Life Is Short But Wide (29 page)

Feeling a little better, Herman agreed, “Yea, the seventies and the eighties were really something. Sneaky, foolish, wars, going to the moon, Nixon impeachments. This world is spinning out of control.”

She smiled up at him. “Abortion rights, women’s rights, some good things. The Black civil rights workers fought us right
into a much better world. And I remember all the good music you introduced me to. I never seemed to have time to …”

Herman leaned against a near wall. “You don’t seem to have time for listening to music with me anymore. Yea, you are always busy; giving your time away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well there was your aunt’s daughter, Monee. You used up almost ten years taking care of her child, Poem. I was glad when she came to get Poem. I liked that name. But, still, you had so many things on you. I think people take advantage of you, Myine. You’ve never taken time to live your own life. You don’t have a child of your own. You don’t have a husband or …”

Myine stood straight over the hoe she had picked up in the garden. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Herman didn’t want to upset her with an old argument. He looked closer at the work she began doing. It was garden planting time.

She was working on the plot of land Cloud kept cleared for the garden she and Juliet used for their kitchen storeroom, or pantry, or cooler, some people call it. It was larger than in her grandmother Irene’s day. Myine loved to work there. They grew almost everything they ate.

Cloud and Juliet had a boy they had named Wings Val Cloud. He was a big boy now, about eight or ten years old. He helped his mother in her garden and helped his father cleaning auto parts. He got paid for it, sometime. They still paid no rent, but Cloud took care of the whole five acres of land in exchange, keeping it clean and the trees pruned and thinned. Just their being there was a blessing to Myine.

Many times all the heads working in the yard were greying.
Cloud hadn’t replaced some of his teeth, but his smile was just as sunny, bright and happy. He loved his wife and his son. They didn’t have another child because the doctor had told Cloud how difficult the birth had been on Juliet.

“One child is enough for us to see ourselves mixed in one piece. And you gave me a son. So there will still be a Cloud dreaming after I am gone,” he had told Juliet. She leaned back in her wheelchair and, glad he was happy, agreed with him.

Leaving Myine in the garden after helping her awhile, Herman walked over to Cloud’s work place. Besides the concrete platform for the oily parts he worked on, he had also built a five-by-five shed to keep the cleaning solvents, rags, and tools in, away from danger to his wife and son.

Myine went to see Juliet often. They spoke on all kinds of subjects. Myine was glad to have a good friend to talk to. Juliet was still interested in almost everything going on in the world.

One day Juliet asked Myine, “Listen, here, am I looking old? Ami too fat?”

“No, where did you get that from? Not Cloud, I know.”

Juliet laughed a little, “No, it’s all these magazines coming out for the last five or six years! With all the ‘beautiful people.’ Showing all their beautiful asses. I don’t blive it! Somebody is doin something wrong to their body. That ain’t no natural look!”

Myine laughed. “I heard someone say that when you go to bed with somebody these days, you don’t know whether to get in the drawer, after they take everything off, or to get in bed with em. All the good stuff was removable!”

“That’s right, Myine! My beautician said wigs sell, even here in Wideland, like hotcakes!”

“Well, we have our own hair, Juliet. We should thank God for
that, because some people really need a wig; I’m glad there are wigs for them.”

“Well, I’m just glad beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Cause I wouldn’t make all these plastic surgery changes even if I had the money. People don’t know what may happen to them later on in their life. If God gave it to me, I’m glad to keep it!”

“Some people use plastic surgery, Juliet, for medical reasons. It does more than just make them look better, sometimes it makes them functional, or able to live without being stared at.”

“Well, I wasn’t being mean, Myine. I’m just telling you what I think. If I could get my legs to work, I would. You know, Cloud has me so I can stand up straight? I can’t walk, but I can stand up on my feet!”

“What is he doing to you that you have to stand up?” Myine laughed as she asked.

“He just likes to try to make me exercise, keep my bones strong, and moving! I’m the one kissin and huggin him.”

They laughed, and were happy for each other’s joys. But Juliet was concerned that there was no one to love Myine like Cloud loved her.

When Herman stopped by to holler through the door at Juliet, Juliet called him in. “What chu doing tonight, Herman? Have you seen that new picture at the movies? Everybody says it is good! You need to take Myine to see it. She likes things like that. All she does is stay at home.”

“Well, did you ask her if she wanted to go?”

“No, I hadn’t seen you yet, and she already been by here.”

Herman didn’t want to tell Juliet to use her telephone to call Myine and ask her; that should be his job. But something didn’t
feel right for him. He didn’t want to ask her because he didn’t want to hear Myine say no. After all the years he was still hesitant to ask Myine personal, just-the-two-of-us things.

He laughed and said, “What are you today? A matchmaker? Make your man take you!”

“We already saw it. That’s why I know you all would like it.” Herman didn’t ask Myine. He just passed her front door on the way to his truck, looked at her house as he locked the gate, then got in his truck and went home to put on some more of his lonely life music.

After the day he had helped Myine work in the garden, Herman began to stop by almost every day trying to catch Myine in the yard again. The days he didn’t come by he was worried that he was becoming a nuisance. He was the only one who thought that; they were all glad to have his help, and Myine was just glad he was there. They shared the harvest with him, and it even had become a yearly thing.

