Bernard agreed and tsked, tsked wherever he could to sound sincere, all the while jittery to finish his job and grab that pup before Miss Loretta figured out she was getting robbed, jittery to head back home to where his own beloved was waiting, alive and blooming. By the end of the day, he had the place in tiptop shape and then Miss Loretta made him a plate of sustenance as she called it. Of course, he was required to eat and compliment her on her cooking and her kitchen as well. Finally, just after sunset, he was out the door with the pup in his shirt.
Miss Loretta said as he left, Why, wait. I have been so rude, I never asked. Forgive me, but what is your name?
And he said, Bernard, m’am. Bernard Levy.
It was the strangest thing. Just like all those years ago in Miss Maple’s classroom, the mention of his name caused an eruption of robust hilarity. Miss Loretta laughed and laughed until she turned purple and looked as if she might keel over. He went back into the store and helped her to a chair while she caught her breath.
Oh, forgive me again, she said, but one of our very best customers in the old days was a Mr. Bernard Levy. From Memphis. And if you could note the difference between the two of you . . .
A creeping sensation came over Bernard’s scalp as if a tide of lice crawled all over it. Later on, he wished dearly he’d paid attention to that feeling. It was prescient. At the time, he just wanted out of there with his prize so he ignored it.
Well, that was odd, Horace said to him when he remarked on the unexpected invocation of his name-twin and his scalp’s curious creep. That was indeed odd.
Yes, it was, Bernard agreed.
Three weeks passed, three weeks during which Aurora Mae was in a constant state of contentment, due to the addition of Maxine, or Maxie, as she named the pup, to the household. She held the little thing in her lap whenever she sat to work at her potions and sewing and such. She stroked her head and murmured to her. She got quite dexterous at using the one free hand for her chores. Whenever Bernard was in the room with them, she cast him gracious looks or held Maxie up from under her front legs to show him the elegant line of her limbs or her sweet, round belly and did everything but call him the dog’s daddy to her mama.
When the three of them sat on the front porch at night, Maxie was always with them, cooed over by the humans, nestled somewhere in Aurora Mae’s person, whether licking her hands or lost in a snoreful nap. She looked like a furry wood elf sitting in the lap of a giant, a sight that amused Horace so much that one night while in his cups he decided to pull a prank. He stole the dog as his sister dozed in her rocker and dressed Maxie in a pair of his sister’s knickers. The wee head with its snub little face and comically long ears emerged from one leg hole and the short, plump legs, squared up with a piece of hair ribbon, came out the other. He took her finest handkerchief, tatted all around with lace, and tied it under Maxie’s chin then gently draped the whole canine bundle over his sister’s shoulder so that it looked for all the world as if Aurora Mae had a most peculiar-looking baby there, one who needed a good burp. It didn’t take a minute for Aurora Mae to wake up. She was startled but once that dissipated, she laughed as hard as her brother. The sound of their gaiety got Bernard out of the privy. He ran across the yard to the house, pulling up the shoulder straps of his overalls. When he got close enough to see what was going on, he, too, broke into a funny fit.
Here, Daddy, look at your baby here, Aurora Mae said in all good humor, handing him the wrapped-up spaniel pup, which he made a great show of tenderly accepting and cradling in his arms.
There was a full moon that Saturday night. It never occurred to them that anyone would be watching or listening to their foolishness, but it so happened that Cousin Clyde was coming home from a visit to a ’cropper’s farm down the road. He crossed in front of the big house from a distance, so they didn’t notice him. They weren’t looking anyway. Cousin Clyde was drunk enough to see what he thought he saw, and hear what he thought he heard. He had enough lingering meanness over the refusal of his mama’s cough medicine for him to develop conviction and decide to blab about it.
By Sunday morning, half the cousins heard that Aurora Mae had a baby by that funny-looking, little white man she kept around, a baby as homely as he was and as much a freak of nature as she. Naturally, they were all scandalized. Whoever knew she was carryin’? they asked one another until someone offered that a woman Aurora Mae’s size might carry high and hide it quite well.
A handful of cousins liked to go Sunday mornings over to the Jesus Christ of Abundant Mercy Pentecostal church, because they had a white preacher there, a man with more fire and brimstone under his tongue than the Black Baptist and the A.M.E. preachers combined. One of those cousins couldn’t keep her mouth shut on a morning buzzing hot with the shock and spice of fresh-cooked gossip. When the white preacher asked her how that heathen cousin of hers who bossed the colony like an old-time overseer was doing and was Aurora Mae any nearer to Jesus, she told him. And didn’t that cause an unwholesome crop of unexpected problems.
It’s unclear how the story of Aurora Mae and Bernard’s baby got around so fast, unless you accept as gospel that white preachers have big mouths when it comes to the sins, real and imagined, of black folk. It’s more unclear why no one ever corrected the story. It didn’t take half a day for the cousins to learn Clyde had been mistaken. They all had a good laugh about it by Sunday supper, but the news never did make it out into the wider world.
Two nights later, Bernard went out hunting with Horace as the larder was light. They walked a long way into the woods before they could find game that didn’t spook the second the hunters sighted it. It was as if the critters close to the house knew something evil was up, and they’d withdrawn deep under brambles and rock to escape humanity. Eventually, the men took down a scrawny pheasant too old to hear them approach and a possum in similar condition, then gave it up and trudged on home.
Not two hundred yards from the front porch, they found the yard dogs, all three of them, bleeding out from gunshot and writhing their last. They ran to the house. The door was open. Maxie was dead on the floor. The wall next to her battered little body was streaked white, rust, and gray with the pup’s bashed-in brain matter. Everything else was a mess of shattered glass and busted-up wood. Aurora Mae was nowhere to be found.
