The Summer We Got Free (26 page)

“Try.”

Ava looked at
the painting of
herself
holding the red dripping brush
and tried to think, tried as hard as she could to remember. “I tried not to
stop. But after a while, I just couldn’t do it anymore. Whatever it was that
made me want to paint, I couldn’t feel anymore.”

“And you never
felt it again?”

“No,” she said.

“What was it you felt?” Helena asked her. “Can you
remember the feeling of wanting to paint?”

Ava shook her head. “No,” she said, and she noticed
that the room felt smaller suddenly, and warmer.

“Try, Ava.”

Ava could feel a tightening in her chest, and her
breath coming slower. “I can’t remember,” she said. “I can’t remember.” She
felt her throat closing. She could not get air in. She felt Helena’s hands on
her face and heard her voice saying, “Ava, what’s wrong?”

The room was getting smaller and smaller, the air
thicker. She felt dizzy and she grabbed hold of Helena’s arms and tried to keep
herself up, but her limbs were going numb and she couldn’t feel Helena there.
Her knees buckled. She crashed hard onto the cool floor.

Ava heard footsteps pounding against the cellar stairs
and when she opened her eyes, Helena was bent over her on the floor, her face
close, her hands on Ava’s cheek and forehead. “Ava, can you hear me?” Ava could
feel Helena’s breath on her lips.

“What the hell
happened?” It was Paul, standing over them now, looking panicked. Behind him,
Regina and Sarah were making their way down the stairs.

“What’s the
matter with my child?” Regina asked, looking a little crazed.

“She collapsed,”
Helena told them.

Regina rushed to
Ava’s side, crouched down on the floor beside her.

“I’m alright,”
Ava whispered, trying to sit up.

“What you talking about,
collapsed
?” Paul asked, as Helena and Regina helped Ava into a
sitting position.

“She fainted, I think,” Helena said.

Ava’s head
throbbed. She put her hands on either side of it and held them there.

“Can I get you something?” Helena asked. “Water?”

Ava nodded. She
felt shaky.

Helena sprinted
up the steps, her hard shoes like hammers on the old wood. Ava closed her eyes.
She felt arms around her shoulders and knew it was Paul. She felt Regina’s
hands on hers. No one said anything.

In a few moments, Helena was back. “Drink this.” Her
hands shook on the glass.

Ava took Helena’s hand. “It’s okay. I’m alright.”

Helena nodded, but she looked afraid.

Ava drank the water,
then
said, “I need to lie down.”

Paul took the glass and handed it back to Helena, then
bent down and lifted Ava off the ground. He carried her up the basement stairs
and all the way up to their bedroom, and laid her down on the bed. Regina
soaked a washcloth with cold water and pressed it gently against her daughter’s
forehead. Helena and Sarah stood in the doorway.

“Y’all don’t need to hover,” Ava said. “I just got a
little lightheaded. I’m alright now.”

Paul was sitting beside her on the bed, staring at her
with a strangely eager expression. “You aint…I mean, could you be…”

She squinted at
him through the throbbing in her head. “What?”

“Pregnant?”

She shook her
head and the throbbing worsened.

He frowned. “How
do you know?”

“I can’t be
pregnant, Paul.”

“The doctor said
it aint no reason why not.”

“I am not
pregnant!” There were half a dozen tiny explosions in her head then, and she
closed her eyes.

“Ava, calm
down,” Regina said.

Paul frowned.
“Then what’s wrong with you, Ava? ‘Cause
something
sure as hell is. And don’t give me that ‘I’m fine’ shit again.”

She didn’t
answer him. She wanted him to go away and leave her alone.

Paul stood up.
“I’m calling the doctor.”

“They’re gone at
five,” she said.

“Well, I’m
calling tomorrow.”

“I’m not
pregnant.”

“Maybe not,” he
said. “But something’s wrong, and I want to know what.” He sat back down on the
bed again. “You need anything?”

She shook her
head, no.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek, leaving his lips
pressed against her face for a long moment, and she felt suddenly
claustrophobic, and put her hands against his chest and pushed him away. He
looked hurt and got up and walked out of the room.

“He just trying to help,” Regina said. “He worried.”

“But I’m fine,” Ava said. She looked from Regina to Helena
and Sarah in the doorway. “Please stop hovering. Really.”

When they left, she closed her eyes.

