by LOTT, BRET
I quick reached up, flicked at it with my finger. Brenda Kay flinched a little with my move, and I smiled at her, met her eyes with mine.
I took my hand away then, saw where my finger’d left a small swipe of blood on her cheek, saw, too, the smashed mosquito on my fingertip.
This battle has begun, I thought.
Toxie didn’t stay too much later, and then Leston and I dug in the dark through the trailer to find the box marked linens so we’d have sheets for the beds, towels and washrags for in the morning, next we pulled out the box marked pots and pans so I’d have something to cook breakfast on.
All this time no words passed between us, the two of us knowing already what was in store.
Toxie showed up at seven the next morning with three colored men, men I knew would never believe other coloreds could live in houses as fine as those in the neighborhood where the Exceptional Children’s Foundation had been. I saw it in how they slowly rolled out of the bed of Toxie’s pickup when he pulled in, three men in ragged overalls and undershirts, saw it in how they wouldn’t even mount those steps up as Toxie came to the door, him there in a green cotton shirt and blue jeans, me stooped at the sofa and tying Brenda Kay’s shoes, watching all this through the screen door. The door and all the windows were already open for the heat of the morning, and for that wet air, air that seemed thicker and wetter than any foggy morning I’d known in the last ten years.
He knocked on the doorframe, and I stood, called out, “Leston, Toxie’s here, ” to which Toxie, startled he hadn’t seen me through the screen cleared his throat, cupped his hands to the screen and peered in. He smiled, said, “Got the road crew here this morning to help y’all.” He motioned behind him with his good hand, then stepped away from the door.
“Boys from down to the shop.”
He put his hands in his pockets again, waited for me to open the door.
He looked back at the coloreds, then to the screen, squinted, looking for me.
“Leston out fishing already? ” he said. I made it to the door, paused a second before I pushed it open an inch or so, let him finish opening it himself.
“Nope, ” I said without looking at him. “Shaving, ” I said, and turned, headed back to Brenda Kay and her other shoe.
“Unc Tox! ” she shouted out, and Toxie laughed, pulled that hand from his pocket, made like he was coming at her with it.
She laughed “Huh huh huh” there on the couch, squirmed as he came closer, her foot pulling out of my hand with the movement. l !
“Gonna tickle the bejabbers out of you, honey! ” he said, and I’d had to reach for her foot, take hold hard to it.
“Brenda Kay, ” I said, low and strong, and she stopped, looked at me.
“Tox, Momma! ” she said, her forehead screwed up, eyebrows high in a way I knew meant I should leave her alone.
“Yes, Toxie’s here, ” I said, and slipped on the shoe. “He’s going to be working hard today, unloading all our things so we can move in proper to this palace.”
“Palace, that’s right, ” he said. “Miss Brenda Kay, you’re living in a regular palace.” He stopped, put his hands in his pockets as I finished off tying the shoe, then half-pushed, halfpulled myself to standing, one hand on the arm of the sofa, the other on my knee, I slowly made it up.
Toxie still smiled, his hands still in his pockets. Then he sniffed, looked around, sniffed again. “I don’t smell it, ” he said. He turned, sniffing, and headed toward the kitchen.
“What’s that? ” I said, and gave a hand to Brenda Kay, helped her up from the sofa.
“Breakfast, ” he said. “Your biscuits, grits.” He disappeared into the kitchen, and I followed him in.
He stood at the stove, looked over it like it was some dead animal.
“Like the old days, ” he said, and looked at me, smiled. “Your breakfasts for the crew.”
“The old days, ” I said. I put my hands on my hips. “What gave you the idea I was here to make breakfast for y’all? ” I said, and paused.
“Just like the old days, ” I said. This was a war.
“Leston, ” he said, still smiling.
“That’s right, ” Leston said from behind me, and moved past me into the kitchen. He was barefoot, had on an undershirt and gray workpants, something left over from the old days at El Camino. Above the neck of the undershirt was a spray of gray hairs, and he had a towel round his neck, rubbed at his chin and cheek with one corner of it. His hair was slicked back, still wet from his shower. He looked at me, his mouth straight.
