by Bill Harris
When she closed her bedroom door behind her all she wanted was to get that girdle off and get over in her lonely bed and not think about cowboys or galloping stallions, burning beds, walking time bombs, trust, jazz band-stalking heifers, orphans, or hurt, but just to dream about Peck with his roving self.
Vienna wondered, if it wasn’t for Peck, if she would be fool enough to take on the task of jumping down in that volcano in the heart of Branch Ottley, and leading him out, like a fireman rescuing a victim from a burning building.
That burning building was what Reverend Leonard talked and shouted about in his sermons. What it was was a burning place for 99 and 44/100% of the colored men she knew anything ’bout. Need for redemption, or self-forgiveness for something that wasn’t their fault, was as close in words as a woman could get trying to describe what it was to be one of their men. Most men couldn’t say it in words either. But it was on them.
Peck, with his trumpet-blowing self, didn’t know just what a lucky, bowlegged, cleft-chinned, brown-skinned Negro he was. If he did he’d be on his knees somewhere at that minute thanking something on High, instead of where he probably was, on his knees trying to make his point on a pair of spotted bones, bless him. But he had freed himself from it, and his expression of it he put in notes squeezed nightly through his little brass horn. That was what made him so able to give love, and why it was such a joy to give it back to him.
Branch Ottley hadn’t found his way of expressing, have mercy on him. Unless it was through dispensing pain when he was provoked. And if that was it and he didn’t find a way to temper it, there would be a heap of Old Testament suffering before it was done.
And it was going to take more than just him alone looking to find it.
Then, her mind skipping around like a pinball, she thought about the bond between Pearl and Son. For the entire time she had known them, she had never been less than fascinated by them, separately or together. She was also amazed by how much of what the world was to him was shaped by his mother’s view of it, and yet how independent he was. Was that because of how Pearl didn’t encourage him to cling to her, or because of his personality?
Vienna wondered again what kind of mother—or even wife—would she be, what would she give? It made her admire Pearl all the more and think what it must be like to be her. And laying there in the dark, a wave of love for Peck lit her up like sunshine. She realized again that what Pearl had been telling Son on that first day and every day since was what he needed to know if he was to ever have to do without her.
It was into the early a.m. before she quit her tossing, her pulse settled, her mind regulated again into its normal reliability of the milkman’s horse, and with the first rays of the morning sun, alone in her bed, she thought to herself with a smile that it was a good thing at least one of them had come to their senses. And after a fitful half hour or forty-five minutes of sleep, she rose, bathed, ate, and straightened her usual number of heads of hair.
Peck was steady as the insurance man coming to collect, she told herself, and she wasn’t going to let herself forget it.
After that night she and Branch still went to the pictures on Thursday evenings and didn’t change their seats at Potluck’s table. They partnered at bid whist for match sticks, but they avoided being alone otherwise and they never spoke of that moment on the side porch, though it followed Vienna, whining on the back stoop of her nerves like a not yet weaned pup.
But it was many a day standing, doing a head of hair, that her mind wandered to what kind of woman he needed, biblical-big as his burden was. It sure wasn’t some young girl who’d come directly into and up in the church from her mama and daddy’s house. He needed somebody who’d traveled some of the by-ways, even a few back alleys on her journey before she’d settled her hips into a regular routine of every Sunday morning in the same pew. At best that heavy lifting job would be undertaken, if he was lucky—and why would that be assumed—by some woman, a woman who had Job’s patience and Solomon’s wisdom. Any woman short of that he’d melt down and scorch like a marshmallow charred by a blowtorch.
Heaven help them both.
23
Ada
1941
July 8, ’40
. . . Another new arrivee. A girl named Ada Mayhew. Pretty. She had problems somewhere and somebody sent her here.
V
Ada was a pretty girl. A woman-child, oil-black hair, curly as a Brillo pad, but fine as cobwebs. Like one of those Filipina or Polynesian women, or one of them in one of those Technicolor places with fruit everywhere that you see in the National Geographic, where it was all right, according to them, to show the women bare-breasted like they was something in a zoo or something. Ada showed up with a note from somebody, and Potluck put her on the third floor in the room next to Vienna’s. There was no explanation of where she came from. “She’ll be staying here,” Potluck said at dinner. “She’ll be going to school and helping out with the cleaning, cooking, washing and all that. Her name is Ada Mayhew.”
She was sixteen, with a slight squint that gave her a look of almost sadness, but interest too. When the sun hit her just right she was the color of a brand-new penny. Or she might have been a gypsy for that matter. Kind of stocky, but built up nice. Men and women were well aware of how nicely she was built. She would one day, way before her forties, go to fat, women thought when they saw her. Some of that was wishful thinking. There was a silence about her, but she liked bracelets and necklaces with little charms that made tiny tinkling sounds when she moved.
