“Tomorrow at the hearing, when they tell us the bail, I’ll put it up and then you can get out.”
“Can’t you give them the bail money today? I can’t spend another night in this place.”
“Basil, there’s nothing I can do today. We have to wait.” Mattie pressed a trembling hand to her eyes to hold back the tears. She had never felt so impotent in her life. There was no way she could fight the tiny inked markings that now controlled their lives. She would give anything to remove him from this horrible place—didn’t he know that? But those blue loops, commas, and periods had tied her hands.
“Okay, fine. If you can’t, you can’t,” he said bitterly, and got up from his chair.
“Honey, we still got time, don’t you want to sit and talk?”
“There’s nothing left to talk about, Mama, unless you wanna hear about the broken toilets with three-day-old shit or the bedbugs that have ate up my back or the greasy food I keep throwing up. Other than that, I got nothing to say to you.”
He left Mattie sitting there, understanding his frustration but wishing he had chosen a kinder way of hurting her, by just hitting her in the face.
The judge set bail the next day, and Basil was given an early trial date. Cecil Garvin tried to appeal the bail, but the court denied his plea.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Michael, it’s the best I could do. There’s no need, really, to try and raise so much money. The case goes to trial in only two weeks, and it won’t be a complicated proceeding. I’ve talked to the district attorney, and they won’t push too heavily on the assault charge if we drop the implications of undue force in the arrest. So it’s going to work out well for all the parties involved. And your son will be free in less than fifteen days.”
“I still want to put up the bail,” Mattie said.
Garvin looked worried. “It’s a great deal of money, Mrs. Michael, and you don’t have the ready assets for something like that.”
“I’ve got my house; it’s mine and paid for. Can’t I put that up for bail?”
“Well, yes, but you do understand that bail is only posted to insure that the defendant appears for trial. If they don’t appear, the court issues a bench warrant for the truant party and you forfeit your bond. You do understand that?”
“I understand.”
The lawyer looked thoughtfully over at Basil. “It’s only a matter of two weeks, Mrs. Michael. Some defendants spend months waiting for trial. Perhaps you should reconsider.”
Mattie stared at him, and she thought about the blonde girl in the silver frame on his desk. “If it was your daughter locked up in a place like that,” she said angrily, “could you stand there and say the same thing?”
His face reddened, and he stammered for a moment. “That’s not what I mean, Mrs. Michael. It’s just that with some people it’s better to…well, it’s up to you. It is your son, after all. Come along, and I’ll give you the necessary papers to take to a bonding company.”
The snow fell early that year. When Basil and Mattie left the precinct, the wide soft flakes were floating in gentle layers on the November air. Basil reached out and tried to grab one to give her, and he laughed as it melted in his hand.
“Remember how I used to cry when I tried to bring you a snowflake and it always disappeared?” He held his face up to the sky and let the snow fall on his closed lids. “Oh, God, Mama, isn’t it beautiful?”
“Beautiful? You always hated the snow.”
“Not now, it’s wonderful. It’s out here and free, like I am. I love it!” And he wrapped his arms around himself.
Mattie’s insides expanded to take in his joy.
“And I love you, Mama.” He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Thank you.”
Mattie sucked her teeth and playfully shoved him away. “Thank me for what? Boy, go on and get the car before I catch my death of cold in all this beautiful snow of yours.”
Mattie watched him as he moved through the parking lot almost singing, and she took in his happiness and made it her own just as she’d done with every emotion that had ever claimed him. She took in the sweetness of his freedom and let it roll around her tongue, while she savored its fragrant juices and allowed the syrupy fluid to coat her mouth and drip slowly down her throat.
She feasted on this sweetness during the next two weeks. Basil had been returned to her, and she reveled in his presence. He drove her to work in the mornings and would often be waiting when she got off. They cleaned the yard together and covered her shrubbery with burlap. They rearranged furniture and straightened the attic, and he even washed windows for her—a chore he had hated from childhood. There was no end to the things he did for her, and he stayed close to home. It was so good to have a nice home to come to, he told her. And she grew full from this nectar and allowed herself to dream again of the wife he would bring home and the grandchildren who would keep her spirit there.
The lawyer called at the end of the second week to remind them of the court appointment, and Basil grew irritable. He told her he hated the thought of that place. He had tried to pretend that it didn’t exist, and he had been so happy. Now this. What if something went wrong and they kept him again? You couldn’t trust those honky lawyers—what did they care about him? Those people in that bar weren’t friends of his—what if they changed their stories? What if the girl hated him now and decided to lie? He remembered the way she had screamed over the dead man’s body. Yes, she would lie to get back at him. He knew it.
“I’ll blow my brains out before I spend my life in jail,” he said to Mattie while driving her to work.
“Basil, stop talkin’ stupidness!” Her voice was sharp. She had not been able to sleep well the last two nights, lying and listening to him pacing around in his room. “I’ve been hearing nothing but nonsense the last coupla days, and I’m sick of it.”
“Nonsense!” He swung his head around.
“Yes, damned nonsense! You ain’t going to jail ’cause you ain’t done nothing to go to jail for. We go to court Tuesday; they’ll give all the evidence, and you’ll be clear. That’s all there is to it. The lawyer said so, and he should know.”
