Knee-Deep in Wonder (9 page)

5

“
WHY DOES HE
have to be dead too?” Helene said, almost inconsolable. “Why? As if there isn't enough—”

Queen Ester interrupted her with that accent: nouns and verbs lopped off, extra sounds between words, vowels added. “Yes, ma'am. Keep swallowing that water like he run a mile shore to shore.”

Helene pulled herself forward, straining to sort through her mother's cadences. What she really wanted were stories of Duck, her father, perhaps the way he knotted his tie (over then under, with the right hand doing most of the work), or how he liked his eggs (soft scrambled, lots of pepper, no salt), or even who his best friend was (Cecil Collard, a waiter at Lady Lady's in Little Rock, who died in 1974 of testicular cancer).

Queen Ester didn't know those things and didn't speak of them. “Chess, he got this girlfriend, Morning, and from my way of thinking can't be nobody but her that get him to go there in the first place. Pulling on him and whatnot. Like a lot of women are wont to do. The way I figure, Morning get him to do things his own wife never could. He's real queer about water. If you let him, he walk you clean away in another direction from where the spot of water be. Look like he can't stand more than a tub's worth. Mama say he act like that cause water that come up to most men's chest come up to Chess's neck. And short mens always nervous round high water. Never took no stock in what Mama said, though, cause when she said it don't look like she mean it. Not to say Mama lie, now. Your granny ain't no liar.”

There was an implied past in her mother's words, knowledge just behind the language. The way Queen Ester spoke—in the present tense—admitted no past; there were no dead. Helene, tangled up in her mother's no-
then
-only-
now
telling, knew her mother had tricked her into thinking that what she wanted could be gotten easily, but nothing was further from the truth, because she had to plow through language that didn't want her there.

“But that side the point. Like I was saying before, about Chess and that water. Mama like to die when they tell her they found him the way they did. All big, floating just an arm away from the shallow end of the lake. Just drown.” Queen Ester's lips started to quiver, shaking out a cry that her eyes refused to give.

“Just drown” was a new sorrow, freshly told, that Helene had to brush away lest her mother faint away in a heap of grief. Helene was almost tempted to reach into her purse and pull out a Kleenex, but in the sudden hush, she saw him: Chess, a man so small, so thin, people would have thought he was ancient. His hand first, soft and curled with a caramel Mary Jane held between two fingers, the forefinger and thumb dainty, the nails clean, and the cuticles pushed back. Not like a woman's—no black woman in 1955 had the leisure to clean her nails. Maybe for church, but not in the middle of the week. Spotless clear nails, with a bit of shine, the way a harlot's nails were cloudless, as Annie b would say. Yes, a harlot. Someone who had that amount of time and felt no guilt. Helene saw those fragile fingers before her five-year-old face. She looked cunning as she closed her eyes and waited with her hands behind her back for his soft fingers to reach her lips with the sweet candy.

“Here, baby.” A gentle cooing rolled in his throat, coaxing Helene closer, her eyes still shut, smiling an open baby-toothed smile. “Here, baby.” Helene moved closer until her short dress brushed against Chess's khaki pants. Both Helenes shivered. She stood crotch-high, her face almost smothered against his thigh. “Here now, baby,” he cooed, though now there was pity and longing in his voice that the girl didn't hear. Her child's desire was aware only that the Mary Jane hovered a tongue away.

“Open your eyes. I got to see your eyes fore you get some candy.” She opened them, blinking furiously. “What my name?” he asked. In response, her voice croaked heavy as if she had been asleep. No words, just a noise, a sound gurgling in her throat. “Now, why you gone take candy from a man you don't know?” Frightened, Helene remembered her Aunt Annie b's words; they stung her face: nasty children with they tongue out, they hand out. No home training, none at all. Shamed, Helene stepped away from Chess and laughed.

“I don't want the candy.”

