Tina Mcelroy Ansa (50 page)

When Lena told Herman she couldn’t believe that things had settled down at the office and everyone was taking her place doing what she did best, he wasn’t a bit surprised.

“Lena, right is right, and right don’t wrong nobody. It’s like when a miracle happen. Don’t nobody get wronged by it. It works out fo’ everyone.”

That’s what Lena began praying for right then. A miracle to keep everyone happy and blessed just the way they all were.

I
n honor of all her blessings, Lena planned to cook a huge feast for her first Thanksgiving with Herman—her main blessing.

Besides the twelve-pound Butterball turkey and her mama’s corn bread dressing, she was fixing pole beans, onions and little new potatoes; crookneck squash casserole; rice and gravy with giblets and boiled turkey egg chopped up in it; turnip greens and their creamy sweet roots; sliced tomatoes from plants they had hung upside down in the loft of the barn; Herman’s mother’s china briar bread; sautéed green onions; cranberry sauce; a sweet-potato pie; her own bourbon pecan pie; her grandmother’s cream cheese pound cake and her mama’s ambrosia.

She had gone over to the house on Forest Avenue to retrieve the huge turkey roaster that Nellie had stored on a top shelf of the pantry. Now that the ghosts and demons had settled down since she had found her mother’s recipes, her family’s house was peaceful and serene. The house now called lovingly to her every few weeks, and she’d go by
and sit in the kitchen or on the forest-green screened porch or upstairs in her parents’ bedroom on the floor.

With a pad and pen in her hand, she had gone over the menu with Herman two or three times just to see him lick his lips in anticipation of the huge meal. James Petersen had said he would be busy Thanksgiving Day and would appreciate a plate late in the evening. So plans were for Lena and Herman to dine alone on Thursday evening.

As the holiday week rolled around bringing with it a sudden warm spell, Lena felt she had so much to be thankful for: her privacy and the time to enjoy her life, Herman and their still-hot lovemaking—still hot and hotter seven months into their relationship.

On this Wednesday afternoon just as Lena was enumerating the blessings of her new life and peeling fat Valencia oranges for ambrosia, she heard car horns beeping down at the new gate Herman had erected near James Petersen’s house.

“Now, who in the world could that be the day before Thanksgiving?” she asked Herman, who sat cracking soft-shell Georgia pecans for pies and roasting with butter and a little salt the way he liked them. Herman said nothing. He just kept cracking the nuts into a red glass bowl in a piece of newspaper on his lap.

Lena rinsed her hands off in the sink and walked over to the intercom panel in the Great Jonah Room. When James Petersen came over the intercom, Lena was struck by the force of his voice.

“Lena!” James Petersen said with real incredulity. “You ain’t gon’ believe this, but there’s four, naw, five cars a’ folks out here. They say they come to visit.

“And they got food!”

As the holiday season approached, it seemed that everyone in Mulberry had reverted to old familiar habits, routines, forgetting what he or she had learned over the last five or six months about Lena no longer being the hand everyone fanned with.

It reminded Lena of so many people who can’t afford to give their
families the kinds of Christmas they want suddenly saying, “Aww, fuck it. Buy it anyway. Hell, it’s Christmas!”

Lena had heard that phrase repeated hundreds of times at The Place or at the realty company during the holidays. “Hell, it’s Christmas! Give me that fifth a’ Chivas. And throw in a bottle of that Harvey’s Bristol Cream for my old lady. Hell, you right, man. It’s Christmas!”

“Here, take this little rent money and get the children’s Christmas out the layaway. Shoot, it’s Christmas! And Christmas comes but once a year!”

Old women who had not brought Lena cooked food since the summer were riding up to her gate with their sons and daughters and grands as if they had been invited for the entire holiday weekend.

Folks brought so much holiday food out to her house on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and all that Thursday morning that Lena had to send James Petersen to head them off and send them back to town.

James Petersen was mad, not at all in the holiday spirit. The unexpected, unneeded, unwanted, unsolicited visitors and food
really
interrupted his writing time. He had learned a thing or two himself from Lena in the last couple of months about claiming his own time for himself.

That week, James Petersen was just getting to the climax of the mystery novel,
The Way the River Flowed
, that he was writing. And the last thing he wanted to deal with was a bunch of folks from town with a bunch of food that wasn’t needed.

