Promise, page 29
“They don’t live long, those lightning bugs,” said my grandmother. “That glow in they butts is all about attraction. They got about two months to get it on before they die. Old folks say the female ones will eat the males. Not all the time but enough to make things interesting. The female will use her light to trick the male into thinking he’s getting himself something sweet when it turns out that she’s actually just hungry. Ain’t that something? Animals can be a trip. They got to survive. Just like us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“With this strong storm coming, they’ll take cover soon,” said Ginny. “Do you like storms? Because the rain is perfect here. Hm, I had to run all over the world just to find myself running back here ’cause I missed these storms so bad. When they locked me up, called it putting me into confinement, I spent a lot of time remembering these storms. In that dark cell, lightning flashed across the walls and the sounds of them iron doors opening and closing all around me was a little bit like thunder. God was missing from the hearts of the guards who beat me, starved me, did worse. In my cell there were no trees. I’d pretend, the way I did as a girl, about helping Noah get that ark together. I had to keep myself strong, keep my mind from blacking out. They’d left me in there with next to nothing to eat, nothing but rags to wear. They was ready to make me an animal. But that didn’t happen. The more they thought they was hurting me, the more I moved around the world inside my head.
“I remembered them good-looking boys that once drove me down a straight road to nowhere ’til I barely recognized my own voice. My good times left me broke and high. The only thing I could sing when I got done with myself was about being a junkie. At first, the music I sang was about never begging nobody but myself to love me. I didn’t like to sing nothing about needing a man and his mess. I liked singing about love and I didn’t know—I didn’t know—when I took off from here in a rush that I was running away from a pure love I’d made myself.
“Tried to find the boy who was Jolene’s father but realized I didn’t know who he was, where he came from; and back then I always had my legs up. They was fine, strong legs, by the way. Hm. I know you can’t barely see that no more, but back in the day people would pass around a hat just so I’d show these legs off.
“I got so confused after a while. Got mixed up, got strung out. Got into the kind of trouble that I sang about looking for—then it was real. It was real as the time I served. Hard time. I ain’t trying to scare you by talking to you this way, but I guess that if Jolene’s forgiven me, I need to ask you to forgive me too. In our families we can pass hurt, same as we can pass new life. Baby, I don’t want no more hurt passed to you.”
“Grandmother,” I said, nearly whispering it. My voice vanished inside the showers of her words. She pointed at stars, named birds I could not see. I thought of how Daddy had shown me how to recognize the world, how it could be spoken yet untouchable in its mystery. With each word my grandmother spoke I felt lighter, stronger, better. She trusted me the way Ezra had trusted me.
Ginny’s voice went on, surfacing from her memories and their solitude.
“See, baby, you can smell the dirt, the rain’s ready—goodness, we haven’t had near enough rain yet this summer. If we’ll get a good soaking tonight, maybe my poor tomatoes will survive.”
28
When I came upstairs, I decided to go to Mama’s room instead of the little closet down the hall where Ginny had set up a cot for me. I wouldn’t be able to listen to the rain if I slept in there. Already, I could feel the electricity in the air. The lightning and bald scream of thunder was something I craved, knowing I was safe inside my grandmother’s sturdy farmhouse.
Pulling a thin nightgown over my head, I crept past Ginny’s room, though there was no need for me to tiptoe. Her snoring rivaled a parliament of elephants.
At the end of the hall, there was a window. When lightning flashed it cast everything in a sudden light that then vanished sharply. Instead of being fearful, I smiled. There’d been a few storms in June, but Ginny and Mama had claimed that the July storms were something to see.
I went to the edge of the hallway to stand at the window, waiting for the next moment of lightning. I let my eyes adjust so that I could look down at my grandmother’s front yard to the space where the oak trees wreathed a path that led out to the main road.
