Knee-Deep in Wonder (20 page)

*   *   *

There was an urgency racing in Chess's blood, and though he wished to slow down he couldn't. He imagined the laughter that Cookie would share with everyone at church.

*   *   *

Morning was lost and in her confusion she made a semicircle around Chess. Angry steps pushed aside the debris. I been licking my lips thinking about that paper. See, he want me small and in his hands, she thought. Lord, find me.

*   *   *

Chess heard footsteps and tried to replay the sound. Through the forest he was sure he saw someone. The sun glared and Chess was blinded, but he swore he could make out teeth dancing among the leaves. I bet that's Five, he decided as he ran. So he thrashed the trees. What would it be, to leap over the trees.

*   *   *

I'm tired of his hitting me and him thinking everything fine. She went quiet as she heard muffled sounds approaching. If that ain't Chess I don't know who is, she mumbled. But then she ran, with swiftness, her hair blooming behind her into a black flower. When he catch me, we gone tumble. I'll look up at him and laugh and say I ain't got to be Halle and almost white, do I, do I?

*   *   *

That got to be Five, else I'm running like a fool for nothing. I running like one of them children of mine, Chess thought. As if he had summoned them, his children appeared before him. They laughed, the sort of children's laughter that comes from nowhere. Only children can do that, pull laughter out of the air. But Chess's children swallowed their laughter when he entered the room. One day, he would catch them, empty-handed, with laughter stuffed in their mouths.

*   *   *

Morning shook the bark with the sound of her laughter. And when he catch me, she thought, I'll ask him how he know it was me and he'll say, Cause you my Morning; then I'll tell him that the only reason I was with Blue is that Blue kept after me. Every time I run, Blue run after me; but now you run too, so all that over; see, Chess? All that's gone.

*   *   *

Morning's hands flew behind her and Chess's hands reached forward, so they seemed to be tied together with an invisible string. Leaves whispered in their wake; they rushed by the trees, because nothing could stand in the way of children at serious play. But then, closing in on her, Chess screamed, “Five, I'm gone get you, you dirty son of a bitch!” And if Morning had run before, then she flew. Misnamed and now blinded with tears, she prayed to the woods to lose her again.

*   *   *

He stopped suddenly, trying to give his heart a break, but his heart wasn't listening to his mind at all. Scared, Chess looked around him; it seemed as if he wasn't moving, but his feet flew over the grass. Five was gone. Then he came upon the lake and as soon as his shoe hit the water, he knew Five and his racing heart had both tricked him. By the time his head had caught up with his feet, he was already there, in the water.

He saw a boy flapping and fighting for breath. Small, thin. Chess waded toward him, hot fear coursing down his back as he stepped in the shallow end of Erling Lake. Ain't no pair of lips this time. No flood either. He just a little bit out there; all I got to do is grab him and haul him out. Cold water lapped against the cuffs of Chess's pants, and as he walked deeper, it inched up his calves to the knees. Maybe this the rain Liberty done told me about, Chess thought, and though it was mean, he turned away, about to leave the lake. “Help! Please!” Chess heard the need in the boy's voice; he hadn't heard longing like that since his late wife, the way she had turned the word
please
into sweet beckoning.

He had loved Halle's sound. Not her voice exactly, but the noises that accompanied her movements. The way her zipper hissed going down or the way Halle's breath came out in a whispery rush when she bent over to buckle her shoes. If he kept really quiet, he could hear the sound of her breasts pressing against her knees when she bowed low to roll her stockings over her toes. Chess could even hear Halle's knees object when she finally sat upright, finished with her task. Chess loved the way her legs, entrapped in stockings, swished when they crossed over during church. At home he would hit her so he could hear the thud of her falling to the floor. She never fell alone; Chess would follow her to the ground, pressing his ear close to her mouth, listening to hoarse breathing, smiling, loving the sound of it.

Chess returned to the boy, jumping into the water fully. He hadn't expected the rush of cold water, and for a moment he was stunned. The lake closed over his head while he grabbed the boy's foot, then tried to climb on top of him to reach the sweetest air in Lafayette County, the kind that lay right on top of the water.

