A Long Time Comin'

by Robin W. Pearson

  “Granny B—”

  “How you been?”

  “What?”

  Beatrice watched Evelyn squirm in the corner she’d tried to back her grandmother into. “I said, how you been? I see you roundin’ out plenty. I guess you ain’t got to hide nuthin’ now.”

  “I-I wasn’t trying to hide anything. And this isn’t about me. Why—?”

  “Well then, get back to sweepin’. You can use the exercise . . . and I sho’ coulda used just a peek at yo’ auntie’s face when Edmond said he was like the ’postle Paul.” Beatrice stepped into the house, still chuckling to herself. The screen door bounced against the frame before coming to rest.

  ——————

  Evelyn quietly plucked a cerulean pencil and lightly tinted the sky behind Dominick. She tried to keep the paper from crinkling so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself.

  “It’s not right, Lis,” Aunt Mary complained over her cup of Russian tea. “I came all the way across the country—”

  “But she told you not to come, Mary. Evelyn, did you want some tea?” Lis blew over her cup and sank into the sofa cushion. She peered at her daughter through tendrils of steam.

  Mary’s narrowed eyes met her niece’s before she focused again on her sister. “But I didn’t think she wouldn’t see me once I came all this way. And she saw Little Ed!”

  Lis raised an eyebrow. “Well, when you come back home after being in prison over a decade . . . Besides, you know how Mama feels about Edmond.”

  Mary’s cup clinked into the saucer. “But I spent more than five hundred dollars on a ticket to see that woman!”

  “But, but, but. You’ll have to settle for seeing me, okay? And what’s five hundred dollars to you? A pair of shoes?” Lis handed Mary a slice of Ruby Tagle’s carrot cake.

  Evelyn hid a smile and raised her hand. “I’ll take a slice too, Mama.”

  ——————

  “I thought Aunt Mary was going to fall out of her seat. I really did, Granny B.”

  “That girl always been one for actin’. Her head barely reached the latch on the back do’ but could she put on a show, cryin’ before my switch ever touched her leg.”

  Evelyn laughed.

  “I’m serious.” Beatrice clipped the end of the clothesline and discarded the extra twine. She reached back to hand Evelyn the wire cutters. “Here, chile.”

  “But Aunt Mary was serious, too, Granny B.”

  Beatrice shook her head and wrapped the line around the nail.

  “Why don’t you let me do that?”

  For the fourth time, she ignored Evelyn’s offer to help. “What did I tell Mary in that letter?”

  “Gran—”

  Beatrice tried to swat away the hand on her elbow but had to lean into it as she stepped down. Once she’d planted both feet on the ground, she snatched away her shaking arm and retrieved the stool. Beatrice forced her stiff legs to move toward the screen door. “She was probably comin’ to take stock of the furniture.” She felt Evelyn close behind her as she took the one step up into the house.

  “I don’t think Spring Hope chic is quite her style.”

  Beatrice didn’t answer, so focused as she was on trying to heft the basket of wet sheets.

  Without a word, Evelyn took one of the handles. Together they ambled to the line.

  Chapter Twenty

  OUT OF RESPECT, Evelyn bit her tongue and let the grown folks handle things while she silently stroked Cocoa.

  “What are you doing about Mama?” Thomas and Sissy sat with Lis in the living room. Granny B had turned the couple away with barely a nod at the front door.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “Yes, you. You live the closest to her. You see her most often.”

  “So?”

  “So, you need to do something. I just can’t believe her crazy idea.”

  “What crazy idea?”

  “This—thinking she’s just gonna lay down and die, go down without a fight.”

  “Lay down and die? She’s standing up to you, isn’t she?” Lis’s eyes narrowed.

  Sissy seemed to detect the heat building in the room. “Now, Elisabeth—”

  “I’m not talking to you, Sissy.” She held up a hand to silence her would-be sister-in-law. “I’m talking to my bigmouth brother who has lost his mind over here.”

  “Mama has lost her mind. And if necessary, I’ll use my law degree to prove it.”

  “To prove what? And stop trying to shush him, Sissy.”

  “Well, Ruthena—”

  “Ruthena put a buzz in your ear? I can’t believe the two of you finally see eye to eye. There’s no need for you to prove nothin’, Thomas.”