“Yes you do. You just got to know my name fore you get it.” But wary now, she was scared that she was on the verge of being whipped for being nasty; just out-and-out nasty. A childish smile held back tears. “Come on, now. I ain't gone get you,” he said. She lifted her face, watched him through lashes. “That's right. Don't cry now.” He breathed deeply, wiping his empty hand on his pant leg. “You ready?” Helene nodded. “My name Chess. Chester Hubbert. You like that name?” He crouched suddenly, knees folded in half like paper. “You hear? You like that name?” Helene nodded again. “You gone have to speak up, I can't hear. You saying yeah or no?”

“Yes.”

“I bet you, you get this piece of sweet and forget all about me,” he said sadly. “Little children forget, just like that.” The thumb and middle finger of his other hand snapped loudly. “Tell some little bit to stay out of someplace, and the next day they done forgot all about what you said. You ain't like that, is you?” Helene shook her head. “Say what again?”

“No.”

“So what's my name?”

“Chess.”

“Chess what?”

“Chess Hubter.”

“Almost right. You smart.” He brought his hand to her mouth and, still firmly holding the Mary Jane, let her lick the caramel and his thumb. “I got one more thing to tell you. But I don't know. You might forget.”

“Ain't.”

“Well, I don't know. You might. Being a baby and all.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Well, what if I tell you and you call me a lie?” Helene's face grew serious: no child ever called a grown-up a liar. “Well, I tell you what. I tell you this and you promise you ain't gone forget it?”

“No.”

Chess grabbed her shoulder and pulled her close. “Where your daddy at?”

An image of Uncle Ed came to mind, his small stomach, tight shiny skin, an eagerness in the knees. “I don't know.”

“You don't know where your own daddy at?”

She thought and said, “He at the house.”

“No, he ain't.” Chess smiled. “Have some more candy.” He put the Mary Jane and his forefinger in her mouth. She sucked softly, and a begging noise came out when he took his hand away. “Your daddy ain't at your house. He right here.” Helene looked past his shoulder; her eyes skimmed the yard and the porch.

“No, he ain't.”

“Yes, he is. Cause I'm your daddy.” He caressed her cheek. “Me. I'm your daddy.” Helene's five-year-old face turned joyful. She and Chess opened their lips and let out boundless laughter. Then there was no sound from Chess's moving mouth. Memory blinked. Chess was no longer crouched in front of her and the caramel flew, covered with broken grass and dirt.

*   *   *

Like a picture show closing, the perfect image went dark. Helene was suspicious of her own thoughts. This was just too easy. House, table, chair, a dash of crazy mama, and ta-da! a father revealed. Helene wanted him so badly she had thought up a time and place that existed before her imagination. An acute case of wishful thinking, that's what she had. Memory that big doesn't just fall into your lap. If Helene was right, everything she loved had lied to her for as long as she could remember, and forgiveness could only be stretched so far. “Mama?” Helene spoke into the stillness of the kitchen.

Queen Ester shook herself, a sly embarrassment in the movement of her shoulders. “Quiet gets kind of long when folks try to collect theyselves,” she finally said. Helene could have choked her. Just squeezed and squeezed until her mother doubled over, limp in her hands. Didn't her mother know she lived in hand-me-down memories that hung about her like a rich cousin's dress? Your mama told me to tell you she loves you very much; the barber's son, fore he died, told me to tell you that your granny said a hard head makes a soft ass. Every message came by word of mouth; no one had a phone, and the post office was considered a luxury, only to be checked once a month; every message contained a legion of unknown people: your uncle's cousin's sister's mama just had a baby.

Queen Ester did it too. “That boy was trying to scream his way out of a drowning, but by the time it reached Chess's ears the scream had turned to laughing.” Helene looked puzzled. “Oh, I didn't tell you? There's a boy in that water. Some somebody. I ain't never see him. At least not living. Bout the time they fish him out, his own mama could of walk past him and not know it was hers. Maybe Mama see him before, in town. Used to be you walk into town and always bump into something brand new. Folks always throwing up some new something. We never got a bank, but that beauty shop got built in 'thirty-one. Just went to waste, though, since we all got rollers. Still, it got built. Me and Mama walk by and look on in, trying to see what's what. All them new men, walking round looking lost till some job or woman find them. Train bring them in with the wood. But not now. Folks can't take no more of whatever they took for so long and float on down to Texas. Not to say we was ever bustling. We ain't never been that kind of place, but used to be that every now and again we get a hand worths of new faces.

