Tina Mcelroy Ansa

by The Hand I Fan With

  Through it all, she went about the day singing the same tune under her breath the way she, as a child, had heard Dinah Washington purr it on her parents’ old 78 rpm records.

  “There’s a somebody I’m longing to see

  I hope that he turns out to be

  Someone who’ll watch over me.”

  She sang it in her off-key fashion with such quiet contentment that the women at her realty office got a little miffed that Lena was not a bit more contrite about throwing a monkey wrench in their well-ordered schedule two days in a row. All day at the hospital and she wasn’t even sick, they thought. Then, a whole morning of scheduling wasted. And at the end of the week, too.

  The women—for only women worked at Candace and Lena never had to face even a mention of sexual discrimination—moved around the bright and airy office complex behind Lena and looked at each other out of the sides of their faces. Wanda, Brenda, Carroll, Deborah, Caryl, Dorothy and Lois—friends of a sort since elementary school—knew Lena was usually sensitive about her nonsinging voice. Now, the women noted silently and with raised eyebrows, here she was singing out loud as she signed contracts or headed out the door to show a special client a property. Then, here she would come back in singing the same tune. And she didn’t sound too bad, either.

  Just more of Lena’s luck, they thought.

  Her employees all knew she was born with a veil over her face, and although they appreciated working in the caul’s lucky aura, they did tire of Lena McPherson always getting first pick of anything new or nice or eligible in town, or in the state, for that matter. She seemed to meet the new men in town in just the same way she was always the first to sport the newest fashions. She looked good in the clothes, but the affairs seemed to die abirthing.

  “Hell, it never work out, do it?” local women from Savannah to Atlanta asked each other over the phone. The newly divorced president of the nearest agricultural college—”Man still husky in his fifties!”—a few years before was the last straw.

  Her former grammar school classmates, returned to Mulberry and the South from Southern California and upstate New York and Minneapolis with ended marriages and nearly grown children in tow, would hardly be able to keep from cutting their eyes at her in Mass. “She didn’t even hardly mess over that last one. That college president. Didn’t hardly even mess over him.”

  “Well, it still ain’t right that she just automatically get the new men ’cause she got the prettiest clothes in town. Shoot! I do very well, thank you, for a schoolteacher. And I could stand to meet a man myself.”

  After Lena’s last dating fiasco, Toya, an office assistant, met her boss at the espresso machine and laughed, “Oh, Miss McPherson, you probably gon’ end up marrying the garbageman!”

  The married women in town were the worst.

  “Lord, ham mercy, all these young single women here,” her married sisters would proclaim at parties where she was one of the “young single women there.”

  “Lord, let me get my husband and go home. Let me get my husband from up in through here with all these young single women with no children and no responsibilities and go home.”

  If Sister were present, she would always lean over to Lena and say, “Please, take your husband and get away from here. Please! Get him off my bra strap.”

  Lena had learned a thing or two in being a pretty single woman for more than two decades. She had learned to say “No!!!” whenever the husband of one of her colleagues or clients asked her, “Lena, want to know a secret?”

  When Lena had first hurried in that afternoon, flushed and radiant in her fire-engine-red suit and red patent-leather Gucci mules, she had muttered something about an emergency at home that kept her all morning, but that did little to placate her people. They took into consideration that she had spent all the day before in the hospital. But that was yesterday and folks had business they wanted to conduct.

  Some, like the receptionist, Mrs. Jeffries, who had known Lena practically all her life, were genuinely concerned.

  “Good God, Lena, where you been?!! We didn’t know what had happened to you. Mr. Jackson called three or four times. Come here, baby, you got a piece of thread on that pretty suit. Why, Lena, we thought you was dead out there by the river.”

  Lena just gave her a quick hug and a quick apology. “I’m so sorry to have worried you all.” Then, she moved on.

