JEWEL (45 page)

“Momma, ” Burton said. “Momma, you better come on out here, ” he said.

“Billie Jean, she’s crying out here. She’s crying, and so are Matthe and Elaine.” He paused. “Momma, ” he said, “all hell’s breaking loose out here.”

“Just a minute, ” I said. I was still there on the toilet, still had my eyes closed. “Just wait, ” I said.

I heard Brenda Kay climb in the tub, settle herself, then heard the transistor radio come on, some silly rock and roll song, a girl asking again and again for somebody named Kooky to lend her his comb.

“Momma? ” Burton said, and I opened my eyes.

I said, “I’ll be out in a minute or so.” I said, “Crying’s good for you, ” and I swallowed hard, stood from the toilet, then got down on my knees before the tub, took the washrag from where it hung on the faucet. With my other hand I reached for the bar of soap nestled in the corner where the walls and tub met. I put my hands with the soap and rag into the warm water, started lathering it up.

“In a minute, ” I said, and started in on Brenda Kay.

CHAPTER 31.

WHAT MORE CAN I SAY EXCEPT THAT I UNDERSTOOD LESTON WHEN HE came home from work one evening in April, him in his white dress shirt and thin black tie, his black pants and shined wing tip shoes, standing there in our kitchen. Brenda Kay sat at the table, the transistor to her ear, in her other hand a thick green crayon held tight, her hand squirreling out with the greatest of efforts the rows of letters she’d been making for three months now, the huge and joyful triumph of them, What is there for me to say, except that I understood him when he smiled down at Brenda Kay, touched her hair with one hand, with his other loosened the tie at his throat, then looked at me. A cigarette hung there at his lips like always, across his face a smile that creased his eyes nearly closed, this man Head of Maintenance at El Camino College, my husband.

He tapped ash into the handprint ashtray Brenda Kay’d made so long ago, and said, “We’re moving back.”

What is there for me to say, except I understood him? Because I did.

Though I hadn’t known it was coming, I could have seen it if I’d dared pay that kind of attention to him. There were clues, his life moving along with no help from me, as I could tell. Just moving, while I’d always been all eyes on Brenda Kay.

The first clue had come years ago, when I’d stopped pressing the gray uniform he’d worn for so long, traded in for the dry-cleaning allowance and the shirt and tie. And there had been the way he’d made love that night, the power that’d returned to him and his hands, how he’d held me.

And lately there’d been the clue of his new interest in what Brenda Kay was interested in. There was a new program on the television, !

“American Bandstand, ” a man named Dick Clark running the thing, on the program all kinds of musical bands every Saturday morning. We’d gotten the television as a gift from Burton and Wilman not long after Annie and Gene got married, my little Annie and her husband with a baby of their own now, Laura, and with another one on the way. Brenda Kay watched the program every time it was on, and now she could see the boys and girls who sang the songs she listened to on the old transistor Gene’d given her, her eyes wide when those groups sang, even wider when the children in the audience were shown dancing. On Saturday mornings when Burton or Wilman or, now, Gene weren’t over and helping out, Leston’d sit right there alongside her and watch with her, point out to Brenda Kay teenagers dancing who seemed funny, the two of them laughing in the front room while I went about my Saturday chores of cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming, all else I had to ignore during the week when I was at Brenda Kay’s school.

Leston’d been there through Dennis, too, had assumed a sort of position in things by volunteering himself to go over to his house, square off with his parents, even Dennis himself. I’d just smiled at his ideas, at how he still thought children and their problems could be solved with muscle and weight, as though Brenda Kay and Dennis were nothing more than kids whose parents didn’t want them to date each other. For two years now the battle’d been on, I’d forbidden the two of them to ride together, sit with each other, share food or pencils or anything else.

All of it in vain, of course, still Brenda Kay would come home and whisper to me, laugh at the mention of his name, or she’d see a boy and girl on “American Bandstand” dancing away, point at the two of them, holler out, “Dennis! Brenda Kay! ” But nothing more than that came of the two, no wavering in the way things between them fell. I didn’t know if it was because of me and what I’d resolved to do that night two years ago when she’d first whispered his name to me, or if it had to do with Dennis’ mom, Terri L’Coste, her full aware of what was up and as resolved to keep the two apart as I was. Nor did I know if it weren’t just the two of them themselves, this seeing each other in the faces of teenagers on the television all they could know of love.

