“Considering how long she been out there, it’s a wonder she ain’t got a houseful of children.”
Lena had once seen Gloria push an ardent but unwanted suitor out of her face with a firm friendly shove. Her admirer, a nice-looking young man wearing a freshly pressed short-sleeved white shirt, just stroked his thin mustache, sort of laughed and sat down at the end of the counter. He ordered an orange Nehi, biding his time until his next chance with her came around.
Gloria had looked at a teenaged Lena and confided wearily, “Girl, it’s so old it’s new.”
Lena thought Gloria wasn’t as young as she looked but that she just looked good for her age, as everybody, including her mother, said.
A straying boyfriend of Gloria’s stood at the end of the counter at The Place one night, dap-daddy hat now crushed by his own hand, his chin on his chest, his shoulders slumped. Lena heard Gloria tell him: “You play with fire you get burned. You play with pussy you get fucked.”
The soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend hadn’t looked burned anywhere that Lena could see, so she assumed from what Gloria said, he must have been fucked. Ever since then, when Lena saw someone looking like Gloria’s dap-daddy friend, she’d say to herself, “Um, um, um, bless his heart. He’s fucked.”
Gloria and Lena sat in the dark by the big plate-glass window at the front counter of the L-shaped bar and grill for a while in comfortable silence. The orange glow of Gloria’s cigarette and the weak light from the corner streetlight were the only lumination there. Gloria put out her butt in a tin ashtray on the bar and got up and flipped on a small light over the front door.
“Lena,” she asked suddenly, “you want to split a beer?”
Lena smiled at the thought of sharing a beer with Gloria at five in the morning. “Sure,” she said.
Gloria took a good look at Lena in the dim light. “You know, Lena, you look so good.” On her way back from the cooler, she stopped and looked Lena right in the face again. “I don’t think I seen you this happy since you was a girl. You smile all up in your eyes now, girl. I was telling Eva just that the other night.”
Gloria was pretty happy herself these days, Lena noticed. She and Eva and Eva’s two children from her first marriage were living happily in that beautiful two-story house Lena had found for them out in what everybody called “Bird City.”
Folks wanted to be as blind about Gloria’s true sexuality as they were about her business acumen, Lena thought as she watched Gloria make her way to the cooler in the back of The Place in that slow, easy, hip-swaying walk. Lena and everybody else downtown had admired her gait since Gloria first started walking Broadway, strolling up and down the street from bar to bar, from shop to shop, accepting a drink from this one and that one, going home with somebody.
Now, no one believed that Gloria was a lesbian.
“She sho’ ain’t gay. Miss Thing is serving pussy!” folks quite confidently declared out loud when Gloria walked by.
“Shoot, she ’un lay down with just ’bout every man in Mulberry. She was even married for, uh, ten years or so, wa’n’t she?”
“Yeah, she sho’ was. Hell, I had her myself years ago. Let me tell you, she ain’t no bull dyker!”
“It’s a feeling and a lifestyle choice, Miss Lena,” Gloria had told her. “I love women. I don’t love men. So, what was I supposed to do?”
Gloria had said it nonchalantly, as if it were the kind of thing said all the time in Mulberry, Georgia. With all the complexities of a woman who had seemed to fuck everything in pants all her life being a lesbian, choosing to live that way, to love women exclusively.
“Shoot, Lena, I don’t care what folks think ’bout me. Hell, that would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire for real. I didn’t care when I was married to Harry. And I don’t give a damn now that I’m with Eva.”
Gloria hadn’t been married in over fifteen years, but folks with hope in their voices continued to explain, “Gloria and Harry ain’t together no mo’. They estrangled.”
When Gloria overheard this, she would laugh and say out the side of her mouth to Lena, “Damn, were they there for the last fight?”
“But that’s what I like ’bout living in a little town,” Gloria had told Lena. “Once people get over the initial shock, they kind of accept all kinds a’ things. Now, they may go on talking ’bout it for the rest of their natural-born days, but they do seem to go on and accept it. That’s what I’ve found.”
