Blood of Their Sons
Copyright 2011 by MEB Smith.
All rights reserved. Any use of material conceptually or in fact is by written permission from the author.
Cover Designer: Sherrye Alves
salves47@yahoo.com
This book is a work of fiction.
It is intended for adult readers. It contains language some may consider obscene.
ISBN: 978-0-982954515
Frog’s Hair Press
PO Box 34483
Charlotte, NC 28234
www.frogshairpress.com
frogshairpress@gmail.com
Published by meb smith at Smashwords
Printed in the United States.
January 2012
~SUKU~
As you read, you will come across chapter headings with the word SuKu. SuKu is an ascendant from the realm of Spirit who agreed to help me tell this story. In her realm, Beings are objects no greater than The Trees, The Birds, The Wind. They are objects in the tapestry of Creation; she speaks of them as such. My gratitude to her is endless.
MEBS
“In all thy getting, get understanding.”
(Proverbs 4:7 KJV)
Blood of Their Sons
Chapter 2: Loss
I resented my mother. It wasn’t obvious to others, but I’m sure she knew. The counselor I chose was not gifted to the degree as I, but clearly had insight. I had gone on about my mother leaving me when she asks, out of nowhere, “Tell me about your son.”
“What?”
“The child you lost. Tell me about him.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Then why are you angry?”
“Because my mother took something from me!”
“Your child?”
“No, my child ‘hood’.”
“So, your anger is about loss?”
“My anger is about abandonment.”
“Do you think you abandoned your child, Grace, the one you lost?”
“How could I have saved him? It was a miscarriage. I was perfectly healthy, did everything right, but he died anyway. Inside my body. There was no one to blame.”
“And yet, you do.”
Chapter 3: Going Home
No one talked about why my mother left us, what kept Aunt Olivia away for thirty years or why my brother, Dillon, a vibrant young man, was dead. No one spoke ever about being the first-born female of the first-born female of generations of first-born women. I spoke into the abyss for answers. A voice in my head said, Go home.
Thoughts of growing up— some good, some not— kept me company on the drive. Traffic was heavy for a Saturday morning. An accident forced cars to move like inchworms on Valium. Heat had already begun to crawl into my skin and stay.
To deny the thoughts I knew would come I pressed numbers into the cell phone. I could almost hear the signal roam from a local satellite and bounce to Shannon's home phone. She answered on the second ring. “Hi baby, what's up?”
“Hey mom! Where are you?”
“Stuck in traffic. Calling you from this brick they call a wireless phone. Planned to see Mama and Granny today but if this backup doesn't move before I get to the next exit, I'm headed back home. My lungs are sizzling.”
“So, what's up?"
“Two things. First, how’s my grandson?”
“Wren is great. He’s kicking as we speak.”
“Aw.. he knows his Gaia’s calling.”
“You are definitely an earth goddess, but you’re gonna be ‘Grandma,’ like everybody
else. What’s the second thing?”
“Come to Blessing today. I had one of my inclinations. This one said, ‘get Shannon to Nola’s house.’” We both laughed. "It's probably because I haven't seen my only child in weeks. My baby is having a baby and I don’t want to miss a minute. Come visit with me. Let me look at you.”
I sensed Shannon's laugh fade to a smile. Although cloaked in humor, she knew to take my ‘inclination’ seriously. Shannon was a first-born, and would soon give birth to the next generation, albeit, breaking the gender heritage. When we learned she would have a boy, I felt an odd sense of grief. Shannon had held my hand and laid her head on my shoulder and apologized as if she had done something wrong.
I interrupted her silence. “Knowing I'll see you today will make being stuck in this heat bearable. What say you, my precious baby girl?”
“Okay, mom. I'll meet you there.”
