It feels like Anna Belle and all those spirits or whatever in that locked room down there just got loose, Lena thought, crowding out the cacophony of the complaints and conversations that was ringing in her ears.
Lena was too mad to cry. She had not driven ten blocks before she found herself embroiled in a Mulberry-sized traffic jam of cars on their way to the biggest sale of the year out at the town’s mall.
She banged the steering wheel with the palms of her hands and laid on the horn.
Burning down the whole town of Mulberry seriously crossed her mind. “I know what Mama meant when she used to say we children made her very asshole tremble!” she said fiercely to herself.
The entire torturously slow way home, Lena could hear the townspeople’s talk in her head:
“What the hell is wrong with Lena McPherson!??”
“Yeah, she even stop eating our food. Out there cooking so much herself, don’t even appreciate what we been doing for her.”
“I don’t know what she out there cooking for. Hell, her time sho’ could be better spent conducting some of her business.”
“You know why she out there cooking. Trying to keep that man!!”
“Ain’t no telling what’s going on out there since nobody can’t just drive up like normal people.”
“Have the nerve to go sending us to somebody else when we need to talk to her.”
“Lord ham mercy, I sho’ am glad Jonah ain’t around to see how his girl is running things now. It woulda broke his heart.”
“And what about Nellie? Now, that woman was a saint!!!”
“Not even eating our food! What she think? We gon’ pizen her!!??”
“Think she too good?!”
Caught up in traffic with carloads of ravenous shoppers ready to acquire more stuff, Lena could not block out the voices.
“Look at her, dressing like a ragamuffin.”
“Running away from all her responsibilities. I’ve never seen such a selfish thing in all my life.”
“What does she expect us to do?”
“Yeah, she’s there for you when she want to be. But don’t have a emergency, ’cause she off gallivanting with her crazy self with God knows who, doing God knows what.”
“Her mama would turn over in her grave if she knew how Lena was neglecting her people. Like she ain’t got no upbringing.”
“Yeah. And if Lena McPherson ain’t got none of that, ain’t none of us got it.”
“My mama died and we didn’t hear a word from her. Not a word. Didn’t come to the funeral. Didn’t send no flowers. Didn’t do nothing. What about my mama?”
“Uh-huh, did all that good stuff for the public eye when mama was alive, but where was she at the funeral when we really needed her?”
“Shoot, that ain’t hardly nothing compared with the fact she done turned her back on God, too, they say.”
“On God???”
“Uh-huh. Don’t even go to church no more. And, you know, St. Lena used to wear out the pews at St. Martin de Porres.”
“Yeah, St. Lena.”
“Just go to show you. Her heart ain’t in the right place. Never was.”
Lena thought her very heart would break. By the time she got home, she had heard it all.
“And Herman, now Cliona from Yamacraw got the nerve to be going around saying I’m crazy. I’m crazy?
“Shoot, maybe I am crazy to put up with this shit. And then take all this grief for it. Shit. I guess I’m crazy as a betsy bug and a little foolish fool, too!!”
She was the only one who was surprised by the townspeople’s anger and resentment toward her.
She knew folks in town were calling themselves worrying about her and her new cavalier ways. But to actually have some white man, some jackleg quack, ready to tie her up in a straitjacket and cart her off to a padded cell like some madwoman. To say that she had no heart. To say she was selfish. It was just too damn much for Lena.
She was so hurt and angry she threw things. She didn’t think she had ever felt this way before, and she certainly had never shown her anger in such a manner. She destroyed a number of items precious to her before Herman stilled her hand as she was about to chunk her mother’s delicate white-flowered china face-powder bowl with little rounded gold-leaf claw feet. The very act of touching her, stopping her in midthrow, brought her up short and made her look around the house at the irreplaceable things she had shattered.
“Shoot, Lena, you at least gonna need a old plate to cut collards up on,” Herman tried to reason with his woman. His plain-spoken sense did give her pause to gather herself and her rage, but only for a second.