  “Well, we called you four or five times,” Wanda said as she gathered papers into her briefcase and popped the screen off on her computer. But all Lena offered in explanation was an absentminded “Uh-huh,” because her mind was on Herman, wondering if he would be at home when she got there.

  Precious gave Lena the names and numbers of missed appointments who would not be placated by a call from a personal assistant.

  “Mr. Potter at the bank said he didn’t think you had ever missed an appointment. Mr. Jackson finally came by this morning just after you called. He said he was ’bout to head out toward your house if he didn’t get an answer. And Miss Louise won’t believe me when I tell her you had vegetables for lunch. She wants to talk with you.”

  When Precious had finished her litany of guilt, she stopped and looked at Lena intently.

  “Can I do something else for you, Miss McPherson?” she asked as she poured her boss a crystal goblet of mineral water and brought it to her desk.

  When Lena smiled her thanks and shook her head, Precious leaned down and really looked at Lena.

  “Really, Miss Mac, are you okay? You look kind of funny.”

  Lena just laughed and waved Precious on back to her work. “Oh, I’m fine,” she assured her.

  Lena felt kind of funny. Although her attention was now on her myriad duties and responsibilities—juggling real estate, personal, community and business concerns the way she always did—her real focus was out at her house: the ghost of a man with whom she had spent the morning.

  In just a matter of a few hours, Herman had made Lena feel as if she truly had always had someone watching over her. She felt as if throughout her life, he had taken her firmly and gently by her shoulders between his two strong hands and turned her out of harm’s way.

  It seemed Herman had been watching over her all her life, all day and all night.

  I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood

  I know I could always be good

  To one who’ll watch over me.

  It had made Lena feel safe and protected to hear Herman tell that morning of times he had seen her in trouble and tried to help. Of times he had tried to veer her away from some scary, frightful ghost. Of times he had even wrestled like Jacob with the angel to keep some angry lonely vindictive spirit from overwhelming her. The images began to soften her memories of those terrorizing times.

  Then it came to her.

  Herman was her guardian angel!

  Lena immediately thought of Sister Gemma in fourth grade who had instructed all the students at Blessed Martin de Porres Elementary to leave a little room on the edge of their seats for their guardian angels to sit.

  “Now, he’s with you all the time and it’s only right to think of him,” Sister said, for the guardian angel was always a “him.” Years later, Lena was still angry with herself for not having questioned the automatic male gender of all guardian angels. “So, just scoot over a bit when you sit at your desk or in the pew in church. Even if it’s not a Catholic church,” the chunky Irish nun assured the Protestant children in the class.

  “You see, you don’t even have to be baptized into the one true church to have a guiding spirit. No, you don’t. God gives one to each and every soul He creates. Catholic and Protestant. Jew and Gentile. Isn’t our Lord generous?”

  Lena had to chuckle at the memory now. She certainly felt blessed with the Lord’s generosity in sending Herman to watch over her. She even looked over her shoulder every now and then to see if he was standing there the way he had stood in her bathroom that morning.

  She handled her duties, made apologies,
smoothed ruffled feathers, soothed concerned townspeople. But the whole day, she was thinking about this solid corporeal ghost she had last seen disappearing in her bathroom.

  “A ghost!” she would say softly to herself. Her mind landed briefly on Rachel.

  Umm, she thought suddenly, I wonder if Rachel knows Herman. Maybe, she had something to do with his coming here, she speculated.

  Then, she thought, If he died a hundred years ago, maybe he was a slave, too, like Rachel! It was a sobering thought. But to Lena, Herman did not look any older than thirty or so. She assumed that spirits did not continue to age after death.

  She continued to calculate in her head as she sat at the big flat teak table she used as a desk and returned missed phone calls, if he died in 1895, then slavery still existed when he was born.

  Maybe, he looks younger than he is, she thought.

  What she really wanted to do she could not: reach for the phone and call Sister with the news of this new man in her life.

  She chuckled to herself recalling the Mae West line: “It’s not the man in your life. It’s the life in your man.”

