Necessary Lies (17 page)

“You brung us shoes?” One of the other men—
boys
—crouched and began trying to pile the shoes back into the broken bag.

“Yes, I hope they fit.” I still felt shaky, even with the dog tied safely to the stake. I’d never felt quite so
white
before, surrounded by three big Negroes. Avery seemed harmless enough, and the one gathering up the shoes was all right, but the third leaned against the porch, muscled arms across his broad chest, his eyes narrowed at me. Even so, the light caught them just right and I saw their amber color. “I believe you’re Eli,” I said.

“You believe right,” he said, not shifting his pose even a bit.

“I’m Devil,” said the boy on the ground. He was sitting down now, trying on the shoes. His pose suggested a kid on Christmas morning. But the muscular arms and broad back, so much like Eli’s, told me he was a young man who worked hard every day.

“Maybe you could all try them on.” I looked at Eli. “Your mother said you’d outgrown yours,” I said, but I couldn’t hold his gaze for long. His was too piercing. It was like he was trying to see inside me, and he wasn’t impressed with what he saw. I wondered if he’d liked Charlotte.

“What’s all the racket?” Lita Jordan appeared behind the screen door and I felt relieved by her presence. “Well, hey, Mrs. Forrest,” she said, pushing the screen open and stepping onto the porch. “Shadow give you a hard time?”

I didn’t correct her about my name. “You don’t have to worry about anyone sneaking into your yard, do you?” I smiled.

“No, ma’am,” she said. “I see you brung some shoes. Eli, you try them on? Yours is the worst.”

“Ain’t got time now, Ma,” he said. “Got to git back over.” He walked past me, heading for the fields. I glanced down at his shoes where they’d been cut to make room for his toes. “Come on,” he said to his brothers.

“Nice to meet you!” I called after them.

Mrs. Jordan came down the stairs to help me gather the shoes, including the old pair Devil had left behind, and I realized only then that he’d taken a pair of the new ones. That heartened me. I’d done one small worthwhile thing today.

“That dog.” She nodded toward Shadow who now lay docile near the stake. “He don’t much like white folks, but he never bit no one. Only person he ever hurt was this white man, come around asking for food. Got knocked over good instead. Felt bad for him, though. Any old white man who thinks we’re that good off here in this shack, he’s in sad shape.”

“I like dogs,” I assured her. “He just came out of nowhere and gave me a start.”

She glanced at me as she dropped another shoe in the bag. “You a fragile child, ain’t you,” she said. She pronounced “fragile” so it almost rhymed with “child.” I felt about five years old.

“Not really.” I tried to smile. How was it that, a few short weeks ago, I’d skin-dived in Hawaii, and here I was still trembling over an encounter with a harmless dog—and if I was being honest—over being surrounded by three young colored men I didn’t know?

“Charlotte set you out on your own already?” she asked as we stood up with our bounty of shoes and my briefcase.

“She broke her leg last week,” I said. “She won’t be back to work for a little while.”

“Oh now, that’s pitiful!” she said. “You tell her I be hoping it heals up fast.”

“I’ll do that.” I followed her into the house and through the living room to the kitchen, where plates and silverware littered the table.

“Excuse this mess,” she said, setting the bag on the floor. I lowered the one I was carrying to the floor next to it. “The boys just had dinner, and Rodney’s napping before we head back to the barn.” She motioned to one of the chairs. “Set,” she said, and I sat down.

“Must be hard to keep these growing boys fed,” I said.

“Now, that’s the truest thing I heard all day,” she said, moving the dishes to a basin on the counter. “You like some tea?” she asked.

I thought of the outhouses again, but I was dying of thirst. “I’d love some,” I said. Charlotte had told me it was good to show our colored clients that we had no problem drinking from their glasses or eating from their plates.

“Charlotte … Miz Werkman. She a good woman,” Mrs. Jordan said as she handed me the cold glass of tea. “You got some big shoes to fill.”

“I’m quickly figuring that out.”

“She fought to git me that operation,” she said. “Are you a fighter, too?”

“I think so,” I said. I wanted to be, but her words about my fragility were going to bother me all day, if not all week.

“I didn’t make it easy for her,” she said, chuckling.

