everyman

by M. Shelly Conner

  Black-eyed peas are thought to have their own lucky properties, dating back to the Civil War. They were planted as a food staple for slaves. When Sherman’s troops stole and decimated other crops, they ignored the vast fields of black-eyed peas. But the magic of black-eyed peas reveals itself only when they are consumed on the first day of the new year, and it was not New Year’s Day when Janette stirred green peas—as opposed to black-eyed peas—with borrowed salt at the stove while she poked at June Bug’s discomfort as one does a sore, feeling the sting of weakened skin. Her voice said that it was just salt in the jar, but her tone hinted otherwise.

  “I ain’t tasting shit.” June Bug placed the jar on the table.

  “Fine.” Janette retrieved the peas from the stove and spooned them into the bowl on the table. “Here’s your peas.” The moment was passing, and Janette had enjoyed the balance that the small battle had afforded her. A confidence was blooming in her gait, and June Bug felt it.

  “C’mere, Lil Bit.” He held out his arm to Nelle, who continued to sit silently across from him.

  Janette turned back toward the table alarmed. “J. B., leave her be.”

  “Nawl, Lil Bit gonna taste it.”

  Nelle hesitated and looked at her mother. June Bug reached across the table and grabbed her arm. “When I say come here, you come here.”

  Nelle’s lip quivered. “I don’t want no peas, Uncle June Bug.”

  “Aw, now ain’t nothin’ to cry over, Lil Bit. I ain’t gonna make you eat no peas.” He smiled and rested her on his lap. His hand held her firmly in place by the arm. He reached for the jar with his other hand.

  “J. B., stop it now; you proved your point. Let her go!” Janette tried to grab the salt jar from him. June Bug shoved her away.

  “Mama!” Nelle cried. June Bug held tightly to her as he brought the salt jar to her mouth. Nelle’s head whipped back and forth as she tried to move away from it. June Bug stood with her still on his lap, pinning her against the table and forcing her mouth open. Janette scrambled from the floor. Her eyes were wild and a sound, more war cry than scream, escaped her lips as she charged toward June Bug. She reached him two seconds too late. His hand was around Nelle’s small throat. Her gaping mouth, struggling for air, received salt instead.

  They arrived at Ann’s door late in the evening. Ann, early to bed and early to rise, had already started to drift to sleep when the doorbell rang. Eve—just ten, but already the night owl—was the first to the door.

  “What you doin’ opening the door this time of night?” Ann whispered suddenly at Eve’s side. “Get over here.” She pulled Eve behind her and peered through the peephole. The distorted image coupled with Janette’s tear- and makeup-streamed face, made her nearly unrecognizable. Ann slowly opened the door. “What in God’s name, Janette?”

  Nelle was huddled against her mother. Her skin was paler than usual. A purple bruise encircled her neck, a large blotch on one side that had been June Bug’s palm jutted out into four elongated spindles on the other—his fingers. Her curly brown hair was tousled. A few ponytail holders and barrettes remained as vigilant reminders of the hairstyle that had existed before salt. She clutched an empty can to her small chest. On it, a red banner with white lettered words spelling out the Hanover brand was just barely visible through her fingers. Ann opened the screen door and yanked them both inside. She peered up and down the block before slamming and locking the door. They sent the girls to Eve’s room.

  For Eve, the salt incident started with watching her best friend shake and spit into an empty can every few minutes. Nelle spat her salty saliva into the empty can that had contained the green peas June Bug had refused to eat. Nelle’s hacking, the can, and its contents were the salt incident for Eve. She was unsure of what to say to Nelle, so she said nothing. The salt incident struck some sort of balance for Eve. Many times Nelle had been Eve’s protector on the school playlot, shielding her friend from schoolyard taunting about her thick hair, dark skin, and sinewy limbs. But now that it was Nelle who needed protecting, Eve was at a loss for how to proceed, while every time Nelle tried to form the words to share with Eve what she had told her mother about June Bug, all the moisture left her mouth—absorbed by the excess salt, she was sure. Their silence was punctuated only by Nelle’s sporadic hackings into the can.

