She didn’t answer. She looked out at the water. After a moment, she felt him move closer to her on the bench.
“Look here,” he said, and when she didn’t turn her head, he put his hand on her cheek and turned her face toward himself. “I don’t say a whole lot that I don’t mean.”
He was looking into her eyes and, again, she searched for the disconnect, for the lie in what he was saying.
He tilted his head and leaned in to kiss her.
She got up from the bench and walked quickly away. She heard him behind her, scrambling to follow, stumbling over the case that held his batons, the change inside of it jingling loudly.
“Wait a minute!” he called, hurrying up to her and taking hold of her arm, carefully, gently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to show you I meant what I said, and I got carried away. Seen too many movies, I guess. Women in movies seem to like being kissed by strange men a lot more than they do in real life. You ever notice that?”
“I have to go,” Sarah said. “Really. I can’t be late back to work.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. But look here. Sunday is my last day out here. I’m not gone be eating fire for change no more. I got a promotion at work. Assistant Security Manager. It’s full time. And they don’t want me out here doing this. It don’t look good, you know?” He looked sad, and Sarah felt a little sad for him. “Come back again, will you? To see my last show? We can go get something to eat together after.”
Come back again, will you? It was what she had gone there to hear him say.
He was looking at her, waiting. She searched his eyes a last time, and though she saw no distance in them, no hint that he did not mean every word he had said to her, she still could not believe him.
“Will you?” he asked her again, hopeful.
“Alright,” she said.
He beamed. “On Sundays, I usually finish up around four.”
“I’ll be here,” she said, and she turned and walked back to the bus stop.
When Ava got off the bus at her stop, Helena was there at the corner, holding a paper sack. She waved at Ava, and said, “I went out and got some food for dinner, and I saw your bus coming up the block, so I stopped to wait for you.” She smiled and Ava felt happy. After the bus went past, they crossed the street together and walked up Fifty-Ninth.
“I wonder,” Ava said, “what you must think of all this craziness.”
“To be honest, I’m not sure I know what to think,” Helena said. Then, after a moment, “Do you really believe your mother saw a ghost the other night? And that you saw one?”
Ava nodded. “Yes.”
Helena looked skeptical.
“Let me ask you something,” Ava said.
“Why am I still here?”
She nodded. “Yes. With everything that’s happened. Why are you?”
“Because I came to Philadelphia for a reason,” she said, “and I haven’t done what I came to do yet.”
“You came to see Paul.”
“Not just to see him,” Helena told her. “To tell him something. Something I haven’t managed to tell him yet.”
“What?” Ava asked.
Helena looked surprised. For a moment, she seemed to be thinking about it, considering whether she should tell Ava. Then she said, “I think I’d better tell Paul first.”
They were coming around the corner onto Radnor just then, and they saw a small crowd of people standing on the church steps, Doris Liddy, Hattie Mitchell, and Clarence Nelson among them, all of them surrounding Pastor Goode, who, from the looks of it, was leading a prayer. Ava couldn’t hear what he was saying until they got closer. “Lord, we need your help. We need your guidance. Show us how to do what must be done in your name. We believe in you, Lord, and we ask that you show us the way to cast out these evil people, as we have been trying to do for all these years.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Ava said.
When Goode saw her, his eyes narrowed, and he pointed at her with a shaking finger. “Lord, strike down this evil woman before me. This non-believer. This blasphemer!”
Helena stopped at the corner, and before Ava could stop her, and tell her there was no use, she yelled back at Pastor Goode, “Did you ever stop to think that if God wanted them gone, he’d have made it happen by now? It’s been seventeen years, for Christ’s sake. What’s he waiting for?”
Goode’s eyes, and the eyes of everyone standing on the steps, fixed on Helena. A hush fell over them, a strange sudden-silence, as if a television set had been turned off.
Ava put her hand on Helena’s arm and they continued down the street.