“How do you mean?”

“She sent me to get that test. That ‘how much do you know’ test with the psychology man? If I knowed I was supposed to come out dumb on that test to get the operation, I would of answered them questions mighty different. You take a test, you think you supposed to do your best, you know?”

“Yes.” I smiled.

“You got to be plumb stupid to get that operation, I reckon. But I got it, and don’t have to worry about having no more babies. It’s a relief. You got children?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, you’ll see. You have two, it’s good. Three, still good, but there’s less food for them and they be harder to keep an eye on. Four, even worse. Five—” She shook her head. “No good for mama and no good for the babies, neither.” She sipped her tea.

The mention of her five children gave me the opening I was hoping for. “Your daughter,” I said. “Sheena?”

She nodded.

“She’s living up North?”

“I had to get her away,” she said, looking at her glass instead of at me. “She my oldest one,” she said. “Nineteen. The boys around here was after her from the time she was fourteen. Real pretty little girl, Sheena. I knew I had to get her out of here or she’d end up like me.” She ran her fingertip around the rim of the glass and I wasn’t sure what to say. “So I got relatives up there. Cousins and my brother. And they said send her on up. She done real good up there. Going into college,” she said proudly. “Got a scholarship. Not a full one, but pretty good. I miss her, though. I miss her so bad.”

“I bet you do,” I said.

“My cousins up there, they always after me, ‘Lita,’ they say, ‘why you stayin’ down in that pit Grace County when you could be up here a free woman? No KKK up here. No Jim Crow.’”

“Why do you?” I asked.

She leaned toward me. “Roots,” she said. “I got me some deep roots here. Right here on this land.”

“Mr. Gardiner told me how far back your family goes.”

“Oh yes, and I can’t leave, see? My brother could. He don’t care. But I can’t leave my folks buried in the cemetery here. I can’t leave what they broke their backs for. So I stay.”

“I understand,” I said. I reached for my purse. “Listen, I have something I thought you might like. You don’t need to take them, of course, but I just thought…” I pulled out a little package wrapped in tissue paper and unwrapped it to show her the five small frames I’d picked up at Woolworth’s. “When I saw the pictures of your children on the wall, I wondered if you might like to frame them.” She stared at the frames and I thought Charlotte might have been right about asking her first if she’d like them. Maybe I was insulting her in a way I couldn’t understand. But she looked up at me. “That’s right nice of you,” she said. “Do you think they’ll fit okay?”

“I do,” I said. “But I didn’t see a picture of Rodney. I brought the extra frame for when you get one of him.”

“I got one, but it’s a different size. Let’s see if they fit.”

She got to her feet and we walked into the living room. She pulled the picture of Eli from the wall and carefully peeled the tape from the corner while I opened the back of the frame. She slipped the picture on top of the glass and turned it over. Perfect fit. I watched the smile spread across her face. Together, we framed the other three photos and then she brought out a picture of Rodney sitting on some steps. We had to cut it down a bit to fit, and only when we’d finished framing it, did I recognize the steps as the ones leading up to the Gardiners’ front porch.

“I’ll get Eli to nail them up tonight.” Then she smiled at me. “You all right,” she said. “You real different from Miz Werkman.”

I didn’t know if that was good or bad or what to say.

“She’s smart and full of business,” she said, “and she sure knows how to get things done. You, though.” She nodded. “You a real human being.”

16

Ivy

I was nervous all day Monday while I looped the tobacco leaves over the sticks, waiting for Mr. Gardiner to come tell me I couldn’t work for him no more and to leave his son alone. I worked faster than ever before and the handers was having trouble keeping up with me. I wanted to do everything perfect. I wished I could talk to Henry Allen. I still didn’t know what happened to him after I ran home the night of the fire.

Every once in a while, I looked over at the south barn, which was pretty much gone now. One time when I looked, I saw a lady walking toward us on the path. I kept up with my looping, trying to think where I seen her before and remembered she was that social worker that came with Mrs. Werkman last week. Did Mr. Gardiner tell her about me and Henry Allen? Did he tell her to take me away someplace, like what happened to my mama?

