“All right, all right,” Knot said.
If Valley were lying, he’d be scratching his chin. He was, however, scratching his head quite a bit. He had recently put a relaxer in his hair, and he’d left it in too long.
“You gon’ tell him Essie’s his mama?” Knot asked.
“Naw,” Valley said. He took a pull from his cigarette, blew out the smoke, and slurped his tea. “Hell, I did my part. Through wit’ it now.” Another pull and slurp. “You ain’t gon’ tell him, are ya?”
“Nope,” Knot reassured him.
Otis Lee’s done a whole lot for me. I won’t see him hurtin’ no more’n he need to hurt. Guess I owe him that much. Knot took a sip of the bitter tea while Valley smoked and scratched his head.
“I know one damn thing, though,” Knot said. She held up one finger. “You try some blackmail shit with me, I’ll—”
“I just tol’ you I did not go to that woman with blackmail, Knot,” Valley broke in. “And to tell ya the truth, you kinda hurtin’ my feelings, thinkin’ I’d do somethin’ like that. I done a lot of shit in my day, but not blackmail.” Slurp and scratch.
“If you say so, Val.”
“I do say so. And ain’t nobody studdin’ you and them ol’ secrets you got,” he said. “Them babies is grown women mindin’ they own business.”
He was right. After Eunice moved north, Fran and Breezy went steady. Everyone was happy. And later that year, Fran had a baby girl. Pep and Otis Lee were so happy to have a grandchild, Knot hardly heard the two of them talk about anything else. She saw them going back and forth from their house to the Waterses’ house, grinning from temple to temple.
Otis Lee had tried to get Knot to join them.
“I’ll get ’round to it sooner or later,” Knot told him.
One day, about two weeks after Fran’s baby had been born, Knot was passing by their house. She was heading up-bridge. Knot saw Lady and Phillip in their garden pulling up collards she assumed would be on their Christmas dinner buffet. They both waved at her and smiled.
“Knot!” Fran yelled from the upstairs window. “You ain’t been over here to see my baby! And I don’t quite like it!”
“Otis Lee tell me you give him a pretty grandgirl,” Knot said. “I’ll come see her later on. Get yo’ rest.”
“We ain’t been doing nothing but resting,” Fran told her. “Come see her while she got her eyes open. I just got through feedin’ her. She’ll be sleep in a few minutes.”
Shit! Fuck! Damn! Fuck! Shit!
Unable to come up with a quick excuse to not go and see the newborn, Knot decided it was time to get the visit over with. She would go in, see Fran’s baby, and everything would fine. Nothing to it.
When Knot was inside—it was her first time in their home in many years—she felt the way she had when she was a young girl, being led into Lilly’s Millpond to be baptized by her pastor. She had been so afraid. Knot remembered him telling her to have no fear. He had said, “These here waters may be cold, but when you come up outta here, you sure to feel the fire of the Lord shut up in your bones!”
Knot saw the staircase to her right and followed it to the upstairs hallway. She heard the baby make one of those sounds—the sounds they make in preparation for wailing. After turning the corner and seeing Fran in a chair with the little person resting on her chest—the little head was bobbing this way and that—Knot froze where she was.
“Well,” Fran said, “come close enough so you can see if she look more like me or like Breezy.”
Knot took a couple of steps closer—only a couple. Her heart was already trying to beat her and leave her for dead.
“I don’t know,” Knot said. While she looked back and forth between Fran’s face and the baby’s, the sunlight showed a hint of copper-red in Fran’s hair. It was the first time she had seen that. And then, somehow, she had an answer to Fran’s question. “Like you. She look like you, I think. And she’s a big ol’ healthy baby, too.” Fran smiled and kissed the top of her baby’s hairy head. “What’s her name again?”
“Cedar,” Fran said. “Cedar Marie Loving.” Then she told Knot that she and Breezy were going to be married. “We ain’t in a big rush, though. We’ll do it sometime next year.”
