Tina Mcelroy Ansa

by The Hand I Fan With

  She didn’t know how to handle the pain and shock she was feeling now. It was so deep, and she was completely unprepared for it. She kept hearing Herman’s words: “I gots to go, baby.”

  “Come on, baby,” he said, pulling her up onto his lap as he sat in his pine chair. He put his long callused hand on the bright silk over her breast. “You know you can feel it in yo’ heart. You know you can feel it’s time fo’ me to go. One of the thangs I’m most proud of is I know you can feel it. I know you know it.”

  “Oh, Herman, I don’t know nothing but if you leave me …” She couldn’t go on for a moment because the words “leave me” had never occurred to her.

  “Oh, Herman,” she begged. “Don’t leave me.”

  He just repeated it. “I gots to go, Lena, baby.”

  Lena rocked in his arms and wailed, “No, no, no, no, no.”

  “God, Lena, I done had two shots at life as it is. That’s one mo’ than most ev’ybody else get.”

  “It’s not enough for me, Herman. Stay with me.”

  She grabbed his hand and brought it to her lips. Then, she took his hand and slipped it inside her robe and down into her panties.

  “Don’t go, stay here, Herman, stay here,” she pleaded as she took his fingers and began massaging Lil Sis. “Oh, Herman, stay right here.

  “Come on back to bed with me. It’s early. The sun’s not even up. You don’t have to go yet. Come back to bed with me. Come on make love to me one more time.

  “Come on, Herman,” she pleaded, standing and attempting to drag his body toward her boudoir. Remembering his favorite Al Green song, she begged, “Come on, Herman, love me one mo’ time, for the good times.”

  Herman took both Lena’s hands in his and kissed them gently.

  “You do know me, don’t ya, Lena, baby, I gots to gi’ ya that. You sho’ do know me. ’Cause ’bout the only thang that could keep me is you in that bed up under me.

  “But even after that, baby, I still gots to go. No matter how many times we go back to that bed, no matter how many times I touch my tongue to yo’ tongue, my lips to yo’ titties, my mouth to yo’ sweet pussy, I still gots to go.”

  Now, Lena was sobbing like a two-year-old who knew what heartbreak was. She grabbed Herman’s hands and tried to pull them into her chest. Then, she sank to the floor again because she didn’t have the strength to stand. Herman sank to the floor with her and took her in his arms.

  He held her as tightly as he could without bruising her tender McPherson skin, but she got no comfort from his tenderness. She could feel him slipping away, getting less and less solid, less and less Herman.

  She buried her face into his chest and bit the sweet skin of his dark dark nipple. She rubbed her face on his green cotton shirt, leaving tear and mucus stains on the spot above his heart.

  “Herman, if you knew that you were going to leave me, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me yesterday or last week? Or when you first come here? Why you string me along like this?”

  “Tell you? What fo’, baby? So you could be this miserable and cryin’ and heartbroken longer?”

  “Longer? Damn, Herman, I’m gonna be heartbroken forever.”

  “Aw, naw, you won’t, baby.” Herman’s voice was so soothing and reassuring that Lena almost believed him for a second. But the next moment, it hit her anew that Herman was really leaving her now, in spring, with the wisteria blooming and the jasmine and the honeysuckle about to break into flower. And she broke down again, moaning and begging and screaming in Herman’s arms like a woman who had lost her only child in a drive-by shooting.

  She was inconsolable.

  He started to tell her, “Good God, baby, you knew I was a ghost when I first rode up.” But he knew she was in no condition for an old-time saying right ’long through there. Instead, he said, “You always knew I was a spirit, baby.”

  He kissed her face and neck and stroked her braids and forehead and rubbed her breasts awhile.

  “Shoot, baby, if we s’posed to be t’gether, then we be t’gether fo’ever. This life ain’t it. This ain’t nothin’ but a vapor, baby.”

  A vapor. Lena remembered him as nothing but a vapor when he first appeared to her in her bathroom, and she wept all the more.

  “I been here so long now in yo’ time that folks in my world startin’ to question thangs.”

