A Dead Man Speaks

by Lisa Jones Johnson

  She disappeared into the driving rain without so much as an umbrella, braving the wind and the sheets of chilling April rain, as if it were no more than a mild shower.

  Now as I looked over at her gently stroking my daughter’s dark curls, I wondered what unspoken secrets lay between her and my dead husband. Never to be talked about. Buried with his soul.

  I supposed I’d never know. She and I rarely talked. Except for last night. It was the only time she’d ever revealed any of herself to me. Most of our conversations in the past consisted of the bare necessities. I never felt comfortable around her, as if she were sizing me up, judging me against some standard to which I was doomed to fail. I only allowed her to stay out of guilt. I knew she had nowhere else to go, and despite what I might have thought Clive would have done, I wouldn’t be accused of putting his destitute mother out in the street.

  Clive would have had no mercy, but I don’t know why I couldn’t just bring myself to put limits on her, tell her to leave and go back to where she’d come from. It seemed as if every time I got close to taking a stand, asserting my rights over my home after all, I caught a glimpse of someone else under the hardness, and something in me wouldn’t allow it.

  Last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I’d climbed out of bed and headed to the kitchen, thinking that perhaps warm milk would help this ever-present insomnia, when I noticed a light coming from underneath the study door. Clive’s study. His prize. The room where he kept all of his first editions like trophies. Books from all of the famous writers, shiny leather covers, dusted lovingly, but never opened. But now as I walked into the room, I saw Clive’s mother, doing the sacrosanct. Reading one of Clive’s books. Books for show not for use.

  “Mother?” She looked up, startled for a moment.

  “I was lookin’ at all his fancy books. Bet he didn’t even read none of ’em.”

  I didn’t answer, torn between defending my dead husband and blurting out the all too obvious truth. She snapped the book shut abruptly and turned so that she was facing me directly. Pulling her faded bathrobe around herself more tightly, she said, “Yo daddy’s a doctor, right?”

  Surprised by the sudden change in subject, I nodded. “Yes, a surgeon.”

  “I was supposed t’have worked for a colored doctor, long time ago fore I was married. Was s’pposed to have gone to school and studied to be a nurse, two times. First time, I didn’t ’cause I got married, second time…” She sighed and put down the book, her eyes narrowing as she stared ahead not so much at me as through me, as though I was a bothersome impediment to some wisp of memory that was materializing in front of her.

  “Clive was ’bout three. I’d been goin’ to this school to learn the things I’d need to take the ’xamonation for nursin’ school. Things had been real bad for Lorenzo. The white folks was mad ’cause of the things that had been happenin’ in the South, boycotts and sit-ins and what not, so they’d made it hard for the colored men in Hendersonville to get work. Lorenzo had been a housepainter, but the crackers had decided they didn’t want no more colored men paintin’ they houses. So it’d been ’bout three months since he’d worked. Money was tight. What with him not workin’ much and me not workin’ at all. One day I got home from school. Clive was playin’ with some broke down toy and Lorenzo was sitting’ there looking’ kinda low, when I walked in…”

  As I listened to my mother in law, it was as if her life was playing out in front of me, like a tableau vivant. Only I was seeing it as she would. I wondered, was there some force that I was not aware of there in the room that was opening a window into her past for me. It was at once thrilling and unsettling, but I couldn’t and didn’t want to shake off the feelings. Perhaps it was him. Clive. I often felt as if he’d never really left, that he was just there close enough for me to touch but then not too close. As he’d been in life—there, but not really. Perhaps I was seeing what Clive could see with the eyes of the dead. Eyes that could peel away the layers of time and make what was yesterday appear as today. For I saw clearly my mother-in-law’s life through her eyes as it happened, so many years ago…

  * * *

  Through Sarah’s eyes as she remembered…

  “Sarah, we needs to talk.”

  I didn’t like the way Lorenzo looked. He’d been lookin’ worse and worser every day that he didn’t have no work. I kinda sidled over to him and sits next to him on the bed. Afraid of what he was gonna say. He kinda cleared his throat and tooks my hands, rubbin’ ’em like he was tryin’ to figure out what to say.

