by Joy Copeland
Zoie was surprised to see Dylan raise his hand with the others.
“Great. It’s unanimous,” Ray said. “Lunch is being served in the dining room. We’ll resume at one thirty.”
“Thank God,” Hilda said. “I didn’t think my bladder was going to make it.”
“Don’t forget that this afternoon we’ll discuss our new PR campaign,” Ray called after them, as they exited.
“Why bother?” Dylan said. He had hung back and was fumbling with his cell phone. “Ray, how can we put out public-service announcements touting our support for children when that’s not where we’ve directed the bulk of the Foundation’s grants?”
“Dylan, Dylan, I understand your frustration. Transition takes time. We can’t rush these things,” Ray said. “The PR campaign is for the future.”
Avoiding the conversation, Zoie brushed by the two men and headed to her office. Milton Page, though not a Board member, had sat in on the meeting. He caught her in the hall.
“Excellent save, Zoie,” said Milton, grimacing. “Ole Ray was about to bust a gut.”
“He did look a little ‘pee o’d,” she said.
“Ray’s not accustomed to being challenged on his grant recommendations.”
“Really, why not?”
“The Board members are usually comfortable with his judgment. They come for lunch, listen to his speeches, get their little stipends, and then go home.”
“So we’re supposed to be a rubber stamp, huh?” she asked.
“No, not like that. Ray briefs everyone before the meeting and gets buy-in,” Milton explained.
“Well, he didn’t talk to me. And I doubt he got to Dylan.”
“Now, Zoie, you’re a Crayton employee. I guess you’re supposed to understand the legwork that goes into our recommendations and our reviewing and investigating applicants.” Then Milton’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The Board members are lazy. You saw how unprepared they were. Nobody even read the material we sent them.”
“I bet Dylan Ross read his packet. Based on what he was saying, I thought he’d abstain.”
“But you stopped that. You were brilliant. ‘Life and death,’” Milton said, waving a finger as though he were conducting a mini-symphony.
“Those, my friend, were not my words,” Zoie retorted.
“No, but you led Ray and then Dylan right to them. Brilliant! Did Ray thank you?”
“No, but…”
“Don’t worry. He will.”
Milton left her standing in the hall. She was mentally replaying the boardroom scene. Zoie wasn’t sure that she wanted credit for scuttling the fledgling reading program or for contributing to the demise of the seniors’ day care. As a mother and a granddaughter, she could relate to those programs. But homelessness, the desperation of living on the street, was something foreign.
Zoie reached into her pocket for the ladies’ room key. She’d made a habit of stopping by the spot where the homeless men who’d saved her life hung out to leave small donations. She felt the latest small folded paper that Simon had thrust at her just that morning. She unfolded it. It read, “You must be wary of what you say when life and death is the game you play.”
Of course this is another fluke. A coincidence. But even if she’d read its message earlier, she wouldn’t have changed a thing she’d said or done that day. “Too weird,” she said, stuffing the paper back into her pocket.
Coming out of the ladies’ room, she ran into Ray Gaddis. “Zoie, I’m glad I caught you.” He was a head taller than she was, but then most men were. “Thank you for your support with the Board, just now.” His all-purpose plastic smile had returned.
“No problem. Your arguments made sense.”
“I’m glad you could see that. The Board needs to understand. Disrupting the Shelter’s funding could send the place into a tailspin. Replacement money for nonprofits is hard to come by, with government cutbacks and all.”
“Yes, it’ll be difficult for the Shelter as we transition,” she said.
“Well, yes.” He paused and took on a more serious air. “For now let’s assume that somehow we’ll continue to support Mahali. We’ll have to figure out a way to preserve their grant in the next round. Are you with me?”
His question surprised her. “I guess…I really don’t know much about the place.” What else could she say?
“That’s easily solved. Call Jahi Khalfani. He’ll arrange a tour of the Shelter. You’ll be up to speed in no time.”
