HENRY “I hear,” Henry said, but he didn’t feel like a new man. Not like he had at first, during those early days and weeks when the church seemed to lift him right off the ground, when a new and holy life had felt possible. Now the Bible verses were riddles. The prayers and the meetings felt like work, and he already had sixty hours of that a week. He didn’t want another prayer meeting or sermon; he wanted something to take the edge off of his hangover. He did his best to look like he was listening, but he was thinking about an iced-down beer.
Tom clapped Henry on the shoulder. “Flee temptation, brother,” he was saying now. “And drink some coffee.”
Henry nodded. “Thank you, Pastor Tom. I’m glad you’re here to holler me back.”
“Repent and seek sanctification. Pursue the path where you can make things right.” Pastor Tom thumped a hairy hand against his Bible. “Remember.”
As the pastor strode away, Henry slid down to the porch steps and rested his elbows on his knees. A tinge of pink and purple colored the sky above the woods, and he felt suddenly sobered by the cold. He could hear Naomi moving around in the kitchen, and he realized that he was afraid to go back into the house. What could he say? He longed to feel clean and strong and redeemed, like he had at first in the church. She could give him that, he knew, if she would just forgive him. Henry was hungry for the relief of it. He needed it now more than ever.
He held his hands open, then closed them into fists. Open, closed. There was a way to fix things. The solution came to him whole. When the time was right, he’d make Naomi see it, too.
NAOMI Naomi managed the day with no worse casualty than a few stern looks from her teachers when she stifled a yawn in class. After school, she left the twins helping Miss Bell and made a beeline for the tree. She curled up inside the blanket and slept until Wash kissed her awake.
But when she collected the twins and they went back to the house, Henry was there. The sight of him made something lurch in her. He left shortly after she arrived, mumbling something she didn’t hear.
It was like those first days in East Texas, only worse. Even when he was gone, everything seemed marked by his presence. The dishes in the sink. The chair where he’d sat, the napkin left crumpled on the table. When Naomi went to use the toilet, she could smell his aftershave and, worse, him. She backed out of the bathroom.
After she sent the twins to bed, she waited for Henry to arrive, trying to think of what she would do, what she would say. She gave up when he still hadn’t come home at midnight, but she lay awake listening for him. The sky had already shifted from pitch to a lightening gray when he finally came home. She stayed in bed this time, but she held the letter opener against her thigh. She watched the doorknob for any signs of turning. Sleep was an unreachable territory.
◊ ◊ ◊
“You look terrible,” Tommie told Naomi outside their homeroom the next morning.
Naomi shrugged. Her eyeballs were sticky with fatigue. Her head ached, and her hands trembled. The thought of the day ahead staggered and exhausted her. Before she’d left the house, Naomi had gulped down a bitter cupful of coffee. Now her stomach gurgled and clenched. She felt even worse than when she’d climbed stiff and aching out of bed.
She sleepwalked through the morning, unable to think of anything but closing her eyes. Mr. Pittluck, the math teacher, saw her head droop and called her to the front of the class. “Do what it takes to stay alert in my class,” he snarled.
She mumbled, “Yes, sir,” and made a move to sit back down, but he stuck out his ruler to stop her.
“You stand until the end of the hour. Here.” He made her face the chalkboard.
She could hear laughing. “God, but she’s stupid,” someone hissed between giggles. Miranda whispered loudly, “Nobody but a dummy would dare sleep on Pittluck’s watch.”
“I ain’t complaining,” Sam Jackson said. “I’d say the scenery just improved considerably.”
On any other occasion, Mr. Pittluck would have silenced these remarks, but he seemed to view them as part of her punishment.
Naomi’s face burned and her eyes itched. She looked up at the pressed tin on the ceiling to keep from crying. She slipped a hand into her pocket and traced the circle of birds on the ring from Wash until the hour was over.
“Sorry about Pittluck’s class,” Tommie said when they met outside for lunch. “Deanna told me what happened.”
