Perfect Peace (19 page)

On one occasion, Perfect reached to tickle Eva Mae between her legs, but the husband refused. “You just relax,” she said, pushing Perfect’s trembling hand away. “I’m de husband, and I’m s’pose to make you feel good.” Such altruism was strange to Perfect, who had certainly never witnessed Gus cater to any of Emma Jean’s pleasures, but Perfect didn’t mind. If Eva Mae preferred giving to receiving, then Perfect was fine with that. Where others might have been bored with such monotony, the girls enjoyed their respective roles and thanked Emma Jean silently for forcing them to play together that day in the sun.

Three days before the party, Emma Jean had strutted throughout the community with her hands cupped around her mouth, heralding Perfect’s eighth birthday party like Gabriel proclaiming the birth of Christ. Folks rushed to their doors, wondering what in the world Emma Jean was screaming about. “Party! Party! Party!” her raspy voice belted. “Birthday party! Saturday afternoon! All children welcome! Bring gifts!!” Everyone knew it had to be Perfect’s birthday since Emma Jean never made a fuss about any of the boys. Mothers smiled politely while simultaneously murmuring, “That bitch is crazy. She think that li’l heffa is better than otha kids ’round here.” Children began to ask permission to attend.

Gus found the notion ridiculous. “Everybody got a birthday every year,” he said, perceiving himself profound, “so what’s so special ’bout Perfect’s?”

“This is yo’ daughter, man!” Emma Jean said, trying any angle she could to justify the expenses.

“I know who she is,” Gus said. “I’m jes’ wonderin’ why we gotta make such a big hoopla ’bout her birthday.”

“ ’Cause she’s a girl,” Emma Jean said pitifully. “And girls need stuff like this.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so!”

Gus shrugged.

The day before, Emma Jean had taken a shiny new quarter from Gus’s overalls and given it to Perfect, who then bought enough yellow ribbon to decorate the entire living room and kitchen. Perfect rose early Saturday morning, too excited to sleep. After Emma Jean forced the menfolk up and out, Perfect cut the ribbon into foot-long strips, tied them in bows, and taped them everywhere she found a bare spot. She put three on Bartimaeus’s coffin. Then, like God on the seventh day, she looked around the living room and said, “I like it.”

As she swept the floor, she hummed a tune Eva Mae had taught inadvertently during their moments beneath the house. With the broom handle as partner, she danced—Fred Astaire style—sweeping many places repeatedly before scooping the dirt onto a piece of used cardboard and casting it out the back door. Perfect then shifted furniture, three inches to the right or two inches to the left, until she convinced herself that the room had been rearranged. “There,” she said, and clapped excitedly.

She named aloud the guests she was sure about: “Eva Mae, Caroline, Christina, Joyce Ann, Bonita, Martha Jean, Angie Faye, Trutisha, Jackie, Sandy, Ethel Faye . . .” and she wondered what each girl would wear. Emma Jean told her not to worry—none of the other girls would be prettier than her—so Perfect focused on making the house something both she and Emma Jean would be proud of.

“What the hell?” Gus mumbled when he reentered the front room, rubbing his eyes as though having awakened in a foreign land. “Who did this?”

“Don’t chu worry ’bout it, Mr. Gustavus Peace!” Emma Jean intervened before Perfect attempted to explain. “It looks real nice, baby. Real nice.” She surveyed the room like a museum observer.

“This is gonna be the best party ever!” Perfect declared, skipping to the kitchen. “Can I help make the birthday cake, Momma?”

Emma Jean smiled warmly and toyed with Perfect’s short plaits. “Of course you can, honey. But then we gotta do somethin’ with that head o’ yours.”

“Okay,” Perfect said, and retrieved the mixing bowl from the cupboard. She placed it on the table and waited. Olivia sat in the chair beside her.

“What about breakfast?” Gus asked, primarily for his and Authorly’s sake.

Emma Jean’s narrowed eyes made him wish he hadn’t said anything. “You greedy niggas cain’t go without breakfast fu one day? Don’t y’all see all the work me and dis girl gotta do to git ready fu this party? Menfolk can be so selfish sometimes.” Emma Jean shook her head.