“I’ll do that.” With a hand in her pocket, she crushed the strip of paper with its warning.
“Khalfani can be a little bullheaded, but you’ll find that he’s very accommodating when it comes to the Foundation.” Ray stroked his neck and then looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go spend quality time with these people,” he said, referring to the Board members. “See you at lunch, but remember to keep thinking about a strategy.” He walked away.
Zoie’s expression was blank. A strategy? What had she gotten herself into?
CHAPTER 7
Not Enough Love
Frances Woods lay in her bed. Shadows crossed her room as the moon tried to hide behind the trees outside her window. She sighed with relief. She’d had another coughing spell. Now her breath was finally calm, and Gabe was on her mind again.
Thoughts of Gabe had been vivid in recent days. His image had been clear. The scene of the day she told him she was leaving played in her head. His eyes had a glow, a flickering light that sparkled like a firecracker at a summer fair when he was excited. They shimmered like moonlight on a river when he was deep in thought. On that day his eyes were deep, dark, and still. It was as though he knew what she was going to tell him before the words found her mouth. How would she break the news? How could she break his heart as well as her own?
“What’s wrong, Francee?”
“Gabe,” she’d sputtered, her voice weak, her eyes searching for a place to settle on the floor, rather than looking into his. “I’m going away.”
“I knew something bad was coming,” he said, shaking his head.
She cried. She’d figured that she could tell him without tears, but she hadn’t understood how much she would miss him until then. He was a part of her heart.
“Gabe, I wanted to tell you before someone else did.”
“Where you goin’?”
“Baltimore,” she sighed. “To live with a cousin.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“Gabe, it’s complicated.”
“It don’t have to be complicated. Francee, I got a job now, over at Tuck’s Cabinets. I wanted to tell you. It don’t pay much, not while I’m an apprentice. But it will later. Carpentry pays good. Folks always need a good carpenter, especially a cabinetmaker.”
“That’s not it, Gabe.”
“Francee, let me finish. After a year or two, we can get married. I’ll save up. Do some extra work on the side.”
She hadn’t planned to tell him about the seed growing inside of her. It didn’t seem fair, now that her parents were sending her away from prying eyes and snickering. But the child inside of her had a mind of its own. It wanted to be recognized. Somehow it reached beyond her will and used her mouth to make the announcement.
“Gabe, I’m going to have a baby.”
There—she’d said it. She’d told him and had not turned to dust.
He grabbed her hands and kissed her palms; then he gently stroked her face with one of his big hands. He was quiet, but his tears spoke the words of his heart. For a second, he even smiled. Then that solemn stare returned, as if he’d just realized that he wouldn’t be allowed to be a father.
“It’s our child I’m having.”
“I know that, Francee.”
“So you see our getting married in one or two years, well, would be too late.”
“Francee, we’ll marry sooner. I’ll do anything. I’ll work two jobs. We can live in Luckit at my Aunt Ruth’s. She’s got an extra room behind the kitchen. S
he wouldn’t charge much.”
The truth was that even two years was too soon. Any time was too soon. Her parents would never have agreed to her union with a man like Gabe, a man with skin as smooth and dark as her mother’s mahogany table. Closing her eyes, she bit her lip to feel the pain. There was no point in telling him the extent of her parents’ disapproval, no use adding that rusty nail. He needn’t know the whole truth of it. But then maybe deep down he already understood.
“Gabe, don’t you see? That won’t work. I mean to go to college. I mean to be a teacher. Remember, just as I talked about.”
“God, Francee! You ain’t giving me a chance. I thought you loved me.”
What did she know about love? Only that she couldn’t sleep thinking about their next meeting. Only that her mind wandered, causing her to put salt in the sugar jar and the cornmeal in the flour bin. At eighteen she had kissed only one other boy and only because of a dare. What did she know about love when she couldn’t think straight half the time and with a baby pushing on her insides, making her queasy, sleepy, and cross?