There were a few things Knot knew when she left the Waters house. The first being that she would not be able to get the sight of that beautiful baby out her mind for at least a month. Second, Knot needed a drink. Cedar Marie. Third, she was confused to hear that Breezy and Fran were planning to marry, because a few months back, the North had chewed Eunice up and spit her all the way back to West Mills. Knot had gone to Otis Lee and said, “What in the hell is she doin’ back so soon? Ain’t nobody that damn homesick.”
“She ain’t visitin’ this time,” Otis Lee had said. “Breezy tol’ me she came back to stay.”
“How he know?” Knot had asked. Otis Lee had stood there looking at her, shaking his head.
Not long before Fran’s little girl took her first steps, Eunice was up-bridge on Busy Street rocking a colicky baby of her own. A boy. Except for the middle name, Eunice had named the child after Breezy. Robert La’Roy Loving.
Knot had been expecting to hear about wedding plans between Fran and Breezy. Instead it was Breezy and Eunice who got married, and they moved into the apartment over Manning’s General Store—the same one in which Valley had lived before he inherited and moved into Gertrude’s house.
The part that baffled Knot most—it kept her awake for more than one night—was that Fran didn’t seem to care about Breezy and Eunice’s union. I can’t make head or tails of it to save my life.
One day, girls, Knot’s pa once said to her and her sisters, y’all gon’ find yourselves walkin’ behind me slowly. Everything I ever tried to tell you three, you’ll remember it. Every last word. Y’all’ll be walkin’, but I’ll be layin’ down. Just live long enough. You’ll see.
On the Friday before Christmas of 1964, Knot was sweeping balconies at the Penningtons’. Lady Waters was there, too. She was inside polishing silverware and ironing tablecloths. She had told Knot she wanted to make some extra money to travel north for New Year’s Eve to visit people she’d kept up with in letters but hadn’t seen in decades.
“If you don’t get somewhere and rest that cold off, you ain’t gon’ be well enough to go nowhere when the new year gets here,” Knot had said earlier that week. Lady had been coughing a lot, and she got tired just from walking from the dining room to the kitchen.
Having left her sweater inside, Knot planned to give the second-floor balcony a quick hit, as she called it. Once the cool wind hit her harder than she’d expected, her plan changed. Half a quick hit.
Just as Knot was about to go back into the house, she saw an unfamiliar green Buick drive up. Curiosity won the battle against the December chill. So Knot stayed on the balcony and swept until the Buick got closer.
The passenger side door opened and Otis Lee got out.
Otis Lee?
“Well, I’ll be damned! Otis Lee Loving! What you doin’ ridin’ up in that shiny string bean?”
Mary, Knot’s older sister, and Mary’s oldest son, Onslow, got out of the car. The way they got out of the Buick so slowly, both dressed in black, made Knot think of oil. She went downstairs, but not hurriedly. No sense in runnin’. Not with all that black they got on.
“We weren’t able to wait, Knot,” Mary explained. Her breath smelled of Premium Soda Crackers, coffee, and lies. “Pa had to be buried as quick as we could manage.”
Mary said that Ahoskie’s only colored undertaker—who was also a Centre, though he was of no traceable relation to them—had sold all his supplies to the white undertaker for cents on the dollar and had skipped town. No one knew why, Mary said. The white undertaker had quoted them an unfathomable price to embalm their pa’s body.
“Everyone thinks Pa was a rich man,” Mary said. “He gave most of it to that no-count church.” She said the majority of what was left had been used t
o send Onslow to Shaw University. Thank God there were no liens against their parents’ property, Mary said.
Knot did not speak. She only listened, deciding which parts to believe and which parts she’d hurl back at her sister.
“We just didn’t have a choice, Aunt Knot,” Onslow said. “We just didn’t.”
Mary once again opened her arms and tried to hug Knot. The first time Knot had taken a couple of steps backward. But this time she held her hand up. Stop.
Knot didn’t doubt her sister’s remorse. Mary’s tears had already done the vetting. It was the fact that she and Mary had exchanged two letters in the past five months, neither of which had noted that their pa’s health and finances had been failing for well over a year. It was that fact that caused Knot to wonder what it would feel like to knock Mary’s and Onslow’s heads off their shoulders.
But it would hurt him some kind of bad to see that.
Hurt who, Knot? Yo’ pa’s dead.
