It's All Love

by Marita Golden

  “But… do you know anyone in Arizona?”

  She shook her head. “But I'll be fine. It's not like I have much of a life here anymore.” She paused, reached for Ruth, and took her hand. “Except for you, of course.”

  Ruth looked down at her fingers entwined with Naomi's. Their skin tones blended together like they were meant to be. How was she supposed to live her life without Mahlon and now without Naomi? For just a moment she closed her eyes, talked to God. And He told her what to do.

  Slowly, she said, “Okay. Then we're going to Arizona.”

  Naomi reared back at those words. “We?”

  Ruth nodded.

  “You can't do that. Your family is here. And that great new job. Your life. It's all here.”

  Ruth paused, considered for a moment Naomi's words. And then God repeated what He had just said: Go, blessings await.

  Ruth said, “My family has each other. And my job …” She paused and thought about how long she'd worked for the promotion, then said, “I'll probably find a better job in Arizona.” She squeezed Ruth's hand. “But my life … I know my life is with you.”

  “But what are you going to do in Arizona with me? It's not like I can have another son and then raise him to marry you.”

  Ruth laughed. “Now wouldn't that be something?” But then, serious again, she said, “Anyway, I'm not thinking about that. I just know that I'm supposed to be with you.”

  Naomi's mouth was still open wide with surprise. “I don't believe this.”

  Madeline stepped from behind and took Naomi's other hand. “Believe it,” she said. “Ruth is giving you the gift of love—the kind of love that God wants from us. Naomi, you are blessed with this wonderful young woman. One of her is better than you having seven sons.”

  With watery eyes, Naomi nodded. “Then that's the way it will be.”

  RUTH HUGGED HER MOTHER one last time. “Mama, I'll call you as soon as we land.”

  Her mother nodded, but she couldn't speak through her quivering lips.

  “I promise to take care of her,” Naomi said to Ruth's mother.

  “We know you will.” Ruth's father spoke for both of them.

  It still took a moment for Ruth to turn away. She took Naomi's hand, and together they strolled into the terminal. Through the long security line they both stayed silent, each inside her thoughts. Each saying good-bye to Los Angeles and the life that to this day was all they knew.

  Ruth pressed down her rising fear. Go, blessings await. That's what she held on to. That's what she believed.

  When they settled in front of the gate, Naomi said, “Before we get on this plane, I want you to know that I won't have any problem if you change your mind and want to stay. I will still love you. I will always love you.”

  Ruth's chin jutted forward. “My place is with you.”

  “Then that's the way it will be.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Both lifted their eyes to take in the sight of the man who towered above them. He was dressed in a pilot's uniform, but that did little to hide the muscles that made him a man.

  “Ms. Naomi, is that you?”

  Naomi peered, but only for a moment before her lips spread into a smile. “Bo Gaines! Oh, my goodness.”

  He pulled her from her seat. They hugged. And Ruth stared, soaking in as much of him as she could. First, she decided that it was unfair for a man to have eyelashes like that. But it was equally unjust for him to be walking around with so many blessings on the outside. It seemed ridiculous that this man wasn't starring in somebody's major movie.

  “Ms. Naomi!” He stood back and with his light brown eyes gazed at her some more. “It's so good to see you.”

  “I didn't know you were back in Los Angeles. I spoke to your mom a few months ago; she didn't tell me.”

  “I'm not. I'm just flying through. I live in Phoenix actually.”

  “Really? That's where we're going.” She paused. “Oh, excuse me. Let me introduce you to my daughter-in-law.”

  She turned, but before she could say anything, Bo took Ruth's hand. “Wow.” Seconds passed and then: “It's nice to meet you.”

  It took Ruth a moment to recover from the electrical bolt that raced from her hand, through her arm, to her heart. Inside, she tried to shake away all that she still felt. What was that? she wondered.

  Naomi explained. “Bo was like a son to me before he and his family moved away.” She asked him, “How many years has it been?”

  “Too many. Listen, I have to get on the plane, but wait for me when we land. I'll catch up then”—he turned, stared at Ruth once more—“with both of you.”

