She sat up all night with the lights on, and Basil finally fell into a fitful sleep. The next morning she took him to the hospital for a tetanus shot and ointment for his cheek. She returned to the boardinghouse, picked up her clothes, and with her baby in one arm and her suitcase in the other, she went looking for another place to live.
“We don’t take children.”
“I’ll pay anything.”
“We don’t take children!”
She walked the entire day, and her hand became blistered from the handle of the suitcase. Basil was growing heavy and restless in her arms, and his constant whining and struggling was taxing her strength. She had thought that she would find another place within hours, but her choices were few. After countless attempts, she learned that there was no need in wasting her energy to climb to steps in the white neighborhoods that displayed vacancy signs, and she even learned to shun certain neatly manicured black neighborhoods.
“Where’s your husband?”
“I ain’t got one.”
“This is a respectable place!”
As the evening approached she cursed the aching feet that were beginning to fail her and she cursed her haste in leaving the only shelter they had, but then she thought about the gnawed bottle nipple and kept walking. She had her week’s pay; she could go to a hotel. She could buy a oneway ticket home. Tomorrow was Sunday; she could look again. She could go home. If she found nothing Sunday, she could try again Monday. She could go home. If nothing Monday, she must show at work for Tuesday. Who would keep the baby? She could go home. Home. Home.
In her confusion Mattie had circled the same block twice. She remembered passing that old white woman just minutes before. She must have wandered into one of their neighborhoods again. She started to approach her and ask for directions to the bus station, but she changed her mind. She shifted Basil in her arms and silently walked past the fence.
“Where you headin’ with that pretty red baby? You lost, child?”
Mattie looked for the direction of the voice.
“If you wants the bus depot, you walkin’ in the wrong direction, ’cause nobody in their right mind would be trying to walk to the train station. It’s clear on the other side of town.”
Mattie realized that the old woman was actually talking to her, but it was a black voice. She hesitantly approached the fence and stared incredulously into a pair of watery blue eyes.
“What you gapin’ at? You simple-minded or something? I asked if you lost?”
Mattie saw that the evening light had hidden the yellow undertones in the finely wrinkled white face, and it had softened the broad contours of the woman’s pug nose and full lips.
“Yes, mam. I mean, no, mam,” she stammered. “I was looking for a place to stay and couldn’t find none, so I was looking for the bus depot, I guess,” she finished confusedly.
“What, you plan on sleeping in the depot with that baby tonight?”
“No, I was gonna buy a ticket and go home, I guess, or find a hotel and try again tomorrow, or maybe find a place on the way to the depot. I don’t know, I…” Mattie stopped talking because she knew she probably sounded like a complete fool to the woman, but she was so tired that she couldn’t think, and her legs were starting to tremble from lack of sleep and the heavy load she had carried around all day. She bit on her bottom lip to hold back the tears that were burning the corner of her eyes.
“Well, where’d you sleep last night?” the woman said softly. “You get kicked out?”
“No, mam.” And Mattie told her about the boardinghouse and the rat.
“And you just pick up and leave with no place to stay? Ain’t that a caution. Whyn’t you just plug up the hole with some steel wool and stay there till you could get better?”
Mattie tightened her arm around Basil and shook her head. There was no way she could have slept another night in that place without nightmares of things that would creep out of the walls to attack her child. She could never take him back to a place that had caused him so much pain.
The woman looked at the way she held the child and understood.
“Ya know, you can’t keep him runnin’ away from things that hurt him. Sometimes, you just gotta stay there and teach him how to go through the bad and good of whatever comes.”
Mattie grew impatient with the woman. She didn’t want a lecture about taking care of her son.
“If you’ll just show me the way to the depot, I’ll be obliged, mam,” she said coldly. “Or if you know somewhere that has a room.”
The woman chuckled. “No need to go gettin’ snippy. That’s one of the privileges of old age—you can give plenty of advice ’cause most folks think that’s all you got left anyway. Now I may know of something available and I may not,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “You workin’?”
Mattie told her where she worked.
“Where’s your husband?”
Mattie knew this question was coming, and she was tempted to say that he had been killed in the war, but that would be a denial of her son, and she felt nothing shameful about what he was.
“I ain’t got one.” And she bent down and picked up her suitcase.
“Well,” the old woman chuckled, “I’ve had five—outlived ’em all. So I can tell you, you ain’t missing much.” She opened the gate. “Since you done already picked up your valise, you might as well come on in and get that boy out the night air. Got plenty of room here. Just me and my grandbaby. He’ll be good company for Lucielia.”
She took Basil from Mattie’s arms. “Lord, he’s heavy. How’d you tote him all day? Look a’ them fat legs, pretty red thing, you. I was always partial to reddish men. My second husband was his color, but did he have a temper.” And she cooed and talked to the baby and Mattie as if she had known them for years.
Mattie followed her up the stone steps, trying to adjust her mind to this rapid turn of events and the nameless old woman who had altered their destinies. They entered the house and she set her suitcase on the thick green carpet and looked around the huge living room overcrowded with expensive mahogany furniture and china bric-a-brac. Through a door on the right, a yellowing crystal and brass chandelier hung over an oak table large enough to seat twelve people.
