Knee-Deep in Wonder (31 page)

Sho nough, I was right. That ain't to say folks can't come up with some foolishness. Got me running here and there with they wants. “Other, you come help me with these bags; Other, gone go run this down to the boss man.” But I say this: I ain't never got into no trouble behind yeah and sho nough. Cept till now. I was only gone for a second. Queenie think I saw it all, but God as a witness that ain't true. Banky ask me to go and pick up his baby girl and take her over to her mama's, and by the time I get back, all I see is Chess closing the door behind him. I should of saw Chess coming, that way he always looking at a nigger when he think ain't nobody watching is some queer mess. And I swear Queenie been looking at him like she can't look nowhere else. Cut her eyes at Liberty every chance she get. So, yeah, I broke the door down.

17

SHE WALKED STIFFLY
, passing her own boarded-up bedroom door, haphazard wooden shingles fastened to its frame, the nails protruding and bent. The door had let her down once but never again. It had been built up better, stronger, hers. Light-headed, she crept down the hall until she reached Chess's room, its door still ajar the way Helene had left it. Only inside those four walls could she feel safe. This place was a creation all her own, every object in it nowhere else but where she wanted it to be: the sewing machine in the corner, the rug rolled up next to the long counter table, a portable coffeepot turned on its head, the toaster and iron in the closet.

The only time Queen Ester had thought to fix the disarray was when she remembered Liberty's sickness and the filth that had taken hold in every room as Liberty had grown weaker. She always believed that illness hadn't taken her mother. Liberty had the power to say things and make them come into existence, the way God said Let there be Light and it was so; Liberty had decided to get sick, said “Let Me take Ill,” laid down in her bed, and died.

Queen Ester dipped her fingers into the glasses filled with honey-sweetened water, adjusted the chairs and tables. Stooping, she grabbed the leg of the sewing machine and lifted it, finding the carpet underneath bright and shiny, unworn from exposure. She loved that spot, the place where time had no meaning. Reverently, she fingered the carpet.

Staggering to her feet, she approached the countertop, her hands outstretched as if even now she held the wood between her fingers and thumb. “Hello?” she said, nervous because she couldn't smell the softly sweet odor she was sure had been there, with the dead bodies. “Helene done shook something loose, and now here I am stuck with it all, too old to make room,” Queen Ester said. She hadn't scared Helene senseless, she thought; in her own way had urged Helene to stay the way you force a mule to plow a straight line with a heavy hand, since if you make the mistake of being nice, stroking its hind end, cooing in its ear, the mule will eventually kick you in the chest.

She looked closely at the bottom edge of the counter, and where there should have been a leg there was nothing. Her eyes slammed against the blank wall behind the bar. Don't fret, Queen Ester told herself. I pulled the bar just so, I think. No, that's right. So maybe they is still behind there and I just don't see. But even if I pulled it—and I ain't saying I'm wrong—I should see them from right where I'm standing. Even from here I should be able to see something. Sweat spread across Queen Ester's chest, washing over her sunken breasts and dampening her housecoat.

“If they ain't here, where is they? Helene ain't carried nothing out with her.” She held on to the counter. “Well, move in close so you can see if they is where you left them at.” At last, she leaned her head over its edge to see the other side. They were gone. Even the depression where they had sat had vanished. Queen Ester shuddered. She believed what she had told Helene—“What being dead got to do with anything?”—but she knew they could not have gone anywhere without her.

Turning quickly, she fell, scraping her legs. On her hands and knees, Queen Ester tried to close her jaw, but the muscle beneath her chin was slack. Gripping the side of the bar, she pulled herself to her feet, her thoughts still clear, methodical. “Well, just where could they be at? Mama's room? Mine? Kitchen? Living room? What's that sliding? You hear that?”

She saw her left foot was limp and twisted as she dragged it toward the door. “That me?” She locked the door behind her. “All this time, I ain't never done up Chess's door. Well, ain't I a day late and a dollar short? Where to first, upstairs or down?” At the head of the stairs, she felt a draft, soft and insistent. “If that ain't wind, I ain't me,” Queen Ester said, towing her foot behind her. “Here I am looking a mess with the front door wide open.”

