Nowhere Is a Place

by Bernice L. McFadden

  * * *

  Now, the sun just breaking the horizon, Vonnie moved slowly up and down the rows of cotton, carefully examining the stalks and the white puffed blooms they held and smiled, his mind clinging more to the new blossoms that slept comfortably inside of the house than the ones he fingered.

  Willie had been right: God would reward him twofold.

  ___________________

  It was the same every morning.

  Suce walking through the house, swinging open bedroom doors, snatching at shutters, and tugging off blankets.

  “Mornin’, time to get up now.”

  Most times Dumpling was already awake, the smell of frying bacon and boiling grits getting her stomach going before her mind even stirred.

  Beanie Moe was a hard one to rouse. It took Suce two or three visits and a swat on his behind before he would even open his eyes.

  Lovey was the worst. She would suck her teeth and snatch the covers back over her head and mumble something Suce was sure was foul. “You ain’t too big for the switch,” Suce reminded her.

  At the breakfast table, Lovey would sit with her arms folded across her chest and her face screwed up so tightly her eyes almost vanished, while Dumpling’s right hand gripped her fork and she watched like a starving pup as Beka or Helen moved from one child to the next, spooning grits, scrambled eggs, and smoked sausage onto their waiting plates.

  Beanie Moe, forgetful of the rules, would shove a forkful of food into his mouth before the morning blessing had been said and now had a tender spot on the back of his head where Suce, Beka, or Helen had taken to popping him.

  Lovey would take a few bites, push her plate away, and asked to be excused. “I’ll eat it,” Dumpling would sputter through a mouth already crammed tight with food.

  “Pig!” Lovey would spit at her and storm from the room.

  “I told you about that trash talk in this house,” Suce said.

  It was hard for her, for all of them. Suce knew it; she’d lost her own mother young and still wept for missing her so much. She knew the children had had a different life in Phila-del-phia, but this was their life now, and they’d better try and get used to it.

  “I’m done warning you; next time it’ll be me, that filthy mouth of yours, and the lye soap!”

  ___________________

  Lovey had found a hiding place far up the hill alongside the skeletal remains of the big house. In that place, where wild honeysuckle clamored for space on the rotting beams and a young sap pushed its way through the decaying floorboards of what used to be the center hall. Birds made their nests on windowsills that stuck out like lips, and black squirrels scurried up and down the corroding stairway.

  Lovey was not afraid of that place, dark and looming as it was. However, Dumpling and Beanie Moe found it to be spooky, and anyway, they warned Lovey as they started back down the hill, “Granny said we’re not to come up here.”

  “I don’t care what she said,” Lovey slung back at them, and settled herself down on a tree stump.

  She’d seen Lillie up there. She wouldn’t tell them that, though. If she told them, then she would have to share her, and she didn’t want to do that.

  She’d seen Lillie sitting cross-legged on the hill, bathed in the blue full moonlight, dressed in red, smiling, throwing kisses down at her, beckoning her to come. And she did, stealing out of the house and running barefoot but sure through the late-night cool.

  When Lovey reached the top of the hill, breathless, eager, Lillie was gone, but the scent of Evening in Paris was everywhere and so Lovey knew that she had not been dreaming.

  Every night after that, Lovey went to the place, singing the bedtime lullabies Lillie had once sung to her, humming tunes that her mother had once swayed to in their Philadelphia parlor. Every night she went in search of her, peeking behind trees, lifting loose stones, calling out, “Lillie, Lillie girl!”

  It wasn’t until the night she carried the red gloves along as an offering and laid them across the spot on the ground she’d first seen her mother resting on that Lillie finally came.

  First as a glow of ruby and then a full woman, peeking around the sycamore tree like a small child.

  Lillie, done up in a red silk dress with a blooming skirt that made rustling sounds like dried leaves. “Oooh,” she moaned as she stepped from behind the tree and looked lovingly down at the gloves.