I hung up and held the phone next to my cheek. When we came home from the hospital, and were alone for the first time, I had held her in my arms, close to my face. For a child just days old, she was exceptionally alert. I folded back the blanket and caressed her hair. Already two inches long at birth, the thick lockets were like a shining aurora circling her head. I brushed her cheeks with my finger and peered into knowing eyes that stared back. My eyes glistened and I couldn't help but smile from way down deep. Shannon smiled, too. As if trying to speak, she moved her lips and a bubble grew. I covered my little girl's face with mine and washed her with my tears. Warmth burned in my heart like nothing I'd ever felt. Not before, not since. Not like that moment.
Without notice, the memory I had forced at bay found a crack in my resistance. What happened that night, on the dark side of the moon, had become graffiti on my soul. Some days I stared at it. Today, it stared at me.
Yes, I had to go home— to face Nola, to confront Grandmother. These women were linked to the fear growing in me; they would know its name. Sadly, I would learn the price of being the first-born female of the first-born female of generations of first-born women who bore the name, St.John.
Chapter 4: SuKu – MaeAlice
For most of The MaeAlice’s years, life was a narrow strip of smoldering ash, sprinkled with shards of glass, and she walked it barefoot. Perhaps it was being born black, and a woman at a time when neither was valued. Every now and then, an ash had cooled or a patch of glass worn harmless by those who had gone before.
Much of her burden was blamed on the grandchildren dumped on her to keep. That's how she saw it. They were only to be there a little while. A little while turned into years. Along with anyone who listened, they knew their part in her misery.
The stroke didn't disfigure her; her mouth didn't contort, her arms didn't withdraw. But something did change in her countenance. It was odd; everyone said she became beautiful. She had the look of moonlit water. The stroke took her mind but gave her gentleness. Some thought it gave a better trade than what it took.
The word went out. Anyone wanting to pay respects should come. Church matrons sat in folding chairs around the metal bed built for one, and pretended to pray. Behind her back they asked each other, “Who does she think she is,” rebuking anything MaeAlice dared to do, this woman who dared often. She did not want them at her side. But The MaeAlice was one of them, a member of this unrehearsed troupe, performing this unwritten act. She pretended to appreciate their presence; they pretended to care.
“Lord, Miss Mae, you blessed to see another day. The Lord's gon' take care of you,” they’d say. “You get your strength back. We-alls praying for you. Girl, the usher board just ain’t the same. You get yourself better, you hear.”
Next to gardening, chopping wood was her favorite thing to do. A time came when she enjoyed burning wood just as much. Year round, heat formed a wavy gauntlet through which anyone wanting a peek into her sanctum had to pass. Not many made the passage. But there she could be found, sitting two feet from the flames, rocking to a rhythm only she knew. She was queen and the flickers her servants. Sometimes it seemed fire was the master, and she its loyal subject. Keeping the fire alive was why she chopped wood—to feed the red belly of her savior. The cast iron beast sat in her bedroom like a forsaken Buddha. It warmed her flesh and warded off all others.
Now, here she lay, gripping the bars of a tiny metal bed in another room cloaked in heat. Her visitors rocked their overweight bodies and moaned a song that didn't resemble any gospel heard on Sunday. The sound came off their tongues and fell like broken glass.
The scowl MaeAlice had perfected early in life twisted across her face. Flesh stretched tight across her cheeks and hung like muffs below her ears. The legs every woman envied for years now sagged like too much cloth in a pair of slacks. They looked like a little boy wearing his father's britches.
She’d all but stopped digesting more than a spoonful of anything. Bits of what she did eat could be found in the folds of her bedspread, or her skin. She confused the two sometimes. Had she not been darker than the floral brown covers, it would have been difficult to tell one fold from another.
The MaeAlice and Grace shared something that had no name. It guided her back. She was the keeper of MaeAlice’s secrets, and she had one more to tell.
