Tending to Virginia (32 page)

“I hope Daddy’s riding around with him,” Cindy says. “Of course Daddy probably has a whole lot full of Chevrolets.”

“Um,” Emily shakes her head. “Jesus will not have one that takes his own life.”

“Yes, he will,” Cindy says. “Jesus counts in rare diseases and such.”

“No, Jesus will not have one that takes hisself off earth,” Lena says. “’Cause if he would then I’d get me some Sominex and go on out right now.”

“You would not,” Emily says and stares hard at Lena. “Don’t say such.”

“It’s true. Sominex can kill.” Lena sits up straight. “I lived in
New York and I lived in Chicago and when I had my part on Broadway, it was the popular way to leave this earth.”

“God, not again,” Cindy says. “You had one little part. Big deal.”

“Shhh,” Madge says and she makes Cindy so sick. They can say that her daddy is burning in hell like a giant french fry and her mama doesn’t open her mouth, but God, don’t admit that Lena has spent her life acting like Miss Hollywood when she had one little part on one little night when somebody else had taken a few too many Sominex.

“I came out in a little black suit with a ruffly white blouse,” Lena says and stands, her hands on those polyester hips. “I said, ‘I’m back. I think you always knew I’d be back.’” She trails her finger along the coffee table while she speaks with a slight British accent, turns her head from side to side and smiles. “Roy was front row, center, and tossed a rose up on the stage and it made the man in charge so mad that I had to choose between my part and Roy Carter, so I chose Roy and that’s why I only did it one night.”

“I’ve never heard that part,” Ginny Sue says, and acts like she believes it. Ginny Sue has always believed any and everything. Cindy could say, “Your epidermis is showing” and Ginny Sue would look down at the crotch of her pants and say, “isn’t.”

“She just made it up,” Cindy says and looks around the room. They all know it but they won’t admit it.

“That was so good, Lena,” Emily says and wipes her eyes. “Me and James were so proud when Roy called us long distance to say you were going on the stage.”

“Roy stood up and he said, ‘More, more you beautiful bitch you!’”

“I’d leave that out of the telling,” Emily says and turns to Madge. “You can pray Raymond out if you try. If you know a Catholic they could help you better than me.”

“She doesn’t have to,” Cindy says. “My daddy is in heaven. He was not well and killed himself so we wouldn’t have to watch him wither up into an old senile nothing.”

“Crazy,” Lena says with her accent, still trailing her finger.

“What he did is no worse than killing somebody else,” Cindy says. “I think it’d be better to kill yourself than somebody else. I bet
your son, David, killed somebody in the war.” She looks at Emily.

“Cindy, don’t,” Ginny Sue says as if she’s coming out of a daze.

“David did what the service ordered,” Emily says. “I don’t know that he ever killed a person. The telegram said he was good and brave.”

“My daddy was brave,” Cindy says. “Makes no difference. Murder is murder and I say it’s better to kill yourself than somebody else.”

“It makes no difference,” Madge says, again feeling the tears coming to her eyes. She would like to get up and leave, to let the wind and the rain push her through the street, to feel a bolt of lightning go right into her head. “Either way, you’re hurting others.”

“David was defending himself, this country,” Hannah says and rubs her mama’s back. “I think the Lord understands that.”

“I think the Lord knows that if I had kept my part, that I would’ve been famous forever but that I chose Roy Carter because he is all I ever wanted.” Lena stares hard at a smudge on the coffee table that somebody needs to take some Pledge to and says her line again. All these years and she hasn’t forgotten a thing. “I never wanted another man.”

“I’m with you.” Madge forces a laugh. “And all I’ve got to choose over a man is my job.”

“But,” Lena says and turns to Madge. “Your mama would’ve had another. Your mama was crazy over that stray fiddler that took up here for awhile.”

“Lena,” Hannah says and leads her back to the sofa like she can’t walk.

“He was a handsome man,” Emily says and takes out her snuff. “And a good nice man.”

“Well, let’s hear it all,” Cindy says. “I’m so tired of y’all bringing this up and never telling it.”

“Nothing to it,” Emily says.

“What do
you
know about it?” Cindy turns to Madge.

“About what?” Madge turns suddenly from the window, her heart beating so fast.

“About what? About Grandma Tessy and her boyfriend?”

“His name was Jake.” Emily says. “He could play a violin, taught music.”

