Knee-Deep in Wonder (29 page)

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Sterile, with nothing but a pair of worn pants where his sex should be, he never consummated their marriage. Instead, he took the train to Little Rock and courted prostitutes for weekends that climbed into Tuesdays every month. She never asked outright, but she knew what he did: playing house, she heard some people call it, paying some woman three dollars a day, a field hand's wage, to cook and rub his head while calling him baby or honey. From what Mable told her he saw one woman—Bell, that's what she was called, now, ain't it?—so often she and Duck learned each other's last names. Liberty provided Duck's money for the prostitutes, knowing that her daughter still slept in the single bed next to her own room while Duck slept across the hall.

Worn dollars passed from hand to hand. Queen Ester would give him the money that she got from Liberty. No words were ever exchanged, just bills piled neatly atop each other left on the dresser. Duck got to keep the money he made at the sawmill for other things, groceries that refused to grow in the garden. According to the logic of the house, he shouldn't have to pay for his women, since Queen Ester had decided she wouldn't be touched and neither she nor Duck had really wanted to get married in the first place.

Liberty had conjured up the idea. Queen Ester was pregnant and so should be married, the order of these two things being irrelevant. And since Duck was always prowling around (Liberty found him in her barn twice), she figured marriage was as good a way as any for him to earn his keep, and he had been after Queen Ester anyway, as far as Liberty could tell. Didn't Duck toy with dreams that he would one day own the house and land? He couldn't get them without wedding someone, Liberty reasoned. Maybe marriage would keep Queen Ester occupied with something other than keeping Liberty under constant watch.

Duck had always been around (after Liberty had run him off from the barn, he'd taken to the cotton field, and she'd let him stay there), the thief who stole their broom to sweep their porch, the poor mouth whose thievery meant his victims had to feed him. Queen Ester didn't often remember him as her husband—the marriage had been too short, too sterile; Duck the husband was truly a brother but not even graced with friendship, since to be friends they would have had to know each other better.

“What you say now?” was his version of hello, as if the person he greeted had just said something that Duck had failed to catch, so the beginning of a conversation with him always felt like the middle. He was the only man who thought to call her girl, the only one who refused to be scared off by her mother. She would give him a bite of her lunch. “Them sweet fingers of yours make it taste so good, girl,” he would say, ready with the inelegant persuasion of a lover. Every compliment was fumbled, but Queen Ester didn't notice, because Liberty had done such a thorough job of keeping away every man save the few who came to the café, and even then she ordered Queen Ester to stay in the kitchen. He became her husband, even though she had already thrown away what she called her “nothing.” Duck just smiled and said he didn't need it.

They had the discussion one Wednesday. (Why always a Wednesday, a would-be church day had any of them been churchgoers?) Liberty picked the day and the dress. “Well, you done done it now,” she said, “so you got to go and get a daddy.” She instructed Queen Ester calmly, holding the dress on a hanger.

“It already got a daddy,” Queen Ester said, with complete naïveté. She sounded amazed, or maybe it was just anger with nothing to cling on to.

“Well, that daddy already got a wife.” Liberty handed Queen Ester the dress. With utter control, Liberty thought swiftly of all the places Duck might possibly be at that time of day. She rehearsed what she would say to get him to wait on her porch, weighing her words and their lilt, and decided she would offer him lemonade. Touching the doorknob, Liberty called back over her shoulder, “Iron that collar and be down on the porch quick,” and opened and shut the door before Queen Ester could say another word.

Liberty found Duck sitting in the corner of her cotton patch where she thought he would be. “You gone to the porch, I got lemonade in the kitchen,” she said. Duck looked up, trying to understand the meaning behind her words, not trusting the lazy sound of her voice, since she had in fact almost pounced on him.

“All right, then,” he said, but Liberty didn't hear him as she spun around to trot to the kitchen, where a pitcher waited for her sweating hands. She stood in front of the counter, her eyes searching the ceiling, squinting to see Queen Ester dressing above her, willing the prayer, “Get up and gone to the porch and be still, boy,” over and over. Liberty directed imaginary hands to push Duck to the front porch and stay put, not wander off to the barn for a nap or to look for a beer that she didn't have. Hearing Queen Ester's steps, she poured two tall glasses full of lemonade, and met her daughter at the foot of the stairs.