  “I know you miss them, Mama.” Lovey spoke in a quiet voice that was laced with excitement. She folded her hands and held them at her middle, unsure if she should step closer.

  Lillie nodded her head yes.

  Lovey saw that her mother was as beautiful as ever—hair gleaming and curled at the ends, pulled to one side and cascading over her right shoulder. Lovey quickly used her hands to smooth down her own hair. She rubbed at the cold in the corner of her eyes, licked at her parched lips. She wanted to look good for her mother. She wanted to look just like her mother.

  “Go on, Mama. Pick ’em up,” Lovey urged, so eager to please, not caring one bit that Lillie hadn’t said how much she’d missed her.

  Lillie just stared and then her eyes fluttered and set on Lovey. They were sad, brimming with tears.

  “Can’t you, Mama?”

  Lillie sadly shook her head no.

  Lovey bent down and retrieved the gloves; she stroked the material and Lillie moaned softly. Lovey slipped one glove on and Lillie’s tears disappeared. The other now and Lillie flung her head back in ecstasy

  Lovey understood. “I can wear them for you, Mama, huh?”

  Lillie smiled.

  Lovey was elated. “Anything else I can do for you, Mama?”

  Lillie’s smile became menacing as she slowly turned her head, moving her gaze from Lovey and planting it squarely down on the saltbox.

  * * *

  So there, in that place wrapped in shadows, away from Wella’s babbling and Dumpling and Beanie Moe’s endless battles over food, away from Suce’s spite and threats, away from Beka’s and Helen’s comforting hugs and Vonnie’s cruel mouth, Lovey could have her mother again, could rock to the lullabies she sang to her, could feel her completely, could be her.

  ___________________

  “Be careful with her, Vonnie,” Helen warned as she watched from the doorway. Vonnie had Wella by her hands, swinging her through the air. The child’s face would twist with terror and then glee with each round they took.

  “What he doing?” Beka came up behind her. “Oh,” she gasped when she saw what was happening. “He’s certainly taken a liking to her.”

  Helen wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard some malice in Beka’s voice and she turned to look her full in the face.

  “What?” Beka said, her eyes innocent.

  Nothing.

  They stood watching until Wella hollered, “Stop!” and Vonnie reluctantly set the girl on the ground. The whole top part of Wella’s round body swayed and she raised her pudgy hands and pressed them against her head.

  “See, now she’s dizzy,” Helen called, and started toward them.

  Vonnie stood stiffly aside as Helen gathered Wella into her arms and took her back to the house. He seemed not to know what to do next and stood staring at the spot where Wella had been until Beka made a sound in her throat.

  “You seen Lovey?” she said, needing to fill the emptiness between them.

  Vonnie didn’t answer, but he turned his gaze up toward the house. Beka’s eyes followed, and she shook her head in dismay.

  Vonnie looked back down at the ground and then suddenly said, “Tell Mama I went to town.”

  He strode off, back straight, hat pulled low over his eyes, and climbed into his pickup truck and drove off.

  * * *

  No one would suspect him to be a middle-of-the-day type of man. Him—black-skinned, wide-brimmed hat, and heavy black boots. Everything about him screamed after sundown and before dawn. But there he was, climbing out of his pickup, just before noon.

  Sawyer smiled as she watched h
im through the lace curtains of the window. Below her, the barbershop buzzed with conversation and the clicking sounds of scissors. In the next room, a man moaned loudly and the thumping sounds that had gone on for less than three minutes came to an abrupt end.

  Sawyer fingered the cross around her neck and then her fingers absently searched the thin gold chain for the clasp, unhooked it, and tucked it safely away into the top drawer of her bureau.

  Vonnie didn’t like religion.

  He moved slowly and with no great conviction down the four streets that made up the District. Familiar faces turned away or lowered, and hands came up to conceal, but Vonnie knew them all. The hard ones—the sanctified, single, married, and lost.

  The District, a shotgun of a place that was never supposed to be anything more than a pit stop between Augusta and Myanmar but somehow grew into a cluster of rag-tag buildings that leaned in high winds and seemed almost imaginary during the long hazy, heated days of summer.

