A Long Time Comin'

by Robin W. Pearson

  And so Little Ed had used those dexterous hands of his to jiggle the lock to Mr. Fulton’s store and snatch Suzy—not the Suzy who sat gazing out the window, but one of the many boxed up in the back. He had presented her to Elisabeth with a flourish one afternoon while their mama was shopping and their daddy gone who knows where and after the other children had escaped into the woods. “Here you go,” he’d announced. “Don’t forget to pay me.”

  Elisabeth had secretly finger-combed Suzy’s buoyant curls and smoothed Suzy’s black-and-white pin-striped dress with its wide white collar. But she never used her to wipe away her snot and tears after a whupping, never tucked her into the waistband of her skirts, never took her out to work with her . . . because nobody was supposed to know Suzy even existed. Suzy had a pretty comfortable life. Unlike Hattie Mae and Elisabeth.

  And Beatrice. One day some fingers gripped Elisabeth’s shoulder as she crouched over Suzy on the back stoop, counting the stripes on the doll’s skirt. She knew there were thirty-two, but this was about all Suzy was good for. Elisabeth recognized the feel of her mama’s knuckles before she ever turned around, her eyes wide and her breath escaping with a “Wha—!”

  “I wonder if Jesus walked in here in a leisure suit, would I have much use for Him.” Beatrice scoffed. “Or Him for me? I figure He wouldn’t get down in this dirt with me or help me clean up one of y’all’s messy behinds. Let alone touch the drunks and streetwalkers down on Temple Avenue. Whatchyou thank, ’Lis’beth?”

  Elisabeth tucked Suzy under the tent her bent knees created. “Well, I—”

  “No, suh, that love you got to hide, that’s too good to touch you? It ain’t real. It do more harm than good. Give me somebody who can hold me and who I can hold anytime I get good and ready. Look at Thomas.” She pointed to the toddler trying to pinch a beetle burrowing into a crack on the bottom step. “He one of the fussiest babies I ever seen. Always cryin’ over somethin’. Hangin’ on me. But when he see I’m upset, he always reachin’ for my face, kissin’ my tears.

  “Now, Little Ed? He such a pretty child, always grinnin’ ’bout somethin’ rollin’ round in his head. But the only time you gon’ find him is when you trip over him in the dark. Ain’t much help to you or me, but plenty of trouble.” Beatrice slapped at Thomas’s hand as it made its way to his mouth, the bug trapped between his thumb and index fingers. Immediately he screwed up his face and worked up a wail.

  “You tell me. You wont those roses bloomin cross the street that hide all them thorns or the sour weeds y’all love so much? Jesus wearin’ a suit or dusty robes?” She swatted Thomas’s backside and ordered, “Hush up now” before nudging him into the yard toward the clothesline. Beatrice and Elisabeth watched him pluck a long green weed and suck on it for a few minutes before she went back inside, leaving her daughter alone with Thomas. And Suzy.

  So one day Elisabeth dug a hole for the doll and tossed her in it. Little Ed never asked her what happened. He just spent her twenty-two cents and ate her bologna sandwiches, smiling and winking as he did so.

  As far as Elisabeth was concerned, no one else ever knew about Suzy. That was, until her daddy caught up with her, some fifty-odd years later.

  Dear Lisbeth, his letter began:

  It been a long time. You probly thought youd never hear from me or see me agin. Maybe you never wanted to, seein as how I lef and all. But I hope you care won way or nuther if Im dead or livin and that Im in Jasper. I dint want nobody to find me, but I dint have no money to go but so far. Twinny miles bout as far as I got. Corse B found out, but I trust she dint never tell nobody.

  You mite not want to hear it but I ben missin all yall runnin round, playin and yellin, tearin up the devil. I even miss B. It been a long year babe girl. Rutheena and them yungern you but you always ben my babe. Sarah dint care nuthin bout me she was so yung wen I lef. But you new me. And I new you. You go for wat you want, jus like you did wit that wite babe doll you had. I usta see you take her out from hind that washbord and you jus sit and hold her. You took better care of her than I did of yall. But you wanted that doll and somhow you got her. Well I say somhow but that mean Edmond. That boy wuld do anythang for you. Rong or rite. He try to hide it tho.

