Knee-Deep in Wonder (15 page)

Mable looked at her old friend. “She grown, woman. You got her something so small, it's a wonder she can wipe her own ass.”

“Shut your mouth.”

“You ain't big enough to tell me to shut my mouth.” Angry, both women quickened their steps. “You too busy playing patty-cake with Ester to hear all that's being said bout you.”

“And what, you ain't busy enough?” Liberty pulled her wrist away from Mable's hand. “First you tell me I got to go fetch Chess, and here I am out in the middle of night when I should be at home. Now you telling me how to raise what's mine. You got no right, Mable. You got no right.”

They traveled the rest of the way in silence. If Liberty hadn't been so angry, she would have walked into Bo Web's with her dignity wrapped about her, pulled Chess out by his ear, and walked out without a problem. No one would have contested her; she stood taller than them all. But with Mable's censure caught in her throat, she stumbled over the noise that greeted her at the door—two men playing harmonica and guitar in a corner while a third man roared about losing his house. Couples were swaying in the middle of the room, and a single tin flask passed from hand to hand.

Like I can find him in all this mess, Liberty thought, watching the tumble of bodies. “Where you think he at?” she asked Mable.

“I ain't seen him yet.” Mable stood close to Liberty's shoulder, trying on tiptoe to look over the crowd of heads. “But here come Bo Web's woman.” She saw Liberty standing in the door and struggled toward her.

“This yours? Get him on out of here. You hear that? Pissed on my floor last night. I can't have that kind of shit.”

“I can't even see him.”

“There he is.” She pointed.

Drunk, Chess swayed in some woman's arms. Liberty gaped at him while he danced a slow two-step. One, two, slide-dip-slide. When he learn to dance like that? she thought.

“Well, gone and get him,” Bo Web's wife barked.

All three women moved at once. Liberty in the front, Mable and Queen Ester close behind, they pushed through the crowd. Without having to share a nod, all three reached, arms out, hands extended, for Chess. Mable and Queen Ester stepped out from behind Liberty, forming a circle around Chess and the woman he danced with. A hand touched his thigh, the tail of his jacket, the collar of his shirt. Six hands but one pull, and, tangled in his partner's arms, Chess stumbled into the ring of women.

Just whose hand had reached him first? Liberty was sure it had been hers. Wasn't that Chess's small hand in her own? Sharp hahs were added to damns, and for a moment the five of them wobbled. In the midst of the confusion (where was Mable's hand? Is that Queen Ester or am I holding Chess?), they all, Halle too (caught up so fast in their embrace that
My name is
or
How do you do?
lay forgotten at their feet), glared at one another. Only when Mable coughed and said, “All right, get off my foot,” did they unsnarl themselves. Liberty stepped back, looking at the woman Chess still held.

Waste of yella is what she is, Liberty thought, waste of yella and too much hair. One of those pretty-if-you-squint girls. Without being told, each woman knew her role: Liberty had come to take back what had been borrowed and Halle was there to remind Liberty that, for now at least, Chess was hers.

“Chess, now, you need to come on.”

“Ain't going nowhere.” He held Halle closer.

“Mama, he ain't coming.”

“Didn't I tell you to stay at the house?”

“That your mama or something, Chess?” Halle looked up at Liberty and gave her a sly smile. And passing, too, if she can, Liberty thought, staring at Halle's hair, which, unbound, waved around them like another person.

“Naw, it ain't my mama.” Chess spat out a humiliated chuckle.

“It's my mama,” Queen Ester said.

Halle turned slightly, taking in Queen Ester's yellow dress and hard nipples. “Yeah, sure, baby.”

“Look here, bitch. That's my girl. Chess, you need to come home.”

“I ain't going nowhere. I'm a grown-ass man, I don't need to be fetched nowhere.” His face turned nasty but he wore his beautiful smile, pink lips parted just so, even white teeth barely seen. “You gone, Liberty. Halle right; you ain't my ma'am.” He stopped talking and burped. The ripe smell hovered. “Look like who needing who, now?”