  “How much more of this school you got ’fore you finish?”

  “I don’t know exactly, ‘pends on how I do on the next tests. The teacher says he thinks if I keeps up like I’s doin’, I oughta be finished by year end.”

  “So three mo months.”

  “Yeah, ’bout.”

  “Sarah, we ain’t got three months. I gotta call from the landlord. We is three months behind on the rent, and he’s gonna put us out ’less we pay up this week.”

  This sick feelin’ crept up from my stomach to my head. I knowed what he was gonna say, but I couldn’t let him. There had to be some other way. Not what he was gonna make me do.

  “I talked to your ol’ boss over to the factory. They’ll give you your old job back and some money in advance if you’ll start—”

  I turned around and screamed, “No I ain’t doin’ it! You promised me I could do this, you promised me when we got married that I wouldn’t have t’work, that I could go back to school and do somethin’, that I wouldn’t end up like Ma and Pa and all the rest of the colored folks in this town!”

  Lorenzo looked like I’d hit him in the gut. He tried to gently pull me back on the bed and into his arms, but I wouldn’t let him. I hated him. I hated all of ’em. Stealin’ my dreams again. First before, now this. This was my one chance, and I warn’t givin’ up. I started cryin’, even though I hates cryin’, Mama Joe said never let a man see you cry, then they knows they got you. But I didn’t care no more, all I cared ’bout was my chance, my one chance to be somethin’ was gettin’ snatched away again.

  “Can’t we holds out a little longer? We got some money saved up, don’t we?”

  “It’s all gone.”

  “Cain’t you do somethin’, anythin to make some money?!”

  Lorenzo was real quiet. He didn’t say nothin’ for a minute. Then when he did start talkin’ it was low and so soft I couldn’t hardly hear it. “Sarah, baby, I’m sorry. I asked yo boss, if I could take yo old job, but he said his boss didn’t want no men in the factory, only women. No colored men on the line. Said they caused too much trouble and headaches for the folks. I been tryin’ to find work. I even looked in the other towns, but they’s nothin, nothin’ for colored men.” He stared ahead with this sad look on his face. For a minute I felt kinda bad. I knowed Lorenzo warn’t the kinda man that’d go back on his word. I knowed that he’d tried, but all I could think about was how close I was to gettin’ out to doin’ somethin’. I decided right then that I warn’t givin’ up. Not this time.

  ‘Twas late, must been ’bout two, three in the mornin.’ Lorenzo was sleep. I gets up and grabs a paper bag, stuffin’ my things in it. I’d decided what I was doin’. I was goin’ back home to Ma and Pa, even though I’d swore I’d never go to that town again. But it ’twas my only chance. There was a school there. I’d live with Ma and Pa. I could find some work there at night and send the money back to Lorenzo for him and Clive, and that way I could keep on. I had to keep on. I looked around. I felt kinda sad leavin’ Lorenzo and Clive, but they’d understands. I’d sends ’em money. I’d finish school, and then we’d all have plenty a money. They’d see I was doin’ the right thing. They’d see.

  Late afternoon I was walkin’ up the dusty road to Ma and Pa’s house. I itched all over from the mosquitoes and gnats. My head ached. I was sticky and tired from walkin’ the whole way. Thirty miles. But I didn’t care. At least here, I’d have a chance. I opens the door, stickin’
my head in.

  “Ma…is you there…it’s me…Sarah…”

  Crash.

  The sound of the wind slapping against the window jolted me back to reality. Clive’s mother stopped. Startled by the sudden noise, she just sat there, shivering slightly. I was almost afraid to say anything, but I had to know. “What happened after that, were you able to finish?”

  She looked at me with aching sadness, as if the answer was all too obvious. “No chile. Ma and Pa made me go back to Lorenzo and Clive. Said a wife’s place is with her family. They closed the school in Hendersonville, an’ I went back to the factory. And that was that.”

  She said it with finality that couldn’t mask the bitter disappointment of a life forever on hold. So now when I see her with my child, even though I want to grab Ariel from her and hold her, I feel the ghosts of the other person that Clive’s mother was, before the sadness settled in, and I can’t. I can’t tell her to leave now. Maybe in a few weeks. But not now, she’s lost too much already.

