The plants weren’t the half of it. It was the lamps, the power to fuel them. But maybe MawMaw knew there was something on the horizon of his life; maybe she could divine he was on the verge of something greater, and maybe she couldn’t determine the shape of it, but she could see its outline, she could estimate its weight.
“It’s cool,” T.C. nearly whispered.
“What? That’s it?”
T.C. nodded.
Tiger paused.
“All right then,” Tiger said after a minute. “All right then, dawg. That lil’ boo musta gave you what you needed ’cause you was trippin’ this morning. I thought that place had turned you out, dawg.”
“When were you thinking we could start?” T.C. asked.
“Today, my nigga. I got my contact who sell the seeds. They got the ride and everything. They’ll come right over.”
“Call him then,” T.C. got up for the bathroom. He remembered MawMaw, the pad bulging in her pants, the loose shirt sneaking down past her shoulder blade. He shook the image out of his head. At least when they reup’ed he could roll a blunt. He and Tiger could sit on his patio like old times stuffing their faces with Domino’s slices, or maybe they’d stay in, play Mario Kart. He had won a bronze trophy before he left, and he might as well start making plays for silver.
Evelyn
Summer 1944
A few weeks after the dinner, Evelyn sat in her bedroom finishing her homework, when Ruby stormed in.
Evelyn asked what was wrong, but she didn’t look up. She didn’t imagine anything substantive could be the matter. Ruby had Andrew, she had Daddy’s approval, what more did she need?
Ruby mumbled something, but Evelyn didn’t understand it and instead of digging further, she started preparing for bed.
“He’s leaving me,” Ruby repeated, this time belting it out across the room.
“Oh,” Evelyn said, with more emotion than she’d given her previous comment but far less than the situation might have appeared to require. She was surprised, and then she wasn’t. The more she’d gotten to know Andrew, the more it seemed he was a sensible type of guy. She didn’t understand what had taken him so long to see her sister wasn’t his equivalent. On the other hand, everything had been going so well.
“You’re not going to say anything else?” Ruby asked. “You’re just going to stand there and finish undressing.”
Evelyn sighed. “Was it another girl, Ruby?”
“What?” Ruby hustled up behind her. “If it was another girl, you think I’d be here crying? I’d be out somewhere screaming, I might even be swinging, but I wouldn’t be crying.”
Is that so? Evelyn wanted to say. She remembered Ruby in the exact same position when old Langston had strayed, but Evelyn only nodded and said, “Okay then.”
Ruby got tired of waiting for a proper response and threw her handkerchief down on the floor.
“He’s going to the war,” she said, her words sputtering out, except for the last word, war, which sealed the rest of them together.
Evelyn looked up then. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, so now you’re cooking with gas. What do you think I mean? He’s going to war. He’s leaving in a couple weeks. He may never come back. What else do you need to know, Evelyn? Looks like those are the only few details that matter.”
Mother opened the door then, gleaned the problem from Ruby’s display, and wrapped her arms around her child.
“That’s okay now, my pretty baby; ah, la pauv’ piti.”
Evelyn felt sick witnessing her sister being comforted, and when Mother whispered for Evelyn to get a towel, she was happy to oblige.
Mother smiled when Evelyn handed it over, and Evelyn smiled back. She’d held a tender spot in her heart for the woman since the dinner, and a repulsion toward her father that couldn’t be tamed. It was as if all her affection toward him had shifted over to Renard. Her beau’s naïve belief that her father approved of him, his security in it, only made her love him more.
She left her mother and Ruby to mope and went out on the porch. She could hear Brother and his friends playing cops and robbers a block away. It was summer, and the orange nasturtiums and red zinnias bloomed across the street on the porch beside Miss Georgia’s rocking chair. Evelyn had already met Renard that day on North Claiborne, but some nights when he needed to see her sooner than the following afternoon, he came for her here. He’d walk by the house, kneel behind the petunia tree, and whistle. They’d walk the few blocks to a bench and though they scarcely did more than kiss, she’d been tending an irrepressible urge to allow him to make a woman out of her. Even tonight as she waited, she wondered if this night would be the one.
She dallied on the swing almost an hour—the full heat of daytime had become unbearable, but the cool night breeze felt nice on her skin. When he didn’t come, she told herself he was probably with Andrew, and she went back inside. Ruby was asleep; her mother had retired upstairs. Evelyn stood over her sister, stared at her, trying to glimpse a change. What happened to the face of a broken woman? Did it turn to convey the loss or did it conspire with her heart to hide it? Looking at her, she thought it was the former. She remembered seeing Ruby so crumpled only when she was a toddler and their mother would leave her. Now as an adult, Evelyn felt genuine sympathy for her for the first time in her life. She sat on the edge of Ruby’s bed and stroked her hair, but when Ruby stirred, Evelyn retreated back to her own corner of the room, back to her own life.
The next morning she went out in search of Renard. It was a Saturday, and she thought he’d told her he’d be working at the French Quarter restaurant that weekend. She chose one of her Sunday dresses, pinned her hair up, and dabbed a touch of lipstick on her cheek for color the way she’d seen Ruby do. Aside from Andrew, she had never been introduced to anyone in his life before, and she wanted to make a good impression.
