Knee-Deep in Wonder (19 page)

“That ain't the point. Ain't I told you not to listen to grown folks?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Then what you call yourself doing?”

“I can't help it, Auntie.”

“Oh, no, you'll help it all right.” The chair Annie b sat in scraped back, and she lifted her hand.

“Stop all that, now,” Uncle Ed said. He looked at Helene. “Gone take a plate to your room and finish eating in there.” He stared at his wife, her hand still raised. “And put your hand down. Quit on all that. You grown enough to know you can't keep on picking and picking at a thing.” He paused to take a bite of chicken. “You don't know what's going on up there any more than I do. Do you?”

“Well, I know—”

Ed cut her off, jabbing his empty fork in her direction. “All you know is that we got they little girl.”

Annie b grunted sharply. “I'll keep the peace, but I sho ain't gone turn blind just cause you say so. Nothing stands to reason. If Queenie's the mama, how come she can't stay with them? You tell me that. I got nothing against the girl, but I don't like when folks try to pull one over on me. Something going on
up
there in that house, and it ain't part of God's plan.”

*   *   *

True enough, something was going on up there. Mother, daughter, and interloper stood right beside the clothesline, in front of a choked cotton patch, afraid to say a hurtful thing that could knock them all down. Liberty touched Queen Ester's shoulder. She swallowed her stern voice, producing a soft coaxing sound. “I was right there when Chess was sitting with her. He ain't said a thing. Don't you think I would have told you if he did? Don't you?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Now here you is pulling on some old hurt and Chess just got out. What kind of welcome is that? Gone to the house and I'll see off that letter.” Liberty turned to Chess. “Didn't you say you have somewhere to go?” Liberty asked.

Chess lifted his eyes, and relief shone from his face. “Yeah, I did.”

*   *   *

After leaving Liberty's, Chess thought he would go to Bo Web's, but Bo's woman worshiped God on Saturdays, so no jook music and no beer. He weighed going to Flip's but it was on the edge of Lafayette, close to Canfield, and he didn't know the people who went there. The places where a man could go and prop himself against a porch were limited. There were no real cafés in Lafayette County, only sagging houses where the owners put in swinging doors to signal that they were open for business. Chess headed back to his house, cursing that he had no car.

“Where you been?” Morning asked, as he stepped inside the door.

“Outside.” Chess smiled as he spoke, but Morning had a face that said she did not want to be humored. “Come on, girl, I didn't come home to fight. I need these nails of mine to get clipped.” Chess reached out and tugged at her hips, almost dragging her into the bedroom. On the mattress they fell and Chess laughed. “Well, get to cutting.”

“Clip your own damn nails.”

“Can't you do nothing for a Negro just out of jail?”

“Look at my face, Chess. Who the worse?”

“Ah, Morning, now.”

“I can't even feel my face, I can't sit down without hurting somewhere. You done broke me to pieces. Now what? You want me to say thank you? I'm spose to act like nothing wrong, except I done took so much BC powder, I'm sick at the stomach.”

“Morning.” Chess took a deep breath. “I'm saying please. I can't even hold clippers the way my nails is.”

“Ain't got no clippers.”

“Gone in the kitchen and get some.” As Morning rose, Chess slapped her behind, still smiling, but his grin was fading because she didn't want to play. Liberty's words had gotten under his skin, and in his mind to stop the rain he had to be good to somebody. Morning came back, trying to keep her crushed mouth still so as not to break the scabs. “What you look like that for, girl? Smile, it ain't gone hurt.”

“I can't smile, you done broke my face.” After Chess had left, Morning had run to the bedroom and snatched her purse from under the chair. Three packets of powder in a glass of water and within an hour Morning glowed. Waiting till she was numb she went to her purse again, grabbing a mirror. What she saw threw her to her knees. A long shaky cut over her right eye, a swollen jaw, her lip slit in three places. “Ain't saying I was right for messing with Blue. But you ain't right for making me look like this. You better hear what I'm saying: I ain't gone look like this no more.”

When Morning spoke, Chess's smile drooped to the floor. “Well, you shouldn't have been messing around with Blue. You can't wait for me three months?”

