JEWEL (28 page)

The less we brought with us the better, I thought, and I pictured , , l i l us pulling into Los Angeles with nothing to our names, simply the money in our pockets and prospects spilling all around us. I saw orange blossoms going strong, took in the warm sea air and the crystal blue sky, and I saw a place where Brenda Kay would find friends, teachers, and saw Leston at work somewhere, doing something, it didn’t matter what. The doing of it was all that mattered.

I hesitated a long while before I put the next word on the list of things to sell off, but then I wrote it, home Such a small word. But one that carried too much of what kept us here, and so I scribbled through it, and in place beneath it wrote house I was upstairs going through the boxes of the boys’ clothing when I heard it, the knock at the back door.

I went to the attic window, tried to see through the dirty glass who it would be, though I already knew.

I folded the flannel shirt in my hands, tried to put away in my head the fact it needed two new buttons before I could sell it, and I climbed down the ladder, went slowly along the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen.

I glanced first into the front room, saw Brenda Kay was coming around, her mouth opening and closing like it does just before she lets out the first yelp of pain she gave every time she awoke, the burn a surprise to her, new every time she came up from sleep.

I had only a few minutes before the tending would start up in earnest, had only a few minutes to deal with who was out there, the woman I’d laid blame cold and simple on, the woman I’d sealed my heart against all those nights on a cot in a hospital room that reeked of alcohol and dead skin.

I reached for the door, saw Cathe ral’s outline through the curtains, and the flush of my own pain took me over, and I saw my hand shake at the knob.

I opened the door. There she stood, smiling, smiling and smiling, though in her eyes was some piece of sorrow. She had her hair covered with a worn-out blue handleerchief, had a beat old yellow sweater over her shoulders against the February cool out there, the only button left on it the one at the neck.

I stood looking at her a long moment, felt her too familiar to me. I knew she’d be the one who’d somehow end up laying open to me the fact I was forsaking the heart of my husband to further the good of my retarded daughter, that knowledge coming to me in just that moment, in no time, really, and then I realized that the sweater she wore was one of my old ones, a sweater I’d given her years ago when the times were good, and when we’d fed nigger after nigger at our back door, and when they’d all followed my strong and handsome husband off into the woods to help the United States win the war. That was my sweater she had on.

Still smiling, she shook her head, whispered, “The Lord trying His best to smile down on you, child, but you not letting Him do that.”

Before I could think of anything else I could do, any words or gestures or silences, I drew back my hand and brought it full force across this nigger woman’s face, and in that moment all I’d ever fought against exploded in me. I saw Bessy and Cleopatra inside a nigger woman’s shanty stealing her food. I saw Tory’s face as I took my beating. I saw myself pulled up by Pastor from the Pearl River, wet and shaking and miserable in the Lord, Missy Cook on the bank and crying tears meant for nothing but effect, and I knew then I was no better than my grandmother, knew no matter how hard you prayed, no matter how shiny the stones in your pocket, no matter how far behind you you thought your old lives were, they were never gone. They were never more than an inch from the surface, battling each moment you breathe , each and every moment of every day fighting to rise up and take you over. And I’d lost, let those old lives win just now.

And at last, in the end of that motion, in the instant of pain in my palm and the pain my palm gave out, I saw Missy Cook’s own hand speeding down onto my face. Missy Cook was still a ghost inside me, and I saw you never gave up who you were or where you’d been in your life. I’d refused to let Missy Cook try and reconcile herself to me, just as right now I was refusing Cathe ral, and as I felt the pain in my hand, suddenly Missy Cook was only a sad and lonely old woman choking to death on the dry crust of her own history. And now here was my own history, the dry crust of blame I wanted forced from me in the form of my hand slapping hard the black flesh of Cathe ral’s cheek.

And then I remembered what I had done after Missy Cook’d hit me, how I’d simply turned my other cheek to her, offered up myself to her, daring her to strike me.

Which was the only thing Cathe ral did. Once I’d struck her, she’d closed her eyes, took in a quick breath between clenched teeth. She seemed to fill up her lungs with that breath, held it, then gave her head a quick shake as if to rid herself of the pain I’d given her.