I was surprised to see what looked like a man on a horse there in the middle of the opening between the trees. He wore a hat that looked very old, from another time, but when he tilted his head back as if to meet my eyes, I waved immediately, because it was my father. I’d never seen him on a horse, and this one was quite large, with strange, humanlike eyes. For some reason, I knew not to call out. So I pressed my hand against the glass as the lightning traced it in rapid bursts. I wondered if my father had come from heaven or if he was a ghost, his body fully restored as it had arrived in this world at birth. Then I realized he couldn’t be my father, because he was holding the reins to his horse with two hands. In my mind, I heard children crying and the sound of rushing water, louder than the rain that thundered on my grandmother’s roof. When I looked again there was nothing. Wrapping my arms around my body, I felt unbearably lonely, afraid to walk into a future whose air felt too sad and shaky to let me breathe.
Pushing away my thoughts, I slipped into Mama’s room, startled to hear her voice greet me.
“Hi, baby girl.”
“Hi, Mama,” I said. “I wanted to hear the storm. And it’s too hot where she has me sleeping. Can I listen to it in here with you?”
“Of course, baby,” she said. Her voice was tired, but I could tell that she was happy I’d come to her.
“Open the window a little bit, won’t you? When you hear that sweet rain touching all her crazy bottles, you’ll feel like you’re sitting inside a symphony.”
“Did you used to listen to the rain all the time when you were a girl?”
“Oh yes,” said Mama. “When I knew a good rain was coming, I treated it like a friend. I’d be so excited!”
“Did Daddy like it?”
“Yes, in his way,” said Mama. She paused. Her voice picked up again thoughtfully. “When we first moved to Salt Point, I’d open the windows wide when it stormed. I’d sit on the porch or stand out in the yard so I could feel it on my skin. Your father would appreciate the downpours for the way the world stopped. He liked the rain for his reading.”
“Were we scared of storms when we were little girls?”
“Come over here,” she said, moving just a little under the quilt. “See how the breeze has made it so cool. You can smell what’s alive in the garden. You can feel the river too.
“Long ago, though anybody would say I couldn’t possibly remember, I was born on a rainy day in a bed like this. Not this bed but something with feathers in it. I can actually remember how the air felt on me, how it smelled. I can remember my mother’s voice speaking. It was a proud voice. Still is.”
“Yes, she sure is proud,” I said. “But what about Ezra and me, Mama? When we were little?”
“You would sleep through storms in Salt Point or you’d keep yourself busy around the house,” she said. “But Ezra…Ezra would ask me if she could go outside, even when the lightning was close.”
I curled against Mama. Her voice grew distant under the rumbling world beyond the window. “Did you ever wish you had a sister?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mama in a wistful voice. “Everything I wished for I’ve received. I have my daughters. I’ve done my best with how the world has done me. Who says that anymore? In another world, we’d be sisters, you and me. In another time, you might be my mother. I’d be your daughter. In the next life, it wouldn’t matter to me what I was, long as I’d get to call you mine.”
“Mama,” I said.
“You’ll always have me,” she said. “Because we love each other. In every world, this love will be the same.”
“The earth always has rain,” I said, yawning.
“Yes, you understand enough,” said Mama. I could hear her smiling.
* * *
•••
In the morning, oaks waved beyond the window. Bands of scalloped light stenciled the periwinkle walls of my mother’s bedroom. The air blowing over us lifted the sheer curtains as though the gauzy panels breathed with the wistfulness of something having passed. In the wake of hard rain, the sun was shiny. The birdsong was bold.
Like every Saturday morning since we’d arrived, there was the scent of strong coffee brewing. I listened to my grandmother’s humming, down in the kitchen, not unlike the birds in the rinsed-blue air.
Without touching Mama, who was still sleeping, I moved a little so that more of the breeze could touch the skin on the top of my toes. The tinkling of wind chimes wafted up pleasantly. I remembered the riot of fireflies the evening before, the flotilla of stars above them twinkling, and how the natural world could always pull me away from the thinking part of my mind.