  Lena wiped her runny nose with the sleeve of her silk robe. “Fuck your people asking questions, Herman! You ain’t got to go. We don’t have to follow no rules. You said most spirits don’t get to come back like you did. So, maybe you don’t have to go, neither.”

  “I gots to be honest Indian wid you, Lena. I don’t know how I got this time wid you. I don’t know. I know I ask fo’ it. Folks ask fo’ a lot a’ stuff between here and there, and don’t usually get it. Ain’t s’posed to have it, I guess.

  “But I looked up, and you was callin’ me, Lena. You was callin’ me to come on into yo’ world. And I been happy, deep-down happy, ever since. And, Lena, I will be happy for all eternity.

  “You the cause a’ that, baby. ’Cause God, who I may be ’bout to meet, knows I love you.”

  “Oh, Herman, I know you love me. I know that. Just don’t leave me. You know I don’t have nobody else. Please, don’t leave.”

  Herman kept on talking as if Lena were not sobbing and begging him to stay. He appeared nearly unmoved, but Lena, even in her state, could feel his deep sorrow.

  “Whether I gets to stay a extra year or fifty years, I’mo or you gon’ haf to go. And this life gon’ end. But, baby, what we got ain’t gon’ end, never, ever.”

  “Oh, Herman, is this what I get for loving a ghost? Just some metaphysical bullshit and you gone?”

  “Lena,” he said, looking at the sun rising low out of the Ocawatchee for his last day on solid earth, “look, baby, I can’t love you enough. I can’t suck you enough. I can’t kiss you enough. I can’t massage you enough. I can’t eat you enough. I can’t touch you enough.

  “If I had a million years on this earth, it wouldn’t be enough time to love you the way I want to. But be that as it may, Lena, baby, I gots to go. And that’s just the pure-T truth. It’s time.

  “Time. It’s the answer to everythang. Time, baby.

  “It’s my time now. It don’t make me love you no less. But I gots to go.”

  Lena had no shame. She didn’t give a damn about shame. She was so weak, she couldn’t even stand. All she could do was beg.

  “Don’t go. Don’t leave me, too. Hell, every dead body say I can do anything. Now, I want to do this! I want to keep you. Oh, Herman, don’t make me beg and cry like this.”

  “Baby, I don’t want to see you hurt. It hurt my heart to see you hurt.”

  “Then, dammit, Herman, don’t go! Just don’t go!”

  “Gots to, sugar. I been here a year …”

  “A year! A year??!! Herman, a year ain’t shit. You were dead a hundred years! You had a hundred years to love me. I only get one year to love you? That ain’t right. Oh, God, that ain’t right.” She could feel anger building with her shock and pain.

  “Baby, right is right and right don’t wrong nobody.”

  “Oh, Herman, I don’t even know what that means. Save that old-timey bullshit for somebody else.”

  Then, Lena stopped, still as the grave. She wiped the snot and tears from her face once more.

  “Herman, is that it? Is there somebody else?” She could barely whisper the words.

  “Aww, baby, even feelin’ the way you feel you gotta know better than that! You still the ’oman whether I’m goin’ up under yo’ skirt every chance I get or not, whether I’m shoein’ yo’ hosses or not, whether I’m rubbin’ yo’ feets or not …”

  “Stop! Stop!” she cried, closing her eyes and dropping her head into her hands at the images his words called up. She could not bear to think that all of that was over. Lena had been certain, certain, that she and Herman would live and love out at their place by the river
for years and years. She had imagined them growing old together like Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, like Nellie and Jonah. Then dying together. She could not imagine a future without Herman.

  “I got friends, and they been holdin’ thangs off fo’ me. Ain’t all a’ them like Anna Belle, bless her jealous heart,” he was saying.

  Lena broke down crying again at the thought of Herman slipping away to others who probably didn’t even appreciate him the way she did.

  “Oh, Jesus, Herman, don’t go!!!”

  She looked right in Herman’s face and kissed both his beautiful high cheekbones, kissed his chin that looked so resolute and strong, kissed his straight black black eyebrows, kissed his curly black eyelashes. By the time she got to his lips, she could not bear it any longer.

