JEWEL (50 page)

Brenda Kay and I kept a few paces behind Leston, him leading the way, his pantlegs rolled up, too, to reveal the pale white skin of his legs, an old man’s legs, I saw that afternoon out on the water. Then I looked down at my own legs, saw the blue veins crisscrossing just beneath skin that seemed transparent as new ice, and I saw that I was only an old woman. Most days of my life’d already passed through me, and not once in the last ten years of those days had the picture of me walking out in the Gulf of Mexico with my husband and baby daughter wheedled its way into my head. Then I pictured California, and the waves there, remembered the power of them I’d drawn into me the morning we’d left for this place.

I said, “There’s no waves out here, Leston, ” and I stopped, let go the hem of my skirt a moment, held a hand up to my eyes and looked out to sea.

Leston stopped. He put his hands on his hips, looked out to sea, too.

I glanced at him, saw the round, wide patch of sweat on the back of his shirt.

He said, “Kind of nice, no waves.”

“If you don’t like waves, ” I said. He turned, a puzzled look on his face, and I was glad he couldn’t know what I meant, glad for the secret of the sound of those California waves breaking in my head.

He turned from us, said, “Let’s keep going, ” and started off.

I gathered up my skirt, looked at Brenda Kay, smiled and said, “Just a little farther and we’ll head back in.”

She smiled up at me, started walking, and for a moment I let play across me the notion we were actually having a good time, Brenda Kay liberated in some way, barefoot in the Gulf of Mexico. Her steps through the water were slow and gentle and exaggerated, with each step she lifted her foot clear of the water, brought it forward, set it back in the water, did the same with the other foot.

I watched her move this way, watched her smile, then heard Leston say, “Take a look at this.”

I turned from Brenda Kay, saw Leston point at a boat way out in the water, when Brenda Kay’s hand jumped in mine, her screaming out at the same moment.

I turned to her, felt her hand hold tight to mine, nearly crush my bones. She was staggering, her feet moving quick beneath her.

“Momma!

Momma! ” she screamed, though her eyes were on the water, her head darting, looking, looking.

Then she looked up at me, crying now, and said, “Momma, foot! Momma, foot! ” “What, honey? ” I said, and took both her hands. “What happened? ” “Maybe stepped on a ray, ” Leston said, and now he was all movement next to me, reached down and lifted her like a baby into his arms, up out of the water. “Take a look at her feet, see if there’s any marks.”

“Marks? ” I said. “What kind of marks? ” But I was already poring over her feet with my eyes, touching all over, searching for welts, cuts, bites, anything.

She’d gone to silent tears, her breath in short, quick spurts as she took air in, cried it out. l I found nothing on her feet, nor up her legs to the knees. Only her scars, the same old evidence of an accident years before.

“Probably stepped on a flounder is all, ” Leston said, his voice gone calm, and I saw a chance, another avenue for ammunition, and I said, “You knew there were rays out here? ” He looked at me, eyes squinted for the sun. Brenda Kay had hold of his shirt collar with one hand, the other clutched at the neck of her own blouse. She was still crying.

“She didn’t get stung, ” he said. “She maybe stepped on a flounder.”

“There’s rays out here, and you knew it, and you let us out here.” I stopped, peeled Brenda Kay’s hand away from her blouse, took it in mine.

“There, ” I said to her soft as I could. “We’re heading back in now.

We’re going home now.”

I looked up at him again, knew I’d done the best I could with what I had at hand, we wouldn’t be back here, wouldn’t step back in the Gulf of Mexico.

I lay awake at nights wondering on how quick we could get back out.

There wasn’t any doubt in me, we’d be back there, and I’d be back to the Foundation, back to driving the station wagon, back in the classroom and doing what was necessary for Brenda Kay’s life. That, I saw, was what I was doing late nights Lying awake, already fixing this, mending the bone-break our moving here was.

Instead of remembering my life back in California, I found I was imagining what would be once we returned, emerging once again from this jungle called Mississippi into Los Angeles, but this time without having to break all new ground, without having to live in a motel or bus tables or work for a moving company.