“Took you long enough,” Liberty said, pushing the lemonade into Queen Ester's hands.

Queen Ester leaned close to her mother, clutching the frosty glasses. “And what if he say no? What then?”

For the first time since Liberty had thought of marrying Duck and Queen Ester, she looked uncertain. Then her doubt fell away and she said, “He won't.”

Duck sat and waited on the porch, surprised to see Queen Ester in a dress with a collar and lemonade in her hands.

“I got it now,” he said, taking a glass from her. Queen Ester looked at him and smiled, saying nothing, since Liberty had forgotten to give her the words to convince him without shaming herself. She didn't know how to use flirtation to win him over, undo the important buttons, slide the cloth down her shoulder, blink slowly to make her lashes catch and pull apart. Instead, she thought, If I was in a car with the hood up, Duck would come running cause men like to fix what's broke.

She sat down on the porch, knowing that Liberty stood just inside the house, listening through a door over an inch thick. Unable to hear a thing, Liberty pressed her forehead against the wood, trying to feel the vibrations on the porch to know where Queen Ester and Duck were sitting or standing. Queen Ester wished Liberty had followed her outside, because without her mother's guidance, she thought the only way to trap Duck into marriage was to present him with a broken chair. She decided on the truth, the only thing she knew. “It's gone.”

“What?” Duck asked, wiping the condensation from the glass onto his pants.

“My nothing, it's gone.”

“Girl, what you talking about?”

Queen Ester's face burned. She slumped a bit, put the glass down next to her, and pressed her hands to the middle of her dress. As she looked at Duck, he smiled, his dimples appearing, and Queen Ester felt a searing start at her chest. His coaxing felt like scorn to her. He too put his glass down and muttered, putting his hand on top of her own, “You women the devil's confusion,” a soft chuckle escaping from his mouth.

With hopelessness overwhelming her, she looked up, letting the sun burn the back of her eyes. “Duck, I'm trying to tell you. My nothing—it's gone.”

“Just what that mean?”

Her dry tongue licked cracked lips. “I'm having a baby.”

Now he smirked openly, it was the look she had braced herself against before she'd stepped out the house. They sat quietly, silently asking and answering each other's questions: So you need me now? You know I do; need you bad. And your mama, for all she is, had to stoop low and catch me. Yeah, she done stooped low and got you. No more cotton field for me? No, you right, no more field sleeping for you. I knew it, I knew it.

“Ain't too partial to bloody sheets no way, girl,” he said. Queen Ester gasped. Well, I asked; I can't do nothing now, she thought. Though she was prepared for the smirk, the comment knocked her back. Even Queen Ester, whose mother's control had rubbed her down to a dull glow, had pride. And Duck's words had pricked it. She wanted him to drop to his knees and beg, even though she didn't love him. Still, as childish as she was, she had enough sense to know the begging wasn't coming. She would have to settle for Duck patting her hand and calling her
girl
two times in a row. “Me neither,” she said softly, struggling to grin.

Liberty rushed through the door, stood before them, and stared directly at Duck, taking Queen Ester's expression for granted. Why waste time looking in the mirror? she thought. Although absent, she had taken her part in the exchange and, not wanting to see her own regret in Queen Ester's face, spoke only to Duck. “We got to make a date. I gone get the license, ain't no need to send away for it. Maybe we can get Mable to take us on down to Texarkana. Let's start off early on a weekday, maybe Thursday or some such. They got that courthouse right off the highway, and if we hurry we can make it back here fore supper.” Duck, thinking he would one day be the man of the house, lifted his glass and said nothing. He swallowed half the lemonade, clinking the ice against his teeth, and looked at Liberty over the rim.

“You free then, Duck?” Queen Ester asked.

“Yeah,” he said, not taking the glass from his mouth. Liberty saw his scorn, knowing that if he could reach over far enough he would put his thumb on her neck, but she smiled; Duck would find out right after he moved into the house that he'd taken charge of nothing. Her daughter wouldn't even take his last name. So now they were three, even four if you counted the unborn child. Liberty made the arrangements, except there was no excitement or joy in her voice, just determination that Duck mistook for desperation.

