With the same determined tread that took her to the graveyard six or seven times a year, Ruth left the house and caught the number 26 bus and sat down right in back of the driver. She took her glasses off and wiped them on the hem of her skirt. She was serene and purposeful as always when death turned his attention to someone who belonged to her, as she was when death breathed in her father’s wispy hair and blew the strands about. She had the same calmness and efficiency with which she cared for the doctor, putting her hand on death’s chest and holding him back, denying him, keeping her father alive even past the point where he wanted to be alive, past pain on into disgust and horror at having to smell himself in his next breath. Past that until he was too sick to fight her efforts to keep him alive, lingering in absolute hatred of this woman who would not grant him peace, but kept her shining lightish eyes fixed on him like magnets holding him from the narrow earth he longed for.
Ruth wiped her glasses clean so she could see the street signs as they passed (“Eat cherries,” Pilate had told her, “and you won’t have to wear them little windows over your eyes”), her mind empty except for getting there—to Darling Street, where Pilate lived and where, she supposed, Hagar lived too. How had that chubby little girl weighed down with hair become a knife-wielding would-be killer out to get her son? Maybe Freddie lied. Maybe. She’d see.
When the banks disappeared and small shops in between rickety houses came into view, Ruth pulled the cord. She stepped down and walked toward the underpass that cut across Darling Street. It was a long walk and she was sweating by the time she got to Pilate’s house. The door was open, but nobody was inside. The house smelled fruity and she remembered how the peach had nauseated her the last time she was there. Here was the chair she had collapsed in. There the candlemaker’s rack, the pan where Pilate’s homemade soap hardened into a yellowish-brown slab. This house had been a haven then, and in spite of the cold anger she felt now, it still looked like an inn, a safe harbor. A flypaper roll entirely free of flies curled down from the ceiling not far from a sack that hung there too. Ruth looked into the bedroom and saw three little beds, and like Goldilocks, she walked over to the nearest one and sat down. There was no back door to this two-room house, just a big room where they lived and this bedroom. It had a cellar that one could enter only from the outside under a metal door that slanted away from the house and opened onto stone stairs.
Ruth sat still, letting the anger and determination jell. She wondered whose bed it was and lifted up the blanket and saw only mattress ticking. The same was true of the next bed, but not of the third. It had sheets, a pillow, and a pillow slip. That would be Hagar’s, she thought. The anger unjelled and flooded through her. She left the room, pressing her fury back so she would be able to wait and wait until somebody returned. Pacing the floor of the outer room, her elbows in the palms of her hands, she suddenly heard humming that seemed to be coming from the back of the house. Pilate, she thought. Pilate hummed and chewed things all the time. Ruth would ask her first if what Freddie said was true. She needed Pilate’s calm view, her honesty and equilibrium. Then she would know what to do. Whether to unfold her arms and let the rage out to do whatever it might, or…She tasted again the Argo cornstarch and felt the marvelous biting and crunching it allowed her. Now she merely ground her teeth as she stepped out to the porch and made her way around the side of the house through the nicotiana growing all wild and out of control.
A woman sat on a bench, her hands clasped between her knees. It was not Pilate. Ruth stood still and looked at the woman’s back. It didn’t look like death’s back at all. It looked vulnerable, soft, like an easily wounded shin, full of bone but susceptible to the slightest pain.
“Reba?” she said.
The woman turned around and fastened on her the most sorrowful eyes Ruth had ever seen.
“Reba’s gone,” she said, the second word sounding as if the going were permanent. “Can I do something for you?”
“I’m Ruth Foster.”
Hagar stiffened. A lightning shot of excitement ran through her. Milkman’s mother: the silhouette she had seen through the curtains in an upstairs window on evenings when she stood across the street hoping at first to catch him, then hoping just to see him, finally just to be near the things he was familiar with. Private vigils held at night, made more private because they were expressions of public lunacy. The outline she’d seen once or twice when the side door opened and a woman shook crumbs from a tablecloth or dust from a small rug onto the ground. Whatever Milkman had told her about his mother, whatever she had heard from Pilate and Reba, she could not remember, so overwhelmed was she in the presence of his mother. Hagar let her morbid pleasure spread across her face in a smile.
