Perfect Peace (48 page)

Bartimaeus rolled to his left side, trying in vain to sleep. Sometimes he buried his head beneath the pillow, and other times he simply endured. He loved Caroline—all of her—but the sleepless nights made his love less dreamy and more actual. He wanted his coffin back, yet, afraid Caroline might feel rejected, he kept the fading wish to himself. Only in these moments did he desire a slimmer wife, and that was only because he believed Emma Jean’s theory that “fat folks snore the loudest.” Authorly had proven it. At any given hour, when they were kids, he would begin hollering—as Mister called it—and none of the others would sleep again until Authorly rolled onto his stomach. Bartimaeus soon discovered that, by lowering the coffin lid, he could
shut out most of Authorly’s noise and sleep dead to the world. Now, after months of marriage, he knew the days of sound, uninterrupted sleep were gone.
Oh well
, he thought. If this were the price he’d have to pay for living with a woman who cooked like Caroline, he counted himself blessed. He never knew a chicken could be prepared so many different ways. Their union also introduced him to foods he’d never heard of like broccoli, asparagus, and eggplant. Gus had told him that “any man who finds a cookin’ woman gon’ love her forever,” and now he knew his father wasn’t totally crazy. What Bartimaeus liked most about Caroline’s food was that she didn’t overseason and overcook the way his mother did. She could baste a coon so tender others thought they were eating roast turkey.

Food was also Caroline’s nemesis. She ate nonstop and, at every meal, cooked enough for ten although there were only two. Conscious of waste, she felt compelled to eat what Bartimaeus couldn’t, and fussed at him for making her eat all that extra food. Her escalating weight didn’t trouble him as much as her deteriorating health, but Bartimaeus decided not to complain. The last thing she needed was another man unsatisfied with her.

How hard could sewing be?
Anybody could thread a needle and cut out shapes of cloth from patterns, then sew them together. There was nothing difficult about that. The sitting would be the hard part, Emma Jean reasoned, and she’d simply have to stand whenever she needed to. Henrietta had offered the ultimatum as though believing Emma Jean would be tortured by the work. It just couldn’t be
that
hard, Emma Jean told herself as she walked. She had always worked, even as a child, so it would take more than physical labor to break her down. That’s what Henrietta wanted, wasn’t it? To break her spirit and make her regret what she had done? Emma Jean cackled. “Henrietta Worthy don’t know me! Shit, I’m a survivor. If I can live with Mae Helen Hurt and come out alive, I can stand anything!” There was simply nothing she could foresee about sewing that would torture her into believing she had not done the right thing for Perfect. Well, Paul. She hadn’t meant to twist up the child’s mind, as Authorly had put it, until he didn’t know right from left. She had simply wanted a daughter, and she didn’t understand why she couldn’t have one. Since her days with Mae Helen, she had heard nothing but “no” and “you’re not good enough” and “you ain’t nothin’ ” and “you don’t deserve this or that,” so she promised herself that, when she got grown, she would have something she wanted and something she loved. And nobody would keep her from it. “Henrietta’s got another thing coming if she thinks I’m gon’ apologize for what I done!” Emma Jean declared, stomping her frustration into the dirt road. “She ain’t gon’ make me hate myself for lovin’ my child!”

The first day wasn’t so bad. It was actually pretty boring. Emma Jean’s hands ached from cutting out countless garments with scissors that Henrietta
knew were too dull for the job. But it didn’t kill her, and because of that, Emma Jean left for home at 5:16 with her head held high. She was tired, of course. She couldn’t lie about that. Ironing cloth in preparation for cutting, then pinning patterns atop it, then bending and stretching around those patterns as she attempted to cut the cloth with precision had been far more exhausting than she had anticipated. A few times, Henrietta had glanced at her and burst into unbridled laughter, but Emma Jean didn’t let the ridicule bother her. She simply pressed on as though Henrietta wasn’t there. By day’s end, Emma Jean couldn’t hide her fatigue, and Henrietta said, “See ya in de mornin’!” as though knowing Emma Jean’s destruction was nigh.

Shortly after six that evening, the menfolk entered and saw Emma Jean asleep at the kitchen table. A light fire brewed in the woodstove, but Gus smelled no food.

