Gathering of Waters (19 page)

“I forgot my pocketbook.”

She walked back into the dining room and reached for the purse, which was dangling on the back of a chair. Before turning to leave, she looked right at Emmett and offered a soft, knowing smile.

Emmett gasped with surprise.

Later on, in the darkness of the movie theater, Sonny and Aida shared a large tub of buttered popcorn. On the screen, Pam Grier pulled a gun on her would-be murderer and pressed the nozzle into his groin.

Aida stared at the screen, but her mind was on the spirit in the May home. She reached for her cup of Coca-Cola and slurped until the brown sweetness filled her mouth.

For most of the film, she pondered whether or not she should share what she knew with Sonny. Finally, when the credits began to roll, she turned to him and whispered, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Sonny laughed. “No, why, do you?”

Aida nodded her head yes.

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I guess to each its own,” then stood to leave. Aida followed him out of the theater.

As they walked down the street, Aida grabbed hold of his hand and began: “Well, the reason why I asked is because …” She launched passionately into her explanation, using her free hand in an animated way to describe what she had seen.

Sonny first thought Aida was joking, but the seriousness in her voice told him otherwise.

When she was done, he looked her and blurted out with a laugh, “A ghost? In my mama’s house?”

“Yes.”

He’d had crazy in his life before, and was not eager to invite it back in.

When he dropped Aida off at her home that evening, he shook her hand at the front door. Aida knew then that he didn’t believe one word she’d said and that she would never see him again.

Chapter Thirty-One

T
hey were thirty years into their marriage when Fish’s sight began to fail.

Diabetes.

It was bound to happen. You can’t escape a disease like that if you drink Coca-Cola with your breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Tass had to inject the insulin into his veins, because he couldn’t bear to stick himself.

They now had grown children and grandchildren who owned cars and lived close by, but they had their own jobs and families, and not much time to chauffer Fish and Tass around. And so after an entire lifetime of being a passenger, Tass decided she would learn how to drive.

Sonny was recruited to teach her. Fish supervised from the backseat.

Sonny pointed to the pedals. “Okay, Mama. That one is the gas and that one is the brake.” He handed her the ignition key. “Push it in, press down on the brake, and turn the key.”

Tass did as she was told and the car roared to life. The younger children watched silently from the porch.

“Now,” Sonny said, “shift the gear into dri—”

“See, already you telling her wrong!” Fish barked. Sonny turned around to meet his father’s angry eyes.

“How am I telling her wrong, Fish?”

“Did you tell her what the gearshift was?”

Tass was gripping the wheel so tightly her fingers went numb. Her eyes were glued to the wide, open street before her, and when she spoke, the words came from the corner of her mouth: “I know where the gearshift is. I put it in drive, right?”

“Yeah, Mama.”

Tass grabbed hold of the gearshift. “How do I know when it’s in drive?”

Sonny leaned over and tapped the arched glass embedded in the dashboard.

“
D
is for drive,” Fish grumbled.

Tass ignored him. “Do I keep my foot on the brake?”

“Yep!”

She pulled the gear down and watched as the dial clicked to
D
.

“Okay, now ease your foot off the brake and step on the gas—”

“Gently!” Fish yelled.

The car jerked, Tass shrieked and slammed both feet down on the brake.

Sonny sighed. “Okay, Mama, let’s try it once more. This time, keep your foot on the gas.”

“Okay.”

Tass eased her foot off the brake again and placed it on the gas pedal. She gave it a little pressure and the car began to roll forward. A cheer went up from the children.

The car inched along at a turtle’s pace until it reached the corner. Tass stepped down on the brake and looked at Sonny.

“Which way should I go?”

“Whichever way you want.”

Fish let off a long, loud yawn. “Left.”

Sonny placed his hand over Tass’s and together they steered the car left.

“It turned, it turned!” Tass squealed with joy.

“Imagine that,” Fish muttered.

A year after Tass learned to drive, Fish suffered a stroke, rendering his left arm and leg useless, and slurring his speech.

