Keeping Secrets (19 page)

“Come with me,” he’d said, and Jesse’s head reeled, for never in his entire life had he walked out a door with his father.

“You ever had a woman, Jesse?” The big boat of a dark-blue Oldsmobile was sailing through the back streets of the neighborhood, making waves at crowded corners where men hanging out tipped their hats—for Jessup was a respected man of property. More than likely he rented them the hovels they called home.

“No, sir.” Jesse wasn’t sure whether that was the right answer or not, but he didn’t think diddling with Sharleen next door would count.

“Well, it’s time, son,” he’d said. “And it’s a father’s duty to break you in.”

Jesse didn’t dare ask why Jessup suddenly had been reminded of his paternal duty after a space of fifteen years, though the question of why his father, or his mother for that matter, didn’t love him and his sisters was something he often wondered about.

They drove a couple more blocks and stopped. Jesse stared at a little house with a crooked front door and falling-down steps.

“She’s behind,” Jessup said. Jesse didn’t know that his father was talking about the young woman who lived inside and her relationship to her rent. Her baby and her little boy, both high yellow like she was, almost as fair as Jesse’s mother Blanche, were tossed in corners of the soiled sofa in the living room, down for their naps.

The woman nodded at Jesse, smiled at his dad.

“He do look like you. Like father, like son, they say. That true?” Then she winked. “I hope.”

“Depends on what kind of teacher you are, Lorinda,” Jessup said. “Like I told you, we’ll subtract it at the usual rate.”

Again, Jesse didn’t know what his father meant. But he did understand when Lorinda took him into the tiny bedroom that was almost filled by her double bed. There she stripped to a bright-red nylon slip that was plastered onto her like a silken flag. Then she took Jesse’s hands and placed them on her breasts. He had been this far with Sharleen. The rest of it, with Lorinda’s gentle direction, pretty much took care of itself.

Later, driving back home in the Oldsmobile, Jessup had delivered the longest speech Jesse had ever heard from him, the words floating out from around his cigar.

“Remember this, son. A man has only so many fucks in him. You don’t want to waste them, but then, too, you don’t want to die with some of them still left in your account. That’s what women are for, son, to help you balance your books.” He paused and took a hard look at the end of his cigar. “Remember, now, they’ll try to short-change you. They have deals they’re working on their own, and the biggest one of all, the one that cancels all their markers, is holding on permanent to a cock like yours. Whereas you’re just trying to dip in and out of their honey pots, stealing all the sweet you want, without getting caught. All the flavors are different, son. Try as many as you can. But remember that you always the one in control. You always the one on top. Don’t ever let an uppity woman think because she got a piece of your thing she can get the best of you. You hear what I’m saying, boy?”

Jesse did, and he followed his father’s advice.

When Jesse was seventeen, Clifton had peered at him across the top of his half-glasses.

“Where you get all these naked women, son?”

For Jesse kept him supplied with figure models who tossed off their clothes with happy nonchalance, modeling gratis as if they were guests of honor at a party in Clifton’s studio.

“I’ve just been doing what my daddy told me,” Jesse answered. Then he explained what that was.

“Sometimes women come up and ask
me
, women I don’t even know.”

“What do they say?”

Jesse laughed. “Last week one yelled at me across the street, ‘Say, give me a piece of that, I could love you forever, honey bun.’”

“You believe them?”

Jesse shrugged.

“You want to believe them?”

“Hell, no. All I want to do is get laid. Don’t you?”

“Listen to me, boy. You too young to know it yet, but when you take off your pants, you exposing more than your fine black ass.”

“Like what?”

“Ought to be at least a piece of your heart.”

“Old man, you don’t know what you talking about,” the young man had flung back as he bounced out of the studio.