She took a first step, tripping again, and reached for the hallway carpet to steady herself. From where she leaned, she saw the walls curve and then Liberty's door curl itself into a bow before her eyes. The bow looped itself into hands, feet, legs, black men, some of whom were equipped with unflagging strength and could triumph over rivers and railroads. A woman paced back and forth on a dirt-packed floor, clutching at a handbag crammed with camisoles and undershirts, desperation and desire. Shaking hands wrapped themselves around a Colt revolver and blew a hole in a chest, big enough for a fist to fit through. The draft blew harder and the door creaked. “Sweet Jesus,” Queen Ester gasped, stretching with both hands to touch the wooden doorframe, wheezing. “Sweet Jesus.”

18

THEY CRASHED TOGETHER
in the dark toward Queen Ester's house. Her hand inside the crook of his arm, Helene squinted to see Other push back an overgrown branch as if he were pulling out a chair for her. All the while she kept up a chant of words. “At first, I didn't know why I came. I mean I knew I wanted Mama, just to look at her and not be pulled away by someone. But it wasn't just that. I could have driven down here and sat inside my car and stared at Mama to my heart's content. But I wanted to know what was going on down here, why everyone seemed to stand in our way.” She panted while they tramped on. “You know, when I saw Mama today she seemed happy to see me? She said hello as if she meant it and then we sat down and I didn't have to tug at her for a thing. She just spilled out her life, although she lied about my daddy. Whoever he is, he's dead. That's what I want to tell her now. Whoever he is, Duck or Chess, he's dead. Aunt Annie b's dead and Grandma too. Everybody's dying on me and I can't do a thing about it.”

She stopped. “You hear that? I did it again. I sound like Mama. I sound southern,” Helene said. They were running now, stepping lightly over underbrush and around branches that stuck out from trees like tables. “This morning—” She stopped again, amazed that it was only this morning when she had woken up with the scowl of sleep and the only weight she had carried was her curiosity. “This morning—” She tried to remember. Am I old or tired or crazy? she thought. Maybe all three, and that's why I'm out here running in this country darkness to who knows where. “Other? Other, you still here?”

“Yeah.”

“Don't,” she said, anger in her voice. They ran side by side, clutching on to each other. “Don't do that. Say something else, okay?”

“Sho nough.” Helene pulled hard at his shirt, dragging her feet till they stopped.

“Don't, Other. I need you to talk to me. You have to say no sometimes. I think sometimes people don't know what they are until they say no to something or break something over their knee.”

Because they were in the dark, Helene didn't see Other's face crack and fill with words, as it had when her mother barked at him—“You say it, you say it, you”—in the upstairs hallway. Helene didn't know what she was asking for; her words were just there to chase away the loneliness of her voice out in the wilderness. Maybe, had Helene seen the rage that her mother had seen, maybe she too would have said, “No, boy, you forget that, cause I'm gone to.”

“That's what you plan on doing?” Other spoke suddenly. “Breaking your mama over your knee? Because you can, you the only one left that can do it. Break her right in half if you have a mind to.” His words, brimming with disapproval, split the night. “I know you. I was there in the yard with Chess, with that piece of candy hanging out of your mouth. I was there when Mable handed you over to Annie b. You want to come in your mama's house and make her lay down. Shame on you, girl. She's so weak she can't hurt a soul even if she wanted to, and you want her to stir up an old ache, just so you can see for yourself. And why? Because you're the daughter? You think you got a right to know? Queenie ain't the only fool in your family. You a fool too. Fool to come down here and try to make your mama mind. Who are you to make an old woman lick at a hurt she's been trying to forget some twenty-odd years? Who are you, Helene?”

*   *   *

“Hello? Hello?” Queen Ester said, tugging her limp leg behind her like luggage. Where had they gone? Well, they sho ain't downstairs taking tea and laughing over biscuits, she thought. Two bodies couldn't get very far without someone to help them along. Maybe Helene come back and I ain't seen her.

