She heard it again. “Ahem.”
“My God,” Lena gasped as she grabbed at the loose shower massage that was splashing water all around and trying to regain her footing. “Who is that? Who is that??”
Again, all she heard was, “Ahem.”
“Who is that? James Petersen, is that you?”
She knew it couldn’t be James Petersen, since he tried at all costs to avoid her whenever she might be walking around nude. There was no way he was wandering into her bathroom while the shower was running.
“Who is that? Who the hell is that?” Lena was insistent now. She looked around the shower stall for something, some weapon, with which to defend herself. All she had was a loofah on a light balsa stick; some pink and purple plastic bottles of herbal soap, shampoo and conditioner; a small plastic hippopotamus in a hat and a tutu that one of her godchildren had given her, and a short-bristle back brush and a tiny wooden nail brush. There was a huge maidenhair fern growing over the top of the shower stall. But it was no good to her as a weapon. The stiff brush was the heaviest thing in there, so she grasped it. It was a puny defense, but Lena didn’t have much experience defending herself. She usually didn’t have to. She thought briefly of the shotgun Jonah had bought for her and taught her to use. But she did not know where that was.
“I’m not in this house all by myself,” Lena shouted toward the shower door, her voice cracking and giving away her fear and deception.
There was a split second’s pause. Then came back the reply.
“Lena, it’s me. Herman.”
Lena was truly speechless. She thought, Now, who the hell is Herman? He said his name as if he were identifying himself for some official position.
“It’s just me,” the intruder said, “Herman.”
He had a real country-sounding voice that had an unfamiliar, foreign taste to it, a little flat on some syllables and words, but somehow smooth.
He pronounced “Herman” as if it were “Hur-mon” with the emphasis on the first syllable. She almost didn’t know what he was saying at first. She appreciated his repeating it.
“It’s me, Lena. Herman.”
She opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out. She was thinking, Herman? Herman?
Lena started to open her mouth to scream, but she smacked her lips and felt the Sahara Desert in there. So instead she turned the shower’s spigot toward C and filled her dry mouth with cool water. It didn’t help. She still could not find a voice to speak. She did not know what to say if she could. But she did like the sound of this Herman’s voice.
“Lena, I’m a spirit,” Herman said.
Oh, God, she thought. It’s the ghosts and stuff. It’s starting again.
Herman kept right on talking.
“Lena, I come ’cause you called me.”
Lena started to say, “Oh, you must be mistaken. I most certainly didn’t invite or call you in here,” as she stood on the other side of the shower door with her large white wash mitt in front of her vagina. But she heard herself sounding like somebody from Milledgeville, if the state still kept the insane in institutions there. Yet, she did not know what else to do.
Her heart was racing and so was her mind. A man, a spirit come here to my bathroom??!! she thought.
“You called me here, Lena. I couldn’a come if you hadn’a called me up,” explained the voice on the other side of the door. “I sho’ looks forward to meetin’ ya.”
The invitation for Lena to step outside hung in the air like steam. Then, there was silence again.
The image of calling up a ghost reminded Lena of her friend. “God, I wish Sister was handy,” she muttered to herself inside the steamy shower stall. “She might be able to handle something like this!”
But the very thought of her can-do friend seemed to make her brave.
Lena couldn’t help herself, she was intrigued. She cleared her throat.
“Hope I ain’t being a foolish fool here,” she said softly as if Sister were right there to stop her if she were.
Her heart was still thumping in her chest like the machines at the paper plant, but she dropped her “weapon” on one of the shower seats and moved toward the door. Lena had yet to utter a complete sentence to this “Herman” outside. She couldn’t believe she was doing this, but she opened the shower door a crack, just wide enough for her to reach her hand out and grab the big white Turkish towel hanging on a hoop nearby. It felt a little like sticking her hand into a dark hole at the fun house of an amusement park—frightening and exciting.
Okay, she thought, making a deal with herself, if nothing grabs my hand and pulls me out, then I’ll know it’ll be safe to proceed.