The treefrogs starting up, the night owls and cicadas and various other animals outside our open bedroom window making their nightly racket, I pictured Leston heading off to work at ECC each morning in his shirt and tie, saw him at the table of an evening, rubbing black shoe polish into the toe of a wing tip with an old rag, then buffing it, shining it up, brushing it with the brush from the shoeshine box there on the floor in front of him. I saw him spending Saturday mornings with the boys mowing the lawn, saw him with older and more grandchildren circled round him as he rolled cigarettes with one hand at the same kitchen table. And I saw him smiling while surfcasting at The Rock, maybe Brad or Matthe or Susan next to him, him showing them a thing or two about fishing.

I saw, too, a party for Brenda Kay when she came back, not the party Mr. White had thrown for us leaving, a party that’d involved me having to clear from the walls of the old classroom all Brenda Kay’s drawings, sheets of construction paper I’d labeled “Easter Sun day” or “Our Garden” or “Three Rainbows, ” though Brenda Kay’d never given any of them names. There’d been a whole file folder full of them I’d had to take down while Mrs. Walker passed out cupcakes she’d made, and Mr. White’d poured Kool-Aid into Dixie cups for us all.

No, the party I saw was one that welcomed her back to the classroom, a classroom where, after more cupcakes and more Kool-Aid, she’d settle in, be quick to finish learning the rest of the letters of her name, so that the next crop of pictures she’d have stapled to the walls would have her signature at the bottom, no matter how shaky the letters.

And I even saw in my plans, plans like the kind of dream I’d told Burton of years ago, the kind of dream you had to make happen, or it wasn’t worth dreaming at all in my plans I even saw Dennis, saw in the time I’d had to devote to keeping the two of them apart some piece of joy, I had that job to do, had my baby daughter to keep from him. A job.

The day after Leston came home with the Studebaker, I told Mr. White that we were moving back to Mississippi, some sort of true proof in my husband’s purchase of a new car that we’d really be going. Mr. White’d only smiled, put out his hand for me to shake.

We were in the gymnasium at West High, the children out on the court in four teams for two games of badminton. Long ago we’d gotten rid of Mrs. Klausman, now had two Long Beach State PE majors paid by the Foundation to lead the children in their daily activity time. There were two station wagons then, too, another woman, Mrs. Cox, and I traded routes in the mornings and afternoons so we wouldn’t get too bored at making the same rounds every day.

Word had it Word always had it at the Foundation, Word about new and fantastic events coming at us, those Words floating through us like the rumors they usually were, but sometimes taking hold, proving out to be true that not too far off was some sort of short day program at Lawndale High. Mr. White’s plans to get the children onto the campus of a public high school for at least a small amount of class time each day were supposedly coming close to actually happening after all these years of fussing and tussling with school board after school board.

All the way back to the old Foundation office on Adams he’d been talking about this happening, our children showing up to public schools. And just before we’d moved, the Word had started its rounds, soon they’d be in real schools, not jammed into an old storeroom.

But that day in the gymnasium, he’d only shaken my hand, put his other hand to my shoulder, and smiled. A whistle blew, and one of the college boys, Neil, a big bear of a boy, black hair in a crew cut, shoulders broader than either Wilman’s or Burton’s ever were, called out to the children, “Okay, people, let’s swing the racket up.

Everybody! ” I glanced to the children, saw them swing their rackets up as close as they’d ever get to together, then looked back at Mr. White.

He let go my hand, took the other from my shoulder, buried both hands deep in his pockets. He said, “If we were in my office, I’d make you sit in that chair in front of my desk, and I’d put you through my lecture on how valuable you’ve been to the Foundation.” He paused, looked down at the parquet floor, said, “But I think you may already know that.” He smiled, said, “And I don’t think you’d sit in that chair, either.”

“Certainly not, ” I said, and smiled. “You know me better than that.”

“Of course, ” he said. “I, being the pompous and arrogant man I am, am right.” He laughed, and I did, too, though I found it hard to. This was the end of things.

I looked out to the children, saw the other college boy Stan was his name, a boy as blond as one of those surfing boys we’d see disappear into fog the morning we would leave for Mississippi standing behind Marcella, his arm on hers, gently lifting the racket in a fine arc from her knee to just above her shoulder.

