He stayed that way, swaying from light buzz to stoned, for two days and a night, and would have extended it to at least another day but for a sobering conversation with Magdalene called Lena, to whom he had not said more than four consecutive sentences since he was in the ninth grade.
She was waiting for him at the top of the stairs when he came home early one morning. Wrapped in a rayon robe and without her glasses, she looked unreal yet kind, like the man who had picked his pocket a short while ago.
“Come here. I want to show you something. Can you come in here for a minute?” She was whispering.
“Can’t it wait?” He was kind too; and he was proud of the civility in his voice, considering how tired he was.
“No,” she said. “No. You have to see it now. Today. Just look at it.”
“Lena, I’m really beat out…” he began in sweet reasonableness.
“It won’t take more’n a minute. It’s important.”
He sighed and followed her down the hall into her bedroom. She walked to the window and pointed. “Look down there.”
In what seemed to him like elegant if slow motion, Milkman went to the window, parted the curtain, and followed her pointing finger with his eyes. All he saw was the lawn at the side of the house. Not a thing was moving there, but in the light of early day he thought he might have missed it.
“What?”
“That little maple. Right there.” She pointed to a tiny maple tree about four feet high. “The leaves should be turning red now. September is almost over. But they’re not; they’re just shriveling and falling down green.”
He turned to her and smiled. “You said it was important.” He was not angry, not even irritated, and he enjoyed his equanimity.
“It is important. Very important.” Her voice was soft; she kept on staring at the tree.
“Then tell me. I’ve got to go to work in a few minutes.”
“I know. But you can spare me a minute, can’t you?”
“Not to stare at a dead bush, I can’t.”
“It’s not dead yet. But it will be soon. The leaves aren’t turning this year.”
“Lena, you been in the sherry?”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said, and there was a hint of steel in her voice.
“But you have, haven’t you?”
“You’re not paying any attention to me.”
“I am. I’m standing here listening to you tell me the news of the day—that a bush is dying.”
“You don’t remember it, do you?”
“Remember it?”
“You peed on it.”
“I what?”
“You peed on it.”
“Lena, maybe we can discuss this later….”
“And on me.”
“Uh…Lena, I have done some things in my life. Some things I don’t feel too good about. But I swear to God I never peed on you.”
“It was summer. The year Daddy had that Packard. We went for a ride and you had to go to the bathroom. Remember?”
Milkman shook his head. “No. I don’t remember that.”
“I took you. We were in the country and there was no place else to go. So they made me take you. Mama wanted to, but Daddy wouldn’t let her. And he wouldn’t go himself. Corinthians turned up her nose and refused outright, so they made me go. I had on heels too. I was a girl too, but they made me go. You and I had to slide down a little slope off the shoulder of the road. It was pretty back in there. I unbuttoned your pants and turned away so you could be private. Some purple violets were growing all over the grass, and wild jonquil. I picked them and took some twigs from a tree. When I got home I stuck them in the ground right down there.” She nodded toward the window. “Just made a hole and stuck them in. I always liked flowers, you know. I was the one who started making artificial roses. Not Mama. Not Corinthians. Me. I loved to do it. It kept me . quiet. That’s why they make those people in the asylum weave baskets and make rag rugs. It keeps them quiet. If they didn’t have the baskets they might find out what’s really wrong and…do something. Something terrible. After you peed on me, I wanted to kill you. I even tried to once or twice. In little ways: leaving soap in your tub, things like that. But you never slipped and broke your neck, or fell down the stairs or anything.” She laughed a little. “But then I saw something. The flowers I’d stuck in the ground, the ones you peed on–well, they died, of course, but not the twig. It lived. It’s that maple. So I wasn’t mad about it anymore—the pee, I mean—because the tree was growing. But it’s dying now, Macon.”
Milkman rubbed the corner of his eye with his ring finger. He was so sleepy. “Yeah, well, that was a helluva piss, wouldn’t you say? You want me to give it another shot?”
Magdalene called Lena drew one hand out of the pocket of her robe and smashed it across his mouth. Milkman stiffened and made an incomplete gesture toward her. She ignored it and said, “As surely as my name is Magdalene, you are the line I will step across. I thought because that tree was alive that it was all right. But forgot that there are all kinds of ways to pee on people.”
“You listen here.” Milkman was sober now and he spoke as steadily as he could. “I’m going to make some allowance for your sherry—up to a point. But you keep your hands off me. What is all this about peeing on people?”
“You’ve been doing it to us all your life.”
“You’re crazy. When have I ever messed over anybody in this house? When did you ever see me telling anybody what to do or giving orders? I don’t carry no stick; I live and let live, you know that.”
“I know you told Daddy about Corinthians, that she was seeing a man. Secretly. And—”
“I had to. I’d love for her to find somebody, but I know that man. I—I’ve been around him. And I don’t think he…” Milkman stopped, unable to explain. About the Days, about what he suspected.
“Oh?” Her voice was thick with sarcasm. “You have somebody else in mind for her?”
“No.”
“No? But he’s Southside, and not good enough for her? It’s good enough for you, but not for her, right?”
