Tina Mcelroy Ansa

by The Hand I Fan With

  Lena was dumbfounded. From the first time Lena remembered being held in the old lady’s arms, she knew that her grandmother was the very essence of power and wisdom. As powerful as her mother and father. As wise as any of the nuns and priests at St. Martin de Porres, as any of the winos and whores down on Broadway and Cherry.

  “Good God, Grandmama, you didn’t have a clue?? If you didn’t have a clue, then what about me?”

  “Exactly, baby!!!” Grandmama said and, rising like a soapy bubble into the night air, burst and disappeared.

  38

  PERIOD

  It was a day in late May when Lena first noticed the sound of her own laughter. It truly shocked her to hear the throaty giggle coming out of her own mouth as she watched Emmanuel prance importantly around the corral right behind his mother. Lena realized that she was no longer in deep mourning for Herman the way she had been throughout the month of April, breaking down each time a spring breeze ruffled the hairs at the back of her neck.

  Remembering all that Herman had taught her, Lena just didn’t feel right being miserable.

  She could hear his voice as clear as anything.

  “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 s’posed to be.”

  Now, Herman whispered at her ear when she had a question, or he swung open a gate when she reached it. He still spoke to Lena all through the day, just the way he had before, asking her questions and pointing out new signs of spring along the river. And she talked to him, just as she had before, seeking his advice, sharing an interesting thought or pangs of love.

  He had promised her that he would always be there for her. And he was.

  But Herman no longer walked her property as a man. He was there as mist, as breeze, as a feeling, as sunshine, as a hunch, as the Ocawatchee River, but not as a man.

  And Lena missed Herman’s body.

  Every single thing reminded her of Herman. The gate he built. The trellises he erected. The steps he repaired. The signs he made. The seeds he planted. The bed they shared. With the sound of her laughter, she realized she had reached the point where she was grateful for nearly every single memory.

  For a while after Herman first disappeared Lena had tried to be angry with him. For loving her and leaving her. For teaching her everything except how to live without him: without him eating her food, without him eating her pussy, without him taking her hand as they walked through the woods.

  She had stood on her deck many a night cursing and screaming at the darkness for enveloping her Herman and taking him away.

  She had even tried one night to yell, “Fuuuccckkkk you!” in the direction of the stars, but the words evoked such hot sexy images of her and Herman together in the cornfield, in the shower, in the hayloft, in their bed, that she could not even get the whole curse out.

  Lena found it impossible to sustain any anger at Herman. She loved him too much. And the ache she felt when she could hear him but not see him, when she could see him but not touch him, was not as sharp as it had been at first.

  It seemed a waste to spend time being angry at Herman for doing what it was time for him to do. For not doing what she wanted him to do. She knew that her time would be better and more happily spent remembering and smiling and living and continuing to love him whether he was there in body or in thought.

  Herman wasn’t the only ghostly presence around Lena’s place nowadays. Her grandmother, mother and some of her other Grandies came regularly now to sit on the deck and talk or to stand in the kitchen and watch her make dressing or a hoecake of corn bread. They offered comfort and gentle guidance.

  Even the ghost of Herman’s mother—Lena called her “Mama Mae”—had come a few times to smile on Lena and help her with her recipe for china briar bread. She spoke just like her son, and she didn’t even make Lena nervous. Her talks helped Lena appreciate Herman the spirit in the way she had loved Herman the man.

  Lena’s brothers just about lived in the woods on her grounds now. She had seen the two of them dashing down to the river one morning. Lena was looking forward to talking to them sometime soon. She found that she really did not know her brothers at all.

  And Jonah, she discovered, enjoyed just sitting on her deck in the warm spring sun.

  Lena even began to think that her birth caul had indeed been a gift.

  Almost against her will, she found herself moving on with the life and plans she and Herman had set into motion. She carried the dull clump of pain with her, but she moved on. Not as a martyr. Not as a widow. But as someone who had a life to live. She was just beginning to understand what Herman had told her about “surrendering” and reveling in what she had right then.

