“George, if something happened to me, would you get married again?”
Always something far-fetched like that. And awfully stupid, because how was she expecting an honest answer, being out there within arm’s reach of the razor blades, nail files, and Drano while all I had to protect myself was a bar of Lifebuoy?
“That depends, Ophelia. If I was eighty-five, I’d probably call it a day.”
“No, I mean right now. If I left for work this very minute and got run over by a truck, how long before you’d get married again?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Why?”
“Because there’d be a thousand factors to consider: did the truck just maim you so you lingered for a while, or did it kill you instantly? Then there’s the funeral—some ministers talk longer than others. The time I’d need to clean out the closets. The—”
“So you would want to get married again?”
“Well, if the tables were turned, would you?”
“No. I’d never get over you.”
“Same for me. Never get over you.”
“You lying dog.”
The trick was to make you laugh, or to get you angry enough to leave me in peace but still avoid any arguments at breakfast. Living with a female: a day-to-day balancing act, and I really enjoyed the challenge. Because the times I got it right, your being different made all the difference in my world.
Could any woman have served? In the beginning I thought about that, and I wondered about Shawn more than I ever admitted to you. As a matter of fact, there was no time I mentioned her. I wasn’t that disoriented, even with soap in my ears. And she inevitably came up as one of your water questions. Are you sorry I’m not Shawn? That answer was easy because I’d rehearsed it—Oh, baby, never. Never, I said, as I drew you into the tub and spent the last fifteen minutes of my shower time with you. You tell the unvarnished truth when it serves: No, I wasn’t sorry you weren’t Shawn. But could Shawn have been you? There is a spectrum of women and personalities that can make one man happy. I was past the age, and had never been inclined, to believe that there is one special somebody waiting on the horizon. You meant enough for me to give us a chance—that’s all. But she had meant something, too. I was with her five years and couldn’t make a commitment; I married you after six months. It’s only natural that I would wonder.
And I think it’s the word natural that finally put it to rest. We had been married about three months and we’d talked about your going back to school. You wanted a history degree, and we hardly needed your salary. I couldn’t have cared less if you’d quit working after we got back from New Orleans. I wanted to start having children immediately, but you were set on this idea of first getting your degree. I doubt if you remember the particular incident. You had gotten your acceptance letter from NYU and were excited when I came home.
“Ophelia, this looks like goulash.”
“Because that’s what it is.”
“It was your turn to cook.”
“I cooked.”
“No, I cooked pot roast last night. And you took the leftovers, threw tomato sauce on it, and gave it back to me.”
“You’re right. I was so busy reading through these brochures about the college, the time flew by.”
“There’s always going to be something for you to read. But fair is fair.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
“So what am I supposed to eat? Not this mess.”
“You want some tuna fish?”
“No, I don’t want tuna fish.”
“Then I’ll make you an omelet.”
“And kill me off with all that cholesterol? Besides, eggs are breakfast food. Check out the clock, this is dinnertime.”
“Well, what spoiled your day?”
“Coming in here and looking at this goulash.”
“Nigger—please.”
Only you could have put your hands on your hips, narrowed your eyes, and come out with that. It was effortless and real. And above all—no, I should say, beneath it all, we both understood. A small moment, long forgotten in the drama of our lives. And so much of why I was with you, instead of her, hinged on it. No, I didn’t marry you because only you could call me a nigger. It’s just that you’d never feel the need to explain.
George, you were always so exacting, and that made you pretty hard to live with. Some things just couldn’t be boiled down to a formula that you could shove new elements into and have it all come out nice and neat. The closets, for one. When I was moving from Manhattan to your house on Staten Island, you brought out a slide rule and graph paper—yes, graph paper—to measure the length of my closets and figure out how much of our clothing we would have to store in the basement in order to share the space in your bedroom. And then when your damn diagrams didn’t work out, you carried on as if I was purposely trying to sabotage our marriage because I hung up an extra linen blazer. So we just shove one of your shirts over. No, we don’t do that because then you don’t have the rod space allotted for five days’ worth of shirts—and you must always have five pressed shirts ready in that particular corner at the beginning of your week.
It was more than a routine; you operated by rituals. A place for everything and everything in its place. I guess a lot of it came from growing up in an institution, or maybe it was the work you did. You often said that Bruce dreamed up the impossible and you found the nuts and bolts to make it happen. You were not an imaginative man, but you were constant. In my better moments that was comforting to me. With all the odds against us, you could be counted on to hang in there for the long run. But getting along with you day to day was another matter. I understood perfectly why taking your heart medicine was second nature. Every morning after you’d used the toilet, you’d slide over the right door of the vanity, remove one of the digoxin tablets from your bottle, and take it with half a glass of water. Twice a day without thinking: a second bottle at your office and one you always carried with you. I moved the bottle in the vanity once, not to another place in the house, not even to another shelf—I pushed it a fraction away from the right-hand side to put in a flat box of Q-Tips.
