The Babe Ruth Deception (14 page)

H
er rule was that Joshua couldn't help, so he sat and watched, which he hated. The leg brace, with mean-looking leather straps and steel rods and buckles, had to weigh five pounds. Sometimes she called it her thighbone, since it made up for the one that never healed right. The first few times she put it on with him around, she tried to keep her skirt pulled down to her knees, then reach up under it.

“Just pull your skirt up, girl,” he had said. She said it wasn't decent. “Not decent?” he said. “After what we just finished?” She flushed and sent him out of the room.

Now she pulled her skirt up to get it done. And she let him stay in the room. But she didn't let him help.

“Don't stare,” she said, perspiration beaded on her upper lip. “I hate it.”

“I love that leg, sweet girl, and every other part. Let me help.”

“Nope,” she grunted, straining at a buckle. She gasped when the prong went through the eye and the tension on the brace relaxed to a level of steady discomfort. “There. Brooklyn's favorite gimp is ready for a day of hobbling around.”

“You don't need to talk like that.” He rolled over and knelt at the edge of the bed facing her, placing his hands on either side of her waist and pulling her to him. He could feel her muscles. Every other part of her was strong, making up for the leg.

“Talk like what?”

“Making fun of yourself. I'd punch anyone who talked like that about you.”

“And what would that fix, mighty warrior? I'd still be a gimp.” He laid his cheek against her torso, his arms around her now, the fabric of her slip rustling in his ear. She dug her fingers into the tight curls of his hair. What did she think of how it crimped close to his skull? Or of his caramel skin? She had puzzled over the palms of his hands, so much paler than the rest, not much different from hers. He had been less surprised by her whiteness, after the women in France, but still could wonder at blue veins in her wrists, her breasts, the red flush of feeling on her cheeks.

Talcum powder motes tickled his nose. He reached under her skirt and slid his hands up to the asymmetry of her thighs. Under the heavy brace, the injured leg had narrowed. No matter how many exercises she did or how much she walked, the leg remained thin, vulnerable. When Violet thought he was looking at it, she would say that at least it wasn't getting worse.

Joshua smiled. The hunger was building again. He slid his hands further up her leg. He rose and kissed her lips.

“Say, buster,” she said softly. “The brace.”

He kissed her again. “No time. We'll work around it.”

In just a few weeks, he'd grown addicted to the feel of her, the smell of her. Even the talcum. He was surprised, after the first couple of times, how she took her pleasure. Some of the French women had done that. He learned to like that, their response, to wait for it. But where did this sheltered American girl learn about it? When he asked her, she smiled. She said maybe she was a natural. That smile, that attitude that she knew more than he did—at first it could make him nervous. Then he started to like it, too. He stopped thinking about how she was bound to come to her senses, realize she had no business being with the likes of him. He steered her back onto the bed and fell onto his elbows, then into her. He couldn't get enough.

Afterward, they lay in a dozy haze. The morning light dazzled. Her head rested on his shoulder, fingertips tracing a rib, back and forth. The buckles on her brace bit into his upper thigh, just as they had to be biting into hers. He couldn't remember feeling so complete. Until now, the idea of heaven never made any sense to him. Bliss was a word without meaning. What could that be—endless ice cream on sunny days? Now he knew what those poets had been talking about, or should have been talking about. The part about having it forever, though, that still didn't make sense.

“I hope I remember this,” she said, “when I'm old and fat.” She had raised up to stare into his eyes, inches from his face.

He smiled. “You won't need to remember anything. We'll still be doing it.”

She lay back and rested her head on the pillow, then leaned over to kiss his ear. “You like fat white women?”

“My favorite.” He kissed her eyelid.

“Joan says we're going to hell, living like this.”

“What do you think?”

She didn't answer.

“What do you think?”

“I wish my only remaining friend didn't talk like that.”

“Violet—that's superstition. You know that? Some of the guys on the line over in France used to talk that way. 'Course, heaven and hell weren't any crazier than what happened to us every day.”

She was quiet, not wanting to say something wrong about the war, still trying to figure out that part of Joshua. She knew he didn't sleep right. Once she woke up in the night to find him lying next to her staring at the ceiling. Another time she found him smoking out in the other room. A couple of times she found his hand squeezing her arm or her leg, grunting and moaning. He could have his eyes wide open but not be awake. What happened in France was never far from him. When she asked about it, he put her off. He said it was getting better. She hoped it was, that it would keep getting better, even that she could help him with it.

“Anyway,” he said, “you don't need to take that sort of talk from her.”

“It's not what she says, the sin and hell part. But it's being by ourselves so much. Knowing that just by being together we make people angry. I try not to go out on the street around here. The women, the colored ones, they give me hard looks.”

“You just give 'em hard looks right back.”

“At least they don't spit at me, curse me out, like those longshoremen did, that time we were over near the river.”

She could feel his heart speed up with the memory. She pulled her head up. “We can't fight them all, Josh. Where would you start?”

“I know it. I know it, but I can't help wanting to.”

She dropped her head onto the pillow and rested her fingertips against his cheek. “It makes me sad. It's our happiness that makes them angry.”

Joshua sat up and swung his legs to the floor. He stood and reached for his underdrawers. “That ain't it.”

“No?”

“They don't care if we're happy or miserable. It's that we
are
, that we exist. A pretty yaller-haired girl and some ignorant nigger buck.”

“I don't like it when
you
talk like
that
.”

“Us not saying the words won't stop them from saying them, from thinking them.”

Violet sat up, her forearm holding the sheet across her breasts. She watched him catch his big toe on the waistband of his shorts. His foot went through cleanly on a second try. He sat on the bed.

“Say it, Violet. Whatever's eating at you.”

“Well, there's my parents and your parents, and our happiness makes them unhappy, too.”