“It’s just like Mama said, They start out wanting your friendship, just wanting to talk, and they end up wanting your heart, soul and liver, chopped up fine and spoon-fed to ’em.’”
She mimicked Nellie and said, “Here, take my heart, take my liver, take my soul! Take it and be done!”
“Yeah, why don’t these damn people just do that?”
Outside, little white peaks were beginning to form on the Ocawatchee River. Even from the deck, Herman could see that Cleer Flo’ had suddenly ceased. And the wind was whipping up the pine straw on the ground.
Seeing how furious and hurt Lena was, he tried to make a joke to lighten her mood.
“Hey, take it easy, greasy. You got a long way to slide,” he said.
Lena, however, was not to be played with this day.
“Herman, listen to me, they actually had some jackleg doctor who used to work at the crazy house in Milledgeville down there at my place to observe me!
“Cliona from Yamacraw sitting up in there just as big with her certifiably crazy self talking about ’Now, stay calm, Lena.’
“Saints preserve us, Herman!
“They actually talking about the process of commitment. For my own good!
“Said they made some phone calls and had collected some ’pertinent information’ about my ’recent strange behavior.’ Herman, they called the bank and down to Candace!
“And they got the nerve to say I lost my mind!!”
While Lena came up for air, Herman just said, “Umm.” Lena continued.
“At least the folks at the bank and my friends at Candace didn’t fall for this and throw in with them. Now that I think about it, Gloria was trying her best to head me off when I walked in this morning.
“But the rest of those folks …”
Outside, Lena’s anger was wreaking as much havoc on nature as it had on her prized possessions. A storm had come up suddenly over the Ocawatchee and tall muddy red peaks were beginning to form on the surface as the wind whipped up foam. A lightning bolt struck a tree in Pleasant Hill, melding a baby doll, a brand-new Schwinn bicycle and a red hairpin to its trunk.
Herman felt the tension in her clenched fist flowing through her wrist, up her arm, through her chest and down to her heart. When he felt it in her heart, he had to steel himself and stop himself from crying like a baby at her hurt.
He moved closer to her on the sofa in their bedroom and put his arm around her shoulder.
“Shit, I can’t believe I’ve been such a fool. Everybody ain’t happy for me. After all I’ve done for them, they don’t really give a damn about me. Herman, they mad at me!!!
“Where I been? How come I ain’t answered their phone messages? What they s’posed to do waiting for me to get around to them? They got a pain in their chest, and I won’t make it go away. Don’t I care about nobody but myself?
“And where was this little foolish fool? Ripping and running all over creation trying to do what I could. And here I am thinking I’m the one who has to save everybody. If I don’t do it, the world will fall apart. What a fool I was!! Some of them making fun of me and calling me St. Lena.”
Lena was cut to the quick when she understood that the people of Mulberry were truly angry with her, talking about committing her, talking about her deserting them, talking about her betraying her family name.
She suddenl
y heard James Petersen’s voice cut through the other noises in her head.
“Yeah, Gloria, it woulda broke Lena’s heart if she knew how some of those folks just threw that food against the fence when Lena didn’t invite them in yesterday.
“I got it all cleaned up, so when she came out this morning she didn’t know no better. But I wouldn’a let her see that for nothing in the world.”
Herman took Lena in his arms and held her there.
Her big brown eyes filled with tears at the thought of people she had loved all her life talking about her like a dog and treating her like one, too. Throwing food at her gate.
Her! The baby! Used to being instantly loved.
“You expect people to love you, don’t you, Lena?” Sister had asked once. And Sister was right.
Lena had always gotten what she expected. What she measured out, she seemed to get back, pressed down, shaken together, running over. Everybody in Mulberry could testify to that. She had done that with her town and had not really judged them for always pulling at her skirt tail and taking her for granted.
But she was the baby. She wanted to tell folks who made mean, thoughtless statements, “Oh, you must not know I’m the baby.”
Herman held her as if she were the only baby. He held her and rocked her and kissed her and made over her until she began to feel better.