“Told him last night we’d have breakfast over here before we started in on the trailer, ” he said. He finished wiping his face, took the towel from round his neck. “Guess I forgot to inform you, ” he said.
“I imagine you’ll be wanting the whole works, of course. Biscuits and bacon and grits and eggs.”
“It’s a whole trailer out there we got to unload.” He balled the towel up in his hands, said, “Then we got to get down to Gulfport to the U-Haul, turn it in.”
“That’s a good day’s work, ” Toxie put in, and I cut my eyes at him, saw him shrug, smile.
“And the coloreds outside, I suppose I’ll be feeding them, too.”
Leston nodded, said, “Suppose so, ” the towel tight in his hands.
“Coloreds? ” Toxie said then, and it was as if my looking at him sharp as I had didn’t mean a thing. “Coloreds? ” he said again, and gave a chuckle, the same low and cold one he’d given with Leston last night.
“That’s a California word if ever I heard one, ” he said, still smiling.
He said, “Them’s nothing but niggers out there. No better or worse than that.”
I looked at him. I said, “You call them what you want, Toxie, and I’ll call them what I want. You understand that? ” He looked down, nodded.
“Yes ma’am, ” he said, and he looked again like nothing more than the teenage kid at the supper table, illmannered and ready to eat.
“If I’m feeding this whole brood, ” I said, and I paused, weighed out a few seconds while I gathered up my words, not certain how they’d play out here, I was thinking right then on May the secretary and how I’d had to learn that word colored all on my own, and I was thinking on those two or three retarded colored children that first morning ten years ago in the classroom at the Foundation, and I was thinking hard, too, on that colored boy who’d helped me park our old Plymouth, and the woman in the lavender dress, her baby Leon with the croup.
And though it brought shame to me even as we stood there, whatever hell was about to break loose here, I was thinking on what ammunition I could bring to things, get him to see the truth of Los Angeles, the promise we’d already wrung from it, a row of letter B’s, basketball, a classroom with the pictures of our Presidents on the walls.
Then I said it, said the unimaginable, half because a piece of me believed it somehow the right thing to do, but another half, the half I was already ashamed of, because I wanted to use those colored men out there to my advantage.
I took a breath. “If I’m feeding this whole brood, ” I said again, “then I think the coloreds ought to come on inside, eat in here.”
They were stupid words, I knew as quick as I’d said them, stupid for the way they showed my own hand instead of forcing his, stupid for how they revealed me and all the plans I had in my head.
“God damn, ” Toxie whispered. I blinked once, twice at Leston’s granite face, then looked to Toxie.
“Your language, please, ” I managed to say, though I knew the tight pitch of my voice’d already betrayed me, shown me to be nothing more than an old woman working to get her way.
“God damn, Leston, ” Toxie whispered again, and he looked up first at me, then to his uncle. “Y’all didn’t go out to California and come back goddamn nigger-lovers, now did you? ” Toxie was smiling, but it was a different smile now, no longer the child, but the man, the same man who’d driven here in that old pickup out front, the same one who
’d loaded up three niggers to spend a Saturday helping his uncle and wife and retarded cousin move Back Home.
The same man who, just by the color of his skin, dictated to those three men exactly how far back of him they had to walk.
Now he was a man, I saw, ready to say what he wanted, and I saw that in fact nothing’d been lost on him. He knew all about what was going on between Leston and myself, knew, too, by how he lifted his jaw, took a breath, that he’d thrown in with my husband. I hadn’t put him away last night at all.
But Leston spoke at just the right moment, said to his nephew, “You watch your language in this house, Toxie, ” and I looked to him, saw him in profile, his face turned to Toxie.
Toxie nodded, lost the smile. “Beg pardon, ” he said.
“And no, we are not nigger-lovers, ” Leston said, and slowly turned to me. “What’s fair is fair, ” he said. “Them boys out there niggers, coloreds, whatever you want to call them they’re going to work today, so we’ll feed them.” He paused, brought the towel up to his face, swiped at a dab of soap below his ear. He said, “They’ll eat outside, too. Just like they used to.”
