by Dorothy West
She had a seat reserved on a small plane, no more than a puddle hopper really, that left Boston at seven o’clock the next morning. She had his address; she would be at his front door by eight. The ticket in her purse was powerful evidence of the lengths to which Lute had driven her, for she was terrified of planes and had avoided them thus far in her life as if they were flying coffins. Fly to Mexico indeed, she thought. Lute had always tried to coax her into flying, and he had finally succeeded, but the flight was not going to Mexico.
Della picked up the phone and held it motionless in her hand. Then she slowly pressed it back down into its cradle unused, as she had countless times before. Enough, she thought to herself. Call him. She leaned forward in her chair, snatched at the receiver again, and dialed his number.
As the phone rang, she tried to compose herself, praying that one of the children did not pick up. She doubted it, though, late as it was. A click, and then a voice at the other end of the wire; it was Lute, and he was obviously in a good mood: his “hello” rang with childlike exuberance.
“Lute, it’s me.” Silence at the other end of the phone, and then Lute’s voice again, the same and yet completely different, dry as dust, as if he had handed the phone to a nearby stranger. Inwardly, Della quailed at the change, but she steeled herself for the coming deluge. “Lute, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to … surprise you. I’m taking a plane to the island tomorrow. I know this is last-minute, but I need a break from this wretched city.”
The blast of invective that spewed into her ear made her physically wince. It was a bellow, an enormous uncoiling of rage. Never had she heard Lute so angry, so ruthless in his threats. “I’m … I’m sorry that you feel this way,” she stammered mechanically, “but I am your wife, and I have a right to see you. It’s not fair to keep me away, and I will not—” Another blast of bile interrupted her; she held the phone away from her ear and let him rage until he was spent. “Lute, I don’t know why you suddenly hate me, what I ever did to you but try to help you, but if you want a divorce it will have to be on my terms.” Della rubbed at the black circles under her eyes. “I will see you tomorrow, and you will look me in the eye, and you will tell me how your heart could have turned to stone. And if you can do that, I will leave you and never look back.” Lute’s voice in her ear lowered in key, shifting to a softer, more soothing pitch. He pleaded with her, cajoled her, begged her with every fiber of his being to wait, to hold off for just one week, so that he could prepare for her arrival with all of the ceremony it deserved.
But Lute’s whimpering, conjuring up as it did visions of past days when power was firmly in her hands, only firmed her resolve. She spoke tersely into the receiver. “Lute, I will see you tomorrow morning, and that’s final.” With numb resolve, she listened as he mounted another verbal assault, but before he could get very far she did something she had never done before. She hung up on him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The morning of the wedding broke cool and clear. The sun was still too low to burn off the sprinkling of dew that dusted the grass around Addie Bannister’s cottage, and the only sounds that broke the still air were the excited voices of Barby and Muffin packing their bags for a day on the beach with their new-found friends from across the Oval and Jezebel’s sniffing as she explored the treasure trove of smells that were to be found under the front porch.
The sun rose higher now, slipping through the stately trees in the park, dappling the grass with pale green places which highlighted the richer green of the shaded areas.
The Ovalites were coming awake. Baths were being run by the fastidious who bathed on arising, the conspiring odors of bacon and coffee were speeding up, the babies were beginning their demands, some cheerfully, some tearfully, and the women, with the wedding now only hours away, were groaning as they tried on girdles and high heels, and giving short answers to any query not concerned with clothes.
The onrushing sounds of the Oval filtered through the window to Lute’s daughter’s bedroom, and Tina awoke with a start, momentarily alarmed at finding herself alone in the room. As she drifted up from sleep into fuller consciousness, she remembered the outing her sisters had planned the day before. Barby and Muffin loved the beach, but Tina did not share their enthusiasm, preferring instead to spend her days in the orbit of next door’s mother, even though it meant enduring the company of her two sons, Drew and Jaimie. Drew, twelve and dark-skinned, barely acknowledged Tina’s presence, and Jaimie, nine and fair-skinned, acknowledged her presence by teasing and tormenting her. He was the devil of the family. He tried hard to be good so that he could get to ten, but he was so mischievous that his mother was sometimes afraid he wouldn’t make it. Next door’s mother seemed to favor Drew over Jaimie, but Barby told Tina that was just because she was afraid Jaimie would pass and break her heart.
Tina kicked off her sheets and stretched her stubby, nut-brown legs. She noticed that the sunlight pouring through the window was brighter than it usually was when she got out of bed. She wondered why, and she also wondered why her daddy had not called her down for breakfast the way he usually did. Shouldn’t Barby and Muffin have come back already? Rubbing her eyes, she rolled out of bed and padded to the top of the stairs.
Peering between the banisters into the living room below, Tina saw her father sitting on the edge of the sofa, arms crossed. He was rocking slightly back and forth, and he had a funny look on his face that she did not recognize. “Daddy?” she cried out querulously.
Lute looked up, a tight smile on his face. “Good morning, sleepyhead. Don’t you worry about anything. Everything’s going to be just fine.” He resumed his rocking.