Ruth was not impressed. Death always smiled. And breathed. And looked helpless like a shinbone, or a tiny speck of black on the Queen Elizabeth roses, or film on the eye of a dead goldfish.
“You are trying to kill him.” Ruth’s voice was matter-of-fact. “If you so much as bend a hair on his head, so help me Jesus, I will tear your throat out.”
Hagar looked surprised. She loved nothing in the world except this woman’s son, wanted him alive more than anybody, but hadn’t the least bit of control over the predator that lived inside her. Totally taken over by her anaconda love, she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelligence that was her own. So it was with a great deal of earnestness that she replied to Ruth. “I’ll to. But I can’t make you a for-certain promise.”
Ruth heard the supplication in her words and it seemed to her that she was not looking at a person but at an impulse, a cell, a red corpuscle that neither knows nor understands why it is driven to spend its whole life in one pursuit: swimming up a dark tunnel toward the muscle of a heart or an eye’s nerve end that it both nourished and fed from.
Hagar lowered her eyelids and gazed hungrily down the figure of the woman who had been only a silhouette to her. The woman who slept in the same house with him, and who could call him home and he would come, who knew the mystery of his flesh, had memory of him as long as his life. The woman who knew him, had watched his teeth appear, stuck her finger in his mouth to soothe his gums. Cleaned his behind, Vaselined his penis, and caught his vomit in a fresh white diaper. Had fed him from her own nipples, carried him close and warm and safe under her heart, and who had opened her legs far far wider than she herself ever had for him. Who even now could walk freely into his room if she wanted to and smell his clothes, stroke his shoes, and lay her head on the very spot where he had lain his. But what was more, so much more, this thin lemon-yellow woman knew with absolute certainty what Hagar would willingly have her throat torn out to know: that she would see him this very day. Jealousy loomed so large in her it made her tremble. Maybe you, she thought. Maybe it’s you I should be killing. Maybe then he will come to me and let me come to him. He is my home in this world. And then, aloud, “He is my home in this world.”
“And I am his,” said Ruth.
“And he wouldn’t give a pile of swan shit for either one of you.”
They turned then and saw Pilate leaning on the window sill. Neither knew how long she’d been there.
“Can’t say as I blame him neither. Two growed-up women talkin ‘bout a man like he was a house or needed one. He ain’t a house, he’s a man, and whatever he need, don’t none of you got it.”
“Leave me alone, Mama. Just leave me alone.”
“You already alone. If you want more alone, I can knock you into the middle of next week, and leave you there.”
“You’re botherin me!” Hagar was shouting and digging her fingers in her hair. It was an ordinary gesture of frustration, but its awkwardness made Ruth know that there was something truly askew in this girl. That here was the wilderness of Southside. Not the poverty or dirt or noise, not just extreme unregulated passion where even love found its way with an ice pick, but the absence of control. Here one lived knowing that at any time, anybody might do anything. Not wilderness where there wa
s system, or the logic of lions, trees, toads, and birds, but wild wilderness where there was none.
She had not recognized it in Pilate, whose equilibrium overshadowed all her eccentricities and who was, in any case, the only person she knew of strong enough to counter Macon. Although Ruth had been frightened of her the first time she saw her—when she knocked on the kitchen door way back then, looking, as she said, for her brother Macon. (Ruth was still frightened of her a little. Not just her short hair cut regularly like a man’s, or her large sleepy eyes and busy lips, or the smooth smooth skin, hairless, scarless, and wrinkleless. For Ruth had actually seen it. The place on her stomach where a navel should have been and was not. Even if you weren’t frightened of a woman who had no navel, you certainly had to take her very seriously.)
Now she held up her hand, imperiously, and silenced Hagar’s whines.
“Sit down there. Sit down and don’t leave this yard.”
Hagar slumped and moved slowly back to her bench.