“It was a fiddle,” Lena says. “Messy was fiddling with her beau.” She laughs. “Roy made that up, fiddling with her beau.”

“She did no such thing,” Emily says. “Tessy Brock couldn’t even sing a note, but she could quilt.”

“What did Jake look like?” Virginia asks. She barely remembers Tessy, only remembers a woman with long gray hair screaming and cursing the day Gramps died. Gram had told her that sometimes people couldn’t control themselves, that sometimes people do things without thinking.

“He was right handsome,” Gram says. “He looked like his people.” Virginia tries to focus on Gram, the story, the words. Mark is probably through with his test by now, probably on his way home, or already there.

“His people,” Cindy says. “Well that tells all doesn’t it? That’s like saying I look like my people and there’s not a one of you that I resemble.”

“He looked like a Jew,” Lena says. “And you’re the spitting image of Messy Brock.”

“Oh, I get you,” Cindy says. “He looked like Jesus. He had long silky hair and big brown eyes and a straight nose.” She stretches her legs out and laughs. “And he wore a robe, too, a long white robe.”

“Not in public he didn’t,” Emily says. “I don’t know what he wore in that room he rented.”

“Bet Messy Brock knew,” Lena says. “And he looked nothing like Jesus.”

“He had dark curly hair and dark eyes and a dark tan,” Emily says. “He looked nothing like the Lord.”

“He could’ve been black from that description,” Cindy says.

“No,” Lena says. “It wouldn’t have surprised me if Messy had got herself a niggra but this one wasn’t. There might have been a niggra but this one looked like a fiddling monkey.”

“He looked like a person,” Emily says and glares at Lena. “And Tessy never did anything with him or nobody else, white or colored.” Emily looks at Madge. “Him and your mama were friends
’cause Tessy liked the music that he played there in front of the dry goods store.”

“Mess took to more than the music,” Lena says. “And he was married. Married to one of his own kind. We didn’t have many of his kind in these parts.”

“What
kind
are you?” Cindy asks and Lena just stops and stares at her.

“Where was his wife?” Madge asks, feeling so uncomfortable that she never knew her mother at all. Her mama wouldn’t let her get close, and that’s why she married Raymond; that’s why she let Raymond make his promises and carry her away from the dull silence of a house she had always hated.

“She lived over in Spottsville,” Emily says. “He come by train ever so often to teach some music lessons. Tessy told me he was a sad sweet man; him and Tessy were the same age.”

“Harv said he was a freeloader,” Lena says. “Harv said he was a bum.”

“My parents never agreed,” Madge says. “If they talked at all, it was to disagree.” She feels them all staring at her, and that rain pounding the ground outside, the street steaming, and she’d like to go right on, tell how her daddy had slapped her mama’s face and how her mama picked up the gun. “I’ve had enough now, Harv,” she said and Madge was crouched in her nightgown behind a chair, her feet so cold on that old cracked floor, and her daddy said, “I give up, Tessy. Just go right on hating me for the rest of your life. I’m sorry I took you from that shack where you lived, sorry I’ve given you a home and a family. Sorry that I’m not what you want. But as long as you stay here, you’ll do as I say.” And she had seen her daddy crying when he was out in that clearing, blasting those bottles and she had seen her mama’s cheeks glisten while she sat by the window and sewed, humming tunes that Madge had never heard before. That’s why Madge never wanted to sew; it was sad and lonely and that’s all sewing meant. Madge didn’t want to be like her mother; she didn’t want a life like her mother’s and that’s why she had married Raymond.

“I never noticed them arguing,” Hannah says, watching Madge stare out the window. “I loved Aunt Tessy and nobody on this earth will ever sew like she could.”

“She was lucky to get Harv,” Lena says. “And look how she said thank-you.”

“But she was too young to marry,” Emily says, remembering Tessy clutching her hand. Tessy was not but thirteen with eyes like saucers, knowing she was going to have to climb in bed with a man she barely knew when the sun went down and Harv come up from that field. “I’m so scared,” she had whispered to Emily. “I know there ain’t a God for this to happen to me.” Emily squeezed Tessy’s hand, scared to even imagine what goes on in a bed. She told Tessy that now they were like sisters and all her secrets were safe. She wanted Tessy to believe that there is a God, even though she could see why Tessy felt like there wasn’t. “Tessy wasn’t but thirteen when they married and Harv was already thirty,” she says.

