everyman

by M. Shelly Conner

  Sixteen-year-old Ann crept silently through the woods, keeping a careful eye on her target: the two giggling girls weaving their way around the trees. She was tired of having to always look out for Mercy, who still seemed too young for her years in so many ways. There were chores to finish. Yet when Ann looked out of the kitchen window to see how Mercy was coming along, she found the back stoop empty. Instead of cleaning the catfish Uncle Cornelius had dropped off for them, Mercy was traipsing through the woods with her friend Geneva Thompson.

  It didn’t matter how many times Ann caught her sneaking off from her chores. Their mother’s punishment—all mundane church-house-related chores—didn’t even seem to set Mercy in her place. Mercy acted as if whatever she was getting herself into was worth all the trouble. She didn’t even get mad at Ann for telling on her. In fact, she was nice toward her older sister, always acquiring an extra candy, magazine, or trinket for Ann when she received one. It annoyed Ann that Mercy’s first request upon receiving gifts was that she have an extra for her. Ann could not help but think that maybe Mercy felt sorry for her and acted on her behalf. She did not want Mercy’s pity. She was the older sister after all and therefore should be entitled to first experiences and generous gifts that she would then dole out to Mercy, and not the other way around. But Mercy was simply more outgoing, which netted her more friends, more experiences, and more gifts than her sister.

  Ann continued following at a safe distance. She didn’t have to worry about being quiet. Mercy and Geneva were in their own world, singing and swinging around the trees. Ann wondered where they were going. An abandoned shack loomed ahead, and the girls raced toward it. Geneva reached it first and jumped up and down shouting, “I won! I won!”

  Mercy panted beside her. “’Bout time. I guess I got tired of winnin’.”

  “Oh no you don’t, Mercy Mann!” Geneva argued. “Don’t even think ’bout tryin’ to say you let me win.”

  Mercy grinned. “Naw, you won alright. Let’s go in and you can git yo’ prize.” They hurried into the shack.

  Ann wasn’t sure what to do next. There were things that she needed to finish before their mother returned from her work at the church. But the chores were not the biggest thought in her mind at the moment. She wondered what prizes Ann and Geneva exchanged. Maybe she could stay a little longer and peek through one of the windows.

  Ann made her way to the back of the shack and peered into the darkness. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she gazed around the space. She recognized a quilt from their house spread across the floor. There was an oil lamp and stacked wood was being used as a table. Ann and Geneva sat in the middle of the quilt.

  “C’mon, Mercy.” Geneva scooted closer to Mercy, and Ann frowned as her view was blocked. She heard them giggle but could only see their backs.

  Ann racked her brain to figure out what the prize could be. She wondered if it was the cookies she had baked. She became incensed with the thought of it. Her fists tightened against the wall of the shack. Finally, Geneva moved slightly, creating a gap between her and Mercy and a break for Ann’s line of vision. Ann breathed a sigh of relief. There were no cookies present, but moments later she wished that there had been. Her breath caught in her throat. Eyes and mouth agape, she stared unbelievingly at her sister and Geneva with their arms wrapped around each other and their lips pressed together like she imagined hers with her unrequited love, James—who in a few short years would remind her of the smooth-skinned folk balladeer Harry Belafonte and inspire Ann’s first celebrity crush, ironically because of Belafonte’s likeness to James, as opposed to the other way around.

  Her mind ran through the usual intimacy exemptions: women sometimes kiss each other to say hello. Sometimes it’s to say goodbye. But none made the uneasiness building in the pit of her stomach subside. She could not look away and began to count in her head. One, two, three . . . And the realization that women don’t kiss each other that long—seven, eight, nine—brought the thought that only husbands and wives kiss like that. Quick flashes of past images of Mercy and Geneva played through her mind like a picture show: their lingering gazes at one another; long, boring conversations; the way their hands always seemed to find each other. Ann realized that she and everyone else had witnessed the courtship of the two.

  Ann’s mind latched onto one of the foremost principles in the Bible Belt South: that intimacy was between men and wives and, even then, belonged only in private thoughts and holy matrimony. It did not belong in a shack in the woods of their property, where Mercy and Geneva sat with their lips pressed together. Oh, God, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . . Ann hated her sister with more power than she had known existed. Hatred incubated in their sibling rivalry and fed on Ann’s resentment about being older and more mature; for having to complete Mercy’s chores when she left them unfinished; and for being invisible to James, while he pined for Mercy. Hatred coursed through her body and pulsated violently. She bit down on her lip in an effort to regain control. She tasted blood and tears.

  “Eighteen! Nineteen! Twenty!” Ann’s rage found voice, and Mercy and Geneva were startled out of their kiss. It was a disturbing image, Ann immobile and enraged with a trail of blood on her chin and eyes glossy.

  Inside the shack, Geneva’s mouth froze in a cartoonish circle as she expelled an “Oh, God!”

  The words released Ann and she fled through the trees. She was panting, running without thought, but moving instinctively toward home. Branches scratched at every bit of skin exposed by her sleeveless sundress. Her ears attuned to the sound of twigs snapping behind her, revealing Mercy’s pursuit. Ann pressed harder, allowing her anger to fuel her pumping arms and burning thighs. Her toe struck something hard. Before she could process the pain, she felt herself falling.

