by William Bell
When all the soil had been loosened and banked and the dug-up weeds collected and tossed onto the compost heap, I leaned the hoe against the garage and swung my arms to shake out the stiffness between my shoulders, recalling the cop who had thrown me into the back of the cruiser and sprained my upper back.
Before I had gone outside into the garden, Mom had said, “How about showing me those things you dug up?”
That had been the first mention she had made about my project since Song’s visit, so I guessed she’d been thinking over the last while. When I stepped into the cool of the kitchen she was sitting at the table with the document box, the white straps and neck ring before her and the essay in her hands.
She tamped the papers on the table to line them up. “Lawd, lawd, hee-ah come de fiel’ han’ want him sumpin cool to drink,” she drawled.
“Not bad, Mom, not bad.”
I popped a can of tonic water, leaned against the counter and drained half the can in a few gulps.
“Your dad told me something last night that made me so mad I almost spit.”
For my mother, that was strong language.
“We were talking about your … trip, and you know what he said? That he was proud of you.”
I choked on the last mouthful of tonic water and coughed.
“Yeah,” Mom said. “That’s about how I reacted.” She put down the paper and lifted Pawpine’s neck iron, weighing it in her hands. “I can’t say I agree, but I think I understand.”
“What happened between you and Lucas, Mom? I know why you broke with him, but how come you never kept in touch with the others, like Cal and Ned? They seemed like nice guys. Do they think the way Lucas does?”
“No, I don’t think so. But I was born and grew up in Chicago. My uncles and aunts stayed in Mississippi, so I didn’t have much connection with them or my cousins, not even at Christmas, which your grandfather refused to celebrate anyway. I never knew my mother’s family, really. She was an only child and her parents died before I was born.
“Your grandfather was always dead set against what he called the White Devil. You and I both know he had lots of reasons to be bitter, but he went too, too far. When I was grown and pretty much on my own I didn’t see him much, and after I met your father and we decided to be together, I phoned your grandfather back there in Chicago and told him I was getting married and planned to stay in Canada. He asked me about your dad, what he did for a living, things like that, then he said, ‘Etta, for a girl who’s getting married soon you don’t sound very happy.’ I said, ‘Daddy, that’s because I’m afraid to tell you something.’” Mom smiled and flushed a little.
“He thought I was pregnant. After I corrected him, he was silent for a long time and then he said, ‘Etta, tell me it isn’t what I think it is.’ I told him, ‘Daddy, I can’t.’
“His voice came over all mean and low. He called me names, said I was no daughter of his if I went ahead. I said he had to accept your dad or lose me, I wasn’t going to give Thom up. ‘So be it,’ he said, and hung up on me.
“Those were the last words I ever heard him say, ‘So be it.’”
“Do you hate him, Mom?”
“I did for a long time. Now I just don’t think of him any more. He isn’t part of my life. I’ve never regretted marrying your dad and I never will.”
The iron clanked against the wooden tabletop when she put it down, lost in thought. I knew it was one of those times when her artistic mind was making connections only she could follow.
“You know, when you’re angry, you have a look about you that reminds me of him.” She shook her head. “He sure is a piece of work, that man.”
At first I thought she meant my father.
Chapter 5
“I hereby propose a toast,” my father announced, looking faintly ridiculous as he stood at our formally laid dining-room table wearing a white apron with “DOWNE WITH IGNERENCE!” stencilled on the bib, a glass of cheap champagne in his hand.
The rest of us were dressed for the occasion. Mom wore a long roomy linen dress and, as always, hoop earrings; Jen was beautiful in a short skirt and silk blouse. I had on slacks and a white shirt. “You are not wearing cut-offs and a tank top to a graduation party,” Jen had announced over my protests.
In the centre of the table were two tall candles left over from Christmas/Hanukkah season, a smoking, mouth-wateringly fragrant roast chicken on a cutting board, dishes of steaming roast potatoes, corn on the cob, peas and, for Jen, who had decided the week before that she was a vegetarian, a mammoth salad.