“That boy who drowned with Chess was new like that. On the road through here without a mama to hold his hand. It ain't like that now. Coming up, I go to town with Mama and a whole passel of boys is running errands and whatnot for the grown folks. I ask Mama where they family, at least the mama, you know?” Queen Ester didn't notice Helene's rising anger. “And Mama say, calm as grass, ‘They ain't got nobody. Ain't got no ma'am or no mister, either.' I was just a little bit then, and if you think I stay close to Mama before, well…” She paused, filling the kitchen with a laugh. “She could of sewed me into her pants pocket and it would of been right fine by me. Lord, where the mind go if you let it. That boy can't be more than twelve. Getting in some kind of mess. Cookie in the woods when it happen, and she say she hear him laughing. Sound just like Chess's dead wife, Halle. Ain't that something, gal, trying to save somebody and they sound just like your dead wife?”

Even with all her age and reason, Helene's mouth dropped open. She didn't want to know all this, not this. She could, perhaps, understand that her father was not who everybody said he was (if her memory hadn't fooled her). She could even tell herself that someone somewhere had gotten an important fact confused, and that the mistake had grown of its own will and couldn't be stopped. But Helene didn't want to hear as well that death was just a curtain and people could poke their heads around it to say hello.

She rose from her chair, looking to see if her purse was nearby. Her start was halfhearted, her knees stiff with sitting. Her chair skipped lightly on the tiled floor, but Queen Ester went on talking, receding further into the brightly colored past.

Helene sank back into the chair. Despite herself, she was entranced by the sound of her mother's voice. Queen Ester moved from the counter and took a seat across from her daughter, her housedress pulled up slightly. She grunted softly as she rested her elbows on the table and went on speaking about death as she would a pancake recipe. Helene knew that the dead are dead. But she stayed anyway, because outside that kitchen, that house, there was nothing. Just a bunch of Southerners who took up her time and shamed her with their questions: Where you from, girl? Who are your people? She had no idea, no story with which to awe anyone. My great-grandfather helped start a town, built a house, saved a child. Queen Ester knew—she could tell her. Just no more voices of dead wives who lure grown men to their drowning, she thought. The pleasantness masking her face was still there but slipping, being replaced by doubt and resistance she couldn't hide.

Queen Ester stood up from the chair with her legs apart, as if bracing for a blow. “Chess in that water moaning, yelling, ‘Halle! Halle!'” she howled, a noise that hovered between a laugh and a scream. “I ain't the one that see Chess drowning, but what happen come from so many mouths, everybody say how Cookie hear the laughing, and how Chess just a mama's hug away from the safe side of the water. Morning get him out there, then Halle was calling to him and making him go in that lake. No other way make any sense. Not when you take Chess and his queerness with the water. Ain't nothing but the sound of his dead wife that make him get out there. Cause Halle was the color of Land O' Lakes and her hair soft as the cotton Mama bought at Mr. Jameson's store.

“You know the store when you come on here? Been closed for years, but in my time anything you can dream of was somewhere in that store. Whole tin of sardines for thirty cents, buy two tins and Mr. Jameson liable to throw in some crackers for free. Had shoes and bolts of nice pretty cloth, canned peas and homemade pickles and eggs that sit right on the counter next to the checkout. Mama saving up all that money to get combed cotton from Mr. Jameson don't make no sense, considering that Mama got a cotton field right in our own backyard. Sweet Jesus, gal, you should've seen Halle's hair. Couldn't sing worth a lick, but that girl's hair—Lord's redemption.” Queen Ester smoothed down the lapels of her housedress with her hands.

“And I tell you another thing. It's strange that Halle's name slid out of Chess's mouth. Them two was married, but that didn't stop Chess. I hear he keep Morning and Halle at the same time. Running from house to house, extra set of pants hanging in Morning's closet. Ain't no kind of woman gone stand for that. Got so bad, he take Morning down to Bo Web's, like ain't nobody gone tell Halle about it. If that ain't enough, he didn't have the sense to keep his mouth closed. The Lord made him talk about it in his sleep.”