Snatching the towel inside the stall without looking out the door, Lena breathed a shaky sigh of relief. But she also felt a thrill of exhilaration. She had to stop for a second or two to catch her breath. Then, she tried to wrap the fluffy white towel in the least seductive fashion she could. It did not work. No matter how she threw and wrapped and twisted and tucked the towel, she managed to look cute. So, she covered herself as decently as possible, shook her long heavy wet braids free of excess water and took a deep breath.
She had not heard a sound from the other side of the door since she had snatched the towel inside. But she sensed that “Herman,” or rather “Hur-mon,” was still there.
She felt some trepidation. But surprisingly, she was not scared. She thought back to meetings she had had with other ghosts when she was younger. How her heart had raced, how the hair on her arms had stood on end, how sometimes she had felt dizzy at the sight of a headless body or huge animal or a mist or vapor covering and smothering everything in its sphere. But this time she was different. Lena felt just a little anxious, like before a blind date.
Her mother would have warned, “Curiosity killed the cat, Lena. Watch yourself.” Nellie and Grandmama had always told her she was too curious for her own good. But now she didn’t care about taking any solid advice from ghostly relatives. She had to see what this Herman looked like.
Under her breath, she muttered, “Well, Lord,” sounding like her dead Granddaddy Walter before he embarked on an adventure.
She opened the shower door all the way, letting out a puff of steam, and stepped out. Lena was surprised the door didn’t make a creaking noise like in a haunted house when she closed it. But she steeled herself anyway for what she was about to see. She didn’t even flinch when she turned and saw him.
13
HERMAN
Herman had a noble face.
Lena loved his face immediately.
It was a face that she had seen in the arrangement of leaves on a tree in the woods, a shape that was there in the sunlight, then gone in the shade. It was a face that she had seen in the clouds. It was a face that showed innate gentleness.
It was a face, she realized suddenly, that she had seen in her dreams.
His face was broad but not round. His cheekbones were high and wide and seemed to stretch his sweet dark skin so tightly across his visage that Lena could not imagine him ever aging. It was difficult to think of anything old or aging or dying while looking into his face. As a child, Lena had heard her mother often exclaim, “Lord ham mercy, Lena, every sin that woman ever committed was written on her face this morning.” Looking at Herman made Lena think, Every kindness this man has ever committed is written on his face this morning.
Lena thought, Um, he’s the picture of health.
On his right temple, half-hidden in the thick edges of the thicket of his longish hair, was a faint scar shaped like a half-moon. Lena was shocked at herself, but she had to restrain her hand from reaching up and caressing it.
His eyes were black, as dark as midnight down by the river with no lights on. But they sparkled like something in a fairy tale. His brows and lashes were thick and just as ebony as his eyes. His eyebrows looked as if someone had wet a thumb with spit and smoothed the short hairs down. But his eyelashes were curly and unruly.
He had
a good head of hair, coal black, like his eyes. And his eyes and hair seemed to have life in them. He had long bushy nappy hair, like a lion’s mane around his broad face. It was not in dreads, but it was thick enough to be. His short bushy mustache made him look daring, dashing, adventurous.
Lena thought his mouth below his bushy mustache appeared made to sing songs. She did not know why she thought that, but she did. And his lips looked so soft they made her lick her own lips.
His nose was what her Grandmama called a “proud African” nose.
A tall drink of water, Lena thought as she watched him stand there in her bathroom on her fluffy white looped rug, leaning back on the counter behind him while standing back in his legs like a sexy woman, his muscular arms crossed over his barrel chest to let her take in all of him. Or what there was of him. Although he stood a full six feet tall in full color with poetically beautiful tensed shoulders and slightly bowed legs, he was nearly transparent, translucent. Almost a vapor. Lena could just barely see the counter and bottles and towels and his dusty black hat through him. The steam wafting from the shower stall hung in the air around him, almost seemed to be a part of him.
Even as a vapor, he was himself. There. Set. Herman. Himself.
