Solemn (11 page)

“I seen you before,” Desiree said.

Solemn couldn't recall her. But Desiree was a bit younger. The older kids didn't look down much.

“You got B lunch,” Desiree said, correctly. She had seen Solemn before.

“You
have
B lunch,” Stephanie corrected. “You hear me? Desiree? Desiree?”

The girl continued to stare at Solemn, entranced. Solemn sat on the couch right beside her, with her legs crossed Indian-style, too. Only there was a quarter-size hole in the tights. Between her thighs. Desiree paid this no mind. Solemn smelled toast, and the Nutella she saw Stephanie wipe across it. Then she smelled a banana, cut wide open, a swoosh of sweet green vines with them now. And the caramel goddess woman was before her and the girl with two light-green saucers and full, very full, glasses of juice.

*   *   *

Over at Stephanie's house, where Solemn could sing. Or sang. Loud as she wanted to. She could even jump around and dance. Stephanie never yelled. Solemn had swing in her hips and Desiree had born rhythm in her arms. When they were famous, they would call themselves “Desi's Child.” At her home, Desiree had control of the remote. Solemn had control of Desiree. If it wasn't Beyoncé it was Mary J. Blige and Angie Stone. Michael Jackson and 'N Sync. Nelly and Juvenile. One night, Solemn got to stay over and up to watch the late movie. It was
Boyz n the Hood
. Solemn didn't have to turn her head when the boys got the holes blowed through them in the alleys, or when the boys and girls did nasty stuff in the beds. Desiree, just nine, did not know it was nasty stuff yet. Solemn let Desiree in on the secret of Nashville, where the singers were. Along with the well, it was a new shared destination for them both.

And we can make a routine to show everybody and maybe take it around town …

When Landon disappeared for the Army, right after there were big explosions in America where she lived (so Solemn heard Oprah and others on the television say), in the place called New York, where Dick Clark did the American Bandstand on New Year's Eve every year, while her parents drank frosted Corona beers with limes put in, as she watched her favorite stars sing in a place called Times Square, until a big ball dropped for a whole new year to change all the numbers. The explosions there sent women crying on television with firemen and policemen cradling the whole tragedy, and the white man President Bush on television having the gall to interrupt Oprah's show.

But Landon had already promised to be gone to fight, to be a black man with a legal gun and show to the whole world black men were brave—maybe in a place called “Afghanistan.” Solemn tried to pronounce it still. She heard talk about it. The Redvines were not sure. They just knew he was gone, it wasn't good, life was fraught, it was war. In their America. They prayed for them in the trailer every night. They all emptied out from Landon's unavailability with only the assurance he might send letters to fill them.

Solemn watched her parents sulk, worry, fret, wonder, and frantically archive his belongings in storage compartments under the camper. Landon was eldest, the firstborn, the cement to them, the inconvenience who had prevented a turn-back. The Redvines' readjustment included more attention to the child who was not there than the one who was. Solemn hung the five-by-seven uniform photograph of her brother on the door of her closet.

Bev had something else to talk about and it impressed the church. Her first class was Religious Fundamentals.

“But hell, I already know the Bible so good the professor like me,” she told Redvine and Solemn. She wrote it in her notes to Landon: “I'm a real good student…”

Solemn thought it was funny to see her mother with homework. Still, it was better than hearing Bev tell her to do her own. She and Bev did it together. Redvine sometimes offered to cook, so Bev could look in her books stationed at the kitchen table from now on. On some secret times, she rode down the Oprah Winfrey Road in town with a white woman named Ruby—“for my head of hair Ma named me.” Ruby loved to have chocolate classmates around now to talk about how much she was never a bigot and she always had black friends—even when her ma and pa said they'd whip her for it. Ruby had three grown children in college. Plus, in the summer, she went twenty hours on Illinois Central Amtrak to Chicago for
The Oprah Winfrey Show
.

“I told everybody in line, Bev, I was from here and they liked me so much,” Ruby repeated to Bev every time she gave her a lift home if Redvine forgot to show. Bev wrote it off. She had a good husband. And Ruby loved to help. Ruby told Bev Chicago was very, very integrated with everybody running the same streets to no division. Bev wondered what it would be like to see Chicago. Maybe take Solemn along, for a treat.