I know. But Otis Lee’s standin’ right here with his arm ’round my shoulders. It’ll hurt him to see me fight my sister.
“I’m so sorry, Knot,” Mary said, tilting her head to one side in a way Knot recognized. And it all became clear to her—as clear as the jar she now longed for.
“Dinah Bright,” Knot realized.
She could almost see the weight rise, like steam, from Mary’s slumping shoulders. Knot said the name again, and she took both of Mary’s hands into hers. Knot had to hold them firmly, because that was the only way Mary would understand that all was well.
Mary shook her head no. Her tears took up the same speed. When she rested her damp cheek on Knot’s shoulder—like a small child who had been fighting against an oncoming nap—Knot heard her sister whisper, “Dinah Bright.”
Onslow joined their embrace and said, “We’re real sorry, Aunt Knot. Sorry things happened the way they did.”
Knot had heard about people going into shock. But she had never been able to imagine how it might feel.
This must be it, she thought to herself. When you know you hurtin’, but there ain’t no pain. When you know you sad but you don’t feel like you gon’ cry. I want to say a whole lot of stuff, but I don’t want to talk. This must be it. Got to be what shock feels like.
Mary and Onslow offered to drive Knot and Otis Lee back to Antioch Lane. Knot declined and walked back toward the Penningtons’ wraparound porch, where pumpkins lined the right side of the steps, and where Lady Waters stood in the doorway. Once Knot was almost to the porch, she heard Otis Lee say, “She’ll be all right. A good walk is what she need for now. My mama used to always go for long walks when she got hol’ o’ some bad news. They helps things, ya know?”
“Yes, sir,” Onslow said.
“I’ll walk wit’ her,” Otis Lee reassured them. “Y’all best get back on the road. Be dark ’fore ya know it.”
“Mother,” Onslow said to Mary, “we’d better get going.”
The last thing Knot heard before going back inside was her sister’s voice.
“Thank you, Mr. Loving,” Mary said. “I’m glad she has you here.”
Me, too, Knot thought.
Two weeks later, soon after Christmas, pneumonia had worn out its welcome with Lady Waters. Finally it decided to leave, and it took Lady along with it. That afternoon Fran came over to Knot’s house to tell her. Knot was still in bed when she heard the knock on the door.
“Anything you want me to do?” Knot asked. Fran sat down at the table and put her face in her hands.
“I just had to get outta there for a few minutes, Knot,” Fran explained. She had taken Cedar to the Lovings. “Daddy over there givin’ them people a hard time. Won’t let them take mama out o’ the room.”
“Jesus,” Knot said, hard-pressed to imagine what that scene must have looked like. Knot couldn’t understand exactly, but she had some idea of what Phillip was feeling. She knew what it felt like when somebody walked out the door with something—or someone—that she had gotten used to having with her every day. Even when she hadn’t wanted the something or someone with her every day, she had still gotten used to it.
Why Fran had come to her, Knot didn’t know. But the truth was, she kind of liked that Fran had. It made Knot feel like a person—a regular person. More and more, Knot had found herself wondering what the ladies on the lane did together when they piled into cars and drove off on Saturday mornings; what they talked about when they walked while pulling their grandchildren in red wagons. Is it too much to ask for me to live my life the way I want and have folk treat me regular? How often was it that anyone came to Knot during hard times? Almost never. Yes, sometimes Valley came to talk about his lover in D.C., and the new lover in Chesapeake. One man wanted Valley all the time, and the other man didn’t seem to want Valley enough.
Yes, Otis Lee had sought Knot out when Essie had visited and turned half of his world upside down. I’m glad Essie left the other half of his world alone. Shit.
Having Fran come to her, especially at a time like this, meant something. Knot wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but she thought she might be able to get used to it.
With her face still buried in her hands, Fran sat quietly, just as Knot had done when Mary and Onslow came to West Mills with the news about her pa’s passing. Knot thought about that sad look her pa had when she spoke to him in his office the day he told her to make peace with the loss of her child—the child who was sitting with her right now.
The people of West Mills New Nazareth Missionary Baptist Church knew how to send someone home. That was how the pastor had put it several times that week at the Waters house.
