In Search of Satisfaction (45 page)

“I don’t think so, Miz Befoe.”

Carlene laughed, “I give it to the servants. Let them die, they’re not worth a damn anyway!”

Hosanna said seriously, “Sally is a very good woman. You are lucky to have such a sister. Hold your head still now.”

Carlene almost shouted, “Sally is a liar! And she does not like you at all! None of you! You should hear what she says about you!”

“I don’t think so.”

“And she slaves those grandchildren of hers. Working them in the hot sun, burning them brown! Like the rest of all those … She should let servants do that work!”

“I don’t think so. They work early mornings or late evenings.”

Carlene ignored Hosanna. “Her grandchildren hate her, I hear.”

“I don’t think so. I think Richlene, Luke, Sally, Ann and William are happy.”

“You would, Hosanna, what do you know?”

Hosanna, thinking of Bowlegs, answered, “Not too much, Miz Befoe, not too much. Especially about love.”

“Love?! Hah! There is no love. And when there is, you are defeated by fools!”

Hosanna nodded her head, “Sometimes, the fool is you.”

“I was not a fool! He was not a fool.”

Years ago, this conversation between the two of them would never have been, but Hosanna understood more about life, and Carlene cared less about life.

So, Hosanna answered, “No, because you married the man you loved.”

Carlene twisted her head around to look at Hosanna, “I did not marry the man I loved! I married the man he wanted me to marry!”

Hosanna gently turned Carlene’s head back around. “Well, I guess
we can all be fools about love. But I am changing my style, my way of loving that man. I deserve more.”

Carlene spoke as though secretly, “Don’t give him any money. Don’t ever give anyone any money! You hold them to you if they have nothing!”

“Money isn’t everything, Miz Befoe.”

“Well, give me yours then, because I will never be without it.”

“You never have been. Your daddy was rich when you were born. You were good looking and you married a rich man. But now, he is dead. Your daddy is dead. You are old now. We are all dying, what can money do to help you now?”

“I can pay for what I want, what I need!”

Hosanna smiled gently. “I don’t think so. Anyway, who wants to have to pay money for everything?”

Carlene laughed. “I have everything I want.”

“I don’t think so, Miz Befoe. By the way, how is your grandson, Carlton?”

Carlene’s voice was angry as if she despised him. “Carlton! He only comes here to see how close I am to dying. He wants my power of attorney so he won’t have to wait for me to die. He says he is coming home to do this house over and live here sometimes. He’s really coming here to give him more time to work on me! Oh, how I wish I had someone else to leave my money to!”

Hosanna frowned. “Do you ever pray, Miz Befoe?”

“To God!? No. God is for the poor. When they have problems they always return to God.”

“But, you never go to God at all.”

“I pray to myself.”

“Do your prayers get answered?”

“Of course.”

“Then, you must not pray for much, Ms. Befoe.”

“I have everything.”

“I don’t think so.” Gently.

Carlene raised a finger at Hosanna. “God is just a figment of someone’s imagination.”

“A figment does not last thousands of years, all over the world.”

“People are stupid and it’s a strong figment.”

“Lies are never strong, Miz Befoe.”

“Oh, certainly they are. They rule the world.”

“I don’t think so, but on the other hand, is that why the world is in such bad shape? Turn your head a little this way now.”

Carlene mumbled a curse. “Even the poor people who say they believe in God don’t really believe in Him. They only use Him when they need something, then they forget Him.”

“They don’t last, just like lies don’t last,” said Hosanna. “I don’t think anything wrong or evil lasts. The Bible says the soul that sins will surely die. And I’ll be damned if we haven’t been dying ever since we got here. All the great scientists in the world haven’t changed that.”

“But the world has lasted this long.”

“Miz Befoe, the world is changing.”

“Hosanna, it always changes. Back and forth, back and forth.”

“That’s because mankind does not change. They said it would be a better world after the last two wars. But what’s better? What’s different? And they’re always fighting wars in Europe, it seems. It don’t seem to get any better over there either. Now, in America, we leave and go fight a war someplace else! Nobody is attacking us even. But our boys still die. Lincoln lost a leg, and I don’t blive he can tell himself why! The only thing different is, more taxes. And the tax money must go to people who make bullets and guns cause what else do you use in a war? And what is being given to these poor people out here losing their farms and lives, even starving to death? Or to the people dying in the wars? The women and children who die or are left alone?”