The arrangements even provided a boost in the love lives, with Bev seeing Stephanie wouldn't complain if she was a bit late. If both the girls went on Stephanie's orders to scavenge for bottles and cans they came back with less than Desi would have on her own, but they stayed gone longer than she would have. The relief of their daughter having a partner in a lengthened venture gave the couple permission for foreplay.

“The door locked,” Solemn would say.

“No, you just ain't doin' it right,” Desi corrected.

“Okay, you do better,” Solemn challenged. They wound up still outside and turning the key the Longwoods just kept in the car. The girls flopped about to the radio until Stephanie came out, fresh faced and claiming a nap. Solemn was quite eager for the job, since she kept most of the profits. According to herself, she was saving for a long trip out of town and would never come back. She was up to over $182 now, she could say.

“How nice.” Stephanie smiled down at the eager, honey-colored gal. Then, she offered her chance to make more with more cans. Desiree came back one time hollering: a knot on her forehead and in her hands a tattered slingshot, a present from Solemn, she said. Stephanie made her bangs. Another time Desiree had a little tack stuck in her foot. She was inoculated, so it wasn't much but a pain. Solemn always had a good story for it.

Desiree was friendly, so Solemn took over her bike, standing up to push the pedals while Desiree rocked on the seat behind. They rode around the circle of Singer's until they returned hungry and sweating. They shot stones at cans perched on four-by-fours they stuck in the dirt. One girl had to always ask to stay or go home with the other. Long dinners and visits through weekend errands were the best the parents could do with the little girls who pulled at their skirts or pants waists to ask favors. Stephanie drove them all in her Imperial on a voyage to Dillard's in Jackson and then Boston Store in Biloxi. Less than a semester after Solemn first rode in the backseat of the van on to Bledsoe and Miller's middle school, where just twenty whites were actually the minority, so it was fun, Stephanie had had to start cooking enough for five plates; Solemn ate enough for two.

The girl had her advantages, but Stephanie soon tired of all the ongoing tall tales. And, she was kind enough to find and hide a note the principal sent home with Solemn about her behavior. To her, it was just like lying, so she said she wasn't doing it again.

“She told you
what?
” Stephanie said to the latest Solemn story: a giant man around Singer's was looking for babies to chew up and spit out. “Girl, quit lying…”

“She did!” Desiree insisted.

A stray mix galloped toward the door. Where there was laughter, there might be scraps. But there was never anything near that one's door. Stephanie never accumulated leftovers. Her strong point wasn't reminders. Who wanted to unthaw or retaste a meal an argument or bad news had hovered over? She never knew which one of those would come around again; she only made enough for three and for one day. Then, Solemn just happened to start riding with them to Miller's and coming along after school. Stephanie only started to make extra food for Solemn's lingering. She threw the rest out for scraps the mutts could tussle over. Had it not been for Solemn being part of the house now, the strays would have never come near. Just another consequence of the new child.

Stephanie piled a few aluminum pans atop her breasts and toppled reminders out of the pans one by one. The dog outside groveled and bayed at the spilled potatoes, stringy pot roast, greasy carrots, and cabbage. Stephanie winced at the wretched slopping.

“So, this man at the well walks around Singer's in the middle of the night, and sleeps in Redvine's trailer? That's what Miss Solemn told you?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Desi smiled.

“And you saw him at the tent, and heard him in her trailer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he looks like Solemn's daddy, who I hope you're calling Mr. Redvine?”

Desiree was not.

“Desi,” Stephanie said, “I really don't think there's any men hiding in trailers or hanging round at night.” She knew Gilroy's ass had thrown them off, all of them.

She went on: “Doesn't matter. You got no reason to go 'round there. Everybody gets our own water these days, from the faucet or the store. You see your daddy lugging the water coolers in this house every week. Appreciate it. It's about time folks got less dependent on that well, even though we got the best drinking water in Mississippi. Somebody need to cover it. Out of respect. But there's no one out there, sweetheart.”