“To our honoured guest,” Dad bowed with mock formality, “Jen, student of … um …”
“Environmental science,” Jen supplied with a giggle.
“Right, E.S., Innis College, University of Toronto. May you be the bane of polluting corporations and municipalities everywhere!”
We—Dad, Mom, Jen and I—took sips of the bubbly stuff. Wine seldom made an appearance at my house, but this day was an exception, Dad had insisted. A graduation party of sorts, but mostly an induction party.
“Congratulations, Jen. Belated, but heartfelt all the same.”
Mom and Jen clinked glasses.
“And to Zachariah, student of … er …”
“History, Dad. As if you forgot.”
“Ah, yes, history, University College, University of Toronto.”
Clink. We sipped again. The wine was sour and the bubbles went up my nose.
“Good luck to both of you,” Mom said. After a moment she added, “Now, it’s gift time.”
My father reached under the table and handed a small box to Jen. She opened it and showed me a black fountain pen.
“Not a very imaginative graduation present, is it?” Mom said.
“It’s lovely,” Jen said. “Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Lane. Look, Zack, my initials are engraved on the cap.”
“Real scholars write with a fountain pen,” Dad said, “not those plastic throw-aways. And you being environmentally friendly and all …”
“Thanks,” Jen repeated.
I could tell she was touched by their gift. I had given her mine the night before, a new backpack in heavy green nylon with lots of zippered compartments, straps and buckles. Very romantic.
“Okay,” I shouted, watching Jen turn the pen over and over in her hands. “My turn!”
I was in a pretty good mood. And a little scared, to be honest. In a couple of weeks I’d be leaving home to move into residence. At long last I would escape the little town I used to hate but didn’t any more. I’d be back in the city, with the traffic, the smog, the noise, the energy that pulsed out of the pavement like heat on a July day; the movie theatres, the clubs, the stores and restaurants. I’d be starting a new life, as I had been yearning to do for so long. But I wondered if I was ready, if I would ever really be ready. True, Jen would be there. And that would help.
“Here you go,” Dad announced.
Like a corny stage musician, he reached into his shirt pocket and slowly, humming a fanfare—if it was possible to hum a fanfare and make trumpet sounds through your lips, my father could do it—he drew out a key. He then held it between thumb and index finger, showed it to all of us, individually, as if he was about to make it disappear, then casually tossed it onto the tablecloth in front of me.
It was the key to the Toyota.
“You’re kidding,” I murmured.
“Nope. Your mom and I want you to have the truck. After all, you’ve put your mark on it, in a manner of speaking.”
Mom threw back her head and laughed. Her earrings jumped and swung. A week before, my parents had come home one night with a used—”previously experienced”—Jeep Cherokee—part of the image of the rural resident, I guessed, and they had built racks for the interior to hold Mom’s instruments and gear. I had hoped I could take the Toyota to Toronto, but I figured the odds were against me.
“Thanks, Mom and Dad, this is great.”
“The truck is from your dad,” Mom
said right away.
“Oh.”
Confused, I watched as she got up and walked into her studio. A moment later she returned with one of her guitars. It was her favourite, an old acoustic six-string with a smooth mellow sound that perfectly complemented her voice. Awkwardly, she laid the instrument in my lap.
“Give us a few riffs,” she said.
Stirred by an unfocused excitement, I strummed a few complicated blues chords she had taught me not long before. I had been practising them every day.
“Not bad. Maybe you better take that old thing with you when you go to school so you can practise some more.”
“Mom, you mean—”
“You take music lessons when you get to the city, son.” And she leaned down and kissed me, holding me tight to her body for a few seconds before she sat down again.