  * * *

  Sawyer meets him at the doorway, the scent of lavender water sailing from her bare elbows. She wants to kiss him on his mouth that is so unkissable, dying to know what those ruined lips will feel like against her own, but he won’t allow it and so she just smiles and steps back, letting him through.

  The room is less than appealing: stained and peeling wallpaper, cracks stretching along the ceiling like cobwebs. Sawyer has tried to make it beautiful, soft. Sheer curtains, a colorful gypsy’s wrap thrown across a cluster of oil lamps. A mauve-colored cushioned stool sits in one corner of the room, a standing mirror crowned with stalks of heather in the other.

  Vonnie sits down heavily on the foot of the bed. He does not remove his hat but waits for Sawyer to do so, and she does, placing it on her head as she hums a foreign tune and begins a slow dance of seduction.

  Vonnie watches nothing but her feet, and she knows it will be awhile before his eyes break loose and crawl up her calves. He likes her knees and so will spend some time there before gathering his courage again and scaling her thighs, rounding her hips, up her stomach before stopping at her breasts, which poke out at him from her cupless brassiere.

  By the time his eyes fall on those succulent, jutting nipples, he will be more than ready for her. He will feel like perfection itself and will have no problem tilting his head skyward without the broad brim of his hat casting shadows and hiding his cruel mouth.

  * * *

  There in the District in the middle of the day, curtains pulled back and dazzling sunlight spilling in and igniting every inch of Sawyer’s body, there he could take his time and push away the nasty comments his cleft palate brought. Could toss out the adult faces that stared in horror and then whispered behind cupped hands. There he could erase the pointing children that mocked him for the two years he went to school.

  In that place he could forget the angry tears he’d cried because he wanted what all boys his ages wanted, but no girl would give him because of his mouth, which drove him to take it from his own gene pool.

  There he could twist his father’s words to make it all seem okay and right.

  There in the District and in the middle of the day, he could caress and sink into that wet place that was so yielding, so warm that he imagined heaven itself was lodged there and he did not have to swallow his moans. His timepiece was of no consequence, and the ownership was brief and paid for. And when it was over, he could lie there in the crook of her arm and smell the stink and sweet of them both and listen to what the world sounded like beneath the beating heart of a body that was spent and glistening, while she stroked his cheek and told him that he was beautiful.

  ___________________

  The days sizzle on and after nearly a year, Lovey still does not understand how one can tell the difference between spring and summer in that part of the world. She is as miserable in June as she was in April. Dumpling has started to drag her words and Beanie Moe is always walking around with a stalk of hay dangling from the corner of his mouth, like some cowboy.

  Wella is all but lost, because when Lovey points to the framed picture of Lillie, Wella looks back at her, blinks, and asks, “Who you say dat is again?”

  Down here with the heat that didn’t seem to let up until January, and everything the young teacher Mrs. Pace was teaching, Lovey had learned two years earlier. Now she sat, twirling her pencil in her hand and staring out at the open road and the field beyond.

  Some part of her still half expected to see Lillie come strolling out of the blue, or at least down from the big house, handbag swinging from her wrist, the heels of her pumps leaving tiny half moons in the dirt. A year earlier Lovey had thought that if she wished it hard enough, it would happen. But it never did, even though there were times when the room was suddenly overwhelmed with the scent of Evening in Paris and Lovey would look around for a jutting hip, curling cigarette smoke, and a splash of red.

  And to make things worse, the prized red pumps were missing and all she had left to dote on were the crimson-colored silk gloves and the red plastic beaded necklace.

  ___________________

  “Women in the District got a passion for red too,” Suce told her after she’d bitten off a piece of snuff and tucked it into the corner of her jaw.

  Lovey shrugged her shoulders and continued clearing the table of the dinner dishes.

  “Don’t you like no other color?” Suce probed.

  Lovey shrugged her shoulders.