It had been the look in Helena’s eyes that made her
swoon. It was the same look she had seen there days ago, when Helena had
brought her the sketch on the grocery list and, in her
eyes,
Ava had seen the greatness of the drawing. This time, though, it had been much
more intense. In Helena’s eyes, in that moment, there had been a captivation
that Ava recognized, though she had not seen it in so many years. It was the
look Miss Maddy had given her at four. The look Kenny Goode and Malcolm
Hansberry and Sister Kellogg, and everyone else had all given her, all those
years ago. It was the reflection of what they had all seen in her, what they
all recognized in her from the time she was a small child, and in that moment
Ava had seen it in Helena’s eyes, too. This time she had seen that
she
was great, not just the paintings,
but Ava herself. That she was extraordinary. And, for no reason she understood
right then, seeing it had caused her to fall.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Ava could hear
her family in the kitchen, the usual dinner preparations underway. Quietly, she
moved through the foyer and opened the front door, slipping out of the house
without making a sound. She walked quickly down the front steps onto the sidewalk
and walked down the street, passing neighbors who watched her with curiosity
and dislike. When she got to the steps of Blessed Chapel, she paused, and
looked up at the stone structure, its stained-glass windows catching the light
of the late day. She pulled open the front doors and stepped inside.

She did not have to go looking for Pastor Goode. He
was right there by the altar, as if waiting for her.

1959

A
va sat in the
bishop’s nook, behind the pulpit at Blessed Chapel, across the desk from Pastor
Goode, who was writing frantically on a pad of paper, his eyes narrowed, his
lips twisted in concentration. She sat watching him, and after a couple of
minutes he looked up at her, smiled. “Well,” he said, setting the paper aside.
“That’s Sunday’s sermon done.”

She had gone
there because her mother had informed her that the pastor wanted to see her.
She had no idea why. Now she blinked at him, waited.

Goode cleared his throat. “You a smart girl, Ava. I
always thought so.”

Ava just stared
at him. She had never forgotten what he had said at Sister Henrietta’s funeral,
that she had the devil in her. She knew he believed that. She’d known by the
look in his eyes when he said it.

“And you are
gifted,” he went on. “Talented like no child I ever knew. I can’t deny it. It
would be a sin to deny it, because that’s God-given talent, and denying it
means denying the work of the Lord.”

“The Lord?” she
asked. “Last year you said it was the work of somebody else altogether. What’s
the Lord
got to do with it now?”

“I spoke in
haste that day,” he said. “But since then, the Lord has allowed me to consider
things differently. I heard about what happened with you and that art contest
the city had.”

It had been a
contest for amateur artists, all Colored and all living in West Philadelphia,
sponsored by the arts and culture department of the city. Ava had entered one
of her paintings and Regina had taken her down to where the competition was
taking place. There had been a hundred other artists and Ava’s painting had
been chosen the best of them all. But the judges had assumed that Regina was
the artist, and when they discovered it was Ava, they insisted the contest was
not open to children, and gave someone else the prize. There had been a very
short article about it in the Philadelphia Daily News and, as a result, an art
school in New York City had invited Ava to enter the painting into their annual
competition for Colored artists in the tri-state area. Regina had already
agreed to take Ava up to New York next month for the judging. Since all that
had happened, nearly a month ago, most people on the block had come up to Ava
and expressed disapproval of the arts and culture department and their actions,
but Pastor Goode had not been among them. She wondered why he was pretending to
care now.

“There’s a way
you can use your talent to serve this community right here,” he said. “I’d like
to have a mural painted on the back wall of the church.
Something
beautiful and uplifting.
Something that will call
souls to our church and to the Lord.
I’d like you to paint it.”

 
“I don’t
do religious art,” she said.

“You an artist,
aint you?” he asked. “Don’t all great artists have religious works? What’s the
name of that one who did the Sistine Chapel?”

“Michelangelo.”

He nodded.
“Exactly.”

Ava had spent
hours looking at photographs of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, studying
every inch of it. That, and Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, painted in
the early 1500s for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Immaculate
Conception, in the church of San Francesco Grande in 
Milan
. And, Ava’s favorite
European painting, The Supper at Emmaus, depicting the moment when the
newly-resurrected
Christ reveals himself to two of his
disciples, painted by Caravaggio in 1601.

“Well, maybe
so,” Ava said. “But why you want me to do it?”

“Because the Lord
spoke to me,” he said. “He spoke to me and told me that you are the person to
do it.”