Mr. White cleared his throat, said, “But what I’m not certain I understand is why you’re leaving. And why, ” he said, his voice gone low, almost to a whisper, “to Mississippi. Perhaps you’re returning to your family ” “I have no family out there, ” I cut in. I swallowed, said, “I was orphaned at age eleven.”

“Oh, ” he said. “Oh, ” and I saw only then how thin this relationship had actually been all these years, he knew nothing of me, knew only I’d been a teacher once, two or three lives before this one. He knew nothing of a logging shack, or of pomade or bamboo fans printed with Bible verses, or of leather belts or blasting stumps for the Government. The fact was that I’d known more of him after our first meeting in an oak-paneled office on Adams than he knew of mwe right now, after eight years of helping him.

But what I found most strange was that I took comfort in that, because it only proved I’d been successful in my mission so far, this relationship was bound up in Brenda Kay, and how I’d been able to lend my hand to helping fix her life, and the lives of these other children.

That was where I’d wanted the focus of my life to stay, and, judging by how little he knew of me, I’d made that happen.

“I’m sorry to hear that, ” he said, his face all serious, and I’d had l to make myself laugh for him, ease the obvious strain I’d put between us. He didn’t know what to do with what I’d just told him.

“Thanks for feeling sorry, ” I said, “but it happened quite a while ago.” I smiled.

He looked down. He said, “Yet I’m still surprised you’d choose to move back. What with the unrest there, the racial tension going on.”

“Racial tension, ” I said.

He looked up at me. “Why, yes, ” he said. “I’m speaking of the freedom marches, the bus rides. Dr. Martin Luther King.”

“Oh, ” I said, and I glanced again out to the court. Stan and Neil stood together now on the far side of the gym, arms crossed. They both had on the same outfit they wore every day, gray sweatpants, gray sweatshirts, whistles round their necks. Stan was saying something to Neil, both of them looking at the children swinging away. Then Neil busted out laughing, shook his head. “Carrie, ” Stan called out, “hold tight to the racket, ” and left Neil to his laughter.

“I’ve been hearing about that for quite a while, ” I said. “But it won’t have anything to do with us.” I looked to him, smiled. “We’re just poor crackers moving to a bayou.”

He looked at me, shrugged. He said, “Well then, why are you moving?

From all this ” he brought a hand from his pocket, gestured at the crowd of children. “And from what’s coming up soon.”

“You mean Lawndale High School, ” I said.

He smiled, said, “That must be common knowledge now.” He paused. “So why are you moving? ” I swallowed again, took in his words, because now he was asking for the truth, not stumbling on it, like he’d stumbled on the small pebble of my history I’d just revealed to him, me an orphan at eleven. He was asking straight out for the one true reason we were moving, and I had to swallow again, struggle out the words.

I forced a smile, said, “My husband, my Leston, wants us to.” I said nothing else, felt myself bite my lower lip, felt a drop of sweat cut a small swath down the middle of my back.

“Oh, ” he said. He took his hands out of his pockets, crossed his arms.

He had on a navy suit coat suits being his own uniform of sorts, and I remember looking at him as he half-turned from me, looked away from me and out onto the court.

He said, “I’ve certainly no experience in that department, as well you know. Marriage, I mean.” He paused, nodded at the children. “I’m quite pleased with the performance of these young men.”

I turned to them, too, saw that Stan and Neil were lining the children up in order of height, little Carrie first, followed by Marcella, Brenda Kay two children back from her, Dennis, I was thankful, five children back from Brenda Kay. They each still had a racket in one hand, and stood a few feet back of one net. Then Stan ran around to the opposite side of the net, a birdie in one hand, racket in the other. “Ready? ” he called out, and Neil, next to Carrie, him so big and brawny next to that tiny child, took hold her wrist as Stan’d done with Marcella. “Ready! ” Neil said, and Stan batted the birdie high up and over the net, Neil swinging up Carrie’s racket so that she batted it right back.

Stan made a big stunt out of backing up and backing up, trying to center himself under the birdie coming back down to him, his arms flailing about as he backed up even more, then finally fell down on the floor, only to have the birdie drop dead center on his chest.

Neil cheered and clapped at Carrie’s making contact with the birdie, her so pleased with herself she dropped the racket, clasped her hands together at her chest and started stomping the floor, a smile wide across her face.