Second, the moment the fellow spoke the word driver, Otis Lee’s mind left his body for a journey back to the 1920s and it visited him as a young man in New York City. Essie’s husband—his name was Thomas, but Essie called him “Thomas Dear”—had hired a driver. Based on what Otis Lee had overheard, Thomas had actually hired the driver because one of the other police officers had hired one for his own wife. “I’m happy to drive myself around, Thomas Dear,” Essie insisted. And Thomas said, “If Elis Foley has a boy taking her to those afternoon coffees or teas or whatever the hell it is you all do, you’ll have a boy driving you, too.”
Now Otis Lee felt something like warm cooking grease moving through his bowels. He nodded at the driver and ran to the backyard. In the old outhouse, he pulled his trousers down just in time to sit on the cool, damp wood where the hole had been cut many years ago. As his body relieved itself—he had very little to do with it—Otis Lee pulled spiderwebs from his face and hoped an angry snake wouldn’t come out from a crack.
Essie? In West Mills, North Carolina? In my house?
Who else can it be, Otis Lee? Shit and get out of the outhouse.
While in New York City, Otis Lee often went to the Municipal Building on Centre Street to shine shoes for extra money. He was certain there were more people walking around on that block and in the lobby of that building than there were in West Mills and the two neighboring towns. Everyone had somewhere to be and they acted as though they only had ten seconds to get there. And they all had something to sell: newspapers, candy, mismatched jewelry, lost or stolen pens. What they all—blacks and whites—seemed to be running low on most, both in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, were “Hellos,” “How ya doings,” and “Come agains.”
Otis Lee only went to Centre Street on days when he didn’t have to work at Essie’s. He hadn’t told her or anyone else at the brothel about his side hustle. But one day, kit in hand, he ran into her.
“Don’t you get tired of workin’?” she asked him. Otis Lee remembered that she spoke in her southern accent when she felt safe, which was usually when he went with her to run errands.
“What I do when I ain’t at yo’ place don’t concern you,” Otis Lee shot back.
“No need for the sass,” she said, and he felt a hint of guilt for having snapped at her. “Just thought you might want to rest, is all. More to life than workin’, baby. Had anything to eat?”
“Essie, you ain’t got to do all this pretendin’,” Otis Lee told her. He looked down at the pavement while he spoke to her, but his focus shifted to her glistening black shoes. “Our mama’s in West Mills, missing us both. And soon as I get up enough money to go back—enough to have a head start down there—I’m goin’.” There was a brief silence. And when he lifted his eyes to meet hers, they looked as though they would spill over any second. She walked to the car O’Heeney had purchased especially for her to be chauffeured around in. The driver, a middle-aged colored man, opened the door for her. Otis Lee turned and walked away, not wanting to see her ride off that way. That night at the brothel she was sitting in the parlor with one of the customers. Essie gave Otis Lee a familiar look—the same look Rose had given him when he was a little boy and not feeling well—as if she was suffering because he was suffering.
Now, sitting at the kitchen table with Pep and Breezy, Essie greeted him with that familiar look. Seventy or seventy-one years old by now, not a single strand of her once pitch-black hair had been able to resist time. It was silver—all of it. But Otis Lee would recognize his sister anywhere. And to him she looked whiter now than she had all those years ago. He wondered if the thought of being white made the body follow suit.
Essie stood and walked to him. She moved quickly for a woman her age, he thought. It reminded him of Ma Noni.
“Otis Lee,” Essie began. Her voice was much higher-pitched than he remembered. “I know I—”
“I know you been in the North a long time,” Otis Lee cut in, “but down here, when we gon’ visit somebody we ain’t seen or heard from in God knows when, we sends a note or somethin’ ahead of us.”
“I thought—”
“I don’t want to hear nothin’ from you, Essie,” he said.
Essie lowered her eyes for a moment, which gave him enough time to notice the green brooch on the lapel of her dark blue blazer—the same brooch he had seen her wear almost every day when he lived with her. He would never forget that brooch.
What Otis Lee had forgotten, however, were the eyes. When Essie looked back up at him, he saw his mother’s eyes. They ’bout all Essie got to prove she’s my mama’s daughter. She probably ain’t never even wanted them brown eyes.