  She was thankful for a great many things in her life: Herman and her ghostly family; her faith and the right she claimed to her own privacy and choices; 455 Forest Avenue and her children; her garden and horses, and the freedom and time to enjoy them.

  Lena found laughing in the morning with Herman a difficult habit to break. She woke rested now with a smile on her face, remembering one of Herman’s songs or one of his stories or one of his sayings. Her day was so full of things she was eager to do on her land or at 455 Forest Avenue that she also awoke smiling in anticipation.

  No one, not even James Petersen, who saw that all of Herman’s personal belongings were gone, dared ask what had happened to Lena’s man. The town of Mulberry respected her privacy and did not treat her like a grieving widow to be smothered with sympathy.

  She was grateful for that.

  Lena felt as if she had been given a treasure each time she heard Herman’s voice or caught his scent on the wind. But she was even more grateful that his ghostly presence had not yet shown up in their bed. Just hearing Herman’s voice, or remembering the touch of his callused fingers all over her and up in her, Lena would come sometimes standing at the sink or stooping in the garden. Sometimes, she thought she could feel Herman’s fingers strumming the hairs on her matchbox.

  Her pussy, as lonesome for Herman’s body as she was, had not sung a note since he first disappeared. Lil Sis didn’t even sing the blues. And Lena was glad of that.

  Sister had completed her sabbatical in West Africa and planned to swing through Mulberry on her way back home from the continent that week.

  “Girlfriend, do I have some talk for you,” Sister’s wire had read. “And I bet your hair looks like the devil’s doll baby danced in it.”

  Lena’s thick copper braids were loose and messy, but her hair, in Herman’s agile hands for a year, now looked better and healthier than when Sister had last oiled and braided it.

  She heard Herman say, “I loves yo’ hair like that, Lena.” And she tossed her head and smiled.

  Lena hadn’t decided how much she was going to tell Sister about Herman. It really didn’t matter. Lena found she did not need to tell anyone else about Herman. She liked having him all to herself.

  There was hardly a sign still around her house of the fierce storm that had blown through the county the month before. Lena and James Petersen got the house and grounds straight faster than she would have thought. They retrieved outdoor furniture, resecured trellises and replanted uprooted bushes. All the while, Herman’s spirit kept popping up to guide her.

  Lena discovered more things she owned that she did not use, things she could get rid of or share. She could hear Herman say, “Good God, Lena, ya got so much.” Her cabin out by the river was not Spartan now. But it was indeed free of much unneeded plenty.

  Chiquita from 455 Forest Avenue was Lena’s first choice to help her sort through the goodies she and James Petersen unearthed in their cleaning. The teenager, who was just discovering Dinah Washington and bebop, said the two of them—she and Lena—were “simpático.”

  Lena found that was true soon after Herman disappeared. Chiquita had tried calling a couple of times, concerned about how bad Lena had looked the last time she had seen her. When Chiquita didn’t get a respo
nse, she sent Lena an envelope.

  Inside, there were lyrics and music to a love song Chiquita had composed about her own mother and a note that read:

  “When you feel better, Miss Mac, I’ll play it for you.”

  The image of little fifteen-year-old Chiquita, who had not seen her own mother or father since she was two, trying to comfort Lena brought tears to her eyes. She called and invited Chiquita out to visit that very week.

  Lena found that even after giving Herman all her love, she still had love to give. And her children needed as much love as they could get.

  Lena and Chiquita would sit for hours at 455 Forest Avenue or out on the deck at Lena’s house by the river and discuss everything from boys and birth control to poetry and clothes. Then, they would switch to a serious discussion of Chiquita’s artistic aspirations. Sometimes, James Petersen would sit down and join in the discussion—from a writer’s point of view.

  When Chiquita bounded into Lena’s house with her short dark hair braided in an abbreviated version of Lena’s hairstyle, Lena had to smile at the imitation. Chiquita had blown in like a new breeze and put on Dinah’s “What a Difference a Day Made,” singing along the way Lena had in the house on Forest Avenue when she was a child.