  I gess I up and lef outta noware like that doll. But ther wont much els I culd do. Jus like Edmond my rong was rite in my hart. B ask me wat good was I doin you by stayin. I wasnt no daddy to yall and never no husband to B. I hope yo mama tell you all bout it won day but nowin B she go to the grave wit it on her lips. Trust I luv you even tho I aint never told you to yo face. I jus dint feel it was my place. I hope you hav som real babes to take care of. Mabe then you see wat it like to luv somthin so much you got to leave it.

  ——————

  “Sometimes we just wished she would die. Then we could drink as much as we wanted, play as long as we wanted. We thought we wouldn’t have to pick vegetables or sweep the yard or clean another thing if she would just go away or at least just leave us alone for a few days.” Lis spoke very softly, yet very deliberately. “Thanks to this leukemia, Mama is finally cooperating, but now I’m hoping she’ll stick around a little bit longer. Long enough to fuss at me, ignore me, yell at me, or kick me out of the house. My heart quakes at the thought of her dying and leaving me. Can you make sense out of it, Evelyn?”

  Lis registered Evelyn’s startled reflection in the windowpane. “I told you when you were little I had eyes in the back of my head.”

  “Oh, you saw me in the window. Why are you eating chocolate this time of night?” She took her mother’s candy bar and closed the foil wrapper. She set it down on a notepad on her father’s desk.

  It was well past midnight, and until Evelyn appeared, Lis had been standing alone in Graham’s den, her nose against the cool glass. Her eyes looked past the clouds scudding across the moon in the inky sky to images indelibly imprinted in her memory.

  In her mind, her brothers and sisters ran back and forth on the hard North Carolina clay of Mama’s yard. She inhaled the dust their hot, cracked feet kicked up as they skirted between the house and the sidewalk, around the house, and back to the front door. She listened to them argue over whose turn it was to ask Mama for permission to come in for water and held her breath as they held theirs.

  They could never tell what Mama’s mood was. It changed from day to day, from moment to moment, from bad to worse. Maybe they would get a drink of water and more time to catch june bugs with string. Maybe they’d have to pull weeds. She could still hear Mama say, “Y’all done had ’nough fool time. Get in here and get yo’ be-hinds in bed.”

  Lis reached past Evelyn and retrieved her sweet. She took a large bite. “Why am I eating chocolate? Well, my mama is dyin’ and I didn’t have any kind of relationship with my daddy. Soon I won’t have anybody. No daddy, no mama. Nothing.”

  She chewed the last of the candy and dropped the crumpled wrapper into the bin beside the desk. “You know, Graham could sit for hours if you let him, just poring over one subject or another. I never could stand to sit down more than five minutes with a book. I don’t know how I managed to get through all those hours to get my license to open Headquarters.” Lis hoped the change of subject indicated that the previous one was closed.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Lis didn’t feel like diving into that particular pool of emotion. Any unshed tears from earlier in the day bubbled just below the surface, waiting to spring forth and overcome her. Not even the deep tissue massage had helped. She left work with a great hollow in her middle. Talking about her feelings wouldn’t fill it. Missing Graham wouldn’t do it. Thinking about her daddy wouldn’t do it. And watching her mama die surely wouldn’t do it.

  “Girl, I don’t want to talk about how I’m feelin’,” Lis finally answered in a tremulous voice, her back still to Evelyn. Tired as she was, her Southern accent weighed down her words rather than dancing lightly through them as it usually did. “Ask me in a few months’ time when I’m an orphan—a middle-aged widow
ed orphan at that. Maybe by then I’ll know just how I’m feelin’. And by then I’ll be feelin’ plenty.”

  “But—”

  “But what about you? You’ve had a big day, what with tellin’ us all about this baby. How did Kevin react to your big news?” Lis composed herself enough to turn away from Graham’s bookshelf to face the five-foot-three giant in the room. She watched her younger daughter fiddle with the ties of her robe.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re fine. If you say that one more time . . . ! That’s all you been sayin’ since you got here, and we all know it’s a lie.” Lis shook her head. “So we know that you’re fine, but what about the rest of us? Your sister is feeling some kind of way since she had to hear it from me, and I know I’m put out. But I’m just your mama. Kevin’s your husband. He must be angry.”

