The Future Has a Past (8 page)

Luella was uncomfortable and flustered with so many things happening so fast around her. “No need to do that. We in a hurry anyway. Silki was just leavin.” She looked at Silki’s hand which is still reaching out to her for the money and is ashamed to give him money in front of Mattie. Luella sighed and opened her purse again, saying, “Ahhh, yes, well . . . here,” handed him a few bills, “this is just a little somethin for helpin me with all these packages.”

Mattie eyes weren’t big enough or quick enough to see all she wanted to see, but she saw the money, the boxes, the bags and the red dress. “Sho musta been a lot of help. And I ain’t never seen that there suit before either, Silki. And new shoes!”

Silki dropped the money Luella had just given him on the floor, on purpose, so Mattie could see what a man he is.

Mattie did. “SHO musta been a lotta help . . . or somethin!”

Silki smiles a satisfied smile, even with the little money, fifty dollars or so, he has in his hand. “Okay, baby, I’m gone now. Don’t forget to give yourself plenty time to get to Aunty’s house and everything. It’s most four o’clock now.”

Momentarily, Luella is happy. “Alright! See you at five o’clock.” She watched Silki as he crossed the yard to her backyard gate, his head bent, counting the money. She sighed, deeply, and slowly closed the door.

Trying to ignore Mattie, Luella began bustling around the room. Clearing the boxes, folding her new clothes, running to her room for her grandmother’s cardboard suitcase. Glowering, Mattie just watched her, standing with her hands on her hips. Finally Luella said, “Well, how you doin, Mattie?” She didn’t wait for an answer, she just asked, “What do you want? You can see I’m in a awful hurry. I got a lot to do . . . I got a pointment at five o’clock.”

Mattie raised one hand in the air, “You sposed to be a church woman. Your mama raised you right and took good care’a you. Now . . . you ain’t showing no principleations. You ought to follow in her footsteps! Yeah . . . she was a good woman! You ain nothin but a fool!”

Luella had been changing clothes and was now in her new slip. She stopped and looked at Mattie, surprised. “I ain’t in your shoes and I am not in your house. And, now, I’m supposed to help myself! I’m takin care of me and I’m gonna be a real woman with a real man, and if you don’t like it, don’t stand there and watch me be something I always wanted to be . . . somebody’s somethin!” In a gentler tone, Luella added, “My mama wasn’t ever anybody’s woman.”

Mattie misread the tone. “Girl, you too old to be a fool . . . talkin bout bein somebody’s woman! Huh! And your mama musta had somebody cause she had you! So what if he left? They all leave. At least, she didn’t go off with him, like you doin!”

Luella tried to continue preparing her clothes and talk to Mattie at the same time. “I ain’t too old! And I ain’t no fool! And I am somebody’s woman! I want a man who won’t leave. MY man! And I GOT one! Now . . . you stop tryin to tear me down . . . make me sad . . . and lonely again.”

But Mattie was too selfish to hear. “Girl! Money is important. You ain sposed to give it away! To no man! What would your mama say?”

Exasperated, Luella said, “My mother dear is dead. I ain’t. I’m standin here, breathing . . . right in front of you. I am ALIVE. I’m alone. You had you somethin to get your children with. I ain’t got nothin but some little money . . . what won’t give me no babies . . . and a big empty life. So don’t you tell me what I’m sposed to do . . . you go do what you sposed to do. And pay me back my money.”

Mattie didn’t really want to hurt Luella and ruin her chances for some of that money, but she wasn’t all that smart herself. She said, “You twenty-five years old!”

Luella gave pound for pound, “You forty-eight years old. Why I got to be better’n you? You ain’t been so smart. Ain’t no man at your house, that blongs to you. Ain’t no man waiting on you, workin for you.” Again, Luella’s tone softened because she meant nobody any harm. “Mattie . . . I’m me. I want to be me. I don’t want to listen to nobody no more, but me. And (lying), I’m twenty-two years old.”

Mattie, encouraged by Luella’s softer tone again, “You buyin that man! And bought men ain gonna stay no longer than the money. When it gone . . . they gone too! You ain got nough money to hold that Silki man long enough to write ‘my man’ on a cupcake!” Mattie looked at Luella’s sad, little profile as she turned her head away and she realized she was hurting her own chances. She changed her tune to a friendlier one.

“You ought to save that money and help some of your friends that you can count on when you down. Now, I don’t need,” Mattie stopped to smooth her dress and straighten her shoulders, “no help. But . . . I could use some. And . . . and you could do it. You don’t need nothin . . . you got everthin. And you ain down . . . You young. You ain’t got no kids. And me? I am down, right long in here . . . now. If you could give . . .”