But he knew that Clifton was onto something. For all those times that he’d dipped his wick, that he’d buried himself between some willing young girl’s legs, he kept coming up feeling empty. Even now at twenty-four, with everything in his life going so well he was constantly holding his breath, afraid he’d wake up, he had to admit that he was lonely—even with all the sweet ass he could handle, with him always in the driver’s seat, always calling the shots.

“How’s your family doing, anyway?” Clifton asked. The birdlike saxophonist’s melody found the home it was looking for.

Jesse shrugged, signaled for another round. “Oh, you know how it is. My momma’s up in Sacramento living with I don’t even know who. She hasn’t come to see me in two or three years. And I get tired going up there watching her act like she was still sixteen years old, always looking for the man who’s going be the answer to her prayers, always ready for another party,” he gestured with his glass, “another shot of hooch.”

“You sounding like your Grandma Lucretia now for sure.” Clifton smiled. “Sounding mighty Old Testament for a man who’s never settled down.”

Jesse ignored him. “Then I see the girls. Allison’s already got three kids, Clarissa’s got a second one on the way. Hell, Blanche’s gonna be a grandma five times over, and she’s not even forty.”

“They ever come down to see your work? Come to that group show?”

“Hell, Clifton, they don’t know what any of that means.”

They drank silently for a few minutes. The bassist was again working his big fiddle, a giant trying to sing a lullaby.

“Ran into your daddy a couple weeks ago. He looked tired.”

“He still buying up all the property in sight?”

“Asked him, but he didn’t say. Did say if I saw you to say hello.”

“Ain’t that something?” Jesse laughed. “Think the man didn’t know white boys had invented the telephone.”

“Maybe that’s why he don’t want to use it.”

They both laughed again, and the air lightened in the room. “Hell, I don’t know why I got in this mood.” Jesse held up his glass and took a long look at it. “Must be this demon rum. We’re supposed to be celebrating, not crying in our beers, celebrating the arrival of Professor Jones. That is why you came up here to the North, sir, to profess?”

“No, cocksucker, I came up here ’cause I can’t get laid in LA.”

“All the women find out you were queer and tell you to go fuck yourself?”

“Did, be the best piece of ass I ever had.”

Jesse slapped Clifton on the back. “Are you sure you got a job up here? Sure they ain’t got the wrong Jones?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I am the wrong one. Then I’ll just go on welfare, suck for a while on Uncle Sam’s tit. Hell, that cheap bastard ain’t ever paid me all he owes me for giving him my second-best leg in the war.” He knocked on his artificial limb. It made a hollow sound.

“How come it was second-best?”

“Hell, boy, ain’t I ever told you? I used to be part white. That was it, that leg.”

8

West Cypress

1964

It was only nine o’clock, the sun not all the way up the summer sky, and already Rosalie had to stop every five minutes to wipe the sweat off. She leaned on her hoe and squinted out across her garden. Sixteen rows were up, marching from the back fence halfway up the yard, stopping at the edge of the sunken bathtub where she’d tucked some cucumbers, and the bathtub’s border was tiny strawberries planted all around. Her fruit trees were doing well; the pear and the peach were both loaded. The plums would fill several cupboard shelves with rubylike Mason jars of jam.

Now that it was June and the real heat had begun, she was going to have to get up earlier for the garden. She’d been at it three hours, snipping and picking peas and keeping after the weeds.

First thing this morning her hoe had unearthed a nest of baby rattlers right over there at the edge of the garden in that bunch of shrubs. They’d scattered every which way, then each had stopped and struck, their tails clattering as if that was going to frighten her off. She’d chopped them in half neatly, every one.

Momma Snake hadn’t been home. Probably she’d gone for a drink of water over to the deep bushy-banked ditch that Rosalie kept after the city to cut. But the city didn’t care if she was going to have to be on the lookout for a momma rattler. She’d called the mayor about the ditch, but with no results. Well, the city had bigger fish to fry. The whole town was in an uproar about next fall’s school integration. And if her choice was between that and snakes, she’d take the snakes.