And there had been the giant clue Leston’d given as to the future of our days here in California. It was a clue I hadn’t seen at all, one that came the day she gave to him the first row of letters she’d ever made, those B’s labored and forced and hard, but B’s all the same. Mr. White’d been stone resolved not to start her in on letters and such, her not testing in at a suffficient level for him. But I’d seen him working with the children for years on their letters, and I took to filling in the afternoons until Leston pulled in, with working on her name one letter at a time, first through the curves in the letter B, then the straight lines, until she was making one and two and three of them of an afternoon. We never told Leston what we were up to.

Then three months ago I’d pulled the surprise on him, had Brenda Kay make an entire row in one afternoon. When Leston walked in the door, there stood Brenda Kay, all smiles, a hand behind her back. I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and front room, a dishtowel in my hands, behind me the kitchen filled with the smells of fried ham and mashed potatoes and biscuits, and I said, “Go ahead, Brenda Kay. Show your daddy what you did.”

She quick brought the hand from behind her back, held out the sheet of lined paper straight out of a tablet just like the ones I’d filled my whole childhood. There was a look on my Brenda Kay’s face, one I’d never seen before, a sort of startled surprise and pride, her eyebrows as high up as they’d go, her mouth in a big open smile. And there was a look much the same on my husband, who took the paper from her hand, looked at the row of gnarled letter B’s there, then bent over and kissed her cheek.

It was then he uttered the words it’d be months before I’d realize meant more than they did, “We did it! ” he hollered out, and hugged his baby daughter tight, an eighteen-year-old girl just completed her first line of letters, all of them capital B’s.

We did it. I thought nothing of those words, only went to him and kissed his cheek, then kissed Brenda Kay, her already laughing. “B, Daddy! ” she shouted, and Leston’d said, “B, Brenda Kay, ” and laughed more.

But suddenly, this evening in April, Leston’s tie already loosened, supper almost ready, I felt all these clues fall suddenly into a big and intricate shape I couldn’t quite recognize. Still, I knew what he meant when he said, “We’re moving back.”

“Moving where? ” I said to him, though no name had to be uttered.

He put the cigarette to his lips again, took one last drag, then stubbed it out in the tray. “Home, ” he said, his eyes on the wisps of smoke up from the dead cigarette.

I was at the counter, slicing up a green tomato I’d picked from the small strip of vines that grew along the back of the house. Leston liked the green ones sliced up and fried, then spread with mayonnaise and sprinkled with pepper, and I looked from him to the tomato on the cutting board, the knife in my hand. I closed my eyes a moment, opened them, sliced right down and through the tomato, and again.

I said, “So we can run our lives right back into the ground. Run right back to that cracker life we had before.” I paused, though I kept cutting away. I said, “And this isn’t home? ” I nodded at Brenda Kay.

I said, “You see what she’s doing there? You think we’d be able to get this far back where you call home? ” “We got this far, ” he said.

I wouldn’t let my eyes meet his, instead stared hard at Brenda Kay wrestling those letters in her head to the paper, fighting hard for them, the crayon nearly snapped in two for how hard she gripped it.

But still I saw him out the corner of my eye, saw him looking at me as he pulled the tie on through his collar, slowly folded it up in his hands.

“We got this far, ” he said again. I That night we lay in bed, me on my side and facing him, but as far away from him as I could get.

Leston, I could make out in the dark, lay on his back, eyes open, his hands behind his head on the pillow.

I whispered, “But she’s writing. She’s got the first letter of her name down so well she don’t have to look at the letter B anymore to write it.” I paused. “I heard they’ll all be starting up to Lawndale High School soon. Part of the day. It’s in the works.” I paused, whispered, “We can’t leave.”

He whispered, “You taught her what she knows. You taught her to write that first letter to her name. Just like you taught who knows who all back home how to read and write. You’re a teacher. That’s you.” I was quiet, then whispered, “Your job.”

“My job, ” he said, and in the light from the small shard of moon through the window I thought I could see the shine of his eyes, wide open and unblinking, him staring at the dark ceiling above us.