She did not
believe him, but it didn’t matter. Since the scandal at Miss Henrietta’s
funeral, she had been trying to think of a way to use her talent to benefit the
people around her, instead of always upsetting them.

“Alright,” she
said.

He smiled and
looked genuinely pleased. “Good. I’m glad we can come together. I know you
think I’m some kind of tyrant—”

“Are you?” she
asked.

His smile
slipped, but he got control of it again quickly. “No, Ava,” he said. “I’m only
trying to do the Lord’s work, the way he calls me to do it.”

Work on the mural started that next week. The back
wall of the church was partially covered with lime plaster, creating a canvas
that was twelve feet by twelve feet, bigger by far than any Ava had ever used.
It was covered with a large tarp and left to dry. While she waited for the
canvas to be ready, Ava sketched her idea for the mural. It would depict the
congregation of Blessed Chapel, some of them on their knees at the altar.
Before them, there would be a bright light through the stained-glass windows.

When the plaster was firm, but not quite dry, when she
could press her thumb against it and make a thumbprint in its surface, Ava set
to work transferring her sketch to the wall. Scaffolding was erected and, at
the pastor’s request, Vic Jones showed Ava how to raise and lower it according
to her needs. From up high, she could see out over most of the block while she
sketched, and most of the block could see her. Though the pastor asked everyone
not to crowd her, not to distract her from her task, people passed by often,
and most stopped at least long enough to eye her work. Ava was sure this was
exactly what Goode had intended. With so many eyes on her, she would have a
very hard time adding anything to the mural that might be considered
controversial, if in fact she were inclined to try.

She sketched the scene onto the wall in pencil. It
took an entire weekend, a whole Saturday and a whole Sunday. When it was done,
she began painting. She worked for a few hours every day, from the time she got
home from school until just before dusk. The church provided all the supplies
she needed, large bottles of paint in myriad colors, dozens of brushes. While
she painted the details, Geo helped her by painting the background, according
to her instructions, using the colors she selected.

“We really high up here,” Geo said, looking down over
the scaffolding.

“We aint even six feet up right now,” Ava said, painting
the face of one of the churchgoers.

“I guess.” He looked a little worried.

Miss Lucas came by and waved from the ground. “Y’all
need any help?”

“Sure,” Ava said. She lowered the scaffolding and Miss
Lucas climbed on.

“This gone hold all of us?” Geo asked.

Ava nodded. “It holds four adults.”

Miss Lucas helped Geo paint the background, while Ava
continued to paint the faces. The next day, she came by again and helped. The
day after that, Miss Maddy spent an hour filling in the color on the figures’
clothing, again according to Ava’s directions. Ellen, Miss Antoinette, Mr. Malcolm,
Rudy, and Juanita all helped.

One afternoon,
when the mural was almost finished, as Ava stood on the scaffolding, painting
the cushions on the altar, Sondra came around the back of the church and stood
below her, her arms folded across her chest, watching. She didn’t say anything
at first, but even in silence she was menacing.

“I guess you
think you some real hot shit now,” she said, loudly, so Ava could hear from her
high perch.

Ava ignored her.
She hated to be bothered while she was trying to paint, and of all the things
there were to be bothered by, Sondra seemed the worst possible one.

“I wonder what
would happen if one of them ropes snapped,” Sondra said, and turned and walked
away.

Later, Geo came
and helped with the last of the painting. He stood looking up at the scene, a
trace of a frown on his face.

“What’s the matter with you?” Ava asked.

“Nothing,” he
said. “This aint what I expected, I guess.”

It was a beautiful
painting, lush and buoyant as anything she had ever done. But there was nothing
about it that pushed, nothing that made him feel uneasy.

They finished the mural that day, and that evening, as
Ava was pulling the tarp down over it, Pastor Goode came around the back of the
church.

“Hold on, now.
Let me have a look at it,” he said.

He stood back and looked it over, his head moving up
and down, and from side to side. Ava knew that the painting was aesthetically
good, even wonderful, and that it was what Goode had wanted. As he took it all
in, a smile spread across his face, and he nodded his approval. “It’s
wonderful,” he said. “It’s the Lord’s work.”

Ava knew exactly
whose work it was and she had the calloused hands to prove it, but she was
tired of fighting this man, so she said nothing.

“We’ll be
uncovering it right after morning service,” he said. “I’m proud of you. You
have used the gift God gave you to praise him, and that’s the best use of any
gift. I used to think you
was
out of control, that you
didn’t understand the importance of what I’m trying to do in this church, and
in this community. But now I know the Lord has a plan for you, Ava Delaney. All
you have to do is stay on his path, and you gone be just fine.”