Naomi let out a long breath. “I wanted to die. It’s over now, though.”
Tommie fingered the edge of her coat and gave Naomi a sympathetic look. “You’re tired. Lay your head in my lap and doze if you want.”
Naomi gave Tommie a grateful smile. “Here, finish my apple. I’m too tired to eat.”
“Wish I had that problem,” Tommie said a little glumly, before biting into it.
“No,” Naomi yawned. “Trust me, you don’t.” She was asleep the minute her head touched the thick wool of Tommie’s skirt.
◊ ◊ ◊
“It’s nothing,” Naomi insisted when Wash asked what was bothering her. She did not want to tell him, did not want to let Henry into their tree. And anyway, there was nothing he could do about it. She turned her face into the soft fabric of his shirt.
“What was your day like?” she asked, wanting to turn their talk elsewhere.
He shrugged. “School is school. But don’t change the subject. Something must have happened.” He rubbed her ears gently and then moved his fingers in slow circles against her scalp.
She sighed and closed her eyes. “I just haven’t slept well. That’s all.”
“All right. In that case, here’s what you do. This is a very old, very secret method, from my people.”
“Your people?”
Her skepticism didn’t make a dent. “This knowledge was passed down from distant ancestors, from their days as kings and queens and healers in the heart of Africa. So listen carefully and—shhh—don’t tell anyone.”
She smiled into the semi-darkness. “I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Start by putting a good sized lump of sugar on your tongue. Brown sugar’s best. Right on the center of your tongue.”
“They had brown sugar in the heart of Africa?”
Wash ignored her. “Then you say your lover’s name a hundred times.”
“Mmm-hm?”
“And then ... if you’re still awake after all that, you slip your hand under the covers ... you slide it back and forth, up your legs and down until...”
“Enough,” she said, swatting him lightly. “I get the idea.”
“What?” He laughed. “Until you fall asleep. That’s it. That’s the remedy. Give it a try.”
“We’ll see.” She curled her body closer to him. “Or I could just come here to sleep.”
“Why don’t you rest now,” he said. He slid back to give her room and stroked her hair. She let his gentleness and the quiet familiarity of the tree lull her to sleep.
◊ ◊ ◊
Naomi propped herself up on the sofa after dinner and watched Beto try to get Edgar to fetch a bit of pencil as they all listened to a soap opera. Henry was still making himself scarce. Maybe it had nothing to do with her. He was probably working to bring in a new well.
Naomi fiddled with the fabric in her lap. For the last little shirt she was making for Muff’s baby, she’d cut a bit of muslin out in the traditional Mexican style. In the end, it would have embroidery around the neck and a simple tie-close opening. But now, as she went over what she’d sewn since dinner, she saw that the stitches were wide and uneven. She tossed the shirt aside. It would all have to be redone.
Naomi rubbed her face. “We’re going to bed after this program,” she said.
“Come on, Omi, it’s not even nine o’clock,” Cari protested. “Will you at least tell us a story about Mami at bedtime? A new one?”
Beto frowned. “And what about Daddy’s supper?”
“Can it, you two!” Naomi snapped. “Daddy knows how to work the stove. As
for stories, I’m not a record player. Keep it up, and it’ll be straight to bed.”
◊ ◊ ◊
When the program ended, the twins brushed their teeth and tucked themselves in. Beto was extra helpful and affectionate, but Cari was withdrawn, still fuming over Naomi’s refusal to tell a story. Naomi thought she’d seen her eyeing the guitar case, but she wasn’t sure.
She knew she shouldn’t have pushed the request away; it wouldn’t be long before the twins would be too old to want her stories or songs. They were growing up, and it worried her. Once they no longer needed her, what reason would she have to stay in East Texas?
She stood in the bathroom and combed her hair, then she padded to the kitchen pantry and pulled out a dime-sized lump of brown sugar from the sack on the shelf. Wash’s remedy was charming nonsense, but she was willing to try anything.