  Nelle felt that this was punishment for the story she had told her mother. Ashamed, she couldn’t bring herself to share the lie with Eve. In a few short hours, Nelle had matured beyond her ten years and the lie revealed itself as the juvenile ploy of an insecure girl. No longer that girl, Nelle couldn’t bear to admit to Eve that she had once been her—the girl who spun dangerous tall tales for her mother to hear. She had lied about June Bug, which isn’t to say that he was completely innocent.

  June Bug had poured salt down her throat, but he was no child molester. He didn’t lure young girls into dark places, whisper lewd lines into their small ears, or become their first-time sexual experiences. June Bug looked at girls in the way many men do: with comments in their eyes and knowing smiles creeping beneath their mustached lips. He was one of those who whistled at them from stoops, told them that they “shole was pretty,” assured them that if they didn’t have boys sniffing around them, “the knuckleheads wouldn’t be long coming.” He gave them candy, asking for some of their sweet sugar on his scruffy cheek. Yet his behavior was no different than that of most of the men in a young girl’s life—uncles, fathers, Santa Claus. It stepped into the inappropriate without crossing into pedophilia. But it only took a slight shift in perception for this same behavior to be considered predatory.

  Fifty eyes peered at Janette. Most were from the owl figurines and paintings in Ann’s small living room. The only live set of eyes belonged to Ann, but they stared at Janette with no less inquisitiveness. “You a fool to go back to that apartment tonight.” She sipped a small amount of brandy from a chipped coffee mug.

  A much larger amount was in Janette’s cup, which remained pressed to her lips until she replied, “I’d be a fool to let him think he can lay up in my bed after laying hands on my baby girl.”

  Ann began to slowly rock herself in the straight-backed armchair. “What you gon’ do?”

  “What you think I’m gonna do?” Janette shot back. “I’m gonna get that poor excuse of a man out of our lives. I’m gonna kill him.” She drained her cup and reached for the bottle of brandy on the coffee table between them.

  “Janette, let’s be serious . . .”

  Janette glared at Ann. “I am being serious. Maybe something like this is hard for you to understand, not being a mother and all.”

  Ann’s fingers clutched at her housecoat and she swallowed, suppressing the sting of the comment and the flare of an angry retort. Janette was instantly remorseful. “I’m sorry. I know Eve is more than a niece to you.”

  Ann reached across the coffee table, nearly upsetting the brandy, and squeezed Janette’s hand. “Let’s call somebody. Let’s get some of the men in the neighborhood . . .”

  Janette gave a weary smile. “Girl, half of them run with June Bug and the other . . .” She trailed off on what didn’t need to be said. The other half, married or otherwise, had all been at one time or another her lovers, prior uncles to Nelle.

  “At least don’t go back tonight,” Ann pleaded. Janette rolled her eyes toward Ann but said nothing.

  Ann continued, “We can plan something . . . together.” Ann thought of the ways of womenfolk back in Macon County. Women’s troubles or maladies always seemed to involve men, and the remedies required certain sacrifices. It had been women who had taken care of Big C after Mercy left with Eve still growing in her belly. “Even a small ax can fell a big tree,” she quietly whispered, her eyes on Janette and mind in Georgia.

  Janette tilted her cup down her throat and stood.

  “Janette . . .”

  “What?” Janette stared at Ann d
efiantly.

  “Nelle needs you.”

  “I know,” Janette replied. “Which is exactly why I’m going to do what needs to be done.”

  When Janette left Ann’s apartment, she had no idea how to do what needed to be done. She returned to her own apartment. To the low moan of Bobby “Blue” Bland on the radio crooning “I Pity the Fool.” To the sounds of June Bug snoring from the bedroom. To green peas and salt strewn across the kitchen floor.

  She washed the dishes, gathered the errant peas, and was beginning to sweep up the salt, when she paused. Janette stared at the grainy scatterings on her floor. Instead of sweeping them into the dustpan, she brushed them into the corners, where wall met wall met floor. It created an anthill-like mound in one corner. The other corners of the room stood empty. Bare. Janette needed more salt. The urge was so strong that it could not be ignored.

