Leaving: A Novel (18 page)

“Look at how that baby loves you. You’re mother and child. Couldn’t nothing come between you. Isn’t that right?”

Gina just smiled. Marcus kept on.

“No matter what your child do in life, you gonna love him and take care of him. Isn’t that the truth? Isn’t it?” Gina nodded. “Ain’t nothing like the love between a mother and her child.” Marcus looked up at Lida and she turned away, the way her mother turned away now as they sat in the living room.

“Hear how they burned down the Castlemont Apartments because of the hustlin?” Lida asked Ruby.

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“Seems like everybody angry at somebody nowadays.”

“Sure do.” Ruby closed her eyes and then opened them very slowly to erase whatever feeling might have been coming up on them. “You want something to drink?” she asked. “I’m going to make myself some tea.”

She got up to go to the kitchen and took her Bible with her. In the kitchen, she filled the rusted red teakettle and set it on the stove, then came back to the rocking chair and placed the Bible on the cast-iron table beside her again.

“I was thinking about moving back in, Mama.”

Ruby made no gesture of response, so Lida moved to the edge of the couch to explain.

“I’ve still got my job and we could pay for some of the bills.”

“Who we?” Ruby looked at her hard.

“Me an Marcus.”

“Nn-mmm. That boy ain’t livin in this house.”

Lida didn’t argue. She had never argued with her. When Easton was still alive, she had always been too frightened to think of angering the only person in the house who could have made it safe for her. Now that silence had grown like a deep river between them and it seemed too difficult to cross.

“That boy ain’t livin in this house,” Ruby repeated again, as if Lida had in fact argued with her. Lida’s gaze settled on the leather Bible, so close to her mother’s arm it seemed she was touching it on purpose. Lida found herself envying the book. There felt like miles of things she had to explain to her mother, and if she could just explain it all, then she knew Ruby would reach out to her also. She wanted to explain how she used to tiptoe around the house so she wouldn’t disturb Easton, how she used to feel so bad about herself, how she always went to Marcus because he would take care of her, and that he didn’t sell junk anymore. But then she’d have to explain so many other things: why he had to take care of her, why she had to tiptoe. One thing would lead to more questions, and it didn’t all make sense unless she told her what was at the bottom of it all. But even then it didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t explain why she didn’t go to her mother in the first place or how come she had to leave the house even after Easton was dead and it was safe to stay. And when things didn’t make sense, they sounded like lies, even to herself.

“I never did know what you saw in that boy,” Ruby added. “He stole all that money from his father’s store and was into drugs. It’s a disgrace, you livin with him, and I have to see his father in church on Sundays.” The teakettle whistled, and Ruby raised herself to go back in the kitchen.

Lida looked at the bookcase by the stereo. Two twisted seashells with holes in them sat on the edge of one shelf. She used to put her fingers through the holes when she was a little girl and wear them like gigantic, expensive rings. She stood up and went to the shells. She held one in her hand and slid her finger into it, but it didn’t fit past the first knuckle.

“We can’t keep our place since he came back from jail,” Lida called out to her mother.

“Well, you come live here and let him stay with some friends.” Ruby returned and sat back in the rocking chair. “What do you want to stay with him for, anyway?”

“Because.” Lida’s face burned, and like someone calling for help across a large canyon, she blurted out: “He’s the only one who ever loved me.” It was the first time she felt like she’d said exactly what she’d wanted to say—and it terrified her.

“What are you saying, Lida? I’ve always loved you. Plenty of people love you. You’re talking crazy.”

“You don’t understand.”

Ruby held her teacup on her lap and stared up at her daughter. She saw a look in her eyes that she didn’t recognize and a hard breathing through her nose that was not like Lida, but like a kid after a long fight.

“You’re right,” Ruby said. “I don’t understand. I don’t. Maybe I never will. I’m saying you can move back in, but he’s not moving in here.” Ruby took a sip of her tea as if to settle the matter.

Lida carefully unstuck her finger from the shell and placed it back onto the bookcase. She lifted her purse off the couch and faced her mother, but Ruby added nothing. She walked slowly to the door, fighting the urge to hop on one foot as she used to do, turned the doorknob, and left the house.