  From his smile alone it appeared to Lena that this man, though dead, had plenty of life in him.

  “Herman.”

  She said it softly as she sat at her desk, the telephone poised in her hand. She felt a little tingle run through her body.

  “Herman.”

  She said it again, the way he pronounced it, “Hur-mon,” a little louder this time, and felt a smile spread all over her face.

  15

  STARS

  It was dark, and a big old full moon was shining in the blue-black velvet sky dotted with what looked like every star in the galaxy by the time Lena got her business day about straight and headed back to her home out by the river.

  She and Precious were the last ones to leave the Candace offices. But even after a long day, Lena wasn’t a bit weary. She was so excited she could hardly keep still.

  “I wonder, will he be there? I wonder if James Petersen saw him. I wonder how he’s going to come and go? I wonder where he’ll sleep … I wonder …”

  She laughed at herself because she didn’t even feel like a little foolish fool.

  For nearly her entire life, and especially since she had met Madame Delphie in New Orleans, she had felt in danger of being enveloped, eaten up, consumed by that other ghostly world that she knew existed. Now here she was driving as fast as she could to embrace just that world.

  By the time she hit U.S. 90 along the Ocawatchee, she could feel her heart pounding as if she were sixteen and going on her first date. She was gunning the motor at 85 mph, fast even for her. But she was excited.

  Her stomach felt as if it were full of butterflies. And her entire body felt flushed as if she had driven into a wall of fire. She dropped a window and let the cool spring evening air into the car. The night air felt chilly on her skin, but she was still hot.

  Her heart had not settled down since she heard the first “Ahem” outside her shower that morning. It was still beating wildly in her chest, and she unfastened the shiny top button on the jacket of her suit to give her heart a little more room.

  Lena hit the CD selector and smiled when Billie Holiday’s voice joined the sound of the night wind whistling through the automobile.

  You’re my thrill, you do something to me

  You send chills right through me

  When I look at you, I can’t keep still

  You’re … my … thrill.

  When she crossed the wooden bridge spanning the Ocawatchee on her dirt road, she felt for a moment that someone had arranged a greeting party for her. All over the surface of the river, flowing clear and pristine in the darkness, lightning bugs—thousands of them, it appeared to Lena—floating in droves, signaled their welcome to her in green fluorescent flashes.

  BLINK-BLINK, BLINK-BLINK, BLINK-BLINK.

  There were so many fireflies that it was difficult to see the reflection of the sorrel moon on the clear glassy surface of the river. It seemed there were hundreds more than the night before when she had first noticed them.

  And there was music in the air. So many animal noises that the racket drowned out Lady Day. Tree toads, said to be in danger of extinction worldwide and a harbinger of the end of life, seemed to be having a noisy convention on Lena’s land, all singing alto. Frogs on the banks of the river added their bass with deep throaty roars. Cicadas, awake after a seven-year slumber, sang their sopranos and falsettos on cue. Other crickets and creatures of the night joined their chorus to the symphony already being played.

  Altogether, they sounded like a true symphony. The din grew louder and louder as she neared her house. Night birds hooted and screeched. A family of bobwhites began calling to each other—”Bobwhite! Bobwhite! Bobwhite!” A lone loon put in her crazy-sounding laugh.

  And Lena had to laugh, too.

  The symphony was turning into more of a shivaree.

  The fireflies, flying low right along with her car, frolicked in the air, lighting the way along with the Mercedes’ headlights cutting through the tunnel of darkness formed by the overhanging oaks and pines along a stretch on her road.

  She honked her horn beep-beep-bee-beep-beep when she drove down her winding road past James Petersen’s house to let him know she was home and everything was okay with her. But when she pulled up in the driveway between the house and the stables and parked the car, she questioned whether she was in the right place. She recalled from her childhood that ghosts could do just about anything they wanted, unfettered by the laws of gravity and time and matter as mere mortals were.