  “What’s this, Miss Mac?” Chiquita asked as she dug through the closets in the sewing room. “Some kind of instrument stand?”

  “Oh, that’s for the telescope,” Lena said from the other side of the room. And she smiled thinking of the first time Herman had looked through its lens. Some nights, Lena could feel him looking over her shoulder as she scanned the heavens.

  “I’m a little hungry. You had lunch, Chiquita? Let’s take a break and get something to eat.”

  Having her children around her house from time to time felt so right.

  “Okay, I’m always hungry. And you always got something good to eat in your refrigerator, Miss Mac You the only single grown person I know who cooks like that.”

  At the mention of food, Lena felt Herman’s presence enter the room. He seemed to be around all the time now.

  “Can we eat down by the river?” Chiquita asked. “It feels good down there.”

  “Uh-huh, moist air, good for your skin. You got pretty skin, Chiquita. Now, you have to take care of it, okay? Be gentle with it. Pat it dry when you wash your face. Don’t ever rub it hard. Pat it dry, do that for me, okay?”

  “Okay,” Chiquita promised as demonstrated. “You’re always showing me something good, Miss Mac”

  “Am I telling you too much? Am I getting bossy?” Lena asked with a chuckle.

  “Uh-uhh, I love to learn things. ’Specially from you.”

  Lena smiled again. “Come on, let’s take that lunch break. Eating down by the river is a good idea.”

  “I need to go to the bathroom anyway, Miss Mac. Can I use your great big bathroom?” Chiquita asked.

  The teenager said she wanted a bathroom just like Lena’s when she built her own house.

  “You got a Tampax, Miss Mac?” Chiquita called from the bathroom off Lena’s bedroom.

  Lena thought a minute. “I’m sorry, sugar. I don’t think there are any.”

  “You don’t have a tampon in this whole house, Miss Mac? In this house?”

  Lena smiled when she thought how Herman had called her house the “got house.”

  “Uh-uh, Chiquita,” she answered. “I don’t think I have any in my purse, either.”

  “You don’t have any? No panty liners either?” Chiquita was not convinced. “What you been using, Miss Mac?”

  “I don’t know,” Lena said more to herself than to her young visitor. It seemed she had not had use for a tampon in ages.

  Lena glanced at the Varnette P. Honeywood calendar on the wall in the kitchen. Lifting the pages, she looked back through to the beginning of the year where she had drawn the last red star. Lena realized she had not used a Tampax since February.

  She looked through the calendar once more, counted back again, and pondered the date with a quizzical smile playing around her face.

  “I made do with some Kleenex,” Chiquita explained as she came into the kitchen ready to eat. Taking containers of leftovers from the refrigerator, the girl continued to chatter away. But Lena wasn’t listening.

  A slight change in the temperature of the room told Lena Herman had just entered. Then, she felt him at her ear looking over her shoulder and counting with her under his spectral breath:

  “Nought from nought leaves nought.”

  Standing with her hands on her hips, Lena chuckled and, sounding like her dead grandfather about to set off on an adventure, said softly to herself and to Herman, “Well, Lord.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tina McElroy Ansa’s first novel, Baby of the Family, was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times in 1989. Her second novel, Ugly Ways, was published in 1993. She lives with her husband, Jonée, a filmmaker, on St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia.

  READER’S COMPANION

  A LETTER TO

  MY READERS

  “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.”

  —Zora Neale Hurston,

  Their Eyes Were Watching God

  Dear Reader:

  On my way to the airport while promoting my second novel, Ugly Way’s I said to my husband, Jonée, that I knew my next novel would be a passionate, erotic love story, something I had wanted to write since reading my mother’s adult contemporary novels as a child. I knew the main character would be Lena McPherson, the eponymous main character from my first novel, Baby of the Family. But, I told him, I didn’t know whom she was going to fall in love with. Jonée gave me this incredulous look and said, “Now, who else would Lena fall in love with but a ghost?”