“I never knew she was that young,” Hannah says. “I thought she was at least sixteen when she married and I had no idea he was that much older.”

“Neither did I,” Madge says and turns from the window. “You see how much I know.”

“Tessy had herself a hard time,” Emily says. “Tessy lost two babies right early on.”

Virginia instinctively clasps her hands over her stomach and presses until she feels a little kick, a little knee or elbow. Then she lies back, eyes closed, imagines that she can hear the heartbeat.

“Thirteen,” Cindy says. “Good God, that sounds like,” Cindy pauses. “Ginny Sue, what’s that book about that child screwing that old man? I saw the movie.”

“Lolita”
Virginia says and opens her eyes, the heartbeats disappearing.

“Honestly, the way you choose to say something,” Madge says to Cindy.

“She could’ve said the
F
word,” Lena says but nobody laughs. They’ll laugh at Roy though. Yeah, they’ll laugh when it isn’t funny.

“Oh I’m sorry,” Cindy says. “Let’s see Miss Purrio, that child that was engaging in relations.”

“Tessy didn’t want to marry,” Emily says. “She had no choice about it.”

“I didn’t know that either,” Madge says. “I was never told anything.”

“And I’m never told anything,” Cindy says, and Madge catches herself feeling like she’d like to go and wrap her arms around Cindy and hold her so close like she did when Cindy was a tiny baby. That’s why she loved being in a dark room when she nursed her babies. It felt so good to have that warm little body there. “First sign of a tooth and I’m done,” Hannah had told her right after Robert was born. And when Ginny Sue came, Hannah said, “I can’t work and nurse, too. Ginny Sue’s on the bottle.” But, it was the happiest part of Madge’s life when she was nursing, those helpless babies, her ignorance that they were gonna grow up and be so indifferent to her.

“You were such a pretty baby,” Madge says to Cindy, the words rolling from her tongue before she can stop them.

“And now I’m not? Is that what you mean?” Cindy asks and watches her mama sigh one of those long pitiful sighs.

“That’s what Tessy and Jake had in common together,” Emily says. “They were both told to marry the people they married.”

“That’s why she didn’t want me to marry Raymond,” Madge whispers. “But she should have told me the truth. She should have told me that she never loved my daddy!”

“And you should have told me that you never loved mine!” Cindy says.

“But I did love Raymond,” Madge says, the rain hitting the sidewalk, rushing from the gutters over the duplex stoop. “When I married Raymond, I loved him very much.” There is a flash of lightning, low rumbling thunder.

“And I loved Charles Snipes,” Cindy says. “I get so damned tired of everybody acting like I’m so terrible for being married two times when the truth is that I loved Charles Snipes and he walked out on me.” Cindy feels herself wanting to cry and that’s the last goddamned thing she wants to do in this creepy place. Whoever thinks of her feelings? Who? Name one.

“I loved Roy,” Lena says. “But he’s dead isn’t he?” She looks around
the room and they all nod, and they’re not laughing this time. No sir, they learned a lesson.

“Divorce is worse than death.” Now, Cindy walks over near where her mama is sitting and watches the rain, listens to the slow rumbling of the thunder. “At least when somebody dies you can cover him up and forget it. You don’t have to see him out places.”

“Have you seen Charles?” Ginny Sue asks, her voice a whisper, the kind of kindness that has always made Cindy nervous. Relative, good friend, it doesn’t matter, they will yank out your gut and smear it from here to tomorrow if you care enough to let them. “Your body is a tomb,” her daddy had told her once. “And there you must hide all that is bad, all the secrets of all your life.”

“Roy’s dead you know,” Lena tells Emily and Virginia watches Gram’s eyebrows go up in surprise and then the recognition on her face as she nods that she remembers. “James, too,” she says.

“But y’all had years together,” Cindy says quietly and Virginia is almost holding her breath, so rare to see Cindy so serious; Cindy is framed by the window, that dark black sky, her face pale. “You don’t have to sit around and wonder if he’s gone because of you.” Cindy faces Madge now, her hands clutching her necklace. “And the same for you,” she says. “Daddy took his own life because he was sick and Roy had a stroke and James . . .”

“Heart attack,” Hannah whispers as she feels herself calling the roll of the others; Tessy, so old and pitiful; David, burned in the helicopter so far from his home, his body destroyed; Curie, murdered. And her mother is so old and helpless, and Lena.