One Dark Body, page 6
She forced herself to stretch her legs toward the kitchen, move her arms inside the room as she fixed herself food to eat. She had to have nourishment for her body, to keep up her strength for the flow of her days, the hollowness of moving from one small container into another, until her body filled with a silence so loud it echoed.
She pushed the bread into her mouth, felt the coarseness of its skin. Water rolled gently down her throat, soothing her with its coolness. She was sweating now, all the time sweating. She held the steaming dish of potatoes and cheese to her nose and filled her head with its vapor. She poured salt into her hands and licked her palms. Each brackish bead of salt filled her with a longing so deep, her eyes burned.
She began opening, all over the house opening: drawers, containers, boxes of books. She threw open the door to her bedroom and'opened the window. It was hot. The heat made her sleepy. She laid on the bed and pulled the sheets to her body close as a lover. The only sound inside her head, a soft whimper. Even the air smelled of something opening, flesh unlocking from flesh.
Though it was light outside, soon, oh very soon, the shadows on the wall would be as black as she was, lying there, open in her bed, naked legs clinching the sheets as if she were riding them. She could not open her mouth now, even to pray for early darkness.
Soon she slept and dreamed she was an island. A long yellow broken piece of land floating in black water. A land uninhabited by man.
When she opened her eyes, the night’s dark had fanned into her room.
A high moon cast a slash of white light on her bed. She heard the sound of something dragging around the house, some long thing circling. She was not afraid of the sound, not afraid when the dragging stopped outside her window.
An orange mist poured through the window as a man climbed into the room.
“You again?”
“I told you I’d be back.”
“They’re all going to think I’ve lost my mind.”
“How are they going to know?”
“You know what can happen from this.”
“You’ll have someone who’ll never leave you.”
“You?”
“You.”
“I’m going to have more than me if this turns out like I think it might.”
“We all need something more than ourselves some times, as long as we know it for what it is.”
“Like I know you?”
“I’m not your daddy.”
“And you’re not God, so why do I keep listening to you?”
“Cause you’ve got a need and I’ve got a need.”
“How do you know about my needs?”
“I can smell you when you out in the woods.”
“Well, it’s been hot lately and I haven’t been myself.”
“You’ve been more yourself than you’ve ever been.”
“They’re going to build a crazy house just for me here, they find out about this.”
“Nobody gonna find out. You ain’t gonna tell nobody, not even the boy.”
“What boy?”
‘You’ll see and you’ll know and remember what I said. What you crying for?”
“What kind of life is this?”
“It’s the one you signed up for, the one you agreed to live. You wanted all of this, your daddy, your mama, me, the boy. You wanted this. Don’t you remember?”
“No. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not even real.”
“I’m real as your life, Aimee. As real as the need shining between your legs.”
The mist covered her body as the man stood next to her bed. She reached for the warmth of her breasts and held them up into the vapor, her nipples standing like hard bits of orange chocolate. She smelled the sea of herself, the sea of what she sensed inside the cloud around the man.
He pressed himself upon her body. She pushed her body against his. Her tongue became serpentine. Her body a rolling mass of flame.
Somewhere, deep inside, her unblemished core was touched and released.
She wanted to submerge and cleanse herself, obliterate then create herself, within the lush cloud and the man moving inside her.
A woman, Sin-Sin murmured, rubbing his knee with his hand-eye. The young wanting woman he had seen was his mother.
He marveled at the tenderness of the man who’d made her moan with pleasure, marveled at the ease with which the woman in his mother had blended with the body of the man.
He couldn’t help but wonder now if that faceless man in the orange mist was Blue.
SECTION 4
The Space Between Words Where People Live
I
Raisin
Don’t know how long them watery whispers crying, “Baby girl—Baby girl,” hold me fixed to that spot in the road. I see Miss Marius walking, not paying me no attention, but I can’t even blink my eye.
When Miss Marius look like a speck on the road, the whispers let me go. My arms fall like branches cut from a tree and my body start to move again.
I look all around me into the trees, but don’t see nobody and it don’t seem like nobody see me. I’m glad. I don’t know what folks’d say if they saw me standing like that out on the road.
I cock my head and listen, but all I hear is the same wood-sounds. Not one solitary whisper.
I pick my legs up cause I can, and run down the red road to Miss Marius. The trees standing off from the road like stuck-up women admiring theirselves are a green so dark they almost black.
I don’t tell Miss Marius about the whispers cause I don’t want her to tell this Nola woman I ain’t got good sense. When she turn her head to look at me puffing up alongside her and shake her head, I’m glad that’s all she do.
We both walk the rest of the way to town without saying nuthin. But I know we’re both thinking about who’s waiting at the train depot.
When we’re almost at the depot, Miss Marius say, “I used to always dream about trains. Them long silvery tracks leading to some new kind of life and folks who don’t know nuthin about you. I used to know the train’s timetable like I know the wrinkles in my own body. Chicago. Detroit. Memphis. New York. For some reason I got the notion to see one of them big cities where buildings raise up out of the ground like strange steel flowers and folks rush past each other like they’re running to catch their yesterdays, since tomorrows ain’t promised to none of us.
