Genevieve

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  “She didn’t take anybody. Delphinie would say that she was going to the store for cigarettes and it might be weeks, maybe months before they saw her again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Gravedigger couldn’t give her what she wanted. He couldn’t get her out of Odenville. Guess he was happy being here, digging graves and playing the piano at church.”

  “So, she’d run away and leave all of you here?”

  “She left everybody with Willie Esther. Lots of mothers in the South do that. Have children young. Realize we’re not toys and we cost money. Realize that children can be the inhibitors of dreams and fantasies. So they leave their children with their grandparents.

  Got so bad that Willie Esther used to make Delphinie take somebody with her when she went to the store. Preferably the youngest. Delphinie would have to come back if she took the youngest.“

  I swallow and blink a few times. “She left everybody with Gravedigger.”

  “Please. When Delphinie went away, a couple of days later, after Gravedigger had screamed and cursed and damn near went love crazy, he would vanish too. Leave everybody with Willie Esther. Sometimes he would go stay with Grandpa Fred. A few times he went into Birmingham, went bar to bar looking for Delphinie. Sometimes he’d just wait for her to come back. He wasn’t gonna keep those children. Let Grandpa Fred tell it, not a man’s job to work all day and look after children, not when the woman he married ain’t doing nothing.”

  I nod. “So everybody stayed here and with Grandpa Fred.”

  “Oh, hell no. Just Gravedigger. We didn’t and still don’t go to his crib.”

  “Why not?”

  She almost laughs. “Tree Stump didn’t want no halfbreed colored children over there messing up his funky little trailer. Compared to this dump, his shack was a castle. He had an air conditioner. Willie Esther didn’t. He’d let us sweat like pigs while he sat up in that tin can, air conditioner on high, sipping sweet tea, and watching his color television.”

  “How was it for you growing up here?”

  “I was in Dunwoody with my daddy most of the time.”

  “Dunwoody?”

  “Over in Georgia. After Delphinie died, things were crazy, so they sent me to go live with my daddy. Actually he came here to see me, saw our welfare lifestyle, went to Grandpa Fred’s trailer, and he took me with him. So I was with him most of the time. I came back after I was a teenager. Went to school out here one year. Got in trouble. Well, was having problems at school and with Daddy’s wife. Of course that bitch thought it would be best to send me away.”

  “How was Willie Esther to you?” No answer. I ask, “How did Willie Esther treat you?”

  When I turn around, Kenya is across the room, crying, wiping her eyes with her hands.

  She says, “Great. Messing up my eyeliner.”

  Her sudden tears unnerve me the same way Genevieve’s attack did.

  Kenya says, “I’m okay. Thinking about Daddy. Sadness and anger, it comes and goes.”

  “What anger?”

  She shakes her head, pulls her lips in, doesn’t say. “Cancer is a bitch.”

  “Pancreatic?”

  “Prostate.” She nods. “Typical black man. Hated going to the doctor. Anyway, I went to Stone Mountain to take care of him. Was already too late. I fed him, changed his linen, cleaned his bedpan. Everything was in reverse, me doing for him what he did for me when I was a baby.”

  “They say ‘once a man, twice a child.”“

  “When a man is dying, all he wants to do is bare his soul. To make things right.”

  I nod.

  “I was talking to Daddy, then he asked me to go get him some breakfast, came back and he wasn’t breathing. He was gone. All the pain was gone from his face. I wanted to try to revive him, but I let him be. He knew he was about to die and sent me away. He knew I would’ve tried to revive him. He always told me that he didn’t want that. Had his DNR order written up. He was already talking about how tired he was. I didn’t try. I sat there next to him for hours. Crying.”

  The door opens and a group of children come inside. Kenya gets them all plates of food.

  She tells them, “Make sure you bring the leftovers back in here. Jimmy Lee and Velma want to take the leftovers back to their mutts. They have more mangy mutts than children.”

  She rubs their heads, laughs with them, then sends them back outside. Doesn’t want to get food all over the trailer. She puts on yellow gloves, cleans off the chipped counter, puts trash in a big green bag, does chores without thought.

  One glance at my wedding ring tells me to run away from here.

  But I stay.

  She says, “Let’s stop doing this circle dance and talk.”

  “Yeah. There is this… I’m uncomfortable.”

  “You have nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t do anything to damage your marriage. I’m as much to blame as you are. All I had to do was not open my door. I did what I wanted to do.”

  The skies turn a deeper gray. Rain will be here soon.

  Kenya’s cellular sings again. She frowns and ignores Usher’s song.

  More children come inside the trailer home. I step outside.

  Minutes pass before Genevieve and the others come out of Grandpa Fred’s home. The war veteran coughs like he’s not long for this world, struggles, but gets his breathing back on track, and lifts his hand so he can smoke. Raises that nub and scratches his face again. I cringe.

