She had looked at him with vague curiosity and he had smiled back. A friendly smile. Not unlike the ones he gave her as she danced and shimmied in front of him, to his music and for him, at Emma’s. At the dinner table that night he did not let her hand go immediately.
Tonight as he had played a piano composition he had written himself, June had taken her studies in her room, separating herself from the family who knew he was going to marry her oldest sister. They thought the youngest of the Blacksmith’s daughters had become a good student at last, immersed in her studies.
They talked about the Piano Man at school a great deal, the girls who wished they were going to Morris Brown so they could see the new music instructor. The boys from Morehouse said that he was courting more than her old maid sister. They said there were younger girls flocking to his classes and almost throwing themselves at him. They are jealous, she thought. He is the most handsome man. He has what they lack: class, position, fame.
“He belonged to me the first night I saw him, Willie. I know that. But how do I get him back?”
Brother laughed sleepily. “Just walk into the parlor and say: ‘Papa this man loves me. Since I first met him at Emma’s Juke joint he has loved me. He’s just stringing Minnelsa along.’”
June frowned. “Willie, I didn’t know you could be so mean. That wouldn’t be right. Minnelsa didn’t hurt anybody. If papa had let her marry the Wood’s boy years ago. . . Besides, if papa knew his son-in-law to be was playing at Emma’s, he wouldn’t even let me marry him.”
“I was just kidding, June. Kidding because,” he yawned, “there is nothing you can do.” Then he had gone to sleep.
Maybe she should go to Emma’s to get him. She wanted him back. She had become an ideal daughter: affectionate to her older sisters, helping around the house, and going to class and paying close attention to her studies.
It was driving her insane.
She was going to be an ideal woman now. She knew of such things. Things that her older sister would never know of. She had listened to the bad talk. She had seen women rub themselves against the men at Emma’s. She had seen the men slip their hands into the blouse or run a hand up a skirt and once, once when she was sitting in the car waiting for Ross, she had seen a couple fornicating against a tree.
The sight of it had thrilled and scared her all at the same time. They had snuck out of the club, full of illegal hootch and the man was smoking one of those funny cigarettes that gave her a headache. The woman walked a little in front of him shaking her large butt from side to side and laughing. The man threw down the cigarette and came up behind her. First kissing her on the neck and then running his hands over her large breasts.
June’s mouth had dropped open as the man slid his hands down the front of the dress and in between the woman’s legs. He pressed his hands there then grabbed what was in between with all his might. She threw her head back on his shoulder and the man moaned something to her.
He then lifted her skirt. The woman wore no underwear and the man seemed even more delighted as he slipped one hand in between her thighs. June, slumped down in Ross’ dark gray touring car so no one could see that she could see. She watched in the moonlight as the man’s hand went up and down and the lady’s dress danced.
The woman had swayed and moaned until June had begun to sweat. Then the man undid his pants and led the woman’s hand inside. How June wished she had seen it, been able to see a man’s private part when a man was not trying to do something to her. But she hadn’t. Instead the man opened the woman’s blouse and fondled her breasts till they toppled out. He leaned her over a wagon and went at her from behind, a breast in each hand. When they tired of that position, he turned her over, suckled each breast and put her on the wagon and started to pump her again. At some point that seemed to take forever they began to agonize and moan louder. Then they stopped.
By then June was all huffy and sweaty. It was as if she had experienced what they had experienced. Ross had looked at her funny when he got into the car. “What you been doing?”
“Waiting for you,” was all she said as she wiped sweat from her. “Sitting here in the heat and waiting for you.”
That was one way to get a man. It was one way Minnelsa would never think of to get the Piano Man. June could go to Emma’s and lure him outside.
But she couldn’t get to Emma’s alone. The place was well hidden in the woods. If she had planned to go with Ross and the boys she should have contacted them earlier in the day at the college and told them to meet her in their special place.
She stared out into the night. Maybe the Piano Man hadn’t gone to Emma’s this evening. He had been courting Minnelsa, and on the nights he courted that Blacksmith’s daughter he was never seen anywhere else.
June knew the exact location of his room at Mrs. Maples, she had passed the house so many times longing to see him. There was something she could do.
She had turned into the woman in red running in Minnelsa’s dream.
* * *
He had heard they were asking for him at Emma’s. He hadn’t been there in a few days, but he wanted to go.
He had been told: “The Brown family is a little more than any one man could have bargained for. Five beautiful daughters, a crippled son, a quiet lovely wife, and wealth to boot. Man, they are more than nigger rich. But if you get in, it will be worth it.”
When the Blacksmith had explained the part about the property, the Piano Man was glad. This was what he needed to make his life complete. He could marry Minnelsa and settle down and within a year have a child of his own, a new house with his own room like the old Blacksmith. He could have tenant farmers, not have to teach, and play whenever he wanted down at Emma’s. What good wife would stop her husband from having a good time now and then?
He was no longer a young man. Minnelsa was not a young girl. A short engagement would be the best. She would make the perfect wife of course.
Unlike wild June.