Chapter 5: Hog Killing
It was October when Olivia left. I was almost ten. This time of year was important to our survival. Along with gifts of fruits and vegetables Grandmother preserved from the earth, a pig was the staple meat to get us through the winter. One was selected a few months before and put into a small stall made of reject pieces from Mr. Jim's lumberyard. He often gave Grandmother these remnants of his guilt.
There was no man in Grandmother’s house. Not now, anyway. Ted had been gone for two weeks. Everyone suspected he would not be coming back. Knowing that, some of the men around the neighborhood came to help with the killing. Most were glad he was gone. Even if Ted were around, he'd be little use in hog killing. He was a city boy. The men who came would have come anyway. They’d work the whole day for a jar of the corn liquor illegally made in the woods behind a barn, and illegally sold in Grandmother’s kitchen. The brew master, an old Indian man, was nice, though he didn't look it. He had no teeth and his hair hung in strings across his face. Everyone said his moonshine had to be stolen from God. Others teased it was flavored by the drippings from his hair.
Three men helped to kill hog that day. Two: one round, the other tall; stood around laughing over some exaggerated story until Grandmother was ready. Hog killing was a daylong chore that turned into a weekend event. The round man didn't have a job so there was no boss to lie to about not coming in today. The tall man had a job he didn't want and hoped he wouldn't have come Monday. He'd never quit even though he hated the trade that paid him fifty dollars less each week than he needed to make ends meet.
A hole had been dug in the ground earlier that morning and piled with wood and kindling. To us children, kindling was magic. It didn't take much to bring a fire to two-foot flames. Grandmother did her favorite thing while the hole was being dug: she split wood. The tall man laughed out. “Tonight, Eva Lee’s legs gon’ split just like that.” His partner laughed in agreement.
The third man tended the fire. Everyone did as this man instructed. Except Grandmother. Out of earshot, the other men talked about the man who took orders from her. “He’s got some kind of power,” the tall one said. “Watch him, he’s gon’ talk to that pig. They say he talks something out the animal's body so when the pig dies, the meat won’t go bad.” No one ever said what the something was. The tall man didn't know how he did it but swore it was true.
“I seen him do it,” the tall man exclaimed. “That pig must have knowed he was about to die cause he starts wailing and running around in that stall. The other ones huddle in a corner and squeal like babies. That man walks to the pen. He stands there, looking at that pig like he was reading his mind, never said a word. The pig stopped wailing and stomping. All he did was grunt one time, then nothing.”
The round man held onto every word. So did I. The storyteller slowed the telling. He lowered his voice and spoke the next sentence with effect.
“The pig turns to face the man and don't move. The man reaches inside that heavy leather coat he wears and pulls out a gun. It's a rifle with a barrel as long as my leg. Without taking his eyes off that pig, he raises the rifle and aims it ‘bout four feet from the pig's head. Pig stands still. Then, BAM! One shot between the eyes with the pig looking straight at him.”
The storyteller stopped telling. He looked each listener in the eye to show how the pig looked at the man. Wide-eyed, he spoke his last sentence. “The pig drops to his knees. Dead”
I stared at the third man. He never said much, even when he told us what to bring from the kitchen. He said “Pot,” and we scrambled to bring one back. He looked at it and nodded that one would do.
The third man was old. Like with Grandmother, no one knew his age with any degree of certainty. Some said he came on the first ship from Africa. His skin was as worn as his coat but had a beautiful glow. Balls of hair more silver than black sat all over his head like tiny boles of cotton. A vein on the side of his temple lay like a sun-dried worm. He never opened them much so his eyes looked like a crooked river that went nowhere. A scruffy mustache and matted beard, the same color as his hair, moved up and down with each chew on whatever was wadded in his cheek. He put on his coat. Three snaps remained on the tattered leather that had a dozen hooks.