Pilate turned her eyes to Ruth. “Come on in. Rest yourself before you hop on that bus again.”
They sat down at the table facing each other.
“Peaches kind of dried up on me in this heat,” said Pilate, and she reached for a peck basket which held about a half dozen. “But there should be some good ones left in here. Can I slice you up some?”
“No, thank you,” said Ruth. She was trembling a little now. After the tension, the anger, the bravado of her earlier state of mind, followed by the violence of Pilate’s words to her granddaughter, this quiet social-tea tone disarmed her, threw her too soon and too suddenly back into the mannered dignity that was habitual for her. Ruth pressed her hands together in her lap to stop the shaking.
They were so different, these two women. One black, the other lemony. One corseted, the other buck naked under her dress. One well read but ill traveled. The other had read only a geography book, but had been from one end of the country to another. One wholly dependent on money for life, the other indifferent to it. But those were the meaningless things. Their similarities were profound. Both were vitally interested in Macon Dead’s son, and both had close and supportive post-humous communication with their fathers.
“The last time I was here you offered me a peach. My visit was about my son then too.”
Pilate nodded her head and with her right thumbnail slit the peach open.
“You won’t never be able to forgive her. For just tryin to do it you won’t never be able to forgive her. But it looks to me like you ought to be able to understand her. Think on it a minute. You ready now to kill her—well, maim her anyway—because she’s tryin to take him away from you. She’s the enemy to you because she wants to take him out of your life. Well, in her eyes there’s somebody who wants to take him out of her life too—him. So he’s her enemy. He’s the one who’s tryin to take himself out of her life. And she’ll kill him before she lets him do that. What I’m sayin is that you both got the same idea.
“I do my best to keep her from it. She’s my baby too, you know, but I tear her up every time she try. Just for the tryin, mind you, because I know one thing sure: she’ll never pull it off. He come in the world tryin to keep from gettin killed. Layin in your stomach, his own papa was tryin to do it. And you helped some too. He had to fight off castor oil and knittin needles and being blasted with hot steam and I don’t know what all you and Macon did. But he made it. When he was at his most helpless, he made it. Ain’t nothin goin to kill him but his own ignorance, and won’t no woman ever kill him. What’s likelier is that it’ll be a woman save his life.”
“Nobody lives forever, Pilate.”
“Don’t?”
“Of course not.”
“Nobody?”
“Of course, nobody.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Death is as natural as life.”
“Ain’t nothin natural about death. It’s the most unnatural thing they is.”
“You think people should live forever?”
“Some people. Yeah.”
“Who’s to decide? Which ones should live and which ones shouldn’t?”
“The people themselves. Some folks want to live forever. Some don’t. I believe they decide on it anyway. People die when they want to and if they want to. Don’t nobody have to die if they don’t want to.”
Ruth felt a chill. She’d always believed that her father wanted to die. “I wish I could count on your faith as far as my son was concerned. But I think I’d be a really foolish woman if I did that. You saw your own father die, just like I did; you saw him killed. Do you think he wanted to die?”
“I saw Papa shot. Blown off a fence five feet into the air. I saw him wigglin on the ground, but not only did I not see him die, I seen him since he was shot.”
“Pilate. You all buried him yourselves.” Ruth spoke as if she were talking to a child.
“Macon did.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Macon seen him too. After he buried him, after he was blown off that fence. We both seen him. I see him still. He’s helpful to me, real helpful. Tells me things I need to know.”
“What things?”
“All kinds of things. It’s a good feelin to know he’s around. I tell you he’s a person I can always rely on. I tell you somethin else. He’s the only one. I was cut off from people early. You can’t know what that was like. After my papa was blown off that fence, me and Macon wandered around for a few days until we had a fallin out and I went off on my own. I was about twelve, I think. When I cut out by myself, I headed for Virginia. I thought I remembered that was where my papa had people. Or my mother did. Seemed to me like I remembered somebody sayin that. I don’t remember my mother because she died before I was born.”