  “She reminds me of my baby.” She hugged Ariel tighter against her gaunt frame.

  “Clive?”

  She didn’t look up. She just continued rocking Ariel back and forth, then said softly as if almost to herself, “No…not Clive…his baby sister.”

  I looked up at her sharply. “Clive never mentioned a sister. I always thought he was an only child.”

  “He warn’t much mor’n a baby when she died. He didn’t ’member much ’bout her. Seems like just a little while ago…but it t’wasnt…’twas right after her birthday…same day…”

  * * *

  Her eyes sunk deeper into her face, like her soul was somehow traveling back again to that different self. As she remembered, I saw once again what she was seeing, through her eyes…

  * * *

  Through Sarah’s eyes as she remembers…

  “C’mon, now. You let yo mama wipe yo face…” I leans down and wiped the little dribbles of yaller birthday cake from her chin. She gots crumbs in her hair, tangled up in the shiny black curls. Indian hair. That’s what Mama said when she seen her. Looks just like yo daddy’s mama…Mama Jay, pure Indian, a Seminole from Florida. Her husband, Pa’s daddy, had been a slave. But Mama Jay growed up in the swamps with her people. Granddaddy had run away an’ hid out with Mama Jay’s people. An’ after the war, they’d left together. Him an’ Mama Jay had seven chillun’s. My pa was the youngest, an’ Mama Jay had lived with us since I could ‘member. I ‘members her sittin’ on that cushion in the corner of the room, wise like. Maybe if she’d been there, things woulda been different for me. Mama Jay always made it alright. Even when Ma and Pa, beat me for somethin’ I didn’t do, Mama Jay would make it alright. She’d hold me an’ tell me I was special. I was diff’rnt, that I’d git out. I’d be somethin’.

  “Ma-ma…”

  I hugged my baby an’ gives her a big kiss on the forehead. My pretty baby. At least I had my pretty baby. Chocolate brown like Lorenzo, but with Mama Jay’s Indian hair and big black eyes that follows me evr’where. Clive comes up and tugs at the baby’s pink dress. The one I made special for her birthday from the scraps at the dress factory where I worked.

  “Wanna play, does baby wanna play?”

  I pushed Clive away, saying firmly, “She don’t play. Now go on, git. I tol’ you not to bother yo sistah.” The baby’s body trembled, and she coughed. She’d been coughin’ like that off an’ on since the mornin’ before. I held her a little tighter, yelling out, “Lorenzo, she’ still be coughin. I thinks you needs to go git the doctor.”

  Lorenzo bends down and scoops her up real gentle. “How’s my little lady, hmmm? How’s Daddy’s birthday girl?” I dunno know why, but I felt tense. I almost yells, “Go on, Lorenzo, git the doctor, and take Clive with you. I can’t handles him with her right now.”

  Last thing I ‘members is the door closing. Later, I was in the bed, holdin’ her. She’d been coughin’ since Lorenzo left. I didn’t wanna sleep, but I’s so tired. The baby was quiet now. I held her closer to me. An I must’ve slept, ’cause now they was shaking me, Lorenzo an the doctor.

  “Sarah, Sarah, the baby”

  I looked down an’ it’s like she’s sleepin’ cept when I touches her, she’s cold. I can’t believes it, I won’t, so I holds her tighter cryin’ to Lorenzo.

  “Git some blankets, the baby’s cold, can’t you see, she’s cold!” I’m cryin’ an’ the doctor’s tryin’ to take her from me.

  “Sarah, she’s gone…”

  “Nooooo! She jus’ cold thas’ all!”

  Lorenzo picks me up and takes the baby outta my arms. But I was cryin’ so much an all I can think and say is, “I cin’t leaves her. I gots to be there when she wakes up, or she’ll be cryin’. I got’s to be there!”

  * * *

  Thump.

  Something fell to the floor. I jumped. Ariel had awakened and slid off Clive’s mother’s lap, tottering over to me. I scooped her up, not knowing quite what to say. Clive’s mother looked smaller hunched in the chair. The room was quiet. Only the muffled sound of cars outside the long windows. After a moment Clive’s mother spoke.