The hog killer dipped his hands into the wash pot, cupped out a handful of water and rubbed it around like a doctor preparing for surgery. Steam rose from the small bubbles that had formed on the surface. He seemed not to notice. Sure enough, just as the storyteller said, the pigs began to squeal as soon as the third man approached them. He walked over to the special pig and stared at its back. Its hooves paced the wooden floor in one spot in a corner of the stall. The man stood still. Soon, the pig stopped scuffling and turned around. His snout was to the floor and he snorted hard, tired from his failed escape. The man's hands hung loosely by his side. Water dripped from his dark, knotty fingers.
Everyone stood still, saying nothing, watching the figure who looked like the bad man in a western movie. Eventually, the pig looked up from the floor. When he did, the man folded open his leather coat and pulled out a rifle. He raised the sight on the long barrel to his eye, his movements choreographed. He waited. The pig lowered his head, blinked and looked up again. Everything was still. A sharp whistle pierced the silence. The pig’s front knees buckled, and then he fell. The man turned, and walked a few quiet steps, another movement in his dance.
The other men hoisted the pig onto a tall workhorse they’d erected a few days ago. His head swung slightly like a pendulum over the hole beneath his snout. The wash pot boiled nearby.
The hog-killer put the Winchester back into his coat. In the same motion, his hand returned with a machete. Grim faces were carved in the wood of the mahogany handle. Age encrusted the blade black and brown, except for the thin streak of silver that glimmered the whole length of its two-foot shaft. The old man's arm moved outward like a geisha. This frightening thing caught the morning sun. The man walked up to the dead pig. He mumbled something and raised his knife. Grandmother caught his hand. She took the knife from him and with one swift motion, cut the pig's throat from left to right, backhanded. Blood squirted onto her matted sweater and splattered her face. The rest gushed from the pig's body and poured in a heavy stream into the hole beneath him. Grandmother wiped the blood from her face with the back of her hand. I thought I saw a small stumble as she backed away.
Chapter 6: The Lesson
The hog killing was done.
The third man took his plate and sat on the ground underneath the white willow tree that shaded the back of the house. He propped his knees to his chest. I wadded a paper towel around my pork rinds and sat on the ground near him. I chewed and swallowed and watched. The old man said nothing for the longest time.
Finally, he spoke. “You are a special child. Like yor gran’mudda, but dif-fer-ent. You know dis, yes?” he asked. “You see beyond da living. You hear beyond the word. Yes?” He spoke— not so much asking as telling. “What you want to know little one.”
I was surprised that he did not humor me, that he knew I had questions. Without his offer, I would never have asked. “I want to know what you did to the pig.”
“I did no-thing to the pig. What you must unda’stand, little one, is all things have purpose. God requires all things to be revered. And yet everything is to serve. Some things are here solely so that other things may live. You understand dis?”
He looked at me for a long time. I finally nodded yes. Even through the heavy African dialect--from where and how long ago, I did not know; it didn't matter--I understood him.
He added, “No life is ever lost, little one. Death is a mere step along the sacred journey. This you will know in time.”
The other two men stayed to help Grandmother finish up. They were sufficiently fed and on the road to drunk. I found a spot close by to chew on the pork skins I had left. The men had become accustomed to me being around all day so didn't hold back as they resumed telling stories. They were still sober enough to pour from the Mason jar into the jelly glasses Grandmother had set on the table.
Dusk had begun to drape the evening. The man who had a job talked about his hatred for it. They shared each other's misery on that subject for some time.
“It was a good day for killing,” one said. The other agreed. Another discourse followed about someone who had been caught by the police and almost beaten to death. “Po thang,” he offered, speaking about the mother. “She already got one boy in prison. Look like this one going there, too.”
Not caring for that subject, for its stark reality over which they could do nothing, the other man said something about Eva Lee’s legs parting, a subject each relished, and had intimate knowledge.
“I’m gon’ git some of that tonight,” the job man said.
“Pay for a round for me, while you’re in there,” the other coaxed.
“You may as well hump that hole in the ground when I’m finish with her,” the job man teased.