  “Why not?”

  “I talked to Mama’s attorney myself the minute Ruthena and Matthew left—”

  “And?” Sissy leaned forward.

  Evelyn stopped rubbing Cocoa and stared at her mama.

  “And he said Ruthena must be crazy herself. Well, not in so many words.”

  Evelyn expelled the breath she’d been holding.

  “Well, hallelujah for that!”

  All eyes turned to Sissy after her outburst.

  “I’m sorry. But I never agreed with any of this, Thomas.”

  Thomas rubbed his hands across his face, then back over his wavy hair. “So now what?”

  Lis held up one finger. “Find out what kind of insurance Mama has.”

  “Elis—”

  Mama’s raised palm stopped her younger brother short. She extended a second finger. “Ask her about the service she’d like to have. Mama might as well have her way when she dies just like when she’s living.” Mama raised her ring finger. “Then we’re going to contact Paul Stewart’s funeral home. The rest is up to Mama.” She dropped her hand to her lap. “The dying and all.”

  ——————

  “You know you should see somebody.”

  Beatrice grunted. “I saw Edmond. And if I see somebody else, I got to see ever’body else. They’ll all be seein’ me soon enough.” She knew Evelyn wouldn’t want to pick up that particular ball and run with it.

  Yet her granddaughter persisted. “They’re your children. They’re trying to show you they care about what’s happening to you.”

  Beatrice snorted.

  “Granny B, we’ve been through this—”

  “Exactly. We been through this. If I wan’t dyin’, they wouldn’t be streamin’ down here noway, all in a tizzy. Lookin’ like a bunch of hungry rats after some cheese.”

  “Much as you try to fight it, they’re going to come, and they’re going to see you . . . whether you like it or not.”

  Beatrice said nothing. She just sipped her tea, enjoyed the view of the house and yard from their spot near the woods.

  “How are you feeling? You look pale. Want to go inside?” Evelyn waited. “Granny B . . . I know you hear me. If you don’t say something, I’m just going to keep talking.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “Don’t you feel a need to wrap things up with your children? To say good-bye? There might be crying or carrying on—”

  “That’s what my funeral is fo’.”

  Evelyn swallowed audibly. “Well . . .”

  Beatrice held up a bony hand. “The well done run dry, gal. Now I don’t wont to hear no mo’ ’bout this. I said all the good-byes I’m gon’ to. You got this big happy fam’ly reunion in yo’ head, but it ain’t gon’ happen. Didn’t you figure that out when we saw Milton? I wrapped thangs up all nice and neat when I wrote them letters.”

  Evelyn sat like a log in one of the chairs she’d dragged out.

  “I can see you sittin’ there stewin’.”

  She glanced over at her grandma. “Are you laughing at me?”

  Beatrice cackled, out loud this time. “Gal, ain’t I the one dyin’? We ain’t like them fam’lies you see on TV. And you ain’t got to work so hard tryin’ to fix us. We ain’t broke . . .” She paused, considering her next words
. “Just a little bent, is all.”

  Evelyn sighed. “Granny B—”

  “I had me one of them TV fam’lies once. When I was a girl in Farmin’ton.” Beatrice smacked her lips together, tasting the lingering flavors of memory. “It’d be dead a-winter and them nights would make even dead bones clank together.” She shook a bit herself in the warm shade. “I ’member Pap’d heat up a blanket in front of the fireplace, and when it was good and toasty, he’d throw it over all us chillun. Back then it was Henry and me, then my little sisters, Sarah Jean and Mae. Ooh, that blanket felt good goin’ on. We’d run with it up to our rooms; then we’d drop it and jump in the bed.

  “We was babies a long time, us chillun.” Beatrice sucked up an ice cube from her glass and rolled it around in her mouth. It rattled against her teeth. “Mam would dress us in undershirts with long sleeves and we girls had to wear two slips. ’Course, it was such a long, cold walk to school, we was glad we had all them layers.”

  “What, fifteen, twenty miles and uphill both ways?”

  Beatrice smiled. “Mo’ like three and another three back. But that was pretty far when it was snowin’ or rainin’ or when it was hot like it is now.” Her sharp teeth reduced the cube to bits. “But it didn’t matter how much the wind blowed, we couldn’t wait to get to school.”