“That mean we ain’t gon’ eat?”

She stared at Gus until he went away.

“Get four cups o’ flour, baby,” she told Perfect, “and pour it into the mixin’ bowl. Then sift it.”

“Why you gotta do that, Momma?” Perfect said as she obeyed.

“So yo’ mixture won’t be so lumpy. You want the cake to come out right, don’t chu?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Perfect hollered. She sifted the flour carefully like one panning for gold. “I’m done!”

Emma Jean ran her fingers though the flour. “Good. Now put in two cups o’ sugar, a tablespoon o’ baking powder, and a teaspoon o’ salt.”

“Salt? You put salt in a cake?”

“Dat’s right, girl. You didn’t know dat?”

“No, ma’am. I thought a cake was s’pose to be sweet.”

“It is, but you still gotta add a touch o’ salt. I think it does somethin’ with the baking powder.”

“Oh.” Perfect sighed and added the ingredients.

“Now mix it all up real good. And when you get through with that, add six eggs.” Emma Jean smiled as her eyes moistened.

“What is it, Momma?”

“Nothin’, chile. I jes’ cain’t believe my baby girl is growin’ up.” She clasped her hands over her mouth.

Perfect chuckled. “I’ll always be yo’ baby, Momma. That’s what you always say.”

“Yeah, but you ain’t no baby no mo’. Seem like jes’ yesterday you wuz layin’ next to my tittie, suckin’, and now you a big girl!”

Perfect stirred a bit too forcefully, splattering small portions of cake batter with each whip of her wrist.

“Take yo’ time, honey,” Emma Jean admonished tenderly. “Try not to spill nothin’ or the cake won’t be but so big.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And when you crack the eggs, crack ’em clean. We don’t want no shells in the batter if we can help it.” Emma Jean began putting dishes away.

“Momma, can I ask you somethin’?” Perfect murmured as she added the eggs. She slid from her knees to her bottom in the kitchen chair.

“Sure, baby. What is it?”

“Caroline told me I was gon’ start bleedin’ one day soon down between my legs. Is that true?”

Emma Jean tried to hide her trembling hands, but couldn’t. She turned her back to Perfect, talking slowly in hopes that a sensible lie might materialize.

“Some women do,” she began, “and some women don’t. Everybody’s different.” She braced herself for the next question.

“Then why do some women bleed?” Perfect continued stirring the batter freely.

“Um . . . some women . . . bleed to keep . . . um . . . pure.” Emma Jean cleared her throat. She glanced at the white-faced image of Jesus hanging over the living room sofa. “Some women have to be reminded of the sacrifice Christ made for them. Other women never forget.”

Emma Jean knew her explanation made no sense, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. People always shut up after preachers mention the cross and the blood, and Emma Jean hoped Perfect would do the same.

“Do some men bleed, too?”

“No.”

“Why not? Don’t some of them fugit, too?”

Emma Jean’s confidence was disintegrating. “I don’t know what happens to men who fugit ’cause I ain’t no man. You jes’ be sure to love the Lord and remember, and you’ll be fine.” She turned abruptly. “And anyway, a lady don’t talk about her personal business to otha folks. Tell Caroline that!”

Perfect didn’t understand Emma Jean’s sudden wrath, but she was determined never to bleed if she could help it.

Emma Jean added, “Every woman got her own particular life, honey, and no two womens is de same. Jes’ stick with de Lawd and you’ll be fine. That’s why I named you Perfect.”

She smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Emma Jean sighed.

Once the cake rested in the stove, Perfect went to the picture of Christ hanging above the living room sofa. “I love you,” she whispered to it. “Thank you for bleeding so I don’t have to.” She then ran her finger across the picture, wondering how anybody could stand to have nails driven through their palms and ankles without dying from pain. She guessed that’s why he was so special—’cause he could endure what others couldn’t. And he wasn’t even crying! Yes, she loved his fortitude and his soft countenance, especially in the midst of tragedy. And to think, as preachers demanded, that he died for her? Especially for
her
? Perfect smiled at the picture and promised never to let the sun set without acknowledging him. If Caroline broached the subject again, she’d tell her all about Christ and that he could keep her from bleeding, too.