*   *   *

LIDA AND MARCUS
were evicted. They moved in with Gina and David and their son, Malcolm, across the street from the Kozol Towers. The apartment had a living room, bedroom, kitchen, and a bathroom. Extra tenants weren’t allowed, but almost every other apartment had long-term guests. Lida and Marcus hoped not to stay too long, just enough to save up some money for their own place. She had gotten him a bagging job at Lucky’s. They both had Monday mornings off, and they lay together on the corduroy couch, which they used as their bed.

Marcus placed his hand on her stomach and looked at her sleeping face. The light crossed below her nose, and he watched as her eyes moved under her lids.

“You love me,” he whispered. A curl of her hair shook with his breath, and she made a small noise that sounded like a door creaking open. He smiled and whispered again.

“You love Marcus.” She didn’t make any noise this time. He blew lightly on her forehead and she rolled over, almost pushing him off the couch.

Now her bare shoulders and upper back were uncovered. Her skin was dark and solid like rich soil. He put his fingertips on one shoulder and brushed them across to the other. He sang to her, softly:

She’s all of the colors

She’s blue on the inside

She’s red in her eyes

She’s green as a child

She’s black in her lies.

Lida rolled back toward him and smiled, her eyes still shut. The sun had moved and now it crossed her mouth and onto his ribs. She opened her eyes and traced her finger along the line of sun on his body. He sang some more.

She’s all of the planets

A radiant Venus

And brighter than stars

More helpless than Pluto

More angry than Mars.

“You still have that blue pick?” she asked.

“What blue pick?”

“The one you used to wear in your natural, from elementary school.”

“Sure.”

“How come you never wear that anymore?” She traced her finger into the small hairs around his nipples.

He smiled at her. “You want me to get it?”

“Naw.” She closed her eyes again. “It’d just make me sad.”

He reached out to stroke her eyebrows. “What made you think of that old pick, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I just pictured you with it.”

Kids ran down the building’s hallway, pounding on the floorboards. They knocked on the door and kept running, knocking on every door.

Malcolm started crying from the other room.

“Ah no. No,” Marcus yelled. They took care of the baby on their days off so David could look for work that wouldn’t conflict with band rehearsals. Gina worked two part-time jobs, mornings at Orchard Supply and afternoons at ACE.

Lida threw the covers off. She got her green sweatshirt out of her suitcase and wore it like a dress. She walked through the kitchen and into the bedroom where Malcolm slept on a floor mat beside Gina and David’s bed.

Marcus stood in the doorway wearing his blue bikini underwear and watched Lida pick up the baby and cradle him against her shoulder. He was a nappy-haired baby with thin yellow lips and one eye sealed shut with slimy gunk.

“He misses his mommy,” Lida said. She held him with her hand across the whole of his back. Malcolm coughed and stopped crying.

“You’re good with that baby,” Marcus said. “You know how to put up with all that crying.”

“He’s just hungry.” She walked him into the kitchen and got the bottle off of the counter. “See, he was just saying, ‘I’m hungry. I’m hungry.’ It only sounds like cryin to you. You’ve got to be able to read a child. They hardly ever say straight out what they really want.”

“Crying sounds like what it is: crying. We just about to make love too.”

“What do you mean just about to make love? How do you know what
we
just about to do?”

“How come you’re always starting something? I just meant we were having a nice time and then … never mind.” He opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of water. He poured himself a glass and went back to the couch, then called back into the kitchen, “How come your mama didn’t want us living with her? Did you tell her I didn’t have nothing to do with your uncle being killed?”

“She don’t like you.”

“What’d I ever do to her?”

“Just been yourself.”

“Ain’t there any way I can make it up?”

“If we were married, then she’d have to let us live there.”

“I’ll marry you,” he said.

“Get serious,” Lida yelled back. Marcus got off the couch.

“I am nothing but serious.”

Lida came out of the kitchen. “When?”