“Before you were born? How could she…?”
“She died and the next minute I was born. But she was dead by the time I drew air. I never saw her face. I don’t even know what her name was. But I do remember thinkin she come from Virginia. Anyways, that’s where I struck out for. I looked around for somebody to take me in, give me a little work for a while so I could earn some money to get on down there. I walked for seven days before I found a place with a preacher’s family. A nice place except they made me wear shoes. They sent me to school, though. A one-room place, where everybody sat. I was twelve, but since this was my first school I had to sit over there with the little bitty children. I didn’t mind it too much; matter of fact, I liked a lot of it. I loved the geography part. Learning about that made me want to read. And the teacher was tickled at how much I liked geography. She let me have the book and I took it home with me to look at. But then the preacher started pattin on me. I was so dumb I didn’t know enough to stop him. But his wife caught him at it, thumbin my breasts, and put me out. I took my geography book off with me. I could of stayed in that town cause they was plenty of colored people to take me in. In them days, anybody too old to work kept the children. Grown folks worked and left their kids in other people’s houses. But him being the preacher and all like that, I figured I ought to make tracks. I was broke as a haint cause the place didn’t carry no wages. Just room and board. So I just took my geography book and a rock I picked up for a souvenir and lit out.
“It was a Sunday when I met up with some pickers. Folks call ’em migrants nowadays; then they was just called pickers. They took me in and treated me fine. I worked up in New York State pickin beans, then we’d move to another place and pick a different crop. Everyplace I went I got me a rock. They was about four or five families all together in the crew. All of them related one way or another. But they was good people and treated me fine. I stayed with them for three years, I believe, and the main reason I stayed on was a woman there I took to. A root worker. She taught me a lot and kept me from missin my own family, Macon and Papa. I didn’t have a thought in my head of ever leavin them, but I did. I had to. After a while they didn’t want me around no more.” Pilate sucked a peach stone and her face wa
s dark and still with the memory of how she was “cut off” so early from other people.
The boy. The nephew, or was it the cousin, of the woman who worked roots. When she was fifteen, and the rain was so heavy they had to stay in the shacks (those who had them—the others had tents) because nothing could be harvested in that pouring rain, the boy and Pilate lay down together. He was no older than she was and while everything about her delighted him, nothing about her surprised him. So it was with no malice whatsoever that one evening after supper he mentioned to some of the men (but within listening distance of the women) that he didn’t know that some folks had navels and some didn’t. The men and the women raised their eyes at his remark, and asked him to explain what he meant. He got it out, finally, after many false starts—he thought they were alarmed because he had taken the pretty girl with the single earring to bed—but he soon discovered that the navel thing was what bothered them.
The root woman was assigned the job of finding out if what he said was true or not. She called Pilate into her shack one day later. “Lay down,” she said. “I want to check on something.” Pilate lay down on the straw pallet. “Now lift up your dress,” the woman said. “More. All the way up. Higher.” And then her eyes flew open wide and she put her hand over her mouth. Pilate leaped up. “What? What is it?” She looked down at herself, thinking a snake or a poisonous spider had crawled over her legs.
“Nothin,” the woman said. Then, “Child, where’s your navel?”
Pilate had never heard the word “navel” and didn’t know what the woman was talking about. She looked down at her legs, parted on the rough ticking. “Navel?” she asked.
“You know. This.” And the woman pulled up her own dress and slipped the elastic of her bloomers down over her fat stomach. Pilate saw the little corkscrew thing right in the middle, the little piece of skin that looked like it was made for water to drain down into, like the little whirlpools along the edges of a creek. It was just like the thing her brother had on his stomach. He had one. She did not. He peed standing up. She squatting down. He had a penis like a horse did. She had a vagina like the mare. He had a flat chest with two nipples. She had teats like the cow. He had a corkscrew in his stomach. She did not. She thought it was one more way in which males and females were different. The boy she went to bed with had one too. But until now she had never seen another woman’s stomach. And from the horror on the older woman’s face she knew there was something wrong with not having it.