And folks did talk.
“Naw, she sho’ ain’t no lesbian. Miss Thing is serving much pussy!”
“She may be. But she sho’ ain’t serving it to you boys,” one of Gloria’s friends would offer to the group. And even the men would have to join in the laughter that gently put them down.
“I guess you are right ’bout that,” Alfred or Peanut or one of them would say, shaking his head in amazement. “ ’Cause we ain’t had none in years!!”
Over the years, she and Gloria had shared all kinds of talk: business conferences to circumvent Jonah’s biases; girl talk about men and women; family chats about emergencies and achievements. But this early conversation now was feeling better than anytime they had talked.
Gloria split the tall can of Colt .45 between the two frosty mugs from the cooler, and they sat at the bar sipping their beer as Gloria lit up another Tareyton, blowing the smoke out of her mouth like a whore.
Then, reaching in her jacket pocket, Gloria pulled out two quarters and spun on the stool, hopped off and went over to the jukebox.
“Shoot, I don’t ever get to hear my song!” she complained lightly, and punched two buttons. “I started coming down here early to open up, but now I come down early just to get a little quiet time to be by myself and get myself together.”
“Humph,” Lena said. “I used to do that.”
Lena was talking to herself, but Gloria heard her.
“I know, Lena, I seen how you changed your life, baby. Ain’t no need for me to go down that same road.
“We ain’t all got to go cross the burning sands to know what it’s like and what’s on the other side. Shoot, Mulberry can take a lot out of you. Some folks got the nerve to be mad you ain’t still pretending to eat their food.”
Although Lena had laughed it off, what Gloria told her about the people in town was true.
Sometimes, Lena would spy someone she hadn’t seen in ages standing on the corner waiting for the bus, and she’d pull up to offer a ride before she thought about it. Or sometimes, she’d just pull up to someone’s porch to say hey. But she would always end up regretting it.
Folks were beginning to feel they were well within their rights to get Lena straight. When they could catch her, they had the nerve to say, “Well, yeah, Lena, you have been, well, I won’t mince words, sugar, distracted lately. Like your full mind ain’t on what it s’posed to be on.”
She would listen to them chastise her if she had time and Herman wasn’t waiting for her and just shake her head and chuckle at their presumption.
Some people still insisted on trying to stop her as she breezed infrequently through The Place, trying to slip in a litany of needs. But Lena had learned a thing or two in the last few months with Herman at her side. She would just calmly stop talking with Gloria or one of her children and suggest that the needy person get in touch with someone at Candace Realty or at the church or at the bank or at one of the service organizations she supported. She even gave them the name of the specific person to see to get the job done.
The response was usually shock, followed by disbelief, then indignation. Folks would stomp away from Lena muttering, “If you ain’t gonna do it for me, then don’t tell me how to do it!”
Sometimes, she’d call out, “My mama always said, ’You can’t dance on every set.’”
But most times she would just smile, shake her head and put them in the hands of the Lord, remembering Herman’s words, “They ain’t in yo’ hands. They in the Lord’s hands.”
Gloria was more mildly
amused than anything else by Lena’s new way of handling her business and her life. She was right happy to see Lena pay more attention to her own life.
But everybody was not as happy with Lena McPherson.
Some of the phone messages and notes she began to get when folks saw they really could no longer get their hands on her at will sounded truly plaintive.
“I sure will be glad when you get back to normal,” Miss Birdie told Lena’s answering machine. Like so many older people, Miss Birdie hated answering machines and usually refused to speak into them when they beeped. Or the old folks would just start talking as soon as the greeting began, so if Lena heard anything, it would only be the tail end of their message or maybe just a word she could use to try to decipher the identity and message of the caller. Sometimes, when there was no message at all, Lena would have to sit and try to guess which of her older friends was hanging up without leaving any message at all. She’d call all those people until she found the true caller.
Lena knew Miss Birdie was fairly desperate to talk on the machine.
“I used to be able to do my own shopping and errands and even go to church regular,” Miss Birdie’s message said. “Now, I can’t even get out of my house without you.”