She walked to North Claiborne, then St. Bernard, stood amid the mothers buying snap peas and chickens for their evening meal, the bakers unloading mounds of white bread. She stepped onto the bus. It was so crowded the whites were seated in the Negro section. Evelyn didn’t mind standing though, not today. The closer she got to her stop, the more excited she became. She could see Renard through the restaurant window before the bus came to a complete stop. She watched him while she waited for the whites to disembark. He didn’t even know she was there. He moved in a steady rhythm, bending down to pack boxes, taping them, lifting them and stacking them in a large pile. An air of peace shone through him while he worked, almost as if he had merged with the movement itself and they were bound together on some mission that surpassed what lay ostensibly before him. She didn’t want to interrupt him; she didn’t want to interrupt something so sacred; she would say hello quickly, then head back home. She stepped off the bus and walked toward him. She was only a few feet away when a policeman approached the restaurant window. He tapped on it loudly until Renard came out, then he shouted, “There’s some trash from your store in the street, boy. Old fruit and the such. It’s starting to stink.”
“I’m mighty sorry, sir. Mighty sorry.” Renard bent his head for the officer in front of him. “I’ll have someone clean it right away.”
The officer smiled, a slow stretch across his face that felt more malicious than joyful. “Is that right, boy? You’ll have someone see to it?” His smile stretched even wider, and he leaned into the backs of his polished black shoes. “Just who do you think you are, boy?”
“No, sir, I mean, yes, sir, I’ll see to it myself right away, sir.”
“That’s more like it, boy. That’s more like it.” The officer stepped back and watched Renard fumble through the street, lifting particles of trash near the store and even stray bottles from the billiard room next door. When he was done, he wiped his hands on his white apron and walked back over to the police officer, reached in his pocket, and slipped him a bill of cash. T
he officer yanked it from his hand, and it was Renard who said thank you. He watched the officer walk off until he was out of sight, then he ducked back into the shop.
Evelyn would have gone in then. Renard went back to hunching over the boxes, oblivious to the fact that she’d seen him, and she longed to touch him, join him in his oblivion. Each time a box hit the dolly, she started toward him. She told herself she should go at that very moment, but something glued her to the road, and when finally he went out to check the street once more for litter, she ran away so she wouldn’t be seen.
Evelyn didn’t see Renard again until a couple of days later, and she had to run into him in front of the Sweet Tooth, the way the insurance man would meet her neighbors out in their driveways sometimes. After she left the restaurant the other day, she waited for him on her swing but he never came. She wondered if it had something to do with that officer, the way he’d spoken to Renard, but Evelyn didn’t have reason to believe the officer didn’t speak to him that way every day. Why would one encounter effect change? Still, she was glad she hadn’t revealed her presence. She hadn’t been embarrassed for him, only sad. If he knew she was there, though, he’d be embarrassed for himself, and he might not be able to recover.
Now, the way he was standing, with his hands in his pocket and his head down as if he didn’t have every pure thing in the world ahead of him, she wondered if it was her Renard, or if she was seeing visions. Of course it was him. She approached him slowly. When he caught sight of her, there was only faint recognition.
He nodded at her instead of speaking.
She tugged at his arm. “Renard, where have you been? I’ve been so worried about you.”
“Nothing to worry about, girl.” He smiled a distant smile.
“What do you mean, ‘nothing to worry about’? You were supposed to come by yesterday, and the day before that. Where were you?”
He looked off to the side. His eyes appeared misty, not as if he had been crying, but as though he had obscured them to avoid seeing. “Look, Andrew and I been busy with some things. I just didn’t get to it.”
“You didn’t get to it?” Everyone around them turned to stare, but she barely noticed her voice rising. She lifted her hands to pummel them into his chest, and only then did he really seem to see her. His face sort of softened then, but she wasn’t sure, there was so far he had to go. “What is it, baby?” she asked.
He pulled her by the wrist behind him. They walked for seven blocks before they slowed, then turned down several roads in a confusing wind. When he finally stopped in a secluded street she hadn’t known existed, he let go of her hand. He lifted both of his own, then dropped them at his side, like a balloon expanding and deflating.
“I’m going to the war,” he said.
Evelyn sighed. After his behavior she had been expecting worse, though when she thought about it now, there wasn’t a worse scenario she could pick out and name. No, this was as bad as she could fathom. She shook her head, wanting to bar the news from penetrating. “But that means you can’t come by? That means you forget about me?”
He sighed, a deep heavy release. “I didn’t forget about you, Evelyn. I could never forget about you. But I wanted you to forget about me. They’re starting to let more Negroes fight now. I may not come back, and if I do, who knows what shape I’ll be in? Andrew’s brother lost his legs. He ain’t no use for nobody.” He talked in a matter-of-fact manner as if he were explaining to someone how he cracked the chickens’ necks each Saturday.
“Well, can’t you tell them things changed? You’re a student now, and of medicine. I thought if you showed proof of your studies, you could—”
“Even if it did work—” he paused. “I didn’t want to worry you, but the money Andrew’s mama was giving me didn’t come through this semester, so I’m not a student. So there’s no excuse.”