Queen Ester, shamed again, didn't know who to be angrier with: Duck, who didn't have the decency to hide his ambition to rule their eighty-three acres, or her mother, cold and dauntless. Where was Queen Ester's fury when she needed it? Maybe I spent it on Other, she thought.

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Other had been watching Queen Ester (while she swept the yard, picked tomatoes, threw sheets over the clothesline to air) and she him (over the length of a table, while running errands at the two general stores). For days she would turn quickly and catch him looking at her with blank or apologetic eyes. All that week he would capture her gaze, then drop his eyes to her shoes and fumble with the lint in his pocket. His yeahs and sho noughs had become full of import. Finally, she cornered him in one of those dark spaces where she stood keeping an eye on Liberty, luring him there on a false errand. “You gone and get some shoestring for me, Other,” she said, already knowing his answer. She tugged at his collar as she whispered, “What?”

“Yeah?” Other said, crouching to accommodate the pull.

“What?” she said again, twisting harder. He looked away, placing his hand on the wall to steady himself.

“Sho nough,” Other said, waiting for Queen Ester to state her need, tuck coins or a list into his fist, and let him go, but she said nothing. He resorted to his second response, since “Sho nough” only made Queen Ester's hand tighten. They stood for a while, Queen Ester with a bruised look in her eye and Other trying to pass as deaf and dumb, unable to bring himself to face her.

“I know you know, I know you saw it, so won't you just gone and say it?” Queen Ester lashed out, clutching Other by the shoulder. “Somebody broke my door that night.” If I could swallow him whole, I'd do it, she thought.

He had never seen her in the dark before and, frightened, he shouted shrilly, “Yeah, yeah!” Unprepared for Other's voice to rise above a murmur, Queen Ester let go of him, but he remained crouched.

They both knew that Liberty stood somewhere in the house, so she cupped her hand around Other's ear, speaking in a low conversational tone. “Other, you know. You know. You ain't dumb. You think I don't know you can speak? You say it. Tell me you the one that crack my door in two.” Angry, Queen Ester shook in her dress, her mouth resting near his cheek and ear so that they appeared to be lovers trapped and grunting. “You, goddamn it,” she said.

As if he had been sleeping, letting Queen Ester have her way with him, Other suddenly woke up and struggled under her grasp. He tried to tear his shoulder from her hand, but she held on all the tighter, whispering all the while, “You say it, you.

“Cause if you did see, then you just as much to blame,” she went on. “You the one that come out of closets and whatnot with your yeahs and sho noughs. Can't beat you at trying to fetch what folks want, but you didn't do nothing for me. You is bigger than he is and could of stopped it.”

Queen Ester heard an unfamiliar sound start at the back of his throat, and she realized she didn't want him to say what he had seen: the pushing up of her flimsy nightgown, the taking of her nothing before she had time to withhold it. Other opened his mouth, but she quickly placed her hand over it and smothered the words. “No, boy, you forget that, cause I'm gone to.”

*   *   *

The day after, Queen Ester and Liberty walked with their heads bowed, their brows dark and serious as if they were speaking about a bank robbery or a murder.

“You is a liar, girl,” Liberty said. She might as well have said, Take that, for the harshness in her voice, as if she meant to slap her daughter. Queen Ester didn't bother to say, No I'm not, since she didn't lie and her mother knew she didn't. Liberty's accusation was merely a formality, a space, an opportunity for Queen Ester to clap her on the back and say, Yeah, I am.

“Now what you gone do?” Queen Ester asked, rubbing her hands together as if she stood out in the open snow, cupping one hand in the other and blowing into them.

“I don't know yet,” Liberty said. Queen Ester took a step back, unprepared for the remark, wanting instead for Liberty to yell, I'm gone kill him, kill him dead! or some such declaration from a Western: Wait till sundown; When the clock strikes twelve.

“What you mean, you don't know?” Queen Ester said, and Liberty's eyebrows rose with surprise, as if her daughter had just tossed her a gold ring. “I just told you what I told you, your only baby girl, and you tell me you don't know? That's all?”