Genevieve

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  “Kenya. Stop it.”

  “Wash your dick before you go back to your wife.”

  “Don’t trip, Kenya.”

  “That’s how you do it, right?”

  “Stop it, Kenya.”

  “Wash your dick and go back home as if nothing ever happened, right?”

  I have become nothing to her.

  I have become too small to see hear taste smell feel.

  She is Medusa. She is Mephistophelian. Shrouded in darkness and mystery.

  I move by her, head to her bathroom, my mind afire and legs unsteady.

  On the way I see her laptop, Palm Pilot, I-pager, DVD player. And a U-Haul key.

  I scrub our scent away, pull my clothes on, pass by her without saying anything else.

  At the door I stop, this heaviness in my chest asking me to explain the unexplainable.

  I leave her sitting in her dark and cool room, a new cigaretteglowing in her hand.

  ***

  Odenville stares.

  I walk through my guilt, part my own sea of deception, and follow my wife up a two-lane highway. There is no sidewalk. Mud, gravel, and grass separate the road from the countryside, so she’s keeping to the edges of the asphalt, moving in a straight line like she’s on a tightrope.

  Genevieve is calm. Her moment of insanity was brief. This is not new to us.

  I say, “You haven’t had a panic attack in a long time.”

  “In front of Bubba Smith, of all people.”

  “You remember him from when you were here?”

  “He says he’s one of Gravedigger’s brothers. That’s all that matters.”

  “You don’t know all of your daddy’s brothers?”

  “The way I grew up, that’s not unusual. Not for my family. We’re a mixed bag.”

  Mixed bag. Same phrase that Kenya uses.

  We walk until we are between Odenville Presbyterian Church and the town’s fire department, in a parking lot for the Odenville Utility Company. A basketball court, tennis court, and a small park rest in the shadows of both modest structures.

  I ask, “Why do all the businesses and churches start with Odenville?”

  “Because we’re in Odenville.”

  Stupid question. Aggravated answer.

  I watch her and worry. She’s not herself, not one hundred percent.

  The one and only panic attack I ever saw her have happened over a year ago. It was a Saturday morning, kids were lining up to get in the pool for swimming lessons. Children were waiting and Genevieve was taking forever to come outside. No child was allowed in the pool until she gave them permission. Genevieve was never late with her classes, always started her class on time down to the minute. Late students weren’t allowed in the pool, her way of training them for life in the real world, pulling them away from the concept of CP-time as being acceptable.

  Lupe, our cleaning lady, came to the door and called me, did it in a discreet way. With her wide-eyed expression and her strong Spanish accent, she told me that something was wrong with Doctor Forbes, that she was angry and breaking things. I hurried upstairs, found Genevieve barefoot, a T-shirt over her two-piece swimming suit, eyes wide, throwing books and glasses and candles. I called her name over and over. Perfume flew into the wall. Boxes of tissue followed.

  She looked different—lines in her forehead, eyes dark.

  She was someone else.

  Then whatever had possessed her went away while she held a picture frame in her hand. She lowered the frame, stood there breathing hard, looking at the destruction she had caused.

  Whatever look she saw on my face frightened her as much as she had frightened me.

  That was when she had to explain part of who she was. I knew her mother was dead and her father wasn’t in her life, that she never talked about him, but the same applied so far as my absentee father was concerned, was the norm in the black community.

  I didn’t know her father was in prison and would die in prison.

  She told me her mother was called the town whore and her father loved her despite her faults, her needs for variety when it came to carnal stimulation.

  I asked, “What made you… what just happened?”

  She whispered, “Othello.”

  The trigger, that day, was the television. HBO. Othello was on, the one with Laurence Fishburne as the Moor. She had walked into the bedroom when Othello killed Desdemona. In this version, a black man killing a white woman. Her brain made her a teenager again, gave her the five senses of that wretched moment, began processing too much of her past all at once.

  She lost it, started yelling and throwing things at her never-ending memory.

  That day, after the ghosts had fled, I held her until she told me she was okay.

  She whispered, “He took a knife to her throat and killed her.”

  Her father didn’t run outside naked and pretend he was crazy, didn’t take her mother’s body out on a boat and try to drown the evidence, just called the local police, lit up a cigarette, and waited. He was on the porch when the police came, no blood on his clothes because he had changed into a black suit, white shirt, and dark tie. Clothes he wore on Sunday mornings when he sat in the choir and played the piano for his pastor’s congregation.

  I asked her, “You saw it happen?”

  “I saw it.”

  “You and who else?”

  “No one was there but me.”

  Genevieve tells Bubba Smith to drive on, that she knows the way from here, that we will follow when we are ready. “Ma’am, if there is anything I did to make you—” I snap at him, “Can you please stop running your mouth and listen?”