Evelyn didn’t say anything for a while. What was there to say?
“I could talk to my daddy,” she started. “He’ll know his way out of this. He always has a plan. What he says is, ‘Every problem has a solution.’ He says it’s a law. By virtue of there being a problem, there has to be a way out of it. You just have to identify it.”
Renard shook his head violently. “Is you that naïve?”
Are, she wanted to say.
He grabbed her elbow and shook her whole body. “Well, is you? You think your daddy know a way out of doing what the government tell you to do? You think your daddy know a way out of war itself? I know he over there living his life like a white man, but that don’t mean he turned into Jesus Christ overnight.” With that final display of rage, Renard seemed to come to, and his body quieted along with his voice. “I didn’t mean to say that,” he started to stammer. “I always respected your daddy.”
Evelyn might have cried over any aspect of the last few days—just the drafting and not the outburst, just the distance and not the war—but she snuffed out any urge she had to do so now, forbidding herself from breaking down in front of a man who had enough anger in him to overpower his love; if their roles had been reversed, she didn’t know if any other emotion inside her could have outshined what she had come to feel for him. She lifted her head.
“You didn’t have to say that about my daddy,” she said. “My daddy always was kind to you. He’s an honest man and works an honest living. Is that a crime all of a sudden?” She held on to the self-righteousness that was duly hers in that moment. She didn’t care so much about what Renard had said—she still hadn’t forgiven her daddy for the conversation she’d overheard—but it was his ability to distance himself that had broken her.
“No, no, it most certainly isn’t,” Renard said.
“Well, then, I didn’t think so.” She reached down for her bag, which had dropped in the uproar. “I guess I ought to be going then,” she said, willing herself now to hold back her tears. “I’m awful sorry to hear about you being drafted, and I’ll pray for you then.”
She turned and walked toward the bench where she’d left her books. She hadn’t walked far before she heard footsteps behind her. She turned. He had followed her. Her relief rose, but when she remembered his rage, it fell again.
“There’s nothing really to talk about,” she said.
“I leave in a month for basic training.”
“You and Andrew going to the same place?”
He nodded. “For training at least.”
“Well, that’s good then. You can keep each other company, watch out for each other.” Her voice cracked then under the weight of all the heavy suppression.
He pulled her to him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know how to handle it. And then yo daddy, who was I to say a word against yo kind daddy, I ain’t been myself is all. I’m so scared, and you the first one I been able to say that aloud to, I’m so scared.” His words came out from all directions in sharp spurts, running into each other, stepping back, and turning in the opposite direction just to collide again.
Evelyn felt herself collapse inside. “Oh, I wish you would have said all that straight out. We could have avoided all that other—”
“I didn’t know how to say it until now. If I had known, I woulda, but I didn’t know how to say it.”
They held each other tighter.
“A month is a long time. I’ve heard of men getting less,” she said. “There’s a lot we could do in a month.”
“I could stand here just like I’m standing right now and be content.”
Evelyn looked around. The evening was just starting to come, and the street was filling up with people hustling home for dinner. “It’s so early in the night,” she said. “I got at least a few hours before my daddy starts looking.”
Over the next week, Ruby stayed in bed, and their mother catered to her, extra honey buns and jars of pig lips. While Ruby napped, Mother would sit at the table plodding through beads of the Rosary, her mouth mov
ing in silence. While she prayed, Evelyn stood in the bathroom mirror, spraying her wrists with her sister’s perfume, reddening her cheeks with her lipstick. She even borrowed Ruby’s new clothes; her favorite was a short black slipper satin dress that reached her knees. It left her shoulders bare, so she begged Miss Georgia to spare ribbons of material she could drape over them. Then she’d stand in the mirror and just stare at her reflection. She began to understand why it took Ruby over an hour to get ready to see Andrew. For most of that time, she was already complete, but she was surveying her work, admiring it, spinning around and catching it from distinct angles. Now that Renard was leaving, Evelyn intended to spend every minute with him. She invented outright lies about where she was headed, more out of habit than out of concern for what her parents would think. Her mother barely lifted her head as Evelyn’s heels tapped against the hardwood floor, but her father burrowed into her lies, seeming more fascinated by the evidence of her new disregard than by the content itself.
That night, as she sat on the front porch waiting for Renard, her daddy walked outside to smoke a cigar.
“I’m just going off to study with some of the girls from school,” she hurried to say, to ward off any serious conversation.
Silence.
“We have a big final coming up, and I joined a study group.”
Her father sat beside her, and the swing creaked under his weight. “Don’t lie to me, Evelyn.”
“The girls came to me, I didn’t need it, but I wanted to help people who weren’t as well off as I am,” she continued.
“You know we don’t lie to each other in this house.”
“Like I said, I didn’t need it, but I thought about what you always say. ‘To give is to get. The Lord sees people as interchangeable and so should we.’ So I didn’t need it, but I remembered how you felt on the matter, and I obliged them.”
A Kind of Freedom Page 11