“Oh, you don’t know what you are talking about.” But Carlene’s voice was not so strong, because she knew what Hosanna was talking about. She had made a great deal of money, millions, from her armaments investments and was still making plenty of money from them.

But Hosanna persisted, “Only more people hate more people and don’t even know why. Even people in this grand United States—and I love this country America—are running around lynching, hanging, killing people, sometimes for nothing but what race they are!”

“Oh, we’ve always had that!”

“That does not make it right. You sound like killing is normal! That’s what I’m talking about. You can’t change mankind! And the world cannot rise above hate if so many people are hating! You cannot
hold on to what’s good, when most people are vicious and stupid about fairness and love and …”

Carlene interrupted her, “Your Christianity has failed the world.”

“Oh, Miz Befoe, don’t blame it on Christianity. The people have never tried it! Who has been a Christian except Christ and a very few others—who were killed, I might add, for loving their brothers! The world has failed Christianity, far as I am concerned! And if people are not a Christian, whatever they may be, they have failed goodness and love.”

Carlene searched for words, “Well …”

Hosanna was on a roll, she never talked much about religion, but she had opinions “Just like the Jews. Some people hate Jews because they say they killed Christ! Well, Jesus Christ was a Jew! How can you hate his people? God chose the Jews and, besides, that was two thousand years ago Jesus was killed. What these Jews today got to do with that? And I know cause I lived in Washington, D.C. Some people who hate Jews don’t like God or Jesus anyway! They don’t really care who killed him. They just want to kill somebody for themselves. And the devil gives them a reason they can understand, cause they love killing. When that reason runs out then they pick on the Negro people, Chinese, the Mexican, the Russians, I read the papers. The Irish, whoever. I know, cause I worked for em. I saw things. I heard the radio. We are paying taxes right now for a war already fought and the dead are gone. And ain’t nothing changed for the better! It’s a depression right now, all over the world, cause we paying for a war. Love does not cost anything. Use love and these wars would stop.”

Carlene interrupted her again, turning to look at her, “That’s a mighty long speech for a little Negra girl to say.”

Hosanna smiled and frowned at the same time. “I don’t think so. And I’m a woman, not a girl. And I have a brain. I am now, also, finished with your hair. It is free. No charge. You are welcome.”

Carlene said, “The war was just to preserve the constitution.”

Hosanna laughed. “The constitution is a beautiful thing the way it reads, but it ain’t shit if you don’t get to live it. I studied, Miz Befoe. It does not take a genius to know it was written for everyone in the United States, but white folks still try to think they have to decide who it’s for. They don’t even want some of their own kind to be free. They send them
out to die, too! But, I’m not just talking about the United States, I’m talking about all over the world. Governments! Not one of them is any good for poor people and there’s more poor people, of all colors, than any other kind in the world!”

“Hosanna, you should be careful of that kind of talk.”

“I am careful. God, the Bible, says choose things by which you are willing to live or by which you are willing to die. If I am right, I am willing to live or die by it. You know what, Miz Befoe? I can see more and believe more in God every day. He is there!”

Carlene laughed a rusty, old laugh. “I think you have lost your mind.”

Hosanna smiled as she started out the door. “I don’t think so.” She turned back, “Listen, it’s stuffy in here, not fresh at all. Let’s open that window.” After the window was opened, Hosanna went to the door and turned again to say, “I am going to see that you get a good dinner this evening and try to get Minna to come on back here to work.”

Carlene spoke in a sly voice, “What are you doing? Being so nice to me. You are trying to work your way into my will?!”

