Knee-Deep in Wonder (3 page)

And she was. Vanished in the middle of the night through the front door, that bag he knew all along was stuffed with camisoles and their only pair of shoes clutched at her side. Soon the husband left too. Except before he disappeared he tried to explain his upcoming absence. In the same way the wife was gripped with the thought of ever-rising debt, the husband was blinded by his own explanations. The week before his departure, he spoke to his daughter with words knotted up in question marks, rubbing her shoulders and head gently. In the middle of telling her that he had to go find her mother, his child peppered in, “When y'all coming back?” and “Why can't I come?” although she had heard her mother's whispering that not only was she too black, she wasn't even the right sex. The father nodded mindlessly at his daughter's fear, dreaming all the while of black men carrying parasols to shade themselves from the sun, their hands sticky and sweet from overripe cantaloupe. The girl saw her father's faraway gaze as he spoke to her, so when he crept though the window a week later she knew he wasn't coming back either.

Orphaned, she went from tenant to tenant on the farm, tall enough to see the way old Negro women held their mouths when they spoke about her mother. Though they did not realize it, they hated her, this child who helped gather cabbage and tomatoes in their small gardens and ran errands and gossip from house to house. They watched her suspiciously as she stooped to pick up stray things, noting the way her long legs gaped wide despite the fact she wore a dress. “Trouble just waiting on her,” they murmured, watching her too-easy laughter, her draping arms as she caressed their children. “Look at her taking my baby and kissing her up under the neck. Don't tell me I'm living to see it.”

Anyone that carefree after not only the mother but also the father left her was a child that trouble would snatch up as soon as it stopped by. All the women thought it was just a matter of time before the mother's haughty slyness would visit the child. But they let her stay in their homes for two years, her name changing as she moved from house to house. She was bestowed with the names of dead daughters and sons, lost husbands, cherished wives who had died in childbirth, till finally, despite her age, they put her out of their homes and their lives, for fear that, when the habits of the mother showed themselves in the child, their own children would become infected by proximity. So she became a roaming hand for picking cotton, until she turned seventeen and Sweets found her.

He was a drifter, a twenty-year-old man with no luggage or steady job. By 1914, he had traveled from Tennessee to as far as Oklahoma and Arizona, claiming to anyone within arm's reach that he had taught the great Bill Pickett everything he knew. “Bulldogging? Who you think taught Dusky Demon that little trick? I let him take credit. Myself, I didn't want to be bothered.” Every grandmother within throwing distance knew he was no good. But with no people of her own, who could have told that to a seventeen-year-old girl?

She heard him first, whistling lightly in the full-grown corn; the sound, practiced and swift, pricked her ear and she stood up, spreading her arms through the tall stalks to get a better look. Then she saw him, walking slowly toward her, his jacket tucked under his arm, and the corn seemed to move out of his way: some idle, callous, free black man. With no one's apron to hide behind, no low whisper full of caution, she liked his soft laughter and easy way. And Sweets did what none of them had ever thought to do—he asked her name. He strolled closer and she dropped the basket she carried, swaying at his nearness. When he stood only a pace away, the jacket still under his arm, he sang her hello. Her laughter made him bolder and he took her hand, rubbing her thumb. “Who is you?”

She thought and thought, unsure of what to say, waiting for him to see the blank space of her dilemma and put in the name of an old lover.

“Girl, you hear me? What's your name?”

She looked past his shoulder, almost panting,
Lord, Lord, Lord,
waiting for an answer that would not break her heart or her back. Then she heard it. Like a ripe peach ready to drop, the name fell into her lap, beautiful and free of soft spots. The sound of her name almost made her knees buckle. “Liberty, my name Liberty.”

They left the tenant farm soon after. Liberty didn't belong to anyone, so there was no one to ask whether he could take her away; those old black mothers and grandmothers were glad to see her go, knowing that trouble had finally caught up with her. And that name (she told everyone in one day—every house, every field hand knew her name), the name that mocked them all and their predicament, was too much to bear. “She gone tell the wrong fella that name and get knocked out.” But Liberty didn't hear their worry or their scorn, already in love with her Sweets, her honeyed man. Those old women were right about trouble catching up with her but wrong about the timing. It would take more than two decades to arrive, creeping up on her so softly she wouldn't notice it at all.