Liberty pulled back from him and walked out of Bo Web's as if struck.

7

HELENE STOOD IN
front of the living room's thick blue curtains, which were turning silver because of the unrelenting Lafayette sun, and felt it was not good for Queen Ester to stay alone in the house. Behind her the carpet had no tracks, no well-worn path to show the way Queen Ester moved around the living room.

Alone, in a room that felt empty, Helene wondered, Did her mother tuck her hands in the pit of her arms when it was cold in bed? Did her eyelids flutter in her sleep? Did she dream about how tall her daughter had grown, as she said in her letters? How could she have asked me whether I was middle-sized like her or bigger than a door like Grandmother, when I didn't know the height of the door? That's what I should have written, she thought. Instead of
I miss you
in three different crayon colors, Helene should have written,
How big is the door, Mama?

The uncertain scrawl of her mother's handwriting was printed on pages of white paper, but appeared mostly inside used greeting cards with
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY
scratched out or the wings of cherubs torn off. By the time Helene learned to read, sixty-two stamped and sealed envelopes were resting in a brown paper bag waiting for her. (It was a moment she remembered well. Reading came to her suddenly—one day she couldn't read and the next day she could. The very first words she read to herself were on a banner,
COME SEE OUR GRAND OPENING
, and comprehension settled in her four-year-old mind without prompting. Aunt Annie b didn't believe Helene had read the words. “Lying little ass,” she spat out, and Helene had smiled, trying to spell what Annie b had just said, getting slapped in the mouth in response.)

Queen Ester's letters found their way to Helene's house even when it wasn't Easter or Christmas or Thanksgiving or her birthday. The words
I love you
were stuck in the most unexpected places. Helene remembered reading the letters aloud—some of which contained only a sentence—as she thought Queen Ester would have done, but that was a child's fancy because she didn't know the sound of her mother's voice. So her Queen Ester cadence took on the note and pitch of her favorite Sunday school teacher or Annie b's most recent but least favorite visitor. She felt relief when she received letters written on white pages and not on mangled greeting cards.

When Helene was fourteen they stopped coming. The letters, arriving so surely that they found a place in Annie b's language—“Only things you can count on is death, taxes, and them letters you get from your mama”—were cut off, ripped away in the middle of the year, not even a trickle down to nothing, something Helene thought a fourteen-year-old could have borne.

“I can't just stand here,” she mumbled, the soft sound menacing in the country silence. She wished for her mother, hoping that Queen Ester would come down soon and then they could pull up kitchen chairs together, knees almost touching, and Helene would point at childlike handwriting and say, “Why did you say that?” Queen Ester would smile and say, “I thought you knew.”

The sun rose higher in the sky, lighting what had been in shadow, and Helene saw a heap of tattered books that had earlier looked like a pile of colored dresses in the corner. She moved. Curiosity pulled her toward the old books, where she crouched, her eyes fixed on pages hanging precariously from their bindings.

Gowns, less splendid than the one she wore, and half-packed trunks were scattered about.

It is the Glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.

Her hands riffled through torn pages, and she reached the bottom of the book pile. In the distorting light she thought she saw a small boy of eleven or maybe twelve with a bony chest lying flat on the floor. But then the sun lifted and broke through the stripes in the curtain, and she saw that there was no little boy. It was a box, a long red box so dark it could have been mistaken for a black body. Helene pulled it toward her, lifted the lid and threw it onto the heap of books at her side. Letters.

The ones farthest away from her glowed a dim aged yellow; those in the middle of the box were the color of ivory; and the envelopes closest to her gleamed white. Helene reached for those at the back of the box, her hands slightly shaking, and picked up the last one. It had never been sent, had no postmark, but it was stamped and sealed. She held up the letter to see better and read the address:

Queen Ester Strickland

P.O. Box 246

Lafayette County, Arkansas

Helene did not think to herself, This is Mama's and not mine. Desire uncurled inside her, chanting the words:
This is the only way you're going to get what you want. This is the only way to get what you want.
She tore the envelope open as calmly as if her own name and address were printed on the outside. It never occurred to her: don't do this. She heard no chiding voice, only the very satisfying tear of heavy paper.