  She was so glad that the rich Hershey color of her skin hid the heat that rose beneath. With his stare still on her, she decided that she needed to find something in her bag—her lipstick, her tissue, a quarter, something. But when he strolled away, she stopped her search and watched him. And marveled at the way he strutted to the door—like he owned the whole airline.

  “My.”

  It wasn't until her mother-in-law spoke that Ruth remembered that Naomi was there.

  She needed to say something, but there were few words that she could think of at the moment that would sound like English.

  Naomi said, “Well, I guess you liked what you saw.”

  “What?”

  “Don't what me.” Then Naomi grinned. Leaned closer to Ruth and whispered, “But the great thing is—he liked what he saw too.”

  “I—I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Oh, yes, you do.” With her smile still in place, Naomi nodded her head, as if she were responding to a voice she heard inside. “I get it now. I know why God told you to go with me to Phoenix.”

  Her skin heated again. “What are you talking about?”

  “You heard him. Bo lives in Phoenix.”

  “And?”

  “And he is going to be your husband. I'm going to make sure of it.”

  For a moment she sat in the middle of that wonderful thought. Soaked it in. Then realized that she didn't know a thing about the man. And there were other challenges as well. “First of all, how can I get married? I just lost Mahlon.”

  “Yes, dear. But, Mahlon would want both of us to go on with our lives.”

  “And second of all,” Ruth began, wishing that she weren't so interested, “how do you know that Bo isn't married?”

  “He's not. His mother told me that he broke off an engagement about a year ago. And he told his mother that it's difficult to meet women in Phoenix.” She lowered her voice, leaned closer. “I think he meant Black women.”

  Now Ruth smiled, even though she didn't want to. “Thirdly, how do you know I'm interested in him?”

  Naomi leaned back. “My asthma hasn't affected my eyes. I saw the two of you. Neither of you could help it.” Naomi's eyes shone in a way Ruth hadn't seen in months. “Mark my words. You and Bo.” She shook her head. “I'm on my way to being happy again.”

  “Flight thirty-seven to Phoenix is now ready to board.” The announcement came over the loudspeaker.

  “That's us.” Naomi stood, glanced at Ruth. “Come on, daughter, it's time for us to get on with our lives.”

  Ruth handed the attendant her ticket and then followed Naomi down the jetway. Her heart fluttered when she saw Bo standing at the door.

  “Just wanted to make sure you two made the flight,” he said to Naomi, but smiled at Ruth.

  “We're here,” Naomi said, taking Ruth's hand. “We'll be waiting for you right at the gate once we land.”

  They had moved only a few feet when Ruth glanced back over her shoulder. Bo stood at the entry to the cockpit, watching her. He tipped his hat, and for the first time she smiled at him.

  Blessings await.

  She smiled, knowing all of God's promises were true.

  A River to the Moon

  ANTHONY GROOMS

  I.N THE MOONLIGHT, the shadows seemed to twirl about the bed, and the breeze, foretelling storm, rushed in t
hrough the windows and billowed the light curtains. Jimmy Lee watched Beah's breasts bounce against her ribs; they were round and had edible color, and he could feel their movement resonate through her body and vibrate in his thighs. The air, drying up sweat, tickled like fingers on his back. His body felt like milk in a half-full milk can or water in a well bucket. She threw her head back onto the mattress and moaned and at the same time clawed his chest. For a moment his concentration waned. The wind had picked up and the branches broke the moonlight into flutters. Then the intensity began to build again, like weary legs striving toward a summit, a summit that shifted its distance and shape with each step toward it, until suddenly he was stepping on it. He fell on top of her and let out an exhausted laugh into her ear. He felt oozy, drugged, and for just a moment, he slept. Then she pulled his penis out of her, turned, and pushed her back into his side, and he rolled over and cradled his body around hers. Together, they seemed to float. The bed was a raft, and they were floating on a river of moonlight, rippled by the shadows. It was a river to refresh them and a river to carry them away.