At the hospital, Tass and the children cornered Fish’s doctor and pelted him with dozens of questions, including the one that was the most difficult to ask: “He still got his mind?”

“Yes.” The doctor’s response was emphatic. “Luckily, he only suffered some physical fallout, but his mind is still as sharp as it was before the stroke.”

Understandably, Fish was frustrated and angry at how his body had turned on him. No soft or comforting words from his wife could expunge the indignation he experienced every time she had to assist him with the handling of his own penis or bend him over the toilet to clean his behind.

The constant humiliation ravaged his ego and Fish began to turn mean.

At first Tass ignored the way he watched her, pointedly and premeditatively. She began to feel like an unwitting target caught in the crosshairs of a sniper’s gun.

Fish would go days without speaking to her. For a while he wouldn’t eat anything she prepared. The daughters had to bring him casseroles of food and spoon-feed him.

Once, while Tass was outside sweeping dead leaves from the sidewalk, Fish hobbled to the door and locked it. Through the window she could see him sitting in the kitchen, stone-faced and staring. It was nearly dark when one of the children happened to drive by and saw Tass waiting there on the porch. After that incident, Tass had an extra key made which she hid beneath a smiling gnome in the front garden.

The worst act of insolence took place on a crisp, April morning. Fish was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in his thick green house robe. The radiators were clanging and whistling as Tass stood at the stove preparing his breakfast.

Fish had been hearing things. Whispers, giggles, feet scrambling up and down the staircase, doors opening and closing, the squeal of bedsprings. He assumed that Tass was slipping men into the house after she put him to bed.

Of course, that was absolutely untrue as Tass was completely devoted to Fish.

Let me explain why he was hearing these things. I know you are familiar with the adage:
Once a man, twice a
child
. The words hold more truth than many of you will believe. Remember when I told you that little children are able to see the spirits around them? Well, when a soul begins to slip from the binds of the physical world, the consciousness reverts to its natural state and once again it becomes open and receptive to the spirits that live amongst the host body. For some, the transition has been problematic, which has led to sane people being medicated or institutionalized.

This particular morning, Fish slammed his fist against the table and barked, “You better not be bringing no niggers in my house!”

“Uh-huh,” Tass sounded, and kept right on whipping the eggs and turning the bacon.

“What type of woman is you? Imagine, at your age picking up a Jody, and after all I done for you!”

She had grown used to the accusations. It was becoming as customary as her morning cup of coffee.

“You hear me talking to you, Tass?” Again, he brought his fist down hard onto the table.

“Uh-huh,” Tass said absently.

Fish was suddenly seized with a pure and toxic rage that propelled his frail body from his chair, into the air, and onto Tass’s back. They went down like anchors, tossed into the sea.

On the floor they battled like hellions, until Tass was finally able to free herself and jump to her feet. Backing away from him, she reached for the knife lying in the sink.

“Nigger, don’t you ever put your hands on her again. Don’t you know I will kill you?”

Not her words, but his. Not her voice, his voice.

In that moment, Emmett discovered that his love for Tass far exceeded the power to manipulate butterflies, flowers, and birds.

The color drained from Fish’s face and the knife slipped from Tass’s hand and clattered back into the sink. Husband and wife stared at one another in astonishment, before cautiously casting their gazes around the room.

As far as they could tell, they were alone.

Tass thought it was an oddity, like a person born with one blue eye and one brown eye, or poor black people hitting the lottery two drawings in a row. There was no other way to explain it.

After the moment had passed, Tass reached down to help Fish to his feet, but he was spooked and scrambled across the yellow and brown linoleum with the agility and speed of a lizard.

“Don’t touch me,” he slurred through his crooked lips.

“Don’t be silly,” Tass said as she reached for him again.

Fish batted her hands away. “Get off me, you possessed bitch!”

Tass reeled back in surprise. Even during their most horrendous disagreements, Fish had never called her out of her name.