“I think she ought to leave,” Otis Lee said to Pep.
“Sit down a minute, Otis Lee,” Pep suggested.
“Don’t ‘sit down a minute’ me, Penelope,” he argued. “What she want?”
“I want to know you,” Essie told him, touching his hand. He would have snatched it back from her, but he would never have snatched his hand away from his mother if she had been there. Them’s Rose’s eyes lookin’ at me.
“Pop,” Breezy said. Otis Lee felt his son’s wide but light hand on his shoulder. “She want to talk to you. She ain’t come to cause us no trouble. She just want to talk.” Otis Lee looked at Breezy, and he felt hot tears running down his own face.
Wet-cheeked, Otis Lee stared at his son, because he could not look at Essie while saying what needed to be said; her eyes—his late mother’s eyes—would make it too hard if not impossible.
“I want her out,” Otis Lee declared. “I think it’s best she don’t come here no more.” Essie walked back to the table and picked up her purse. “I’m sorry to have intruded,” she apologized, and headed for the door.
“Just a minute, ma’am,” Breezy said. He stood in front of Otis Lee, but Otis Lee wouldn’t look up at him. “She’s ya sister, Pop. The only person in this world you shared a mama with. Sit and talk to her. She’s ya blood.”
“She run off and left us!” Otis Lee shouted. “Left her mama, grandmama, and me. Left us with not a damn thing! And wouldn’t come back wit’ me when I went to help her!” He could not remember the last time he’d cried so much or yelled so loudly. “Sit and talk to her for what, Breezy? ’Bout what?”
Otis Lee heard Essie’s heels coming back toward him. Breezy made space between them. And Otis Lee saw that her cheeks were wet, too.
“Sent off, Otis Lee,” Essie corrected. “I didn’t run off. She sent me off.”
With Pep and Breezy gone to visit Knot, Otis Lee and Essie sat across from each other at his table. Essie told Otis Lee that she had wanted to come when Rose died, but she hadn’t been able to work up the nerve, not having made an effort in all the years that had come before.
Otis Lee had paid close attention to only three-quarters of what his sister had been saying because he was thinking about his son. He was proud that Breezy had seemed concerned about something other than his own needs and wants. Finally becomin’ a grown man with some sense in his head.
“So what made ya come now?” Otis Lee wanted to know. “You sick or somethin’?
“I’m all right,” Essie reassured him, “as far as I know. But I’m no debutante.” Otis Lee did not know what that meant, and his frown must have said so. “I’m no longer a spring chicken.”
He hadn’t been to the chicken coop. Did Pep or Breezy feed my cluckers?
Essie said, “Ma Noni used to say, ‘No man knows the day nor the hour.’ ”
Easily, Otis Lee could have flipped the table over when his sister recited the quote. Instead he took a deep breath.
“What reason did Ma Noni have to want you gone, Essie? I can’t understand that.”
Essie told him everything she’d been told about Rose and Leland Edgars Jr.
“I can’t remember a single day that woman was kind to me, Otis Lee,” Essie said. “Ma Noni, I mean.”
“But you was her daughter’s child, Essie,” Otis Lee said. “I jus
t can’t underst—”
“Look at my face, Otis Lee,” Essie broke in. “I came along in 18 and 91. Can you imagine what it was like for Ma Noni to see her daughter with a white-looking baby on her hip? A baby that was hers? In 1891? I’d probably been sent away the day I was born if there was anywhere to send me. I was probably fourteen or fifteen before Leland Jr. even acknowledged to Mama that I was his.”
Essie said she didn’t know what Ma Noni had said to Leland Edgars Jr. to convince him that Essie needed to be sent away all of a sudden. But he had given her money—it had been far more than the twenty-five dollars Otis Lee had heard about—to help with the journey. Essie said she always assumed there must have been some vicious lie, or a threat, to make things happen so quickly.
“There something I need to—”
“So you ain’t sell Ma Noni’s land behind her back?” Otis Lee said.
“She didn’t own any land,” Essie told him. “If she had, what would I know about selling land? I was just a young girl.”
