JEWEL (20 page)

Finally, he smiled. He nodded, the move slow and measured, his mouth never opening. Then he knelt next to me, and he kissed my cheek, moved his face into my hair.

He said nothing, but what he’d given was more than he’d offered in longer than I cared to recall, a kiss, his face close to mine. Only that, but I was happy with it.

I said, “Saturday we’re going on a picnic, out to Ashe Lake.” I paused, looked at my children’s faces. They’d gone quiet, mouths open.

“A picnic. Fried chicken? Potato salad? ” I said. “Any takers? ” The boys and Annie started in to laughing, Wilman and Burton still touching Brenda Kay. Billie Jean started to give excuses why she wanted to go to town, said something about having lunch with her friend Ruby Sit well. Then it must’ve come to her, a picnic, something I couldn’t remember our doing, not since before Brenda Kay, and Billie Jean smiled again.

Leston stood. I watched him move back to the doorway, where he stopped, turned around, and leaned against the doorjamb, the coffee cup still in his hands. His eyes were on Brenda Kay. He was smiling, and brought the cup to his lips.

Brenda Kay started churning in my arms, excited at all these goings on, walking, clapping, laughing. Her mouth was open and taking in too many breaths, and she tried to clap, her eyes on the children, her hands came together twice, then missed, came together again.

Walking at five years and six months, her word Momma coming at four and one month, out of diapers only five months ago. She lifted her head at one year, rolled over at two.

To say things were hard on us is to do us all wrong, and Leston’s kiss to me, his face in my hair, signaled to me what all we’d sacrificed so that I could tend to my baby. His heart’d been gone for some time now, and I can’t say as I blame him for it. When the war was over, Pascagoula seemed to shut down altogether, like there was a gate into the place and nobody’d open it for him, and that good, clear money we’d had for so long might as well have been only a dream we’d all carried on for years.

Because we woke one morning in September of 1945, and looked at each other while the sounds of the house started up like every morning. But the look we’d given each other wasn’t anything like the one we’d had the morning I told him I was pregnant with Brenda Kay.

This look was one of bewilderment, neither of us certain what was going to happen to the baby in the cradle next to us.

That morning in September I was to bring Brenda Kay to Dr. Beaudry’s office for another set of shots, her needing them every six weeks, as per Dr. Basket’s direction. The routine of each visit had been in motion since April of the year before, when the war was in full swing, and we were winning, and James’ letters home were filled with more and more good news of how they were all squashing the great Empire of the Sun with each push of their bulldozers, each hammer driving home a nail.

But that morning there was no money, and no prospect of it, other than what Leston said to the empty room, to the air in there that seemed suddenly too close, too thick, “We’ll sell off two of the steers. See where that puts us.”

“Leston, ” I said. I didn’t move, didn’t touch him.

He pushed back the sheets, got up.

The shots cost money twenty-three dollars each time and the doctor visits cost money two dollars each time and the trips into New Orleans every three months cost money. And now we had no JF. WFL l . money.

We had five steers and three cows by that time, what money we’d been able to squirrel away and not put back into the stump business invested in them.

“How much longer will she have to keep up with the shots? ” I said to the room, to Leston’s back, though I knew the answer to that better than he did, for as long as she needed them, Dr. Basket’d said, which I took to mean, For as long as she lives. Back then she wasn’t yet two years old, the age Dr. Basket’d said she wouldn’t live past, and I couldn’t help but imagine sometime the shots would stop, and we might see ourselves clear of this. But I’d hoped at the same time for a trainload of shots for her, her visits every six weeks for the rest of all time and eternity, for us marching up and down those stairs to Beaudry’s office above the hardware store until we were all so old we had to be carried. I’d only asked my question to hear it, as if with my words Leston’d know I felt as scared as he did about what the future would give.

But he was the one lost his job, the one who’d already let go everybody.

In September of 1945, only Toxie and JE came over, where they would stand outside in the early morning dark, lean against the truck and smoke while I made breakfast, portions so much smaller then that I had to remember how to cook little batches of grits, remember to crack open only six or seven eggs and not three dozen. They smoked and smoked, and after breakfast the three of them would just drive off, Leston in the lead in the pickup, JE and Toxie following in the flatbed. They showed up in the early afternoons, maybe only one stump on the flatbed one day a week.