She’d handed in her resignation at the end of the year. Three years shy of twenty, but it couldn’t be helped. She’d had enough misery in the classroom, putting up with those nasty junior-high-school children. She didn’t need to add the niggers. The whole situation was just going from bad to worse. She didn’t care if she didn’t get her full retirement. For the first time in her life she’d said, What difference would a few dollars more make? She couldn’t imagine what it would be like, looking out at a classroom and seeing those nappy heads. It was going to be a mess. She’d said that, and others in the teachers’ lounge had nodded, especially those heads that were gray like hers. Who she really felt sorry for were the younger teachers who still had years to go.

Well, that wasn’t her problem now. Rosalie wiped a drop of sweat from off the end of her nose and got back to work, reminding herself to keep an eye out for Momma Snake.

But maybe the snake didn’t even care. That thought occurred to her. Maybe she’d slide up to that nest and, finding it empty, just go on about her business. As if it didn’t matter. Her children, out of sight, were out of mind, forgotten.

Rosalie wished that she could do that. Since Emma left last fall, this had been the worst year of her life. And most of it was Emma’s doing.

Rosalie winced as she thought about Mary Ann Graubart’s phone call yesterday, one more thing to worry about. That too was Emma’s fault. In fact, Rosalie had hardly slept all night. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Miz Graubart had said, she’d like to drop by. Rosalie had talked to Bernie’s mother only once before in her whole life, not counting saying hello at Emma’s graduation, and that time liked to have killed her. What misery was the woman carrying to her doorstep now?

Rosalie pulled the long green hose across the yard. The grass, mowed only last week, was already getting too high. She’d have to speak to Jake about cutting it today. He’d remind her once again how much less yard there’d been to take care of at the old place before they moved. You’d think that he’d be grateful for a new brick house, but all Jake could do was complain about the yard.

She knew he was going to be little help with Mary Ann Graubart today. Last time when the woman came to call, tripping in as if she were bringing them a sweet pineapple upside-down cake, Jake had sat there for the longest time without saying a word.

Rosalie could see that day. She’d seen it over and over again for months now, every time she tried to fall asleep. The pain of it throbbed worse than even her rheumatism.

* * *

“I guess you know that Bernie and Emma haven’t been getting along so well,” the short round woman had begun, rolling little crumbs of cake around on the plastic lace tablecloth, never looking up.

Yes. Rosalie knew. Well, she suspected. It wasn’t as if Emma ever told her much. She’d become quiet as a clam around her when she and Bernie had started getting serious, almost three years ago. Rosalie overheard her laughing and carrying on with her friends, though she never brought them home. With other people Emma was a completely different person.

But Bernie, yes, she wondered about what would happen when Emma went away to Atlanta to graduate school, though Emma had let on that when she finished they were going to get married. Bernie had stayed behind to graduate. A year older than Emma, but she’d passed him right on by.

Emma had always been in a hurry, ever since she was a little girl. With her late birthday, she’d begun first grade when she was still five. Then at the end of the eleventh grade, right after she met Bernie, Emma had come home and announced that she was graduating after summer school.

No one had ever heard of such. But Emma was bound and determined to go right ahead, as if senior parties and proms meant nothing, just leapfrogging right over into college and her freshman year when she was still only sixteen. At first Rosalie had thought that Bernie was the cause of it, that Emma hadn’t wanted him to leave her behind at West Cypress High. But then when she put up a stink to go away to college, as if Cypress State just across the river weren’t good enough, as if they were made of money, Rosalie realized that it wasn’t just Bernie Graubart that she had on her mind. Emma was in a hurry to get on to something else.

Why, you’d think that the child would be grateful, but then gratitude didn’t run in the Fines.

Going right on to college, just like that, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Rosalie could tell her a thing or two about it, how hard
she’d
worked in the kitchen to go to normal school for those two years. How many nights she’d sat up late studying after working all day, struggling to finish her degree so many years later.