They laughed. Talk of Eva Lee’s legs led them to Grandmother. Their recognition held as much appreciation for the woman as for her legs. No woman could challenge Grandmother if there was such a contest.
“She handles that ax better than any man I know,’’ the jobless man offered.
“I'd hate to cross her with that thing nearby. You could lose a leg and never know it till you took a step to run.”
A few more opinions led them to Ted. “He ain't likely to show up around here again.”
“Nope, not in one piece anyway, not after what he done.”
"How could he do that to Mae? What kind of man would do that?"
They both turned up the jelly glass they cupped in both hands, quickly found their mouths, and swallowed deep.
Ted had been Grandmother’s lover. One of the pig killers said he was ‘slick as snail snot and smooth as fresh-made butter.’ They all laughed. They appreciated Ted's good looks and style but could not say so directly.
“If I had just a taste of what he's got, man, shoot. All the women this side of town would be mine.”
“Yeah, and the other side would be mine.” A roar of laughter, between coughs, followed.
Hearing the men talk reminded me of the first day I saw Ted. He was far younger than Grandmother. He had come from Baltimore and was the guest of one of her customers. Along with beer and moonshine, she served up bottles of cheap gin and vodka purchased at the ABC store and sold at a premium. Most everyone started with a beer or fifty cent shot and worked their way up to dollar drinks when they were bold enough, or drunk enough not to care about the groceries the money was meant to buy.
Grandmother wore an apron with deep pockets when she served drinks; she never wore one to cook. This one, like the garden apron that held the seeds and fertilizer for her labor, contained the elements of her trade— a towel for drying glasses, quarters to make change. One pocket held bills. Like the bounty of her garden, business was always good.
Grandmother never learned to read and write, but she could count. Even better, her memory was precise. She knew exactly how many drinks each person had had, and at what price calculated to the drop. Before they got too drunk or pretended to, she settled their debt. Every now and then one had enough sheets in the wind to challenge her on the bill or try not paying at all. Once, a newcomer thought he’d show off to his friend. “I ain’t giving her shit. Her goddamn liquor watered down anyway.” The words drooled from his lips on a strand of spit.
Grandmother left the room. Others tried to warn the fool of his mistake. But this one had to test MaeAlice’s manhood. When she returned, the fool was saying, “If she mess with me, I'll call the po...” Before he could get out “...leese,” she had raised her ax with the flat side facing his head. He never finished his sentence. Those who had warned him stepped back, outside the scope of her swing.
Someone yelled. “No, Miss Mae, don't!” and grabbed the handle midair.
Scared sober, the man jerked one hand up to protect his head while the other scrambled to his pocket to find the five dollars he owed. A trembling hand reached it to her.
“I don’t want nothing from your hands. Put it on the table, there,” she commanded. When he obeyed, she looked at his two companions and told them, “Get this bastard out of my house and never bring him back.”
One was a regular who lived about three miles away. The other newcomer was Ted.
Chapter 7: The Return
I made my way to the back bedroom where Grandmother lay dying. An oversized television sat atop a dresser like a billboard. The cataracts and glaucoma veiled her once brown eyes with a gray film that refused her visual participation in this world with any degree of clarity. I found her fetal-like, turned away. Grandmother was bundled in a cotton smock she had tried to remove. The top of it lay open enough to expose the side of a withered breast. The bed covers lay in disarray. One of the beautiful legs everyone revered lay on top of the bedspread like an excavated bone.
Softly, I called, “Hi, Granny.”
She turned her face from the pillow. Her eyelids fluttered and began to separate.
“It's me, Grace.”
A smile came to a pair of toothless lips. In the voice she reserved for those she favored, she recited the nursery rhyme she’d sing when she wanted to show me love. “Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace....” I was born on Tuesday. Grace became a nickname. I could have been born a Wednesday’s child who is full of woe, or Thursday's child who has far to go. Poor Saturday's child works hard for a living. Yes, I could have been born on any of those days. So could the woman who lay before me.