He gave new meaning to the phrase “ghost of a man.”
He was the most solid ghost of a man she had ever seen. He had the kind of shoulders Lena liked: broad, solid but not thick and overly muscular. His thighs, Lena’s favorite part of a man, were long, lean, sinewy, and strong.
He looked to Lena to be about thirty-five years old or so. But with his flawless bittersweet-chocolate skin, Lena thought, there’s no telling how old he is.
He reminded Lena of pictures in biographies of old-timey black men like farmers and blacksmiths and coopers and cowboys standing in front of their fragile-looking wooden country homes or beside their horses.
He was wearing simple brightly colored clothing: a light green cotton long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled up over his arms to the bulge right above the elbow. And even with his big shirt tucked neatly into his pants, Lena could see he had a nice flat hard stomach. His pants were heavy cotton dark nondescript work pants, but they didn’t look like any work pants Lena had ever seen. They looked like they might have been handmade, but Lena thought, Now, who in the world makes their own work clothes?
He was a man who looked good in his pants. He had narrow hips like many country boys Lena had seen down at The Place—lanky with a little huskiness thrown in to let you know he was used to doing a good day’s work—and a real nice behind she could see from the side that was not too high or too low. Nice.
On his feet, big feet, Lena noted, he wore heavy boots, well-worn, but beautifully made of black leather with square heels and stirrup marks on the instep. They looked to Lena as if they had weathered many a trip.
She tried to picture him in some Gucci loafers and no socks, a loosely constructed linen suit, black Ray-Bans. But even when she squinted, she could not get him out of his original clothes in her mind’s eye. He seemed to belong in them.
The dusty black weather-beaten hat on the vanity behind him looked like it belonged to him, too. It was used, serviceable and a little sexy.
She was thinking how sexy he was, when he spoke, startling her.
“Mo’nin’, Lena. How do ya do?” he asked politely, formally, and sort of tipped his head toward her.
He was smiling so broadly, Lena had to admire his strong small white teeth. She smiled back.
He took this as encouragement and began his introductions again.
“I’m Herman. I’m here ’cause you called me up.”
His insistence that she was responsible was really puzzling her.
“I’m a spirit, Lena. Been one fo’ most a hundred years. But you called me here and made me real. You did that. And here I am.”
She still stood speechless, but she thought, You certainly are here.
As if to put a real punctuation mark at the end of that sentence, Herman stretched out his nearly transparent arm to her, and Lena watched in amazement as the limb began to materialize before her. As in an anatomy class, she saw the marrow and the bone form—she could see how his wrists’ sockets fit together, how his elbow worked, how his fingers flexed—the tissue and muscle and cartilage cover that, the blood and tissue around and through and over that. Then, the beautiful dark brown skin, callused and cut and burned and scarred in places, over that. Then, a few curly dark hairs appeared on his knuckles and above his wristbone.
Before the sweet brown skin appeared over his beautifully symmetrical skeleton as his entire body began to materialize, she saw his heart beating in his chest, the blood rushing in one side, pumping out the other. She saw his lungs appear and fill with air. She witnessed his skull forming—he even had what her grandmother had called a “sense knot” on the back of his skull—over his brain.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Lena intoned like a nun as she watched, transfixed and naked, except for a towel.
Watching the creation, the transformation, Lena thought, There ought to be music Creation music And right away, the wind outside began rustling the trees and the heavy metal wind chimes hanging in the enclosed porch leading to the deck outside the French doors of Lena’s bedroom.
She was too charmed by the beauty of the metamorphosis to be frightened by its macabre aspects. She was too charmed by this spirit of a man, this “Herman.”
He became more and more real, more and more solid, more and more firm, more and more precise, more and more tangible right there before her eyes, as if fed by her seeing him.
In a matter of seconds, she could no longer see right through him at all. He was truly there.
He sighed one time, then he spoke, repeating his declaration in an ever stronger, more forceful voice.