“Lena…”
“What do you know about somebody not being good enough for somebody else? And since when did you care whether Corinthians stood up or fell down? You’ve been laughing at us all your life. Corinthians. Mama. Me. Using us, ordering us, and judging us: how we cook your food; how we keep your house. But now, all of a sudden, you have Corinthians’ welfare at heart and break her up from a man you don’t approve of. Who are you to approve or disapprove anybody or anything? I was breathing air in the world thirteen years before your lungs were even formed. Corinthians, twelve. You don’t know a single thing about either one of us—we made roses; that’s all you knew—but now you know what’s best for the very woman who wiped the dribble from your chin because you were too young to know how to spit. Our girlhood was spent like a found nickel on you. When you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked; when you wanted to play, we entertained you; and when you got grown enough to know the difference between a woman and a two-toned Ford, everything in this house stopped for you. You have yet to wash your own underwear, spread a bed, wipe the ring from your tub, or move a fleck of your dirt from one place to another. And to this day, you have never asked one of us if we were tired, or sad, or wanted a cup of coffee. You’ve never picked up anything heavier than your own feet, or solved a problem harder than fourth-grade arithmetic. Where do you get the right to decide our lives?”
“Lena, cool it. I don’t want to hear it.”
“I’ll tell you where. From that hog’s gut that hangs down between your legs. Well, let me tell you something, baby brother: you will need more than that. I don’t know where you will get it or who will give it to you, but mark my words, you will need more than that. He has forbidden her to leave the house, made her quit her job, evicted the man, garnisheed his wages, and it is all because of you. You are exactly like him. Exactly. I didn’t go to college because of him.
Because I was afraid of what he might do to Mama. You think because you hit him once that we all believe you were protecting her. Taking her side. It’s a lie. You were taking over, letting us know you had the right to tell her and all of us what to do.”
She stopped suddenly and Milkman could hear her breathing. When she started up again, her voice had changed; the steel was gone and in its place was a drifting, breezy music. “When we were little girls, before you were born, he took us to the icehouse once. Drove us there in his Hudson. We were all dressed up, and we stood there in front of those sweating black men, sucking ice out of our handkerchiefs, leaning forward a little so as not to drip water on our dresses. There were other children there. Barefoot, naked to the waist, dirty. But we stood apart, near the car, in white stockings, ribbons, and gloves. And when he talked to the men, he kept glancing at us, us and the car. The car and us. You see, he took us there so they could see us, envy us, envy him. Then one of the little boys came over to us and put his hand on Corinthians’ hair. She offered him her piece of ice and before we knew it, he was running toward us. He knocked the ice out of her hand into the dirt and shoved us both into the car. First he displayed us, then he splayed us. All our lives were like that: he would parade us like virgins through Babylon, then humiliate us like whores in Babylon. Now he has knocked the ice out of Corinthians’ hand again. And you are to blame.” Magdalene called Lena was crying. “You are to blame. You are a sad, pitiful, stupid, selfish, hateful man. I hope your little hog’s gut stands you in good stead, and that you take good care of it, because you don’t have anything else. But I want to give you notice.” She pulled her glasses out of her pocket and put them on. Her eyes doubled in size behind the lenses and were very pale and cold. “I don’t make roses anymore, and you have pissed your last in this house.”
Milkman said nothing.
“Now,” she whispered, “get out of my room.”
Milkman turned and walked across the room. It was good advice, he thought. Why not take it? He closed the door.
Part II
Chapter 10
When Hansel and Gretel stood in the forest and saw the house in the clearing before them, the little hairs at the nape of their necks must have shivered. Their knees must have felt so weak that blinding hunger alone could have propelled them forward. No one was there to warn or hold them; their parents, chastened and grieving, were far away. So they ran as fast as they could to the house where a woman older than death lived, and they ignored the shivering nape hair and the softness in their knees. A grown man can also be energized by hunger, and any weakness in his knees or irregularity in his heartbeat will disappear if he thinks his hunger is about to be assuaged. Especially if the object of his craving is not gingerbread or chewy gumdrops, but gold.
Milkman ducked under the boughs of black walnut trees and walked straight toward the big crumbling house. He knew that an old woman had lived in it once, but he saw no signs of life there now. He was oblivious to the universe of wood life that did live there in layers of ivy grown so thick he could have sunk his arm in it up to the elbow. Life that crawled, life that slunk and crept and never closed its eyes. Life that burrowed and scurried, and life so still it was indistinguishable from the ivy stems on which it lay. Birth, life, and death—each took place on the hidden side of a leaf. From where he stood, the house looked as if it had been eaten by a galloping disease, the sores of which were dark and fluid.
One mile behind him were macadam and the reassuring sounds of an automobile or two—one of which was Reverend Cooper’s car, driven by his thirteen-year-old nephew.
Noon, Milkman had told him. Come back at noon. He could just as easily have said twenty minutes, and now that he was alone, assaulted by what city people regard as raucous silence, he wished he had said five minutes. But even if the boy hadn’t had chores to do, it would be foolish to be driven fifteen miles outside Danville on “business” and stay a hot minute.
