesha stepped over and around the mess on her trek with Monica to the kitchen.

  “You want something to drink?” Monica asked. “A soda or something stronger?” She reached into a cabinet and pulled down a bottle of cognac.

  Aliesha shook her head and watched Monica pulled a tumbler from the cabinet and go into the freezer for some ice. She frowned at the sight and the sound of the liquor’s splash and crackle into the glass. “You feeling all right?” she asked as she watched her friend, who owned a rep for being a teetotaler, raise the drink to her lips.

  Monica made a face and sputtered, “Good Lord, I don’t know how you lushes do it.” After a cough-filled laugh, she said, “Don’t mind me, girl, come on.” She led Aliesha to the room housing her wide screen television and other entertainment equipment. After plopping down on the sofa, she reached for the remote and started clicking buttons.

  Aliesha sat beside to her. “So what is this? Something for one of your classes?”