I cradled the guitar, ran my hand up and down the neck, admiring the pearl finish of the tuning pegs, the grain in the polished wood of the box, the area beneath the hole worn to a lighter shade by strumming fingers. I recalled the times when I was so small I could hardly hold the guitar. I would play with it when Mom was out of the apartment and Dad preoccupied with his work. It was only now, as I held it, my hands leaving barely visible smudges in the waxed finish, that I realized she must always have known I had held it and tried to make music.
I heard the doorbell ring as I examined the worn spots between the frets.
“I’ll get it,” Jen said.
I looked up at my mother. “Mom, I don’t know what to say. Thanks—”
From behind me I heard, “Is this the Lane residence?” The voice seemed somehow familiar.
My mother did not acknowledge my words. A look of horror struck her face, and her wine glass, which hung suspended from the fingertips of both her hands, dropped. The stem split away and fragments of glass and foaming champagne blossomed up from the table.
“Oh, my Lord,” she whispered.
I turned in my chair, the recognition of the voice hitting me exactly at the moment my eyes took in the figure at the door.
Chapter 6
He leaned on his cane in the doorway, his free hand clutching and working the hem of his black suit jacket. He had on a white shirt and a wide red tie even I knew was way out of style.
Jen stood with her hand on the doorknob, staring past Lucas at me, her face clouded with confusion. Dad looked at my mother with his head tilted to one side the way he did when he was surprised. The wet mark on the tablecloth spread slowly outward, unnoticed by my mother, whose fingertips pressed her cheeks beside her open mouth.
“Hello, Etta,” my grandfather’s deep voice broke the spell. “Hello, Zack.”
Dad’s glance switched from Mom to the stranger at the door as he tried to put the pieces together. “Is this who I think it is?” he asked my mother. When she spoke her words were as hard as stone. “What are you doing here, Lucas?”
Outside the window I could see a red and yellow taxi in the driveway and the rumble of its motor rode on the silence in the house. Lucas had told the driver to wait, I saw, because he expected to be shunned and he would have to leave again, knew he would be turned away, knew he deserved to be.
“You must be Thom,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Zack favours you, around the chin.”
Mississippi was far away, but Lucas’s mellow drawl brought it all back to me—the slow warm water of the bayou, moss-hung live oaks in the yard, the hot, hot air so thick with humidity it was like a second skin.
“Really,” my father said icily.
Jen had come and stood by my chair. “What’s going on?” she whispered.
“He’s my grandfather.”
“You mean the one who—” she blurted, her skin flushing immediately after the words left her mouth. “I’d better take off, Zack.”
“You stay right where you are,” my mother commanded. “There’s no need for you to go.”
Which made Jen, I could see, want to leave more than ever.
Now that my grandfather and mother were in the same room, the resemblance between them was obvious—the facial features, the slender form, the proud bearing, even though Lucas stooped a little. But where Mom’s jaw was set and her eyes crackled with fire, Lucas looked tired and thoughtful, and the way he gripped the head of his cane hinted at his discomfort. No one in the house wanted him there, and he knew it.
“Etta, I’d ‘preciate it if you’d hear me out. Got a taxi waiting out yonder. Won’t take long.”
“You said all you had to say a long time ago, old man,” my mother hissed.
He nodded his head twice. “Won’t take long,” he repeated. “I come a long way to see you.”
My father, who was usually Mr. Good Host, didn’t say a word. He knew this was Mom’s call, and he waited. We all waited. The silence and tension grated on my nerves. Jen began to chew a fingernail, a pained Get-me-out-of-here look on her face.
Why was my grandfather here? I wondered. Had he found out he was going to die and decided to make peace with his daughter? Not likely, given his attitude towards people he called the whites. Did he need money? Was he in some kind of trouble? He had relatives around Natchez. Why come here?
The thought of his—and my—relatives brought to my mind something I had been trying to forget: the look on his face that morning in his yard when I had told him who I was and he had said he hadn’t known he had a grandson. And the words I had spat back at him.
“Mom, Dad,” I said. “Couldn’t you at least hear what he has to say?”