“When you get here,” she asked, still singing her words.
“A few minutes ago.” I pulled at the thin bedspread to cover her skeleton. “Are you thirsty; you hungry? Mama made mashed potatoes, chicken and stewed okra. All your favorites. I’ll get you some and you can tell me what Victor is doing on ‘The Young and the Restless’.”
“Okay.” The word was sweet, like an old man tempting a young girl with candy. Grandmother’s voice had not lost its power like the rest of her. But this voice was reserved for me.
I had been Grandmother’s confidante and personal secretary until I left for college. I read letters to her and wrote back to the senders. I knew whose husband beat her, whose son got locked up, whose daughter got pregnant. Who died that Grandmother didn't remember or sometime said good riddance. Who graduated from high school and what job someone had that made them think more of themselves than they should. Equally, I knew Grandmother's response— both the one she sent in reply and the ones I couldn’t put on paper.
A surge of pity burned in my throat to see her this way. Grandmother had resigned to using her gums long ago after her store bought teeth went missing. Before that, she kept them in water on her dresser to scare little children into obedience. Most likely, one of them was the reason her teeth were gone.
The doctors said she had tumors in her esophagus and stomach. These tumors, that had no name, caused her considerable pain. Nola, my mother, would never admit they were cancer. Whatever they were, the polyps were the reason Grandmother had stopped eating. Medication helped, but not enough.
“Shannon is coming to join us, Granny. You should see how big she’s gotten. We thought she might have twins until the doctor said it was just a big baby.”
“She’s gon’ have a beautiful baby girl,” Grandmother said.
“It’s a boy,” I beamed. “Shannon is going to break the first-born female trend.” It was a secret Shannon and I agreed to keep, but I couldn’t help myself.
“No, no; she can’t” Grandmother answered.
Her agitation startled me, so I changed the subject. We made small talk about nothing in particular between clicks and swallows. Mostly, we sat quietly in each other's company. Voices came from the television looming atop the dresser but they didn’t have her attention. Her eyes focused on the seat at the foot of her bed. She turned to me and said, “Do you see him, Grace? Do you see him?”
I turned my head to the place of her attention. “Yes, Granny, I see him.”
Chapter 8: Discovery
I learned an important fact about myself when I was nine. It was my first awakening of what it meant to be the first-born female of the first-born female of the first-born female of unknown generations before Grandmother’s mother. We saw, felt, and knew things others did not.
I spent a lot of time in the cemetery back then. It was my favorite place to get away to my thoughts. No one came to there. Fear of the dead. If they needed me, they'd call, yelling my name if I took too long coming.
I had not seen the woman come into the cemetery. Was surprised when I looked up from my book and saw her several rows away. She wore a black fur coat even though it was summer. A short ruffled veil spewed from the top of her hat like a flower too heavy for the stem. I followed the woman with my eyes, thinking she must be looking for someone, a family member to visit. The visitor moved slowly through the rows, came to a new tombstone, stopped and knelt. I could no longer see her but continued to watch.
After several minutes, when she hadn't stood up, I called out, “Miss, are you all right?” I walked to where I thought she'd gone. The etching on the stone where she'd stopped read: ‘Shelia Paxon. Loving Wife. Gone Home.’ I looked around but the woman was nowhere in sight. Looking again at the dates on the tombstone, I thought it odd; I didn't remember anyone being buried recently. It could have happened while I was in school. That made it doubly odd since most funerals took place on the weekend. No one could afford to have a day taken from a paycheck that was already too short. After another glance around, I went back to my book.
My material gift developed in my teens. I came to know things instinctively. Without looking at a clock, I always knew the time within five minutes of my guess. Grandmother’s customers made me their timekeeper, especially the men who had to get home before their wives started calling, or worse, came looking. They paid me a quarter for my services. I’ve never worn a watch— not even now.