Then she opened her eyes, smiled again, and turned her other cheek to me.

She looked at me out the corners of her eyes, and waited. My hands were at my sides, dead, useless, and I took my eyes from her.

“I sorry, Miss Jewel, ” she whispered. “But you got to think on Job.

You got to think on David and him fighting the anointed Saul.” She paused.

“You got to think on Christ, ” she said.

That was when I turned from her, stepped inside. Without looking back through the curtains, without looking at anything other than the kitchen floor, I pushed the door closed, then twisted the knob until it locked.

I leaned my back against the door, held my hands at my chest. I looked around at all we had in the kitchen, the plain white china and three vases in the glass cupboards above the sink, spoils from those war years, a fine oak table built by Leston, the wall clock that chimed on the half hour, a wedding gift from Leston’s mother and stepfather. I looked at everything we could sell and make money from, already trying to gauge in my head how much closer each item might bring us to California.

I heard behind me the slow steps of Cathe ral as she moved down the steps, off of our property and toward her own, and though I hadn’t known it, I found myself crying, saw the room and its contents shimmer in my eyes.

I pushed myself away from the door, went to the kitchen sink and looked out the window to see Cathe ral leaving, heading for the same woods Brenda Kay’d walked through.

I watched Cathe ral disappear into the woods, until the last thing I could see was a glimpse here and there of my own yellow sweater deep in the gray and brown of February trees, and then she was gone, and I knew I’d never see her again, knew it just as certain as if I’d lowered her into her grave myself, or just as certain as if she’d lowered me into mine.

CHAPTER 20.

JEWEL, LESTON SAID, JEWEL, WAKE up.

I opened my eyes to the dark of the bedroom, to the cold and empty side of the bed that had once been Leston’s. I ran my hand across the sheets, felt nothing, wondered if I’d only dreamed his voice.

“Jewel, ” he said again, and I saw his shadow standing next to my side of the bed, at his face the bright ember of a cigarette, the only light here.

He brought the cigarette down, shot out a breath, and I imagined the smoke he let out falling down on me, burying me.

“Get up, ” he said. He turned, left the room. A moment later I heard his footsteps down the stairs.

I sat up. “Brenda Kay, ” I whispered, and wondered what was going on.

It was May already, and there’d been a couple mornings so far when I’d been able to get her to take a step or two away from the bed, though the pain, it was easy to see, was still there in her legs, dressings still tight on her thighs and on her one calf, us over to Dr. Beaudry’s more often than ever now to get those dressings changed. But there’d been no gangrene after all, no pneumonia to kill off my baby, so I didn’t know what was wrong. I climbed out of bed, grabbed my robe from the foot board, moved quick to the stairs and down.

Brenda Kay was asleep there in the front room, across her face and body the long shadows cast by the light from the kitchen, her mouth partway open like always as she took in deep and steady breaths. I still hadn’t put on my robe, only stood over her, watching her, waiting for whatever my husband’d thought deserved my attention.

“In here, ” he called, and I turned, saw him sitting at the table, hands around a coffee mug.

I swallowed, looked back at Brenda Kay, then at him. Slowly I shrugged on my robe, left it untied. I backed away from her toward the kitchen, certain there was something about her Leston wanted me to see. But once I was in the kitchen he wouldn’t look at me or toward L the front room.

Instead, his eyes were fixed high on the wall opposite him. At first I thought he was only staring, lost in whatever thoughts he had, thoughts I’d long given up on trying to understand. I blinked at the light in here, tried hard to focus on him. He had on one of his old white undershirts, his tired green and white striped pajama bottoms. Before him sat his ashtray, heaped with the ends of dead cigarettes. Next to the ashtray lay a new cigarette, already rolled and ready to smoke. I said, “What is it? ” I paused. “She all right? ” He nodded at the wall, and only then did I see what he was on to. I turned, looked, saw the empty space where until yesterday had hung the wall clock.

He said, “My momma and stepdaddy give that to us, ” his eyes hard.

“They’re both dead now.”