Over her shoulder, as she was leaving, Hosanna laughed and said, “I don’t think so.”

t
he black widow spider, old now, felt the breeze from the opened window. She hastily uncurled her legs from around her body and prepared to leave through the window. She was almost dying of hunger. She crawled over the white walls without caring, but Carlene did not see her, she was looking in her mirror. The spider made it to the rain gutter and scurried down, a little slower now from hunger and age. To find a lover and a meal. One in the same.

o
ne day Bowlegs went home to his room, expecting it to be clean and to find clean clothes set neatly in his drawers. He was startled to find the room and drawers exactly as he had left them. Messed up. He opened the drawers, twice, to be sure. There were no clean clothes there other than the few already left there by him. He twisted his lips to the
side and stood thinking, then he smiled, “What she tryin to do? Somethin must’a held her up. She be here tonight, I know!” He looked at the inexpensive, but good, watch she had given him so he could learn to be on time. Time payments. “I betta hurry and get to Choke’s. I need to work tonight!” He searched and found a not too soiled shirt and a suit, hurriedly pressing it on his bed. “Damn that woman! She knows I got to have things to go to work in! I would’a had somebody get some things ready for me. When she come down here tonight, I’ll have somethin to tell her! Women don’t do me this way!”

He stayed up all night drinking and talking with the fellows, hoping Hosanna would come by Choke’s so she could see what he was really doing—nothing. She didn’t come, so he left for home about six in the morning. He had said to himself, “Well, she didn’t come down to Choke’s this weekend, so I know that room is clean now and I got clothes this morning!” The room was exactly as he had left it. The drawers were still empty of clean clothes. So, he hung up his own wilted, smoky suit.

As he crawled into the musty sheets to get some sleep, his last thought was, “She be here by time I get to sleep, waking me up! And that damn woman know I need my sleep!” But he woke alone. She hadn’t come. She didn’t wake him up. Now he was angry.

“I’ll fix her. I ain’t goin over there either! I’ll get Juney Bug to do my clothes. Wait till she see that! That’ll teach her!” He did what he planned, but Hosanna didn’t come the next few days either.

He finally dressed in his best, clean clothes (that Juney Bug had cleaned for him). “You got to look good when you go see a woman you fussin with!” he told himself. “So they can see what they gonna be losin if they don’t be careful and ack right!” When he looked as clean, slick and fine as he thought he should and as he knew Hosanna liked, he started down the road to her house.

Now Hosanna had been fighting herself, and winning, about not going to Bowlegs’ place. Not because she loved him so much anymore, but because loneliness can be a terrible thing. Her heart felt way down low, but she was holding her head up. She had made up her mind and talked to God about it, asking for His help. “I deserve more.”

She was in her yard doing lingerie when she saw him stepping highly and lightly down the dusty road to her house. A handkerchief in his hand, nails cleaned, filed and polished, he dusted dust off his shoes,
folded his handkerchief and wiped a light perspiration off his brow. He looked around for the kids, didn’t see them, but kept his voice low. “Why you ain’t been by the house, girl? Where you been?”

Hosanna took a long look at him, then went on about her work, “I’ve been here. Doing my work.”

He looked around for a seat, Hosanna usually ran to get him one. She just kept working this time. “Ahhh, girl, Hosanna, where you been? I ain’t seen you.”

“Did you want to?”

He smiled, “I always want to, baby.”

“Well, I’ve been here.”

Bowlegs wanted to make her do something for him, the man. “Say, get me a glass of water. I’m thirsty. It’s hot standin out here in the sun.”

“That’s right, you’re used to the dark. Bow,” she pointed at a pitcher of water, “reach that dipper over there. I just got that for myself. It’s nice and cool.”

“Hand it to me. What’s wrong with you?”

Hosanna kept her voice neutral and low, “I’m working. Do I ask you to come down off your stage and get me a drink?”

“Cause you know I can’t do that!”

“Well, give me some consideration. I shouldn’t have to stop work either.”

Bow took his handkerchief out again, dusted his jacket sleeve. “I am your man. A woman gets her man what he needs.”

Hosanna stopped squeezing the lingerie and looked up at him quizzically. “Were you thirsty yesterday? Or the day before?”

“What that sposed to mean?”

Hosanna went back to her work. “It means whoever, wherever you got your water from, you got it. You didn’t need me to get it for you. You know how to take care of yourself.”

“Oh, you want to talk that ole shit! You mad cause I wasn’t home!”

Hosanna laughed. “Weren’t home? When?”