Knee-Deep in Wonder (4 page)

*   *   *

Liberty swallowed a knot of hurt. “Niggers got to live they life in threes, I know that much. So I spose leaving and Liberty is through. Cause ain't nothing of mine gone ever get left by me.” Although she had not paused, her voice had stopped fumbling. Queen Ester lifted her head, watching her mother's face. “You gone stay with me forever and ever. No child of mine gone have to kiss some baby only to get slapped away.”

Close the door, close it, the small child thought, looking at the anger in her mother's face, not knowing that she too felt something, a displaced fury that should have landed on Sweets. But with his absence she aimed it at the door, which seemed to look not only thrown open but mocking. At last, Queen Ester pulled away from her mother's hand and said slowly, “Ain't we ought to close the door?”

Liberty smiled at her daughter's full-grown voice. Mama and baby both, she thought, reaching for the knob.

“There goes your son-of-a-bitch daddy,” she said, as she locked the door.

3

FOR THREE DAYS
, Helene and Uncle Ed searched for addresses, found lost insurance policies, and put names to faces. Uncle Ed's house ballooned, full of murmuring church ladies who hissed softly between their teeth because there was no plastic on the couch or doilies on the coffee table. They skirted round freestanding tables with their thumbs pushed out, testing for dust. “A man's house,” they whispered, as the daughter who was not the daughter put iced tea in their hands and received mountains of potato salad and tuna casserole. Helpless, Helene searched their faces, looking for the blank spots in which to place a smile.

She made sure to stay close to Uncle Ed. Together, their hands reached for Annie b's basil seeds and old shoes, since they wanted to clutch at more than their sorrow. They tried not to observe themselves as they nodded with grace and composure at women Aunt Annie b had hated. Twelve hundred dollars later, she lay in her open coffin, on view so her close friends and sisters could gasp and see the ill-chosen lipstick she wore and the new dress Ed and Helene had had to buy because Annie b owned only Levi's. Everyone stared at the stitches showing through the bright pink lipstick, there to hold her lips together; the coroner had had to break her jaw because she had died with her mouth open.

“I think the funeral home really outdid itself,” Helene said, leaving the viewing.

“You right about that.” As he spoke, Uncle Ed smoothed down his rumpled tie. “Been so busy with Annie b, ain't had time to ask how you been.”

“Oh, you know me. Same as always.”

“You still working at that nursing home?”

“Yup.”

“Been there—what, three years?”

“Going on four.”

“Time sho can get behind you if you let it.” They stood together in the parking lot. “Here come Ms. Tilly.” An old woman walked toward them.

“Ed, Ms. Annie looked just beautiful.”

“Thank you, Ms. Tilly, thank you.”

“And I thought her dress was just lovely.”

“Thank you, Ms. Tilly.” Ed turned to Helene. “You remember my niece, Ms. Tilly?”

“Is that Helene?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Helene said.

“Girl, you done got so big. Last time I seen you, you couldn't of been taller than my knee. You turned into a good-looking girl.”

“Thank you, Ms. Tilly.”

“Don't thank me, baby, thank your mama.” Mrs. Tilly laughed into her hand, and Ed watched Helene's face darken.

“I don't want to keep you, Ms. Tilly,” Ed said, as he moved farther into the parking lot toward his car.

“Oh, I ain't got to be nowhere. So what you doing now with yourself, Helene?”

“Just the same-old same-old. I work at a nursing home in D.C.”

“You got family there?”

“No, just me.”

“You ain't married yet?”

“No, no, not yet.”

“I got a daughter bout you age. Husband work for the post office. I got three little grandchildren.” Ms. Tilly dug into her purse and pulled out a bundle of photos. “That there's Reginald, Tyron, and LaShay. Last year's Christmas.”

“Excuse me for cutting you, Ms. Tilly, but we still got some things to tend to back at the house.” Ed grabbed Helene's elbow and steered her away. “I'll see you at the funeral, Ms. Tilly,” he called out.