  “Yessir. But no need of you hollering at me like that.” The look in his face, the way he pulls at his crooked moustache in worry, shows his regret for talking so much. He gets back inside the Town Car, turns on his signal light, and after a few cars go by he pulls away. Not far up the U.S. 411 he turns right at an Exxon. I ask, “How far?”

  “Almost there. Can smell the gizzards from here.”

  Ford Escorts and F-350s whiz by. I wait for Genevieve to breathe again, to make a move. Another car filled with blond teenage girls goes by. They all turn, stop their incessant chattering, and crane their necks at the same moment, turn and stare at the strange people.

  Another sign says we’re on the Historical Stagecoach Route. Charlotte’s Antiques, other small businesses surround us, this town breathing underneath a blanket of gray clouds, darker clouds in the distance letting let us know the storm of all storms will be back to torture us soon.

  I catch a glimpse of a public park with colorful swings, a walking trail, and recreational area that rests between two churches. Genevieve stops moving. Her breathing is labored. But another panic attack doesn’t rise. I touch her and she jerks like she’s surprised she’s not alone.

  She says, “What if I begged you not to walk around that corner with me? To just go back to Birmingham, go see the Vulcan, go to the Civil Rights Museum, go to Five Points and eat at Surin West, go have fun and wait for me, or to just stay at the hotel, be supportive in that way?”

  Her glass shield thickens. Moments like this, when I’m supposed to be her strength, she pushes me away. This validates my tryst with Kenya. And that angers me. It makes me want to scream. But I remain stubborn.

  My words may ring as those of a hypocrite, so be it. Despite anything I have done, I love my wife. I desire her, crave her, but that is not always reciprocated, and that is both disheartening and deflating to the soul. Makes my love feel unfulfilled, like a parasite still in search of a host. I have endless honeymoon fantasies, but our honeymoon is over.

  It ended this morning when I went inside Kenya’s room.

  I play down my own anxiety, chuckle. “You expect me to walk back to Birmingham?”

  “Wait at the gas station. I can send Bubba Smith back down when I get to the trailer.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Please?”

  Her word is soft but t
hat glass walls turns into brick.

  “I’m going to meet your family,” I tell her. “They’re my family too.”

  She struggles with herself. “You’re right. As my husband, this is your right.”

  “I’ll turn around. But only if you turn around with me.”

  “I can’t turn around.”

  “Why?”

  “They know I’m here. I’m beyond the point of no return. For me it’s inevitable.”

  “What’s inevitable?”

  “Plus, I have to know that Willie Esther is really dead.”

  “Closure.”

  She nods. “I have to know that I am free.”

  She starts walking. There is no sidewalk. I’m right there with her. We cross a small stream, Beaver Creek. The park is to our right. Picnic areas, colorful flower beds, plenty of swings.

  Genevieve goes that way, into the park, up the newly resurfaced asphalt track. Her eyes tell me that all of this is new, that so much has changed. Her eyes also reveal her swelling angst.

  Genevieve says, “Why are you so persistent? Who I am striving to be should be more important than who I was. You’re always looking back and I’m always looking ahead.”

  “That’s the Cancer in me. The Taurus in you.”

  “But you have questions.”

  “I want to untangle every snarl and see into every motive because your cryptic behavior leaves me in a constant state of vague uneasiness. Because I never really know what you’re thinking. Most people have misplaced their memories, have left them in their heart’s attic, and from time to time you’re allowed a peek. You throw your memories away.”

  “Not all memories are good memories.”

  “I have no idea what your good memories are. You don’t have pictures of family, of old boyfriends. No cards, no mementos. It’s as if you were born the day I met you.”

  “In some ways I was.”

  “You had to have good memories before you met me.”

  “Meeting you. Marrying you. Waking up with you. Those are my good memories.”

  Her earnestness shatters me. She takes a deep breath and stops walking. First looking back up the road in the direction we have come, then toward where we are going.

  She says, “When I met you, I loved you before you said a word. I thought, he’s my Neo. He’s the one. When I sat across from you at that table, I was nervous. I had a choice. I thought, tell him all, or tell him nothing. Tell him all, watch him walk away. Tell him nothing and maybe he’ll stay. Tell nothing and he can’t hurt me. Tell nothing and I remain perfect in his eyes.”

  Her words carry a depth I’ve never experienced. Continual intensity in her eyes.

  My eyes tell her, no matter what she says, I’m not going back. I want to see the things that do not appear on her flowchart, on her wall that faces the rising of the sun.

  She walks the trail. We are so close and now she chooses to walk in circles, as if she has to move in the same counterclockwise direction her mind is spiraling.

  Snails crawl by us as we stroll.

  She stops walking and frowns at me. “You’re pushy. So very pushy.”