He should never have made up that elaborate story to disguise his search for the cave; somebody might ask him about it. Besides, lies should be very simple, like the truth. Excessive detail was simply excess. But he was so tired after the long bus ride from Pittsburgh, coming right after the luxury of the flight, he was afraid he wouldn’t be convincing.
The airplane ride exhilarated him, encouraged illusion and a feeling of invulnerability. High above the clouds, heavy yet light, caught in the stillness of speed (“Cruise,” the pilot said), sitting in intricate metal become glistening bird, it was not possible to believe he had ever made a mistake, or could. Only one small thought troubled him—that Guitar was not there too. He would have loved it—the view, the food, the stewardesses. But Milkman wanted to do this by himself, with no input from anybody. This one time he wanted to go solo. In the air, away from real life, he felt free, but on the ground, when he talked to Guitar just before he left, the wings of all those other people’s nightmares flapped in his face and constrained him. Lena’s anger, Corinthians’ loose and uncombed hair, matching her slack lips, Ruth’s stepped-up surveillance, his father’s bottomless greed, Hagar’s hollow eyes—he did not know whether he deserved any of that, but he knew he was fed up and he knew he had to leave quickly. He told Guitar of his decision before he told his father.
“Daddy thinks the stuff is still in the cave.”
“Could be.” Guitar sipped his tea.
“Anyway, it’s worth checking out. At least we’ll know once and for all.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“So I’m going after it.”
“By yourself?”
Milkman sighed. “Yeah. Yeah. By myself. I need to get out of here. I mean I really have to go away somewhere.”
Guitar put his cup down and folded his hands in front of his mouth. “Wouldn’t it be easier with the two of us? Suppose you have trouble?”
“It might be easier, but it might look more suspicious with two men instead of one roaming around the woods. If I find it, I’ll haul it back and we’ll split it up just like we agreed. If I don’t, well, I’ll be back anyway.”
“When you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“What’s your father say about you going alone?”
“I haven’t told him yet. You’re the only one knows so far.” Milkman stood up and went to the window that looked out on Guitar’s little porch. “Shit.”
Guitar was watching him carefully. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Why you so low? You don’t act like a man on his way to the end of the rainbow.”
Milkman turned around and sat on the sill. “I hope it is a rainbow, and nobody has run off with the pot, cause I need it.”
“Everybody needs it.”
“Not as bad as me.”
Guitar smiled. “Look like you really got the itch now. More than before.”
“Yeah, well, everything’s worse than before, or maybe it’s the same as before. I don’t know. I just know that I want to live my own life. I don’t want to be my old man’s office boy no more. And as long as I’m in this place I will be. Unless I have my own money. I have to get out of that house and I don’t want to owe anybody when I go. My family’s driving me crazy. Daddy wants me to be like him and hate my mother. My mother wants me to think like her and hate my father. Corinthians won’t speak to me; Lena wants me out. And Hagar wants me chained to her bed or dead. Everybody wants something from me, you know what I mean? Something they think they can’t get anywhere else. Something they think I got. I don’t know what it is—I mean what it is they really want.”
Guitar stretched his legs. “They want your life, man.”
“My life?”
“What else?”
“No. Hagar wants my life. My family…they want—”
“I don’t mean that way. I don’t mean they want your dead life; they want your living life.”
“You’re losing me,” said Milkman.
“Look. It’s the condition our condition is in. Everybody wants th
e life of a black man. Everybody. White men want us dead or quiet—which is the same thing as dead. White women, same thing. They want us, you know, ‘universal,’ human, no ‘race consciousness.’ Tame, except in bed. They like a little racial loincloth in the bed. But outside the bed they want us to be individuals. You tell them, ‘But they lynched my papa,’ and they say, ‘Yeah, but you’re better than the lynchers are, so forget it.’ And black women, they want your whole self. Love, they call it, and understanding. ‘Why don’t you understand me?’ What they mean is, Don’t love anything on earth except me. They say, ‘Be responsible,’ but what they mean is, Don’t go anywhere where I ain’t. You try to climb Mount Everest, they’ll tie up your ropes. Tell them you want to go to the bottom of the sea—just for a look—they’ll hide your oxygen tank. Or you don’t even have to go that far. Buy a horn and say you want to play. Oh, they love the music, but only after you pull eight at the post office. Even if you make it, even if you stubborn and mean and you get to the top of Mount Everest, or you do play and you good, real good—that still ain’t enough. You blow your lungs out on the horn and they want what breath you got left to hear about how you love them. They want your full attention. Take a risk and they say you not for real. That you don’t love them. They won’t even let you risk your own life, man, your own life—unless it’s over them. You can’t even die unless it’s about them. What good is a man’s life if he can’t even choose what to die for?”
“Nobody can choose what to die for.”
“Yes you can, and if you can’t, you can damn well try to.”
“You sound bitter. If that’s what you feel, why are you playing your numbers game? Keeping the racial ratio the same and all? Every time I ask you what you doing it for, you talk about love. Loving Negroes. Now you say—”