  “You loved learning that much?”

  “No, we loved eatin’. You shoulda seent what Mam packed in our lunch pails. Biscuit and ham. A piece of cake. You see, we was pretty well off.” She could see Evelyn swallow her words as well as a big gulp of iced tea.

  “I remember writing about that in Aunt Mary’s letter. You left when you were only fifteen? Why, if it wasn’t to get a better life?”

  Beatrice polished off her glass and set it down in the prickly blades of grass beside her chair. She wiped her mouth with the ever-present handkerchief she retrieved from the pocket of her green housedress. “Barely fifteen, and I suppose that’s what ever’body thought, that I was tryin’ to escape bein’ po’, only to find myself a heap po’er.” She reached for her glass, remembered that it was empty, and sat back in her chair.

  “So that isn’t what happened?”

  “No, that ain’t what happened. We had a good life. Mam and Pap had us a big house in Farmin’ton, and my pap did good work. We never wonted for nuthin’. ’Cept me. I wanted to be grown. I got tired of warm blankets and wearin’ undershirts and thick tighties and bein’ tucked into bed. And here come that man, just in time.”

  Beatrice’s eyes sidled her granddaughter’s way. “Back then, see, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—it wan’t like it is now. Girls was bein’ trained for raisin’ families and keepin’ house, gettin’ ready for marriage. But not much in my house. Mam kept the world away from us. She hoped we’d have somethin’ better, like good schoolin’ and thangs.” Beatrice’s chest rose on a deep breath. As she let it out, she repeated, “But here come that man.”

  “But didn’t you love Henton? Was it worth it, at least for a little while?”

  “Girl, ain’t nobody thankin’ ’bout no Henton.” She pointed at the back of the small house sprouting from the ground in front of them. “Whatchyou thank? You lookin’ at the same house I am. You thank it was worth it?”

  Evelyn said nothing.

  “Was it worth it?” Beatrice repeated the question, and then surprisingly, she grinned. “Yep, it was worth it, ’cause I loved me some of that man there! I sho’ did. And he loved me. At least fo’ a while.”

  The tea Evelyn had just sipped ran from her mouth and down her chin.

  “I’m a woman—don’t you forget that. And I can feel just like one, too—at least I did. I felt the same way you did about yo’ Kevin, no matter how you thank you feel now.” Beatrice passed her granddaughter the handkerchief. “Here, girl, wipe yo’ face. You look like you been havin’ some kinda heatstroke out here.”

  ——————

  “So what do y’all talk about?”

  Evelyn looked away from the rain beating against the pane. “Excuse me?”

  Lis leaned against the doorjamb. “You’ve been in Spring Hope every day. What do you talk about all that time? What do you do?”

  We talk about our love lives. “She busies herself doing nothing. I hover until she orders me to go somewhere.”

  “But I bet you don’t go. Right?”

  “No, I don’t go. When she sleeps, I sit down myself—trying to keep up with an old lady will wear you out!” This produced a laugh, and they shared it. They sat there, enjoying the sound of the rain spattering against the glass.

  “Sitting around Granny B’s house, spending so much time where you were raised, I think a lot about you and my aunts and uncles. I’ve been wondering . . . about the letters.”

  Lis’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “You know, the letters Granny B sent out. Have y’all talked about what Granddaddy Henton wrote?”

  She turned away from Evelyn then. “No, we haven’t talked about Henton’s letters.”

  “Is that what you call him now—Henton?”

  “That’s his name, isn’t it? I mean, Daddy doesn’t quite fit. Most of us stopped calling him that a long time ago, almost the minute he skipped town.”

  “Did Granny B ever explain why he left?”

  “Mama? Since when does she explain anything?” She stood abruptly and walked to the dressing table. She studied the silver-framed photographs carefully placed to the right side of the mirror. “We learned early on not to ask questions.”

  Evelyn understood that feeling. That’s why she hadn’t brought up Milton’s visit with Granny B despite her need to dissect all that had happened. She knew, however, that it wasn’t what she needed that was important, not now. Still . . .