  The memory was a haunting dream for Ann, and it took several moments to calm her breathing and return to the present moment. If it is true that the brain doesn’t distinguish between the memory of an event and its actual occurrence, then to remember is to relive, reexperience, reinflict. Ann sat amid her tousled green covers and willed away Mercy’s voice from her head as she slowly left Georgia behind. It all had nearly disappeared when that same voice, more ghostly than ever, seeped through the vent and returned her attention to Eve and Nelle in the basement—both digging for some sort of connection.

  Eve searched for history, while Nelle hoped that by supporting the process, their friendship would return to its former intensity. When Eve’s allergies succumbed to the dust particles encapsulated in boxed memories, Nelle wordlessly supplied tissue paper to quell her friend’s sneezes. They fell into a familiar pattern of near-silent communication, allowing their history to lull them into comfort and propel their task. In silence their bodies could move about like sisters accustomed to sharing space. Boxes were opened, contents rifled, and abandoned in their tiny assembly line until, returning to the closet for the next box, Eve’s hand faltered on a rough-edged photograph, and her gasp brought Nelle rushing to her side.

  The photo that they found—not in any of the boxes, but crammed in the recesses of the storage closet—was a notable step for each of their goals. Eve’s hands trembled as she swiped across the dusty, black-and-white image. Her fingers traced the face of Mercy, whom she recognized from the only other photograph she had seen of her mother. The tension between Eve and Nelle was forgotten as they retreated from the closet into better lighting. Eve scooted next to Nelle and shared view of the picture. On its backside was scrawled “Cornelius, Gertrude, Mercy, Ann. (Ideal) Macon Co., Ga. 1950.”

  Eight

  the uses of salt

  a lie

  is

  simply a lie.

  it draws its strength from belief.

  stop believing

  in

  what hurts you.

  —Nayyirah Waheed,

  “Power,” Salt.

  There are more than fourteen thousand house
hold uses for salt. In addition to accenting the flavor of meats and vegetables, salt solutions have valuable uses outside of food preparation. Yellowing in enamel bathtubs and toilets can be reversed with a salt and turpentine solution. Salt drives moths and ants away. It has antiseptic properties that make it an effective mouth rinse. It can also improve skin complexion when used as a massage mixture.

  It was salt that killed June Bug. Not as in hypertension. Although in the end, he had become both hyper and tense.

  Nelle didn’t eat salt. Not after the salt incident with June Bug. She lived a salt-free life before the advent of low-sodium canned goods and sea salt versus iodized salt standoffs. She couldn’t bear the taste of it. Even looking at the tiny crystalline specs filled her instantly with disgust. Nelle even hated the smell of salt. Its acrid bitterness was an assault on all her senses. Tears are salty, so she didn’t cry. Sweat is salty, so she tried not to exert herself.

  In college she found herself as most do, discarding the old skin of childhood and discovering new things. Still, the salt incident loomed large, refusing to be discarded as childhood folly. She moved from dating men to dating women, oblivious to the debates on whether her sexuality was determined at birth or through choice, if her sexual orientation was a lifestyle or a life lived. Nelle was no advocate. The truth of the matter is that men and women taste differently, and to Nelle—with a newly discovered aversion to the briny fluids of lovemaking—women were simply less salty.

  The salt incident occurred in 1961, when Nelle was ten years old. Everyone involved could at least agree on that. Yet it was actually a series of events that played out differently for everyone. If they had bothered to speak of it—if they could have spoken of it—the events would have spun into very diverse stories. Nelle would have said that it started with the lie she told her mother about June Bug.

  Janette would have said that it started with June Bug’s interest in her daughter. His inappropriate glances when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  Eve would have said that it began with a late-night knock on the door, which once opened, revealed her best friend Nelle, Janette, and an empty can of green peas.

  Ann, upon hearing Janette recount the details of June Bug’s alleged transgression against Nelle, would have surely recognized the language of Harlequin Romance novel number 528, Wife by Arrangement, and perhaps the salt incident would have ended there.

  But they did not speak of these things. They held firmly to their silence, guarding their individual knowledge against self-incrimination, and the salt incident began as most incidents do—as the consequence of an infinite number of choices made by people with a very limited understanding of their present moment.

  The only time Janette, June Bug, and Nelle were together was when they sat in mismatched chairs at the small dining table. June Bug, seated in the brown vinyl chair, talked nonstop while shoveling food into his mouth. Janette, in the white chair with yellow printed flowers, chewed silently, periodically returning to the stove to refill June Bug’s plate, so her own meal became cold by the time she was able to eat it. Nelle, from her small green plastic chair, watched them both and greedily soaked up information on male-female relations that she could later share with Eve.

  It was already an interesting sort of relationship. When June Bug entered their lives three years earlier, Janette was taken by the more chivalry-cloaked chauvinisms of having doors opened for her, bags carried for her, and garbage emptied for her. They both subscribed to the separation of duties for men and women. Janette did not expect June Bug to cook—although at times he had. Standing over the charcoal grill, with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips, June Bug would claim that he wasn’t cooking but ’cueing on a man stove.

