Voodoo River (1995) (19 page)

I looked at her.

"Please." Her face softened and she took my arm. "Let's try her shop again. If she's not there, we'll go to the hotel."

I took her back to Eunice.

We got there just before four, and again I had to get out and look in the window, and again Edith wasn't there. I went back to the car, and got in shaking my head. Jodi said, "What do you have to do to get a break around here?"

We were just pulling away when Edith Boudreaux's metallic blue Oldsmobile passed us and parked at the curb and Edith got out. Jodi and I saw her at the same time. I said, "That's her."

Jodi came erect and stiff in the seat, her face almost to the windshield, both hands on the dash. Her lips parted, and there seemed a kind of electrical field flooding the car. I looked from Jodi Taylor to Edith Boudreaux and back again. Looking at Edith was like looking at an older, softer version of Jodi.

It took Edith maybe fifteen seconds to move from her car to her shop and then she was gone.

I said, "Are you okay?"

Jodi stared at the closed door. Her breasts rose and fell, and a pulse hammered in the smooth skin beneath her jaw.

I said, "Jodi?"

Jodi blinked twice and looked at me, and then she shook her head. She said, "I was wrong. I can't leave now. I have to go in there."

Chapter
20

T he sun was high and bright, and the sky was a deep, rich blue, and maybe I hadn't heard her correctly. Maybe she wasn't talking about Edith Boudreaux. Maybe we had taken a wrong turn coming back to town and we weren't even in Eunice, Louisiana, anymore. Maybe we were in Mayberry, and she had seen Aunt Bea slip into this dress shop and she wanted to meet the old gal. Sure. That was it. I said, "I thought you didn't want to meet her.""I've changed my mind." She didn't look at me when she said it. She was looking past me, at the dress shop, as if Edith might suddenly make a break for it and disappear.

I said, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

She shook her head.

"The smart thing is to bring in Lucy Chenier. Lucy knows about this."

Jodi shook her head again. "I might chicken out."

"If you're not sure, maybe you should chicken out."

"Why are you trying to talk me out of this?"

"Because you were adamant about not meeting her. Once you meet her you can't take it back, either for you or for her. I want you to be sure."

She kept her eyes on the store, drumming her fingers on the dash.

I said, "At the very least I should go in first and prepare her."

She said, "Let's just get this over with." Jodi pushed out of the car the way you come off the high board, all at once so that you don't give yourself time to reconsider. The way you do when you're not sure you want to go, but you're going to go anyway.

I got out with her and we crossed the street and went into Edith's place of business, me in trail and Jodi ahead, plowing on come hell or high water. Two women in their sixties were browsing through a rack of summer frocks to our right, and the young blond sales clerk was talking with a red-haired woman who was looking at herself in one of those three-sided mirrors in the rear of the place. Edith was standing at the register, frowning at a sales receipt. She looked up when the little bell chimed and smiled automatically, and then she saw me and her smile froze with the abruptness of a stopping heart. Her eyes went to Jodi for a moment, held there, then came back to me. Jodi froze in the center of the store as if she'd been spiked to the floor. Up close is different than out in the car. I said, "Hi, Mrs. Boudreaux. I hope this is a good time."

She wasn't liking it that I was back. "Well, it isn't really." She looked at Jodi again. She knew that this wasn't the same woman who was with me before. Jodi was still in the dark glasses and ball cap, with her hair pulled back and a shapeless cotton top and big dangly earrings and no makeup. She didn't look the way she did on television.

I went to the counter, trying to act as if this was the most mundane visit in the world. "Mrs. Boudreaux, could we speak with you in private?"

She glanced at Jodi again, and this time the look was curious. "Why?"

"Because we want to discuss something personal, and it's better if we don't do it here." I kept my voice low, so that only Edith could hear.

She shot another glance at Jodi, and now she looked nervous. "My husband spoke quite clearly for us the last time. I don't have anything to say and I'd rather you leave."

Jodi took off the sunglasses. Her eyes hadn't left Edith since we entered, and now Edith was staring back at her.

Edith said, "You look familiar."

Jodi opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. She came closer and stood next to me, so close that her shoulder was touching my arm. She didn't look full-steam-ahead now. Now, she looked the way you would look after you leaped off the board, and realized the pool was empty. She said, "My name is Jodi Taylor."

Edith seemed confused, then nodded and gave a little smile. "You're on television. We see you all the time."