This was surely a river day. It was likely the storm had made the waters rise. I would try to stay outdoors, away from the thoughts that kept me up at night. A simple day beside the backwards river with a book and all the world surging around me would be enough. When I returned from visiting the river, I might walk back the long way to make sure there were flowers on Daddy’s headstone. Maybe later Mama would want her hair brushed out. We could sit on the swing and wait for the floating fireflies. I knew Mama would love them.
Ginny was on the stairs, and by her breathing, I could tell that she was carrying a breakfast tray, which she often did for Mama on Saturday mornings. She was already speaking as she opened the door.
“Jolene, I can’t believe you and this child slept through that storm last night! Tell me that wasn’t the devil rattling his nasty teeth on my clean roof. I been up early. Got to have Mr. Davis and his grandson over here. Some of the shingles fallen, and my little myrtle over by the shed has been ripped up off its roots. Lot of broken glass out front too. Don’t see why that storm had to go and do that. My jars wasn’t hurting nobody.
“I swear this storm’s not going to stop me today. Shit. What a mess. Like I don’t already have one hundred things to do on a Saturday.”
I pushed the covers back, swinging my legs over the bed. I didn’t want Ginny’s fussing to disturb Mama, who hadn’t stirred.
“Didn’t I tell you not to get in the bed with her?” said my grandmother, glaring at me in my thin gown. She set down the tray. “Who opened that window?”
“Mama. She asked me to,” I said, wincing at the sharpness of her voice.
“Did you know what your mama was asking you to do? Didn’t you know what she wanted, asking you to do that? You don’t understand rain?” There was spit in the corners of my grandmother’s crazy, unpainted lips.
I went around the bed, protectively, to Mama’s side. When I pulled her hand, there was no resistance, no word from her. I could feel a little warmth but not much. I pressed my fingers at her pulse and listened with closed eyes. I said her name in my mind. Mama? Touching her shoulder, I noted the early breeze gentling some of the loose curls that had come undone from her thick bun of hair. The vein in her neck that I’d watched for months, like a clock, was quiet.
“Jolene?”
Ginny pushed past me. The room filled with Shalimar, whipped eggs, Nu Nile, cane sugar. My grandmother’s throat whined as she drew the quilt away from Mama’s face and used her fingertips to smooth her dark curls.
“Jolene?”
My grandmother’s tears rolled down into her open lips as she sank on her knees against the bed. Her mouth was open, trying to draw the air out of her body. Before she could let herself do that in front of me, Ginny closed her mouth, swallowing her scream. She shook her cornrowed head, vulnerable in a way that filled me with terrible understanding. Then she buried her face in the nubby ivory chenille bedspread. Although it was only minutes, I felt as if Ginny and I were frozen inside years before either of us could move.
Mama’s eyes were half-opened, abandoned.
“Jolene knew,” said Ginny, pushing herself upright. “Not a clock in the world can hold your hand when it’s your time.” Her body heaved as the floorboards beneath her moaned. She crawled up the side of the bed, gathering Mama’s silence against her. “Sweet Jesus, I made a pretty girl. Didn’t I make a beauty? She won’t have to ask this world for nothing never again.”
Then my grandmother motioned for me to come by her side and close my mother’s dead eyes. She guided my fingers to my mother’s face. I touched the tender skin of my mother’s sockets. The shock that she would not blink, would not turn her eyes to me in question, filled my mouth.
“She won’t have to beg this life for one more thing. Not one more thing,” sobbed Ginny. “And neither will I, have mercy. Who knew in this life that Jolene’s peace could break my heart?”
* * *
•••
Hours later, my grief turned into something firm and inflexible. I was no longer interested in listening to, or obeying, anything that my grandmother said to me. If I allowed myself to open, to listen, I could lose the trace of my mother’s voice, which I clung to while I was raging and spinning inside.
When I said she wasn’t my mother and couldn’t make me take a shower, Ginny peered through her red eyes at me, shaking her head. “You laid up next to death all night, you’re going to wash yourself. And if you’re selfish enough to make Jolene’s death about you,” she said, “then you can’t be the daughter Jolene said you was.”