“I'm here, ain't I? I'm here. The next time you get the notion that you want to beat me and make me mind, I'm gone walk out that door and close it. Ain't coming back.”

Morning had said this all before, but it was the burn in her eye that told Chess to say something easy and soothe her. “You want to hear my sorry, well, here it go: sorry. But Morning, ain't gone beg. That ain't my nature.”

“Did I ask you to beg?” With a stiff gait, Morning sat on the mattress with a crush and a whoosh, took his hands, and started to clip his fingernails. “Sometime you treat me like sunshine, but then you go off and rain on me. You know what? I'm getting sick. If leaving you gone shake this cold, that's what I'm gone do.”

“Well, I see what you saying. You done finish with my nails?”

“Chess!”

“I said I see what you saying. I'm gone try to keep my hands off you as long as you keep your hands off Blue.” Chess smiled, pulling Morning into bed with him.

They lay there, the clipped nails on the floor, and Chess asked about the weather and would she like to go fishing with him. “Someone said in Bo Web's that they were in for rain tomorrow,” she said.

“What you doing at Bo Web's?”

“Like everybody else, dancing, drinking,” Morning replied.

“Why didn't you go to Liberty's?”

Morning thought. Cause I can't stand up to your dead wife, she wanted to say. Because Halle up and died of cancer and got your tears, and I take care of your kids all by myself for three months and get knocked down for it. Because if I lie down in the dirt no one would see me, and Halle passed for white when she felt like it. Because I'm big and Halle was thin as a string. Because every time you had a fight with Halle she ran down to her mama's and you ran to get her, and when I run off you wait till I come back. Because everyone at Liberty's café knows that.

“Just needed to see some new folks and different food,” is what she said.

“Tomorrow's Sunday. We can go to Bo Web's for fish.”

“Not the long way.”

“Ah, Morning.”

“I ain't walking from here clean round the other side of Erling.”

“All right. All right. We'll go the short way.”

“Cross the footbridge.”

“All right, I said.”

“Bo Web's wife got pork chops? Fish make me swell up, you know that.”

She curled her hand beneath her chin. Feeling drowsy but wanting to talk, she mumbled about her family. Morning was tired and Chess yawned in response. They continued to talk, their voices low and secret, yielding to soft nods and smiles. Sleep came on them without warning, so quick they didn't have time to say good night.

*   *   *

In the middle of the night, Arthur dreamed. He was pulling a small red wagon, and in the back a little girl rode. His legs, fast in his dream, glided across grass as if the girl weighed nothing. The wind pushed on Arthur's hat and played with his jacket, making wings at his sides. Quickly he ran, blurring the sky.

But then the little girl grew heavy, slowing the wagon down. Arthur turned around, asking her to get out and race beside him. The wagon had become too hard to pull. He was shocked by what he saw. The girl's hair turned red, growing longer as he watched. Seeing Arthur's puzzled face, she began to laugh. Open-mouthed, tongue showing, she laughed aloud. Laughter shook her body and threatened to overwhelm her, but she went on, its sound turning dirty, secret. Still her hair grew. Red bounty filled the wagon. The hair grabbed Arthur by the wrist, pulling him down into her red sea, swallowing him in its folds.

Arthur's scream ripped the air.

“What is it? What is it?” Betty said, shaking with fear. All the children woke up, blinking at Arthur.

“What's going on in here?” Morning came in, still in her clothes.

“Something wrong with Arthur,” said Rose.

“I don't feel good, I think I hurt myself,” Arthur said, lightly touching his swollen wrist.

“Now how you hurt yourself like that in your sleep?” Morning asked.

“Maybe he hit it on the floor,” Betty said.

“No, I didn't, it was some hair,” said Arthur, looking at Morning.

“Y'all gone to bed. Arthur, can you sleep with your wrist like it is?” Morning asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, lie back down. I'll look at it when the light gets here.” She returned to Chess's bedroom. “Baby, Arthur all right, hurt his hand on the floor, I think,” Morning said. She heard his deep breathing; Chess had not stirred.