Her father made his pronouncement, after church. “You’re going to Cousin Mabel’s up in Baltimore—no ifs, ands, or buts. No daughter of mine is going to parade around town flaunting a belly.” His pale skin, with its ruddy sun blotches, was brick red from the heat of his anger. Wisps of the hair on his balding head stood erect like fur on a mad dog. “Cousin Mabel will take good care of you. I’ll send money. You have to understand, Frances, we’re not deserting you.”
No matter his words, to Frances Woods his edict felt like desertion. She dared not say a word. Her father could be loose with his hands. She looked to her mother, who’d been quiet through her father’s tirade. She could see her mother’s acceptance. Celia Moore never questioned her husband’s judgment.
“This is for your own good. Cousin Mabel will introduce you to some decent fellow.” Decent was her father’s code word for “light skinned, preferably college educated.” After all, Joseph Moore, of the Moores of Ricetown, principal of Ricetown Colored School—thank you very much—had a position in the community to uphold.
Frances Woods tried to move her position in the bed. A pain shot through her hip as intense as the day of her fall. She lay still, afraid to move again, not wanting to call Queen, not wanting to end her reverie. The pain gripped her leg. She tried to ignore it. She let her mind drift again. She couldn’t seem to stay in the here and now. Thoughts of Gabe—sweet, though sad—somehow dulled the pain. The pain seemed to transfer from her legs and her hip to her heart, a heart that had borne a secret pain all these years.
She could hear Gabe’s words again. “God, Francee! You’re not giving me a chance to make this right. I mean to take care of you and the child.”
He promised to come to Baltimore to be with her. After he put some money together, he would catch up. She tried to dissuade him, though she never actually said, “No, don’t come.”
“I thought you loved me.” Those words haunted her when everything was still and she could hear her own heartbeat. “I thought you loved me,” he said again, between the beats, his voice soft, not angry, though he had every right to be.
“Gabe, I do love you,” she answered. What she didn’t say was, I love you but not enough to run away with you. Not enough to live in the spare room behind your aunt’s kitchen, down in Luckit. Not enough to disobey my father or to give up my dream of becoming a teacher, even if that dream is now second to holding the child inside me.
Frances Woods’s leg cramped. “Damn it.” The leg had a mind of its own. When she wanted to walk, the leg acted as if it belonged to someone else, but when the leg wanted to hurt, the pain was all hers. Grunting, she pushed herself up on her elbows, reached down, and pushed her leg to the side until it fell in flat on the bed. She massaged her upper thigh, the only part of her leg she could reach. Thankfully, the cramp passed. Exhausted, she fell back on her high pillows.
Only God could judge her. Things were complicated back in the good ole days. They just seemed to be simpler since no one talked about the complications. It wasn’t polite. She always felt guilty that she hadn’t loved Gabe enough or given him the chance to make things right, the chance that he had asked for.
She had written him several times and given him Cousin Mabel’s address in Baltimore. Deep in her heart of hearts, she expected him to come for her or at least to hear from him, especially after the letter in which she told him that she had given birth to a girl. “Dear Gabe,” she wrote. “The child is here. Her name is Laurel. She has your eyes.” In that same letter, she mentioned that she had met a kind gentleman from DC, a Howard University graduate. He wanted to marry her, to help her with the child, and even to help her get a degree from DC’s Teachers College.
Her dear Calvin Woods, her savoir, treated Laurel as his own, though folks wondered how Laurel came to have her wonderful dark cinnamon complexion when both of her parents were so light. “Who does she favor?” they’d ask, expecting to hear a convoluted story, like the one most people told about their Cherokee ancestry, their white grandfathers, and the like.
Calvin, a man of few words, put an end to all their inquiries. “My people have more color than I do,” he’d tell them, pointing to his pale skin. “Guess not as many rapes in that part of the family.”
Frances Woods would stifle a laugh and beam with pride. Who couldn’t love Calvin Woods? Over time she’d come to love him. That love was different than what she had felt for Gabe. But it was still love; she was sure of that.