“I’m afraid of going up there,” I said.
Ginny held the stained, yellow plastic receiver of the telephone in her hand. Attached to it was about a yard of dirty, corkscrewed plastic that she could stretch as far away as the porch, if she decided she wanted to sit and talk there.
“She said you’d help me,” said Ginny. “Look, I got to make these calls. Ain’t much time for you to be ’fraid of nothing no more. You fighting me on the basics. You held your mama up in life, you got to hold her up at her crossing.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, feeling guilty that I was angry at her. I couldn’t admit that I was angry with Mama too, for leaving me with this woman.
“We got us an understanding?”
But I was already backing out of her kitchen, away from her hoarse voice. My foot was on the step leading upstairs when I heard the grandfather clock bellowing in the good parlor. Pivoting in rage, I ran into the room, with its plastic-covered sofas and the artificial irises arranged in cheap crystal vases on the windowsills. I opened the door of the clock to stop its voice.
Ginny had followed me. She overtook me, gripping my fingers.
“No, Hyacinth, that ain’t going to help nothing. That’s time. That ain’t yours. You can’t stop living. You can’t stop time or living ’cause they hurt your feelings. Time and feelings be damned. You got to live.”
* * *
•••
Powdered and dressed, I sat outside on the porch. My clothes were soaked in sweat and nerves. It was dusk. Time poured like syrup. I folded my arms across my chest, using my stiff legs to push against the floor.
“Mr. Randall and his grandson coming over soon to take your mama,” said Ginny, appearing behind the screen door. “Ain’t you hot sitting there like that? This is country heat. I would’ve thought the storm would cool things down but, Jesus, it feels worse.”
Turning from her voice, I stared at the low hills that repeated and repeated their green and yellow curves until they touched the deepening horizon.
“I have to go out for an hour with all these pie orders,” said Ginny. “Put those pies I left on the counter in my car and roll the windows down so they don’t melt. I can’t lose no money. I’ll need it for flowers and a little something to give Louise for singing at your mama’s service. Louise don’t never ask nobody directly, but everybody knows how much it costs to have an angel sing.”
“An angel like my mother?” I asked. “How much did it cost her when you left her alone, left her worse than trash?”
“Only reason I’m not smacking your whole face is ’cause I see my daughter’s eyes looking back at me,” she said. “This is not just about some grief in you. What is wrong?”
“Will you take me somewhere and leave me with strangers?” I asked quietly. “Just tell me.”
“I ain’t leaving you nowhere,” said Ginny, stepping outside. Her voice broke against duets of katydids. “Mercy, I want to sit. So bad. But I can’t, not yet. If I sit down, the Lord knows I might not get up.”
“Yes,” I said in agreement. Because I couldn’t tell whether it was easier to stand up or fall down, I didn’t say anything else.
“It was my girlfriend Ernestine who took your mama over to white folks’ charity,” said Ginny. “I can’t blame her for what’s been done. I didn’t do your mama right by what I did, but nobody on this earth is going to shame me about my baby girl. Not in this world or the next. Me and your mama came to our peace. Praise God.
“Now you better come, and come quickly, to your own senses, thinking you going to sass me on my porch. You’re a good girl. I can’t begin to imagine what it would feel like losing my mama and daddy like you have. Little sister, I know the word sorry don’t begin to cut it. But you need to know that this damn world ain’t trying to apologize for itself neither.
“Back in the day, Black folks got lost all the time. Went missing. Whole families burned together in fires, in chains. They drowned in oceans. They caught diseases or some white people’s massacre pushed they bones and they names into one black hole. Sometimes miracles happened, but most of the time there’d just be a question mark. Be a wound. Be an unmarked grave. Wouldn’t be nothing to be done about it but to move on. Least you got me. You sitting here with the nerve to act like I’m nothing. You ain’t going to act that way. My baby raised you better.”