  Perhaps her Laveau magic—spurred by recent events—had awakened and risen within her like the kundalini snake uncoiling itself from the base of the spine. Like the loa taking possession of its supplicant and rejoicing in dance. Like crossing over into the place of no space and no time, she began to recall things. The placing of salt across doorways kept away evil spirits. Accompanied by an incantation, casting salt after the departure of an evil person prevented their return. Consumption of communion wine and wafers only proves that religions are just sanctioned magical beliefs and rituals. Any ritual, infused with enough belief, can be a spell. To believe is to think something into existence that wasn’t previously there. It is conjure. Any object can protect or harm, and too much of anything can be a poison. Janette Marie Laveau Baptiste needed more salt.

  Over the days that followed, June Bug never noticed that first mound of salt, and he had enough sense not to mention Nelle’s absence. But when the mounds began appearing all over the apartment, he could no longer hold his tongue. He stood in the middle of the dining room watching Janette cook dinner. “What the hell is all this, ’Nette?”

  “All what?” Janette cut a chunk of butter and dropped it into the pot of collard greens on the stove.

  “This shit in the corners.” He gestured frantically around. But it was more than in the corners. It lined the baseboards of every room. It snaked around furniture like chalk outlines of bodies at crime scenes. It traced thresholds and lined windowsills.

  Janette, with a Morton Salt container in hand, sprinkled a careful amount into the greens. “Keeps the ants out.”

  “I ain’t seen no damn ants.”

  “Must be working then.” Janette checked the chicken baking in the oven.

  They ate in silence. June Bug watched Janette, wondering if her food tasted as salty as his. But their food was flavored to the same degree, and whatever saltiness June Bug tasted had traveled to his senses through the moistened air of the seasoned apartment. He struggled to swallow but could not manufacture enough saliva. Water did not help but seemed to intensify the problem. His only relief was in the bottle of Old Granddad. The bourbon cut through the salt mines in his mouth, leaving a smooth alcohol finish in its wake.

  Old Granddad was June Bug’s lifeboat as he skipped around the apartment, avoiding salt trails like a game of hopscotch. After brushing his teeth, he rinsed his mouth with bourbon instead of the salt and water mix Janette had substituted in place of their usual Listerine. He stayed out of the apartment for as long as he could, sometimes sleeping on a friend’s couch to sober up from the excess of Old Granddad. But they eventually sent him back to Janette’s. No one wanted an out-of-work drunkard in their home for too long. So June Bug would meander back to the apartment to find more salt in unexpected places.

  One night, about a week after Nelle had been sent to stay with Ann and Eve, Janette reached for June Bug in bed. His body stiffened at her touch. “’Nette . . .”

  “Shhh.” Janette could feel his fear. His heart beat rapidly against her palm. “You’re so tense, J. B.”

  June Bug’s breath heaved, filling the space between them with the smell of bourbon and the weight of remorse. “’Nette, I’m sorry for . . .” And in that moment he was sorry for everything. He was prepared to curse the salty oceans for freshwater bodies and purify the world of its saline dependency.

  Janette shushed him again, pressing her lips against his and her body on top of him. “I know, baby. Just relax.”

  June Bug sighed as her hand kneaded into his neck. His body sank into the mattress. Janette reached for a jar on the nightstand, and June Bug’s eyes flew open. “What’s . . .”

  “It’s just massage oil,” Janette cooed, and June Bug slowly allowed his body to relax again. Janette rubbed the oil into her palm and massaged it onto his chest. The texture, warm and grainy, eased his tension and exfoliated his skin as she raked her fingernails down his chest. It felt invigorating. Janette’s hands moved downward, and June Bug felt his arousal.

  More oil. More massage. More nails. His face twisted. The grainy scrub, against his sensitive member, felt more aggressive as Janette worked her hands to every part. June Bug felt a tingle that grew into a sting. He screamed. He shoved Janette off him, and clutching himself, ran to the bathroom.

  June Bug straddled the sink. The cold porcelain pressed against his backside as he flushed his genitals with cold water. He returned to the bedroom shriveled, scratched, and wet, and asked the question to which he already knew the answer. “What was in that oil?”