Helene and Ed got into the car in silence, though Ed tried to jump-start the conversation. “We got a movie house down the block there. Saw
Shaft
with Annie b couple years back. Remember me telling you about that catfish place, Tin Tin? Right there on your left.” But Helene's responses were halfhearted. Ed searched his niece's face as he drove and saw her longing. She wanted mother love, deep and dark as a carpet. Sitting in the car, she was shivering with desire, an open throbbing stretch empty of everything but yearning. Her mother was the pause right before the shudder. Helene wanted her mama. Maybe even her daddy too.

When they pulled into the driveway, Helene said, “Do you still know the way down there?”

Ed slid the car into park and sighed. “Helene.”

“Just draw me a map, okay? That's all I'm asking.” Before he could answer, Helene hopped out of the car to water the wilting flowers in the yard. She had hummed with purpose since reading Queen Ester's letter and, unlike her previous trips to her mother's house, now she'd had time to plan. While Uncle Ed went inside to collect Aunt Annie b's clothes for the church donation, Helene kicked at the tires of her aunt's 1967 Chevy Impala, checking their air pressure. She got in, cleaned out the passenger seat, and then went through the glove compartment; she even thought of giving the Chevy a coat of Turtle Wax but changed her mind when she reached the back porch and found Annie b's old trunk.

Its groan welcomed her as she opened the lid. She crouched low to collect forgotten evidence: old letters, still in their worn envelopes, that she hadn't read since she was fourteen; a faded photo of her mother and grandmother surrounded by friends in front of their house; a torn page from the Lafayette telephone book that held neither her mother's name nor her grandmother's but the number of the abandoned sawmill where her father, Duck, had worked until he died. She slid them into her pocketbook, these slices of her family's past without her.

Entering the house, Helene hounded her uncle to draw the map to her mother's house, not letting up even though he had shriveled since her aunt's death. The skin of his cheeks and hands was now drawn tightly against pronounced bones, and his stomach, which had once looked like muscle that didn't know when to stop growing, lay slack inside his shirt.

Uncle Ed sat down and etched out a map on a piece of cardboard, showing his niece how to jump through time and not get lost on the way. “South of Lafayette, east of Canfield, and a ways from the lake they got and you there—there's your mama. Waiting for you, in a manner of speaking.

“There's a walking bridge over Bacaw's Creek. Fore you get there, the road breaks in two. Now, you just take FM493 and you should be there in no time at all.” Uncle Ed stared at the sheet of cardboard. “Watch out for FM493, cause you just get that one sign; there ain't gone be nothing else to show you the way.” He shook his head. “Just stubborn, you. Anybody else with the kind of want you got in your teeth would of dropped it by now.”

“I know it,” she said. “I know it.” And she grabbed the map from his hand.

*   *   *

Ed accompanied his niece out to the driveway. “You check the tires?” He patted the top of Annie b's Chevy. The car looked shabby. Both fenders were painted with primer and Ed had yet to put on the new muffler he had bought from the mechanic. “Don't get your heart set on your mama.”

“I'm not.”

“Ain't that what you always said? You know I done always wanted nothing but right for you.”

“She's my mother. How could she be anything but right for me?” After hearing the fear in his voice, Helene's next words were smooth and beseeching. “Don't worry, you've got all those ladies to look after you while I'm gone.”

“I'm just trying to tell you—”

“This time is different. I'm an adult now.” Both remembered the trip he and Helene had made to Queen Ester's ten years ago. Helene had convinced Uncle Ed to drive her out to the house. From the passenger seat, she had watched the shimmer of trees passing and heard Uncle Ed's anxious voice. “You just smile if she don't come out. It take two to make ugly, and I done brought you up better than that.” But her mother had let her into the living room, winking, calling Helene names that rang in her ears like ghosts. A Mable in a blue dress, a Morning whom her mother scolded for staying away so long. The past flickered before them, different colors, until Helene reminded her mother she was her daughter and then Queen Ester put her out.

