Winter Birds (19 page)

I have little patience with such stories. I suspect
Reader’s Digest
of blurring the edges of reality. What I wanted to know, but wasn’t told, was whether Montreal won the game. Since the information was omitted, I assume that they didn’t. Perhaps the next batter struck out, and Curtis Pride was thrown out trying to steal third. Perhaps the Phillies went ahead by ten runs during the last two innings and Curtis Pride cried bitterly in the locker room. But no matter,
Reader’s Digest
, the “World’s Most Widely Read Magazine,” found in an otherwise uneventful game one little beam of light to flash to all the readers of its “more than twenty-five million copies in nineteen languages.”

There is a sudden whirring sound, as of an electric mixer. I wonder if Rachel has suddenly thought of a part of the meal she forgot to prepare. The sound temporarily, mercifully, blocks out Patrick’s voice just as he has moved on to talk about yet another baseball player he has read about recently, Cal Ripken Jr., who broke Lou Gehrig’s Iron Man record in 1995. Perhaps Patrick is thinking that he will stump Potts now, that surely he will be less likely to know about white baseball players than black. I also read this article in Patrick’s bathroom collection of
Reader’s Digest
magazines, another story with the standard sentimental ending in which young Cal Ripken pays tribute to his father’s shining example on the baseball field and in life.

When the mixer finally stops, there is silence for a moment, and then I hear Patrick: “Nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.” I wonder what has elicited these words. How has the conversation pivoted from baseball to the treasure of a man’s heart? These words were not part of the
Reader’s Digest
articles about Curtis Pride or Cal Ripken.

When Patrick pauses, the new voice says, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock.” And now I understand. It takes no powers of clairvoyance to realize that they are reading from the Bible. An old woman, even one with Jewish blood in her veins, has heard enough in her lifetime of the King James New Testament to recognize it for what it is. She may never have attended church or synagogue, yet the tune and cadence of the language are as familiar as an old folk song. Perhaps my nephew and Potts are looking at the page together. This would make Patrick feel very expansive and liberal of soul—to share a holy book with a black man.

And then I hear Rachel’s voice, at a volume I rarely hear from her: “And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.”

The new voice picks up again, but I lose the first words as I think of Rachel’s acquaintance with vehement storms. Then I hear Potts say, “And immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.” The reading appears to be over.

And then, strangely, after a pause Patrick lifts his voice in prayer. I am mystified by the turn the conversation has taken. I am further mystified by Patrick’s prayer. Though shot through with pompous word choices, it somehow rings of sincerity. He prays for Potts by name, expressing thanks for his “dear brother in salvation, whose path has divinely intersected my own.” He prays for Potts’ son, Tyler, that the “ways of this young man would be ordered according to your holy will” and that “he would be preserved from the evil one” and “sheltered in the hollow of your almighty hand.”

When he finishes, I hear the sound of weeping. Potts’ deep voice is broken. He thanks Patrick for his prayer. He speaks of things such as the sinner’s unworthiness, Satan’s stranglehold, the dark valleys of life, and God’s grace. He speaks of his burden for Tyler and the temptations he has to face as a teenager, of his regret that he “can’t be there for him every day.” There is a rhythmic eloquence in Potts’ rolling tones that reminds me of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which my father drove to Washington, D.C., to hear in 1963 when it was first delivered, and which I have heard from a library recording. Rachel speaks to Potts softly. I can’t hear her words.

Patrick keeps repeating himself, using less formal language now, telling Potts that “God is in control,” that “God’s not going to let the devil get at Tyler,” that “the Lord is always on duty,” and so forth. Patrick supplies no documentation for such knowledge, and Potts lets his empty assertions go unchallenged, saying over and over, “Yes, yes, I’ve got to keep looking up. I’ve got to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus.”

You’d best keep your eyes on the solid ground beneath your feet, I want to tell him. I’ve seen people stumble and fall flat on their faces while craning their necks to look at something in the sky.