Any minute now, James Petersen felt, he was about to come up with the key to his southern murder mystery.

Then, “honk, honk, honk” at his gate.

He wasn’t going to have it.

He threw down his pen and stormed out to the gate.

Students home from college for the first time in the semester came streaming out to pay respects and show off grades.

“Mama said don’t bother to call Miss McPherson first,” the eager young people said to James Petersen. “Mama said just to come on out.”

James Petersen called with each new arriving car.

Buzz.

“Lena, it’s Cliona from Yamacraw.”

“Well, James Petersen, please tell her I’m getting ready for my own Thanksgiving. I’m just not in any position to receive company right now. And tell her I said Happy Thanksgiving.”

Buzz.

“Lena, it’s Peanut and Dude Sr. and Dude Jr. and Dude the Third and some more of your daddy’s friends. They say they come to share a little holiday cheer with you.” James Petersen did not even try to hide the sardonic tone in his voice. “They got a fifth with ’em, but it’s ’bout empty.”

Lena finally told him to put up a sign.

“And what do you think the sign oughta say?” he wanted to know.

Lena was baffled, too, for a minute. It
ought to
say, “Leave us the fuck alone,” she thought.

“Just say, ’Do Not Disturb,’” Lena said.

She thought a moment and added, “No, James Petersen, write, ’Please, Do Not Disturb.’”

She paused to think, then said, “Write, ’Please, Do Not Disturb,’ then add the name, address and phone number of the soup kitchen downtown, the one where my children go. Okay?”

“All right. Good idea,” James Petersen muttered, almost to himself. “I got some work I want to get back to.”

“Well, after you put the sign out, you’re through. And thank you, James Petersen.”

“You welcome, Lena,” he said. Then, he chuckled and added, “Happy Thanksgiving,” sounding just like his brother.

Lena had tried to sound calm as she spoke, but she was mad as hell.

“Happy Thanksgiving to you, James Petersen,” she said.

Herman had disappeared into the woods. Lena had to go looking for him. She found him down on the river deck with his fishing pole and line dangling in the chilly waters of Cleer Flo’.

Lena came storming down the deck’s wide walk past the blooming pink and red and white camellia bushes.

“Herman, I’m mad enough to spit,” she said, coming up to him.

“Uh-uh, Lena, don’t be spittin’ mad in the river. Cleer Flo’ started for the first time when you did that. Ain’t no telling what’ll happen this time.”

Herman’s revelation stopped Lena right in her tracks. “What do you mean, Herman? Cleer Flo’ happened last time?” He chuckled and said, “Right here where you caused Cleer Flo’, hey, Lena?”

“Herman, what in the world are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Good Lord, Lena, baby.” Herman’s voice was mildly irritated with a splash of love. “You don’t even know you caused Cleer Flo’?”

Lena had forgotten that spring morning when, in her irritation with the world, she had stood on her deck and spat out the words “You old muddy nasty river!!”

Then, like an old woman, Lena had spat in the murky waters of the Ocawatchee. In a flash, Herman’s comments brought it all back to her.

He looked at her with those clear sharp eyes with a little blue in the whites like a boy’s and no trace of red. He sighed deeply and lay his cane fishing pole down.

“Lena, this ain’t ’bout folks botherin’ you. It’s ’bout you knowin’ yo’ own se’f, baby.

“Baby, you got the power to get mad and cause som’um like Cleer Flo’, and you don’t even know it? Yet you ’round here getting heartless mad just ’cause some folks come when it ain’t convenient. Lena, baby, you got to do better.”

Herman had not meant to sound so chiding. He picked up his
pole again and went back to fishing as he talked, trying to sound casual.

“All them folks comin’ out here from town just people bein’ human. That’s all they doin’, Lena, just being human. What you gonna do? Fill in all their spaces fo’ them? Be mad all the time? Abandon them altogether? They just tryin’ to love you best they can.”

“I guess you’re right, Herman,” Lena said, trying to forget her annoyance at folks intruding on her private holiday with her man. She sat down beside Herman on the dock, rested her chin on her hands and looked out over the rushing Cleer Flo’ waters. Herman made things so clear for her sometimes.