The last time she set eyes on Gabe was at the Ricetown rail station. Her parents were putting her on the train. She could see Gabe standing behind the post at the end of the platform, that cap he always wore shading his eyes. He stayed at the end of the platform, away from her family. For a moment she thought he might come forward, but he didn’t. As the train pulled away, she hung at the window. Their eyes met for a second. And that was it.
She was the one that left. She was the one who didn’t love him enough to runaway. “Laurel had your eyes, dear Gabe. Wherever you are. Laurel had your eyes. Zoie, her daughter, has them too. Oh, I wish you could see them. If you’ve left this earth, I hope Laurel is with you.”
“Mrs. Woods,” Queen called from downstairs, “Zoie is here.”
CHAPTER 8
The Choice: Spike Lee or Your Nose
Zoie loved the Brandywine house, the house of her childhood. Looking at it now, she thought the staircase somehow looked less grand than it had through her child eyes, its dark banisters not as wide, the ascent to the landing not as steep. The staircase landing once served as Zoie’s official playhouse. It was better than a tree house, where the rain and the caterpillars could interfere with a tea party. Better than the dark crawl space under the lattice on the side of the house, with its worms and spider nests. That landing had been her castle, a place where she had spent hours humming nonsensical tunes, arranging her dolls neatly atop the upholstered bench, or sprawling across it while reading a favorite book. As a child she could wedge herself under that bench and become hidden from adult view. The sound of her mother’s voice was still clear. “Zoie! Zoie! You can hide if you want to. You’re still going to clean your room—even if it takes until midnight.”
Her grandmother’s house was a place of simpler times, though her father’s leaving left a deep and complex scar on the child who had played on those stairs. Reeling from the news about Elliot, Zoie the child was coming home to Grandma for answers. Elliot married? Expecting a child? Wasn’t her daughter good enough for him?
Tonight Zoie wanted to curl up, to force her body under that bench, and to hide from the world. Being thirty-six, her body wouldn’t fit.
“Zoie, we weren’t expecting you,” Queen said, coming from the kitchen. The big woman wiped her hands on her dishtowel and grinned. Queen always seemed pleasant enough. Zoie couldn’t understand why there was such a rift between her grandmother and this woman, who seemed so caring.
“H
ope I didn’t alarm you.”
“I guessed it was you. You’re the only other one with a key. If you’d been somebody else, I’da cracked you on the head.” Queen pointed to a baseball bat handle rising above the rim of its home—the umbrella stand.
“Oh, I should’ve called. I decided I needed to see her,” Zoie said, handing Queen a bag with a couple of heavy bottles.
Queen peered into the bag. “Ah! Fruit juice. She likes good juice. Not too sweet.”
“How’s she doing?”
“You know. So so. She’s a little depressed.”
“Depressed about what?”
“Just moody, that’s all. She gets that way,” Queen explained. “Seeing you will do her good.”
“Seeing her will do me good.” After that dreadful phone call to Ohio and three hours sitting on the floor of her dark kitchen, Zoie needed to talk. She’d tried her friend Tina first, but Tina had gone incommunicado. Grandma was her next best choice.
“Go on up,” Queen said. “She’s awake. I tell you she’ll be glad to see you.”
Halfway up the stairs, Zoie’s nose zeroed in on the faint scent of disinfectant. The scent grew stronger as she entered her grandmother’s dark room. In the room, lit only by moonlight, she could make out part of her grandmother’s profile. The older woman was sitting up in bed, propped by thick pillows, her head tilting toward the window.
“Grandma, what are you doing here in the dark?”
“Thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
“Nothing in particular. At my age thinking is about all a body can do…thinking and watching that boob tube.” The television sat dark atop the bureau.
“Anything worth watching tonight?”
“Nah. It’s all violence. I can’t stand all that violence.”
“Grandma, you should get cable.”
“What for? To pay to see more shooting and killing?”
Zoie tried another tact. “What about reading? You love to read.”