  “It’s good for the skin.” Janette switched off the lamp and rolled over toward the wall.

  His friends began to notice the weight loss. They bought him food. Perch sandwiches from the seafood place on Forty-Seventh. Chicken dinners from Gladys’s. Invited him over for oxtails, black-eyed peas, and Friday fish fries, but June Bug ate very little. The absence of salt at these gatherings loomed as large as its presence in Janette’s apartment. He didn’t taste salt in these dishes, and strangely enough, he missed it.

  He was too quiet. When he did speak, he put his friends off with strange questions. Staring at the untouched plate of pork chops beside him on the stoop of George Wright’s house, June Bug asked, “You think it’s something out there that affects men and women different?”

  George exhaled his Marlboro. “You mean like Mother Nature? Menstr’ation?”

  June Bug slowly rolled his eyes upward to look at George. Large bags puffed beneath them, and eye crust stuck in the folds of skin at their corners. He licked his dry lips and took a swig from a pint of Old Granddad nestled in a brown paper bag. “Nawl. Like . . . salt.”

  “Salt?”

  “Yeah, you think salt can act different in men than it do in women?”

  George scratched at the bald spot spreading at the crown of his head. “I’ont know, J. B.” A concerned look crossed his face, and he thought briefly about offering the couch to his friend that night. But his wife did not take too well the last time June Bug had stayed over. He’d broken one of her good glasses that he had insisted pouring his bourbon in, and she swore that he’d used the large house plant as a toilet, complaining to George that it reeked of urine. So George closed his mouth on the offer and watched June Bug stagger home for the very last time.

  It would have shortened the distance had he taken the alley, but June Bug was in no hurry to get home. He half walked, half stumbled in the direction of the apartment. His shoulders scraped brick walls and chain link fences. He bumped into garbage cans and felt his chest tighten the closer he got to his destination. His thoughts did not go beyond placing one uncertain foot in front of the other. He was a lemming drawn to the cliff overhang of a raging ocean. He was a bit of cosmic debris in the inexorable gravitational pull of a black hole. He did not want to push forward, but he could not turn back. As it was with Lot’s wife in the Bible, there was nothing to go back to.

  June Bug reached the bottom of the back stairwell. He trudged up the first flight. The shuffle-clump of his footfalls reverberated th
rough the empty night. The first-floor neighbors, accustomed to the late-night arrivals, remained fast asleep. Their five-year-old son—finally convinced that the rhythmic shhh-cloomp was not a monster dragging a body, but the drunken homecoming of their third-floor neighbor—slept soundlessly as urine trickled into his pajamas and spread across his bedsheets.

  June Bug made it to the landing of his second-floor neighbor, a single mother of two. She thought Janette was a “high-yella heifa,” and had slept with June Bug out of jealousy, regretting it immediately. He’d been too drunk to perform, passing out on top of her and dripping bourbon-scented spittle on her sheets.

  June Bug sat on the landing and lit a Kool. He rubbed at the scruff of hair on his chin, feeling its contrast with his smooth cheeks, where hair refused to grow. His eyes peered upward to the apartment where Janette murmured strains of a blues song in her sleep. The next flight of stairs leading to the apartment was a minefield of salt. It saturated the crevices of the stairs so that June Bug was forced to perch on his toes. He could not square the irrationality of his fear. He knew that salt wasn’t acid, yet he was afraid to make contact with it. He had tiptoed on the balls of his feet, hopscotching over the sagging fifth and sixth steps, so many times that he could do it drunk in the dark. Muscle memory guided him every night to land on the seventh step and take the final leap onto the concrete step at the back door.

  Janette often thought that in a perfect world, he’d stumble and miss. It wasn’t just the abundance of the salt that put June Bug off but its pristine appearance. He suspected that Janette frequently replaced the salt, and his suspicions were correct. She couldn’t stand for grains of dirt and debris to dull its luminosity like snow that had been on the ground too long. If magic is belief plus intention and action, then clear intent must be represented in ritual. So she swept and redistributed the salt trails in his absence. Earlier that night, Janette had moved the salt line at the back door two inches closer to the stairs, and the imperfect world shifted into one moment of perfection.