*   *   *

It's not what Solemn convinced Desiree inside the tent, before the very first time they hugged each other. Theo Longwood spent all night fashioning old lace window panels and the old sheets around his fishing nets. The mosquitoes gave up but the chiggers hung on. So the calamine lotion scuffed up their skin. Stephanie had already spread it down their arms and legs, but the girls wanted to do each other again on the feet, middle of the backs, and arms. The favor of the owls who paid them a visit was welcome. When the sun went down, the owls began to chatter and so did the girls.

“You have to go down in the well with me, if you wanna see him,” Solemn told her.

They clenched a scratchy throw tucked up to their chins. They moved in close. Desiree's eyes widened into wonder and trust. For everything in the Longwoods' house was structured, ornate, comprehensible. Their telephone chirped with the volume low, the school clothes ironed in advance, her shoelaces replaced regularly. She did not grow into high waters. She accompanied her mother to the Salvation Army, to take a fast ticket to inventory all their donated clothes rather than a patient browse through the Goodwill aisles. And figs drained the stigma from their daily oatmeal. Their own peaches sweetened their ice cream. Pretending shook things up a bit.

Solemn dictated Desiree pretend to be Oprah Winfrey and she would be the star onstage, with the audience on their feet and maybe even fainting when they saw her.

“What he look like?” Desiree asked her guest, entered through the tent slit.

“Like a man,” Solemn thought back. “Nothing different or bad. But tall. Really tall, and walking kind of crooked. But but he ain't got no face.”

“No face? Then, Miss Solemn, tell me how come he don't look different?”

“'Cause he don't look like nothing,” Solemn said. “We all look like something, but not him. Or he look like whatever you want him to. If you want him to look nice, he looks nice, but don't believe it. And you can't tell nobody about him. If you talk about him, he'll just follow you. He'll start asking you questions. Or telling you lies. 'Cause he said he ain't through. It's gonna be more of us. Could be me. It could even be you.”

Desiree screamed. They jerked around to see if a door yanked open, the flimsy covers of their tent torn back, a roar to “get yas asses back in here right now!”

But there was no one. No one but the owls.

“I'ma take you there, one day, soon. Down far … And if we just keep on collecting the bottles and cans, doing what we can, working…”

“Hey, Oprah don't work,” Desiree said. “So I'm not supposed to—”

“But you got money,” Solemn said. “So, we make enough money one day soon to go on to the rest of the world to meet new people. And nobody gon' tell us what to do again. If you get on the shows or I get on the shows, we make sure to pick each other too.”

So Desiree became the second, after the good brown cop; Solemn gave a peek. She would wait until maybe she got to the place called Chicago and talked to Oprah Winfrey, to tell it all there because everybody would listen and nobody would laugh.

Them girls started a game of tickling, mostly barely touching. Desiree remained an accomplice to Solemn's sanity, to dwarf her imaginings down to mere stories and twist bad memories into tolerance. Nothing more. Just stories and living dreams. Just to be able to tell somebody was a revelation, enough to ease the confusion and wonder. Solemn's visions became no more than fables to share word for word and bit by bit on an occasional morning she remembered them. The secrets became harmless. Even invited. Through a semblance of a yard accentuated by the few fruit trees Singer's Trailer Park could show off, on a fine dust grain dot of the Earth appearing to be the only world to them, with a sheet of haughty mist coordinating its fine shadows, and the graciousness of garter snakes held at bay, those two girls saw and imagined together.

 

NINE

Even the cicadas, brood buried for thirteen years, weren't so sneaky as the weather proved to be in 2002. Some didn't have televisions or good reception to watch the news. The radios went to music. The newspapers got pored over for the obituaries and coupons. If a telephone happened to be in reach, weather was never the message. They were used to heat. The rain was always welcome. The tornadoes happened to
“those”
people, their curse for being able to stretch front and backyards across acres. The sewage water, from the slaughterhouses dumping the hog and cow shit, only ran up on the neighborhoods fortunate enough to stand tall near the rivers and ravines. God didn't bother blacks. White people did.