Tina Mcelroy Ansa (51 page)

“Intervention??!!”
Lena laughed. “An intervention for what? For who?” She was really puzzled.

“For you, sugar,” Miss Cliona said.

Lena was struck dumb.

In the silence, the crowd opened again and a white man who looked to be in his eighties wearing a dingy white shirt and shiny blue serge suit made his way slowly to the table and sat down in the other chair next to Lena. Seeming to ignore Lena, the man took a few wrinkled sheets of paper from his weathered briefcase.

“Don’t we know each other?” Lena asked politely of the man with the ashes and burn marks down his shirtfront.

Lena knew she had seen the man somewhere before. Then, it came to her.

“Why, you’re Dr. Byrd. From the hospital in Milledgeville!” Lena exclaimed, remembering the strange jumpy white man who had
shown up one night when she was a child to borrow money from Jonah. She had started to say “the crazy house in Milledgeville” instead of “hospital in Milledgeville.”

Nellie had threatened all her children at one time or another to commit them to the state hospital for the insane if they continued “to act so damn crazy” and get on her nerves.

“Do it on a Sunday, Nellie,” her father would put in with a laugh. “Then, you’ll get thirty-five dollars instead of twenty-five for each.”

But no one was laughing in The Place this morning. Especially not Lena. She was just understanding that this was not a joke. These folks were serious.

“You mean you actually got this man up in here to put me away in a padded cell?” Lena was incredulous.

“Well, just to observe you for now,” Miss Cliona explained. “That’s the first step in the commitment process.”

Lena just sat there in The Place in shocked silence. She had to rest her spinning head in her hands for a moment. She could hardly form words.

“Okay, let’s make a deal,” Lena said evenly to Cliona from Yamacraw. “You don’t commit me, and I don’t send your black ass back to Milledgeville.”

“Well, now, you have been acting mighty strange, Lena,” someone in the circle said. There was a buzzing in Lena’s head, and she couldn’t place the voice.

“Yeah, we know Nellie and Jonah worked too hard to give you all a’ this just to have you th’ow it away on some kinda change-a-life craziness.”

Lena spun around at the sound of the familiar voice. Peanut? She truly could not believe these words were coming out of his mouth.

“I beg your pardon!” Lena said to the tiny man. “Surely, you don’t want to talk about ’change of life.’”

Peanut dropped back into the crowd.

Lena was just dumbfounded.

“Have all of ya’ll taken leave of your senses?” She was serious. “You all ought to be ashamed.”

But they weren’t a bit ashamed. Lena could tell that from their faces. They were self-righteous and serious. But not a bit ashamed.

“I tell you what,” Lena said to the concerned and curious faces around her. “Kiss my crazy ass!”

And she stormed out of The Place, brushing past Gloria, who had finally made her way over, but knew enough to leave Lena alone.

Lena felt she had been hit in the head with a two-by-four. She saw stars. And she heard voices.

As she sped away toward Riverside Drive, she heard somebody back in The Place ask, “You think she sane enough to drive?”

It feels like Anna Belle and all those spirits or whatever in that locked room down there just got loose, Lena thought, crowding out the cacophony of the complaints and conversations that was ringing in her ears.

Lena was too mad to cry. She had not driven ten blocks before she found herself embroiled in a Mulberry-sized traffic jam of cars on their way to the biggest sale of the year out at the town’s mall.

She banged the steering wheel with the palms of her hands and laid on the horn.

Burning down the whole town of Mulberry seriously crossed her mind. “I know what Mama meant when she used to say we children made her very asshole tremble!” she said fiercely to herself.

The entire torturously slow way home, Lena could hear the townspeople’s talk in her head:

“What the hell is wrong with Lena McPherson!??”

“Yeah, she even stop eating our food. Out there cooking so much herself, don’t even appreciate what
we
been doing for her.”

“I don’t know what she out there cooking for. Hell,
her time
sho’ could be better spent conducting some of her business.”

“You know why she out there cooking. Trying to keep that man!!”

“Ain’t no
telling
what’s going on out there since nobody can’t just drive up like normal people.”

“Have the nerve to go sending us to somebody else when we need to talk to her.”