We sold off the two steers, then the rest of the cattle, one by one, while nothing like a real job came close to Leston. Finally JE and Toxie stopped showing up, and I’d taken the job at the grammar school, and the boys and Annie took to selling vegetables from our garden out front of the house, all to pay for what I’d committed us to with my words to Dr. Beaudry on a morning what seemed decades ago.

It was Cathe ral to tell me of the job opening up over to the grammar school, one of her cousins leaving, moving north to the city of Detroit.

After supper the day she told me of it, the children all bathe and in bed, I finally worked up the nerve to inform Leston of my plan to go over to Bailey the next day, and ask for the work.

Leston was in the kitchen, leaned against the countertop, and I came up next to him, put my hands together. I said, “Leston, I’m going to ask for work in the cafeteria at Bailey.” They were the words I’d rehearsed all day on my own, and I thought my voice’d seemed honest enough, sincere enough. They’d come out as clear and strong as I’d intended them to.

Because it was nigger work, serving up food at the cafeteria. It was nigger work, plain and simple, and I figured my words would need to be as strong as I could make them for my husband. I’d figured he’d rage on at me and this news, my husband a man who’d been the boss over nearly a dozen niggers himself at one time. Now here was his wife, readying herself to go join their ranks, serve up food to white kids who, he and I both knew, would rush home to their own mommas with the news of Mrs. Hilburn ladling up food for them.

He turned to me, his mouth straight, eyes blank. He said, “Guess you figured there’s no sense in asking me. Figured you’d just tell me what you were going to do, whether I wanted you to or not.”

I looked away from him. He was right, I hadn’t asked him a question, but’d only told him. I’d already decided I was going down there to Bailey bright and early tomorrow, whether he said yes or no. I knew I’d be down there at the cafeteria door, Brenda Kay in my arms.

Because it was a life we were saving. It was Brenda Kay we were saving, and it didn’t matter where the money came from, because we were saving our daughter’s life.

He looked at me a long moment, opened his mouth and closed it like he was gasping for air, or was drowning at the bottom of some deep well.

But he made no sound, until finally he whispered, “You do what you think best.”

He turned from me, dumped his cold coffee in the sink, then stepped out the back door, where I knew he’d stay for a while, smoking away.

He left me there in the kitchen, alone with the decision I’d made, a decision that was no decision. I’d wanted him to approve, wanted him to at least nod his head, or touch my cheek, or even put his arms around me, something to let me see he knew what I had to do. I needed that touch from him.

But it was a life we were saving, I told myself enough nights after that, when Leston started staying up with his coffee, just staring out the window above the kitchen sink, where I found him every time I (, came downstairs and begged him back to bed. And it was a life we were saving, I told myself enough days the children went on to school in clothes mended and patched so many times there was no telling what was the original material and what I’d been able to pick up at the piece goods store.

It was a life we were after, I thought enough times we got checks from James, me feeling guilty for the gift of the money from a son trying to put himself through college, him a married man now. Guilty, because each time I got a check from him I felt relief, as though the only good thing I felt for my firstborn and his wife was thanks for the money they sent.

But it was a life we were after.

One morning in 1946 James’d simply showed up at the house with a girl on his arm, a brassy blonde who chewed gum and wore high heels so tall she staggered like she was blind drunk while walking up the ruts in our dirt drive, the two of them dropped off like visiting dignitaries by one of the three taxis Purvis had to offer.

We all smothered James, who looked as much like a man as I knew he ever would, him in his uniform, and then we hugged him separately, first Annie, then Wilman, Burton, and finally Billie Jean, the two of them exchanging looks like they’d thought they’d never see each other again.

Then I gave over Brenda Kay to James, his sister a little over two years then and with the startled, dazed look her green eyes almost always held, her small hand touching his chin, his nose, his cheek.

That was when he finally turned to the girl beside him, said, “Y’all, this is Eudine, my wife.”