“Fine, ” I said, and brought my eyes from his, right away set about banging open and shut the cupboards in search of a skillet, a pot to boil water in. I wouldn’t look at either Leston or Toxie, embarrassed at having my own bluff called in this way, mad I’d lost this first round.
And, I realized, I wouldn’t look at them, especially Leston, because I was savoring the small piece of victory I’d found, Leston’d looked first to Toxie, told him to watch his mouth. Told him, in fact, this was our house, no one else’s. That was a victory.
I found a skillet and pan in the cabinet next to the sink, precisely where I’d placed them the night before, though I couldn’t recall putting them there. I set them on the stove, Toxie moving out of my way, hands still in his pockets. Then I opened the refrigerator, took out the slab of bacon in there.
“Get out the kitchen, ” I said, still without looking at them. “I’ve got food to cook.” I went to the sink, filled the pan with smooth-flowing water from a shiny stainless steel faucet. I fixed my eye for a moment out the window above the sink, out there the bayou, sawgrass and water, waves of heat already shimmering up off it all.
CHAPTER 34.
I LAY AWAKE EVERY NIGHT THE FIRST MONTH, WONDERING HOW ITPD come about, and come about so quick. The open windows above the headboard seemed only a prank there in the dark, the air inside no cooler, no less stagnant than that out on the water and in the woods. The only thing close to movement was the soar and tear of night sounds out there, sounds louder and more rambunctious than any late-night siren or honking horn I’d heard in Venice or Manhattan Beach.
Leston lay next to me, sleeping away, he spent much of each day, as he’d said he would, fishing or crabbing, or just tooling around in the Studebaker, a regular country gentleman now, him with no need for a job and with all the money we had from selling off the house. The wad of it was settled into a bank down in Gulfport, waiting for us to find a house we wanted to buy, or a parcel of land we’d want to build on, all of it part of his big plan for the end of our lives.
Sometimes we went with him on his rides, the three of us stopping at a hamburger stand in Gulfport and getting oyster po’boys, then sitting on the picnic tables set up out front, eating away while that Gulf sun beat down on us.
Once, too, we went right down to the water, trudged through a beach wider than any California beach I’d ever seen, the sand here like sugar, white and fine. When we finally made it to the water, I rolled up Brenda Kay’s pantlegs, held the bottom edge of my skirt in one hand, took hold of Brenda Kay’s hand with the other. Then we walked out what felt a half-mile before the water even got up to our knees.
Brenda Kay and I kept a few paces behind Leston, him leading the way, his pantlegs rolled up, too, to reveal the pale white skin of his legs, an old man’s legs, I saw that afternoon out on the water. Then I looked down at my own legs, saw the blue veins crisscrossing just beneath skin that seemed transparent as new ice, and I saw that I was only an old woman. Most days of my life’d already passed through me, and not once in the last ten years of those days had the picture of me walking out in the Gulf of Mexico with my husband and baby daughter wheedled its way into my head. Then I pictured California, and the waves there, remembered the power of them I’d drawn into me the morning we’d left for this place.
I said, “There’s no waves out here, Leston, ” and I stopped, let go the hem of my skirt a moment, held a hand up to my eyes and looked out to sea.
Leston stopped. He put his hands on his hips, looked out to sea, too.
I glanced at him, saw the round, wide patch of sweat on the back of his shirt.
He said, “Kind of nice, no waves.”
“If you don’t like waves, ” I said. He turned, a puzzled look on his face, and I was glad he couldn’t know what I meant, glad for the secret of the sound of those California waves breaking in my head.
He turned from us, said, “Let’s keep going, ” and started off.
I gathered up my skirt, looked at Brenda Kay, smiled and said, “Just a little farther and we’ll head back in.”
She smiled up at me, started walking, and for a moment I let play across me the notion we were actually having a good time, Brenda Kay liberated in some way, barefoot in the Gulf of Mexico. Her steps through the water were slow and gentle and exaggerated, with each step she lifted her foot clear of the water, brought it forward, set it back in the water, did the same with the other foot.
I watched her move this way, watched her smile, then heard Leston say, “Take a look at this.”