Otis Lee thought about what Essie had said over the course of the past few minutes. She can say anything now, with Ma Noni and our mama gone on.
“Otis Lee, I need to—”
“Why you ain’t tell me this stuff when I found you, Essie?” Otis Lee asked. “You coulda—”
“I wasn’t ready,” Essie replied quickly. It was as if she had prepared to answer that question before he asked. “You wouldn’t have believed me anyway.” She reminded Otis Lee of how ornery he had been with her when he showed up at her back door, pretending to be looking for work. She had thought he was there to blackmail her, she reminded him. So she had offered him a real job. “Even with you hating me, I wanted you around. You’re my blood, Otis Lee. Just like your son said—what’s his given name again?”
“Robert,” Otis Lee answered.
“After—”
“After my father,” Otis Lee affirmed.
“I see,” Essie said. And she slid to the edge of her chair. “There’s so much more I need to tell you. I need you to hear me out because—”
“I don’t need to hear no more,” he interrupted.
She ain’t got but one nephew, and she don’t know his name. She don’t know any of us. She ain’t wanted to. Otis Lee decided then and there that everything Essie had said was a lie. Ma Noni had not lied to him all those years. He was certain. She ain’t have no reason to! It don’t add up. She lyin’!
Otis Lee looked across the table at his sister, the kin he hadn’t seen in thirty-five years, the kin who hadn’t cared about their mother, who wasn’t there when their mother was sick and asking for her. He got to his feet and looked down at her.
“I want you to leave, Essie. Right now, please.”
“Otis Lee …”
He walked over to the door and opened it. Essie stood slowly, looking at him. She went in her pocketbook and pulled out an envelope.
“Here,” she said, holding it out to him. “Some things I wro—”
“Take whatever it is, and yo’self, and get on, Essie, or Ellen—whoever the hell you is.”
“Please take it.”
“Get out, goddamnit!” Otis Lee shouted. “Now!”
When Essie’s car was gone, Otis Lee sat and cried until his sides were sore. And once he’d wiped what he decided would be his last tear for his sister, he wanted to get out of the house.
“Where she go, Pop?” Breezy asked. He and Pep were walking into the yard.
Otis Lee hugged his wife and pulled his son’s head down so that he could kiss his forehead.
“Don’t worry ’bout Essie, son,” Otis Lee reassured him. “She all right. Always gon’ be all right. We will be, too.” He patted Breezy’s arm and said, “I’ll be back later on.”
“Where you off to?” Pep asked.
Without turning around, Otis Lee said, “Goin’ to Knot’s. Think I’ll have me a drink.”
THIRTEEN
The morning after Otis Lee’s real mother had visited him, Knot went to be sure he had survived the night of drinking, and to allow Pep to curse her out for letting him drink beyond his limits.
“You sat yo’ lil behind there and let him, Knot?” Pep scolded. “I had to clean him up twice last night.”
“Spit up that much?”
“Spit up, peed, and shit,” Pep said. “All at the same time.”
Knot turned her head so that Pep wouldn’t see her holding in the laugh.
“I see ya,” Pep told her. “And I don’t see nothin’ funny ’bout it. He just find out his grandmama coulda been lyin’ to him all them years ’bout Essie runnin’ off, and all you can think to do is hand him your jar?”
Pep went on for three or four minutes, and Knot didn’t stop her. She’ll run outta breath soon, I s’pose.
“You ain’t care, though. Did ya?” Pep asked. “Gave you a reason to drink.”
“See, now you gon’ piss me off, Pep,” Knot shot back. She stood up and walked to the door. “I don’t need nobody to give me a goddamn reason. When I get ready for a taste, I gets my taste.”
“Get on outta here,” Pep ordered. “I ain’t in the mood for it.”
“I ain’t, either,” Knot replied. “I come to check on him and you want to fuss.”
“Bye, Knot,” Pep said, and she nudged Knot out the door and closed it.
Knot was just about to tell Pep to kiss her ass and to go to hell, but it dawned on her that Valley had probably had a hand in all of it, since Essie had known exactly where to go.
Knot stood near the ditch in front of the Lovings’ house and waited for anyone who might be headed in Valley’s direction.