Between the name-calling, Queen Ester had stuck a glass of water in her daughter's hand and Helene told her the things she thought a mother should know, her voice high and wavering while she tried to strike the note that would make Queen Ester give her tea or let her stay for dinner. Uncle Ed had stayed in the car, its purring engine drowning out the country silence. What Helene had to tell took no time, just a quick breath, a short exhale; everything important was said by the time her mother sat in the chair, except Helene wasn't sure she had been heard. Queen Ester had stared at her, waiting till Helene had to catch her breath. In the snippet of soundless air, the mother spat out, “I know something of mine is burning on that stove by now. You just get on.” But this time, not only did Helene have Annie b's death but also the letter, its ripe invitation dangling at the end of the page.

“Helene?” Uncle Ed folded his hands over his stomach, his irritation breaking through her memory.

“Yes?”

“Your mama—”

“Those other times…” she interrupted, then dwindled to a close. Those other times, she thought, I didn't look so good, my shoes were run over with grass. “Mama's not like that all the time. Don't you remember when—”

“I remember. But your mama turn off and on like a switch.”

“Uncle Ed, I know. I've been there.” She looked at him over the rim of the open car door. A soft hush settled on them that she quickly broke. “Thank you.”

“I just don't want you coming back here looking like a broke heart. Now you got all that old hurt stuffed in your purse. What good is all that gone do?”

“This time she asked for me.”

“That come-on could mean just bout anything, coming from your mama. And that don't count for why you want to haul them letters with you.”

“I just want to show her I've got them. Every time I go down there I forget.”

“You thinking both y'all gone lean over them and make it right?” His voice curled with concern. “She ain't a bad woman, but you got to learn when to leave well enough alone.”

“Uncle Ed, it's just this one time more. I just want to know. I want to know it all.” Despite herself, she had become angry.

“All of what?” Shame crept into his face.

“All of everything.”

“And what good is that gone do you?”

“Where was your father born?”

“Girl, you know all that.” Ed looked tired, older than his age, but Helene pushed on.

“Tell me anyway.”

“Virginia. Galax, Virginia.”

“And your mother?”

“Texas.”

“Were they good people?”

“Stop it, girl.”

“Were they?”

“You know it.”

“That's all I want to know, Uncle Ed. Where my daddy was from and was he among good people.”

“I can tell you that.”

“I want to know all the things in the middle, too. Can you tell me that?”

“Baby girl.” He paused, sweeping his hand over his face. “And when you know all that, what you gone do then?”

She laughed. “Well, I guess I'll get married then.” Uncle Ed thought, How somebody can be so grown and not grown at the same time just don't figure to reason. All those memories peeking from her purse, pretending to be salvation.

The morning school bell suddenly rang, hallowed, wailing. Ed watched his niece. Her face turned, trained and alert, her eyes on the children who had just appeared at the end of the block, covered in bright yellow and green jackets. Helene took in a quick breath as the clatter of shoes grew nearer. They peeled past Uncle Ed and Helene—a sea of arrogant children, satchels clapping against their knees. She watched on, helpless, angry, remembering the tight ring of third-grade children singing with brutal mouths, “Ain't got no mama, ain't got no daddy, you twice as ugly, and you hair is nappy.”

“Children is a blessing,” Uncle Ed said, looking at Helene's lonely face.

“Yeah.”

“Bout your mama. Ain't gone be nothing but heartache.”

“Yes, well. Let's see how she likes a dose,” she said, envisioning Queen Ester's reaction to the news of Annie b's death. Helene slid into the car, wresting the door closed.

She meant her last words to Ed. How would her mother like to live a life satisfied with secrets and bits of stories? Helene remembered once when she tamely searched for her family's history, turning shiny when a couple who visited Uncle Ed claimed to come from Lafayette County and carelessly recalled having a meal at her grandmother's café. The aged and muddied southern voices rose to her memory. “Liberty, you say? Liberty Strickland? Oh, you know Liberty Strickland, Minyas. Died in 'fifty-nine, remember? Taller than a tree, your grandmama was. Oh, come on, Minyas. We went to sermon with the woman for damn near three years. Put the pie down, Minyas. Had that baby girl that was…” And then an uneasy trail into silence. “Your mama was so sweet and kind—Minyas, put that pie down—never did … Well, look at us wearing out the welcome. Come on, Minyas.”