Herman was, now, going on fifty-eight years old, and didn’t look it. He looked worn, but not tired. When he looked old it was because he had been lonely so long. Loneliness can eat away at your body, your nerves. He had been in love with Myine a long time, but thought he was too old to step up to anyone, much more so with Myine, with his heart in his hands.

Myine loved Herman, but felt she was too old and ugly to be thinking about “love.” Thinking, “a dried-up old woman should stay in her place. I don’t want to be frisking around with anybody. I’d look like a fool trying to court at my age.”

They were caught in a quandary in life, and didn’t have sense enough to see they were both in the same place. Life don’t wait for nobody-, it was passing, as usual, swiftly, at that age.

But Myine was beautiful to Herman. He loved her new, short, stylish, greying hair and the glow of the golden earrings she wore. He liked that her body was kept supple, slim, and healthy from all the work she did on her land, in her garden. He liked her starched, cotton, wide-skirted dresses with a belt at her waist, in this age of short-shorts and belly-rings and asses hanging out all over the place. You don’t have to wonder or dream about what a woman has anymore, they put it all out there for you to see.

Myine didn’t have varicose veins on her legs either. “Probably,” he thought, “because she never had any children. But they can take those things right out now-a-days. Nobody has to have them. She is forty-eight now, and I am almost fifty-eight. What can I do about this woman? Time is flying right on by us, fast as this world is turning.

“I don’t blive she is seeing anyone else; hell, I’m around there practically every day, and I don’t ever see anyone except her regular friends. I wonder does he come late at night?” He shook his head. “No, Cloud or Juliet would know that. So, what’s wrong with her?”

He continued on his train of thought. “I wanted a family, but I’ll be happy with just a wife. I can’t raise no hell in bed, but she does not seem to be doing anything in bed at all.

“I think I’ve loved Myine ever since she was a little girl, and I asked her to wait for me. She is always sweet. And so bright and pretty. She reminds me of her mother, Rose. And she reminds me of my mother in her ways. Oh, God, I don’t want to be a fool; especially not an old fool!”

He laughed at himself. “I don’t know why I’m even thinking about it. She isn’t thinking about me. But, I haven’t been there in a few days, so I’m going by there today anyway. I have to see Cloud about something.”

When Herman hadn’t shown up for a few days, Myine missed him. She didn’t ask Cloud about him, or mention him to Juliet. “She, of all people, does not need to know I’m thinking of him. I don’t want her laughing at me. Nobody wants an old lady crying on their shoulders in these days.”

This was the planting season so she was working in the garden some part of every day, thinking of things in general as she worked. After awhile, thoughts of Herman came into her mind. “Herman still looks really good for his age. These women I know out here would love to get a man like Herman. He is a good man. Not a lot of fooling around that I know of, and Cloud never would tell me even if he knew. Those old biddies at the church would tell it though.

“People say forty-eight is not old, but I feel old. I don’t feel … like a woman should. But, Lord, I don’t want no more men like the two I almost married. I don’t want any more of that mess! I don’t usually curse, Lord, but shit on that kind of love. I still don’t know what all the fuss is about people making love. I have never felt it. Never! And I want to know!

“And it looks like I’m going to leave this world not knowing. Lord, making love, or sex, can’t be the most important thing in
life. But, Lord, I want a man. And they are all taken … or dead.” She struck at a weed with her hoe, but hit a radish plant instead. After she repaired the damage, she began hoeing again.

“You haven’t made me live a real hard life though, Lord, I thank you for that. But I did have some hard times. If I hadn’t always answered the call of someone’s needs I might have had time to do more courting, and I’d have someone today. And when Juliet tells me how good Cloud makes her feel, down there, I’d know what she was talking about!”

She stopped to wipe her brow with the handkerchief she carried in her pocket, and looked up at the afternoon sun. “Lord, it’s getting hot out here. Or maybe it’s just me and this menopause I’m having.” She turned back to her work, still thinking.

“Herman,” she thought a minute. “He used to be too old for me, but … not now. When I saw him take his shirt off in this garden the other day … Well, he didn’t look like any young Adonis, but he wasn’t supposed to. What would an Adonis want with me? An old grey-haired lady? And I am not going to dye my hair. I like the grey; it sparkles with the light. It’s mine. I just thank God that I have some hair on my head, grey or not.

“And my hair is soft, and smells good, healthy. Some ladies have put so many chemicals and dyes on their head, so that now, they don’t hardly have any left; and what they have left is stiff and hard.

“Same way they do their faces. I do give my own self a facial every month or so, and I never did wear all that makeup mess these people on the television say you need to look ‘right’ or to feel good. Crap! They make money, and you make bad skin.

“You can’t believe those models on that TV who probably
have never put the product on their smooth, fresh skin! Or they play camera tricks. You can’t ever tell. Everybody lies so much in this world today. Everybody! The people in this world are speeding to a miserable end. No one seems to be happy anymore; and other people are getting rich off of it.”

Myine stood, and leaned on the hoe handle, thoughtfully. “But when I saw Herman’s stomach and his chest … Well, his stomach is smooth and you could see the muscles in it, and his chest. All that work he has done all his life, I guess.”

She bent over the hoe to work again. “He may not look like a young man, but young men don’t look all that good either, now-a-days. Some of them do, in the magazines maybe, but you can never tell; they can be empty, blank, nada inside their heads, beneath all that store-bought beauty. They may even desire other men, and not like you for their self at all.