“I think these people can get on just fine wi’out Lena McPherson’s constant ’tention,” he said as he gently patted her back. “Everybody can. But Lena could stand a little ’tention, too. That’s what I think.”
But Lena was not so easily pacified. She was deeply hurt.
“They know I ain’t got no family but them,” she said softly. And realized again suddenly how hurt and mad she was. Outside, it began to rain softly.
Her senses so sharp, her emotions raw, Lena could not seem to block out the conversations people had been having about her for months.
She discovered they were mad about everything. When the women in town had gotten wind of Lena packing up her clothes, they had had a fit. The clothes had gone into pools of professional attire that young women from Spelman College, Fort Valley State College and Xavier could borrow for job interviews and conferences and social occasions.
“Giving away her designer clothes.”
“Giving away her high-heeled shoes.”
“Ain’t no telling what else she giving away. Wouldn’t be surprised if she gave away Jonah and Nellie’s home over on Forest Avenue before it’s over. Giving away everything she own and still won’t return an old lady’s phone call.”
“I hear she kept that little pink Chanel job, but all the others—the black and white Chanel suit, those little black Ungaro silk dresses, the Versace blouses and jackets, the Ralph Lauren slacks and sweaters, those Jil Sander cashmere and wool suits, that brown leather suit by Calvin Klein—all that went off to some strangers!”
“Yeah, I guess we little country folks in Mulberry wasn’t worthy and sophisticated enough to get her little designer castoffs!”
“Uh-huh, and I had my eye on that brown leather suit for years!”
“Yeah, what she want us to do? Get down and paw the ground just ’cause she did a few things here and there for folks? What we got to do, paw the ground at her feet?”
When Mrs. Jeffries, the receptionist at Candace, overheard one of these talks, she had snapped back, “Maybe what you got to do is give her a little credit and a lot a’ breathing room.” Precious and the other women at Candace had just smiled and kept on working. “We all make a good living here at Candace,” the receptionist added, “and if we want designer clothes, we can buy our own.” That had really shut the grumblers up.
It eased Lena’s pain a bit to know that every damn body in town was not poised to stand outside her gate with flambeaux and pitchforks.
Gloria left a message of support on Lena’s machine.
“Lena, girl, I know this town ’un tore its drawers with you,” the message said. “Call me when you feel like talking.”
Even days after the incident down at The Place, Lena still did not feel like talking with anyone in Mulberry but Herman. The storm on Saturday had finally passed on down the state, but Lena’s stormy feelings did not abate.
For hours, Lena would just sit—her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. Then suddenly, she would slowly raise her head and shake it. “Um, um, um,” she’d say to herself with infinite sadness. Many times, tears would just roll down her cheeks. Remembering what Herman had told her, when she was out on the deck, she was careful not to let any of the salty drops fall into the now muddy waters of the river.
Lena could still hear women all over town discussing the possibilities of just what was wrong with Lena McPherson. Even people who didn’t know her personally itched to get into the act.
“You know she had a lick to her head just last spring according to Bubbles down at The Place,” one of the secretaries at the East Mulberry High School office told another.
“Did she really?” the other asked from her brightly painted cubicle.
“Friend o’ mine work in the emergency room of the medical center. No, she didn’t see her come in, but she heard that Fred Jackson, the man who own the construction company, brought her in and was plenty worried. She say he swore she had been hit in the head with something even though they couldn’t find no bump.”
“Maybe it didn’t take no bump.”
“What you mean?”
“You know some womens go crazy when they reach the change of life. I know it’s hard to think of Lena going through that but she is at that age.”
“Lena McPherson, I know exactly when she was born. It was 1949. In the fall, I think.”
“Anyway, like I was saying, Lena ’bout at that age. Maybe that explain it.”
Each time she heard another Mulberry conversation, she grew angrier and angrier.
She was so mad, she even reverted to her five-year-old self and wondered how they’d all feel if she were dead. “Yeah, if I was laying up in a coffin somewhere, they’d have to get the Mulberry city and county police to direct the crowds.