Sadly, Luella answered her, “If I could give you my dreams, you wouldn’ want them . . . wouldn’t even want to hear bout em. Nor my loneliness . . . nor misery. Not my pain in my soul.” Becoming annoyed again, she said, “You don’t care bout those things of mine, you just keep talkin bout my money. MY money! What you really here for, Mattie? You one of my friends I can count on? You want me to be the friend YOU can count on. Are you my friend to tell me what I don’t need? What I do need? What I should buy? With my own money?!”

Trying to scoff at Luella’s truth and not knowing much to do with the truth, Mattie said, “Stop talkin foolishness, girl. Sure, I’m one’a your friends you can count on. Ain I always been? Ain I been your mama’s friend? Your mama loved me! (Lying) She always helped me.”

In the meantime, Corrine had come home and she could hear them when they spoke loudly. She did not go over to Luella’s house, she just sat on her porch and listened to hear Luella’s mind work.

Luella looked at her kitchen clock and started trying to dress again. She took a girdle out of a bag, studying it. She put her hand on her hip and looks at Mattie, “My mama didn’t allow you to come over here. And I know she never gave you no money. She never gave anybody any of her money cept the church. And since she been dead, I ain’t never needed you, but you always need five or ten dollars. I let you have it, but I want it back. I ain’t never needed you before and I don’t plan to, cause I’m gonna be married with a husband takin care of me.”

Mattie made a last try. “I just don’t want you to be no fool, girl. You need to count on . . . a friend. Let me tell you what to do with that money the preacher gave you. How much you got?”

Luella started to put on her girdle, but looked at Mattie like she was crazy. “Practice on your own money.”

Mattie couldn’t quit. “Somebody sure goin to take vantage of you!”

Luella sat down, breathless from struggling with the girdle which was still just over her thighs. She was very sad because she wanted to think happy thoughts, love thoughts, and Mattie just would not leave her alone to be glad about her future. Sadly, she said to Mattie, “That’s what my mama always tellin me. Says, ‘Luella . . . don’t be no fool, girl. You ugly. You ugly and ain’t nobody ever gonna love you but your mama. So you betta work hard right here with me, get you some money and save it, put it away, and when the hard days come, as you get old, cause you sure gonna be alone when you get old, too, chile. Ain’t nobody ever, EVER gonna wanta marry you! You just ugly . . . like me . . . and you ain’t even shaped right neither. But . . . if you gets you some money . . . you can pay somebody to come in here and take care of you if you ever sick. And stick to the church.’ ”

Mattie relished the thought, “She was tryin to be a mother to you, just like I am. Tryin to be a mother to you.”

Corrine, on her own porch, almost fell out of her chair.

Luella’s mind was lost in the pain of her mother’s world but she spoke out loud, “Mama always say, ‘Don’t think bout no love, chile. No man.’ Then she would laugh that tight laugh of hers. ‘Don’t you even think bout no love cause some things ain’t meant for love and you one of them things wasn’t meant for no love.’ ”

Mattie fell under the spell, said, “I guess I wasn’t neither. All my mens leave me!” But her attention snapped back to her own plight. She looked at Luella closely, said, “That’s why we got to stick together, girl.”

But Luella snapped back to the present herself. “Least you had some, Mattie. Leastways you know what men are like. Mama say all a man want to do is drop a baby in my belly and if that baby come here lookin like me, be a shame fore God. I don’t blive God’s shamed of what a person look like.”

Mattie nodded her head, “Ms. Sedalia was a good, wise, Christian woman. I’d do what she say . . . if I was you.”

Luella was lost in the pain of her mother’s words again, “Said she woulda been shamed to have any more children. Say she didn’t want no more if they all was goin to look like me.” She breathed a deep sigh and was silent a moment. “But I knew she couldn’t have no more if wasn’t no man around. My daddy was gone and didn’t nobody . . . nobody . . . no other man come for her.”

Mattie shrugged, “I don’t blive Ms. Sedalia let em. And you ain’t ugly, Luella . . . I don’t think you ugly,” she laughed.

Thoughtfully Luella said, “I do. You know, I’m still a . . .” she paused, then said softly, “virgin?” She looks at Mattie and realizes all she has said and became brisk again. “But, now, I’m goin.”

She got up to go into her bedroom, shuffling with the girdle around her knees. “I’m goin with Silki. My Lord! This girdle thing act like it’s fightin me!”

