Tina Mcelroy Ansa (44 page)

“We ain’t
all
got to go cross the burning sands to know what it’s like and what’s on the other side. Shoot, Mulberry can take a lot out of you. Some folks got the nerve to be mad you ain’t still pretending to eat their food.”

Although Lena had laughed it off, what Gloria told her about the people in town was true.

Sometimes, Lena would spy someone she hadn’t seen in ages standing on the corner waiting for the bus, and she’d pull up to offer a ride before she thought about it. Or sometimes, she’d just pull up to someone’s porch to say hey. But she would always end up regretting it.

Folks were beginning to feel they were well within their rights to get Lena straight. When they could catch her, they had the nerve to say, “Well, yeah, Lena, you have been, well, I won’t mince words, sugar, distracted lately. Like your full mind ain’t on what it s’posed to be on.”

She would listen to them chastise her if she had time and Herman wasn’t waiting for her and just shake her head and chuckle at their presumption.

Some people still insisted on trying to stop her as she breezed infrequently through The Place, trying to slip in a litany of needs. But Lena had learned a thing or two in the last few months with Herman at her side. She would just calmly stop talking with Gloria or one of her children and suggest that the needy person get in touch with someone at Candace Realty or at the church or at the bank or at one of the service organizations she supported. She even gave them the name of the specific person to see to get the job done.

The response was usually shock, followed by disbelief, then indignation. Folks would stomp away from Lena muttering, “If you ain’t gonna do it
for me
, then don’t
tell me how to do
it!”

Sometimes, she’d call out, “My mama always said, ’You can’t dance on every set.’”

But most times she would just smile, shake her head and put them in the hands of the Lord, remembering Herman’s words, “They ain’t in yo’ hands. They in the Lord’s hands.”

Gloria was more mildly amused than anything else by Lena’s new way of handling her business and her life. She was right happy to see Lena pay more attention to her own life.

But everybody was not as happy with Lena McPherson.

Some of the phone messages and notes she began to get when folks saw they
really
could no longer get their hands on her at will sounded truly plaintive.

“I sure will be glad when you get back to normal,” Miss Birdie told Lena’s answering machine. Like so many older people, Miss Birdie hated answering machines and usually refused to speak into them
when they beeped. Or the old folks would just start talking as soon as the greeting began, so if Lena heard anything, it would only be the tail end of their message or maybe just a word she could use to try to decipher the identity and message of the caller. Sometimes, when there was no message at all, Lena would have to sit and try to guess which of her older friends was hanging up without leaving any message at all. She’d call all those people until she found the true caller.

Lena knew Miss Birdie was fairly desperate to talk on the machine.

“I used to be able to do my own shopping and errands and even go to church regular,” Miss Birdie’s message said. “Now, I can’t even get out of my house without you.”

It was laments like Miss Birdie’s that tore at Lena’s heart and made her sometimes question if what she and Herman had—the childlike freedom to play and love and laugh and eat and explore as if they didn’t have a care in the world—was theirs at too high a price for everyone else.

For a while, Lena seemed to be almost as busy delegating all her duties as she had been fulfilling them herself. And of course,
nobody
was satisfied with the arrangements she made because none of the arrangements involved
her.
Herman watched her go through this futile dance for a couple of weeks. Then he reminded her—again:

“Lena, baby, you need to be more like Mary and less like Martha.”

But she still worried about her people. Miss Birdie’s call preyed on her mind, worrying her so, that even after Lena had made arrangements to handle her errands, she drove into town one afternoon at the end of the summer to check on the old lady.

When she walked up the cement steps to Miss Birdie’s house in Pleasant Hill and found the front door closed and locked, the television in the front-room window off, her heart leapt into her throat. Lena didn’t know whether to head for the hospital or the morgue. She was just about ready right then to repent her new ways, recant her devotion to Herman, and put on her designer nun’s habit again, when the woman next door recognized her and waved.

“Hey, Lena, ain’t seen you in a month a’ Sundays! Birdie ain’t home. She gone on the church picnic out at Lake Peak.”

The neighbor fanned herself, waved again and went on back in her house to sit up under her air conditioner.