“Yeah, like Mama say, ’Gi’ me my roses while I’m still alive to smell ’em.’”
If Herman had not taken her keys away from her, Lena would have jumped in her car many a time and driven into town to confront each and every one of the folks who were so through with her.
For days, Lena would stand out in the garden near the stables and scream in the direction of Mulberry.
“Bump you!!!!!” “Forget you!!!!!” “Screw you!!!!!” She said everything but “Fuck you.”
“Yeah,” Lena shouted to the woods and the bridle trail and the road and the river leading into Mulberry, “why don’t I just wait? Wait until I’m, say, forty-seven, or forty-eight or forty-nine or fifty-nine to get a life of my own. Yeah, why don’t I just fucking wait until it’s convenient and comfortable for all of you?!!” She balled up her fist and shook it in the direction of town.
She thought Yahweh must have felt like this about the Israelites about the time they had been in the desert for a few decades. And they were still turning against Him, doubting Him, blaming Him.
“Fuck these people!!” Lena imagined the Father turning to the Mother and the Holy Spirit and saying of his chosen people. Then turning to his people and adding, “I brought you out of Egypt. Parted the Red Sea for you. Dried up Jordan. Rained manna and birds on the desert so you could eat. I closed my ears to the pleas of your enemies, the Ammonites and the Hittites and the Canaanites and the Girgashites and the Perizzites—and made you my people, victorious.
“Gave you land you didn’t have to clear and till. Gave you vineyards and olive trees you didn’t have to plant. And just listen to you.
“Fuck these people!”
Herman just looked at her.
“So now you up there wid Yahweh, huh, Lena, baby?
“Good God, Lena, just ’cause people loves ya don’t mean they won’t wear yo�
� ass out day to day. Why you so surprised?
“But if folks truly loves you, they be there for ya. They don’t let you run yo’se’f completely in the ground doin’ fo’ them. They like children who don’t know no better, if they do that, Lena. But regardless of what they do, you gon’ have to give it up, baby.”
“I have given up as much as I could, Herman, and you see what’s happened. You see how people acting now!”
“Naw, baby, I don’t mean givin’ up the work. I mean givin’ up the control. The decidin’ who gets what, who needs what, who can’t survive wi’out Lena McPherson’s he’p.
“You don’t know the meanin’ a’ the word yet, but, baby, you gon’ have t’ surrender!
“Once you do that, you’ll be able to love folks again.”
“Love them?!” Lena sucked her teeth.
“You know, baby, you can tell Mulberry and all its people, Tuck you!’ and still be able to love them.
“ ’Cause no matter how much you hurt, all they done is just be human. It’s just people bein’ human. You ain’t in control, Lena. No matter how sweet ya want to do it. Doin’ fo’ people don’t make ’em yo’s. Everybody responsible fo’ they own se’ves. Just like you.
“Damn, baby, you don’t have a clue, do you?”
Herman said it with such power and emphasis that it had hurt Lena’s already wounded feelings. It was spoken almost as an indictment, a grand jury charge. Herman felt the weight of his words, too, and tried to soften them a little.
“Lena, baby, you got t’ do better. You can’t afford not to have a clue. You got thangs t’ do. And ya ain’t got to sacrifice yo’se’f on the altar of doin’ and goin’ and fixin’.
“You ain’t got to give burned offerin’s of yo’se’f to be good. God don’t even want that. That’s all yo’ hush mouth is … burned offerin’s. And yo’ good works, too. Burned offerin’s.”
Lena was hurt to the quick by Herman’s judgment. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I ain’t judgin’ you, baby, I’m try ’na he’p you.
“I been dead a hundred years, Lena, baby, I do know a thang or two.
“You done forgot to look out fo’ yo’se’f. Shoot, Lena, baby, even iron wear out! What you make possible fo’ Lena to do? See, you might be able to come up wid som’um, but you got to think, don’t ya?”
Tina Mcelroy Ansa Page 40