While Luella was in the other room, Mattie sneaked a peek in the rest of the bags and starts toward Luella’s purse as Luella returns, the girdle in place. Mattie opens the shoe box instead and holds up a pair of red shoes, then tries to try one on. “It’s too small!”

Luella sits down holding her sides, exhausted. “Whew! Well, I got that on!” She lifted the red dress, then put it down as she reached for her new perfume. She sprayed it everywhere; under her arms, down her bosom. After putting the dress on, she sprayed under it, too. Finally she looked at Mattie as if she had forgotten her.

“Oh! You better go now, Mattie, cause I got to go. It’s gettin late,” she said while having a little trouble bending over to put on her new shoes.

Mattie, persistent as ever, asked, “Why you got to give him so much of your money? Where you goin anyway?”

Happy again, Luella answers, “Memphis! A big city!”

“Well, you betta leave some of that money with me so you won’t be broke when you get back! Cause you comin back! Alone! And broke! Blive that!”

Luella goes to the door, opening it for Mattie, saying, “I’m coming back with a husband! You won’t have to worry, Mattie. Thank you kindly.”

Mattie slowly goes out, saying, “I’ll sure pray for you.”

As Luella watches Mattie leave, she mutters to herself, “I magine I would need more than your prayers, Mattie.” She gathered her things in her bag, looks around her little house and goes out of the front door, and as she does she spies the black wreath. She picks the wreath up, saying, “You dead now, too. Just like my mama.” She places the wreath carefully on a bush. “You lay here on this land my mother loved so much, with both our lifes.” Luella went back into the house to get the kitten and the bird, Corrine already had the dog. She looks back at the house. “This is goin to be a house of life now. And I’m goin to get me some love!”

Unused to the high-heel shoes Silki had picked, Luella teetered as she walked over to knock on Corrine’s door to leave her pets and to say, “I’m goin now.” Corrine looked sad, Luella looked happy. As she was leaving, Aunt Corrine stopped her at the door, saying, “Luella, sweetheart, you have made up your mind to go to Memphis with him, such as he is, and I’m not going to try to stop you anymore. But I want to say one last thing, please.” Luella waited, shoes already hurting and girdle choking her, too.

“You know, you got a good heart, girl. A good, soft heart. And you gettin ready to be amongst a world of hard-hearted people. A good-hearted person is never safe around hard-hearted people because they are always looking for a way to creep inside it, take advantage of you. You. They can come at you more ways than the wind, and you know we never know how the wind is going to come. You be careful, baby. Because they all will be in need. They poor, most of em, and being poor is dangerous to some people. All kinds of people can make lies sound just like the truth, but it won’t be the truth. You guard your heart, you hear me? Guard it with your mind. And let me know if there is anything I can do. And . . . you come on home where you already know you’re safe. I’m not saying you can never go away, I’m just saying, there is a time; and there is a way to go.” She said a few more things as Luella carefully made it down the stairs to the gate, then they said their last good-byes.

Corrine watched from her window as Luella, carrying her suitcase, teetered and stumbled down the street. “Lord, please answer my prayers, please. Watch over Luella.”

Part III

Silki and Luella met at the bus station. He had wrapped a belt around his suitcase because it was packed fuller than it had ever been and it wasn’t too new. He grumbled a bit because it was getting late, but they boarded the bus and were soon on their way. As they were settling in their seats, Silki asked, “Did you get the rest of the money?”

“Oh, I forgot! After you left, Mattie worried me so.”

Silki snapped his head around to her, “Forgot?! Now how we gonna do what I planned for you?” His turned his face back to the window and pouted, angry. “You let that cow mess up your mind!” Then, after a moment, “Well, how much you got then?”

“One hundred dollars. You still got the fifty dollars.”

Silki had only lost twenty dollars in a crap game. “No! Told you was some things I had to do!” He turned again to the window, then back to her. “Well . . . shit. Give me the money so I can carry it. It ain’t safe with you.”

Luella looked around the bus, said in a low voice, “Not now. Not out here in the open where people can see.”

“What I care bout these people?”

Luella didn’t answer so Silki turned back to the window and said very little all the rest of the way, except, “You better clear up in your head who the boss is.” Soon he fell asleep. Luella slipped her shoes off, they were killing her feet, then she dozed a bit. They arrived in Memphis at nine forty-five that night.

The bus station was surrounded by bright lights and people milling around. Silki was grinning, walking in front of Luella. Luella was between smiles and frowns. She had had a hard time getting her shoes back on her sore feet and she had to trot every once in a while to keep up with Silki.

Finally, he stopped to ask a black man in a rickety cab where a good hotel was.

