Glorious (14 page)
E
aster saw that Shannon hardly paid any attention to Alice—not the way you think a woman with only two children and no job could.
The longing in Alice’s eyes was painful and could have been easily mitigated with a hug, and not just the gratuitous kind that Shannon offered in reward for a gold-starred report or an A on a math test. Easter’s mother had hugged her children often—“just because” hugs were the best ones of all. Shannon’s interaction with her children swung between terror and aversion.
So on the evening when Alice spat up Easter’s creamy mashed potatoes, green beans, and broiled steak, Shannon’s face curled in disgust and she assisted her daughter at arm’s length. She managed to remove Alice’s clothes and put her into bed without getting any of the puke on herself. After that she bid her children goodbye and she and Dobbs climbed into the Cadillac and hightailed it across town where they were due to attend a garden party.
So it was Easter, not Shannon, who knocked softly on Alice’s door and asked just as quietly if it was all right if she came in. And it was Easter who filled the tub with warm water and then said, “Come on in here,” with motherly authority. “Temperature just right and I put some of that bubble bath in there that you like.”
Alice walked into the bathroom wrapped in a yellow flannel robe with pockets shaped like ducks. Easter reached for the knotted belt of the robe and Alice shrank back.
“Miss Alice, believe me, I have seen it all.”
Alice remained steadfast. “Turn around.”
Easter smirked and did as she was told and Alice quickly shirked the robe off, stepped out of her underwear, and leapt into the tub.
“Okay, you can turn around now,” Alice said after she was sure every inch of her was hidden beneath the bubbles.
“You want me to wash your back?”
Alice thought about it for a moment. She couldn’t remember her own mother ever making that offer. She shrugged her shoulders, shifted her eyes, and began to pick at the grout between the tiles.
Easter gently pulled the washcloth across Alice’s back. The stiffness in the girl’s body gradually melted away and the tendons in her neck went slack. She scratched her nose and chanced a glance at Easter and saw that she was lost in thought, staring at the floor.
“What?” Alice asked as she peered over the edge of the tub.
“Umpf,” Easter sounded. She dropped the cloth into the water, dried her hands on her skirt, and bent to retrieve what she’d been staring at. “So this is the problem.”
Alice looked at her underwear and blinked. “What is it?”
Easter brought the undergarment closer and Alice saw that there was a streak of pink in the seat. Her eyes ballooned with fright. “Is that … blood?” she asked in a quivering voice.
Easter nodded her head.
Alice recalled a neighbor who suddenly began to experience nosebleeds. Three months later she had a brain tumor. Two weeks after that she was dead.
Alice’s breath came in short pants. “Am I … Am I dying!” she wailed.
Easter was taken aback by the child’s reaction and placed a settling hand on her shoulder. “No, baby, you’re not dying, you’re becoming a woman.”
Alice gave Easter a blank look.
“Didn’t your mother tell you about this?”
Alice shook her head no.
“She never told you about your monthly friend?”
Alice had heard her mother and her mother’s friends use that phrase, but she sincerely thought it was a real, live female friend.
Easter tossed the soiled underwear into the sink, took a deep breath, and began to explain to Alice what Shannon had failed to.
After the bath, the two sat on the end of the bed with their thighs slightly touching.
“So every month?”
Easter nodded her head. “Every single month.”
“Every month until I die?”
Easter laughed, “Well, not quite that long.”
Alice fiddled with the balls of lint on her pajama bottoms. “Do you still …?”
“Nope.” Easter’s response was curt. “C’mon now, it’s late, your mother will have my hide if she comes home to find that you’re still up. C’mon now, under the covers.”
Alice allowed Easter to tuck her in. What followed was normal and natural, but still left the two of them breathless with astonishment.
Alice threw her hands around Easter’s neck and pressed a kiss into her brown cheek.
M
iss Anthony, Alice’s squirrelly, bifocaled seventh-grade teacher, clapped her hands together and ordered her students to be quiet. She was grinning so hard her face looked as if it would crack. “Children,” she sang, “today is a very exciting day.” She came from behind the desk. “Today the library has received a very special gift.”
“A horse?” Abigail Sessions shouted excitedly.
Miss Anthony’s face fell slack. “No, not a horse,” she said as she waved the ridiculous statement away. “Today the library received the personal papers of a very well-respected and celebrated author named Meredith Tomas.”
Delia Eubanks, who often bragged that she was the best reader in the world because her mother, Lollie Eubanks, was the town librarian, stated in a condescending tone, “Meredith Tomas? Well, I’ve never heard of her.”