“Where you goin’, Knot?” Max asked, coming to a complete stop in front of her. He, his wife, Johnnie Mae, and their two grandsons—who were both staring at her from the back seat of the black Nova—were dressed in their Sunday best.
“Y’all drop me at Val’s right quick,” Knot said. “I’ll give you a quarter.”
“Ain’t got time to go that far,” Johnnie Mae protested. “We already ’bout late, and these boys gon’ usher today. They real excited ’bout it, and—”
“We coulda been halfway there by now, Johnnie. Shit,” Knot said.
“We got to go, Knot,” Max insisted.
“Johnnie Mae,” Knot said, “you learn how to make bread puddin’ yet? Or pecan pies?”
Johnnie Mae sighed and said, “Get on in here, girl.”
Knot climbed in back with Max and Johnnie Mae’s grandsons.
Dreading the prospect of having to clean red clay from her shoes, Knot went around to Valley’s back door. Two minutes after she had knocked, he showed up at the window.
“What is it?” he asked. Her knocks had forced him out of bed, which explained why he was only wearing underpants. They were so thin that when Knot glanced down, she was able to see the length and girth of his private parts. A goddamn waste.
“I’m surprised you was able to sleep at all,” Knot said. “You sneaky sumbitch.” She shoved him out of her way and went inside.
In the kitchen that once belonged to his adoptive mother, he asked Knot if she wanted a cup of tea.
“You had something to do with Essie comin’ to town?”
“Says who?” he asked. Coming from Valley, that was a yes.
“You shoulda let Otis Lee know she was comin’ to his house, Valor,” Knot scolded. “Shoulda let me know, too. Shit. He damn near drank all my liquor.” Before Otis Lee had told Knot anything about his talk with Essie, the two of them had knocked back a few shots. They knocked back a few more after he’d told her about Essie’s visit.
“I want coffee,” she said, pointing at Valley’s stove. “Black.”
“I got Earl Grey,” Valley replied. “No coffee.”
“Well, excuuuuuse me, Your Royal Highness,” she grumbled. “You need to stay outta folks’ business. Why won’t folk leave well enough alone? I just don’t under—”
“It was time, Knot.”
“
Why?” Knot said.
Knot was of the belief that some secrets, if not most, should remain as such. Sometimes the not knowing was a hell of a lot better, she told Valley. She wished Miss Noni were still alive to concur.
After Valley put the kettle on the stove, he rummaged through his cabinets.
“Looooong time ago,” he said, “somebody shoulda tol’ him who is mama is.”
Well, I’ll be damned, Knot thought to herself. Otis Lee ain’t said a thing ’bout findin’ out Essie’s his mama. Said lots ’bout Miss Noni, though. A whole lot.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Knot said to Valley, joining him in front of the stove.
“What’s wrong?” Valley asked.
Knot and Valley grew tired of repeating Well, I’ll be damned. So they each had a cup of Earl Grey—straight up, no chaser.
“She come all the way down here and ain’t tell him she’s his real mama?” Valley remarked. He lit a cigarette.
“Good,” Knot said, having thought about it. “It’s for the best. And I ain’t have enough for him to drink after gettin’ that kinda news anyhow.”
“Be serious, Knot.”
Learning that Miss Noni may have been gravely dishonest had hurt Otis Lee enough. Knot was confident that any more news—especially the news that Essie seemingly hadn’t delivered—would have shattered him. She explained all of that to Valley impatiently.
“I see yo’ point,” Valley said.
“I’m so glad you do,” Knot scoffed. Valley picked up on her sarcasm, and he rolled his eyes. Now it was time for her to ask a hard question. “You had a mind to blackmail Essie, didn’t ya?”
“Course not!”
“Tell the truth, Val.”
“I am!” he insisted. “You sharp-chinned heifer!”
He swore that he had not gone to Essie with blackmail. He said Essie’s police officer husband was dead and gone and that she didn’t care as much about people knowing she was colored.
“I asked her for some help!” Valley exclaimed.
“Help?”
“Just help,” he said. “With my gamblin’ tab. That was it! She said she’ll help me, long as I help her fix things up with Otis Lee—if you must know.”
In West Mills Page 12