She stopped chewing her gum, swallowed it, and put out her hand to me.

“Eudine Hilburn, ” she said, smiling and parting her red lips to show big white teeth. “Formerly Eudine Trahern, late of Dumas, Texas, ” and she laughed, put a hand up to her mouth to make like she was being modest. She had on a bright blue skirt that stopped right at her knees, a jacket the same color, a white blouse with an open collar, and just as much makeup as any one of those girls we’d seen in New Orleans.

“I guess I’m just a ding-dong daddy from Dumas, Texas, ” she said, still laughing, her hand still out to me.

I paused a moment, looked at her, then at my oldest son. Here was another of those moments a mother doesn’t want so much to see, evidence of her children growing up and away, and I thought again of the dinner when he’d been only sixteen and told us of his heading off to war. I hadn’t thought heavily on what exactly I’d expected him to do once he was out of the service, but nothing I ever imagine’d come even close to this, a gum-swallowing Texas girl with hair no natural color on earth.

I took her hand because it was the polite thing to do, and shook it.

As soon as we’d let go, she reached to James, took Brenda Kay out of his arms, and held her. “Now this here’s the one I want to take a hold of, ” she said, and started to bobbing with Brenda Kay, jostling her just the smallest way. This Eudine took one of Brenda Kay’s hands to her lips, gave her the littlest kiss, said, “This here’s the one I’ve heard so much about, this here little baby-cake, ” and she held Brenda Kay close.

Eudine never looked at me to see if I was taking any of this in, measuring her to see if she was worthy or not of my oldest boy. She was only holding Brenda Kay, and holding her close, not afraid at all.

I looked to James, wanted to tell him with my eyes that she was welcome here, that as far as I could see she would make him a good wife, all this just from the touch she’d given his baby sister.

But he was looking toward the house behind me, his chin set and high.

I turned.

Leston stood on the porch. His hands were on his hips, his feet spread shoulder width.

“Leston, ” I called, already trying to settle myself between the two of them. We’d seen James only twice since he’d joined up, both leaves ending with Leston inside the house, me driving James back into town so he could catch his bus. Now James was out of the service altogether, who knew what would come.

“Congratulations, ” Leston said. “I don’t suppose you’ll be moving back in.”

James took off his hat, held it in both hands. Eudine, next to him, whispered baby talk into Brenda Kay’s ear. Burton and Wilman and Annie stood around James, and I watched my oldest son, looking for what he would do to follow up taking off his hat, whether he’d put his arm around his new wife, move toward his daddy, what.

But it was in his eyes I saw what he was up to, how he wasn’t afraid to let them meet Leston’s any longer, how they’d seen enough of this world and all it contained, had worked and sweat with enough men to make certain this moment wouldn’t be anything he couldn’t handle. I could see in his eyes and how they just rested on his daddy’s that he was already gone from this place.

“Moving to Texas, Daddy, ” he said. “Going to college, Texas A&M.” He paused, swallowed, though his eyes were steel, heavy on Leston. “Not sure what I’m going to study, but I’m going to study all the same.”

Leston crossed his arms, seemed to stand even taller. He said, “Don’t be expecting any money out of this household to be helping you on your way.”

“College, ” Billie Jean whispered, and I turned, saw her standing next to Eudine, Eudine smiling her big-teeth smile at her.

“Don’t need any money, Daddy, ” James went on. “Uncle Sam’s seeing to that, for the most part.”

He finally looked down, let his eyes fall on the hat in his hands, ran the brim round once, twice. In the move was so much of his daddy that there shouldn’t have been any doubt in anyone’s mind, no sorrow lost, no grief over his moving out. James’ leaving us now was the only real thing that could take place.

We’d all gone silent for one long terrible moment, a silence that seemed to shout out to us all that Leston, my children’s father, my husband, had nothing left to offer, no business his children could take over, no money even to lend out. The only thing left was wandering through woods to old haunts, where stumps’d been exploded years before, so he could pick up from the forest floor the remains of those days, and sell them in bundles to niggers. Only that.