*   *   *

Eleven years after she had left Georgia with Sweets, Liberty stood in the open doorway of her house trying to step around her anger. She explained to her six-year-old daughter, last night's fight with Sweets had really begun as they journeyed to Lafayette County. “I reckon we was deep in wander fore I know Sweets ain't got no place in particular we had to get to. Sometime I think I never should of left with him in the first place, cause Lord know I can do bad enough by myself. Yes, well, I reckon I don't need no help with that. We was traveling in a circle of twenty tents, and every day we move to a different place. No old mamas with they set mouths looking at how I stoop to catch something. There we was moving long with the railroad, all them men hacking down anything in they way. We move from town to town—Augusta, Montgomery, Jackson, Beaumont—following the rails we make. Your daddy level the roadbed in front of the rails, working the job from sun up till sun dark; then he get at gambling his whole week pay with dice.

“Your mama now ain't like your mama then. I wasn't no mama at all, then. Two years pass, and I didn't say a word, cause that son-of-a-bitch daddy—” She winced slightly. “Well, I reckon I still was loving that low laugh of his and them soft hands. And maybe we could of stayed that way—you know, chasing the railroad.”

She stopped for a moment and caught her breath. Images floated in front of her, of eating cold beans out of tin pails hunched and aching over their food. Liberty swallowed hard at the memory. She remembered learning how to cook, how to take care of the ailing, and how to read in those five years. One of the wives, Sue Ann Johnson—the only one who still took her hospitality toward the end, despite Sweets stealing away her husband's weekly pay—spent every free moment spoon-feeding Liberty the New Testament:
The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
And when Liberty asked why three, why put a number into anything like a measure of meal, Sue Ann snorted at her ignorance and replied, “Cause everything bout three. We live in threes: Mama, Daddy, babies. Even Jesus live in three: God, Son, Holy Ghost. You see? Might get passed over two times, but third time you might have a shot at whatever you hankering after. That ain't no mistake either, cause three is a blessed number, blessed by God. Three blessed, charmed, and whole. See? You can't even talk about three without giving three words to it.” Liberty had let that advice settle on her, suddenly envious that Sue Ann had both husband and baby boy. Sue Ann resumed the lesson, but Liberty only half listened, now worried about the twoness of her and Sweets. Just one more and we'd be whole.

Liberty resumed her story. “Five years sweep on by and, well, I didn't even know it, cause in a way we was always in the same place. All them men working on one thing, stirring up everything within a hand's reach. Like we move in a cloud, and we go into town, and folk whispering they knew we was coming cause they saw the cloud miles off. I spose I was might proud that we was the ones caused all that commotion. See, your daddy … well, I loved your daddy for as long as anybody could of loved him, buying ribbons and tying them on anything I thought his eyes would get a notion to fall on. But love like that bound to wear out, and sure nough it did.

“Sweets was gambling, but I didn't know how much, cause your mama was innocent back then. Just like you is now, but I didn't have no mama like me to set me right. Any mama worth they salt would of seen Sweets coming through that corn and told him to get on. But I didn't have no mama like you got. Then Sweets was doing that dice, and I didn't see a thing—too busy trying to keep house and tying ribbons on anything I laid my hands on. Yes, Lord, I sure was innocent. Didn't see nothing till it was right up on me. All them men stop looking me in the face, wouldn't take my hospitality. I thought it was the other womens put them up to it. But it wasn't. It was Sweets. He was whopping all of them so bad they took it out on me. Sweets got so he was climbing out of the tent at night, gathering them all up and making them play.

“We was just out of Texas and I wanted to settle down, and here I was trying to slide up soft to Sweets and make him stay where we was. Well, he must of seen me coming, cause I only had to ask him one time. I didn't even get half way into what I was saying fore he say yes. There I was trying to push at him.” Liberty suddenly mimicked her younger self. “‘What's gone happen when these here tracks run out? You think they gone hand you some kind of job just cause you kept with them since Georgia?'