“Don’t mind the house, child. I know it’s a mess but I ain’t got the strength I once had to keep it tidy. I guess you all must be hungry. Come on in the kitchen.” And she headed for the back of the house with the baby.
Mattie was beginning to collect herself. “But I don’t even know your name!” she called out, still fixed to the living room floor.
The old woman turned around. “That mean you can’t eat my food? Well, since you gotta be properly introduced, the name of what’s in the kitchen is pot roast, oven-browned potatoes, and string beans. And I believe there’s even some angel food cake waitin’ to make your acquaintance.” She started toward the kitchen again and threw over her shoulder, “And the crazy old woman you’re sure by now you’re talkin’ to is Eva Turner.”
Mattie hurried behind Eva and Basil into the kitchen.
“I meant no offense, Mrs. Turner. It’s just that this was all so quick and you’ve really been kind and my name is Mattie Michael and this is Basil and I don’t even know how much space you got for us or how much you want to charge or anything, so you can see why I’m a little confused, can’t you?” she finished helplessly.
The woman listened to her rattled introduction with calm amusement. “People ’round here call me Miss Eva.” She put the baby on the polished tile floor and went to the stove. She seemed to ignore Mattie and hummed to herself while she heated and stirred the food.
Mattie was beginning to wonder if the woman might actually be a bit insane, and she looked around the kitchen for some sign of it. All she saw was rows of polished copper pots, huge potted plants, and more china bric-a-brac. There was a child’s playpen pushed in the corner with piles of colorful rubber toys. Basil had seen the toys also and was tottering toward them. Mattie went to
stop him, and he cried out in protest.
Miss Eva turned from the stove. “Leave him be. He ain’t botherin’ nothing. Them’s Lucielia’s toys, and she’s asleep now.”
“Who’s Lucielia?” Mattie asked.
Miss Eva looked as if she were now doubting Mattie’s sanity. “I told you outside—that’s my son’s child. I’ve had her since she was six months old. Her parents went back to Tennessee and just left the baby. Neither of ’em are worth the spit it takes to cuss ’em. But then, I can’t blame her daddy none. He takes after his father—my last husband, who I shouldn’t of never married, but I was always partial to dark-skinned men.”
She brought the plates of food to the table, and while Mattie ate, Miss Eva insisted on feeding Basil. Mattie didn’t know if it was the seasoned food or the warm air in the kitchen, but she felt herself settling like fine dust on her surroundings and accepting the unexplained kindness of the woman with a hunger of which she had been unaware. In the unabashed fashion of the old, Miss Eva unfolded her own life and secret exploits to Mattie, and without realizing she was being questioned, Mattie found herself talking about things that she had buried within her. The young black woman and the old yellow woman sat in the kitchen for hours, blending their lives so that what lay behind one and ahead of the other became indistinguishable.
“Child, I know what you talkin’ about. My daddy was just like that, too. I remember the night I ran off with my first husband, who was a singer. My daddy hunted us down for three months and then drug me home and kept me locked in my room for weeks with the windows all nailed up. But soon as he let me out, Virgil came back and got me, and we was off again.” She laughed heartily at the memory. “We joined the vaudeville circuit and went on stage. My daddy didn’t speak to me for years, but I couldn’t stay away from that Virgil. I was always partial to brown-skinned men.”
Mattie was puzzled. “But I thought you said before that you were partial to—”
“Ain’t it a fact.” Miss Eva’s face spread into a wicked grin. “Well, if the truth be told, I likes ’em all, but they don’t seem to agree with me—like fried onions. You like fried onions? I’ll make us some liver and fried onions for Sunday supper tomorrow.”
“That would be nice, mam, but you haven’t told me yet what it’ll cost to stay here with our room and board.”
“I ain’t runnin’ no boardinghouse, girl; this is my home. But there’s spare room upstairs that you’re welcome to, along with the run of the house.”
“But I can’t stay without paying something,” Mattie insisted, “and with you offering to mind the baby, too—I can’t take advantage like that. Please, what will it cost?”
“All right,” Miss Eva said, as she looked at the sleeping child in her arms, “I ain’t decided yet, but in time I’ll let you know.”
Mattie was too sleepy to argue any further; she could hardly keep her eyes open. Miss Eva showed her to the bedroom upstairs, and Mattie was to die with the memory of the smell of lemon oil and the touch of cool, starched linen on her first night—of the thirty years of nights—she would spend in that house.
And she lay down with her son and sank into a timeless sleep. Time’s passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be dammed and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the consciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.
IV
Mattie got up Sunday morning to the usual banging and howling in the house on weekends. Miss Eva was in the kitchen fighting with the children.
“Grandma, Basil broke my crayon. See, he bit it right in half—and on purpose!” Lucielia wailed.
“Basil, you little red devil, come here! Can’t I cook breakfast in peace?”
“But, Miss Eva, Ciel took my coloring book and she tore all the pages.”