  “T’was influenza, she warn’t the only baby that died that winter, jus’ the first.”

  “I’m…sorry… .” And I was. I remembered the baby that I’d lost. The pain that never really leaves you. I held Ariel a little tighter. Thinking of the baby that I’d lost, and then the baby that she’d lost, wondering if somehow they were linked, together in the place where they buried the souls of infants. And for the first time, I felt something for this woman in front of me. I reached over and squeezed her hand. She held my hand tightly as if thirsty for human touch. And I saw tears on her face.

  I don’t know how long we sat there in silence. I must’ve fallen alseep, because now the shadows were longer. I glanced at my watch. “There’s a detective coming in a few minutes.”

  Clive’s mother hummed a nonsensical tune, rocking Ariel in her lap. “Good, they gotta find out who killed my boy.”

  Her remark struck me as odd. After all, she and Clive were not close. However, I suppose that even a child that you grew distant from as an adult, you would still mourn in death. I shuddered, hoping that I would never know first hand that type of loss. I was still unable to believe Clive was gone. I couldn’t convince myself that the police would ever really find out what happened. Clive was into too much, too many people, too many things that were unspoken. Part of me wanted to bury it all with him. Lock it away in an airtight mausoleum with the rest of our life together.

  “Mrs. January, Detective Greene is here.”

  “Thanks, Dolly, tell him I’ll be right there. “

  I turned to my mother-in-law. As usual, she anticipated my question before I could say it. “You go on, I’ll watch my grandbaby.”

  I lit a cigarette. Why I was nervous, I don’t know. I had nothing to hide. I suppose it was just the old adage that has one believing that the wife always did it. Detective Greene looked around my living room, as if he never expected that black people could live like that. I’d gotten so used to it that I’d forgotten how lovely it all was.

  Large and sunny, one of those cavernous Central Park West apartments that reeked of old world charm and even older money. Clive would have nothing less. Of course. A broad staircase descended gracefully from the middle of the polished marble halls. The living room was done in pale shades of cream and antique green and had fresh cut flowers. A far cry, I suppose, from what a detective would suppose that “we” could ever afford. Typical of them. Usually, I would have been righteously indignant that he could ever believe that “we” couldn’t live like that, unless of course we were athletes or drug dealers, but at this point, I just wanted the whole damn thing to be over with.

  “Sit down, please, Detective.”

  “Thanks.” He sat on the edge of my brocade sofa as if he were afraid of breaking something. “Mrs. January, I just got a few questions for you. I might have to come back later and
talk to you again, but right now I’m looking for something pretty specific.”

  “Yes,” I said trying to sound more detached than I felt.

  “Now don’t take offense at what I’m asking, but I gotta know…”

  I wanted to scream, “Go on ask the damn question! The one everybody asks!”

  “Was your husband seeing another woman?”

  I crushed the cigarette slowly out into the blue and white porcelain dish, letting the ash trail slowly around the pale blue figurine. “Another woman? I think you mean women, Detective. My husband never limited himself to just one other woman.”

  I lit another cigarette, and then looked at him defiantly. “Now is there anything else that you want to know?”

  “Did you kill your husband?”

  “I wanted to. Many times.” I watched out the window as schoolchildren crossed the street, all bright and cheery in their plaid jumpers and crisp blazers. There was something so orderly and comforting about school children. They were like harbingers of another era.

  “Mrs. January?” The detective interrupted my thoughts.

  “Right, to answer your question. No, I did not kill my husband. Why should I, there were others who could do a much better job than I?”

  “Oh yeah, like who in particular?”

  “Oh I don’t know really. My husband was envied by many people.”

  “Like maybe his business partner?”

  “Andrew…Yes, I’d say he envied my husband.”

  “Enough to kill him?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the detective, right?”

  “And you’re the grieving widow, right?”

  I smiled, this little verbal cat and mouse was beginning to be amusing. “Well, I am the widow.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and snapped his notebook shut. “Yeah, that’s just about how I figured it.” He looked like he was about to leave, then he turned back, raising one eyebrow. “So why didn’t you leave him, get one of them quickie divorces, take half his shit and go on about your business?”