The sound of breaking glass interrupts their conversation. It seems that Patrick has overturned his glass, which shatters on the hardwood floor, for he is the one who says, “Well, good. I’m getting rid of these old glasses one by one.” He laughs and tells Potts that he never has liked these glasses because they’re too tall and too narrow at the base, making them easy to tip over. “Case in point,” he says, no doubt thinking he is witty.

I hear the opening and closing of the broom closet and Patrick’s cheerful talk as he sweeps up the pieces. I will say this for Patrick: He is not afraid of housework. Last Saturday Rachel went to bed in the middle of the afternoon. Shortly thereafter Patrick appeared at my apartment door with the vacuum cleaner. “Rachel says she didn’t get around to vacuuming in here,” he said. I watched him from my recliner as he moved about briskly. The sound of the machine didn’t stop him from talking. “This has been a good little vacuum!” he shouted. “We got it at Montgomery Ward, must have been twenty years ago!” He was not as thorough and methodical as Rachel, but at least he was done quickly. It was a mercy when he finished and left my apartment, taking his flow of words with him.

I can’t help wondering what Potts thinks about Patrick and Rachel, who have invited him into their home but whose kitchen walls are decorated with pictures of happy Negroes beside their shanties in the cotton field. Is he accustomed to the blindness of white men who imagine themselves free of prejudice yet who are taken aback by any sign of intelligence in other races?

Rachel must have brought dessert to the table, for Potts makes appreciative sounds and says, “I certainly don’t get anything to compare to this at my house.” Patrick tells him that the “whipped cream is the real McCoy, not that processed abomination.” This explains the sound of the mixer earlier. I hear the stacking of dishes as Rachel clears the table. Most hostesses would clear the table before serving dessert.

“Here, let me take those,” Patrick says to Rachel. “You sit down.” I wonder if Patrick is showing off in front of Potts, trying to display a superior level of servanthood to confirm that he is a Christian Man. I wonder if the doctor has told Rachel to take things slowly until she regains her strength.

Back at the table Patrick tells Potts he should write a book sometime about his life. “I’d buy a copy!” he says, as if all a writer needs is the assurance of one reader. I suspect Patrick of considering a collaborative effort. Potts could tell him the details, and Patrick could write the book for him. What a story it would make:
Black Drug Dealer Turns Religious
by Patrick Martin Felber. Patrick would not be above embellishing the facts.

Potts deflects Patrick’s suggestion about the book. He tells Patrick that he is grateful for the job at the office supply store. He says that job offers in Greenville, Mississippi, are limited, especially to black men on parole. He likes the work at the Main Office, he says, and hopes to repay Patrick by being an “exemplary employee.” Patrick takes this as an opportunity to educate Potts as to how he got his own start at the Main Office, first as a cashier, then stock clerk, then stock supervisor, then floor manager, then general manager. The unstated message is this: See, if you are diligent, you too can work your way up the ladder until you are as successful as I am.

Potts asks Patrick to explain the new system of inventory at the store, a system I have heard Patrick expounding upon recently to Rachel. He eagerly begins detailing the modifications he has devised. This is further evidence of Potts’ intelligence: Always appear to be in awe of your boss’s methods.

Suddenly there is a knock at my door and Rachel opens it. “Aunt Sophie, here’s your—” She stops when she sees me sitting in the chair beside the door.

I bend over as if scanning the floor. “I’m looking for a button,” I say. “It came off my dress.”

“Let me set this down, and I’ll help you,” Rachel says. As she carries the tray to the round table, I wrench a button off my dress and drop it onto the floor. She comes back and kneels down. She moves heavily as if kneeling is a great effort. She bends forward on all fours and runs one hand lightly over the carpet. “Did you see it roll over here?” she says, and I answer yes. I glance toward the round table and see a mound of whipped cream on top of a piece of yellow cake, with something red between the cake and whipped cream. Strawberries, cherries, raspberries—I have no preference. I like them all.

“Here it is,” Rachel says, holding the button up for me to see. I nod.