“Can take you to a good rooming house,” the man replied.

“Take us then. Get in, Luella.”

Silki and the cabdriver talked and Silki learned where the places were he wanted to go to.

When they arrived at the rooming house, Silki left Luella to pay the cab while he took his bag and checked into the room. The landlady, Ms. Ready, looked them over and, seeing Luella looked respectable, showed them her nicest vacant room. “Five dollars please, in advance.” The room usually went for two dollars a night.

Silki turned to Luella, “Give me the money, Luella, I ain’t got no small bills.” Luella opened her purse, glancing at Ms. Ready, who was taking account of everything, and gave him twenty-five dollars.

Silki shook his head. “Give me all the money, Luella.” She gave him twenty-five more. He gave a disgusted sigh, but handed Ms. Ready five dollars. “We gonna see if we like it here, then we’ll pay the rest of the week.”

“It be due tomorrow mornin,” said Ms. Ready as she handed him the key and left.

Silki began to bustle around the room, getting settled. He put on a fresh, new shirt, shined his shoes with a thin towel from the face-towel rack. Said, “Come on now, Luella, we got to go, it’s gettin late! After ten o’clock.”

Luella wanted to take off her girdle and the red shoes. She was numb around her hips and her feet really hurt, but she felt she couldn’t. Her feet felt as though they had claws gripping them. Half her body was numb and the other half was in pain. But . . . she had to follow her man.

Ms. Ready recognized Silki’s type when she first laid eyes on him, but she couldn’t get Luella right clear. She thought Luella obviously didn’t belong with Silki. “She dumb, but must have somethin. Prob’ly money.”

Silki, grinning, took Luella to the Blue Blew Inn, a jazzy bar with a dance floor, naturally. Seemed like a thousand colored lights to Luella, but the place was still dark. She tried to become excited as she tripped over people and tried to wave the smoke away from her face. Through smoke that wouldn’t be waved away, she saw more people in one place than she had seen at any time in her life, except church. But this crowd beat the church crowd. The music was the blues and it was low-down and lower. The people dancing seemed hardly to be moving, just clinging close as they could.

There was a couple just leaving from a table near the bar. Silki pulled Luella, stumbling, behind him as he headed for that table. He was happy. He was in his element. After they sat down, Luella leaned heavily on the table, trying to ease her tired, hurting body. Silki primped and styled, his feet eager to dance to the good music.

He waved a hand with money in it at the overworked waitress, who looked at the sharp-looking Silki and took his order with a smile. When the drinks arrived, Silki sipped at his a few minutes as he looked around the room. Then he grabbed Luella’s hand, pulling her up to dance. She followed him, reluctantly, trying to smile. In pain. Her dancing was not quite up to date, but she leaned on him, which she liked and which made the dancing bearable.

Silki paid Luella very little attention, he was too busy watching himself and all the other people in the club. When the music finally ended, they returned to their seats and he waved more money to catch the waitress’s eye for another drink.

At that moment a fine-looking, flashy-dressed woman entered the Blue Blew Inn as Silki was waving his money. She saw the money before she saw Silki. The bartender called to her, “Hey She-She! Com’ere girl!” and she went to take a barstool vacated just for her. Silki turned to look at who the bartender was talking to. Silki liked what he saw.

Luella hadn’t finished her last drink when the new drinks arrived. She was happy to be with Silki, but she was also miserable. Everything was happening too fast. But, oh, her feet and her numb behind.

Silki reached for Luella to dance again. Luella, feet in too much pain, bowed her head.

“Come on now, Luella! Let’s dance! We in the big city now! You can’t lay back on your ass like this! I done spent all this money!! Trying to show you somethin bout life! Come on! Live!”

As Luella started pulling herself up, she felt a rip begin in the seam of her tight, red dress. She quickly put her hand over the ripping seam and started to sit back down. “Silki . . . we been travelin so long . . . I am tired. I just gotta rest my feet . . .” But Silki is not looking at her, not listening to her. She looked to see where he was looking. He was looking at She-She.

For Luella’s benefit, Silki started looking around the club to see if he could find someone to dance with as though he had not already chosen She-She. “Well . . . then . . . damn. I’ll just have to dance with somebody else.” He started walking away, calling to She-She, “Say there . . . young lady! She,” he waved his hand back at Luella, “tired. Come on, let’s dance!”

She-She crossed her long pretty legs and leaned back on the bar. “I dance better when I’ve had a drink. Adds a little fire to my blood.” She smiled up at Silki. “And I step a little higher.”