“You messin’ up,” Daisy, the neighbor girl handing me the leaves, said. She pointed to the sloppy loop I’d just made, tobacco stems sticking up too high above the stick.

“Sorry.” I did that loop over, paying close attention to my hands and pretending I didn’t see the lady, but I knew she was coming, and she was coming for me.

Sure enough, I saw her shoes on the dirt next to where I stood. She wore clear galoshes over them saddle shoes some of the girls wore at school.

“Hi, Ivy,” she said.

I looked up, pretending I was surprised. “Hi,” I said, then looked right quick back at my flying fingers. I wanted to escape. Drop what I was doing and run and run and run.

“Hello, Mary Ella,” she said to my sister, who was handing leaves to another looper. Mary Ella looked clear through the lady like she wasn’t there. Sometimes I was jealous of how Mary Ella could get away with being so rude.

The lady turned back to me. “I’d like to speak to you for a little bit, Ivy,” she said.

“I got to work,” I said.

“Mr. Gardiner said it’s fine for me to take you away for an hour. Just an hour. He said he’ll still pay you for the time.”

Now I really didn’t believe a word coming out of her mouth. “Why would he pay me for not working?”

“Because he thinks it’s important that we have a chat. So, can someone take over what you’re doing here and you come with me?”

“I don’t want to go nowhere,” I said, looping another bunch of leaves.

“Anywhere you like,” she said. “You can take me to your favorite place.”

“I can loop for you,” Daisy said.

“I don’t have to go in your car?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said. “Just … somewhere around here where we can talk. I only want to get to know you better.”

I thought of the crick. Definitely my favorite place, but that belonged to me and Henry Allen. We was too far from it anyways.

“Okay,” I said. I handed the string to Daisy and walked back up the path with the lady. I couldn’t remember her name.

She was a mind reader. “I know we only met briefly the other day,” she said as we walked, “so you probably don’t remember my name. It’s Mrs. Forrester. And my, it’s hot!” She fanned her face with her hand. Here on the path through the field, right out in the sun, it was hot as blue blazes, but I was sweating from more than the heat, for sure. I didn’t dare steal a look at Henry Allen when we passed what was left of the south barn.

“When did this happen?” She pointed toward the barn.

“Don’t rightly know,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on the path. I had the feeling she knew exactly when it happened and why and was trying to trick me somehow.

“So,” she said, “where’s your favorite place to sit and talk?”

“I ain’t … I don’t have no favorite place to talk. We don’t do much sitting and talking around here.”

She laughed like that was funny. “Well, today we will. I have a big thermos of lemonade in my car. Let’s get that and take it someplace shady.”

I saw her car up on the lane. I pictured her pushing me into it when she opened the door to get the thermos that probably wasn’t even there. Then she’d drive me to the place where my mama was. The place they locked people up. I was sure Mr. Gardiner could make that happen.

“I don’t need no lemonade,” I said. We was almost to the car and I started hanging back.

“No?” She stopped walking. “Well, that’s fine. Where would you like to go?”

There was only one shady spot nearby, and that was under the tin roof on the side of the empty Christmas barn. I pointed toward it and we walked over there, neither of us saying a thing. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what she knew.

“This is perfect!” she said when we reached the shade. She sat down on the ground, leaning against the barn, her legs folded under her skirt. I sat down, too, but not close enough that she could grab me.

“Mrs. Werkman broke her leg,” she said. “She and I’d been hoping we could visit you and your family a few more times together, but she won’t be coming back to work for a while, so I’m trying to get to know people better on my own. That’s why I wanted to talk to you today.”

“Did you talk to Nonnie, too?”

“No, I don’t think I’ll have time to get to your house this afternoon. So for now, it’s just you and me.”

“Did you talk to Mr. Gardiner?” I asked.

“I did.”

“What did he say?” I needed to know. Was this about me and Henry Allen or wasn’t it?

She shook her head. “Not much. He told me how long your family’s lived in your house. How you go way back. He told me he and your father were best friends when they were little boys.”

My heartbeat was starting to settle down. “I suppose they was,” I said.

She tipped her head like she was real curious. “What do you remember about your father and mother?” she asked. “I know you were quite small—just five, right?—when you … when your father died. Do you remember him?”