Lena hated to feel angry and hurt. She had even started to feel a little sick to her stomach as she had stomped down to the dock. All she had wanted was to enjoy a quiet Thanksgiving repast alone with Herman.

Now, she could feel her stomach settling down as if she had taken one of Sister’s calmatives with leaves from Lena’s stand of two-hundred-year-old bay trees. Lena was more than glad to toss off the old heavy dirty-feeling cloak of anger that had begun to settle around her shoulders. She watched the tiny peaks on the surface of the river begin to disappear and took a good deep breath.

“You know, Herman, I don’t know the last time I have been mad,” she said with surprise.

T
he moment Lena walked in the crowded front entrance of The Place the Saturday after Thanksgiving dressed in soft jeans, one of Herman’s shirts, short boots and an oversized riding habit jacket, she said to herself, “Something’s up.”

A sad old blues song was playing on the jukebox that struck Lena as an odd choice for folks on a holiday weekend morning. Usually, something like “Let the Good Times Roll” would be blaring. And for there to be so many people present, there was hardly another sound in the joint. Lena heard her mother’s voice say, “You can hear a rat piss on cotton in here this morning.”

When Lena had called the day before to tell Gloria she was coming into town the next morning so she could say “Happy Holidays” to some folks she had missed on Thanksgiving, Gloria had been pleased. “Oh, folks will be happy to hear that, girl.”

Now, however, Lena sensed a distinct chill in the air. She did not feel that usual quilt of warmth, love and affection that had always greeted her at the door. In fact, now that Lena noticed it, people
standing and sitting around seemed suddenly to find a piece of lint on their lapels or take an interest in an old sputtering neon beer sign.

Since the cold November morning Jonah and his poker buddies had toasted her birth there, Lena had gotten nothing but love from The Place. On the wall of her office at home, she had a photograph of herself as an infant, bundled in a soft yellow blanket her grandmother had knitted and propped up in an Old Forester bourbon box on the counter of the liquor store.

But that was not how it felt this holiday weekend morning.

Through the glass partition, Lena could see Gloria waving at her as the strong little compact woman tried to push her way from behind the counter of the liquor store. But there were so many people on both sides of The Place that Gloria could not get to her. Lena noticed, however, that a path seemed to open right up for
her
to get through the crowd.

“Morning, Peanut. Morning, Bubbles. Morning, Miss Jessie. Morning, Miss Etta. Hey, Dude Jr., how you doing? Miss Cliona, what you doing down here?” Lena greeted folks. No one said a word.

She didn’t get one single response. Folks were as tight-lipped as deacons.

Lena stopped in her tracks and looked around at everyone. Peanut wouldn’t even look her straight in the eye. And Dude Jr. picked up a broom and started sweeping in one spot.

“What’s wrong with ya’ll?” she asked lightly. “Cat got your tongues? Or did everybody have too much Thanksgiving celebration?”

At that, Lena heard two or three people in the crowd suck their teeth in disgust.

Gloria had reached the partition dividing the liquor store and juke joint and was loudly rapping on the glass and motioning for Lena to come to her. Now!

It was too late. Lena was encircled by a gang of regulars. She noticed, too, that there were some faces there that did not belong to the usual customers. In fact, there were some folks present whom she had never seen inside The Place before.

There were a couple of people from St. Martin de Porres Church who she knew approved of neither drinking nor juking nor the McPherson family. Clara, the only woman she ever fired from Candace, was standing near the back of the crowd with her arms folded. And Lena thought she recognized some people from Sherwood Forest who owed her back rent from the eighties.

“What’s going on?” Lena asked, still smiling but quizzically. The crowd of Mulberry citizens tightened around her and ushered her over to a tiny table and sat her down.

Despite signs to the contrary, Lena thought for a second that her people had planned a little belated surprise party for her the way they sometimes did when they forgot her birthday. But the sober tone of the gathering dispelled that illusion.

“Now, Lena, don’t get yourself all upset,” Cliona from Yamacraw stepped forward and said soothingly.

“All upset? All upset about what? What do ya’ll think you’re doing?”

“It’s what’s called an ‘intervention,’ baby,” Cliona from Yamacraw explained slowly as if she were talking to an idiot.