It was laments like Miss Birdie’s that tore at Lena’s heart and made her sometimes question if what she and Herman had—the childlike freedom to play and love and laugh and eat and explore as if they didn’t have a care in the world—was theirs at too high a price for everyone else.
For a while, Lena seemed to be almost as busy delegating all her duties as she had been fulfilling them herself. And of course, nobody was satisfied with the arrangements she made because none of the arrangements involved her. Herman watched her go through this futile dance for a couple of weeks. Then he reminded her—again:
“Lena, baby, you need to be more like Mary and less like Martha.”
But she still worried about her people. Miss Birdie’s call preyed on her mind, worrying her so, that even after Lena had made arrangements to handle her errands, she drove into town one afternoon at the end of the summer to check on the old lady.
When she walked up the cement steps to Miss Birdie’s house in Pleasant Hill and found the front door closed and locked, the television in the front-room window off, her heart leapt into her throat. Lena didn’t know whether to head for the hospital or the morgue. She was just about ready right then to repent her new ways, recant her devotion to Herman, and put on her designer nun’s habit again, when the woman next door recognized her and waved.
“Hey, Lena, ain’t seen you in a month a’ Sundays! Birdie ain’t home. She gone on the church picnic out at Lake Peak.”
The neighbor fanned herself, waved again and went on back in her house to sit up under her air conditioner.
Lena’s legs turned to jelly in the late summer heat. She had to lean her behind on Miss Birdie’s porch railing to keep from sinking to the rough wooden floor. She regrouped and headed slowly down the concrete steps toward her car.
As she made a U-turn in front of the old woman’s empty house and headed on back out to the river and to Herman, she kept saying to herself in wonderment:
“Miss Birdie gone on a picnic!”
“Miss Birdie gone on a picnic!”
“Miss Birdie gone on a picnic?!”
“Miss Birdie gone on a picnic?!”
“Damn, Lena,” she said to herself as she slipped onto the interstate. “You are a little foolish fool like Mama used to say!”
Herman was waiting for her at the back door. He smiled his big welcoming smile and accompanied her to the kitchen. Lena knew she didn’t have to explain anything to Herman.
“I made some lemonade, Lena. Want some?” was all he said then. He poured two tall glasses and sat down across from her at the long shiny picnic table by the window in the corner. They sat in silence. Then, he spoke:
“Lena, baby, I done seen peoples like you just sucked dry like a plant wid bugs by other folks’ needs and their own good intentions and bein’ taken fo’ granted. ’Specially womens. I seen all their life and liveliness and spunk sucked right out a’ them.
“I couldn’t bear ta see you like that.”
In the growing light, Gloria leaned her head back, drained her sweating glass of beer and got up to get them another one. When she came back, she glanced out the front window at the breaking dawn and leaned over toward her boss and friend. Gloria spoke seriously.
“Lena, there’s something I been meaning to talk to you about.”
“You can talk to me about anything you like, Gloria. You know that.” Lena felt she was speaking with a relative on some serious family matter.
“Well, you told me last spring that that new door and lock leading from the storeroom didn’t have nothing to do with The Place. That it was private. And you know that’s good enough for me.”
“Oh, it’s nothing illegal, Gloria, you know I wouldn’t put you or The Place in that kind of jeopardy.”
“Oh, shoot, I know that. I just didn’t know whether or not you had noticed, but around the edge of the doorjamb, it looks like somebody been hitting it or kicking at it with a steel-toe boot or something. Dude the Second noticed it last week when he was stacking liquor by the wall, and he showed it to me so I wouldn’t think he did it.”
Lena felt a sudden little shiver and remembered Anna Belle swinging a two-by-four. Herman had made her sound so determined. Lena was just glad that Gloria was sitting there with her in the slowly advancing dawn. She knew Gloria could take care of herself and would do what she could to protect Lena in a fight, too.