“Helene?” She turned, straining to hear any small scrap of sound. “Helene?” she called out again. A light thump echoed in the corner, the same dark nook where she had shaken Other, daring him to say what he had seen. “Helene? That you, girl?” She heard the sound a second time. “Helene, that's you, ain't it? You can't be coming in here, messing with my house. What you do with them two? You hear me? Lord Jesus, you gave me a fright. Come on out of that corner.” Something thumped again. “All right, you get on out of there. Making all that racket.”

Helene stepped out of the bend in the hallway, arms outstretched, accusatory, the way she had been when she ran up to the one room Queen Ester had not let her see.

“What's in the room, Mama?” Her daughter's voice shook the house. Queen Ester trembled. “You know what's in the room. You done saw it yourself.”

“What's in the room, Mama?” Helene said again, and this time she moved. She stood inches away from Queen Ester, her manner wild, frenzied. “What's in the room?”

Queen Ester shouted, afraid of her daughter, who seemed poised to strike. Queen Ester clapped her hands over her ears, now yearning for quiet, and Helene vanished.

“Well, I'll be. She wan't never here, that's why her hair looked so nice,” Queenie mumbled, not frightened by Helene's ghost but, rather, happy that her daughter's shadow was able to step out of dark corners or maybe even closets. Without an ounce of pushing on Queen Ester's part, Helene had moved into her mother's house. All things considered, she thought, that ain't so bad. Ain't got to press on her to stay, cause she already here.

Queen Ester advanced, a slow shuffle, listening for something that might be two bodies walking in an old house. “Where is they? Chess and Mama both having crackers and sardines somewhere.” I done made a good-looking girl, she thought, the hair parted just so and curled up at the end. Not a ribbon in sight but good-looking just the same. My baby sho looked good coming out of the dark like that. Queen Ester threw open the door to her own room and it was as if the three of them, Liberty, Chess, and Helene, were waiting for her quietly, not the ghost of her child but the loveliness of Helene's hair; not the shot but the thumb; not the leaving but the door flung ajar; not the violation but the words said directly thereafter; not the father but the Mary Jane dripping from a child's mouth.

*   *   *

The wild grass stood almost thigh-high. Only the sharp report of branches snapping in two broke the quiet. Helene played back Other's words, this time slowly shifting through, because something he said tasted bitter. I didn't ask Mama to lick at an old hurt, did I? Mama never said, Don't ask because it may knock me down. I never pulled on her, never. I don't care what he says. Maybe I wanted to, but wanting and doing sit on opposite sides of the road. I didn't shake her, make her lick an old hurt. She was talking before I stepped on the porch, and that's the heaven's truth. But that doesn't account for the bad taste on my tongue.

They ducked together under a branch Other could not move and, untucking her head, Helene remembered what he had said—I was there when Mable handed you over to Annie b—which opened a bottomless dive of questions: Who gave me to whom? Where was Mama when I was handed over? Was my daddy already dead, and if he (if Duck was my daddy) had already passed, why did Aunt Annie b and Uncle Ed come out here only when I was born?

*   *   *

No longer chest-to-chest with Chess (her father, hers, hers) in the middle of the yard, a five-year-old Helene stood next to Liberty, not tall enough to reach her grandmother's knee. They were on the porch and the deep rolling voice she had always thought was Uncle Ed's came out of her grandmother, washing over her.

“Yeah, this your house, baby girl, more yours than anybody, cause here, right inside the door, right upstairs, you was born.” Liberty's hand slid from Helene's head to her chin. “Your ma'am push something fierce to get you out. She sure did, and when she got to hollering she scared me bad. Didn't know what to do; and if you know your granny, which you don't cause you too young, you know that Granny always know what to do. I walked up and down the hallway, without a clear thought in my head. And that ain't never happened to me. At least not since I been grown.” Liberty laughed, and the five-year-old Helene lapped up the sound. “You the only one born in this house. Now what about that? Ain't that something?”

Liberty suddenly crouched, scooping the child up in her arms. “I told myself I wasn't never gone kiss some little thing under the neck, but here I go. You want some sugar from your granny?” Helene, frightened because she felt she was on the verge of being devoured, nodded dumbly. Liberty felt Helene stiffen in her hands and turned mean. “When somebody ask you something, you say yes, ma'am or no, ma'am, not shake your head like you some dummy. B been keeping you in a barn?”