  JUST A MONTH BEFORE, at the time of the first cutting of timothy, as he drove the rake over the mounds of cut hay, he had thought how much the smell of the hay reminded him of a woman, freshly bathed and doused with talc. Then he couldn't imagine who the woman he was daydreaming about was, though he could smell her and he could feel her weight pressing against his thighs, pressing his back into the soft mounds of the ripe timothy He wouldn't have minded if she had looked like Dinah Washington, the singer, whose picture he had seen in a magazine. She was a big woman with a pretty, round face and a wide smile. When she sang, “He's slender, but he's tender; He makes my heart surrender,” Jimmy Lee imagined she sang about him. She had been born in Tuscaloosa, just fifty miles east of where he lived, and then she had moved up to Chicago. One day he too would move up to Chicago and live in a tall building and ride on a streetcar.

  It was at that moment, the moment of that particular daydream, that Mr. Jacks, his boss man, had flagged for him. Deacon Thompson, one of the older workers, had suddenly fallen senseless, and Jacks wanted Jimmy Lee to drive him to the clinic. At the clinic, the doctor said the old man had had a stroke and he sent Jimmy Lee to find Beah, Deacon's daughter.

  It was dark and moonless when Jimmy Lee drove Beah home from the clinic, where they had waited for hours in the basement, where the colored were seen, until the nurse told them that nothing more could be done for Deacon and to go home. As they approached the house, the trees blocked out the sky on either side of the driveway, creating the effect of a bright, jeweled swath of sky directly in front and overhead of them. In the swath Jimmy recognized Jupiter, swimming against the Milky Way. He knew it was a planet and had a vague notion from pictures how it looked through a telescope.

  But he couldn't say a lot about it, except that he knew its route through the sky from observation. He knew the routes of most of the bright planets and stars even if he didn't know their names. He knew some of the bright constellations—Orion, the Big and Little Dippers from the winter sky, and the Scorpion from the summer sky. Still, most of the bright patterns remained a mystery to him. He drew his own constellations from the things he knew, not mysterious queens and monsters, but haystacks, mules, and pine trees. One thing he knew well, that the heavens were mysterious and glorious. Many a night he went to sleep with a crick in his neck from staring into the sky. One day, he thought, he would get himself a telescope, just a little one, so that he could see the mountains on the moon and the canals of Mars.

  Suddenly, a meteor streaked across the open swath. It filled him with wonder and privilege. “Did you see that?” he asked Beah.

  “What?” Beah said, distantly.

  Jimmy Lee remembered Deacon, now, and the meteor seemed a bad omen, Deacon's soul departing from earth.

  “Just a falling star.”

  “Oh.” Her voice trailed off. She had said only a few words on the half hour drive from town. She sounded tired and scared. Then her voice brightened. “Did you make a wish?”

  “Uh-uh. What you supposed to wish for?”

  “Haven't you ever heard of wishing on a star?”

  Jimmy Lee thought a moment. “I heard of wishing on a turkey bone. I didn't know you can wish on stars.”

  “On falling stars.”

  “Well, then, I wish Deacon will be all right.” He listened to Beah's breathing, strained but even.

  “That was nice of you to say.”

  “He'll be all right.”

  “I hope so,” she said, her voice getting soft and distant again. “But I don't want him to suffer. I'd rather the Lord take him quickly and not let him linger.”

  “He'll be all right. Won't he?” Jimmy Lee parked the truck in the driveway and turned off the engine.

  “I don't know. Doctor doesn't know. Only the Lord knows.”

  “Well, he will be all right.”

  Neither moved nor spoke for a while. Jimmy Lee was thinking he had never spent any time with Beah. He had seen her at the Normal School and at church, but he had never attended either often enough to know more than her name. He had always thought she was an attractive woman, full-bodied, but not heavy, and dark-skinned, but not so black that people would make fun of her. She had long hair, which he found attractive. It wasn't quite Indian hair, it was a little nappy, but she kept it pressed and twisted on her head in some style or the other. She had a clean smell about her. That was the remarkable thing, the thing he could only know by being this close to her. Even though she had been cooking all day at Maribelle's Diner, she didn't smell of fried fish or grease. She must've washed up before she left work.