“Mama, he’ll say anything to get your money. If someone offered him a nickel more than you paid, he’d throw me in jail personally and swallow the key. You don’t know them like I do, and you don’t know what it’s like in those cells. And they’ll send me to a worse place than some county jail.” He looked at her sorrowfully. “I couldn’t stand it, Mama. I just couldn’t.”
Mattie sighed, turned her head from him, and looked out the window. There was nothing to say. Whatever was lacking within him that made it impossible to confront the difficulties of life could not be supplied with words. She saw it now. There was a void in his being that had been padded and cushioned over the years, and now that covering had grown impregnable. She bit on her bottom lip and swallowed back a sob. God had given her what she prayed for—a little boy who would always need her.
She felt him looking at her turned head from time to time and knew he was puzzled by her silence. He was waiting to be coaxed and petted into a lighter mood, but she forced herself to keep staring out the window. When the car pulled up to her job, she mumbled a good-bye and reached for the latch. Basil grabbed her hand, leaned over, and kissed her cheek.
“Good-bye, Mama.”
She was touched by the gentleness in his caress and immediately repentant of her attitude in the car. During the day she resolved to make amends to him. After all, he was under a great deal of pressure, and it wasn’t fair that he bear it alone. Was it so wrong that he seemed to need her constant support? Had he not been trained to expect it? And he had been trying so hard those last two weeks; she couldn’t let him down now. She would go home and make him a special dinner—creamed chicken with rice—he always loved that. Then they would sit and talk, and she would tell him, once again, or as many times as needed, that it was going to be all right.
Basil wasn’t waiting for Mattie when she fini
shed work, so she took the bus home and stopped by the store to pick up the things she needed for his dinner. She walked up the street and saw that his car wasn’t parked out front and the house was dark. She stood for a moment by the front gate, first looking at the space where the car should be and then at the unlit windows. Normally she would have gone through the front door, taken off her coat, and hung it in the front hall closet. Tonight she entered the house through the back door that led straight into the kitchen. She took off her coat and laid it on one of the kitchen chairs. There was an extra jacket of his in the front hall closet that would not be there.
She washed her hands at the sink and immediately started to cut up the chicken and peel and slice vegetables. Her feet were beginning to ache, but her house slippers were in the living room, under a table where his portable radio would not be, so she limped around her kitchen while finishing his dinner. She let the water run in the sink longer than necessary and dropped her knife and set the pots on the stove with a fraction of extra force. She made as much noise as she could to ward off the stillness of the upstairs bedroom that kept trying to creep into her kitchen, carrying empty drawers and closets, a vacant space where a suitcase had lain, missing toothpaste. She banged pot lids and beat sauces in aluminum bowls until her arms were tired. She watched and fussed over his dinner, opening and closing the oven door a dozen times—anything to keep back the stillness until he would drive up in his car, say he had come to his senses, sit down and eat her creamed chicken, save a lifetime of work lying in the bricks of her home.
The vegetables were done, the chicken almost burnt, and the biscuits had to come out of the oven. She turned off the gas jets, opened the oven door, and banged the pan of biscuits onto the counter top. She looked frantically at the creeping shadows over her kitchen door and rushed to the cabinet and took out plates and silverware. She slammed the cabinet shut and slowly and noisily set the table for two. She looked pleadingly around the kitchen, but there was nothing left to be done. So she pulled out the kitchen chair, letting the metal legs drag across the tiles. Trembling, she sat down, put her head in her hands, and waited for the patient and crouching stillness just beyond the kitchen door.
A hand touched her shoulder, and Mattie gave a small cry.
“Didn’t mean to startle you, mam, but it’s snowing pretty bad, and we gotta move this stuff upstairs. Would you please go up and unlock the door?”
At first Mattie looked vacantly into the face of the man, and then her mind snapped into place from its long stretch over time. The cab had just backed out of Brewster Place, and she watched it turn down the avenue and drive away. Her eyes trailed slowly along the cracked stoops and snowfilled gutters until they came to her building. She glanced at the wall and, with an inner sigh, remembered her plants again.
The mover who had addressed her was staring at her uncomfortably.
“Oh, yes, I’m sorry,” she said disconcertedly. “I have the keys right here, don’t I?” And she opened her pocketbook and started searching for them.
The two men looked at each other, and one shrugged his shoulders and pointed his finger toward his head.
Mattie grasped the cold metal key in one hand and put the other on the iron railing and climbed the stoop to the front entrance. As she opened the door and entered the dingy hallway, a snowflake caught in her collar, melted, and rolled down her back like a frozen tear.
ETTA MAE
JOHNSON
The unpainted walls of the long rectangular room were soaked with the smell of greasy chicken and warm, headless beer. The brown and pink faces floated above the trails of used cigarette smoke like bodiless carnival balloons. The plump yellow woman with white gardenias pinned to the side of her head stood with her back pressed against the peeling sides of the baby grand and tried to pierce the bloated hum in the room with her thin scratchy voice. Undisturbed that she remained for the most part ignored, she motioned for the piano player to begin.