She slid into bed alongside Cari and tried to remember what sleep felt like. Sleep belonged to the same category as swimming; both activities were necessary and dangerous in equal parts. She and the twins had only learned how to swim at Abuelito’s insistence, which had been prompted by her father’s drowning. Sleep was a more complex matter, but most of the time she skimmed along, face barely submerged, coming up for frequent breaths. That kept her safe from dreams. Dreams might take her anywhere. Down into pink-tiled bathrooms and among translucent, unformed babies with unseeing black spots for eyes, and dark braids that moved of their own accord, working their way along the sandy bottom of sleep like inchworms.
But as Naomi said Wash’s name over and over in the silence of her exhausted brain, her grip on the letter opener began to slip, and she descended into the blue depths of proper sleep. Naomi’s body took over, and she dreamed.
Naomi was her present self, but in the dream she was shrunken to the size of a young child. She watched from beneath Henry’s kitchen table as her mother and Wash sat drinking Ovaltine. As if it were normal for a dead Mexican woman and a black boy to sit laughing and talking in a white man’s kitchen. Her mother’s slender bare feet were within Naomi’s reach, and she longed to touch them, massage them as she had on the mornings after her mother had danced late into the night. A pulsing fear displaced that simple longing. Naomi could not see the window over the sink from her position, but by dream magic she knew that Henry was there, watching. She wanted to warn them, but she could not move from under the table. She searched her pockets but could not find Wash’s ring.
No disaster came in this dream, but it opened into another, and another. In whatever dream she faced, the fear of Henry was there and Wash’s ring was not.
◊ ◊ ◊
Cold water soaked Naomi’s chest. Her eyes flew open, and she jolted upright.
“Breakfast,” Henry said. He stalked out of the room, empty glass in hand.
Less than a minute later she was in the kitchen. She filled the percolator with water and coffee grounds, lit the oven with trembling fingers, and cut lard into flour for biscuits. The wet front of her nightgown clung to her under the robe Muff had given her, but she did not dare take the time to change. She glanced at the clock—6:02, half an hour late.
Ten minutes later, she placed a cup of coffee in front of Henry. When the biscuits were done, she slit two open and arranged them on a plate. She slathered them in peanut butter and drizzled dark Karo syrup on top. His favorite.
“Looks good,” he said when she put the plate on the table. She didn’t look at him, but there was a note of apology in his voice.
She turned back to the stove. “I’ve never overslept like that. It’s just that I couldn’t, I haven’t...” She trailed off. She couldn’t explain. And anyway, she didn’t owe him an apology.
Henry sat with his back to her. She could tell nothing from the movements of his fork. “Listen,” he mumbled through a mouthful of biscuit, “I shouldn’t have thrown water on you. Long shift last night. And also ... you know.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
She regretted her words instantly. Just like that, she’d forgiven more than she meant to. Far more.
She looked straight ahead when she hurried into the hall to call the twins to breakfast, but Henry caught her eye as she came back. He grinned at her like nothing had happened. No, not like nothing had happened, like something had happened. Something good. Something shared between them.
“The biscuits are great,” he said. He forked another bite into his mouth and glanced up at the clock. “Remember those first ones you made?”
“Like rocks,” she said.
“You’ve come a long way.”
Cari and Beto tumbled into the kitchen. She served them biscuits and milk and then licked the last of the peanut butter from the knife before washing it. She had never tasted peanut butter before coming here. She loved the thick creaminess of it and the salty shadow it left on her tongue. It was a food that beat hunger, and she thought again how she would take as many jars as she could whenever Henry allowed them to visit San Antonio.
Now, Henry headed to his room with a tired wave. “See y’all at suppertime.”
She surprised herself by telling him to sleep well. Part of her wanted to be angry, but the ease and gratitude that came with having slept were too great for her to hold on to any sourness.