“What’s the matter with you, woman? You sick or somethin’?”

Emma Jean lifted her head slowly, wiping saliva from the corners of her mouth, and blinked her way back to reality. “Lawd have mercy. I musta dozed off for a minute. Y’all ’cuse me.” She rose quickly and began cooking.

“You mean to tell me you ain’t cooked yet?”

Emma Jean huffed. Her nerves were already frayed, and, tired as she was, she had absolutely no patience for Gus’s mouth. “I had a lotta things to do today, man, so don’t start with me!”

“What’d you do?”

“Don’t worry about that, okay? I don’t need you givin’ me the third degree!”

Gus let it go. He washed up and waited.

“Somethin’ wrong with Momma,” Paul whispered to Mister, sitting next to him on the sofa.

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t know what it is. Where’d she go this morning? She left before we did.”

“I don’t know, but wherever she went she must’ve stayed all day ’cause this house is a mess.”

Emma Jean noticed the exchange, but chose to ignore it. It was already 6:30—an hour past dinnertime—and dinner was nowhere to be found. She sliced potatoes and fried them with onions in the cast-iron skillet and rolled out dough for biscuits. The leftover cabbage and yams from Sunday’s meal she simply warmed and placed on the table. At 7:15, she said, “Y’all come on.”

Gus blessed the food, then, before serving himself, asked, “Where de meat?”

“You ain’t gotta have meat
every
time you eat, man. Just go ’head and be satisfied with what you got.”

“But we got plenty o’ meat in de smokehouse. Why can’t we eat it?”

“ ’Cause I ain’t had time to fix it today, okay! Damn! You ain’t never satisfied with nothin’!”

The boys looked at each other.

“Y’all go ’head on and eat! Y’all acted like y’all was starvin’ to death!”

The boys filled their plates and ate in silence. The cabbage was lukewarm, and the potatoes were burned on the bottom, but they feared what Emma Jean might say if they complained, so, like Gus, they ate with bowed heads.

Afterward, Emma Jean was so tired she could hardly tidy the kitchen. She heard Henrietta in her head, roaring with laughter, and she hated her. Having underestimated how the agreement would affect her family, Emma Jean now understood that Henrietta had tricked her into more than she had bargained for. It wasn’t that the work of sewing was so exhausting; it was that, by the time she arrived home, she wasn’t fit for anything else.
Damn bitch
, Emma Jean thought. Of course she couldn’t quit. That would mean she wasn’t a woman of her word, and, if nothing else, Emma Jean Peace kept her word. And Henrietta knew it. That’s why she had taken advantage of her during a desperate moment. “Black hussy,” Emma Jean murmured. And all the while Emma Jean thought she’d had the upper hand.

By 8:30, Emma Jean collapsed across the bed as if she’d been shot.

“You actin’ mighty funny, woman,” Gus said, unlacing his work boots.

Emma Jean found enough strength to roll to her side of the bed. “I’m all right. I just got somethin’ I gotta do for a while.”

“What chu mean, ‘a while’?”

“I mean . . . a while. I can’t really explain it to you, so don’t ask me, but supper gon’ be late every day.”

“Every day?”

“I’ll try to put somethin’ on in the mornings before I go, but—”

“What de hell you doin’, Emma Jean?” Gus turned and stared at her.

“It ain’t nothin’ for you to worry about. It’s just somethin’ I gotta do ’cause I said I would.”

“Well,” Gus said, shrugging, “I sho hope it don’t last long, ’cause eatin’ at damn near eight o’clock ain’t gon’ work.”

Emma Jean drifted off before confessing that the change would probably last a lifetime.