His legs sawed back and forth, trying to lift him above the lake, but their movements had the reverse effect. The more they sawed, the more they pulled him under, entangling him in the long grass that grew on the bottom. Almost out, he thought; he could feel it, the sun bright and hot above him.

Chess took a deep breath, thinking he had reached the surface, praying he was on top of the water instead of under it, because he just couldn't hold out any longer. He didn't feel the water enter his lungs, disguised as air. His body was twitching uncontrollably but his mind was calm. The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was his dead wife looking just as good as she did ten years ago. Just wait till I tell Liberty I kissed Halle good-bye.

*   *   *

The dishes were almost done when Liberty's knees buckled. She fell down quick, a tight yank to the floor. Her flower-print dress hitched up to her thighs and her legs jerked as if they were trying to walk on air. Struggling for breath, she gasped her daughter's name.

Queen Ester came running. “What is it, Mama, what's wrong?”

Liberty growled softly, her mouth opened and closed, trying to breathe.

“Mama, I can't understand you, what's wrong?” Queen Ester yelled in her ear. Liberty stopped moving, and Queen Ester lifted her hand, about to strike her mother back to life.

“Run to Erling Lake.” Liberty's voice was clear and tranquil.

“What you talking bout?”

“Chess done drown hisself and something innocent too.”

9

IN A THATCHED-BOTTOM
chair, her legs crossed at the ankles, Helene watched Queen Ester resume a story that would not cease until she did. “You know Chess was with us off and on for twenty years? When I think on it, don't look like it could be that long, but it was. Twenty-two years. Not straight through—sometimes he take off. Be gone for a week or a year, sometimes three years at a spell. Wouldn't tell nobody where he run off to. Never even pack a bag. Sometimes it take a couple–three days to find out he left. After a while Mama don't even look for him. She could just tell by the way the sheet crumpled in the bed that he gone. Twenty-some years, baby. That's almost as old as you.” She paused, tucking her head down and blowing air into her housedress.

Helene wasn't quite prepared to hear that Chess had been in her mother's house almost a lifetime. She'd thought he'd flickered in and out quickly, maybe two years at the most. No one needed that much time to stir the sort of devilment that her mother claimed Chess had.

“Mama, I'm hungry.” As she spoke her stomach rumbled.

“Sound like it. Well, if we gone have dinner, we got to get those dishes done.”

Helene stood up, her feet tingling from the movement, and walked around the wooden table to the sink, where the floor had been worn to a shallow depression from the sturdy feet that stood there. It was a double sink, both tubs large enough to wash a child, the white porcelain worn thin, black steel peeking through at places.

“What you got a mind to eat?”

“Oh, anything you have, Mama,” Helene said, taking the dishes out of the sink to make room for clean soapy water.

“Well, we got eggs and bacon and bread.”

Helene looked at her watch. “Mama, it's six o'clock.” All this time has passed, Helene thought. We've spent almost the entire day saying what could have been said in two hours. Maybe if I'd asked Mama for breakfast at the beginning, we would already be at Uncle Ed's house, Mama soaking her feet in warm water and Epsom salt, complaining about the air-conditioning in my car and saying she had brought the wrong pair of shoes.

“Well, Cookie brought by pork chops and greens, couple days back. Them pork chops in the freezer, but I'm guessing it wouldn't take too long to thaw them out.” Her voice was echoed by the opening of blue-painted cabinet drawers. “I haven't had someone over to eat in so long, I'm surprised these pans haven't rusted away.”

“Mama, don't worry, I can't tell you the last time I used a pot.” Queen Ester placed two saucepans, a glass dish, a plate, cups, knives, spoons, and forks to her left. Helene turned on the faucet, filling the sink with hot water and liquid soap.

“Ain't you got no man?”

Helene thought she had not heard her mother right, over the haste and hurry of the water from the faucet. She sucked some air between her teeth and held it before she answered—not because she was embarrassed that she didn't have a husband or someone to call to, when she was home alone, but because Queen Ester sounded like a mother. “No, Mama, I don't.”

“Why not?” Queen Ester looked surprised. “You a pretty lady.”