Lena tried to hide her concern and sound casual. “Um, let me take a look at it.” Picking up her ring of keys, she went out the front door of the bar and grill and unlocked the front door of the liquor store. Gloria did not follow her, and Lena was thankful for that. She didn’t know what she was about to see or how she was going to react, but Lena could still see Gloria through the glass partition, and felt reassured.
She grabbed a long silver flashlight from under the liquor store counter among Jet magazines, breath mints and boxes of condoms that Lena and Gloria encouraged the staff to give away to customers and headed in back. It was dark and clammy in the back storeroom, and Lena felt uncomfortable when she realized she was out of Gloria’s sight. She flicked on the flashlight and let out a gasp. In the lower portion of the extra-strong burglarproof steel door Mr. Jackson had placed at the entrance to Herman’s secret room, there were deep rounded dents.
Gloria was right. It did look as if someone or something had been banging at the metal door with a heavy blunt object or kicking at it with steel-toe boots.
When Lena stooped down and hesitantly ran her fingers over the marks in the heavy steel door, she felt another shiver run down her spine. The metal door felt icy to her touch along the depressions. Lena snatched her hand away, but then she steeled herself and checked the heavy double-gauged-steel bolt lock. There was not a scratch on it. When she took the doorknob in her hand and tried to rattle the door in its hinges, it did not budge.
The door seemed secure, but she rushed out of the empty liquor storeroom just the same and back to the safety of Gloria’s company.
“Oh, I think it’s okay,” she reassured Gloria as she gave her a quick hard hug, gathered up her box and headed toward the front door. “I’ll have Mr. Jackson come down and take a look at it.”
Lena made her voice sound light, but when she reached her car, she checked the locks and the interior before opening the door and sliding behind the wheel. Lena thought she sensed Anna Belle’s presence skulking around the frame of the car all the way home. It was nothing real or concrete like Herman’s breeze and touches, but it disconcerted Lena just the same.
When she saw Herman leaning on the fence waiting for her, Lena breathed her first sigh of relief. She hurried from the car to tell him about the dents on the door of his room down at The Place.
“Was the do’ broke into?” he aske
d Lena like a private investigator as he escorted her into the house.
“No,” she said, going into the Great Jonah Room with him.
“Was the lock broke?”
“No, Herman, it was still secure.”
“Was there anythang stolen or disturbed?”
“No.”
“Ain’t nobody been hurt, have they, Lena?”
“Oh, my God, no,” Lena replied. She hadn’t considered the possibility of one of her people, Gloria or Peanut or Miss Cliona from Yamacraw, being injured or terrorized by Anna Belle.
“Well, then, I don’t think it’s nothin’ to be bothered ’bout if nothin’ wasn’t disturbed.”
“Nothing but me,” Lena said, trying to make a joke.
“Aw, baby, don’t be concerned. It sound like Anna Belle, but it ain’t nothin’ to worry ’bout. I wouldn’t let nothin’ harm a hair on yo’ head.”
“Yeah, Herman,” Lena said warily, “but you didn’t see those marks on that steel door. And you didn’t feel how cold it was. Hell, this is a woman who tried to kill me a few months ago, Herman.”
“Make ya dead,” Herman corrected her.
“What the fuck ever,” Lena replied crisply.
“I know, Lena, I ain’t tryin’ ta make light of it at all. But there a few thangs here that sets my mind to rest. First, Anna Belle ain’t shown up as herself. And since that first day down at yo’ place last spring, she ain’t even tried to touch a hair on yo’ head. She cain’t. ’Cause if she could, she woulda by now. I guarantee you that. She just tryin’ to upset thangs ’round you. Spookin’ the horses, kickin’ the locked door to my room down at yo’ place. It’s kinda sad when ya think about it. But she ain’t hurt a soul.”
Lena sat down next to Herman on the sofa and leaned back on him.
“Why, Lena, I didn’t say nothin’ ’bout it to you, but last month I went down to the river and found yo’ favorite wood bench th’owed over in the drink.”
“My teak bench?”
“I took it on out and washed it down. But I knew it war’n’t no wind or nothin’ that took it over in the water. It was Anna Belle. But it didn’t do no harm.”
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