  Bubba Smith is at the Town Car, cleaning the windows. He spies toward Genevieve. Peeps back toward me and toys with his Dale Earnhardt moustache. I’m frowning. He gets nervous. One phone call to his employer and Bubba Smith will be at the unemployment office.

  Genevieve feels my anger, my discomfort, and her eyes come this way. I wave. She waves back, still on the other side of the fence having a meeting with older members of her family. She makes no motion that tells me to come toward her, so I stay where I am, in the company of strangers. Looks like some neighbors have come by, all of them gravitating toward Genevieve, all amazed at her survival and transformation into culture and wealth. Genevieve seems accepting of them all, but I know her; she’s ready to run down the road screaming.

  The children leave the trailer home. I step back inside, search for something edible.

  Kenya asks, “Want me to fix you a plate?”

  “No.”

  “A man shouldn’t have to fix his own plate, not when his wife is around.”

  I linger, watch her do other things. I say, “It surprises me. You’re very uxorial.”

  “Uxorial?” She eases a hand on her hip. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It’s a compliment. The way you said you took care of your dad… caring… wonderful. You’re not boilerplate. You have style of your own. And you have the characteristics of a wife.”

  “Characteristics of a wife?” She rolls her eyes and laughs. “You calling me domestic? And if you are why don’t you say domestic instead of using that complicated word?”

  “Raise the bar. People get comfortable swimming in the warmth of their own ignorance.”

  “Whatever. You need to stop trying to impress me by sounding academic.”

  “Impress you?”

  “You’ve been trying to impress me since I met you in the hallway at the Tutwiler.”

  Kenya smiles and I do the same. She says that if she were my wife, my world would be perfect. She touches a passionate part of me long suppressed by the need of another. If I had met her first, I could have loved her first. Then I would’ve still marveled at:

  Genevieve’s intelligence and viewed her as the optimum choice, the woman to propagate the species with.

  Married to Kenya, I wonder if I would have committed adultery with Genevieve.

  More cars pull up outside. More of the elderly have arrived.

  I ask Kenya, “Tell me some more about your family.”

  “Already did. Poor white trash meets Negroid in the countrified hood. That sums
it up.”

  “I want to know about my wife. Tell me about Genevieve before she ran away to Atlanta.”

  Kenya tenses. “I’m talking too much. What LaKeisha wants you to know about LaKeisha, she’ll tell. But don’t expect much more than what I’ve said. This is the South. Secrets born here die here.”

  “What other things are people hush about?”

  “Only reason I’m talking this much is… is… you know why.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Because of this morning. You did me righteous, hurt me so damn good, did something to me I didn’t expect and I’m not comfortable with what I’m feeling right now, not at all.”

  At times her voice changes, sometimes hip, sometimes shunning any Southern influence.

  I let her words settle before I whisper, “Tell me.”

  She whispers in return, her tone the merging of pain and confusion, “Don’t. Do. That.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  She snaps, “Don’t. Use. Me.”

  “Okay, then tell… just help me out on one thing. You told me that you were there when your mother was killed by Genevieve’s father. But Genevieve told me she was there by herself.”

  Her eyes go to the floor, to a specific spot, as if she can hear the screams, see the madness in a man’s eyes as he kills the thing he loves, see all the blood that was shed.

  I say, “I’m not trying to use you.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t use me to find out what your wife is ashamed of.”

  “I’m family. Maybe I’ll ask around.”

  “Being married to one of us does not make you one of us. Grandpa Fred has this place under control. People might whisper, but nobody’s gonna talk, not to you. The neighbors don’t know you and I doubt if they’d talk even if you had a warrant signed by Jesus. I asked questions for years and got no answers. Damn shame. Only one way to get enlightened in this family.”

  “How?”

  “Find somebody on their deathbed. That’s the only time people around here will talk, when they are trying to lighten their loads in hopes of floating up to the pearly gates. The scent of the Grim Reaper is like a truth serum. Makes them talk so much you wish they would shut up.”

  “You were just talking about Willie Esther. You’re not on your deathbed.”

  “Maybe because since my daddy died… I feel like part of me is dying on the inside.”

  That shuts me down.

  She snaps, “Look, fix your plate and get out of here before people start gossiping.”

  Kenya hates me.

  I take an extra crispy leg from a bucket of KFC and leave her I alone, the door slamming behind me. I loathe her as I draw in each adulterous breath. She has stolen my righteousness. I blame her because I find that easier than accepting the blame for my own actions.

  I stand near the fence, head aching, rubbing my goatee, staring at that marker for my mother-in-law. I would go over there, but I cannot lie to the dead. Delphinie knows my truth.