It wasn’t the music or the words or the woman that took that room by its throat until it gasped for air—it was the pain. There was a young southern girl, Etta Johnson, pushed up in a corner table, and she never forgot. The music, the woman, the words.
I love my man
I’m a lie if I say I don’t
I love my man
I’m a lie if I say I don’t
But I’ll quit my man
I’m a lie if I say I won’t
My man wouldn’t give me no breakfast
Wouldn’t give me no dinner
Squawked about my supper
Then he put me out of doors
Had the nerve to lay
A matchbox to my clothes
I didn’t have so many
But I had a long, long, way to go
Children bloomed on Brewster Place during July and August with their colorful shorts and tops plastered against gold, ebony, and nut-brown legs and arms; they decorated the street, rivaling the geraniums and ivy found on the manicured boulevard downtown. The summer heat seemed to draw the people from their cramped apartments onto the stoops, as it drew the tiny drops of perspiration from their foreheads and backs.
The apple-green Cadillac with the white vinyl roof and Florida plates turned into Brewster like a greased cobra. Since Etta had stopped at a Mobil station three blocks away to wash off the evidence of a hot, dusty 1200-mile odyssey home, the chrome caught the rays of the high afternoon sun and flung them back into its face. She had chosen her time well.
The children, free from the conditioned restraints of their older counterparts, ran along the sidewalks flanking this curious, slow-moving addition to their world. Every eye on the block, either openly or covertly, was on the door of the car when it opened. They were rewarded by the appearance of a pair of white leather sandals attached to narrow ankles and slightly bowed, shapely legs. The willow-green sundress, only ten minutes old on the short chestnut woman, clung to a body that had finished a close second in its race with time. Large two-toned sunglasses hid the weariness that had defied the freshly applied mascara and burnt-ivory shadow. After taking twice the time needed to stretch herself, she reached into the back seat of the car and pulled out her plastic clothes bag and Billie Holiday albums.
The children’s curiosity reached the end of its short life span, and they drifted back to their various games. The adults sucked their teeth in disappointment, and the more envious felt self-righteousness twist the corners of their mouths. It was only Etta. Looked like she’d done all right by herself—this time around.
Slowly she carried herself across the street—head high and eyes fixed unwaveringly on her destination. The half-dozen albums were clutched in front of her chest like cardboard armor.
There ain’t nothing I ever do
Or nothing I ever say
That folks don’t criticize me
But I’m going to do
Just what I want to, anyway
And don’t care just what people say
If I should take a notion
To jump into the ocean
Ain’t nobody’s business if I do…
Any who bothered to greet her never used her first name. No one called Etta Mae “Etta,” except in their minds; and when they spoke to each other about her, it was Etta Johnson; but when they addressed her directly, it was always Miss Johnson. This baffled her because she knew what they thought about her, and she’d always call them by their first names and invited them to do the same with her. But after a few awkward attempts, they’d fall back into the pattern they were somehow comfortable with. Etta didn’t know if this was to keep the distance on her side or theirs, but it was there. And she had learned to tread through these alien undercurrents so well that to a casual observer she had mastered the ancient secret of walking on water.
Mattie sat in her frayed brocade armchair, pushed up to the front window, and watched her friend’s brave approach through the dusty screen. Still toting around them oversized records, she thought. That woman is a puzzle
ment.
Mattie rose to open the door so Etta wouldn’t have to struggle to knock with her arms full. “Lord, child, thank you,” she gushed, out of breath. “The younger I get, the higher those steps seem to stretch.”
She dumped her load on the sofa and swept off her sunglasses. She breathed deeply of the freedom she found in Mattie’s presence. Here she had no choice but to be herself. The carefully erected decoys she was constantly shuffling and changing to fit the situation were of no use here. Etta and Mattie went way back, a singular term that claimed co-knowledge of all the important events in their lives and almost all of the unimportant ones. And by rights of this possession, it tolerated no secrets.
“Sit on down and take a breather. Must have been a hard trip. When you first said you were coming, I didn’t expect you to be driving.”
“To tell the truth, I didn’t expect it myself, Mattie. But Simeon got very ornery when I said I was heading home, and he refused to give me the money he’d promised for my plane fare. So I said, just give me half and I’ll take the train. Well, he wasn’t gonna even do that. And Mattie, you know I’ll be damned if I was coming into this city on a raggedy old Greyhound. So one night he was by my place all drunk up and snoring, and as kindly as you please, I took the car keys and registration and so here I am.”
“My God, woman! You stole the man’s car?”
“Stole—nothing. He owes me that and then some.”
“Yeah, but the police don’t wanna hear that. It’s a wonder the highway patrol ain’t stopped you before now.”
“They ain’t stopped me because Simeon didn’t report it.”
“How you know that?”
“His wife’s daddy is the sheriff of that county.” Laughter hung dangerously on the edge of the two women’s eyes and lips.
“Yeah, but he could say you picked his pockets.”
Etta went to her clothes bag and pulled out a pair of pink and red monogrammed shorts. “I’d have to be a damned good pickpocket to get away with all this.” The laughter lost its weak hold on their mouths and went bouncing crazily against the walls of the living room.