Jodi moved toward Edith Boudreaux. "Mrs. Boudreaux, I believe that you and I are related. State records indicate that I was born to your mother, Pamela Johnson, thirty-six years ago. But I don't believe that. I believe that you gave birth to me. Is that true?"

The color drained from Edith Boudreaux's face, and her lips parted and she said, "Oh my God."

The two women in their sixties turned toward us, one of them holding a rust-colored dress that had to be four sizes too small. "Edie, do you think this works for me?"

Edith didn't hear them. She took a half-step back and then stepped forward again, gripping the Formica counter to steady herself. I smiled at the two women. "I'm sorry, but Mrs. Boudreaux is busy, now."

The woman with the rust dress made a face and said, "I don't think anyone asked you"

Edith blinked six or eight times, then said, "Jill, will you help Maureen, please?" You could barely hear her.

The blond clerk went over to the two women, but Maureen wasn't happy about it.

Jodi said, "There are some questions about myself that I'm hoping you will answer." She said it without emotion or intimacy, as if she had no more stake in the answers than a census taker.

Edith reached out as if to touch Jodi, but Jodi took a half-step back, her hands at her side. I said, "Why don't we go for a walk?"

Edith told the clerk that she had to go out for a while, and the three of us walked across to the square, me telling Edith what we knew and how we knew it. I thought she was going to deny it, but she didn't. I thought she might evade us, or start screaming for her husband, or make a big deal about how dare we invade her life like this, but she didn't do any of that. It was as if she had been waiting thirty-six years for Jodi to walk through the door, and now Jodi had and Edith couldn't stop looking at her. They walked on either side of me, keeping me between them, Jodi with her hands in her pockets, staring straight ahead, Edith anxious and staring at Jodi, as if Jodi might suddenly disappear and Edith wanted to have her committed to memory. When I finished, Edith said, "I can't believe how much she looks like me. She looks more like me than the children I raised." She said it to me, as if Jodi was a dream, and not really there.

I said, "If the state papers Rebenack had were legitimate, then Jodi is the child that Pamela Johnson handed to the state welfare authorities. There aren't any papers that indicate that the child was born to you. Nor are there documents that establish fatherhood."

She shook her head. "No. No, there wouldn't be."

Jodi said, "Then you don't deny that you're my birth mother?"

Edith seemed surprised. "No. No, of course not. Why would I?"

"You denied it thirty-six years ago."

"Oh."

I said, "Well, now that we're all together, maybe I should wait in the yogurt shop and let you two talk."

They both said, "No!" and Jodi grabbed my hand. She said, "I want you to stay. This won't take long."

We walked past a couple of wrought iron benches to a little gazebo in the square. An older man in coveralls and a red engineer's cap was on one of the benches, head back, mouth open, eyes closed. Sleeping. He had a tiny dog on a leash with him, the leash tied to the bench. The dog sat in the shade beneath the man and whined when we passed. The little dog was black and shaggy and its hair was matted. I thought it must be hot, with all the hair. We walked up the steps onto the gazebo and stood there in the shade. It was still hot, there in the shade.

Jodi stood well away from Edith, still holding my hand. She said, "So."

Edith uncrossed her arms, then recrossed them. She started to say something, then stopped. The little dog crept out from under the bench and tried to follow us up onto the gazebo, but reached the end of its leash and cried. Both Edith and Jodi looked at it.

I said, "Don't everybody talk at once."

Jodi frowned. "That's not funny."

"Nope. I guess not."

We stood there some more. The gazebo was sort of nestled in a stand of three mature magnolia trees, and the air was heavy with their scent. The big bumblebees zigged in and around the gazebo like police helicopters on patrol.

Edith said, "I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. I always thought you might come back to me. I would think of you, sometimes, and try to imagine what this moment would be like, and now here we are."

Jodi frowned, and her face pulled into a tight, uncomfortable knot. "Mrs. Boudreaux, I think I should make something clear."

"All right."

"I haven't come here to find my mother. I have a mother. She's the woman who raised me."

Edith glanced at the little dog again. "Of course."

"Just so we understand."

Edith nodded. "Oh, yes." She pooched out her lips, and then she added, "I hope the people who got you were good to you."

"They were. Very."

Edith nodded again.

Jodi said, "Was Leon Williams my father?" She said it abruptly, the same way she had gotten out of the car when she decided to go into Edith's store, like she had to do it that way or it wouldn't get done.

Edith's eyes flagged. Knew it was coming and here it was. "Yes. Leon was your father."