I’d known this moment was heading at me, but’d only put away any thoughts on it, certain I’d be able to piece my way through no matter what. I was certain, too, that with each penny I’d brought in so far, I was bringing us a mile or so closer to California, but at the same time bringing me a minute or so closer to the conversation we were about to have right here, right now.

I’d hoped the words would come to me, in the back of my head somewhere a prayer to God He’d serve me this time, though in everything else I was operating on my own will, on my own cold resolve.

I tied my robe, my eyes on my hands and the impossible task this was, working my fingers to tie a simple knot.

His eyes were on me. He said, “You think I don’t see what’s going on in my own house, do you? ” and he paused. His hands fell away from round the cup, lay flat on the table. A cigarette stub was jammed between two fingers of his left hand, and he brought it to his lips, pulled hard on it.

I said nothing, looked from him to my own hands flat on the table. I opened my mouth, heavy in my head that same prayer for words that would work. And like always, my God either didn’t hear them, or chose to let me tread water on my own. I opened my mouth again, closed it again.

“At least tell me, ” he said, “what you got for it.” I opened my mouth again. I said, “I don’t want you to think ” “Just how much? ” he said, his voice low and steeled, his jaws clenched.

I wouldn’t take my eyes from the cigarette. I said, “I got twelve dollars.”

He laughed, a quick shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head.

He said, “Let’s see. The clock. Four quilts, all the boys’ old things.

Most all the tomatoes and raspberries and okra and pickles and corn you put up last year. And there’s the two vases gone. The two dresses Burton sent Brenda Kay.” He stopped, suddenly sat up, leaned across the table.

He looked at me, his eyes open wide now. He whispered, “Anything I missed? ” I pulled back from him, afraid. He wasn’t anyone I knew, these the most words in years from him, the laugh, the whisper, the eyes someone else in here with me.

“Or is there more I couldn’t come up with? ” he whispered, smiling again. “What is it you figure I do down here? You think I sit here, my ass tied tight to a chair? You don’t think I walk through my house at night, find my way through the dark to closets and cupboards? ” He paused, swallowed air in big gulps, trying to keep up with himself, while all around me the kitchen seemed to grow smaller, hotter. “You figure I can’t see what the hell’s going on all around me? How you’re selling us out piece by piece to some goddamned dream of moving to California? ” His teeth were clenched again, and I could see the faint sheen of sweat on his forehead, veins in his neck straining, sweat coming through his undershirt.

I said, “It’s not a dream, ” though I’d intended no words, hadn’t formed or planned on them. They’d only come in a whisper so low I wasn’t even certain I’d heard them.

“What? ” he said, and leaned even closer, turned an ear toward me.

“I said it’s not a dream, ” and felt my hands begin to shake, my face and neck and back and stomach begin to burn with the effort of only breathing. “It’s going to happen, whether you want it to or not.” I closed my eyes, felt them begin to smolder.

“So how much you get so far? All sales put together, how much you get for your little jaunt out to sunny California? ” Though I knew the number by heart, kept the tab running with each item that left our house, I was quiet, the only sound my heart pounding in me, and the silence left by the wall clock, the ticking my husband must have counted on every night, his only company here, now lost.

I said, “Seventy-three dollars and thirty-seven cents.”

He was quiet, then said, “More than I figured on. I had it about sixty-five or so.”

I looked up at him, saw him lean back again, arms still crossed. He was smiling. “Must be holding out on me, ” he said. He picked up the single cigarette, held it in the palm of his hand, stared at it.

I said, “I sold the hat Burton gave me. For six dollars.” He laughed again, said, “Seems to me you think you can wrestle the world and win.

Ain’t so. Simple as that.” He let the cigarette roll back and forth in his palm, gave it a small toss, watched it land back Jl in his hand.

“Seems if you want to change the world, you might ought to get hold of a few more dollars than that.”

He gave the cigarette another quick toss, higher this time, and grabbed it in midair, held it tight in his fist.

“So I want you to see this, ” he said, “wanted you to come on downstairs here and watch your husband do what he’s about to do, so’s you’ll be able to go at this California whole hog, even with my blessing. My blessing in a big way.”

His blessing, he’d said. His blessing. I took in a quick breath, my heart and its pounding making me feel my chest might explode with each next beat.