“Lord ham mercy, I sho’ am glad Jonah ain’t around to see how his girl is running things now. It woulda broke his heart.”

“And what about Nellie? Now,
that woman
was a saint!!!”

“Not even eating our food! What she think? We gon’ pizen her!!??”

“Think she too good?!”

Caught up in traffic with carloads of ravenous shoppers ready to acquire more stuff, Lena could not block out the voices.

“Look at her, dressing like a ragamuffin.”

“Running away from all her responsibilities. I’ve never seen such a selfish thing in all my life.”

“What does she expect us to do?”

“Yeah, she’s there for you when
she
want to be. But don’t have a emergency, ’cause she off gallivanting with her crazy self with God knows who, doing God knows what.”

“Her mama would turn over in her grave if she knew how Lena was neglecting her people. Like she ain’t got no upbringing.”

“Yeah. And if Lena McPherson ain’t got none of that, ain’t none of us got it.”

“My mama
died and we didn’t hear a word from her. Not a word. Didn’t come to the funeral. Didn’t send no flowers. Didn’t do nothing. What about
my mama?”

“Uh-huh, did all that good stuff for the public eye when mama was alive, but where was she at the funeral when we
really
needed her?”

“Shoot, that ain’t hardly nothing compared with the fact she done turned her back on God, too, they say.”

“On God???”

“Uh-huh. Don’t even go to church no more. And, you know, St. Lena used to wear out the pews at St. Martin de Porres.”

“Yeah, St. Lena.”

“Just go to show you. Her heart ain’t in the right place. Never was.”

Lena thought her very heart would break. By the time she got home, she had heard it all.

“And Herman, now Cliona from Yamacraw got the nerve to be going around saying I’m crazy. I’m
crazy?

“Shoot, maybe I
am
crazy to put up with this shit. And then take all this grief for it. Shit. I guess I’m crazy as a betsy bug
and
a little foolish fool, too!!”

She was the only one who was surprised by the townspeople’s anger and resentment toward her.

She knew folks in town were calling themselves worrying about her and her new cavalier ways. But to actually have some white man, some jackleg quack, ready to tie her up in a straitjacket and cart her off to a padded cell like some madwoman. To say that she had no heart. To say she was selfish. It was just too damn much for Lena.

She was so hurt and angry she threw things. She didn’t think she had ever felt this way before, and she certainly had never shown her anger in such a manner. She destroyed a number of items precious to her before Herman stilled her hand as she was about to chunk her mother’s delicate white-flowered china face-powder bowl with little rounded gold-leaf claw feet. The very act of touching her, stopping her in midthrow, brought her up short and made her look around the house at the irreplaceable things she had shattered.

“Shoot, Lena, you at least gonna need a old plate to cut collards up on,” Herman tried to reason with his woman. His plain-spoken sense did give her pause to gather herself and her rage, but only for a second.

“It’s just like Mama said, They start out wanting your friendship, just wanting to talk, and they end up wanting your heart, soul and liver, chopped up fine and spoon-fed to ’em.’”

She mimicked Nellie and said, “Here, take my heart, take my liver, take my soul! Take it and be done!”

“Yeah, why don’t these damn people just do that?”

Outside, little white peaks were beginning to form on the Ocawatchee River. Even from the deck, Herman could see that Cleer Flo’ had suddenly ceased. And the wind was whipping up the pine straw on the ground.

Seeing how furious and hurt Lena was, he tried to make a joke to lighten her mood.

“Hey, take it easy, greasy. You got a
long way
to slide,” he said.

Lena, however, was not to be played with this day.

“Herman, listen to me, they actually had some jackleg doctor who used to work at the crazy house in Milledgeville down there at
my place
to observe
me!

“Cliona from Yamacraw sitting up in there just as big with her certifiably crazy self talking about ’Now, stay calm, Lena.’

“Saints preserve us, Herman!

“They actually talking about the process of commitment. For my own good!

“Said they made some phone calls and had collected some ’pertinent information’ about my ’recent strange behavior.’ Herman, they called the bank and down to Candace!

“And
they
got the nerve to say I lost
my
mind!!”