“Ah, June,” he found himself saying now and then. Although Minnelsa was pretty she was not beautiful like June.
June was what he desired, Minnelsa was what he needed. He would ask for her hand soon. Do it the proper way. Roy had said: “That blacksmith may think he knows what he’s doing, but the younger sister? She’s trouble. She gonna mess around and get knocked up sooner than the family thinks.”
He sat on the porch at Mrs. Maples and watched the night go by. Not even ten o’clock yet and everyone he knew was asleep. But Atlanta was changing. The little juke joints in the woods were losing business to the fancy colored places in the city. Places you could take a girl in a nice dress, park your new Ford, and spend your money on being and feeling special. Even those places were not for Minnelsa or any of the Blacksmith’s daughters.
Close to home and family was what the big man required.
If Emma’s was jumping tonight, it would do it without him. He would also avoid it for the next few nights until he popped the question. This was not New York, not Paris. Out here, away from the city, this was what he needed. Here was more respectable.
“Here is boring.” He stood and decided to take a walk as he did many nights. The quiet deserted street, the sweet smell of the country air, all this would lull him to sleep very soon. June’s dancing before him like Salome as he played at the joint kept him awake night after night. The thought of marrying Minnelsa, of having a real home helped put him at peace about his future.
He walked wondering about the location of the property the Blacksmith owned near the college. At least it was away from here. Here a few houses dotted the road, each with a little gate and fence to draw their boundaries. He wouldn’t have that when he married Minnelsa. He couldn’t imagine putting a fence around fifty acres.
What did fifty acres look like? Was it big? Was it a lot? He knew nothing of land, just of music. But he was going to learn all about it when he married the Blacksmith’s daughter. He was going to make all the rules on his land, just like the feudal lo
rds of old.
The cobblestones of the street clicked gently under his heels. “I don’t make much of a horse,” he said aloud just to hear a voice and he walked, careful not to lose his way. The air was so still he felt as if he was the only person on earth.
He hadn’t gone far when he saw someone walking toward him.
He spotted the red dress and the wild hair. Then he noticed the bare feet that had not made a sound.
“June?”
She ran to him breathing hard and trying to think of what to say. Instead of talking, she pulled him off the side of the road to a deserted stretch of land with a few dogwood trees and no fence to determine property lines.
“What on earth are you doing out at this hour?”
She grabbed his hand and placed it on her chest. He could feel her heart pounding quickly. He began to breathe hard.
“You should go home, June.”
“You should kiss me, Peter,” and she stretched on bare tiptoes until their lips met.
It was gentle at first, almost a child’s kiss. But she forced her mouth onto his harder and harder until he parted his lips and allowed her tongue inside. He leaned her against the tree out of the prying eyes that might be hidden in the dark, kissing her hard and long.
She came up for air. “Why are you going to marry my sister when you want me?”
He kissed her again then pulled away. June did not accept this as his answer. “I can do so much for you. I’m softer and younger.” She took his arms from around her and forced them to slide down her hips.
He grew with excitement and tried to pull away again. ‘She will be my doom’ played over and over in his head. She took his hands over her red dress slowly, carefully and then, when he realized he wasn’t clinging to the cloth any longer but touching her young naked skin, she whispered: “I have on nothing but this dress.”
He thought no more. He talked no more. He lifted her and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he took her into the dark wooded area beneath the trees.
She was still breathing hard when he lowered her to the ground to try to think what to do next. Silently she removed the sparkly red dress and stood before him. She was neither shy nor innocent about it. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want you to go back home, June,” he said with all his might.
As she looked at him a few tears ran down her cheek. “I came to find you. To tell you, no to show you, how much I love you.”
He bent down to pick up her dress and she reached out for him, touching his face. The warmth and softness of her hand melted his stubbornness. “I’m not going home until you tell me what I’m supposed to do with all this.” He stood as he watched her move one hand to her breasts as she ran the other between her legs.
Forgetting all he had vowed to himself, he dropped the dress and went to instruct her.
* * *
She threw the rock at the window, and when it brushed the glass she wondered why it was closed. Didn’t Willie remember she was going to be out tonight? Then she realized there hadn’t been time to tell him what she had planned to do.
The wind was blowing into a storm and she needed to get in soon for the air was getting cold around her shoulders. The red dress was no longer warm without the touch of a man’s hand on it.
She scraped the ground and found another pebble. No response. Maybe he had left the back porch unlatched although that would mean walking past the dogs and shushing them back to sleep.
The window opened and she stepped from under to tree into the open night. But the figure there was not her brother. The figure standing there was tall and full as an old oak tree.
It was the Blacksmith who leaned out of Willie’s window.
She could run back to the woods and find Peter Jenkins, her Piano Man that she had lain with in the woods on the cool grass. She remembered standing naked before him and touching herself so that he would respond. She thought of what had happened afterwards and was not ready yet to face her father. “He can’t marry her now, Papa,” she whispered to the figure at the window. “Minnelsa can never do for him what I can do.”