Chapter Thirty-Two

M
onths after that incident, Tass was in the basement one morning, loading the washing machine with clothes. Fish was in the kitchen finishing his breakfast, excited about the day he and the family were going to spend on Belle Isle. He was eager to see the boats coasting across the water with their white sails flapping in the wind.

He was smiling at the thought when death closed its dark hand over his heart.

Downstairs, the roar of the washing machine masked the sound of Fish’s body tumbling from the chair to the floor. So when Tass stepped into the sun-drenched kitchen and saw him stretched out with his good hand clutched to his chest, her heart jumped into her throat.

His eyes were open and a glistening stream of saliva spilled ominously from the corner of his mouth. He was still smiling, not because of the vision he’d conjured of Belle Isle, but because his people were there. All of the family and friends who had transitioned ahead of him had encircled him, and were weaving his name into an ancient chant.

Fish’s foot began to bounce to the rhythm of the song, and he was consumed by a tenderness he had never felt before.

Standing just outside of the circle of ancestors was a person who Fish did not recognize. “Who you?” he asked.

Tass was now on the floor cradling his head in her lap, stroking his cheeks and weeping all over him. “It’s me, baby. Tass.”

His head lolled to one side and he was gone.

Tass sat there for a long time, holding him, stroking his arms and running her fingers through his hair.

She didn’t know how long the telephone had been ringing before she finally heard it. Pulling herself up from the floor and carefully stepping around Fish’s body, she picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” Tass sniffed.

“Hey, Mama,” Sonny’s voice rang from the opposite end of the line. “I’m headed over now. Y’all ready?”

Pulling the coiled telephone cord as far as it would allow, she stepped out into the hallway, cupped her hand over mouth, and whispered, “He gone, Sonny, he gone,” as if trying to keep the truth from the dead man himself.

Other than the sound of the clock and Tass’s own steady breathing, the house was quiet. The funeral had ended hours ago, but Tass was still dressed in her black skirt suit and pillbox hat with the studded veil. Sitting on the corner of the bed, she leaned forward and folded her hands into her lap. For a long time she just sat there staring at her hands, contemplating the soft wrinkles and brown blemishes. How smooth and pretty her skin had been when she said,
I do
, forty-eight years earlier.

“Forty-eight years,” she said aloud.

Now, looking back, she realized that forty-eight years had run off like water.

“Not when we were living it though,” Tass chuckled. “There were some days when I didn’t think we were gonna make it.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Fish’s side of the bed, then reached her hand around and patted the place where his feet would have been.

“But we did,” she sighed.

Chapter Thirty-Three

M
ay filtered into June and then spilled out into a July that marked one of the hottest on record. By the time August blinked its bleary eyes, Tass had made up her mind to go back home and sell her mother’s house.

She and Sonny were in the attic fishing through a steamer trunk filled with old records, toys, magazines, and photographs. They’d been at it for most of the morning, and there seemed to be no end in sight.

When Sonny stood up and swiped the back of his hand across his forehead in frustration, Tass blurted out the thought that had been pressed onto her tongue for two full weeks.

“I’m going to go down to Money for a while.”

Sonny reached into the trunk and pulled out a dusty, dingy Raggedy Ann doll.

“Why? Ain’t nobody left down there.”

“Padagonia is there.”

Sonny held the doll up to the light to study its freckled fabric face.

“That’s true, don’t know how I could forget her,” he chuckled. “I think you could use some time away, and I’m sure Miss Padagonia would enjoy having you around.”

Sonny tossed the doll onto the pile designated as garbage.

“Well, Mama,” he said as he slipped his hands back into the steamer trunk, “just let me know when you want to go and I’ll book your plane ticket.”

Tass glanced at her son, who looked so much like his father, and she began to slowly shake her head from side to side. “No, no plane ticket.”

Sonny shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, a bus ticket then. Why in the world anyone would want to spend a thousand hours on a bus is …” His voice trailed off. When it returned it was bursting with excitement. “My old baseball mitt!”

He tried in vain to fit the childhood glove onto his grown-man hand.