Jodi drew a slow breath, her mouth still the tight knot. "All right," she said. "All right."

Edith uncrossed her arms and cupped her right hand in her left at her breast. She looked at me, and then she looked back at Jodi. "That is what you wanted to know, isn't it?"

Jodi nodded.

Edith again took a single step toward Jodi, and Jodi lifted her free hand, stopping her. She still held onto me. "Please don't."

"Does it bother you that your father was a black man?"

Jodi's face tightened even more. "It seems to bother a great many people."

"It always has," Edith said. "I was just a girl, and Leon wasn't much older. We were children, and we were friends, and it became more than that." Her eyes grew wet and she blinked several times. "I hope you don't hate me for all of this."

Jodi stared at the little dog, and then she leaned against the gazebo rail. Even in the shade it was hot, and a single line of perspiration ran down the side of her face in front of her left ear. She didn't say anything for a while, maybe trying to put it in a kind of order. A couple of flies buzzed around the old man's race and he swatted at them without opening his eyes. She said, "Of course, I don't hate you. Don't be silly."

Edith was blinking harder. "Someone was blackmailing you with this, weren't they?"

"That's right."

Edith smiled softly, but there was no pleasure in it. Just a kind of acknowledgment of shared experience. "Yes, well, I know about that, too. When they say getting in trouble, they really mean it, don't they? It looks like you get everybody in trouble."

Jodi looked at me, embarrassed, as if she suddenly regretted being here and speaking with this woman and witnessing her pain. Edith said, "You've grown into quite a beautiful woman. I'm very proud of you."

Jodi said, "How did Leon Williams die?"

Edith drew breath and closed her eyes. "My father murdered him."

"Because he was black?"

Edith wet her lips and thought for a moment, and I found myself wishing that I were not present. I had no right to what was happening, and no place in it, and the sense of alienness made me feel large and intrusive, but Jodi still gripped my hand, and seemed to be holding on all the tighter. Edith said, "I think he shot Leon because he couldn't bring himself to shoot me."

Jodi said, "Jesus Christ."

Edith leaned back against the gazebo rail and told Jodi how Jodi came to be. Jodi hadn't asked that Edith tell her these things, but it seemed important to Edith, as if she needed to explain herself to Edith as much as to Jodi. She described an impoverished home dominated by rage and a brutal father who beat wife and children alike. She sketched herself as a shy, fearful girl who loved school, not so much for learning but simply because school allowed brief escape from the numbing despair of her home, and that after school she would buy yet more moments of peace by walking along the levees and the bayous, there to read or write in her journal, there to smell the air and enjoy the feeling of safety that being anyplace other than home allowed her. The Edith Boudreaux she described did not seem in any way like the person in the gazebo, but then, of course, she wasn't. She described a day on the bayou, her feet in the water, when Leon Williams had come upon her, an absolutely beautiful young man with a bright, friendly smile, who asked what she was reading (Little Men, she still remembered) and made her laugh (he asked how tall they were) and who, like Edith, dreamed of better things (he wanted to own an Esso station). When Edith spoke of Leon, her eyes closed and she smiled. She said that they had run into each other again the following week, very much by accident, and that Leon had again made her laugh and how, after that, the meetings were planned and no longer left to chance. As Edith went through it you could see the old emotions play across her face, and after a while it was like she wasn't with us anymore. She was with Leon, sitting in the warm shade, and she told us that it was she who had first kissed him, how she had thought about it for weeks and wanted him to do it but that all he did was talk until she finally realized that he wasn't going to cross that line, her being white and him not, and that she finally said, oh, to hell with it, and she took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and kissed him, and when she said it you knew that she was seeing his face as plain and clear before her as if it were happening now. She said the meetings became more frequent and frenzied and then she missed her period and then another, and she knew she was pregnant, thirteen and white and pregnant by Leon Williams, he of the African-American persuasion (no matter how watered-down that might be). She had been terrified to tell her mother and then she grew even more terrified not to, until finally she had, and then, of course, her parents demanded to know the identity of the father. Edith stopped abruptly, as if she realized that she wasn't Edith Johnson anymore, but was now Edith Boudreaux. She grew very quiet, and her face darkened. She said, "My father wanted me to name the boy. He kept after me for weeks, and I wouldn't tell them, and then one night he was drunk and he was beating me, and my mother was screaming you're going to make her lose that baby, and I didn't want to tell him but I was so scared that I would lose you. . ." She shook her head and crossed her arms again and began to blink back tears.