Then I saw him smile. He whispered, “The reason I got my job is because it’s nigger work. That’s all.” He paused. “I got the position I do because it’s a nigger job, and I was the only white boy willing to do it. I never told you that.”

He rolled onto his side, faced me, and I lost his eyes, saw only his silhouette, the shape of his head and shoulders, then the folds and lines where the blanket and sheet took over. There was that word, right here in our bedroom, the two-syllable one that brought on the specter of our old lives, that shadow never far from us at any given moment, only one word away. I’d always just said the word colored to him each time he used the word nigger, nothing more. But enough from me to let him know I didn’t approve of its usage around our home. This time, though, I was silent in a darkness that suddenly seemed thick and full.

He said, “The man I replaced was a nigger, and he never gat to wear a tie and wing tips the whole time he was with the college. I l l l llt ll it Gray uniforms every day. Moses on his shirt. Every day.” He stopped again, and now I felt myself slowly move over toward him, felt my body go from the comfort of sheets I’d already warmed up to a new place in our bed, new terrain, the sheets cold but forgiving, warming up quick enough to where the cold couldn’t seep into me, chill me to the bone like the fog did early mornings. Then Leston’s hand was on my shoulder, just resting there.

He whispered, “But it don’t matter, because I did it. I did the job.”

He took a breath, held my shoulder a little tighter, then eased up. “I won, ” he said, “and you won. We beat this place. Brenda Kay’s near on to writing her name, I wear a shirt and tie to work. We’re sitting in a house worth enough money to buy a palace back home.”

I closed my eyes, had seen enough, even though the room was dark.

I whispered, “What will we do there? ” “Live, ” he said straightaway.

“Eat. Sleep.” He paused. “Fish, ” he said, and I could see him smile, even through my closed eyes, even through the dark. He whispered, “I been in touch with Toxie. He tells me there’s a place’d be perfect for us, down near to ” “Toxie, ” I cut in, “you been talking to Toxie.”

That was when I sat up in bed, started in on the hard fight I was ready for. Toxie. Mississippi. Fishing and smoking cigarettes. I said out loud, loud enough, I wanted to make sure, for Brenda Kay to wake up, “You sure got the nerve to go on ahead and start making big plans for this family. You sure got the nerve.”

He still lay on his side, the room silent a few moments, moments dark and full and empty at once. I hadn’t lived here ten years just to see all hell break loose. I said, “Just who you think you are? Just who you think took care of Brenda Kay every day of her life? Just who you think took care, too, of your daughter, of Billie Jean and Matthe and Elaine while they got set up here? Who you think’s got a job to do at a school for retarded children? You think you’re going to lead me by the nose down the primrose path you think moving back to Mississippi is going to be? ” I stopped, breathe hard in and out, felt my face hot and flushed in the dark, my hands in fists, palms sweating. I listened for the struggle of sheets that would be Brenda Kay waking up in the next room, waited for her to cry out in the dark for me to come save her. But nothing happened. She slept.

“Talk to me of nerve, ” Leston said then, his words heavy and sharp and black in the room, some huge ax through the darkness. “Talk to me of making big plans for a family, about going right ahead and doing what you want for your family.” His voice was as solid as I’d ever heard it, and I knew then it wasn’t only me with resolve in this family, wasn’t only in my children, too. It was here in bed next to me. I knew what was going on in his head, knew how he was leading me.

“Talk to me of nerve, Miss Jewel Hilburn, ” he said, “and selling off a house bit by bit, sending to magazines for brochures. Selling a clock off a wall with nobody’s blessing but your own.” He paused, and the words still hung in the air around me, shiny, black words just hanging there. He’d brought me and what I’d done back to fight me, slapped me cold with my own history, with the tight ball of nerves and flesh that made me me and nobody else.

Leston rolled onto his back again, put his hands behind his head again, looked at the ceiling again. He whispered just loud enough for only me to hear, his voice total control, “I been here ten years for you. You railroaded me into this place, and I stayed. I stayed, and now we beat this place.” He stopped, and still I was breathing hard in and out, because I could see the future already, . saw in the dark hollow where his eyes ought to be a place two thousand miles east of here, where the air was thick and wet and hot, where things moved slowly and carefully right on to their deaths.