  “Herman, didn’t you promise to always be there for me? Didn’t you?”

  “Baby, I ain’t got t’ be up inside you to be wid you.”

  Lena burst into new tears at the thought: Herman ain’t never gonna be up inside a’ me again.

  She was the very picture of every obsessed, crazy, crying, hysterical, out-of-control, want-her-man-back, want-another-chance woman in history.

  She cried for Herman like Nellie had at the thought of Jonah going off to fight World War II.

  She cried for Herman like Carmen cried for Joe in Carmen Jones.

  She cried for Herman like Lena wanting her man back.

  Lena just wanted to cleave to Herman. And as he stood, she did just that. “I ain’t got no damn shame, Herman. Don’t leave me,” she implored as she grabbed him around one of his long strong legs and clung to him. When Herman tried to turn and reach down for her, he just dragged her limp body a bit on the floor. But he seemed to steel himself against the pitiful sight and dropped again to the floor beside her.

  For Lena, April was indeed shaping up to be the cruelest month.

  “Ya gotta do the work you called to, Lena. But you ain’t gotta be miserable. In fact, that’s just what you ain’t supposed to be. But yo’ deep unhappiness, no knowledge of yo’se’f, who you was, what you could do, what you was called to do. Ya just didn’t have no knowledge ’bout yo’se’f.”

  The more Herman told her, the more it hurt.

  “I had a duty when I come here, Lena, to he’p you along a little bit. Baby, yo’ unhappiness was causin’ such havoc in the otherworld ya wouldn’t believe it. Then, yo’ broken heart start causin’ disturbance in this world, too.

  “Yo’ anger callin’ up storms. Yo’ loneliness extendin’ over the county. Yo’ spittin’ causin’ Cleer Flo’. Like you som’um from the Old Tes’ament, Lena.

  “That’s ’bout the time I showed up.”

  “So, you just took me on to teach me a thing or two? You took me on as a job, a task, an assignment?” Lena felt that someone had grabbed her by her ankles, turned her upside down and shaken her.

  Herman didn’t drop a stitch. He asked quietly, “Did you ever feel like a task in my arms?”

  And Lena had to break down again at his feet. “I’ll never feel myself in your arms again,” she wailed, and threw her face into Herman’s lap. Looking down, she noticed his boots were not as hard and leathery as a few seconds before.

  “Oh, God, Herman, you’re really disappearing.” She screamed like the goblins had her. “I’ll never feel the breeze without loving you. I’ll never come without feeling you in my bloodstream.

  “Is that the way you want me to go on? How the hell am I supposed to do that?!”

  Herman didn’t answer. He began strobing, disappearing and reappearing right there in Lena’s arms like a hologram.

  “Oh, my God, Jesus, don’t do this to me. I don’t want to lose my man,” she sobbed. Her breath was coming in short frightened gasps. “Oh, Mary, mother of God!” she cried. She felt as she had as a child when a ghost or spirit or demon had her in her sleep and wouldn’t let go. She wept the way she had on a Georgia beach when she was seven and realized she was the only one in her family circle haunted by visions and voices.

  Sitting there, she called his name. “Herman. Herman. Herman.”

  He had always come before when she had called him or even needed him.

  “If you got the money, honey, I got the time.” Herman had said it, and she had taken it as a promise. Now, that promise was broken.

  When he appeared solid, Lena grasped at him with all her strength. She felt that merely by the power of her love, by the power of her wanting, she could keep Herman within her grasp.

  But the next second he was just a vapor. She could not hold onto him.

  “Lena, baby,” Herman said, looking into her eyes with his fading gaze, “I am much in love wid you.”

  Then, he was gone.

  36

  CRAZY

  Lena just about lost her mind lying there on the kitchen floor by herself.

  After Herman disappeared, really disappeared, Lena just wanted to dissolve right where she lay and follow him back into his dead world. She wanted to close her eyes and just will herself to die, too. But she couldn’t, even though she felt she might die of the pain anyway.