“See, I thought I was too big for Pearl, these simple folks around here too dumb for me. I wanted to get out in the middle of that energy running around the world. Wanted to see and do things I didn’t even understand, but I knew there was something important in the doing. Didn’t want to sit and let no moss grow under my feet.
“Seem like that’s one of the worst things in the world. Sitting up and waiting on something to happen instead of getting out there and grabbing hold of it with your own bare hands and shaking, shaking life for all it’s worth.
“And instead of getting all twisted up and over, behind the suffering and hard times that will surely come your way, you learn how to smooth out the knotted spots inside yourself, making you think you’re a piece of nuthin and everybody else is a piece of something bigger and better than you.
“There’s something about a train track. Where it’s all smoothed-out and cold, and laid out sure as you please running cross rivers and mountains, and out where the land is flat and endless as everything there ever was and will be.
“I used to stand in the middle of the track when I heard a train coming in. Stand right in the middle and look it in the eye. That’s what life is, Raisin. A big old hard-smooth piece of steel coming that you’ve got to look dead in the eye. And whichever train come with your name on it, whichever one that come, you got to ride.”
Miss Marius had said all she had to say by the time we reached the depot. She stopped walking when we reached the platform, so I stopped too. There’s only one dark woman waiting at the dropoff. One dark woman say she my mama.
I look at that coat she got on. Coal-black fur look like something from a picture show. And her shoes! Thll black high-high heels. Don’t nobody in Pearl have no shoes like them. And her legs silky shiny.
I look at Miss Nola Barnett’s face. She don’t look like nobody’s mama to me. She got wood-black skin that smooth and shiny, and lips look like they ready to laugh. I can’t see her eyes behind them glasses with pearls at the tips, only see me staring in the glass.
I don’t look nuthin like this woman. She gonna know now she couldn’t never be my mama. She pretty.
I stand behind Miss Marius and feel like I’m wrinkling even more. Woman like her wouldn’t want no girlchild like me.
Miss Marius was looking at her kind of funny, but Miss Nola Barnett stared Miss Marius straight in her face, not shamed or nuthin.
“I guess you think you’ll be taking her now,” Miss Marius say. “Just like all these years don’t mean nuthin to me or her?”
Miss Nola look at Miss Marius and pulled herself up in her picturehouse coat and say,
“Yes, ma’am. I mean no, ma’am. I mean I do expect to lake her. She’s mine. And I do know what it means to both of you and I’m here to show you how grateful I am.”
They was looking at and talking to each other like I’m a speck of dust, or something they can’t see floating around in the air. But I know her voice. She and that man voice calling me on the road.
“They don’t make no pens or paper in Chicago?” Miss Marius ask.
“Yes, ma’am. They make them.”
“We supposed to think anything but what we thought?”
“No. I mean yes,” Miss Nola Barnett say.
“What?” Miss Marius ask.
For a minute, Miss Nola Barnett look small in her big shoes and fur coat. She take the pearly glasses off, but she still don’t say nuthin.
Then finally, in a voice so small I wondered how it could’ve come out of a big fancy woman’s body, how that voice could’ve sounded so strong before, Miss Nola Barnett say, “I paid with more than blood, Miss Marius. I paid with more than blood.”
Miss Marius keep looking at Miss Nola till she satisfied with what she see.
I feel Miss Marius softening, start leaning toward Miss Nola. Her back ain’t held quite so high. Miss Nola start to smile a bit round the corners of her mouth and next thing happen they pulling on each other so hard, it’s a surprise they don’t twist and fall down.
Ain’t nuthin about Miss Nola Barnett familiar, cept that voice. I know I heard her talking before. She got a voice sound like water easing into water. A soft liquid sound. She still don’t say nuthin to me. When they let go, both they faces wet. They keep holding and touching each other. Then they turn around to me.
I don’t say nuthin, just look at the dust on my flat dress shoes. My socks are dusty and the bottoms of my legs look rusty. Even my good dress hanging on my body like a piece of sorry cloth.
What she see looking at me?
A speck of dust. An old wrinkled raisin. A piece of nuthin.
She don’t say nuthin for so long I finally raise my head. Her eyes the black in dreams. I see things in em. Stars, cracked moons, an old dying sun.
I close my eyes cause she looking inside me. I can feel her looking right inside. Don’t nobody look at me like that. Nobody in this world. I hold my body still cause this new. I wanna wiggle but don’t want her to think I’m dumb.
Then I remember. Her voice. I must’ve heard it way before today, way way back when I was floating in her stomach. And I think about how long it took, but she did decide to give me life. She told Miss Marius to give me life.
“I know you don’t remember me, Septeema,” Miss Nola Barnett say. “I left here a long time ago. But I’m back now and I’m gonna be your mama till the day you die. This is for you.”
She got a silver oval in her hand. Holding it out to me. To me. She brought something for me and she don’t even know me yet. She don’t see my skin. The wrinkles in my skin. I take the oval and hold it in my hand. I feel Miss Marius nodding but I don’t look at her. The silver on the oval is old and not polished. I feel. Its rough skin feel just like mine. Feel like a big old round circle of a tree with branches hanging down to the ground. No. It feel like the big round fan on a peacock’s behind.