  Lis tried to figure out just where she’d gone wrong, to determine when she had been relegated to the role of second-class citizen. So she finally came clean, she stewed. She’s been walking around here for weeks, telling me everything is fine, fine. “No, Mama, nothing’s going on,” and here she is pregnant. And thinking she can hide it from me! Internally, she shook her head in disbelief. This girl! I’m her mama, and she can’t tell me she’s pregnant. “So?”

  “So . . . what? Isn’t a baby good news?” Now Evelyn took a turn at the window. By this time, a steady breeze had pushed away most of the clouds to reveal a half-moon and a few glistening stars.

  “It should be. But I got the impression he didn’t know. He rarely called, and you’d think he would have checked on you two after the accident . . . if he’d known.” Lis weighed her next words, a rare move for her when it came to Evelyn because they both stayed armed and ready, shooting from the hip and aiming for the heart. “You know I already suspected.”

  Evelyn whirled around. “What! How did you . . . ? Did Granny B—?”

  “No, chile,” Lis said, sounding like Beatrice. “I’m a mama too. I picked up on the changes in your body. I tried to give you plenty of opportunities to tell me—making mention of your eating, your weight, asking about your health. . . . Why do you think I insisted you stay with Mama so she could babysit you after the accident? It wasn’t just for her sake, though that’s what you thought. It hurt that you didn’t tell me yourself. I can imagine how Kevin must feel.”

  Evelyn returned to stargazing. “He doesn’t know yet.”

  “What? So why did you decide to finally tell me?”

  Evelyn shrugged and rubbed her hands down her nape. She stretched her neck as if she’d just returned from a long run.

  Lis ticked off nearly a minute on Graham’s desk clock as she trained her eyes on Evelyn’s back.

  Evelyn stopped squirming. “Well, you would’ve found out eventually. Which you did.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question, Evelyn. You’re what, ten weeks—?”

  “Fifteen . . . and a half.”

  “Almost sixteen weeks pregnant. Sixteen weeks. Your second trimester! And you’ve been staying here all this time, and you didn’t see fit to tell your own mother that you’re carrying her grandchild!” Lis shook her head in wonder. “I just don’t understand it, Evelyn. What purpose does it serve to hide this from me, your brothers, your sister, and your husband? At least you told Mama.”

  “I didn’t tell Granny B anything. She told me. But why would I confide in you? My pregnancy would just give you one more thing to worry about, one more thing to worry me about. You’ve been walking around since I got here, talking about, ‘Can you afford this? Should you be doing that? What about your job? Did Kevin really go to Europe for work, or did he just up and leave you?’ Now you can’t honestly say you didn’t think that last bit even if you didn’t say it out loud. At least to me.”

  The truth slapped Lis in the face, and it stung. But she retreated to familiar territory and wriggled her toes around in it. “Regardless, girl, I’m your mama. I’m supposed to say stuff like that. If I didn’t love you, you think I’d care enough to ask you what you’re doing? What am I supposed to think? You come down here without your husband. You don’t have a job—”

  “I quit my job—”

  “—and you act like you don’t have to get back for anybody or anything. The only person you can spare a word for is your Granny B—”

  “But isn’t that what you wanted? The only thing you could talk about when I got down here was how I’d ignored Granny B all this time, how much she needed me, how I could help her get treatment—”

  “But you haven’t been too successful with that, now, have you? You’ve been doing quite a bit of talking for the past few weeks, but Mama hasn’t thought about going to see a doctor. And from what she says in this letter of hers, she won’t be either. A lot of good you’ve done.”

  Lis knew she shouldn’t have said it, but she knew she didn’t want to take it back either. Stubbornly, she took in Evelyn’s look of disbelief. As her daughter hugged herself around her middle, it was painfully obvious what she’d worked to conceal all these weeks. Seeing the shape of her grandbaby and grasping that Evelyn seemed more hurt than angry by her comment, Lis finally relented. “Look, I know you did the best you could. It’s just that she’s my mama and—”

  “And I’m your daughter. Does that mean anything to you? I’m not dying, but shouldn’t that mother-and-child thing count at least a little bit?” Evelyn turned away, her voice quaking.