“I spose we got off that rail just in time. All that money swollen in Sweets's pocket and them men looking at him, knowing they got goosed. Only so long you can get away with that. I was having you then, and we jumped off the rail and bought this land with all that money Sweets got off them men.”

She paused again and lifted her hand to her forehead. “I spose even then I was innocent. Cause when I look back, it's a wonder I didn't know. All that money like a rock in his pants, and it never went down. We was buying everything I could think of. Here I was, making sure we got all the windows the way I want and the floor laid down just so and I never wondered where Sweets got all that money from. Like he had it in a trunk somewhere I didn't know about. Cause after we left the rail, I never did see him do no more gambling. He went off to get supplies and come back drunk and singing, but I didn't mind, cause he always come back with them supplies.”

She laughed then, a mirthless sound that escaped from her mouth and tumbled into her next words. “Seem like every piece of clapboard we put up was a fight. And it ain't like Sweets had a notion of what he wanted, he just know he don't want it my way. Somebody should of told me how mean a little man can be. Then just when the house bout done you come, and by then I know it was just a matter of time. Cause Sweets was prowling, looking for a fight. I can't make biscuit worth a damn, far as he concerned. I spose Sweets was thinking I was the one keeping him from his money. With the house all done ain't no need for him to go off for supplies like he been saying.”

Liberty pressed her strong hand on her daughter's head. “There you was, and Sweets act like he didn't want to be bothered with me nohow. The more I be with you, the more mad he get. Telling me how to be mama. I told him right then, ‘You be the daddy and I be the mama.'”

She kept talking, her words only mindless chatter to the small child at her side. Her daughter moved slightly, curious to see her mother's face as she spoke. Only Liberty's heavy hand forced her daughter's eyes to the floor. Nevertheless, Queen Ester heard it, almost saw it: her mother's fumbling. “He was the one, not me.” Liberty's voice tilted upward, trying to lay blame for their last fight on Sweets, the fight that made him tumble out their front door in the middle of the night, leaving it ajar.

*   *   *

He had snuck up behind her while she was dressing Queen Ester. “That child gone be your undoing.” Liberty didn't hear a word he said, her lips pressed firmly against her child's belly. “Liberty, you hear me?” She turned her head then, a small smile on her lips. “You can't keep kissing on her like that.”

“Why come? Ain't she mine?”

“She damn near seven years old.”

“She still a baby.” Liberty dipped her head to kiss Queen Ester's naked stomach.

Sweets caught her chin, stopping her. “You quit on that, you hear?”

She had been sitting, but now with her chin caught in his hand she rose, throwing a tall shadow over her husband. “You let loose, Sweets.” She said her words calmly, as if she were telling a dog to sit. “Just let loose.”

“Ain't nothing of mine gone talk to me like that.” His hand whirled back, only to be caught by Liberty's own fast hand.

“I ain't nothing of yours. Who told you that?” She laughed, an unexpected sound to both their ears, her laughter swollen with anger.

“You hush up now.”

“Ain't.” Her hand let go of his, quickly pulling back to push him.

“You ain't big enough for that,” Sweets said, struggling under the blunt push of her hand.

“But ain't I though? Ain't I?” She laughed again and kicked him, striking his left knee. “Who ain't big enough for what round here? Telling me what to do with my own baby.” Her foot rose again, striking the empty air. Sweets, hurt but quick, had scrambled to the open bedroom door and stood inside its frame. He looked at his wife and her gaping laughing mouth. She had grown four inches since he had known her.

“Now I ain't gone get tore up in my own house.”

“You just keep on out of my way. Or the next time you take ahold of my chin, I ain't gone let you get away.” He heard the menace in her voice and said nothing. But later, in the middle of the night, he left, not taking anything with him except the bulge in his pocket. In his haste, Sweets left the front door open. Now, Liberty stood before the door, knowing that her husband was not coming back. That make three of them, she thought: Mama, Daddy, and Sweets. Two out the door and one out the window. Well, don't that beat all.