My mother sat as stiff and unyielding as an oak plank at one end of the table. Broken glass littered the stained tablecloth in front of her but she made no move to pick up the pieces. I studied my father’s face. He knew he was the “cause” of the break between my mother and Lucas. He’d been called names on the street all his life; he’d read and seen the racist no-minds in print and in person. Lucas was just one more. Dad could handle his hatred. It was the effect on my mother that worried him.
“It’s all right with me,” Dad said. “Etta?”
Mom didn’t flinch, didn’t utter a sound.
Dad handed me a few bills. “Zack,” he said, “go out and pay off that cab.”
Lucas limped to the table, his cane tapping on the hardwood floor, and took a seat between my mother and me. He sat straight, both hands resting on the top of his cane. He wouldn’t take his eyes off my mother. For her part, she refused to meet his gaze. She looked away through the door to the kitchen, as if she had something on the stove and feared it would boil over.
“Etta,” Lucas began, almost whispering, “my old friend Ray passed on not long ago.” His Adam’s apple rose and fell. “And it got me thinkin’ about things. I guess when you get old, when your friends pass, you look back on your life. Kind of take stock, like. I began to wonder if I haven’t come up short.”
My mother continued to look away, but her face softened a little.
“Then Zack here come down to my place. To see me, I reckon. But before I knew who he was, I thought to myself, there’s a fine young man would make any parent proud. Any grandparent too. And when he finally told me he was my grandson, and I learned he was named after my daddy …”
He trailed off, swallowed hard, and got himself under control again.
“I … I’ve suffered a lotta hate in my life, and a long time ago I learned to fight that hate by turning it back against them that held me down, denied me things because I’m black, and against the system that let ’em do it. It was the only defence I had. But, Etta, I let it poison me. I’m not makin’ excuses for myself, mind you. I’m tryin’ to explain.”
Only then did my mother face him, as if to confirm the terrible error and the judgement he heaped on himself.
“Etta, after all these years, I know an apology don’t mean nothin’. But I done you a world of wrong, and I’m sorry for it.”
Lucas turned to my father. “Sir,” he said, almost formally, as if he had rehe
arsed his lines again and again, “I never met you before today, and I done you a deep wrong, too.”
My mother let the words lie a moment, then she spoke, every word sharp as a knife. “Lucas, do you remember what you said to me when I told you I was going to marry Thom? You said I was a traitor to my race, that any black woman who would take up with a white man was trash. You didn’t care that Thom is a wonderful man. You didn’t want to know. You did to Thom and me what you hated others for doing to you. Now you’re sorry,” she said with contempt.
Lucas took the assault straight on, with his chin up. I had to admire the way he kept his dignity.
“I sat down a dozen times to write,” he said. “But words on paper wasn’t enough; they was too easy. Zack come a long way to Mississippi. After he left I tried to reason out why he had come down all that way. Then I remembered that song of yours he sang for us all, and I read that school project he left me and I knew. I told myself, if he could come to Natchez and face me, I had to come and face you.”
My mother turned to me and in her face I saw something I couldn’t name. Lucas got to his feet and let out a sigh.
“Zachariah,” he said, “I’m sorry we never got to know each other better.”
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t know what to say.
“Now,” he continued, “I’d ’precíate it if y’all’d telephone for a taxi to carry me back to the airport.”
I thought for a moment. “I guess I could take you,” I offered.
“I’ll come with you,” Jen said.
It would be nice, I suppose, to say that it was a Disney-type ending, that we all fell into each other’s arms weeping and laughing at the same time, that forgiveness flowed like the river at the foot of our yard, that we sat down together in fellowship and continued the graduation party. But the wounds ran deep in all of us, and the interrupted meal cooled uneaten on the table.
No one asked Lucas to stay. I’m certain that he would have refused anyway. He had come north to start the healing, to make a beginning, and although my feelings for him were a long way from positive, I respected him for his courage. It’s a lot harder to fix something than it is to break it.