“I’m Herman. I’m here ’cause you called me up. I sho’ ’nuff wanted to come. But I wouldn’t be here if you didn’a called me here. Period.”
Then, he reached over and casually took her hand lightly in his new one. Lena could feel the blood coursing through the veins of his elegantly formed wrist, could actually feel his pulse. And she felt a tingle that traveled from her fingers all the way up her shoulder to her chest. There, it made her heart flutter a bit. The feeling was so thrilling, she had to catch her breath. He then escorted her as naturally as anything through the bedroom to the deck as she clutched her towel to her naked body.
She did not hesitate a moment but trailed behind him silently. She hardly noticed where they were headed because she could not take her eyes off the strong concave spot at the small of his back. Even beneath his shirt, it appeared sculptured.
Outside on the wide, deep sycamore deck, more wind chimes played along with the orchestral sounds of the Ocawatchee rushing by. Lena smiled at the beauty of the natural music
Herman led her to the cushions in a teak swing hanging from long ropes connected to a high beam over the deck and they sat. He continued to hold onto her hand. Not against her will yet securely. She thought she could actually feel him become human.
With his unencumbered hand, he pointed to the remnants of Lena and Sister’s man-summoning ceremony.
“This when it happened, Lena. You called me up.”
It took a second for Lena to realize what Herman meant.
“You trying to tell me it worked?!” she shouted, catching her breath. “That the two of us, half-drunk, performed a ceremony that called forth a man!!? The ceremony called you up?!” Lena asked incredulously.
Herman just laughed. Not a foolish or a derisive laugh, just a truly tickled one.
“All this little stuff,” he said, smiling and pointing to the ashes and candles and pictures. “The power ain’t in this. These thangs just to show that you willin’. Willin’ to do the ceremony. Willin’ to go to the trouble to get the pink candle. It show you believe.
“But yo’ ’ceremony’ didn’t call me up, Lena. You called me up. It was you, Lena. You invited me in. That’
s all it took. An invitation from you.”
Lena turned away to try to hide her smile. This ghost, this Herman, pronounced the word “invitation” as if it were “imitation.” He said it a bit like folks she remembered from her childhood at The Place, like her elderly gardener still pronounced it.
The pronunciations sounded so dear to Lena’s ears. It was not so much that this Herman mispronounced some words as it was that he stamped them with the imprint of his own style of speech. This Herman claimed his words!
Lena felt in her bones he was coming to claim her, too.
When she didn’t say anything, Herman continued. “I been watchin’ you fo’ decades, Lena.”
Lena pulled her hand away from the ghost’s at the disquieting thought of being secretly watched. Even if it was by a ghost. She could see by his face that the gesture hurt his heart, but she felt exposed and vulnerable at this news.
He seemed to twitch a bit and added quickly, “Nothin’ improper. Nothin’ I don’t think you would think improper, anyway.” Herman put his newly formed elbows on his newly formed knees and leaned forward with a serious look on his face. And she pulled her towel a bit tighter around her.
“Lena, it wan’t like that,” he said softly. “Shoot, spirits been watchin’ you since ya been born.
“I wasn’t at yo’ birth, Lena. But I sho’ did hear ’bout it,” Herman said.
“What do you mean, you heard about it?” Lena wanted to know. She could not believe that the Mulberry gossip mill extended even into the beyond.
“Oh, we spirits communicate wid each other more than we talk to ya’ll,” Herman replied matter-of-factly. “And yo’ birth gave us a lot to talk about. It was almost like it shook the whole afterlife world.
“I was on my way back hereabouts to Mulberry to see what the to-do was all about when yo’ mama poured out that caul tea in that green vase a’ flowers and yo’ protection from mean spirits along wid it. There was noise and disturbance in my world like I had never heard when that happen. Lena, it was like all heaven and hell had been let loose. Oh, the howls and screams and shrieks and yells and lamentations that went up that day. Oh, Lena, even I was a little disquieted by it all.
Tina Mcelroy Ansa Page 16