  I had to laugh. Of course, that’s who would be Lena’s love: a ghost. (In fact, for a while before I settled on The Hand I Fan With as the title, I called the novel “Lena’s Love” for reference purposes.) How perfect, I thought, how appropriate for an American love story at the end of the twentieth century to be as tenuous, as ephemeral, as insubstantial as trying to love a ghost.

  Herman—what a perfect name!—began materializing right then for me, almost as he came to Lena. For Lena, Herman was perfect—a ghost, a spirit, a vapor of a man who could do anything earthly and unearthly, become any substance, hone himself into any shape and not even break a sweat. As a ghost, he could be any age, have any experience, have lived as a man and a spirit, and learned a few things in the process.

  Herman is indeed a prodigious presence in the novel. But Herman has already been around—alive and dead—some 139 years. He’s got his stuff together. It is Lena who is still a pupil, still growing, still learning, still living.

  But despite Herman’s presence, The Hand I Fan With is and always was Lena’s story.

  In The Hand I Fan With it was important for me to explore the issue of how one lives as well as how one loves. Not what clothes we wear or what car we drive, but how we live a full life on this planet. How we live a spiritual life in the midst of plenty or in the midst of deprivation. How we reach the balance of duty to others and self-fulfillment. How attachment to things and fixing and doing saps us of the joy of living. How it is possible to be a mother without giving birth or without formal adoption.

  For this is a woman’s story of giving too much to others without thought for self. It is the story of how many of us women live our lives in a rush of accumulating and sacrificing.

  For me, writing a novel is an organic thing. It is a natural process. I wanted the eroticism of Lena and Herman’s relationship to grow out of their everyday lives, from the succulence of the vegetables they eat from their garden to the joy of putting their bare feet to the earth. I wanted Lena to rediscover her roots, her culture, her land, her self, her past. And Herman, who was a part of Lena’s cultural past, is her loving guide on this journey.

  Much of the novel evolved that wa
y: One image, one thought, one revelation grew out of another. I felt at so many times in writing The Hand that I, too, was on a journey of self-realization. I could not write about Lena’s inability to say “No” and not catch myself having the same problem. After writing the berry-picking scene in the book, I could not let blackberry season come and go without also marking the occasion.

  A mighty flood did indeed sweep through the center of Georgia in the spring of 1994, leaving confusion, destruction and change in its wake. And I knew that Mulberry would have had to be affected by the deluge, too.

  In dealing with the traditionally erotic, the sexual element of Lena’s new life, I discovered I had to face my own issues of sexuality if I was going to spread Lena’s “stuff” all over the page. This was my “stuff,” too. My pussy was being put out there for discussion as well, and I figured my voice had better be clear and strong.

  One reader said to me after finishing The Hand, “I know this sounds strange, but I missed Lena and Herman so much, wondering what they were up to now, out by the river, that I went back and reread parts of the book just to spend some time with them again.” I love ripping and running with Lena and Herman myself. They’re good people to spend time with.

  Some folks tell me they read the novel in one night! I tell them, “Hey, slow down!” If Lena doesn’t teach us anything else, she ought to teach us that. Slow down, let it get dark sometime, let’s use up some of what we’ve got first before heading to the store. Slow down and see how you can share some love. Slow down! Or as Herman would say, “Time, baby.”

  Love and Peace,

  AN INTERVIEW

  WITH

  TINA MCELROY

  ANSA

  THE HAND I FAN WITH is the story of Lena McPherson, the “hand” the entire tiny middle Georgia town of Mulberry “fans with,” the baby of the family, the wealthiest woman in the county, a child born with a caul over her face (imparting her with luck and second sight and a connection with the spirit world), a woman who by all appearances seems to have it all. But Lena McPherson has nothing. Her parents and her brothers are dead. And she has even turned her back on the gifts of the caul as she tries to avoid the demons and fears it also brings.