Perfect Peace (47 page)

Christina nodded, and the others returned to dancing.

Outside, Eva Mae collapsed to her knees.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Eva Mae?”

She stood slowly, still overwhelmed with it all. “Wow. How do men do it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Y’all get everything you want. And then some.”

“What?”

“It’s true. You get to have girlfriends and flirt with each other, too.”

“Shut up, Eva Mae! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh really? I watched you dance with Christina and make eyes at Johnny Ray—all at the same time. She didn’t even notice!”

Paul couldn’t deny it.

“And is somebody gonna tell Violet about Johnny Ray?”

“Tell her what?”
Eva Mae couldn’t know, could she?

She began to chuckle again. “Everybody ain’t dumb, Paul. Most people ’round here is, but everybody ain’t.”

If she didn’t mention anything specific, he certainly wasn’t going to.

“Oh, don’t worry. I ain’t gon’ say nothin’ to nobody. I just think it’s funny.”

“Just leave it alone, Eva Mae. It’s none of your business.”

“Oh! I see! You’re my best friend, supposedly, but who you love is none of my business?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It don’t matter.” She patted his shoulder. “I’m a woman, so I ain’t supposed to know anyway. That’s how it works, right?”

Paul huffed. “Why are you doing this now?”

“ ’Cause it’s just so crazy! Everybody wants a man—men and women—but women think they’re the pretty ones. Ain’t that crazy!” Her chuckling evolved into uncontrolled laughter again.

“I’m going back inside.”

“Yes, you should. I’m sure Christina’s waiting for
her man
!”

Eva Mae howled. Paul walked away more frustrated that he couldn’t counter her claim than irritated by what she’d said. Before he reached the entrance, he bumped into Johnny Ray.

“Oh . . . hey,” Paul stammered.

“Hey,” Johnny Ray said.

“I like your jacket. It’s really nice.”

“My jacket? Man, everybody’s talkin’ ’bout your suit! Where’d you get it from?”

“Momma made it.”

“Wow. That’s cool. I didn’t know Miss Emma Jean could sew like that.”

“We didn’t, either.”

They endured ten seconds of awkward silence, unaware of Eva Mae’s lurking eyes. Then, without thinking, Paul reached out and lightly touched the lapel of Johnny Ray’s jacket, like one attempting to smooth out a stubborn wrinkle. And Johnny Ray didn’t stop him. In fact, Johnny Ray sighed and closed his eyes at the touch, unaware of the return of Paul’s budding erection.

Eva Mae’s laughter broke the trance.

“Oh . . . um . . . I’m sorry,” Paul said, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay. It’s nothing.” Johnny Ray smiled warmly. “I’ma just go to the outhouse for a minute, and I’ll see you back inside.”

“Okay.”

Paul studied Johnny Ray’s strut, noting his thick buttocks and extra-wide shoulders. Why couldn’t Johnny Ray love him? Mister could have anybody he wanted. Everybody said so. Paul would have done anything—
anything
—for Johnny Ray’s heart. Like Eva Mae had done for his.
But I guess you can’t make nobody love you
, Paul told himself. The more he imagined Johnny Ray in his arms, the more clearly he saw the hurt on Mister’s face.

“Your girlfriend’s waiting,” Eva Mae snarled. “I’ll see you later.” She began walking home in the dusk.

“Why you leavin’?”

“ ’Cause I don’t wanna walk home in the dark.” Over her shoulder, she shouted, “
By myself.
”

Gus and Bartimaeus missed Woody’s wedding announcement in the spring of ’57 because of the rains. It had never poured like that, people said. One moment the sun was shining brilliantly, then, suddenly, dark clouds gathered and unleashed as they must have in Noah’s day. Gus rushed to the Jordan when the rains commenced, and Bartimaeus followed, losing his way among the monsoonlike winds. The rain fell all day, as if from a waterfall, then, as abruptly as it began, it stopped, and the setting sun was instantly unveiled. Gus and Bartimaeus heard exultant rejoicing as they approached home that Saturday evening, and Authorly intercepted them down the road with dry clothes and news of Woody’s engagement.