“Men like me,” Ada apologized to Vienna one Thursday when Ada was in the shop, and Vienna was washing her hair. She couldn’t help how they felt, Ada said. And neither could they, Vienna thought. Just by being Ada she made men wipe at their mouths because they wanted to taste her—for a start. There were certain women who wanted to hold her, stroke her in a motherly, or other, way.
Turned out Ada didn’t help Potluck around the house all that long because Pearl discovered Ada had a hand for sewing, and she became Pearl’s assistant seamstress and apprentice. Pearl had, by that time, opened a little, narrow shop in a space that Chap owned. Vienna thought Potluck turned Ada over to Pearl as much to keep the boys and men of 560 off her as anything.
Ada and Son took to one another right away. Maybe it was that quiet thing in them that attracted people to them that attracted them to each other. Maybe it was their being young and closer in age than anybody else in the house. Maybe it was their being something in them that neither of them could explain, or help, that they hoped the other could help them put a name to. Maybe it was just male and female.
Ada watched Son. Saw he was smart. Smart in what he knew and in how he got to know it. Every radio program he listened to raised questions and he’d figured the trick of asking two people who would likely have different opinions the same questions and listen to them discuss it to get a wider view. Son especially liked the quiz programs. He deflected any praise or wonder at his ability to quickly and accurately answer the more difficult questions, but was self-critical when he did not know. It became apparent to Ada that he was in competition only with himself.
The other thing he could do, and what she liked best, was he was very good at imitating anyone he heard broadcast during the day. Pearl’s favorites were Orson Welles and Eleanor Roosevelt. Ada liked Mortimer Snerd and Charlie McCarthy.
That especially tickled Tinhouse too. That and the best jokes and songs Son reported on at the dinner table.
Aug 12, ’40
. . . Son has somebody his own age to be with, not that he considers himself a teenager . .
V
Ada was a pretty child and not nearly as innocent as she might look, and Pot and Chap knew prevention was better than cure. Separately, without one knowing the other was doing it, they had had a word with all the men in 560 about Ada. Each one they talked to gave assurance that they had better sense than that.
Chap was told more than once that Son was the one needed wat
ching when it came to Ada. He was beating everybody’s time as far as she went. They laughed, acknowledging the truthfulness of it. They also all watched how Pearl was watching her son and Ada.
Oct 23, ’40
. . . Over the course of the fall they’ve gone from playing brother and sister to becoming fast friends. Everybody is watching Pearl watch them. We were sitting on the porch the other night trying to catch the last of the good weather and she said to me how she wasn’t any fool who believed she was going to live forever. And she knew he was going to need somebody. It was the first time she’s ever said anything like that—to me anyway.
You know me. It just made me think about you, and how much I love you. Enough of that for now . . .
Ada watches Son as he listens, absorbed in the radio.
Sometimes he sits close to it with his hand on its side. He touches it the way he lays his hand on his mama’s arm when they walk—the way it lays on Ada’s too. I guess it is because of the warmth from the orange tubes, or maybe the smoothness of the lacquered finish.
Hitler is a stark raving fool. I hope they can stop him over there and we don’t have to get into it.
Enough of THAT for now . . .
I guess the shocking news is that Reverend Leonard suddenly announced his retirement. Surprised everybody. He hasn’t given a real explanation, just said it was time.
V
“I wrote something,” Ada said.
“What?” Son asked. “Homework?”
“No. Something for you. Want to hear it?”
He could hear her straightening out the sheets of paper on her lap and her bangles.
“It’s silly,” she said.
“Read it.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Please.”
“Okay. You said please.” She read, “‘I like the way we can just sit and touch each other and breath in sequence.’ See, I told you it was silly.”
“It’s not. Is there more?”
“‘I like that you know everything, and that you are so gentle. And when we talk that I just lose myself and I can be like I used to be. You are my escape. When you’re with me you aren’t with anybody else. And there isn’t anybody but me and you.’”
Dec 28, 1940
The year is almost gone and you’ve only been gone two days and it feels like six months . . . Everything is just rushing so fast and that fool Hitler is determined to horn in on everybody’s territory.
Listening to Shaw’s “Frenesi.” Nice arrangement by your boy Grant Still. Makes me think about us wandering down to old Mexico with the moon shining bright. Don’t let any of these American señoritas catch your eye—you’re mine all mine.
Love,
V
“You make me smile,” Son said.
Yes, she could see him, she told him.
Son and Ada in her room with the door closed. It wasn’t that unusual to hear them in her room or his. They might be listening to the radio, or whispering and laughing, or her reading to him, or him telling her stories of what he’d heard on the radio that day.
“Men like me,” she said.
He liked her, he told her.
“You’re just a boy.”
“Am I?”
“It’s a curse,” she said, her bangles ting-tinkling.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t call me stupid. You don’t know as much as you think you do,” she said.
“About what?”
“What people do.”
“I know what men and women do if that’s what you’re talking about.”
“How?”
“When I was little. A place. Where men came for the women.”