“You don’t know,” they heard Goode calling out behind them, “who you keeping company with. And if you do, then you just as bad as they are. And the Lord will punish you.”
1958
When Maddy’s mother died expectedly in the spring of 1958, Maddy asked Regina and George if they would allow Ava to attend the funeral. “Y’all know my mother loved that child,” she told them. “She said whenever Ava was around her she felt good. You know, her father was a sharecropper, and lots of times, when she was a child, she would go with him out into the fields, and whenever they could take a little break, they would lay on the ground side by side and look up at the sky, and her father would tell her that his own father, my mother’s grandfather, had been a slave, but that his daughter, my mother, was free, and there wasn’t nothing so humbling to her as that. Because it made her understand that her own freedom wasn’t nothing but chance, and having the good fortune to be born when she was. Anyway, she used to say that Ava reminded her of those times, laying there watching the sky with her father, and feeling free. I know she just a child, but I think it would mean something to my mother if she was there when she’s laid to rest.”
Ava had never attended a funeral. She was twelve and no one she knew had ever died, at least no one she knew well enough to mourn. Once, the summer before, she had slipped into the church during the funeral of Mother Somebody-or-Other, just to get a glimpse of the body in the casket, because she felt she was an artist and that an artist needed to see things like that. Hidden in the pastor’s nook, she had been able to view the corpse from just fifteen feet away. It had looked bloated and strange, with skin the color of nothing she could recall ever having seen in the living world. Oatmeal, maybe. Oatmeal with too much milk. Gray and just wrong. But seeing the body had inspired her, and she had drawn dead people for a week after, much to her parents’ extreme chagrin.
“You don’t have to go,” Regina told her now. “If you don’t want to. I don’t much like the idea of you going to a funeral. Death shouldn’t be invited into a child’s life.”
Ava had liked Miss Henrietta, who had once given her a book of art, full of glossy photographs of famous paintings and sculptures. Unlike the books she checked out from the school library, this one was new, and its crisp pages smelled of ink and color.
She did attend the funeral, and sat at the back of the church, in the last pew, with her drawing pad. All during the viewing, and then the service, she sketched the scene in the church, the flowers, which were all shades of yellow; the mourners with their heads bowed, gloved hands reaching out to touch the shiny wood, or the pearl-colored satin lining of the casket; the stiff-shoulders of Miss Henrietta’s relatives, the dragging of their feet on the plush red carpet of the sanctuary, which, Ava thought, showed their discomfort with death, their resistance to the ceremony of it; Sister Hattie at
the organ, playing songs that sounded like moaning, her body hunched over the keys, her foot against the pedals; the people sitting in rows on the pews, some of their shoulders touching, some not, some of their heads leaned together, others, it seemed, with theirs intentionally leaned apart; Ellen in her severe black dress and patent-leather shoes, staring blankly at her grandmother’s coffin; and the light through the stained-glass windows, which was low because it was an overcast January day; and Pastor Goode, as he stood in the pulpit, giving the eulogy, look
ing solemn.
“Sister Henrietta knew that the best kind of life you can live is a life connected to the church. She lived the last years of her life in this church, and we should take solace knowing that, although disease ravaged her body, in her last days she had the love of God and the help of the church and its people to bring her comfort.”
When the service ended, some of Miss Henrietta’s out-of-town relatives, large men with several chins each, carried the casket down the aisle and out of the church to the waiting hearse. Ava stood on the church steps and watched. When the hearse pulled off, there were a few minutes of lingering, as people decided how they would get to the cemetery, who would ride with whom, and what route they would take. Ellen waved to Ava from her mother’s side, as everyone came up and hugged Maddy, and most everyone said some variation of, “She’s with the Good Lord now.”
When Maddy saw Ava, she put her hand on top of her head and, smiling, said, “I saw you back there, drawing up a storm.”
“I hope you aint offended,” George said. “I told her it wasn’t proper.”