Tina felt a twinge in the pit of her belly. Until her father spoke, she had been unaware that there was anything for her to worry about. She pressed her face between two wooden banisters and regarded him solemnly. “What do you mean, Daddy?” she squeaked.
This time Lute did not look up. “Nothing’s going to stop this family from getting what it deserves,” he said. “You’re going to have a new mother soon to take care of you, and to make sure you grow up right.”
Tina’s face brightened and her eyes grew wide. Her little behind bumped up and down in excitement. “Really, Daddy, really? Who is it? Oh, tell me it’s next door’s mother.” Tina held her breath.
Lute rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Now, you know as well as I do that Mrs. Goodwin has a family of her own to keep her occupied. But Shelby Coles doesn’t, and she’s going to make you the best mommy in the whole wide world.”
Tina had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. She did not know the name on her father’s lips, but she knew whose name it wasn’t. Next door’s mother had been the source of all her happiness that summer and, until her father’s words, the repository of all her hope. When next door’s mother looked down at her, her smile was full and real, not like the smiles of the other mothers, smiles that never made it to their eyes, and barely made it to their mouths.
Suddenly Lute jerked his body around to the door; they heard the sound of a car turning up the gravel path that led to the front of the cottage. Lute snapped to his feet and faced the door. He clenched and unclenched his fists, leaning slightly forward on the balls of his sandaled feet as if bracing for the charge of an onrushing animal. His body was a coiled spring. A car door opened and closed, and the clipped crunch of high heels coming up the gravel walk grew louder.
“Tina, get to your room. Right now.” Lute did not take his eyes from the door. Something in her father’s voice brooked no argument. Tina scampered to her feet and ran back to her room, cowering behind the door and pressing her ear tightly against the painted wood.
Della had arrived. In the very act of coming openly into the Oval, she had sacrificed everything and turned Lute’s own threat of exposure against him. She would have nothing now if she did not hold Lute. They were both fighting lost battles, neither one willing to admit their positions were hopeless. To Lute, Shelby was still no man’s
wife. To Della, Lute was still legally her husband.
When she walked through the door, Lute glowered at her ominously and pointed his finger over her shoulder.
“You should have told that cab to stay and keep the meter running, because you are turning around and going right back to the airport and taking the next flight back to Boston.”
“I am doing no such thing,” Della said haughtily, putting her bags down on the floor. “I did not risk my life flying to this accursed piece of sand just to turn around and leave. I am at least going to spend the night.”
Lute raked his hands through his hair and pulled them down over his eyes. He stared at her through splayed fingers. “Why are you here, Della?” he growled. “Do you even know yourself? You think you can beg a man to be in love with you? Threaten him to be in love with you? Why don’t you just let go, and get on out of here before you make more of a fool of yourself than you already have.”
Della’s face crumbled and turned ugly, the pure ugliness of a woman who has lost everything, a woman who has offered up all she has and been found wanting. She snarled at him like a cornered dog that had been kicked once too often. “The entire plane ride I kept thinking about the call you made the first night you got here. Remember those words? I believed you, you bastard. I waited for you. I’m not leaving this island until I see for myself what it was that poisoned your head so fast and turned your heart to ice.”
Lute looked at his watch. It was ten minutes after ten. He had fifty minutes to get Della to the airport or all his lies about having already divorced her would float to the surface like drowned bodies. Della may have given Lute teasing glimpses of upper-class life among whites, but with Shelby he could share the same existence, only openly, with his daughters a part of it. He would not let this woman ruin everything he had worked for all summer, for himself and his family. “Della, please. You shouldn’t have come. There’s nothing for you to see here. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“What’s wrong?” she mocked, her blue eyes blazing. “You act as if you were ashamed of me. You mean you haven’t been bragging on me? You haven’t been telling this island all about me? Are they going to be surprised to learn that you are still very much a married man?” She bent over, picked up her suitcases, and started to walk to the stairs.
With a low snarl of desperate rage, Lute hurled himself at her. She dropped her bags and clawed at his face with her nails, furrowing long red trails into his cheeks, but he fought his way through her arms and pinned them to her sides. He stuck his jaw in her face. Sweat dripped from his nose. “If you don’t get off this island right now, I’m going to kill you, you hear me? I am not messing around, woman,” he hissed quietly, the veins in his neck bulging. “I’ll kill you and feed you to the crows.”
Della drew up a wad of spit and hawked it in his face. It hit his chin dead on and ran off onto the floor. “As long as I am still your wife, you have no right to order me around. How easily you forget who paid for this cottage. I’ll leave when I’m damn ready.” As she spoke, Lute ratcheted her pinioned arms back sharply, putting excruciating pressure on her shoulders. She drew in a sharp breath, eyes closed tight against the pain. “Let go of me, nigger.”
Releasing one of Della’s hands, Lute hauled back and laid a brutal open-handed slap across her face. She partially blocked the blow, but it still struck her with enough force to send her sprawling to the floor, where she lay, momentarily dazed. With a savage effort, she raised her head off the ground. Flecks of blood mottled her lips. “I’ll see you put in jail for that, chair maker,” she hissed, her voice rising to a screech on the last word.