“We can't live our lives to make other people happy. Not even our own folks.”

She nodded her head. “I keep thinking that if we talked to them, if we showed them how much we loved each other, they'd stop feeling that way. Then they'd know how right this all is.”

He gave her a tight smile. “Don't you worry about it, sweet girl. It's out of your hands. I'm never giving you up. Not ever.”

Violet pivoted carefully on her bottom until her legs touched the floor on the side opposite from Joshua. Her hand automatically tugged the skin where the brace pinched. Facing the wall, she let her face clench, squeezed her eyes tight. The moment passed. She ran both hands through her hair and took a breath. She had to get up, get moving. “Can you face more scrambled eggs?”

“Didn't your mama teach you how to fix nothing else?”

“How to mix a sidecar?” She reached for the cane. It was a bright morning. A breeze moved the curtains over the back window.

“That's dinner, not breakfast,” he said as he stood. “Remember, Cecil's coming.” They met at the foot of the bed. He grabbed her and lifted her off her feet with a hug. She held on as tight as she could, before he started packing.

* * *

Violet couldn't deny it. The tiny kitchen—an alcove, really—was just plain dirty. She started the coffee and let her eyes play over the counter, the hot plate, the sink. There was no excuse for it, even if they'd be moving out soon. She couldn't leave the place looking like this. As soon as Joshua left for Saratoga, she would wash each of their mismatched plates and cups. She would wash them twice. And the few pots. Then she would scrub down the table that the hot plate sat on, then the walls and the floor. At least twice.

The sourness of the apartment was weighing her down. No one came to that neighborhood, the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, unless they lived in one of the ramshackle buildings that were carved up into too many apartments with too many people in them. She could hear conversations through walls, plus every footstep on the floor above. A door slam across the street could startle her. Their neighbors were almost all colored, but only a few were like Joshua. A lot seemed beaten down, defeated. Some she had trouble understanding when they spoke, almost like in a foreign language. She felt conspicuous around here, and then there was her limp.

The leg. It was part of her, sure, but it didn't always feel that way. It had its own moods. Sometimes it wanted to hurt because she had done too much, or moved the wrong way without thinking. Sometimes it wanted to hurt because it wanted to hurt. And sometimes it didn't. Always, though, she had to take it into account. Before moving, she had to think. What was the best way for this shift? How should she distribute her weight? How could she stay steady? If she didn't check in with the leg, it imposed its own punishments. It might be satisfied with a quick jolt of pain. Or it might drop her heavily to the floor, inflicting humiliation as well as pain. She could get off the floor on her own now, using the cane, but it was a spectacle, pathetic and graceless and grunting.

“Why, Miss Violet!” Cecil's voice, with an overlay of put-on southern accent, snapped her out of it. He strode toward her ahead of Joshua and offered a formal bow. “Honey chile, I'm just hoping there's some scrambled eggs in my future.”

She put on a smile and offered a shallow curtsy. “Sir Cecil, I do hope it's to your liking. And a cookbook will be on today's shopping list.” Both men laughed, then crowded in to pour themselves coffee.

When they left her alone before the skillet, Violet found herself remembering that day. She was wearing a blue crepe dress with a drop waist. Her mother said that no woman over forty could wear that. She topped it off with a pale blue cloche hat with gold ribbon and flowers. She thought her hair peeked becomingly out of its low brim.

The bank seemed dark when she entered. A tall guard offered to help her. She had to tilt her head back to see his face. After Griff was summoned to greet her, he left her in a sitting area near the back. He had to finish a meeting. The roar from the street seemed to tilt the building. Something knocked her down. Then she was looking up at Joshua's face, ghostly with clinging dust. She couldn't make sense of it, not then. It should have been Griff, but it was Joshua. And it had been Joshua ever since.

“Violet!” Joshua's voice came from the sitting room.

“Oh, goodness.” She yanked the pan off the burner and scraped the eggs onto a plate. She pulled the charred parts out with a fork. She could eat those parts, or maybe make do with the toast.

“The butter's turned,” she said as she placed the plates on the table, “so it's jam only.”

Joshua told her to sit and he'd get her coffee. He came back with the salt and sprinkled it liberally on his eggs.

“We really should be the ones making with the pots and pans,” Cecil said, “what with your leg and all, standing there. This here man of yours was a wizard at opening cans of vittles in France.”

“That's sweet,” Violet said, “but I need to be on my feet. And standing's easier than walking. I need to do it all. To get stronger.”

“Will Joan come today?” Joshua asked.

“No, she's on at the clinic. She's coming tomorrow, after you boys leave for Saratoga.” She turned to Cecil. “Joan comes all the way out here to Fort Greene to work with me on her day off. Only a real friend would do that.”

“Hey, hey,” Joshua put in, “we're paying her. The Cooks pay their way.”

Ready to change the subject, Violet said, “I thought I heard you talking about that Brotherhood that you two used to be part of. The African thing.”

Joshua cleared his throat. “Cecil has news.” Violet turned.

“Well,” Cecil started, visibly calculating how to frame the news. “You know about the investigation of that bombing where you got hurt, how it's been going nowhere? It's been in the papers. They can't figure out who the hell did it, or why, or how.”

“We do know how,” she said. “They blew up a bomb.”

Cecil smiled. “Okay, but how did it get there? Anyway, now they've started sniffing around the Brotherhood, trying to connect it to the bombing.”

“Was the Brotherhood that radical? Did they bomb places?” She looked at Joshua.

“I don't know of anything like that,” he said, shrugging. “But there were some angry men there. Real angry. Some big talk, you know.”

“What does this matter to us?” she asked. “Do they think you two placed the bomb?”

Cecil grinned. “No, no, nothing like that. Just something for us to know about. Keep an eye on, you know? We deal with the police some, in our business.”