“Have we forgotten that we must be called on if we want to speak?” Miss Anthony’s tone was cutting, but sweet. “And Delia, I’m sure that there are many, many writers you are not familiar with.”
A chuckle rippled through the classroom.
“Meredith Tomas was a recipient of the Rosenfeld and Guggenheim—two very important and distinguished honors. She published poetry in her early years, then a number of short stories and novels later on in life. Her most famous novel,
Sentiments in the Eves,
is her greatest, most celebrated work.”
The students looked bored.
“And do you know why we should be proud of that?”
The students shook their heads.
“Because the story takes place right here in Waycross, that’s why!”
The children reacted indifferently, but Miss Anthony was not to be deflated.
“In fact, the
New York Times
called it the greatest work ever written on Negro life by a non-Negro!” She clapped her hands excitedly.
Abigail’s hand shot up in the air and began waving like a flag. Miss Anthony nodded in her direction.
“Too bad the coloreds won’t be able to read the book.”
Miss Anthony’s eyelids fluttered and she reached for the fake pearls around her neck. “And why is that?”
“Cause the library don’t grant coloreds library cards, that’s why,” said Abigail pointedly.
Miss Anthony went red. “Oh, oh yes. I forgot,” she whispered.
“And anyway,” a burly boy named Elijah interjected, “coloreds don’t read no how.”
“Well, now—” Miss Anthony started, but Alice jumped to her feet and shouted, “Yes they do too! My maid reads!”
Easter was making chicken soup with dumplings, diced carrots, and potatoes that she’d taken the time to cut into perfect cubes. When she reached for the ladle, she caught sight of a young Easter peering at her from the silver belly of the utensil. Gleaming marcelled hair, thin eyebrows, and a face painted like Clara Bow. She would never have gone out into streets looking like that. Well, the marcelled hair was fine, but the whorish makeup? Never!
But up at 409 Edgecombe every day was Halloween. Meredith had the windows blacked out and then she draped Rain’s scarves and boas over everything with a limb—chandeliers, doorknobs, and vacant picture hooks. She insisted that they live by candlelight and candlelight alone. Guests were only received if they arrived wearing Venetian masks.
The three of them lived like unaccompanied minors, spending their days playing dress-up, walking on the furniture, eating pancakes for dinner, roast beef for breakfast, and cake for supper. They filled the bathtub with three cases of champagne, jumped in, and splashed about like seals. And through it all, the little slanted-eyed boy came and went.
It was sweet delirium for weeks, and then after that it was just delirium.
“Easter, Easter!”
Easter remained hushed in her memories.
The backdoor creaked open and Shannon stumbled in. “Easter, what in the world is wrong with you? I’ve been calling you since forever!”
“Ma’am?”
Shannon shot Easter an annoyed look. “I said,” she began slowly, “I’ve been calling you for some time.”
Easter rested the ladle down on the table and wiped at her eyes. “Sorry, just lost in my work, I guess.”
“Really?” Shannon spouted sarcastically.
Easter reached for the bottle of BMX.
“I want a bologna sandwich, not too much mayonnaise and no lettuce,” Shannon said as she stroked her neck. “And another martini.”
Easter nodded. It was 1:30.
It was just as well because she hadn’t wanted to keep thinking about that time.
E
aster was having a good laugh out there in the garden all by herself. Alice bit into an apple and watched curiously from the opposite side of the mesh screen. She was drawn to her now. She offered her help around the house, asked Easter to teach her how to snap the dust rag the way she’d seen her do. When Easter wasn’t looking, Alice stole her Pall Malls and hid behind the garage and practiced blowing smoky circles into the air.
She questioned Easter about Dr. King’s credentials and Easter was more than happy to enlighten her. And the question Alice posed about Negroes having tails almost broke Easter in two with laughter as she assured her that she had never met anyone with a tail.
Alice crept outside, careful not to let the door slam, and when Easter turned around the girl was less than two feet away from her.
“What you want, child?” Easter asked, panting. “Ain’t proper to be sneaking up on an old woman like that. Could give me a heart attack and then who would cook your meals and wash your dirty drawers!” Her tone was filled with humor and her eyes shimmered wet with joyful tears.
“What’s so funny?”
“This.” Easter leaned over, bent her knees, crossed her eyes, and stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth. She raised herself up onto the balls of her feet, planted both hands on her kneecaps, and proceeded to flap her legs together like wings. It was the most ridiculous dance Alice had ever seen.
“What are you doing that for?”
“Just being silly, sometimes you have to just be silly!”
Alice was afraid for her. She felt a woman her size and her age shouldn’t be exerting herself in that fashion. “Stop it,” she whispered fearfully, but Easter ignored her.