“I’ll marry you right now.” He walked over and knelt down in front of her while she stood holding the baby. “Lida Anne Washington, will you marry me?”

Lida laughed.

“Well, will you? I ain’t foolin.”

“You want to marry me?”

“Yeah.”

She turned around and walked back into the bedroom. She laid the baby down on the floor and knelt to change him.

Marcus came to the door and watched her. “So? Will you?”

She took a deep breath and looked away. “Mama still won’t let you live at her house.”

“Forget your mama. I’m askin you to marry me.” She rolled the baby over and took off his dirty diaper. Marcus curled his lips in disgust. She went into the bathroom and came out with a wipe to clean off his bottom. When she finished putting on the new diaper, she placed Malcolm at the top of the bed, then went and washed her hands, slowly drying every finger in the towel, not turning around to face Marcus. Finally she walked to the bathroom door and looked at him.

He stood there in his blue underwear, waiting for an answer. The sun now filled the whole kitchen behind him. The baby was quiet, no cars roared outside, and no one yelled from next door. It seemed the whole world was at a peaceful standstill just waiting for her to answer. She took a deep breath and walked to the bed. She climbed up onto it, and turned around so that she faced the baby lying against the pillows. Her feet sank into the blanket as she stood at the bottom edge of the bed, her back and naked legs toward the window and the rest of the room.

“What are you doing?” Marcus asked. She stood with her arms out and shut her eyes. Before he could ask again, she fell backward toward the floor, her body straight, her face up to the ceiling, the air rushing against her ears and fingers. Neither of them made a sound as she fell. Marcus moved quickly. He caught her just as she became parallel with the floor, and they fell to the ground together.

“You’re crazy. What are you doin?”

Lida opened her eyes and looked up at him. She was cradled in his arms, her feet still up on the bed.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” Marcus said again.

“Why did you catch me?”

“You’d have killed yourself.”

She closed her eyes again as if to hold in her tears. Her breathing was heavy and forced. “I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve anyone.”

“I want to marry you.”

“Even with all the problems I got?”

“They’re bound to go away sometime. I’m going to make you so happy all your problems will look like little ants.”

Lida listened to the silence of the day. She reached her mind out of the room, out of the building, across the freeway, and out toward West Oakland. She listened and waited for something, some answer from somewhere. But she heard nothing.

“You saved me, so you can do what you want,” she said.

“I guess that means yes.”

There was another moment of silence as she shook her head. But then she said, “If that’s what you want.”

*   *   *

IT TOOK RUBY
six months to accept that she was really going to be alone, that Lida wasn’t coming back, and neither was Easton.

Dinnertime was sacred now. She was her own special guest. The carved rock elephants sat on the center of the table by the tall yellow candle. She laid out two red-fringed place mats, one for the pots and one for her place setting, the silverware imprinted with flowers. She didn’t bring up disagreeable conversation topics at this time, that is what she said to herself if her mind wandered. “This is not a time to reflect.”

She dressed up each night. She wore her red shawl over a black evening gown. This dress was the last style she’d made, and they didn’t all sell. The factories that had moved overseas and the sweatshops in Chinatown now produced a hundred garments at the cost she charged for ten. She hadn’t sewn since the burial, when she made a patch-quilt blanket to lay over Easton; she read her Bible instead.

She lit the candle and said grace, then opened the cloth napkin and spread it out neatly on her lap. She picked up the fork and brought the potato to her lips without leaning close or hurrying in any way.

This was a time to taste the yams, to slowly chew their buttery orange sugar. There was the rest of the day to remember Easton, to worry about Lida or bills. This was a time when nothing could be done about those things, and it didn’t do any good to think of them and ruin a meal.

This year she would turn forty, and she wondered what she might give herself as a present. And it came to her all at once, maybe because she had been dusting the pictures on the wall earlier, or maybe because she would be forty this year and always thought of her mother as being forty. If she could save, start saving right now, she would take a trip in the fall to South Carolina. She hadn’t seen her mother in person for nearly eighteen years, almost half her life. She picked up another forkful of yams and smiled, the first real smile she’d felt on her face in months.