She pulled, unfolded, and read:

Chess done beat Tinnie up under the house. Cause she done told him she pregnant. Her daddy leave her with Chess cause the daddy had to go get back the mama from California. Fore he go, he tell Chess, “Keep Tinnie in the house cause ain't nothing outside but trouble.” Then Tinnie run off with some boy, like she don't know what her daddy say to Chess, like she don't know if her daddy beat on her then Chess sho gone hit on her if she step out of line. And Lord, don't nobody move to stop him from beating Tinnie like he did. They hide they nappy heads cause they too scared to go grab the stick he gote. All them children, except Arthur (he the one that run and come tell me), looking at Chess go crazy on Tinnie. And ain't a one of them gone go under to save her, cause fore Chess get in there with that stick he look at them all and say, “I kill you too.” Mama loves you.

Helene tasted a rushing sugared love as she sat in front of the box; there was bitterness too, just out of her tongue's reach. Queen Ester could have said Chess had killed millions; it wouldn't have made a difference. She just wanted to know where her daddy was from and whether he was surrounded by good people. Helene looked at the letter again. There was no
Dear,
no
Sincerely,
no signature. Mama, what is this? Helene thought. Her mother had set herself down in some chair and written herself a letter, in lovely handwriting as well, and to top it all off, put a stamp on it? Girl, you get your shit and go right now, she thought. Still on her haunches, Helene sat back from the box. “Well?” she questioned herself, sighing at her lack of conviction. She folded the letter and pulled out another.

James done come to see me, and out of nowhere he ask do I remember the first time I ever step out of my house. I look at him like he crazy cause he only seven years old, and what he know about remembering something? Well, I tell him, no I don't remember any such thing, and he tell me he remember the first time he step out of his house. He tell me it was about three years ago and he guess he was about four or five and he say he walk out with his little pants on and his little hat. Then he see some bushes over to the side with some cans under them and he guess that his mama was throwing cans out of the window when she done with them. Well, he walked out about fifty or a hundred yards and he think, Well, looka here, all this been outside all this time and I just getting to it? There he is standing outside, pulling on his hat and all of a sudden, he say, “Queenie, I see a big old airplane running through the sky, and I thinks to myself, Lord have mercy.”

It was her
f
's that almost made Helene cry. They bowed over like old women stirring a pot on the stove. She counted softly to herself and picked the seventeenth envelope, its color ivory, and noticed that the letter
M
's on this page looked like thrashing waves.

Monroe done kill Wilde, cause Wilde whooped him in dominoes. Ain't nobody thought about calling the police. This ain't happened recent—long time ago, in fact—but I just thought about it now. Monroe looked shame and paid for the funeral, though. I love you.

Helene read swiftly now, not understanding all the words, just noting that her mother's
i
's looked like praying hands. Putting the letter back into the box, she moved on to the next envelope and, in her rush, pulled out two letters instead of one. The first, in her left hand, was clearly addressed to her.

My Girl,

Arthur done burn the house down in the back and Chess out there tack, tack, tacking all night long. Mama tell him he can come stay with us, but he tell her she throwed him out before and plus he trying to be a man now. Mama say maybe he knocked down for good. Arthur didn't get beat, cause when Chess see his house and the fire he just start crying. I love you, child.

Your Mama

The second letter was addressed to Queen Ester and, except for a difference in handwriting, was the same as the first. That's how they all were, Helene realized: doubled. Mother and daughter, mother and daughter. Now she knew without picking up the rest of them that her mother had written in twos, first to Helene, and then a copy for herself and had mailed none of them. She did not ask herself why, because the answer—that Queen Ester was as crazy as a peach-orchard boar, as Annie b had always said—was not enough. Being as crazy as a wild pig just didn't cover it. Even a crazy pig wouldn't set itself down and write a letter over twice, the handwriting turning lovely the second time around.