“I wouldn’t have it no other way,” Maddy said. Then, to Ava, “Show me what you made. I’d like to see it.”
Ava hesitated. It occurred to her that Miss Maddy would not like what she had drawn. She was twelve now and she understood that people had their own ideas about what was proper. While their ideas almost never coincided with hers, she knew that people tended to be attached to them.
“Come on, now,” Maddy said. “It aint no need to be shy.”
Vic and Malcolm came over then, and Malcolm said, “You ready to go, Maddy?”
“Just a second. Ava about to show me what she was drawing in the church.”
Some other people heard and craned their necks in Ava’s direction.
She opened the drawing pad and held up the drawing.
They all peered down at it, unblinking. For a second, Ava thought she saw wonder in their eyes, pure awe, but a second later Malcolm’s mouth twisted into a disgusted frown, and Vic shook his head from side to side, as if not believing what he was seeing. Sister Hattie said, “Oh, my Lord.”
They were naked. Every single person in attendance at the funeral, even Miss Henrietta herself.
Vic looked at her. “Why would you do this? Why would you show Sister Henrietta this kind of disrespect?” He looked around at the others. “What is wrong with this child?”
Miss Maddy was still looking at the drawing, and looked like she was still deciding what she thought. Pastor Goode appeared at her side, and when he saw the drawing he clenched his teeth, glared at Ava, then took the drawing pad and closed it.
“Give it to me,” Ava said. “It’s mine.”
“Shut your mouth,” Goode whispered.
There was venom in his voice, revulsion, and it made Ava angry. “You shut your mouth,” she spat back.
Sister Hattie and several other people gasped. Regina and George, who had both been talking with the Liddys, rushed over.
“What’s the matter?” Regina asked. “What’s happening?”
“He took my paper,” Ava said.
“This child has been drawing filthy pictures inside this church,” said Goode. “And at a funeral, no less.”
“It is not filthy!”
The pastor handed the drawing pad to George, who took it and opened it. When he found the drawing, he closed his eyes and then opened them again, as if expecting it not to be there anymore. Regina stared at it a moment, and Ava was sure she saw wonder in her mother’s eyes, before Regina looked down at her and said, “Ava, go home.”
Ava went down the church steps and crossed the street.
“What is wrong with that child?” Vic asked, looking from George to Regina.
“We’re sorry, Maddy,” George said.
Maddy shook her head. “It aint nothing to get all upset about. Ava’s a good girl.”
“Why would she do something like that?” Vic asked. “At somebody’s funeral?”
“She don’t mean no harm,” Regina said.
“No harm?” He laughed, bitterly. “You got to be kidding me, Regina.”
“Where a girl that age learn to think like that in the first place?” Malcolm asked. “Drawing naked people? Naked men?”
“I held my tongue about that child long enough,” said Pastor Goode. “I always knew it was something not right about her—”
“Not right?” Regina asked. “Hold on, now, Pastor—”
“—but I thought as long as y’all kept her in line, she would straighten out.” He looked at the drawing again and shook his head in disgust. “But it seem like y’all aint got no control over her at all.”
“We know she wild,” George said.
“Oh, she more than wild,” said Vic. “Drawing this filth. And talking to the pastor like she did. It’s too much.”
“Y’all need to get that girl in line,” Malcolm said. “And y’all need to do it fast.”
Ava was lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, when George came in the room and said, “You gone apologize to Maddy, and to the pastor, and to everybody.”
“I aint apologizing,” Ava said.
“You gone apologize, or I’m gone whip your ass so bad you aint gone be able to sit down for a week.”
She sat up on the bed and glared at her father. “What for?”
“You know what for!” he yelled.
“It aint a filthy picture!” She yelled back. “It’s art! Every artist draws naked people.”
“I don’t give a shit what every artist do! You aint a artist, goddamnit, you a twelve year-old girl! And you ought not be drawing things like that!”
“Don’t tell me what I am,” she said. “I get to say what I am.”