“Was your mama one of them?”
“She took care of the women. Saw after them. I helped.”
“Doing what?”
“Emptying pans, fetching.”
“You might’ve heard about it, but I did it. It was done to me. Because there’s a curse on me.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“He told me I was pretty.”
“I told you that.”
“You can’t even see me,” she said, knowing better. She said, “He liked to touch me, and liked me to touch him.”
“And you let him?”
Her charms went quiet.
“You’re the one who’s stupid. I didn’t let him. He did it.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
“Yes he did.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“He didn’t beat me or anything if that’s what you think.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You want to know one thing I did?”
“You want me to?”
“Let me show you,” she said.
“Why?”
“To see if you like it.”
“I don’t count.”
“Yes you do—Okay?”
The sound was of their fumbling and making small sounds as her bangles ting-tinkled. Then he said, “We better stop.”
The ting tinkling continued.
She said, “See? He said it gave him pleasure—You like it?”
“You?”
She sniffled. “Not with him.” She sniffled again, several times. Sucking back tears and snot. “Did you do it before?”
“Yes,” he said.
“With who?”
“A long time ago.”
“One of the women?”
His not saying that it wasn’t was saying that it was.
“Did you tell?”
“I’m telling you.”
“Does your mama know?”
“It’s okay if you liked it too,” he said.
She asked, “But did you like it too?”
There was a long silence before he said in a voice like he was smoothing the wrinkles from a bedspread, “Your tears are salty.”
Her light laugh echoed her bangles. “So is your sweat,” she said, almost singing.
“I wanted to give you pleasure,” she said.
He didn’t say anything for a minute, and then he said—“Don’t you see me smiling?”
June 16, 1941
Ada is Pearl’s sewing assistant. She’s real handy with a needle and thread. She’s real helpful, but I think Pearl does it some to keep an eye on her and to keep her away from Son. But it’s too late for that, if you know what I mean.
V
Another time Ada said, “You know what else?”
“What?”
“I had a baby.”
He touched her shoulder, then her cheek.
“And I only gave it titty one time. It has already forgot me. I know it.”
He waited through her pause as he wiped away a tear.
“It’s going to be out in the world and won’t even know its mama. They won’t even tell it my name. So it can’t ever find me.”
“It doesn’t need to know your name to think about you, though.”
“Yes it does.”
“I think about lots of stuff I don’t know the name of.”
“That’s not the same. What you’re talking about is things. I’m talking about a flesh and blood baby, come out of me. Soft and sucking, but that I couldn’t give titty but one time. It won’t ever think of me.”
“Don’t you think I think about my daddy that I don’t know.”
“You said he was dead.”
“She said, but I’m not sure.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “And if he isn’t he doesn’t even know my name. I think about him all the time. Wouldn’t know his touch or his smell if he was right here right now.”
“Maybe that’s why I think about my baby. Even more than I would if I knew all about him.”
. . . The Reverend Cook Richardson & company arrived. He’s going to be the new preacher at church. He reminds me of Cab Calloway. A big time showman . . .
Things are changing so fast . . .
V
“Miss Pearl knows,” Ada said.
“Knows what?” Son asked.
“That you’re not just hers anymore.”
He found her hand. Held it.
. . . Son is growing up so it’s hard to remember the little boy he was when they got here. You won’t recognize him next time you see him.
Don’t forget that I Love You Peck Morris.
V
24
An Official Part of History
“What kind of boy were you?” Son asked.
Branch said, “My mother said she saw will and determination in the way I learned my lessons and shied away from the other children, except for one boy there. At the start that friendship was as much a standoff as a friendship. But it was something we each recognized in the other. That and we both loved animals—and fairness. So we could relax with each other.”
Branch watched strangers meeting Son for the first time. Often they tried to talk to him like being blind meant that he didn’t have good sense. Branch would see them thinking he was a fool, and then get put in their place. By the time Son got through with them their mouths would be hanging open and they’d be scratching their heads, wondering what just happened. But one thing for sure, they had learned something, something about the world, or themselves, or something. After, they were some ways different, that was guaranteed.
That, Branch knew, was because Son had so much common sense, more even than most old, grizzled people. Probably Branch included.
Neither Son nor Pearl thought being blind had any bearing on what the boy could do. If he didn’t do it, his attitude said, it was because he didn’t want to, didn’t need to, didn’t have to, or just hadn’t gotten around to it. Not that different than Branch’s adopted family had made him feel about himself.
His mama, Pearl, was a handsome woman and a good mother. Among the three best Branch’d ever seen, including his two. But good as she was she was a woman and a mother and the boy needed a man to fill in the other parts of him. Son knew it and spent as much time as he could with the other men of the house, sopping up what he could from them as he did with everything. The boy was like a cactus in that. And was as curious as a cat. He demanded information. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t ask, and he took it all to heart, which was why Branch took time with and had serious interest in the boy.