A little button on the side. I push and the oval spring open. I jump cause I think I’m gonna drop it, drop it on the dusty ground before I get a chance to see inside. Then I jump again. I’m looking at me in my hand. Me and that blue blanket of a sky behind my head. Me, Septeema.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t like looking in no mirrors. Used to think I’d see a different me, but it’s always the same me. So I leave em alone. Run from em sometime. Lucille like to catch me and hold me down and make me look. She think she gonna make me cry. But I don’t. I look in that glass and pretend it’s water. A big silver drop of water and I’m a fish swimming on through.
On the back side of the oval is a big black pearl. In the middle of the tail feather and all round the edge is red and green stones that catch and hold light.
I ain’t never had nuthin like this.
Not no real mama, and not no real necklace, or rings for my ears, or nuthin.
Lucille say ain’t nuthin gonna make me shine. But I look at the oval and the woman standing smiling, saying she my mama, MINE, and I know I don’t never have to listen to what Lucille say no more. I look up at Miss Nola Barnett, look her dead in her eye and say, “Thank you, ma’am.”
She lean into me but she don’t touch and she say my name over and over like a question ain’t no answer for, “Septeema?”
I don’t answer cause I don’t know no words for this feeling, or this woman say she my mama. But Miss Marius grab hold of one of my arms and Miss Nola Barnett grab the other and they pull me into they circle, and I hold my mirror so tight in my hand it leave marks.
II
We WALK INSIDE the depot and wait for Miss Nola’s bags.
Nathan coming around with his pickup truck to get them after while. I see questions in the ticket-taker’s ice-blue eyes, but Miss Nola don’t say nuthin to him.
“Some things the same the world over,” was all she say. Miss Marius just shake her head.
We stand in front of the depot to wait for Nathan. Miss Marius and Miss Nola keep talking and laughing. Miss Nola sound like a car trying to start when she laugh.
I don’t listen, just look. She can’t go far in them shoes. Her fat brown legs don’t even wobble. Where she been to walk like that in them shoes? Bet she won’t even make it out of town. Look like she walking on knives. I ain’t gonna worry about it, though. Every once in a while she stop talking and turn around. Look at me, wrinkle her nose and smile. Miss Marius stop and look too, but she don’t smile.
Nathan finally come and load up the truck with Miss Nola’s things. Miss Marius gonna ride with him, me and Miss Nola gonna walk.
“Give us some time to make our acquaintance,” she say, and I feel something tight close up inside.
“Now, let’s see. The cemetery’s out that way, right?”
I nod my head and hope this lady don’t want to go out the way walking by the graveyard.
“Your grandma’s buried out there. You been to see her?”
“No,” I say. I don’t tell her I don’t go see nobody in the graveyard.
“Well, that makes two of us. Guess I’ll make it there sooner or later. She’s not going anywhere,” she say and smile.
I don’t smile and I don’t say nuthin. What kind of woman don’t come when her mama die, then come back home and smile?
“You think I’m hard, don’t you? Hard to have left you. My mama. Pearl. Well, you think I’m bad, you should’ve met your grandmother.”
She quiet after saying that, and we walk through town without talking.
“Hasn’t nuthin here changed,” she say after a while. “It’s been twelve years. I bet all the folks at the church know I’ni back and why.”
I hold my hand to my mouth and act like I’m coughing. Miss Nola right. Most everybody did know she was coming back to town. And knew she didn’t come when her mama died. But didn’t nobody know why.
“That’s the thing I love most about a city, Septeema. Don’t nobody know who you are unless you tell them. You can walk down the street and never see nobody you know. Kind of like being invisible. Yeah, almost like not being real.”
I think about that for a while. About being in some city where nobody know my name. About not having no MC, no Wilhelmina, no Douglass. Not having nobody to hold onto when I sleep. Not holding nobody else when they cry.
“Sound awful quiet up there,” I say.
“It is quiet, here inside,” she say, pointing to her head. “Some of the women at the lamp plant where I worked used to call me Silence.”
“You didn’t never talk?”
“Sometimes. Most times I just kept my mouth shut. Seems like life can do that to you sometimes, put so much on your mind till you can’t even speak.
“A’Lelia Collins was the one got me out of my silence. She the one give me my fur coat and a lot of fancy dresses. She gave them to me when her daughter died and looking good didn’t matter to her no more.
“A’Lelia’d been working in a factory ever since they first let colored women get other work besides farming or day work. She used to be a trackwoman on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad before she came to Chicago.
“I got a picture of her holding a shovel almost as big as she is.
“She a friend to me. More of a mama than my own was. Gets on me all the time about doing right by you, since her daughter died before she could do right by her.
“A’Lelia helped me find the words inside myself. The words I can know myself by and feel strong in the world. Now what’s your story?”
“Miss Marius say she sent you letters about me,” I say.
“I burned them,” she say.
“Well, what you wanna know about me now for, then?” I ask.
She act like she don’t know what to say. I don’t neither, but I gotta let her know I know she didn’t wanna know nuthin about me. Not then or now. She got something up her sleeve, I can feel it.