The whipping was severe, worse by far than any Ava had ever gotten before. She tried not to cry this time, squeezed her eyes shut tight and clenched her teeth and willed herself not to cry, but it was no use. With every lash of the belt, pain seared through her, and it seemed to not only come from her legs and her backside, where the belt landed, but from deeper inside of her, way deep down in the places where the art came from, up under her ribs, near her heart, and in the pit of her stomach, and even lower, where she thought her ovaries must be. She felt sick when it was over, and she ran to the bathroom and vomited undigested oatmeal. The grayness of it made her want color, made her need it, and she ran into her bedroom, desperate for paint, and found her father there, gathering up her art supplies.
“You can have them back when you apologize,” George said.
She shook her head, wiped vomit from her mouth. “I’ll never apologize.”
“Well, then, you won’t never get them back.”
The next Sunday at church, everybody was talking about what Ava had done. Before the family had gotten to their seats on the fifth pew from the front, George heard pieces of three different conversations referring to the incident.
“That’s art,” he heard Lillian Morgan saying as they passed her in the vestibule. “You go into any museum and you gone see stuff like that hanging on every wall.”
“This aint a museum,” Audrey Jackson reminded her. “This a church.”
“You ever heard of the Sistine Chapel?” Lillian asked.
“I don’t know about no sixteen nothing. But I know I don’t want nobody drawing nekkid pictures of me when I’m lying dead in my coffin.”
Regina glanced at George. “Wasn’t neither one of them at the funeral. They aint even see the drawing.”
George frowned. “Most of the people in here aint see it. But I bet you they got plenty to say about it anyway.”
He wasn’t wrong. Moving through the center aisle, on their way to their seats, he heard Bobby Smith whisper, “If a daughter of mine ever did something like that, I’d kill her.”
When they got to their pew, Maddy was already there, and she rolled her eyes at them. “Y’all believe these people? It was my mother’s funeral, and I aint even upset about it. Where they get o
ff being so insulted?”
“I can understand where they coming from, Maddy,” George said. “The ones that seen it, anyway.”
Maddy waved an unconcerned hand. “That child got a gift. She ought to use it.”
Regina put her arm around Maddy’s shoulders.
Out of the corner of his eye, George saw Chuck and Lena Ellis moving along the side aisle, making their way to their usual seats. He tried not to turn his head, but couldn’t help it. He watched Chuck shaking hands with Vic Jones and wondered what opinion he might have about Ava’s drawing, whether he was among those who whispered about how George and Regina didn’t know how to control their child. It was hard for him to imagine it, because Chuck wasn’t that sort of person, or at least George didn’t think he was. They never talked anymore, never did more than exchange handshakes and polite hellos, and the obligatory shallow chit-chat when in a group, in the three years since George had made that terrible mistake at the Christmas party. George had been the one to distance himself. A few weeks after it happened, Chuck had pulled him aside during a break at the leadership meeting, and said that they were still friends, good friends, and that they shouldn’t let some drunken misunderstanding end all that. But George hadn’t been drunk, and Chuck hadn’t misunderstood him, and there was no way he could see to go back. He felt saturated with shame, wringing wet with it, every time he thought about what he’d done, every time he played over in his mind the look on Chuck’s face, the shock and disgust. Watching Chuck now, as he greeted his friends and neighbors, happy, smiling, George envied him the humiliation he didn’t have to carry around, the guilt he didn’t have to feel, the loathing of himself that he didn’t have to know. Mixed in with that envy, too, was another feeling, a longing that was ever there, a pining that would not stay away no matter how many times George chased it like a stray dog from his mind.
“You listening to me, George?”
He tore his gaze away from Chuck and blinked at Regina. “What?”
Her eyes followed the path that his had taken and she frowned when she saw Chuck at the end of it. “I was talking about Ava,” she said, returning her gaze to him. “Our daughter. Or maybe you got other things on your mind?”
The Summer We Got Free Page 21