Better than that, I could sense people's character. I knew things about them I had no reason to know. It was as if I pulled the answer out of air. With this gift, I earned my living. That ability only failed me once.
Chapter 9: Acknowledgment
Grandmother exhaled the small breath in her lungs. “Do you remember the old man who use to kill hogs for me?”
“I do. In fact, I thought about him today.”
Grandmother continued without recognizing the coincidence. “He looked at you one day with that look in his eyes. I knew what he saw. He had it, too. Did he tell you?”
I smiled at grandmother and shook my head yes. It was the first time she had ever acknowledged my gift, or her own. I wondered what else she knew; but it was time to listen.
“He was a powerful man,” she said. “Some say he was a hundred years old. Some say he never aged. Could be both is true.” Grandmother looked at me. “You the only one I can count on, Grace. You always was the only one I could trust.”
Grandmother gripped my hand. She was strong to look so frail. Her head turned sharply from the TV to gaze at the end of her bed. She trembled. “I had to,” she said, looking at the visitor. “He comes and stands there, looking at me. He don't talk. He just looks at me. I close my eyes and try to sleep, hoping he'll be gone. But he don't leave. I holler for Nola but she can’t see him; tells me ain't nobody there.”
I looked to the end of the bed, following grandmother's eyes, my hands still locked around her own. I was probably squeezing too tightly but I didn’t know what else to do. Grandmother lay still, her breathing irregular and slow, her eyelids stuck to one another. It was as if she had left her body and expected me to hold onto her in case she lost her way.
The stroke had returned her to the events that put this sad moment in motion. It was one hour, one night that changed every life around her, and followed us across time.
Ted was at the foot of grandmother’s bed. I saw him there every visit. He never spoke; I never acknowledged him. Today I would have to because she saw him, too. "Don't worry; he can't hurt you," I told her.
Seeing him took me to the first day we met. This is how he chose to appear, as he did that day. Ted was good looking by anyone's standard, and he knew it. Every woman in Blessing said he was fine as frog’s hair. When he first arrived at Grandmother’s house those years ago, I thought he must be famous. No one in my world looked like Ted.
I was propped against the white willow tree engrossed in my favorite past time when he arrived that day, the same day as the woman in the cemetery. Ted stooped and asked about the book I was reading. He read the title out loud, ‘The Keepers of Carifa.’ “Sounds interesting,” he said. I was shy and only nodded on cue in our one-sided conversation. Finally, he asked where he could find the lady of the house. I lifted my nine-year-old finger and pointed.
I watched his slow stride to the backyard where Grandmother chopped weeds from the garden. I'd seen enough of Grandmother's customers to tell them apart: the ones who were confident and the ones who were afraid. Ted had no fear. As I watched him glide towards the backyard, I glanced the ground behind him. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. Maybe I'd been reading too long. I squinted in his direction. It was still there, another shadow just slightly to the right of his own, almost indiscernible but there. I stood up and looked for my own thin, elongated shadow. Turned so it was in front of me and then to the side. There was only one.
Chapter 10: SuKu - The Meeting
She was wearing high-top boots, straw hat, and a cotton dress that fell just below the knees the day The Ted announced himself. The frock held snugly at The MaeAlice’s hips and flapped against bare legs every time her arms swung the hoe. She had a rhythm, each motion deliberate and sure. Hoeing a row was familiar. It was how she saw her life; the rows were long, grass was plentiful. She kept the unearthed pieces of someone else’s life in the pocket of the apron she wore. MaeAlice began tilling this plot of dirt right after her house was built. Alongside the men who helped prepare the land, she dug up tree stumps and roots buried deep as her misery.
She didn't see The Ted arrive. In her rhythm, She didn't hear him walk up behind her either. He tapped her shoulder. MaeAlice’s rhythm was gone.
“Remember me?” he asked.
She stared at him, and went back to chopping. “I was here last night. With the guy you almost chopped in half with that ax of yours. Remember?”