“Come on, you try it.”
Alice folded her arms. “Nope. And you shouldn’t be doing it either, it makes you look ridiculous.”
“Aw, c’mon,” Easter pleaded between laughs.
The stupid dance and the joy that Easter seemed to derive from it were infectious and Alice found the corners of her mouth twitching. A giggle tickled its way up her throat and then burst from her mouth in a snort, causing Easter to howl. Alice acquiesced—she crossed her eyes and began imitating Easter’s outrageous movements. They laughed and danced until they were so tired they could do little more than collapse into the patio chairs.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
Easter tilted her head toward the blue sky. “Ah,” she breathed, “a very long time ago in a place far, far away.”
While the children were asleep and Dobbs and Shannon Everson sat on opposite ends of the sofa watching
The Dean Martin Show,
Easter was out on the porch in the rocking chair, listening to crickets hum as she read the newspaper by moonlight.
She read articles about a rogue hog, socialism in Cuba, the suicide of Ernest Hemingway, and the impending arrival of the personal papers donated to the town’s library by the now deceased, renowned writer Meredith Tomas.
Her mind had been known to play tricks on her and so to be sure, Easter reread the lines and then smoked four cigarettes, in succession, down to the butts. When she went to bed that night, her mind was a tornado of images that swept her back to the moment that became her first step in a long journey back to the very place she had run away from.
I
n Harlem the streets burned with gossip. Apparently the penthouse at 409 Edgecombe, which Meredith had playfully dubbed Heaven, had turned into some type of hell.
Meredith was no longer taking visitors—no matter how extraordinarily beautiful their Venetian masks were. The phone rang without answer until the line went dead. The grocery store had not delivered food to the penthouse in weeks. Someone had suggested that the Negro women who lived there had mutinied and tied Meredith to the wooden post of her bed and were forcing her to eat out of her dog’s bowl. If the butler wasn’t dead, said the concerned individual, then he was in on it too. “We can’t waste any more time. Something has to be done, I’m going to call the authorities.”
When the butler answered the door, the police officers’ rigid stance immediately relaxed. They asked for Meredith Tomas and a look of disdain wafted across the butler’s face. He ushered them into the music room where he instructed them to wait. Minutes later, Meredith floated in draped in golden silk pajamas; her hair was covered in a matching cloche.
She batted heavy lashes at them and purred, “How can I help you today, officers?”
They stated the concerns of the worried acquaintance and as they did their eyes crawled over her, expertly examining her body for bruises, her eyes for fear or insanity, and felt like idiots when they found nothing.
Meredith laughed, “Do I look like a woman in peril?” And she took the hand of the more handsome officer and started toward the parlor where Easter and Rain were lounging on the sofa with playing cards in their hands. They raised their eyes when Meredith and the officers entered and Easter uttered, “Oh, hello,” and Rain said, “Never mind them, go fish.”
In the hallway, as the officers stood waiting for the elevator, they fathomed that they had been made the butt of someone’s lame joke. Nothing at all looked out of place in that apartment; it was
odd
that the windows were blacked out, but other than that, nothing. Normal.
The handsome officer stomped his police force—issued boot and slapped his thigh. “Hey, I forgot, it’s April first!”
“So?”
“April first, April Fool’s Day.”
“Oh yeah. Well, they got us good.”
When the elevator doors slid open a young boy dressed in gray knickers and matching jacket stepped out. The gold tin badge pinned to the front of the hat he wore read,
Western Union.
The boy snapped his hand to his forehead in salute and the officers returned the gesture and then stepped laughing into the elevator.
Most mornings Easter hummed, or at the very least muttered to herself in a singsong fashion. But her night had been filled with bitter memories that left a ball of anger in her throat, and so she was as quiet as a leaf while she prepared and served the family breakfast. Dobbs opened his mouth to make a request, but Easter slammed the platter of pancakes down so hard onto the table that his mouth snapped shut again.
There was no conversation that morning. Even Junior was quiet. In the kitchen Easter cussed under her breath, banged pots together, and dumped a whole tray of silverware into the sink. The family exchanged nervous glances and then one-by-one disappeared to different parts of the house. Only Alice remained at the table, and when the door swung open again, Easter charged into the dining room like a wild boar and began clearing the table.
“Um, Easter, I—”
Easter stopped, raised her head, and glared at Alice. “Why you always up under me, huh?”
Alice found herself blinking uncontrollably.
“Go on outside and play, go on away from me.”
Easter spun around and slammed back through the door, leaving Alice seated at the table, choking on her tears.