Henrietta and Emma Jean never talked. Henrietta simply told her what to do and Emma Jean did it. By the end of the first month, Emma Jean discovered that the biggest torture of the job was the silent contemplation it forced. Endless hours passed with Henrietta either quiet or absent, and, in that time, Emma Jean’s mind, without her heart’s permission, wandered back to moments and decisions she never thought she’d reconsider. That was the agony of the job—sitting in silent discourse with herself, then, because of the burn scars, standing, subject to the same mental contemplation. Emma Jean had never known the power of silence. Her life had been filled with sound, noise, speech, and she liked it that way. She could control what she said and to whom she said it. Even when someone’s words pissed her off—like that damn Sugar Baby—she liked that her sharp tongue came to her rescue and put folks in their places. And of course with seven children, someone was always asking or telling her something, and by the time she tired of talking, she was ready for bed. Not now. Now, Silence ruled her and made her think about things. It was so inconsiderate. It didn’t care that some memories were too painful to revisit. It didn’t care that Emma Jean wept aloud each time it forced her back to places and experiences she had forgotten for the sake of sanity. It wasn’t the least bit moved that it sometimes made Emma Jean wonder if she were losing her mind. Silence seemed to enjoy the game. Could Henrietta have known Silence? Could she have known this would happen?

Emma Jean saw Claude Lovejoy’s face one day, buried within the threads of a yellow garment. He was weeping and looking at her as though asking,
Why did you reject me?
Emma Jean turned away, shaking her head violently, but the image remained. “I was a child,” she mumbled. “What was I suppose to do?” The face continued staring, unmoved. Angrily, she bunched the cloth and threw it across the room. After retrieving it and still beholding her father’s face, she ripped it to shreds. Henrietta found her sobbing at the table.

“Something wrong, honey?”

Emma Jean hadn’t heard her enter. “I’m fine.” She wiped her eyes and said, “We’ll need another bolt of yellow fabric. This one fell apart.”

Henrietta smiled. “I see. Well, don’t worry about it. If it happens again, we’ll just have to get Gus to pay for it.”

“This ain’t got nothin’ to do with Gus. You leave him out of this.”

“Fine. But if you get so mad you destroy any more of my cloth, you gon’ have to pay for it—in cash.”

Henrietta walked around the house for the next hour, envisioning Emma Jean engulfed in a rage of fury, ripping yellow strips of cloth and probably cursing all the while, and taunted, “Are you having fun yet?” There was nothing Emma Jean could say or do. Belligerence was useless since, for better or worse, she couldn’t go anywhere, and Henrietta would undoubtedly have welcomed a physical brawl. Ignoring her was the best Emma Jean could hope for, and Henrietta’s mocking laughter made that practically impossible.

By Christmas of 1958, Emma Jean’s balancing of home and work had fallen apart. She was simply too tired to clean and cook after twelve hours of tedious sewing. Still, Gus didn’t know about the arrangement, but he stopped questioning her once she started crying her nights away. In the mornings, she’d soak her hands in hot water, hoping to ease the tension from her joints, but it never helped much, and squeezing the small rubber ball repeatedly only intensified the pain. Henrietta recommended that she sit upon her hands and rock like her mother used to. It relieved her arthritis, Henrietta said, and maybe Emma Jean would find a similar relief. “Of course Momma’s mind wasn’t too good, either, so rocking helped her steady herself.”

“I ain’t no old, crazy woman!” Emma Jean said. Yet, after dropping and breaking half of her good dishes, she knew she needed to do something. She tried Henrietta’s suggestion, and, much to her chagrin, it worked. Gus frowned, wondering why in the world she was rocking like that, but her quivering mouth kept him from asking.

Henrietta opened her boutique in March of 1959 with grand success. Women marveled at the variety of dresses, skirts, and blouses it offered, and wondered how one woman could produce such volume. Henrietta smiled and said, “The Lawd always makes a way!” Within a week, she had sold half her merchandise—mostly to white women—and she told Emma Jean, “Guess we gon’ have to double our production.” Henrietta gave Emma Jean a brand-new pair of scissors, and Emma Jean received it like a Hebrew slave might have received straw for bricks. Although the cutting was easier, the sheer volume of cloth being cut had doubled, so the pain in Emma Jean’s hands never subsided. With Henrietta tending the boutique, Silence came more often. It asked Emma Jean, one day, why she had abandoned King Solomon.

“I didn’t abandon him.”

Sure you did.

“No, I didn’t.”

Then why didn’t you let him go to school? He’s the one who wanted it.

“ ’Cause we couldn’t send but one.”

Oh yeah. And you wanted Perfect to go.

“His name’s Paul.”

Paul. Perfect. Same difference.

“No it ain’t!”