The next day, as soon as service ended, the
congregation of Blessed Chapel Church of God spilled out of the back and side
and front doors of the church and made their way to the back wall. It was a
chilly day, a day not made for standing outside very long. The temperature had
dropped overnight and there was
a frostiness
in the
air that did not fit for May. The congregation stood close together, some of
the older folks shivering. George and Regina stood at the front of the crowd,
and Geo, Sarah, Kenny, and Ellen stood nearby. Pastor Goode held the rope to
the tarp and Ava stood beside him.

When the tarp came down, the congregation broke into
applause. Most of them had seen the mural at some stage of being
almost-finished, and in the bright light of the afternoon they saw what they
expected, what they already knew they liked, and they immediately offered up
their approval. Even Pastor Goode clapped, at first, smiling down at Ava, eager
to commend the child, for her talent, but even more for her obedience, for her
compliance, finally, after all those years of rebelliousness. Her parents
clapped, too, the vague hint of worry in both their eyes, which had been there
all morning, suddenly gone. They looked relieved. Especially her father, who,
it seemed to Ava, exhaled for the first time in a full minute. The only one who
did not applaud was Geo. Not because he saw something the others did not see,
but because he saw exactly what they saw.
A beautiful
painting, strange and eccentric in its planes and angles, lush and feverish in
its curves and colors, extraordinary in its display of skill and breathtaking
talent.
But entirely devoid of any argument, of any challenge, of any
fight whatsoever. For a brief moment, he looked on the edge of tears. Then he
blinked, and Ava watched the smile break open on his face, as he saw what she
had added to the mural, what she had finished painting only a few minutes
before, so that the paint was still wet, and her own hands, held behind her
back, were smeared with color.

Shackles.

Onto the wrists
of each parishioner lining the rows of pews and on their knees before the
altar, she had painted shackles.

It took one and
a half seconds for Geo to see them, for the image of the mural that he already
had in his mind, the image he had already made up his mind about, to be
replaced by the image that was actually before him. And in the half-second that
followed, everyone else saw it, too. The sound of applause vanished from the
air all at once. In its place, there were gasps, then murmurs, as people turned
and looked at each other, with questions in their eyes, as if they could not
believe what they were seeing and needed confirmation, first that the shackles
were there, that they weren’t just imagining them, and then that they meant
something terrible, that they weren’t misinterpreting them, but that their
impulse to feel offended and angry by what they were seeing was valid. When
they were sure that it was, they all turned and looked at Pastor Goode, who was
staring up at the mural with fear and anger in his eyes.

He grabbed Ava’s arm. “Why’d you do this?”

“Get off me,”
Ava said, trying to wrench out of his grip.

Regina and
George rushed over. “Take your hands off my child,” Regina said.

Goode let Ava go
and Regina pulled her away from him. He glared at them. “I warned y’all about
this child.
I been
warning y’all for years. The devil
is in this girl.”

“The devil!” Vic
Jones yelled from the crowd.

“Listen, Pastor,” George said. “She just a little
girl. She
don’t
know what she doing.”

“She know
exactly what she doing!” screamed Goode, pointing a shaking finger at Ava.
“Every time I look at her, I can see her mind working. She wanted to defy
me,
she wanted to make a fool of me and every person in this
church. And why? What for?”

“I aint trying
to make a fool out of nobody,” Ava said, looking out at the parishioners. “I
been thinking about y’all, thinking about what y’all need.”

“What they
need?” The pastor asked. “What you think that is? To be told they slaves?”

“To be told
they’re
not
slaves,” Ava said. “And
you’re not their master.”

Goode looked
ready to kill her. “I aint trying to be nobody’s master!” he screamed.

“You tell
everybody what to do,” Ava said. “What to think. How to live.”

“We live
according to the Lord,” Vic said.

“This aint right!” Malcolm yelled. “Y’all aint never
known how to control that girl!”

“She gone too far this time,” said Goode. “The Lord’s
gone punish her for this, y’all mark my words. He’s gone bring down a judgment
on this girl.”

“I knew the
first time I saw her it was something not right about her,” said Hattie
Mitchell.

“Me, too,” said
Lonette
Brown. “I just couldn’t put my finger on what it
was.”

“She too much,”
Malcolm said, shaking his head. “She
too
much
.”