On the path to Bo Web's the next day, the sky was free of clouds, and still yesterday's conversation with Liberty scared him. A woman bigger than her front door, she could take down the sun if the notion hit her, but she had looked helpless yesterday.

Had he been looking ahead he would have seen Cookie twisting around the trees. A churchgoer, she was one of Liberty's regulars, a woman with a taste for gossip. Chess didn't notice Cookie in the path and bumped into her.

“Where y'all heading to?” Cookie asked, heaving while she spoke. She bent down to pick up the sack Chess knocked out of her hands.

“Bo Web's,” Chess said. “What you doing out in the woods?”

“Figured out a shortcut to Mable's. She said she gone take me to church in Canfield. Got a car her Downtown man let her borrow. So I got to get on the good foot if I'm going. Say, you seen Five since you been back?” Cookie tried to keep her breathing casual. “Folks around saying Five talking about you like you ain't nothing. They say Five was talking about how he should of known better than get involved with you. Talking about how you got caught cause you old and you got that leg. Ain't saying it's true, but that's what I heard.”

“That's what he say, huh?”

“Yeah, that's what he say.” Cookie turned to leave. “Hi, Morning, didn't see you. I see y'all later.” They said goodbye to her back and walked on.

“We ain't at Bo Web's yet? I don't remember it being this far,” Morning grumbled.

“We gone be there soon.”

“Hand me them house shoes I told you to bring.” Morning began to frown. “Don't tell me you didn't bring them.” Chess said nothing. “And I guess you didn't bring that newspaper I got from Kansas City either.”

“Naw, I didn't bring neither of them.”

“See, Chess, you ain't right. I wanted the paper and now I ain't got nothing to do.”

“What you read the paper for anyway? I tell you what's going on.”

“What you know? You can't even read. You don't even—”

“Morning, I ain't asked you to Bo Web's just for a fight. You that mad about a paper?”

“Yeah, I'm that mad about it.”

“Well, gone home. I don't need that kind of mess. Every time I think of something decent for us to do, you go and act a fool. I'm sick of fooling with you. Gone. Gone home, you hear?”

Morning turned on her heel, smacking a couple of trees as she passed them, and wished a couple would fall on Chess and knock him down. She knew come hell or high rain, Chess wouldn't follow her, not even if it meant her life.

Chess watched her leave, shaking his head and wondering whether or not to go after her. If she fool enough to keep on walking, let her walk, he thought. With that, Chess continued falling over hidden stumps, breaking the branches that slapped him in the face, cursing to himself why he was foolish enough to get involved with someone who didn't have enough sense to keep his children at home when he was in prison. “I swear that girl ain't nothing but hassle,” he muttered. Now the pinching of his own shoes made him forget about Morning. Those shoes hurt like hell, but they were the most handsome things Chess owned.

He remembered buying them. He felt the pride swelling as he stepped into Mr. Frank's and pointed at the shining patent-leather wing-tipped Stacey Adamses in the window. Chess just smiled when Mr. Frank said he would have to buy them as is. Chess was figuring that as much as he had been dreaming about them, he would have no problem fitting them. They were two sizes too small.

*   *   *

Half a mile later, Morning realized she had lost her way. Around the trees, pushing back branches, and stepping over fallen logs, Morning thought that if this wasn't the place she had been, it certainly looked like it. Maybe I should turn back and try to find him, she wondered. Maybe I should tell him I don't mind going along, cause it's better than not knowing the way.

*   *   *

Sounds of watery rustling and the crunching of his pretty shoes interrupted Chess's memories. Had Chess looked down, he would have turned back or at least taken off his shoes, which were being scratched by hidden branches that curved up, away from the ground, and tried to trap his feet. But he thought of Liberty and the rain she had spoken of and decided that if he just kept moving forward, the rain would stay where it was supposed to be.

*   *   *

Morning kept walking. She remembered how the children wouldn't eat the food she made after their mother had died. How she tried to wipe their asses and they slapped her hands. If she found Chess, she would tell him that he and them kids don't treat her right and she was tired.