Lena’s legs turned to jelly in the late summer heat. She had to lean her behind on Miss Birdie’s porch railing to keep from sinking to the rough wooden floor. She regrouped and headed slowly down the concrete steps toward her car.

As she made a U-turn in front of the old woman’s empty house and headed on back out to the river and to Herman, she kept saying to herself in wonderment:

“Miss Birdie gone on a picnic!”

“Miss Birdie gone on a
picnic!”

“Miss Birdie
gone
on a picnic?!”

“Miss Birdie
gone on a picnic?!”

“Damn, Lena,” she said to herself as she slipped onto the interstate. “You
are
a little foolish fool like Mama used to say!”

Herman was waiting for her at the back door. He smiled his big welcoming smile and accompanied her to the kitchen. Lena knew she didn’t have to explain anything to Herman.

“I made some lemonade, Lena. Want some?” was all he said then. He poured two tall glasses and sat down across from her at the long shiny picnic table by the window in the corner. They sat in silence. Then, he spoke:

“Lena, baby, I done seen peoples like you just sucked dry like a plant wid bugs by other folks’ needs and their own good intentions and bein’ taken fo’ granted. ’Specially womens. I seen all their life and liveliness and spunk sucked right out a’ them.

“I couldn’t bear ta see you like that.”

In the growing light, Gloria leaned her head back, drained her sweating glass of beer and got up to get them another one. When she came back, she glanced out the front window at the breaking dawn and leaned over toward her boss and friend. Gloria spoke seriously.

“Lena, there’s something I been meaning to talk to you about.”

“You can talk to me about anything you like, Gloria. You know that.” Lena felt she was speaking with a relative on some serious family matter.

“Well, you told me last spring that that new door and lock leading from the storeroom didn’t have nothing to do with The Place. That it was private. And you know that’s good enough for me.”

“Oh, it’s nothing illegal, Gloria, you know I wouldn’t put you or The Place in that kind of jeopardy.”

“Oh, shoot, I know that. I just didn’t know whether or not you had noticed, but around the edge of the doorjamb, it looks like somebody been hitting it or kicking at it with a steel-toe boot or something. Dude the Second noticed it last week when he was stacking liquor by the wall, and he showed it to me so I wouldn’t think
he
did it.”

Lena felt a sudden little shiver and remembered Anna Belle swinging a two-by-four. Herman had made her sound so determined. Lena was just glad that Gloria was sitting there with her in the slowly advancing dawn. She knew Gloria could take care of herself and would do what she could to protect Lena in a fight, too.

Lena tried to hide her concern and sound casual. “Um, let me take a look at it.” Picking up her ring of keys, she went out the front door of the bar and grill and unlocked the front door of the liquor store. Gloria did not follow her, and Lena was thankful for that. She didn’t know what she was about to see or how she was going to react, but Lena could still see Gloria through the glass partition, and felt reassured.

She grabbed a long silver flashlight from under the liquor store counter among
Jet
magazines, breath mints and boxes of condoms that Lena and Gloria encouraged the staff to give away to customers and headed in back. It was dark and clammy in the back storeroom, and Lena felt uncomfortable when she realized she was out of Gloria’s sight. She flicked on the flashlight and let out a gasp. In the lower
portion of the extra-strong burglarproof steel door Mr. Jackson had placed at the entrance to Herman’s secret room, there were deep rounded dents.

Gloria was right. It did look as if someone or something had been banging at the metal door with a heavy blunt object or kicking at it with steel-toe boots.

When Lena stooped down and hesitantly ran her fingers over the marks in the heavy steel door, she felt another shiver run down her spine. The metal door felt icy to her touch along the depressions. Lena snatched her hand away, but then she steeled herself and checked the heavy double-gauged-steel bolt lock. There was not a scratch on it. When she took the doorknob in her hand and tried to rattle the door in its hinges, it did not budge.

The door seemed secure, but she rushed out of the empty liquor storeroom just the same and back to the safety of Gloria’s company.

“Oh, I think it’s okay,” she reassured Gloria as she gave her a quick hard hug, gathered up her box and headed toward the front door. “I’ll have Mr. Jackson come down and take a look at it.”

Lena made her voice sound light, but when she reached her car, she checked the locks and the interior before opening the door and sliding behind the wheel. Lena thought she sensed Anna Belle’s presence skulking around the frame of the car all the way home. It was nothing real or concrete like Herman’s breeze and touches, but it disconcerted Lena just the same.