  “You must be tired?” she said at last.

  “Not so much tired as hungry. I didn't get no lunch or supper.”

  Beah got out of the car. “Come on in. I'll fix you a plate. That's the least I can do.”

  He sat at the table in the large kitchen as she moved about in the lamplight. She decided aloud not to light a fire, but she found him plenty of cold foods: fried chicken and cornbread, sliced tomatoes and onion, and a tall glass of sweet tea. For dessert she gave him a slice of pound cake. As he ate and watched her move about the kitchen, taking plates from the cupboard, unwrapping and rewrapping foods as she placed them in storage tins, a sense of peace began to settle over him. Somehow, in this kitchen, he was feeling that things were the way they were supposed to be. Things had never felt this way in his own home, filled with siblings. In his own home he was always on the verge of exploding, always resisting the urge to tear everything apart because nothing was right about it. But here there was a woman preparing food in the lamplight. She had a quiet, sturdy build, and she moved lightly and confidently about the room. She smiled. She sat food in front of him. For his own part, he sat at a table and was eating with a fork and drinking from a real glass, not a jelly jar. In the center of the table was the oil lamp; next to it, ceramic hen and rooster salt and pepper shakers. At the end of the meal, he thanked her.

  Before sunrise he was in her yard again. She came down in her robe to open the door for him. He apologized for coming so early, but he said he wanted to make sure she had firewood and he would see that the chickens and pigs were fed. When he came back from feeding the animals, she invited him to sit down.

  “Don't mind if I do,” he said, not playing the customary game of politely refusing at first. She served him fried eggs, salted meat, biscuits, and a bowl of canned peaches. He ate with his mouth close to the plate, stopping once in a while to breathe and look up at her. At the end of the breakfast, he thanked her.

  “Now, if you drop me off by Mr. Jacks', I give you the pickup back,” he said.

  “How are you gon’ get about? You got a car?”

  “I can get around all right. But—” He paused and hung his head. “If I had the truck, I could get around a bit easier and be over here to help you.”

  She shook her head no, and he thought she was saying that she didn't want his
help, but then she smiled, parting her teeth and biting the tip of her tongue. “Keep the truck for now,” she said. “My work woman carries me to work.”

  The pattern continued for the next few days, supper and breakfast. She seemed to take pleasure in watching him eat her food, rarely eating much of it herself. She was around food all day at the diner, she explained. And he enjoyed talking to her, shyly at first, and then about stranger and stranger things, things he had only thought about and had never said to anyone. He told her about the various trees, about the insects that sang in the trees, about the stars that shone above the trees. In August, he told her, just a few weeks away, for a night or two, the sky would rain falling stars, great yellow streaks that sometimes fizzled and left shiny dust on your skin. This happened like clockwork, every year. In December, it would happen again, only this time the shower would be farther away and the falling stars whiter and briefer.

  On the third evening, she finally asked him, “How do you know so much?”

  “I just notice things,” he answered, biting into the peach cobbler she had made just for him. “I've always just noticed things about the outdoors.” He laughed. “Course, even when I was indoors, I was mostly outdoors—the house being nothing but a shack.”

  “I've never paid that much attention to the things right around me,” she said. “It's really funny. You know, I was good in school. A straight-A student. But I can't tell you the names of any of these trees except, of course, for oak and pine. The obvious ones. I don't even much know the names of all these flowers around here. Mama planted them years ago, and I just keep them up from time to time.”

  “Sometime,” Jimmy Lee confessed, the setting sun casting a shadow across the bridge of his nose, “I dream I'm going up into space. Like Buck Rogers or somebody. Going up and exploring the moon.”

  Beah laughed, then caught herself. For a moment her laughter sounded derisive, and he felt ashamed. “I'm sorry,” she said, and she patted his hand. She let her hand linger on his. “I'm sorry. I think it's wonderful to want to go places. But the moon!” She looked away from him, out of the window to the yard. The sunset was coloring the sheets on the clothesline. “I've just been trying all my life just to get to New York City.”