“It's hard for me to find a man I like. All the men I meet aren't that great, or they're fat or too skinny, or they have three children.”

“Don't you like children?”

“Mama—” Her mother pulled her head out of the cabinet and Helene saw that Queen Ester was trying her best not to choke on laughter. “I don't like children that much, Mama.”

Queen Ester responded so swiftly that Helene barely realized how easily she had turned the conversation away from what could have been dangerous to them both. “Well, Annie b always did care for pork chops.”

This is what hope is, Helene thought, a flash of fire that slips through the flesh and settles in the stomach so quick it burns. She and her mother played with it, speaking around hope as if they'd always had it.

“Cookie still around?”

“Lord, yes. I don't think she ever thought to go farther than Canfield, where the church is. I suppose the way she see it, if you can find God in Canfield, why would a body want to go anywhere else?” Queen Ester smiled before her face vanished into the freezer. Puffs of cold air escaped out the open freezer door as she continued to speak. “Still gossiping; ain't changed, but I suppose she ain't got that much to talk about now—everybody leaving and all. I told you Mable left to Chicago, and Chess's children, they was gone almost right after Chess get dead. I think Morning the only one that come by the house and say good-bye.” Her hands pulled out the pork chops and set them on the counter.

“Mourning?”

“Morning and Chess was together. From the way I see it, Chess might as well of had two wives, cause he go with Morning about a year after he marry Halle, and even when Halle die he don't get rid of Morning out of shame. Morning stay with him till he died.” She joined Helene at the sink and dipped her hands in the soapy water. “I wash if you rinse. Anyway, Morning told me at the door that she had to see Mama, and she looked mad. Mama ask where she off to, and Morning say she was thinking Kansas City or maybe Texas somewhere. She got a girlfriend down in Texas. Then Morning take Mama by the shoulders and look at her like she gone shake her, but she let go, like whatever living thing made her put her hands on Mama like she was drunk or a man just up and died.

“She left and I look out the window and she ain't got no car waiting on her or nothing, she just keep going straight out into them woods, not even walking on the path Mama had beat out. Mama says maybe Morning feel like she need to walk a spell, and that's the last time I seen her, walking into them woods like there was a road laid through it. Last I heard of her. Course, Cookie tells me she went to Texas and fell out with the folks she was staying with and then she and that girlfriend went up north to New York.”

“Really?”

“That's what Cookie say. But I say, poor Morning.”

“Mama, how did she get a name like Mourning? Was that her real name?”

“As far as I know, it was. I think Morning's a right pretty name.”

“I guess.” Helene looked at her mother again, and Queen Ester shrugged her shoulders.

“You like gravy?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I make a good gravy to put on pork chops.”

This calm, this is hope, Helene thought. Standing together, her hips lightly brushing against her mother's, the commonplace talk drowning in the dishwater. This is what it's like, unneeded laughter, talk without meaning. “Mama, are you really not going to come?” Before she knew it Helene had turned serious. “You should get out of the house, Mama.”

“Well, it's too late for all that.” Queen Ester whispered her answer.

Helene didn't grasp her mother's quiet, her reserve, besides the gurgle of the soapy water.

“Oh, you don't know the trouble with greetings,” Queen Ester went on. “It's always the women that's trouble. Try to be polite. ‘Hello, Mrs. So-and-so,' and then look out. ‘Oh,' she say, ‘Mr. So-and-so been out and about without me, and so on.' And then I look at the mess I done got myself into by just saying hello. You don't want me to get in that sort of mess, do you, baby?”

“No, Mama, but you have to come to the funeral. I need you there. I'll tell you about the women and who's married and who isn't and why; I'll tell you all that while we're in the car, Mama, I promise.” What to do about Annie b's funeral was something they could turn over in their hands along with the dishes. Helene felt their hands touching through dirty plates and cups, around and over through the soap. “Mama, you need to get outside.” Not just around back to hang clothes on the line, not just in front to push leaves out of the yard, but somewhere that required her to put on a coat, fix her hair, and pay attention that her stockings didn't roll down below her knees. “Come on, let's go to the grocery store.”