“He said God came to him the other day and told him he needed a helpmate,” Authorly explained.

“Well, good for him,” Gus said. “Good for him.”

Bartimaeus asked, “Who’s the girl?”

“Puddin’ Jenkins,” Authorly chuckled.

Gus screeched, “Puddin’ Jenkins? That ugly girl from Damascus? One o’ David Jenkins’s girls?”

“Yep! That’s the one!”

“He couldn’t do no better’n that?”

Authorly hollered. “He said God showed her to him in a dream and told him to go get her. I told him he was havin’ a nightmare!”

The men laughed heartily.

“She can’t be
that
bad,” Bartimaeus said.

“If you only knew! You better be glad you can’t see!”

“All right, boy. Ugly folk need love, too.” Gus tried not to laugh.

“He said they gettin’ married pretty soon.”

Gus and Bartimaeus congratulated Woody when they arrived home, and Gus confirmed that a preacher should have a wife. He wasn’t too sure about it being Puddin’ Jenkins, but, hell, why not? She needed a husband as much as any other girl.

At the wedding a week later, which lasted all of fifteen minutes, folks scowled when Puddin’ appeared before the opened double doors of the church. Her dress was pretty enough, but all the makeup in the world couldn’t alter what Emma Jean called “bone ugliness.” Her forehead protruded like a cliff, and her crazy left eye swiveled while the right one never moved. People didn’t know if she was looking at them or around them, so they smiled and waited until after the ceremony to voice their comments.

W. C. said, “If God had sunt me a girl lookin’ like that, I’d o’ told God, ‘No thank Ya!’ ”

Deacons hollered.

Miss Mamie said, “Woody Peace is shonuff a man o’ God ’cause nobody
but
God could o’ made him marry Puddin’ Jenkins. Seem like to me that girl just
wants
to be ugly! She could do better if she just would.”

The crowd marched to Emma Jean’s front yard to consume barbecued coon, squirrel, chicken, and rabbit that Authorly had slow-roasted throughout the night. People congratulated Gus on getting another son married off, and patted his back sympathetically for having endured the recent rains. Everyone had heard his and Bartimaeus’s strong baritones announce the arrival of yet another spring, but by the end of the day their voices had disintegrated into hoarse, scratchy cries of fatigue. They persisted, nonetheless, sure that if they didn’t, the residue of pain in their hearts would overwhelm them before the rains came again. Gus especially would’ve been honored to know that countless Swamp Creek residents sat on their porches and listened to the melodious lamenting until their hearts, too, were made clean and pure. When the wailing ceased, people returned their chairs to their kitchen tables and began revisiting those obstinate neighbors whose offenses they now forgave.

At the wedding reception, Paul told Eva Mae, “I think Christina wants to marry me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. At least I think so. Every time we together, she talks about wantin’ a husband and kids. She asked me what I thought about the possibility of bein’ her husband.”

“What’d you say?”

“I told her I hadn’t never thought about it. Not really.” Paul turned to see Eva Mae’s reaction.

“Paul . . . um . . .”

“What?” he said, smacking on a rabbit leg.

“I don’t want you to get hurt. Just take yo’ time. Okay? You ain’t like most men.”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

“Just what I said. Don’t rush into nothin’. Most folks ain’t got nothin’ to lose. You got everything to lose.”

Paul grimaced.

“Aw, boy, please! Can we just tell the truth for a change?”

“What truth?”

“The truth that you don’t know what you like. Not yet. You look at Johnny Ray harder than you look at Christina. Tell me I’m lyin’!”

Paul didn’t challenge her.

“That means you don’t know who you are.”

“I know who I am!”

“I don’t mean your name. I mean your spirit. Who you really are deep down inside, regardless of what other folks say. That’s what you got to figure out.” Eva Mae could tell Paul didn’t want to hear it, but she continued anyway. “Yo’ life has been crazy, Paul, to say the least, and figurin’ out who you is sometimes takes years. You gotta know what you think and what makes you happy and what you can live with, and some of that I don’t think you know yet.”

Her nurturing tone softened his guard. “You’re probably right.”