  “Oh, Lord, don’t do me like this. Please God, you know I’ve tried to be good, tried to be a true Christian. Jesus, you know that, you know everything. You know that.”

  Lena pulled herself up onto her knees and prayed to every deity she believed in.

  “Oh, our Mother who art in heaven, don’t just take him away like this. Please, don’t do that. Didn’t I forgive when you wanted me to? Didn’t I? Didn’t I love the way you wanted?

  “Now, I’m asking this one little favor. Give me back my man.”

  Lena started making deals with the Lord.

  “Okay, Jesus, if you just send him back to me for one more month. This is what I’ll do. I’ll be aware of every single thing around me. I swear I won’t let my anger and emotions get out of control. I’ll learn more about the gifts you’ve given me and how to use them. I swear if you’ll just send Herman back to me.

  “Oh, Yemaya, please hear my cry. You’re a woman. You know how it feels. Let me have Herman back, and I’ll never ask another thing of you.”

  All she could think of was Sister Louis Marie telling her and her female classmates in their senior year not to think they could fornicate, then make deals with God not to get pregnant.

  “Girlies, you can’t make deals with God, you don’t have the ante.”

  She stood shakily on the cold kitchen floor and stumbled into the Great Jonah Room. “I swear on my Grandies’ graves that I’ll do anything if you help me find Herman,” she said aloud to the rafters.

  She stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Oh, God, I don’t even know his last name!”

  Then, she fell to the floor crying and wailing.

  When she rose, she got up feebly like an old or pregnant woman—first on all fours like a dog, then one foot flat on the floor, then the other, and finally, with her knees bent, she pushed herself slowly upright from the floor with the palms of her hands. She moved to the oak French doors overlooking the deck. Our deck and our stables and our garden and our ground, she thought achingly, bracing herself against the door with the palm of one hand.

  Lena knew she had to gather all her wiles if she was going to be able to do any good and get her man back.

  “Not knowing his full name won’t matter, I don’t think,” she mumbled to herself as she moved toward her bedroom, pulling her braids back out of her face. Herman had told her that the rites or ceremony of conjure or voodoo or hoodoo or Christianity were just outward signs, like a sacrament, of inward grace or belief. She wanted to show that she truly believed.

  Her mind raced to remember concoctions she had overheard down at The Place, to recall what Sister had said was used to hold onto a wandering husband.

  Now, was it Adam’s root or valerian root she told me to use? Lena wondered desperately. Her heart was pounding and her ears were ringing as if she had a steel band around her head. She just couldn’t think
.

  The word “root” reminded her of Herman’s Georgia jumpin’ root, and she had to fight images of Herman’s beautiful penis.

  “Let’s see,” she said to herself as she stumbled around her big deserted house, “I think you add some ginger lily root and some rabbit tobacco. Now, where would I get some rabbit tobacco?”

  Lena remembered that she had taken a piece of thread from Herman’s trousers one night, not to try to hold him, but just to have it. But when she checked the tiny peach and purple trunk-shaped box where she knew she had placed the threads of dark green cloth, the box was empty. A small knot from his hair had vanished, too.

  She put on the red silk underwear that Herman liked under a pair of worn jeans and one of Herman’s long-sleeved shirts.

  She sprinkled salt and pepper around all the doors of her house and stuck a fork in the ground in a vain effort to keep Herman there with her. But she knew it was too late for that.

  When she thought of the chinaberry tree and its aphrodisiac roots that Herman had teased her about, it had begun to rain hard, coming down in sheets across the river. Still, she walked into the woods without a raincoat and got soaking wet sitting at the foot of the chinaberry tree on a stump.

  Lena was truly torn about eating one of the mushrooms growing at her feet. She didn’t want to go on living. Sitting there, she composed her obituary, “She died after eating poisonous mushrooms she found in the woods near her home.”

  Fuck that obituary, she thought, I don’t think I want that to be my epitaph. I don’t want that to be the last thing I do on this earth. She got up and headed back to the house to tell Herman of her decision, but when she realized Herman was gone and that she’d never be able to tell him anything again, she fell right to her knees on the mucky, muddy ground and began crying again.