  I wonder if Herman created some kind of lovely ghostly mansion on this spot while I was gone, she thought. Then, she smiled at the thought of his name. Herman.

  There were no lights on outside and a strange new light seemed to be burning inside at each and every window and glass door of the place. Lena was sure that some of the lightning bugs must have gotten inside. Every window in her big log lodge seemed filled with soft golden natural-looking light, welcoming her home.

  She tried to be cool, but she found herself flying from the car along the stone alee of roses and mantles of bridal veil hanging overhead in pots and annuals flower beds bordered by crossties up to the back door of her house where the southern jasmine was thinking about budding. Soft light was shining from that entrance, too.

  Herman met her at the door looking as real and solid as he had that morning, sporting a warm shy smile. Lena thought, This man is light itself. He’s what’s shining in my house.

  “Good ee-bah-ning, Lena. I lit some tallows fo’ you,” he said, holding the door wide open, in a casual yet grand gesture.

  Lena stood there a moment, gazing at this big good-looking old-timey man standing in her back doorway, welcoming her home. Other than Frank Petersen or his brother, James, it had been years since anyone was there to greet her when she returned home at the end of the day.

  “Um,” Lena said to herself. “So, this is what it feels like to have family again.” She smiled and entered, feeling the depth and passion of his welcome warm her as if he had indeed lit a “tallow” deep in her belly.

  Herman took a step back in his big soft black leather boots—a graceful step, Lena noticed—to let her in, and Lena let out a little gasp, “Ooooo.” All along one wall of the Glass Hall and into what she could see of the rest of her house was aglow with what looked like a hundred burning candles.

  He must have lit every candle in the house, even the birthday candles, she thought, enchanted by the look of her cabin completely illuminated by the flickering light.

  “I used all I could find. What ya think?” Herman asked, closing the door behind them. Lena could hear a taste of uncertainty in his voice, and it moved her. He really cares what I think of what he’s done, she thought.

  “It’s just beautiful,” she said sincerely.

  “I care ’bout everythang got to do wi’ you, Lena. Like I tole ya this mo’nin’, I’m
yo’ man. I loves you already. You just got t’ decide if you my woman. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” she asked, smiling. She could hardly believe how much fun she was having just messing with this man.

  “That’s all,” he said, smiling back at her.

  Lena dropped her purse on top of a heavy flowered silk throw with bronze-colored fringe on the back of the sofa and walked through the rest of the house on the deck side. There were burning candles leading all the way through the pool room into her bedroom suite at the other end of the house. Out on the deck, Herman had lit tall fat candles inside hurricane globes that had not been lit since her last weak attempt at a dinner party more than a year before.

  He had even lit some of the candles left over from the man-calling ceremony.

  “I didn’t think you’d mind me ligh’in’ up all yo’ candles.” He paused and smiled. “Even them ceremonial ones. I don’t think you gon’ have much more use fo’ them.”

  He came up behind her and stood looking over her shoulder at all he had done. Lena could feel his breath on her neck, and she had to step away quickly to catch her breath.

  “Mind?” Lena said, walking on through the house and rubbing the tingling spot on the back of her neck. “Everything looks wonderful.”

  Her house always looked ready for company. James Petersen saw to that. But tonight the house felt cozy, too.

  Lena had seen his old black hat hanging on her grandmother’s antique mirrored coatrack by the back door when she had first come in. So, she figured, he planned to stay awhile.

  Herman had laid and lit a good-sized fire in the cavernous fireplace in the main room. As Lena walked by, the heat felt good against her legs. The country smell and the pop and sizzle of seasoned split oak wood filled the house to the rafters. Clever Mr. Buck had vented all her fireplaces so the heat and smell blew into the house and didn’t go up and out the chimney with the smoke. She noticed Herman had carefully replaced the huge leaf-embossed screen so no sparks from the pinecones he had also thrown in there could pop out and burn her as she passed.