Tina huddled behind her bedroom door, her hands pressed to her ears, her mind blank with fear. This was the way Barby had told her Daddy acted with mothers sooner or later, but before now she had never believed her. The quarreling below grew more bitter. Tina did not know what to do, but she knew that she could not stay in the house a minute longer. She had been drawing a picture for next door’s mother and could wish no better time to present it. The expected hug and kiss and gentle stroking of her hair would quiet her palpitating heart. Throwing caution to the wind, she opened her bedroom door, scampered down the stairs, pushed open the screen door, and sprinted out onto the lawn. Neither Lute nor Della noticed her run past.
Blind instinct guided Tina down the hill to the safety of next door mother’s house. Tina knew she didn’t want a mother named Shelby Coles, and she knew she didn’t want a mother named Della. What she wanted was a smiling brown mother like the woman next door.
Lute stood over Della, arm raised. “Don’t make me slap you again,” he yelled. She wouldn’t. He had slapped her more than enough, had beaten her into stunned submission. He snatched at the front of her blouse and jerked her teetering to her feet. Grabbing her bags with one hand, Lute shoved her toward the door. Sullenly, but without argument or resistance, she allowed herself to be led to his car, a midnight-blue 1949 DeSoto. He took her bags and put them in the trunk, and she stood unsteadily in front of the passenger-side door. Closing the trunk, he looked at her impatiently. “Get in,” he snapped. “It’s unlocked.” She obeyed, slumping down in the soft leather seat.
Lute had used his car so infrequently that summer that he was worried it would not start, but the engine caught immediately. Pressing hard on the gas pedal, he backed out of the driveway with a lurch, then threw the gearshift into drive and shot forward down the grassy lane.
On this too-early hour on this day of all days the mother next door was totally unready for a visitor. Reluctantly, she had tried on the dress she had bought for the wedding months before, some sixth sense telling her that she had gained weight beyond its capacity to hold her inside it. Her doubt was soon borne out, and in her understandable agony she was totally unable to take time with a child who did not know what real agony felt like.
For the first time in their loving relationship, her voice was impatient; her face had no trace of a smile. “I’m very busy today, Tina. You go play with your sisters. I’m sure they’re not far.”
Mutely, Tina handed her the crayon drawing of a smiling brown woman, not knowing what else to do with it, and quickly left the house. Then, not knowing why—perhaps because it had watched her defeat, perhaps to release some unbearable pain inside herself—she picked up a fair-sized stone and threw it at her dog Jezebel to make her yelp in the same way next door’s mother had made her yelp inside herself.
She was immediately sorry, and she ran after him— unseen on one side of Lute’s moving car just as Lute suddenly saw the dog on the other side. Lute swerved to avoid the dog, and at the same time he heard Tina’s wrenching scream.
As if underwater, he drove both feet into the brake, his mouth curled open in a moan of dumb despair. The wheels locked. The car slowed, but not enough. Tina’s waiflike body soared up with eerie grace, head back, arms out. She seemed to hang in the air at the top of her body’s arc, frozen against the soft summer sunlight flickering through the trees. Then, like a marionette with its strings cut, she fell to the ground.
Tina died in the nest of next door’s mother’s arms, too numb with pain to feel it or know she was dying, she who did not even know that children could die before they grew up to be like real people. Next door’s mother held her to her breast, sobbing softly, clutching in one hand her crumpled crayon drawing.
Barby and Muffin heard the sound of their sister’s scream from a distance and they ran to the road and to the sight of their father standing slack-jawed, arms straight at his side. They gathered around him and stared down at Tina. Muffin, young enough to still know what life meant but too young yet to know what death meant, stared in silent incomprehension, but Barby understood. Tina wanted a brown mother like next door’s mother. Brown mothers hugged you a lot and made you laugh a lot. White mothers made you feel sorry and sad. Barby began to cry. “You know how to make her stop dying. Make her stop dying. Make her stop dying. Don’t you love her? Don’t you love her? She’
s my sister. I know it scares her to be dying. I don’t know how to make her stop dying. Oh, Daddy, please.” She looked at her father wildly. “You don’t like mothers. You make them die. All Tina wanted was a mother and you made her die to make her stop saying it.” She began to beat Lute’s legs with both fists.
Lute started to cry. He had not cried since he was a child. At first he cried for his children, and then he cried for himself.
A crowd began to form around the car, and soon it swelled to encompass almost every family in the Oval. Suddenly, a woman pushed her way through the crowd from the edge of the road. It was Shelby. In a single glance, she absorbed the scene in front of her—Lute’s white wife huddled inside the car, Lute with his daughters, two alive and one dead. A roiling fireball of rage and grief engulfed her, and she sank to her knees, hands drawn involuntarily to her mouth. The scales had fallen from her eyes. All of Lute’s words about remaining true to one’s race, all his subtle slurs, his sly digs, all were lies, pretexts. All of his deception and envy had led to this: the death of an innocent, a small girl who wanted a mother more than anything else in the whole world. Shelby could only thank God that it was not too late for her and Meade. Color was a false distinction; love was not.