  “Yellow is nice.” Suce breathed. “Green too.”

  “I guess.”

  “Blue, how about blue? Do you like blue?”

  “Not as much as I do red.”

  “Blue like the sky. Big. Everywhere you look, can’t miss it. Always on display, always noticed. Not like red, most times you gotta search for red, gotta dig it out of something living.”

  Lovey had never thought of it that way. “Hmmm,” she said, and started to walk away, but Suce caught her by the wrist and held tight.

  “What you say we exchange?”

  Lovey twisted her lips. “Exchange?”

  “Yeah. You give me them red beads and I’ll give you something blue in return.”

  Lovey snatched her hand away from Suce. “Them beads belonged to my mama!”

  Suce kept her voice steady. “I know, and your mama belonged to me.”

  Lovey just stared.

  “I ain’t got nothing of hers to hold on to,” Suce added.

  “You got plenty.”

  “Well, nothing as special as them beads.” Suce rolled the tobacco across her tongue and tucked it into the other cheek. “It ain’t like they leaving the house; you can come see ’em anytime you want.”

  Lovey smirked. “What you going to give me?”

  “Got a blue ceramic pig your Uncle Ezekiel sent me from Chicago.”

  “I don’t want no pig.”

  “Uhm . . . I know, I got a blue ribbon—ain’t never been worn,” Suce said hopefully.

  “I got blue ribbons.”

  Suce racked her brain. “Well, I don’t know, child. What you think you want?”

  Lovey knew, had spotted it the first time she set foot in that house and Suce reached out for her. “That,” she said, pointing to the blue granite eagle hanging from the leather strip around Suce’s wrist.

  Suce felt her breath catch in her throat and her hand went immediately and protectively to the charm. “This?”

  “Yeah, I’ll trade you the beads for that,” Lovey said emphatically.

  Suce slowly rubbed her thumb and forefinger over the stone. “What you want it for?”

  Lovey smirked again and leaned heavily on one leg, jutting out her slim hip. “Don’t worry. You can see it every day and I’ll let you visit with it whenever you want,” she said sarcastically, and then grinned slyly.

  Suce’s eyes snagged on the child’s hip before breaking free and finding her face. She had to blink; it was the first time she realized how much Lovey resembled her own Lillie.

  “Well?” Lovey said,
pushing her open palm closer to Suce’s face.

  Suce shook her head clear and even managed a stiff laugh as she slipped the charm from her wrist. It was just a piece of stone. It wasn’t like she was passing it along to a stranger, this was her grandchild, she thought, and then aloud she said, “This belonged to my mother.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lovey said, still pushing her eager open palm out toward Suce.

  “Uh-uh. Even exchange,” Suce said, and pointed a finger at the red beads around Lovey’s neck.

  Lovey smiled and then carefully lifted the necklace of beads from her neck and held them out to Suce. “Okay, on the count of three.” She laughed, and on three Suce grabbed hold of the beads and dropped the blue eagle into Lovey’s hand.

  ___________________

  Maybe it was the weather that day—not too hot, a hint of November cool in the air, even though it was just early September.

  Maybe the silence, the blue sky, and the paintbrush streaks of white that were too thin to be clouds.

  Maybe it was the sun, so pale it was almost white.

  He could look back on a number of those things and think: Maybe . . . ?

  But it was just her, just Lovey.

  Walking slowly up the hill and toward the big house, that birthmark that looked like a G on the back of her thigh, visible beneath the flouncing hem of her skirt. She was twirling a dandelion in her hand and humming something—what, he didn’t know, but she could have been the pied piper from the storybooks Suce had read to him as a child, because he found himself helpless and stumbling up the slope behind her.

  She had to have heard him coming—the soles of his boots crunching the earth, the clink of the timepiece bouncing against the ignition key in his pocket—but she never turned around, slowed, or quickened her pace. The humming got louder, though, and the dandelion began to twirl so fast, its thin petals became a blur of yellow and the G on her leg was as clear as if he’d written it on his eyeball.