A few more whacks at the ground and she responded, “Yeah, I remember,” as if she thought it a stupid question.
The Ted assumed the words she didn't speak out loud: ‘if you hadn't gotten him out of my house, you’d be planning a funeral.’
“I just came to apologize,” he said. “I don't really know him. I'm visiting from Baltimore and hooked up with him through my friend, the other guy with us. Not knowing him don't change the fact that he showed his ass. That made me look bad so I want to say I'm sorry, and see if there's something I can do to make up for his insult.”
The MaeAlice chopped through his monologue. Ted walked a slow pace behind between rows of beans she'd already chopped. At the end of that row, she turned to see The Ted holding his wallet and stared at it for a moment. MaeAlice dug the hoe into the soft, black earth and let it rest from her grip. She folded her knuckles on her hips and looked at him. Ted took money from his wallet. MaeAlice removed the straw hat with one hand and raised the tail of her dress with the other. She wiped her face, caring nothing that he was there.
The Ted looked uncomfortable in his city clothes at the end of a row of butter beans with a crisp bill in his hand. He had stepped high and carefully to keep the dirt off his patent leather shoes, the same color of the earth, only shinier.
“Don't want nor need yo’ money,” The MaeAlice said, as she gripped the hoe from its resting place, and began the next two rows. Ted stepped across the beans to follow while keeping the dirt from sticking to his shoes.
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you,” he said. “I just thought you being alone and raising all these children, you could use the money. Why don't you take it and buy them something. School starts in a couple of months, right? They’ll need pencils and paper.”
“Look, mister,” she said, striking the hoe against the ground. “I don't know you, and you know nothing about what my chullen need. Now if you don't mind, I'm busy.”
Ted stood still, holding a fifty-dollar bill. Finally, he folded the new money and pushed it inside his front pocket. “I guess I owe you another apology,” he offered. “It's just that I think you're an amazing woman.” He stopped for a moment, apparently to collect his thoughts.
“Truth is, I didn't come to apologize for that asshole. I was impressed with how you handled yourself and wanted an excuse to say so.” Ted waited for her reaction. Getting none, he continued. “Fact is, there's something about you... I've never met a woman like you.... and probably never will again.”
MaeAlice straightened her back and lifted her head to look into this man’s face. She took him in: his jet-black hair slicked to his head like sealskin, a wave here and there rippled around his crown. He'd given the clump of hair at his forehead a slight lift.
Her eyes went to his white shirt, opened three buttons from the neck to reveal a fine shadow of chest hair shading his light brown skin. He looked like something fried perfectly. MaeAlice’s Black-Indian skin was dark beside him. His sharkskin pants shone in the sun like his patent leather shoes. Lonely Teardrops, by Jackie Wilson, played on the radio perched on the pump house.
The MaeAlice asked him, “What do you want from me?” She must have recognized this man was at least twelve years younger, if not twelve years and a day. Whatever he said, she wasn't buying it.
“Did the cops send you?” she yelled. “Are you some kind of spook sent to spy on me? You want to lock me away for good? For what? Feeding my family?” That MaeAlice had paid a small fine for bootlegging too many times fueled her suspicion.
“I’m no cop. I just want to get to know you. You are a woman who can use a man around. Let me do what I can.”
“You want to help me?”
Ted nodded. He had taken the starched handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed his face. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the summer sun was very much on duty.
“Fine. Finish those last three rows of beans you standing in.” She handed him the hoe.
The Ted tried speaking “But... but…” was all he could get out.
“If you want to help, then help. I say what help is.” MaeAlice walked to house and was gone.
She came back with a tray of food and a small pitcher of lemonade. She carried the tray to the front yard and set it on a table. The flaps on the table’s umbrella looked like giant tongues in desperate need of water. “Come here gal, keep the flies away.” One sagging flap dragged Grace’s head as she ducked underneath.