I cried half an hour after you stormed out of the house. Yes, I knew how important your medicine was, how important it was for you to be able to find it. The thought of anything happening to you was unbearable. I wasn’t upset because you’d left the way you did. I knew you were only going to walk around for a while and then call from the nearest phone booth. You were never able to stay angry with me for very long, even when you were justified. But it was a fraction of an inch, George. That’s what I was crying over. There were six rooms in that house, and if I was to be afraid for every small change made, what was I to think about the biggest change of all—me?
I couldn’t forget how quickly we’d gotten married. It’s as if we didn’t dare stop and think. But I was thinking now. And I wanted us to work so badly that I would be tempted to try and squeeze myself up into whatever shape you had calculated would fit into your plans. How long could I do it? The answer scared the hell out of me: I could have done it forever. You start out feeling a little uncomfortable, but then when you look around that’s the shape you’ve grown into. Yeah, I could have worked myself into your life. “She has all I have,” you told my grandmother on our honeymoon. But I was determined that we were going to have a life that would work. And that’s really why I didn’t want children right away—they would have confused the issue. I was only twenty-seven and there was time. I knew you didn’t agree, and I understood why you wanted to be a father. The irony is that you would have made a good one, but there was us to consider. And if we weren’t going to make it, it was better that the “we” be kept to just two.
My resolve about children would weaken from time to time. You would catch yourself refolding the towels on the rack, look at me and laugh: I guess you think I don’t want you here. Sometimes, I said, I do. Your face would get very serious: Well, don’t ever let me be a big enough fool to find out what
that would be like. It was especially difficult when Bernice wrote me that she was finally pregnant. She’d been trying for so long, and I knew Ambush was going to make a great father. There were a lot of ways in which he reminded me of you. And then our wedding present came from home in the same summer. After I unfolded the quilt, all seven square feet of it, we stood there in awe for a moment. You wanted to clear a wall in the living room and hang it up. But it had been made to be used, and I also knew they hadn’t gone through that kind of labor just for me. I ran my hands along the multicolored rings. They had sewed for my grandchildren to be conceived under this quilt. I looked at you standing beside me—the blue cotton shirt as always, hair cropped short and parted to the left as always. Our grandchildren? Let’s see how it fits on the bed, I said.
The next week I kicked myself for not putting in my diaphragm. It was back to business as usual. No, you were definitely not going home with me mid-August. You’d have to meet my grandmother and great-aunt another time. There was Hopewell’s apartment complex to oversee and the bidding for your first government contract. You had already taken a vacation in January, remember? And wasn’t New Orleans a romantic city? How would I know, I had seen it through fifty thousand people running up and down Bourbon Street screaming, “Go, Eagles. Go, Raiders,” flapping green wings on their backs and waving tinfoil swords. And all that nonsense about making sacrifices when you’re working for yourself didn’t fool me. When January of ’82 rolled around, you’d be off to wherever they were playing the Super Bowl. Separate vacations—it looked like that was in the cards for us. And it was one fight I wasn’t going to get into our first year. Nor was I going to jump into motherhood. Wait and see and measure: how much would I be asked to give for what I’d be given? And if the difference turned out to be too wide, I didn’t want you—or any man—enough to stretch the bodies of my children to fill it.
My friends thought I had given up too much already. Selma came over to Staten Island with the same enthusiasm she’d have for traveling into the Congo bushland. He’s got you all the way out here? The negligee she’d brought me from Saks had to cost more than the rent on my old studio. No, I didn’t miss the traffic and noise on Broadway. I’d grown up being awakened by the sound of birds and it was nice to have it happening again. Also nice to roll over into a warm spot that someone had left in the bed. And yes, I was quitting work. No, he wasn’t forcing me. I was hardly the type to be chained to a stove barefoot and pregnant. I’d be starting school in the fall. And I don’t care what Jewel’s husband did, it would take a very sick man to put pinholes in my diaphragm. Well, yes, he’d probably expect me to do more housework once I began classes—I was only going twice a week and he worked fourteen-hour days sometimes. No, his schedule didn’t give us much time together, but we made the most of it. Separate vacations? It did seem a little odd, and maybe it was a golden opportunity for him to be with someone else. But any woman who’d be willing to fly People’s Express and stay in Holiday Inns once a year with a man who only wanted to rant on about football couldn’t be much of a threat. Would she be staying for dinner? No, because George didn’t like her. She was right, you didn’t.
Selma may have been the eternal pessimist, but she voiced the doubts I would have kept buried inside. Hearing them out in the open from her gave me a chance to debate with myself and to realize how easily I won.
It’s the season for butterflies when Cocoa comes home. Some years we get more than others, depending upon the wind and the amount of rain that spring. This year there’s so many it’s bound to be remembered as the summer when the woods bled gold. You can’t walk anywhere near a patch of milkweed or wild clover without sending up a storm of color. The woods are full of laughter as the children chase ’em down—the one a gal catches is the new dress she’ll get her next birthday, and counting spots on their wings for a little boy is the number of kisses he’s due. Butterflies are a good sign, and this is a good summer. Drumfish and mullets ain’t waiting to be hooked, they’re jumping into the boats. Crawdaddies and oysters are a dime a hundred and crabs are coming up as big as two hands. Nobody’s sick. Everybody’s working. Gardens are doing so well it’s ridiculous. If it weren’t in the nature of some folks to complain, it could be said that every soul in Willow Springs had a reason to be happy.