  My cellular rings once, then vibrates. I have a text message.

  From: Doctor Genevieve Forbes ARE YOU DOING OK?

  I look up but I don’t see her. I reply that I am fine. Lies come so easily.

  Bubba Smith smokes and watches me. I catch him and he turns away, makes himself busy. I go confront Bubba Smith, let him know that I am beyond pissed with the way he ran up here and spread the word about Genevieve’s panic attack. I tell him that was unprofessional.

  He strokes his NASCAR moustache and says, “Yessir. But since we all family—”

  “That’s my wife.”

  “Yessir, I know, but I think that my daddy and the rest of the family—”

  “What happens in the car stays in the car,” I snap. “What happens while you’re with us, nobody’s business. I’m tempted to call your employer and let them know how unethical you are.”

  “But, please don’t. Just ain’t nothing like that ever happened while I—”

  I walk away, letting his desperate words evaporate in the wind.

  I’m not as angry as I pretend, not with him. I just need him to be afraid of me.

  Genevieve. Thirteen-year-old runaway. Gone for six months. It disturbs me to no end.

  Disgusting images roll through my mind, a montage of things I don’t want to imagine.

  Then I see a family of cockroaches moving through the grass. I lose my appetite.

  I take my plate back inside. Kenya snatches the plate from my hand, stuffs it in the trash, makes sure everything in this space remains in order. Type A. Like Genevieve.

  I tell Kenya, “On a side note, I saw a U-Haul by the Bank of Odenville. Easy to see from that street over there. If they were trying to hide it, they really should move it down a little bit.”

  She gives me her gray eyes, wipes her hands, chews her bottom lip, and nods.

  I say, “Doubt if Bin Laden would attack Odenville, but that truck does stand out.”

  My eyes are on Genevieve as I slip by Kenya, my fingers tracing the rise and curve of her backside. The way she jerks, the coldness that settles between us, it leaves me uncomfortable.

  I am in pain because I want to touch her. I want to hold her. I want to place staccato kisses on her mouth. I want to hold her ass and tongue her while I ease inside her over and over.

  I want to hear her sigh, that sound that resounds like a sweet poem.

  As the metal door creaks open, I look back at my Gotterdam-merung. She does not react.

  Again I feel the coldness of trepidation moving up my spine to my neck.

  I want her to not despise me for being less than a man.

  I want her to not ruin the world I have.

  But I cannot lie about my own needs.

  I can only try to understand this heinous and destructive crime of passion I have done.

  I say, “The only thing I regret about this morning is that I couldn’t give you the kind of love you deserved. I wanted to caress you without rushing, explore all of your erogenous zones. If that angers you, I apologize. I did not want to leave you feeling like you were a whore. Or with the impression that I’m some sort of a nymphomaniac. Or that I had those thoughts of you.”

  Her expression remains void, unmoved by my confession, impossible to interpret.

  I ask, “What are you thinking?”

  She plays with her tongue ring, takes a slow breath before she sighs.

  I say, “Tell me.”

  Without looking at me she whispers, “I still feel you inside me, stretching my walls.”

  She is across the small living room, the low voice of a sensual girl, her dark and full lips barely moving. I close my eyes. Imagine I am slipping inside her, can feel her velvet-lined vagina pulsating around my desire. I close my eyes tighter; envision and feel the tip of my penis moving inside her. Can see her vagina, those three uneven vertical lines, feel those uneven folds parting.

  She whispers, “I really should suck your dick then show you how good I can fuck you.”

  My words are flowers and in return she gives me language as crass as Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. She bestializes what we have done, her way of destroying romantic illusions and offering reality, of saying she is not naive, reminding me not to make this what it cannot be.

  I study her. I look beyond the facade she shows, beyond her body, beyond the tattoos, beyond the tongue ring, beyond the things she has done to herself to reinvent and redefine herself and make herself unique, separate herself from her own past, as Genevieve as done.

  I search for the Kenya behind the mask.

  The gaze she returns is more than gasoline searching for a fire. It is a look I recognize. I saw it as a child. And when I was thirteen, a thirty-year-old Ecuadorian woman who had just lost her husband owned the same expression. It is the receptive stare of a woman in search of love.

  She grabs her skirt, pulls it up, and reveals smooth legs up to her thighs.

  She says, “You can have this right now, if you like.”

  Tha
t disarms me.

  She touches the wrong parts of me in the right way. She knows she does.

  She sighs and desire shifts the topography of my inner landscape.

  Who knows what might have happened right then, at this moment in a dilapidated trailer that faces the grounds of the dead, with my wife and her family right outside that door, if we had not heard a scream, followed by what sounded like a crack, followed by many screams.