While Lena came up for air, Herman just said, “Umm.” Lena continued.

“At least the folks at the bank and my friends at Candace didn’t fall for this and throw in with them. Now that I think about it, Gloria was trying her best to head me off when I walked in this morning.

“But the rest of those folks …”

Outside, Lena’s anger was wreaking as much havoc on nature as it had on her prized possessions. A storm had come up suddenly over the Ocawatchee and tall muddy red peaks were beginning to form on the surface as the wind whipped up foam. A lightning bolt struck a tree in Pleasant Hill, melding a baby doll, a brand-new Schwinn bicycle and a red hairpin to its trunk.

Herman felt the tension in her clenched fist flowing through her
wrist, up her arm, through her chest and down to her heart. When he felt it in her heart, he had to steel himself and stop himself from crying like a baby at her hurt.

He moved closer to her on the sofa in their bedroom and put his arm around her shoulder.

“Shit, I can’t believe I’ve been such a fool. Everybody ain’t happy for me. After all I’ve done for them, they don’t really give a damn about me. Herman, they
mad
at me!!!

“Where I been? How come I ain’t answered their phone messages? What they s’posed to do waiting for me to get around to them? They got a pain in their chest, and I won’t make it go away. Don’t I care about nobody but myself?

“And where was this little foolish fool? Ripping and running all over creation trying to do what I could. And here I am thinking I’m the one who has to
save
everybody. If I don’t do it, the world will fall apart. What a fool I was!! Some of them making fun of me and calling me St. Lena.”

Lena was cut to the quick when she understood that the people of Mulberry were truly angry with her, talking about committing her, talking about her deserting them, talking about her betraying her family name.

She suddenly heard James Petersen’s voice cut through the other noises in her head.

“Yeah, Gloria, it woulda broke Lena’s heart if she knew how some of those folks just threw that food against the fence when Lena didn’t invite them in yesterday.

“I got it all cleaned up, so when she came out this morning she didn’t know no better. But I wouldn’a let her see that for nothing in the world.”

Herman took Lena in his arms and held her there.

Her big brown eyes filled with tears at the thought of people she had loved all her life talking about her like a dog and treating her like one, too. Throwing food at her gate.

Her! The baby! Used to being instantly loved.

“You expect people to love you, don’t you, Lena?” Sister had asked once. And Sister was right.

Lena had always gotten what she expected. What she measured out, she seemed to get back, pressed down, shaken together, running over. Everybody in Mulberry could testify to that. She had done that with her town and had not really judged them for always pulling at her skirt tail and taking her for granted.

But she was the baby. She wanted to tell folks who made mean, thoughtless statements, “Oh, you must not know I’m the baby.”

Herman held her as if she were the
only
baby. He held her and rocked her and kissed her and made over her until she began to feel better.

“I think these people can get on just fine wi’out Lena McPherson’s constant ’tention,” he said as he gently patted her back. “Everybody can. But Lena could stand a little ’tention, too. That’s what I think.”

But Lena was not so easily pacified. She was deeply hurt.

“They know I ain’t got no family but them,” she said softly. And realized again suddenly how hurt and mad she was. Outside, it began to rain softly.

Her senses so sharp, her emotions raw, Lena could not seem to block out the conversations people had been having about her for months.

She discovered they were mad about everything. When the women in town had gotten wind of Lena packing up her clothes, they had had a fit. The clothes had gone into pools of professional attire that young women from Spelman College, Fort Valley State College and Xavier could borrow for job interviews and conferences and social occasions.

“Giving away her designer clothes.”

“Giving away her high-heeled shoes.”

“Ain’t no telling what else she giving away. Wouldn’t be surprised if she gave away Jonah and Nellie’s home over on Forest Avenue before it’s over. Giving away everything she own and still won’t return an old lady’s phone call.”

“I hear she kept that little pink Chanel job, but all the others—the black and white Chanel suit, those little black Ungaro silk dresses, the Versace blouses and jackets, the Ralph Lauren slacks and sweaters, those Jil Sander cashmere and wool suits, that brown leather suit by Calvin Klein—all that went off to some strangers!”