Standing over her, looking down at her, he answers, “Well, get you a drink! Get two! Add a little MORE fire to your blood. Bartender! Two drinks here. Ah . . .” points to Luella, “give her one, too. If she can wake up long enough.”

Luella looked at her man, slowly and sadly. She wiped her forehead and looked like she was going to cry. She slowly nudged her shoes off, then she picked up her glass and drank it all down.

She-She looked at Luella, then smiled up at Silki, saying, “That your mama? Look like she need to be home. Better get some more money from her, quick, if that’s where you get it from, cause it looks like she is gonna go to sleep.”

Silki took affront at her words, “After all,” he thought, “I am a man.” So he said to her, “That ain’t your bizness to worry bout! Let her go to sleep! I got my money! Now! You ready to dance or not?”

She-She threw her head back and laughed, throwing her hair as she said, “I stay ready! Now, you sure you got some money? Cause I don’t like no ‘po’ nothing! No how! No way! No time!”

Silki pulled her into his arms as he said, “I ain’t never gonna be ‘po’ again. I done found my callin. Now, I’m callin you. You better hurry up and answer. Come on now, let’s dance.”

But She-She liked to tease, “Are you sure you can dance? I don’t like nobody messin up my feelings on the dance floor!” She stood as she hollered over her shoulder to the bartender, “Give us another drink, Ju Baby!”

As they moved to the dance space, Silki told her, “My name is Silki, baby. If I ever mess with your feelings we won’t be dancing! Say . . . I could ask you, if you don’t like ‘po’ what you doin in here? But, mama, you look so good, I don’t even care!”

People stepped back as Silki and She-She held the floor in a very sensual dance. Not too slow or even too close, but extremely sexual movements. It was like a dance symbolic of all the Silkis and She-Shes in the world. Promises, lying promises. A sensual, false-true longing and unaware loneliness and Promises. Were the surface scratched, it would reveal the underlying fear that he was getting broke and might not make it. Anywhere. Fail. Her fear that time was already passing her by, she couldn’t reach out and touch it any longer. It was changing her value in her world. She would, inevitably, be less to nothing. Promises that would be difficult for them to fulfill for themselves, or for them to fulfill for anyone else.

One never looked away from the other’s eyes. Oh, those lyin eyes were on the promise. Even when they made dance turns, their eyes sought and found the other’s without a second lost. They came to an uneasy understanding during that dance. When the music stopped, they stood together waiting for it to begin again, and although the music was faster this time, they danced at the same slow rhythm. Silki wanted She-She. She-She wasn’t sure if she wanted him; she had already had many of him. Ahhhhh, but . . . the promise, the promise. It was “love” they wanted, but “love” was breaking the rule of the game they wanted to play. To the Silkis and She-Shes of the world, love was a weakness. It cost you. Their need was so great they possibly couldn’t afford to pay.

Near the end of the third dance, Silki stopped and pointed to Luella with his thumb, then made an outside motion, like pointing to the rooming house, then pointed back to himself and then at the floor. As if to say, “After I get rid of her, I’ll be back!”

Sitting at the table over the watered-down drinks, Luella was wide awake and sleepy by turns, but she had been watching Silki when she could hold her eyes open. She looked at what she thought was the beauty of She-She and it looked ten thousand times more beautiful than it actually was. She looked at She-She’s tight yellow dress and felt her own dress ripping even more. The girdle was choking her soul that wanted to breathe. Her heart was like something that had been washed and stretched all out of shape, never to be whole and good again.

When she saw Silki coming back toward her, her poor little heart got ready to leap for joy. He took her arm and pulled her up. She asked him to wait until she could put her shoes on again, but he pulled her out the door as she dragged her feet trying to get her heel to go down into the shoes; they wouldn’t, so she just clopped out to the cab. They had to take a cab even though the rooming house was not far, because Silki was embarrassed by her, and she absolutely could not walk and struggle with the numbness of her behind.

Silki helped Luella undress, but not with lover’s hands. With hasty hands. He put her to bed. Through a yawn, she asked, “You comin?” A yearning for the knowledge of love still struggled for awakening in her tired pained body.

He didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “You go to sleep, I be here directly.” So she relaxed and went to sleep. When he had finished fooling around, wasting time until she was asleep, he was packed again and his bag was by the door. The last thing he did was go through Luella’s purse which was on the dresser and remove all the money that was left. “That’ll teach her she shoulda brought all of it, then I coulda left her some!” Then he was gone, tipping down the stairs so he wouldn’t wake Ms. Ready. Ms. Ready saw him anyway. It was her business to see everything and she almost always succeeded in her business.