“I did not,” Ciel protested, and kicked him.
Basil began crying.
“Why, you evil, narrow-tailed heifer. I’ll break your neck!” And she smacked Ciel on the behind with her wooden cooking spoon.
Basil stopped crying instantly in order to enjoy Ciel’s punishment. “Goody, goody.” He stuck out his tongue at her.
“Goody, goody, on you, Mister,” Miss Eva went after him with the spoon, “I ain’t forgot you broke my china poodle this morning.”
Basil ducked under the table, knowing she wouldn’t be able to bend and reach him.
“Want me to get him for you, Grandma?” Ciel offered, trying to get back into her good graces.
“No, I just want you both out of my kitchen. Out! Out!” She banged on the table with the spoon.
Mattie stood yawning in the kitchen door. “Can’t there be just one morning of peace and quiet in this house—just one?” Ciel and Basil both ran to her, each trying to outshout the other about their various injustices. “I don’t want to hear it,” Mattie sighed. “It’s too early for this nonsense. Now go wash up for breakfast—you’re still in pajamas.”
“Didn’t you hear her? Now, get!” Miss Eva shouted and raised her spoon.
The children ran upstairs. Eva smiled behind their backs and turned toward the stove.
“Well, good morning,” Mattie said, and poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Tain’t natural, just ’tain’t natural,” Miss Eva grumbled at the stove.
“They’re only children, Miss Eva. All children are like that.”
“I ain’t talking about them children, I’m talking ’bout you. You done spent another weekend holed up in this house and ain’t gone out nowhere.”
“Now that’s not true. Friday night I went to choir practice, and Saturday I took Basil to get a pair of shoes and then took him and Ciel to the zoo. And last night I even went to a double feature at the Century, which is why I overslept this morning. That only leaves Sunday morning, Miss Eva, and there’s church today, and then I gotta go back to work tomorrow. So I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“What I’m talkin’ ’bout is that I ain’t heard you mention no man involved in all them exciting goings-on in your life—church and children and work. It ain’t natural for a young woman like you to live that way. I can’t remember the last time no man come by to take you out.”
Mattie couldn’t remember either. There had been a bus ride with a foreman in the shipping department at her job, and she had gone out a few times with one of the ushers in her church—but that was last spring, or was it last winter?
“Humph.” Mattie shrugged her shoulders and sipped her coffee. “I’ve been so busy, I guess I haven’t noticed. It has been a long time, but so what? I’ve got my hands full raising my son.”
“Children get raised overnight, Mattie. Then what you got? I should know. I raised seven and four of my grand and they all gone except Ciel. But I’m an old woman, my life’s most over. That ain’t no excuse for you. Why, by the time I was your age, I was on my second husband, and you still slow about gettin’ the first.”
“Well, Miss Eva, I’d have to had started twenty years ago to beat your record,” Mattie kidded.
“I ain’t making no joke, child.” And her watery eyes clouded over as she stared at the younger woman. Mattie knew that look well. The old woman wanted a confrontation and would not be budged. “Ain’t you ever had no needs in that direction? No young woman wants an empty bed, year in and year out.”
Mattie felt the blood rushing to her face under Miss Eva’s open stare. She took a few sips of coffee to give herself time to think. Why didn’t she ever feel that way? Was there really something wrong with her? The answers were beyond her at that moment, but Miss Eva was waiting, and she had to say something.
“My bed hasn’t been empty since Basil was born,” she said lightly, “and I
don’t think anyone but me would put up with the way that boy kicks in his sleep.”
As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. This was an ancient battle between the two women.
“Basil needs a bed of his own. I been telling you that for years.”
“He’s afraid of the dark. You know that.”
“Most children are afraid at first, but they get used to it.”
“I’m not gonna have my child screaming his head off all night just to please you. He’s still a baby, he doesn’t like sleeping alone, and that’s it!” she said through clenched teeth.
“Five years old ain’t no baby,” Miss Eva said. And then she added mildly, “You sure it’s Basil who don’t want to sleep alone?”
The gentle pity in the faded blue eyes robbed Mattie of the angry accusations she wanted to fling at the old woman for making her feel ashamed. Shame for what? For loving her son, wanting to protect him from his invisible phantoms that lay crouching in the dark? No, those pitying eyes had slid into her unconscious like a blue laser and exposed secrets that Mattie had buried from her own self. They had crept between her sheets and knew that her body had hungered at moments, had felt the need for a filling and caressing of inner spaces. But in those restless moments she had turned toward her manchild and let the soft, sleeping flesh and the thought of all that he was and would be draw those yearnings onto the edge of her lips and the tips of her fingers. And she could not sleep until she released those congested feelings by stroking his moist forehead and planting a kiss there. A mother’s kiss for a sleeping child. And this old woman’s freakish blue eyes had turned it into something to make her ashamed.
She wanted to get up from the table and spit into those eyes, beat them sightless—those that had befriended her, kept her baby from sharp objects and steep stairs while she worked, wept with her over the death of her parents—she wanted them crushed under her fists for daring to make her ashamed of loving her son.