And there was Wash.
No matter what happened here, no matter what happened at school, the afternoon would still come, and she would see him, and she would not allow even the shadow of a thought of Henry into their tree.
FEBRUARY 1937
HENRY Once Henry was sure Naomi and the twins were gone, he came out of his bedroom and locked himself into the bathroom. He braced himself against the sink and held Naomi’s slip up to his nostrils. He breathed in the smell of her and set to work on himself. It wouldn’t be like this for much longer, but he had to manage until everything fell into place.
Sometimes he began by thinking of Estella or the plump redhead he’d frequented out at the Chicken Ranch before he got saved. But it was the same as every time since Naomi had come to live in his house: he needed to imagine her to finish. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could pretend he hadn’t done it.
He closed his eyes, bunched the thin fabric in his hand, and pressed it back up to his nose.
After he washed his hands, he shoved the slip back into her drawer and closed himself into his room to sleep.
NAOMI Naomi let her English book fall into her lap. The sun made an orange screen of her closed eyelids. The day had started out as winter but had warmed to spring. She felt the warmth of the stone she was sitting on creep through the fabric of her dress.
Arms slid around her waist from behind. She whipped her head around, terrified of finding Henry.
“Hey! Easy! It’s me.” Wash held up his hands and took a step back.
Naomi jumped up onto the bank and rushed past him, throwing her words behind her. “Don’t surprise me like that. Ever.”
“Sure, but—”
“Just don’t.” She took a careful breath and worked at draining the distress from her face.
“Could you tell me—”
She shook her head. She could see he was hurt. His hands wandered, looking for something to do.
“All right, then.” He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You want to keep studying?”
She climbed back down to the river and sat on a log across from him. She nudged his foot with her shoe. “Sorry,” she said. “How about a Spanish lesson?”
He grinned. “That’d be good, seeing as how I keep telling the twins that you’re teaching me some.”
“What time is it anyway?” she asked.
Wash pulled out his watch. “Almost four.”
“Okay, fifteen minutes for Spanish, and then we’ll study in the tree.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Me gusta ésa idea.”
He repeated her words. “What did I say?”
“I like that idea.”
“¿Me gusta Naomi?” h
e said, testing it out.
She smiled. “That works. Now, I’m going to ask you how you are. ¿Cómo estás?”
“And I say...”
WASH Wash learned fast and liked it. He took that learning with them into the tree, where he put Me gusta besarte into action. Gentle but bold. He could tell Naomi was enjoying herself, but all of a sudden she pulled back, frowning.
“You’ve done this before.” It wasn’t a question, but he could tell she expected a response.
He hesitated a moment too long. “A few times.”
She was not pleased. “If I loved a liar, I’d hug you right now.”
“Okay, more than a few times,” he admitted. He tapped the wrinkle between her brows with his thumb. “But that was A.N. And I never liked it half as much as I like it with you.”
“A.N.?”
“Antes Naomi. Is that right?” he asked. “If I want to say ‘before Naomi’?”
“I’m not sure I’m talking to you right now.”
“Correct me at least.” He tried to play it off. Still, he could feel sweat pricking up on his forehead. She was beautiful when she was mad, but he didn’t want her mad at him.
“Antes DE Naomi,” she corrected.
“Gracias, señorita, mil gracias.” He lifted her hand to his lips. Even in the dim light he could see that her frown was gone.
“You could charm the skin off a snake, you scoundrel,” she growled. She was smiling.
He pulled her close and kissed her. “You’ve ruined other girls for me, you know that?”
“Así debe ser,” she said softly. “That’s how it should be.”
NAOMI Naomi and Tommie sat at the kitchen table in Henry’s house, studying their empty glasses of milk as if the answers to the problem of Tommie’s project might be there. Tommie’s first attempt at a dress for home economics lay before them on the table, a malformed monstrosity.
Out of Darkness Page 18