Lord knows, Miss Abigail is fit to burst. Only twelve months since Cocoa was last home and look how much done happened. She come back a Missus. Didn’t bring no Mister, but they don’t seem to be getting on too ugly. She’s been with him long enough to heat up the stoves for a wedding feast if he had come. Cocoa sits around on the front porch a lot more than she’s done before, ’cause her running buddy is in the family way.
And you’d think it was actually a whole litter Bernice was having, how she carries on. The baby ain’t due till the first of next year and she’s run Dr. Smithfield ragged—that is, the times she ain’t running beyond the bridge to the clinic. Taking all kinds of tests for the baby’s blood, the baby’s weight, the baby’s heart. She’s even already paid for her hospital room. Won’t be no midwives delivering her grandchild, Pearl is crowing, that baby is getting the very best. Once Bernice listened to her and stopped taking all that “bush medicine,” see what happened? Word got back to Miranda about what Pearl was saying, but she just hoisted her garden tools on her hip and headed for the other place. And Pearl can’t do enough for Bernice now, won’t let her feet touch the ground. Them two is thick as fleas—you woulda thought Pearl was the daddy. Miranda told Bernice she could keep on walking and doing everything else she was doing, but now it’s Dr. Smithfield says this and Dr. Smithfield says that. There’s a lesson in gratitude floating around here somewhere, but it looks like it’s gonna be a while before it settles.
But Cocoa makes a nice sight up there on the porch in her pants and halter tops. You wonder why they call them little bitty things “shorts,” when they fit so much better on gals with long legs.
“Miss C, you can’t find nothing better to do, with your grandma’s pole beans doubling over to the ground?” Miranda calls from across the road.
“She told me she had too many in the house already. And besides, I—”
“What’s that?” Miranda cups her ears. “You know I’m getting old.”
“I said, she told me she had too many in—”
“Don’t be shouting like you got no upbringing. Speak to folks proper.”
Cocoa takes her own dear time swinging her legs from the railing to cross over to Miranda’s trailer.
“Well, now that you off your fanny, you can help me over here.”
“That’s all you had to say in the first place.”
“I can see marriage ain’t tamed your mouth none. I’m gonna have to send some hickory sticks to that boy.”
Cocoa throws her head back and laughs. “He wouldn’t know what to do with them.”
“He’ll learn.”
But Miranda is right pleased by her answer. She done seen and heard a lot to please her in the week that Baby Girl’s been home. She don’t carry on all sweet and gushy over the boy, ’cause that ain’t her style. And too much sweetness and light would make you kinda wonder anyway. Naw, there’s just the right glow, like you get from banking a bed of coals before going to sleep on a chilly night. The heat’s bound to flare up and flare down, but it’s gonna burn steady and long. Abigail might get herself some great-grands out of this yet, allowing for all of this modern-day nonsense about waiting to “build up a working relationship,” and using college to “find herself.” Marriage brings its own work—you ain’t gotta add nothing on to it. And you only go looking for things that’ve been lost. Baby Girl did have something lost to her, but she weren’t gonna find it in no school.
“Ophelia, I got me some gardening to do at the other place. Pick up them baskets.”
“What did you call me?”
“Don’t stand there with your mouth gaping open, I called you by your name.”
“But in my entire life, you??
?ve never used that name.”
“That ain’t true. The day you dropped into my hands, I first used it. Your mama said, ‘Call her Ophelia.’ And that’s what we did. Called you that for a whole week to fix it into place. So you’ve heard me say it before, but you don’t remember.”
“You mean, I can’t remember.”
“I mean just what I said. Pick up them baskets.”
The talk is of avoiding the poison sumac, marveling at lightning-struck edges of tree limbs, the blooms on sweet bays, but they’re walking through time. Heavy shafts of sunlight form a slanting ladder for butterflies to tip on up among the pine branches as twigs snap under the feet moving in and out of sun-flecked shadows. The shadows erase the lines on the old brown woman’s face and shorten the legs of the young pale one. They near the graveyard within the circle of live oaks and move down into time. A bit of hanging moss to cushion each foot and they’re among the beginning of the Days.
John-Paul waits to guide them back as they thin out the foxglove at the head of his stone: I had six brothers born before me, five that lived. Matthew, Mark, Luke, Timothy, and James. But I carry the name of the one that didn’t make it—John. I was the last boy and the last to marry. Some say I held her too dear. My daddy said it often when I was courting her. Hold back, John-Paul, I can look in that gal’s eyes and see she’ll never have peace. He passed on before I had the chance to tell him he was right. My daddy’s name was Jonah. And there was six brothers born before him. Two come for one: Elijah and Elisha, Joel, Daniel, Joshua, and Amos. All them was born in slavery time, but they lived as free men ’cause their mama willed it so. She became such a legend that black folks, white folks, and even red folks in my time would only whisper the name Sapphira. I can’t tell you about their daddy, they carried no surname till my daddy was born. God rested on the seventh day, their mama declared, and she would too. So my daddy was Jonah Day and it’s what I got to pass on to you.