“I’ll sew it back on for you after I wash your dress,” she says, and I nod again. She hoists herself from the floor.

You have made unnecessary work for this woman, I tell myself, then push the thought aside. She will be paid for her work when I die.

“Aunt Sophie, I’d like you to meet our guest,” Patrick calls from the kitchen. He comes to stand in the open doorway, and Potts appears behind him. Still seated in my chair beside the door, I look up at them. Potts is a big man. Patrick looks like a child next to him. Potts is exceedingly dark-skinned, with a round face and very large smile. Sir, you have no reason to smile, I want to tell him. You have been in prison twice, you are prohibited by law from seeing your own son, and you are working for a tedious, small-minded man.

He steps around Patrick, beaming, to take my hand and declare himself pleased to make my acquaintance. His grandmother, he tells me, lived with his family when he was a child, and he has always had “a healthy respect for women of your generation.” I say nothing but allow him to pump my hand briefly before pulling it away. I wonder if his grandmother was still living when he started dealing drugs and went to prison.

I am not offended by his reference to my age. I am an old woman of eighty. Anyone would be an idiot not to recognize the fact. I think of the man who bought my house before I moved from Kentucky to Greenville, Mississippi, the man who called me “young lady” in the lawyer’s office. If I had thought him capable of improvement, I may have offered a word of instruction. As one does not try to reason with a retarded child, however, I turned away and refused to converse with him except through my lawyer.

Patrick is now speaking again, telling me things I have already heard through the door. I think of Jaques’ famous “All the world’s a stage” speech in Shakespeare’s
As You Like It
. I want to tell Patrick to hush his “childish treble” so I can hear Potts’ voice. I think of the four of us in my apartment right now, whose ages span many years: Potts in his thirties, Patrick and Rachel in their fifties, and Sophie the octogenarian. I think of Jaques’ lines that all men have “their exits and their entrances.” It struck me when typing it in one of Eliot’s papers that he must have accidentally reversed the two words. Surely the entrances should come before the exits.

But, no. I looked up the reference and saw that Eliot had quoted it right. Perhaps the order was dictated by the metrical pulse, but I believe there is a statement there: One’s life is over before it begins. I think of what a sad speech it is. In thirty lines the sum of life is told, from infanthood to “second childishness and mere oblivion.” I think of the depressing closing line: “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Granted, Jaques is a moody moralizer who takes himself too seriously, and as such he is a comical character. Yet for all his affectations, he sees the truth that life is not the grand enterprise young men like to think it is. Rather, it is ultimately a pathetic thing.

I think of all the ways men and women like to justify their existence on earth as important and worthy. I think of all the words spoken in the history of mankind, of all the ones spoken in the course of a day, of those I have overheard tonight through the kitchen wall. I hear Patrick now, his words like the endless piping of a bird.

I have read that bird watchers cannot agree on the towhee’s call. They hear the same thing but interpret it differently. People may also disagree on what a man says. They may hear the same words but interpret them differently. Throughout my eighty years, I have heard many regional accents, dialects, foreign tongues. I have listened carefully and have found that most of the words spoken may be reduced to a few: I, me, my, mine.

“You’ll like the dessert,” Potts says, gesturing toward the tray on the table. I rise and go toward it. Though life is a pathetic thing, I cling to its small joys. And, I remind myself, I have not yet lost everything in this “last scene of all.” I still have my teeth, my eyes, and my taste. I sit at the round table and prepare to eat.

Chapter 15

A Tattered Weed, of Small Worth Held

The nest of the great crested flycatcher may be constructed of an odd assortment of materials: leaves, sticks, roots, bark, even cellophane and plastic. According to bird lore, the flycatcher sometimes discourages predators by weaving a discarded snake skin into its nest
.

I sit in my recliner through Christmas Eve, unwilling to go to bed and wake up disappointed. Disappointment is easier to take if one slowly steeps himself in it than if he is suddenly plunged in head first. If given a choice of one day to eliminate from the year, I would choose December 25—a day that brings to mind empty dreams.