Perfect’s party guests represented the who’s who of Swamp Creek’s black elite. Mamie Cunningham’s granddaughter Christina was there, taking notes
to report back to her grandmother. “If the food don’t look right, don’t eat it, honey,” Mamie had instructed. “Emma Jean can sing, but she sho can’t cook!” Christina gave Perfect a brand-new olive green scarf from Morrison’s, the kind only white girls usually wore, and Emma Jean would have been elated except that it came from Mamie. “Always tryin’ to outdo otha folks,” Emma Jean muttered. Then she said more loudly, “Tell your grandmother thank you. We sho do ’preciate it.” Christina was a pretty, milk chocolate–colored child with long, thick Indian-like hair, and she liked Perfect. That’s why Emma Jean liked her. The girls would have been friends if Emma Jean and Miss Mamie got along, but since they didn’t, Perfect and Christina waved vigorously as their parents pulled them in opposite directions.

The Chambers twins came, much to Emma Jean’s surprise. They were nice boys, but usually they never played with any of the local kids. Authorly said that, for nine-year-old boys, they were mighty soft, and, in fact, only came to the party because they could dress up and sit around looking cute. They were the only black boys in Swamp Creek who went to school absolutely every single day and whose hands were not scarred by physical labor. Whenever you saw one, you saw the other. Authorly wanted some ten-year-old boy to whip their asses and toughen them up a bit, but they probably wouldn’t fight back, he thought. And the only thing worse than a crying sissy country boy was two of them. Didn’t they see they were the only boys at the party?

“What’s the secret?” Caroline leaned over and asked Eva Mae. Other children seemed not to notice.

Eva Mae stuck out her tongue. “Ain’t tellin’.”

“Come on! Tell me!”

Perfect noticed the private exchange and said, “Why don’t we play something everybody can play?”

“That sounds fun!” Eva Mae said, glad to be rescued from Caroline’s begging.

“Then y’all go outside for a while,” Emma Jean said, “but don’t get dirty. The party’s jes’ beginning.”

Gus and the brothers wanted to know when it would end. They were starving and, even if there was extra cake and ice cream, they wanted real food. Authorly and James Earl tried to ignore their hunger as they repaired the barbed-wire fence and Sol and Mister laughed at Woody’s jokes while weeding the vegetable garden. Gus walked with Bartimaeus, teaching him how to feel his way around the world without fear.

“You hear the chillen playin’?”

“Yessir,” Bartimaeus said.

“Where they at?”

He turned to his left and pointed.

“Good. Good. Now where is that bird?”

Bartimaeus pointed to a treetop far to the right.

“Good. You doin’ good. Now. You gotta be able to walk around in all o’ this without bein’ scared you gon’ bump into everything. All you gotta do is listen. I been teachin’ you this kinda stuff since you was little, so you gotta start doin’ it on yo’ own now. I know you blind, but you still gotta be a man.”

Bartimaeus nodded.

“Go get that bucket from under the old cypress tree in the backyard and bring it back to me. Picture everything in yo’ head. You know where the house is and you know everything ’round it.”

Bartimaeus walked with outstretched arms. The children suspended their play and watched as though beholding a performance. When he disappeared behind the house, they waited, unsure of what he was doing, but somehow aware that the show wasn’t over. His return with the bucket made them jittery, and when he placed it before Gus, only inches from where his father stood, Gus shouted, “Yes!” and the children cheered. Gus told them to return to their play.

“How ’bout hide-and-seek?” Caroline suggested. “We can play that without gettin’ dirty.”

Eva Mae hated hide-and-seek, but consented for everyone else’s sake. Her desire was to take her “wife” home and say happy birthday in her own private way. Of course she couldn’t do that, at least not in the moment, so she hid in obvious places, allowing other kids to find her and deem themselves clever.

“Cake’s ready, children!” Emma Jean called from the porch. “Come and get it!”

“Yeah!” they screamed, and herded past her into the house. Just as she turned to reenter, Sugar Baby declared from the road, “A change is a-comin’! A change is a-comin’!”

“Go home, fool!” Emma Jean shouted before remembering he didn’t have one. “This party ain’t for grown folks and it sho ain’t for drunk folks!”