I turned from Brenda Kay, saw Leston point at a boat way out in the water, when Brenda Kay’s hand jumped in mine, her screaming out at the same moment.
I turned to her, felt her hand hold tight to mine, nearly crush my bones. She was staggering, her feet moving quick beneath her.
“Momma!
Momma! ” she screamed, though her eyes were on the water, her head darting, looking, looking.
Then she looked up at me, crying now, and said, “Momma, foot! Momma, foot! ” “What, honey? ” I said, and took both her hands. “What happened? ” “Maybe stepped on a ray, ” Leston said, and now he was all movement next to me, reached down and lifted her like a baby into his arms, up out of the water. “Take a look at her feet, see if there’s any marks.”
“Marks? ” I said. “What kind of marks? ” But I was already poring over her feet with my eyes, touching all over, searching for welts, cuts, bites, anything.
She’d gone to silent tears, her breath in short, quick spurts as she took air in, cried it out. l I found nothing on her feet, nor up her legs to the knees. Only her scars, the same old evidence of an accident years before.
“Probably stepped on a flounder is all, ” Leston said, his voice gone calm, and I saw a chance, another avenue for ammunition, and I said, “You knew there were rays out here? ” He looked at me, eyes squinted for the sun. Brenda Kay had hold of his shirt collar with one hand, the other clutched at the neck of her own blouse. She was still crying.
“She didn’t get stung, ” he said. “She maybe stepped on a flounder.”
“There’s rays out here, and you knew it, and you let us out here.” I stopped, peeled Brenda Kay’s hand away from her blouse, took it in mine.
“There, ” I said to her soft as I could. “We’re heading back in now.
We’re going home now.”
I looked up at him again, knew I’d done the best I could with what I had at hand, we wouldn’t be back here, wouldn’t step back in the Gulf of Mexico.
I lay awake at nights wondering on how quick we could get back out.
There wasn’t any doubt in me, we’d be back there, and I’d be back to the Foundation, back to driving the station wagon, back in the classroom and doing what was necessary for Brenda Kay’s life. That, I saw, was what I was doing late nights Lying awake, a
lready fixing this, mending the bone-break our moving here was.
Instead of remembering my life back in California, I found I was imagining what would be once we returned, emerging once again from this jungle called Mississippi into Los Angeles, but this time without having to break all new ground, without having to live in a motel or bus tables or work for a moving company.
The treefrogs starting up, the night owls and cicadas and various other animals outside our open bedroom window making their nightly racket, I pictured Leston heading off to work at ECC each morning in his shirt and tie, saw him at the table of an evening, rubbing black shoe polish into the toe of a wing tip with an old rag, then buffing it, shining it up, brushing it with the brush from the shoeshine box there on the floor in front of him. I saw him spending Saturday mornings with the boys mowing the lawn, saw him with older and more grandchildren circled round him as he rolled cigarettes with one hand at the same kitchen table. And I saw him smiling while surfcasting at The Rock, maybe Brad or Matthe or Susan next to him, him showing them a thing or two about fishing.
I saw, too, a party for Brenda Kay when she came back, not the party Mr. White had thrown for us leaving, a party that’d involved me having to clear from the walls of the old classroom all Brenda Kay’s drawings, sheets of construction paper I’d labeled “Easter Sun day” or “Our Garden” or “Three Rainbows, ” though Brenda Kay’d never given any of them names. There’d been a whole file folder full of them I’d had to take down while Mrs. Walker passed out cupcakes she’d made, and Mr. White’d poured Kool-Aid into Dixie cups for us all.
No, the party I saw was one that welcomed her back to the classroom, a classroom where, after more cupcakes and more Kool-Aid, she’d settle in, be quick to finish learning the rest of the letters of her name, so that the next crop of pictures she’d have stapled to the walls would have her signature at the bottom, no matter how shaky the letters.
And I even saw in my plans, plans like the kind of dream I’d told Burton of years ago, the kind of dream you had to make happen, or it wasn’t worth dreaming at all in my plans I even saw Dennis, saw in the time I’d had to devote to keeping the two of them apart some piece of joy, I had that job to do, had my baby daughter to keep from him. A job.