  Those days had been good for Janette. At forty years old, she was his senior by ten years. Cougarism had not yet been coined in 1961. It was two years before the publication of The Graduate sensationalized the exploits of a younger man and a much older woman. Janette counted herself lucky to have June Bug, even when the good days began to sour. When his hustle dried up. When his chivalry turned to plain chauvinism. When his attention went elsewhere. To whispered phone calls. To late nights. To the second-floor apartment. To Nelle’s budding preteen form.

  “Why you so quiet?” June Bug asked Janette through a mouthful of meatloaf. A small particle escaped his mouth and landed on the floral plastic tablecloth.

  “I was just thinking . . .”

  “Oh lord,” June Bug exclaimed.

  “Never mind.”

  Nelle’s eyes volleyed between them. “What you thinkin’, Mama?”

  Janette smiled at her daughter and slid her eyes toward June Bug, who sighed and said, “Well, if Lil Bit wanna know, I guess we gotta hear it then.” He winked at Nelle, missing the sneer that spread across her mother’s face. Not that it would have mattered had he caught it. June Bug considered himself to be the head of the household. His own upbringing informed him of what that meant. Do the heavy lifting. Protect the women. And as his own father had dictated, prepare the daughters for marriage.

  Janette’s eyes burned into the side of June Bug’s face. “I was thinking about going to the beach tomorrow.” She was not. She had been thinking of what she always had been thinking about since Nelle told her about June Bug. Since watching him watch her daughter. Since the thought of his hands on Nelle had penetrated her waking moments such that she nearly burned dinner and plagued her nights such that she barely slept.

  “What beach?” June Bug sucked at meat fiber lodged between his molars.

  Janette slowly chewed her food before delivering a very calculated response. The idea was to incite an argument that would result in June Bug eventually storming off into the night. “Rainbow Beach.”

  June Bug’s fist slammed onto the table, causing Nelle and the plates of food to jump. Janette paused, a forkload of green peas at her lips. June Bug grabbed her wrist, shaking the peas from the fork. “I said no to that months ago, ’Nette! Them other fools can go out there and sit-in or wade-in or whatever the hell they wanna call it. But you ain’t going.”

  Nelle slid from her chair and slowly began to pick up the scattered peas. June Bug said, “Leave it. Your mama will clean up her own mess.” He looked at Janette. “Fix me some more peas.”

  Janette rose and moved toward the stove. “J. B., don’t you get mad at anybody ’sides me? Don’t you get mad at those white folk who say we don’t have the right to sit on nature’s beach and swim in the earth’s water?”

  Hugging Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, Rainbow Beach had been legally desegregated for a year. But that did not prevent the neighborhood’s white residents from forcibly keeping Blacks off the city-owned property. When the NAACP led a protest, one of its young members was hit in the head with a rock by an opposing mob. She’d still have a pronounced limp fifty years after the incident, when Rainbow Beach and its surrounding neighborhoods had long since become predominantly Black areas. Maybe if June Bug had known in 1961 that they were just a few harsh years away from equal housing legislation, he would have insisted that Janette become a part of its history.

  His eyes momentarily softened, but Janette’s back was to him and she didn’t see. “Woman, you gonna get yo’self kilt just to get on that rocky patch of beach? And then who gon’ take care of Lil Bit?” He grinned and winked at Nelle again. This Janette saw. Her eyes burned with hatred and bore into June Bug. He turned his head toward her and grinned.

  It was a stare-off that seemed to last an eternity. Neither looked away. Nelle sat immobile, unsure whether to speak or be silent. Finally, Janette brought her attention back to the pot of peas boiling on the stove. She opened the cabinet to the right and rummaged around until she found a small glass jar of salt that she had borrowed earlier from Ann. She sprinkled it onto the peas.

  June Bug watched. “What’s that?”

  “Salt,” Janette answer
ed without turning around.

  “Bring it here.”

  Janette marched the jar to June Bug and set it on the table. “It’s just salt, J. B.”

  “Just salt, huh?” June Bug’s skepticism was unconsciously perceptive. Salt had never been “just salt.” It always has been a form of currency, and a channel of power. It presented itself as no different in Janette’s kitchen.

  Amused by June Bug’s sudden paranoia, a slight smile tugged at the corner of Janette’s mouth. “Taste it if you don’t believe it.” It was a tiny grain of empowerment, not much bigger than the salt crystals in the jar. She held onto it in the place where she nurtured ideas of Laveau magic and women’s intuition. From this same place, Janette made a choice—perhaps even a lie of omission—to not disclose that the salt was in a jar because it was borrowed.

  It is considered bad luck to borrow or lend salt. In ritual practice, salt is a finicky tool. It protects those who use it in their own homes but opens vulnerabilities to those who deploy it in the homes of others. Salt, like toilet tissue and sanitary napkins, should be in constant supply and replenished by the person who will use it. Janette had been vaguely aware of this when she decided two days prior to borrow it. But she also had known that Ann’s apartment was closer than the grocer and she could leave the black-eyed peas she was cooking that night simmering on the stove while she was out.