  I don’t respond.

  It is silent, an anagram for listen.

  That is what I do. Listen while she remains silent.

  A few deep breaths later she nods, in a soft voice tells me that she is ready to talk.

  THIRTEEN

  GENEVIEVE SAYS, “WILLIE ESTHER SAVAGE WAS AN EVIL WOMAN. SHE was a smoker and an alcoholic who kept a dirty home and always called my mother a slut. Said that none of her children would ever amount to anything. Said that my mother messed up by being a slut. And that was the reason she was put on the other side of the fence.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. Anyway, Willie Esther let everybody know that being a slut was why my momma got killed. She was mad because that forced her life to change when she had to raise seven children. She always threatened us, said she would send us to the other side of the fence if we didn’t behave. She made us go to church at least three times a week. Anything to get away from her cigarettes and Wild Turkey. Three times a week I prayed that she would send me away, at least have the state come get me. I didn’t care how bad a foster home was, didn’t care how bad they abused you in the system, it had to be better than where I was.”

  “That bad?”

  She pulls her lips in, starts walking again. “I ran away from here.”

  “Ran away? Where… how far did you go?”

  She chuckles. “Made it to Atlanta. About one hundred miles. Had just turned thirteen.”

  “You ran away at thirteen.”

  “Willie Esther had beaten me so bad, so many times. One day I was on the way home from school and this car pulled up. It was a yellow car. Nothing fancy. Black man was lost, looking for the Interstate. I pointed. Was happy to see another black face in Odenville, even if he was just passing through. Asked him where he was going. Said he was going to Atlanta. Said he was going to Morehouse College. Think that’s what made me want to run away to Atlanta. He told me about the black colleges. Told me about Spelman. I imagined all the black people, all complexions, the fraternities, sororities.”

  “And you ran away?”

  “He was smoking a thin cigarette. He’d inhale and hold it a long time before he let the smoke ease out of his mouth. It didn’t reek like the stench from Willie Esther’s cheap cigarettes. I asked him what he was smoking. He said it was something that took away sadness.”

  “You’re telling me he was smoking a joint?”

  “I told him I was sad a lot. Didn’t know what depression was then, just said I was sad.”

  “He was lost, riding through here, lost, and smoking a joint.”

  “And he handed me one. Told me to sneak and smoke it when I needed to feel good.”

  “He gave you a joint?”

  “Sure did. That was my first one. He smiled and told me I was too pretty to be in a place like this. Said a girl like me needed to grow up in the city, be around more black people.”

  I nod, suspend all judgmental thoughts, engage in active listening.

  “Told me that I was too pretty, that I needed to get away from the karma of land that used to have segregated toilets, bomb threats, and sit-ins. He was the first person to tell me I was pretty, first that I remember, who said it and meant it. Think he was the first man I ever trusted.”

  “He… you and him… what happened after that?”

  “Then he drove away. I wanted to chase his yellow car. Wanted to run as fast as I could and catch that yellow car. My car to freedom. I remember thinking, if I could only get to Atlanta.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Stood there with my eyes closed, clicking my heels.”

  She says that as if she were telling me about her first true love. I look out at the calmness in Odenville. I say, “Hard to imagine.”

  “No, it’s hard to forget. Memory is my tormentor. Memory keeps us in its own prison. You have no idea how she embarrassed us in public, called us niggers in front of white people.”

  “Genevieve, you don’t have to—”

  “I have to.”

  I say, “You don’t have to be afraid. She’s dead now.”

  “Memories don’t die. Did you know that memories are what do us in, the inability to forget? You ever wonder why people with Alzheimer’s look so calm and peaceful, so childlike? Because they forget everything bad.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out with a frown. “I can feel her energy. I can still see her. That filthy, amoral bottom-feeder was the size of a double-wide trailer and she… she… God, she wore more makeup than a carnival freak.”

  Her sharp tone is new to my ears, disturbs me to no end, but I maintain my composure.

  I touch her hand and say, “Genevieve… okay.”

  “Hated the way she said… the way that evil bitch yelled my name. She was loud and crazy. Beat us like we were runaway slaves. Not a strong hand out of love. It was h
ate. Everybody said that she did that because of the drinking and the nerve pills, but it was hate.”

  I lean forward, interested again. “Nerve pills?”

  “She always had to go away for treatments at the state hospital when, and I quote, ”My nerves get bad from all these leftover niggers in my home. Need to send these mutts to a shelter.“ When she was gone it all fell on me. I had to work like a mule and keep up the house. Cook, clean, everything. No matter what I did it wasn’t good enough. There were so many trifling men around…” She shudders and shakes her head, frowns, rubs her eyes, trapped in her own mind. “Anyway, everybody talked about how crazy she was. And the crazy stuff she would do.”