When she saw Herman leaning on the fence waiting for her, Lena breathed her first sigh of relief. She hurried from the car to tell him about the dents on the door of his room down at The Place.

“Was the do’ broke into?” he asked Lena like a private investigator as he escorted her into the house.

“No,” she said, going into the Great Jonah Room with him.

“Was the lock broke?”

“No, Herman, it was still secure.”

“Was there anythang stolen or disturbed?”

“No.”

“Ain’t nobody been hurt, have they, Lena?”

“Oh, my God, no,” Lena replied. She hadn’t considered the possibility of one of her people, Gloria or Peanut or Miss Cliona from Yamacraw, being injured or terrorized by Anna Belle.

“Well, then, I don’t think it’s nothin’ to be bothered ’bout if nothin’ wasn’t disturbed.”

“Nothing but me,” Lena said, trying to make a joke.

“Aw, baby, don’t be concerned. It sound like Anna Belle, but it ain’t nothin’ to worry ’bout. I wouldn’t let nothin’ harm a hair on yo’ head.”

“Yeah, Herman,” Lena said warily, “but you didn’t see those marks on that steel door. And you didn’t feel how cold it was. Hell, this is a woman who tried to kill me a few months ago, Herman.”

“Make ya dead,” Herman corrected her.

“What the fuck ever,” Lena replied crisply.

“I know, Lena, I ain’t tryin’ ta make light of it at all. But there a few thangs here that sets my mind to rest. First, Anna Belle ain’t shown up as herself. And since that first day down at yo’ place last spring, she ain’t even tried to touch a hair on yo’ head. She cain’t. ’Cause if she could, she woulda by now. I guarantee you that. She just tryin’ to upset thangs ’round you. Spookin’ the horses, kickin’ the locked door to my room down at yo’ place. It’s kinda sad when ya think about it. But she ain’t hurt a soul.”

Lena sat down next to Herman on the sofa and leaned back on him.

“Why, Lena, I didn’t say nothin’ ’bout it to you, but last month I went down to the river and found yo’ favorite wood bench th’owed over in the drink.”

“My teak bench?”

“I took it on out and washed it down. But I knew it war’n’t no wind or nothin’ that took it over in the water. It was Anna Belle. But it didn’t do no harm.”

“This happened last month?” Lena asked, a little surprise, a little hurt in her voice. “We aren’t keeping secrets now, are we, Herman?”

“Wa’n’t no secret, baby. I just didn’t see no cause to go and upset you, is all. Everybody ain’t got to know everythang. In fact, don’t no nobody know
everything.

“Anyway, ain’t no way I could keep no secret from you, Lena, baby. We ain’t got that kinda relationship.”

He took Lena in his arms and pulled her cradled in his lap.

“And as long as I’m here wid ya, I swear, ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt ya. Not Anna Belle, not a bolt a’ lightnin’, not nothin’.

“Baby, I’d stand ’tween you and eternity if I had to. Don’t ya know yet how I loves ya, Lena?”

“I know how you love me, Herman.”

“Then you hafta know I mean what I say. I won’t let Anna Belle hurt ya. As a matter a’ fact, I’mo get it straight right now. I’
mo
handle this, Lena, baby, head-on.”

Lena knew Herman could do just about anything.

“You promise me, Herman?” Lena asked.

“I promise you, baby,” he replied.

With all her heart, she believed him.

B
ut then, Herman was an unusual man.

Lena knew he was from another world when she first noticed that he picked up after himself. It wasn’t as if he went around dusting out ashtrays, but if he smoked his clay pipe stuffed with sweet-smelling tobacco, he didn’t leave ashes all over the chair arm.

He agreed with Lena that making a bed every day was a waste of energy and time. But he never thoughtlessly threw a damp towel across the tousled linens because he knew Lena couldn’t stand to fall into bed on a wet spot.

He never even turned right over and fell asleep right after making love to Lena. He
expected
her to fall asleep in his arms, lying on his chest with his arms tenderly encircling her like the prongs of the bed’s headboard. She often awoke to Herman singing a little tune under his breath in her ear.