“To the back door,” the Blacksmith’s voice was barely above a whisper. Why didn’t he shout she wondered? Then she knew. A shout would have awakened the neighbors to the fact that his daughter was not the proper lady that he expected her to be. That he had found her sneaking into the house two hours prior to dawn. She had shamed the Blacksmith. She had succeeded in doing something to make him understand he did not run the whole world. No matter what happened to her now she was one up on him.
The neighbors’ dogs sniffed and whined at her but she didn’t bother to shush them. She wondered about Willie, why her father was in his room. Was her dear brother sick again?
The steps creaked as she walked up them but she didn’t bother to tiptoe. On the big back porch amid the bins of vegetables and the baskets for laundry, the Blacksmith stood in his nightshirt and slippers.
She walked in and tried to get past him but he grabbed her arm. The grip was powerful and made her want to scream but she wouldn’t. June didn’t struggle to pull away from him. She just stood there.
Without warning, without a word the huge hand that bent metal struck her. The Blacksmith let her go and she fell to the floor tasting blood as her went head spinning.
“No daughter of mine disappears into the night like some whore.” His voice was strained.
Suddenly mama was there. Not saying a word but waiting, twisting a towel in her hand.
“Get into the house.” June rose from the porch floor, wiping the blood with the back of her hand, stumbling as her head reeled.
“Where did you get that dress?” Bira asked.
June didn’t answer just looked at her father’s face in the bright kitchen light. So the hatred was mutual.
“You slut!” he said. “Your mother asked you a question.”
June laughed at him for thinking names would hurt her now. When he raised his hand to hit her, Bira screamed. “William, don’t.”
The spinsters appeared. Their starched white night dresses and delicate pale brown feet touching the clean scrubbed floor of the Blacksmith’s house. Bira held her husband’s arm tightly as June said: “The Blacksmith doesn’t have daughters who are sluts. Just daughters who are old maids.”
The sisters stared at her.
“She’s been drinking,” Fawn whispered to the others. But June heard.
“I haven’t been drinking. I have no need to drink.” She turned to her father. “It isn’t ladylike to consume illegal spirits. So I don’t. All I wanted to do is get out of this house and be with some people and have some fun. Maybe some dancing that isn’t waltzing, singing that isn’t in church and laughing at something other than tired old stories of what happened at papa’s shop. I had fun, something we never have here ’cause we’re always waiting. Waiting for papa to say it is okay for us to live, for us to breathe. For us to get married to the man he chooses.” She gave an angry look to Minnelsa. “Even if that man has never and will never ask you to marry him.”
“You shut your mouth, you tramp,” the Blacksmith said, his fists clinched and his face fueled with fury. “Where did a daughter of mine get a dress like that? You are not allowed. . .”
She shouted at him: “I am not allowed to do anything but what you say. But I bought this dress. I’ve been wearing it for weeks now.”
“Where did you get the money?” Bira’s voice was as tiny as her body. “You have no job.”
“That’s right Mama, I don’t have a job. And if I saved all the money you gave me for sodas at the pharmacist’s counter and candy at the fair, I would be as old as Minnelsa before I could afford a dress like this.
“I have smarts, though,” she hissed. “I can make money just like papa. I can barter and trade.” The Blacksmith pulled away from his wife. He slapped June again and she landed on the table holding on for support. The sisters jumped back, their mother just stood there staring blankly at he
r youngest daughter.
“Oh, Papa. I’m sorry you have no faith in me. You think one of your precious daughters would actual give herself to a man for a mere dress?” She laughed and the Blacksmith’s face changed.
To Bira he said: “Is she crazy? She must be crazy. That could be the only explanation for her behavior.”
The dress sparkled as it moved about her. “Why would I sleep with a man for a dress?” She ran her hands over the fine bead work. “I’m not crazy, papa. Besides, no man in Atlanta would touch the Blacksmith’s daughters without his permission. A Blacksmith as big and strong as you could kill them with one hand. Or ,with all his money, have them killed.”
“Watch your tongue, girl.”
She gave him her best smile. “Why would a man sleep with one of us when, if he played his cards right and courted us, he might get a handsome dowry of 50 acres and some of that money you’ve been hording for years.”
The sisters looked at June and then at their father.
“You old fools. So you really didn’t know.” She moved close to them. Fawn stepped back as if her sister carried the plague. “The men who darken our door to call on us don’t want you dried up old women. They want the money. They want the land. Papa wants the men who get his money and his land to be men he can control. So they come here to call on you dried up old spinsters who have never lived one day without the blessing of the Blacksmith.”
The daughters backed away from her not raising their eyes to look at their father. June didn’t care. She turned to the powerful big man. “I traded one of Willie’s paintings for this dress. He gave it to me and I bartered it. Just like trading fixing a carriage wheel for a half a hog, Papa. Fair trade. So there. I’m not a slut and I’m not stupid.”
William Brown pulled away from his wife and passed his other daughters and headed for his bedroom as he said: “Tomorrow she goes to stay with the family in Tyson, Alabama. I won’t have. . .”
The Wilful Daughter Page 12