At Lady’s service, during the viewing, voices sang, hands clapped, and tambourines were beaten against hips and palms. Some members alternated the tambourines between hip and palm. All of this Knot saw from the tenth pew, where she sat with the Lovings on her right, Valley and the Mannings on her left.
Knot was in the center.
Ayra Manning wailed as though Lady were her sister or a best friend. The two of them had never been close.
Why folk act so crazy when they go to funerals?
Eunice directed the choir. She looked regal, professional, and content while doing so. Her thin arms moved in ways Knot thought were peculiar, but the choir members seemed to know what every strange, quick movement meant.
On one of the front pews with Phillip’s sisters and his one brother, Fran rocked from side to side, backward and forward. She had gone and bought a wig. It had a part in the middle, and the hair fell past Fran’s shoulders.
“I ain’t feelin’ like sittin’ in Anna-Faye’s shop this week,” Fran had said the night before.
The matching dresses that Fran had bought for Cedar and herself were lovely. They were black with sailor collars. Phillip had wanted them all to wear something new and pretty to Lady’s funeral. He believed a funeral was just as important as a wedding or an Easter Sunday service.
From where she sat, Knot could see Fran’s shoulders bouncing. A controlled bounce, and her cry was a quiet one, fighting to get out. Knot had become so distracted watching Fran, she hadn’t felt Otis Lee reach over and take her hand. And when had Valley put his arm around her shoulders?
Knot kept her eyes on Fran, the woman who had, on a hot day in ’42, become her new favorite person. Keeping her eyes on Fran, Knot figured, was probably the best she could do for her, because the sympathetic tears that Valley had just blotted from her face would not be enough.
Phillip Waters sat on the same pew as Fran. He had held her and rocked with her for a while before succumbing, briefly, to his own grief. That was before his nieces had gone and sat on both sides of Fran, fanning her and rubbing her back. Then he sat as still as a statue. Knot didn’t see him move again until the undertaker escorted him to Lady’s casket for a final good-bye.
But when Phillip turned to walk back to the pew, he dropped to the floor. Every usher—and the two deaconesses who were still young enough to move with haste—ra
n to him with their fans. It looked as though a swarm of paper butterflies had run to his rescue.
Three days later, there was a small graveside service for Phillip Waters next to Lady’s fresh grave. And while the pastor gave the last prayer, Knot looked out into the distance. She could have sworn she saw two butterflies chasing each other playfully.
At the repast, Knot saw Fran struggling to hold her sleeping child and eat at the same time. Many of the women at the table—women from Antioch Lane—offered to hold Cedar.
“I’m fine,” Fran said. “But I thank you.” The same had been said to Pep and Otis Lee. Breezy had gone home.
Knot saw one of Phillip’s sisters leave her chair, which was next to Fran’s. So she went and sat in it. Without any planning, Knot held out her arms. It was as if something had taken control of her body and her mind. And if that wasn’t enough for Knot to wonder about, Fran placing Cedar in the bend of Knot’s arms was. Eunice was the last small child Knot had held.
Fran didn’t say a word. Instead, she laid Cedar in Knot’s arms, turned back toward the table, and ate.
That evening at the house that now belonged to Fran, Knot sipped the hurriedly made corn liquor she had bought when the news of Lady’s death gripped her heart the same way Dinah Bright had once gripped her sore breast. After everyone had left the house, Knot and Fran wrapped the many cakes, pies, rolls, chicken legs, and hams that neighbors had brought. Knot had made four pecan pies and two large pans of bread pudding. The puddings hadn’t lasted very long. Plenty of pecan pie remained.
The Lovings had taken Cedar home with them for the night, since they would also have La’Roy. They urged Fran to try to get some sleep.
“Won’t you sit and rest a minute?” Knot asked. “And take a swalla of this here. Take two, three swallas.” Even bad moonshine had been hard to come by. So Knot was surprised by her own offer to share.
Fran drank from Knot’s glass, coughed, and set it on the table.
“I don’t see how y’all drink that shit,” Fran said. She made a funny face.
In West Mills Page 13