“Me, on the other hand, I didn’t have no other choice. Ain’t nobody never thought much about me, so I started thinkin’ about myself really early. Remember how I used to come to y’all’s house all the time?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it was only because my folks didn’t care where I went, so I had to pretend somebody liked me. That somebody was you.”

“Why me? I didn’t even know you.”

“Yeah, but Miss Emma Jean adored you and that’s what I wanted. I used
to walk by y’all’s house all the time, hoping she’d ask me to come over and play with you, and maybe then I might be important. At least to somebody. I thought it might work since you didn’t have no sisters.”

“Oh! So that day Momma saw you and Caroline in the road and asked y’all to play with me wasn’t the first day you walked by?”

“It wasn’t the second or third, either. Like I said, I just wanted to be your friend ’cause yo’ momma thought you was God.”

Paul laughed. “Yeah, right!”

“She sure acted like it. Wherever y’all went, you always looked like a doll. You had the prettiest dresses, and the part down the middle of yo’ head was always straight as a arrow. Me and Caroline used to talk all the time about how jealous we was of you.”

Paul sighed as his memory ran amuck. “I miss those days sometimes.”

“I’m sure you do. That’s why I’m sayin’ go slow with Christina. Or whoever. You gotta figure out what part of Perfect you want and what part you don’t. Then you gotta put that part with who you is now. It’ll all come together when you get clear about who you wanna be.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Well, just start by talkin’ to yo’self and admittin’ the truth. You ain’t gotta tell nobody else, but you gotta tell yo’self. Then you’ll be able to answer some of the other questions.”

“How do you know all o’ this stuff?”

“My grandmother. She used to say that a person gotta
make
theyselves, and I never understood what she meant.” Eva Mae paused long enough to speak to Emma Jean, then continued: “But now I see. Just don’t let what other people think and feel make you think and feel like them. If you different, be different. People’ll get used to it. They ain’t got no other choice.”

Paul smiled. “You right about that.”

“Don’t give people God’s power. Yeah, they have opinions and stuff, but they ain’t got no power to change your world unless you give it to ’em. Keep all the power you got. You’ll need it. I promise.”

Bartimaeus and Caroline didn’t want a wedding. They simply asked Reverend Lindsey to marry them and he did so—right in Gus and Emma Jean’s living room. The newlyweds then moved into Caroline’s grandmother’s abandoned house. It had been vacant for more than a year, and Mr. Burden said they
could have it if they wanted it. It was just south of Highway 64, walking distance from the church, so Bartimaeus asked his brothers to examine the house and tell him what it needed. “Everything!” Emma Jean said upon seeing it. “That thang’s ’bout to fall down!” Gus rolled his eyes and said, “It’s not that bad, son. We’ll get it together for you. Don’t worry. I ain’t gon’ have you livin’ in no shack.” Emma Jean said, “Then you ’bout to build a whole new house!” Gus and the boys took a week and repaired what they could, and Bartimaeus and Caroline moved in.

Lying in bed with another person felt strange to Bartimaeus, who only now fully appreciated the security, silence, and confinement of the coffin. He wondered if there were double-occupancy models, or maybe triple, since Caroline consumed the space of two. But not knowing whom to ask, he dropped the notion and tried to adjust to a normal bed, complete with Caroline’s incessant shifting and monstrous snoring. Most nights, he lay awake long after her bestial growling began, or, upon the rare occasion of falling asleep first, found himself awakened in the middle of the night by the same. Sleepless nights came often. Lying there, staring into darkness, he couldn’t tell if it was two o’clock or five thirty. His mind wandered, from one topic to the next, until, one night, he found himself thinking about Paul. What kind of life would he lead? Caroline had told him about Paul’s feelings for Johnny Ray, making him swear never to divulge the secret. Bartimaeus promised he wouldn’t, but admitted he wasn’t surprised. He said it made sense for Paul to be that way since he had been a girl all those years. “But what about Christina?” Caroline asked. “Paul likes her, too.” Bartimaeus had no explanation. He said that maybe Paul liked both of them, although he’d never heard of such a thing. “He’s confused, honey. Anybody who’s been through all of that oughta be.” Caroline agreed.