  “Mama, what happened between Granny B and Uncle Milton? I get the feeling we won’t be seeing him anytime soon.” By anytime soon, she meant Granny B’s funeral, another touchy subject.

  Lis kept her eyes down as she fiddled with Evelyn’s comb and brush.

  Evelyn waited her out as she studied her mother’s reflection in the mirror.

  “When Milton’s name came up, Mama would just say he broke her heart. She asked me once, ‘How can you forgive somebody for tearin’ your heart out and givin’ it back to you?’” Lis gave her full attention to a pair of opal earrings. She turned them this way and that in the wan light.

  “‘He’ meaning Milton or ‘he’ meaning Granddaddy . . . um, Henton? How could a child break your heart anyway? She acted like he was dead. We all did . . .” Why won’t she look at me?

  “And newly resurrected, the way she talks about him now,” Lis finished. “Does she talk about him to you?” She finally set down the jewelry and faced her daughter directly.

  It was Evelyn’s turn to prevaricate. “Well, she doesn’t talk about him, not necessarily. She does mention his name more freely, and I don’t have to skip over words that start with M anymore.”

  Lis smiled, seemingly distracted.

  “You know we went to see him then?”

  Her mama stopped smiling. “You did?”

  “We took him the letters, you know, from Granny B and Gran—Hen—the two letters.” Evelyn didn’t know which road to take. They both diverged into a prickly thicket, so she decided not to choose at all. “It was pretty painful, for both of them. But she seems to be better for it, somehow. Of course, I’m more confused. I’m curious whether she read his letters, if she knew where . . . he was. It’s hard to believe y’all never wondered where he went, what happened—”

  “I didn’t say we didn’t wonder where Henton went. Of course, we wondered.” Lis wandered around the room. Eventually she settled again by the family photographs but away from the mirror, preventing Evelyn from gauging her veracity by an imperfect reflection.

  Lis caressed Graham’s glass-covered face. “We used to whisper late at night, asking each other if anybody had heard anything. Edmond would tell us stuff he had picked up in town. Rumors about where Henton ha
d run off to, about problems Mama and Henton’d had. His new home in Jasper.”

  Evelyn’s mouth flew open. “So she knew where he was?”

  “There’s not much Mama doesn’t know.” Lis laughed out loud, though it was a harsh, joyless sound. “Mama probably found him that job he wrote about and the room over the store.”

  ——————

  “No, I didn’t know exactly where he was. I just knew where he warn’t.”

  “But how could you not know?”

  Beatrice replaced the lid on the steaming pot and set the spoon in the bowl. She wiped her hands on the towel looped through her white apron strings. “You thank I had time to fret over the where’bouts of Henton Agnew, what with all I had to do round here? If he had it in his mind to leave, why should I waste time jaw jackin’ ’bout it?”

  “You know, Mama said almost the same thing the other day.”

  “Well, least we agree on somethin’.” Beatrice continued moving about the kitchen, trying to hide that she was good and riled up. She returned spices and washed teacups. She figured Evelyn sensed her agitation because she didn’t offer to help.

  It didn’t stop Evelyn from pressing the issue. “Did you miss him?”

  Beatrice tasted the dumplings. She added more seasoned salt. “Miss who?”

  “Granddaddy. Henton.”

  “You cain’t miss what warn’t never there.” She tucked a few limp tendrils behind her ears. “Do you miss Kevin?”

  “We’re not talking about Kevin.”

  “You right, but you should be. I did my part, sent all them letters. And you ain’t said word one to yo’ husband.”

  Evelyn scratched her belly. “I told you I can’t tell him news like this over the phone.”

  “So do it in person. Look at his face on that computer of yours.” She immersed a dishcloth in soapy water and wrung it dry. She wiped the area around the stove.

  “I don’t want to Skype him or use FaceTime. Not for this.”

  “Not for anything, I s’pect. Anyway, you ain’t gon’ need no words, by the looks of you.”

  “What words did you use when you told Henton about Milton?”

  Splash! Beatrice ignored the suds that sprayed her apron and arms when she threw down her cloth. “You got to go. Now. You might talk to yo’ mama like you crazy, but this dyin’ old lady don’t have time to stand for it.” Beatrice reached behind and untied her strings and tossed the apron onto the table.