  Lis couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her baby girl cry. She took one halting step and then another until she reached her. Awkwardly, she patted her on the back, half-expecting Evelyn to brush her away and leave the room. When Evelyn remained, when she seemed to actually lean into Lis, she repositioned her hand first to her daughter’s shoulder before stroking Evelyn’s short, spiky do. At a loss for what to say next, she asked the only thing that came to mind. “Why did you cut your hair so short?”

  Evelyn withdrew from her mother’s touch and the room.

  Lis let her go. What should she have said? It’s normal for a happily married woman not to tell her husband she’s pregnant. He’ll find out eventually. It’s okay that you don’t think enough of your own mother to tell her you’re pregnant. Don’t worry about the fact that your grandmother is dying—and that you apparently have done nothing to stop it. Dear, dear, don’t cry.

  Lis retreated to her own bedroom, gathering her pink chenille robe closer to her, trying to find a source of warmth. The item in her pocket stopped her short. She pulled out the first letter that had fallen from the long envelope she had opened earlier that afternoon. It was her mama’s words, but it most definitely was not her nearly illegible writing. Lis closed her door and collapsed on the chaise. Slowly she flattened the three-page death threat against her lap.

  Elisabeth,

  You know, you’re my firstborn. There I was, fifteen years old, and you come out all naked and wet, fully expecting me to feed you and clothe you and care for you like I knew what I was doing. I used to look at you and think, “You are a darn fool child, trusting me.” But I did it. The good Lord and I . . . well, we raised you. Sometimes I felt I was all by my lonesome, but I know He was there. But you did some raising yourself. You raised me first—and then you took on the raising of all the rest when . . . well.

  You been walking around here, wringing your hands, trying to tend to this problem like you tended to your brothers and sisters. Well, you can’t. There just ain’t nothing you can do. I know I never been one to offer much in the way of comfort, but let me say this: Rest easy, child. This is my job. This is something I have to do.

  That’s really all I got to say. This child here keeps saying I need to soften up, but I’m the one who’s traveling on this particular road God done laid out for me. And you know I don’t care what none of y’all got to say, or I’d have been dead a long time ago. I’ve got lots more letters to write, so I can’t be handing out tissues or holding hands, though I can’t really think of one of you who’d shed many tears to s
ee me go. Maybe you’ll be crying cause you need company since your children can’t seem to stand living too close to you—like my own. I’m telling this child here to hush up because this is my letter.

  You know, all my life I had to do something for somebody else—my mam, my husband, my children. Well, this is it. I’m drawing the line. This is what I’m doing for me. If I got all that fancy treatment you wanted, that would be for you and this girl writing this here letter. Writing this ain’t really for me, but I figure I could do this and no more.

  I think Evelyn has accepted it, and now it’s time for you and the rest of them to accept it, too. Really, it don’t matter if you do because I’m going to die either way. But you can make this hard or you can make it . . . well, it’s not going to be easy, but at least you can make it better. This girl says, “easier.” I guess that fits, too. Anyway. I’d appreciate your cooperation, even if you can’t help me much.

  So what do I have in mind? The doctors say I don’t have long, so the time I do have has become precious to me. More precious than I would have thought, and more than I really want to admit to anybody. It’s too precious for me to waste time being pumped full of useless medicine that makes me feel worse than I do already. I plan to spend the rest of my time doing what I always do. Maybe you don’t see the value in cooking and cleaning and all, but this house and taking care of it are part of me. It’s really all I’ve ever had.

  I know you think that’s my fault, don’t you? If you’ve read Henton’s letter, I’m sure you do. Yes, I made him leave. That’s right and true. He says he didn’t want to and that he even wanted to come back. But you can best believe I couldn’t have kept him from his house if that was all there was to it. You probably want to know why. Well, that’s not what this letter is for. What I’m writing about is about me, and I guess a little bit about you.

  Elisabeth, this part is hard for me, harder than the dying really. I know there are things you’ve never heard from me, things you felt you needed to hear while you were growing up. These old newspeople and talk show people call those years the “tender years.” They’d have you think children only need to get pats on the back and what they call “understanding.”