The cousins told them what they knew. One of them, Cousin Mags, was at the house selling some roots she’d gathered to Aurora Mae when they heard gunshots outdoors, followed by the whimpering of dogs. Cousin Mags took off out the back but was afraid to go farther and risk being seen, so she hunkered down in the bush. She heard the whole thing and saw parts of it. She told Horace and Bernard what happened.
Five night riders came up on horseback looking for an ugly half-white baby borne out of blackest sin, a child of the devil. From behind the door, Aurora Mae bellowed at them. There ain’t no baby here!
But they didn’t believe her, so they broke in. She fought ’em, Lord love her, she fought ’em hard, but there were five of ’em, to her one and only self. Didn’t matter how big she was, they had shotguns and knives, too. Over and over, they beat her to make her give the baby up. When that failed, they cut her. They hurt her so bad after a while maybe she would have given that baby up if she had a baby to give, but she did not, so they tortured that poor li’l dog to make her talk, and by then, she could not. Then they tore up the whole house looking for the child of the devil. At last, they started in to rape her, and when they were done they took her away with them, because, they joked, there was so much of her she weren’t half used up. The one with the biggest horse slung her over his saddle like a piece of damn meat, Mags said, and bim, bam, boom, they was gone.
Throughout the telling of Mags’s tale, Horace moaned and trembled and bent over double with grief. Bernard shook from his toes to the top of his head. Buckets of tears poured from his round, close-set eyes. For the next month, the two tried to find out where the night riders had taken her. They combed the woods, the farms, the
city of Saint Louis. They put about to everyone in their ken to check with everyone in their ken, especially those Negroes who worked in the town in private homes and businesses, for sightings of her or gossip about the night she was taken. They tried mightily but could not find her nor any information about where she might be. So they gave up, heading east away from the river, not so much toward a new life, as life felt pretty much over for them both, but because neither could stay in the big house anymore, not without her, not with the sight of little Maxie’s brains splattered on the wall burned into their memories, not with the images that sprang up in every corner of the house and in the yard, images of Aurora Mae’s torments accompanied by the everlasting echo of her screams.
X
Greenville, Mississippi, 1962
EVERYONE AT NEEDLEMAN’S FURNITURE TREATED Laura Anne differently after her daddy yanked her back to Greenville. The men looked at her longer than they should. Whispers warmed her back each time she passed two or more of them together. The women smiled too broadly when they said hello and took too much interest in what she wore, remarking on the length of her skirts, the fit of her blouse. If she dared to wear a fabric that wasn’t coarse or a color that wasn’t dull, she’d overhear them criticize. Look at the way that silk lays against the skin, they’d say. I bet it feels like it’s not even there. Can you imagine? Walkin’ around in public feelin’ naked? And that yellow is bright enough to wake the bees on a winter’s day. . . .
All this was from her coworkers, many of whom she’d known since she was a baby girl when Lot would take her into the store as his “chair tester,” when he’d set her down on something hard and then something cushiony and ask her to pass judgment on how they felt. The customers were worse. As she approached, her face tarted up in her would-you-like-some-help-smile, they turned on their heels, tossing her the insult of a sidelong glance before they walked away with chins up in the air. It got so bad, she quit working the floor and spent her time in the office banging about trying to find enough to do. Lot did not like having her at close quarters. He couldn’t curse his suppliers or tell racy jokes with his daughter right there at the next desk. He couldn’t have his best salesmen or the shipping crew in to share a shot at the end of the day. There were times he considered firing her.
Out on the street, things were better, but only if Laura Anne chose neighborhoods where people didn’t know her. Otherwise, she was stared at, pursued by wolf whistles so rude and sharp they made her jump. If she walked to the drugstore to take her lunch at the counter, men sitting next to her exchanged winks and got their arms and elbows in her way or brushed their thighs against hers. In short, her public life had become that of a fallen woman, a consequence of her behavior she’d never considered when she was occupied with being heroic and in love. There were other consequences, too.
What she’d done to her mother, for example. Rose was a wreck. Her twitch was as fierce as it ever got, including the time she suffered the shingles and spent three weeks in constant agony. Her hair was a mess, she wore the same housedress every day. She kept herself in to avoid others. She would not answer the door. She couldn’t look anyone in the eye, not even the help. The only gaze she met was Laura Anne’s. Her daughter suffered each wet-eyed, red-rimmed stare like a knife to the heart.
Supper times were the worst. Before she’d run off, supper was an occasion of intimate pleasures, of boisterous fun. Daddy cracked jokes and put on the airs of fine ladies outfitting their boudoirs as he told stories about his business coups of the day. Mama might relate some whacky domestic incident, interrupting herself with giggle fits. Often Laura Anne leavened proceedings with a report of something she’d read that informed them all, and conversation would take a serious turn while the family leaned forward on their elbows after coffee to solve the world’s problems. Laura Anne grew up looking forward to supper as the best time of day, but since she’d come home, she hated it.
Mama picked at her food and ate little. Daddy overate and drank, too. The whole meal was silent but for the blessings Daddy made over the wine and bread and fruits of the earth before they ate and the thankful blessings Mama led after they finished. They’d never had the habit of all those blessings before unless it was Friday night or a high holiday. These days, Mama made sure they did so every night as an act of repentance. They’d raised a wanton and must to apologize to God, each other, and the community at large. If she thought to ask the cook for some, she’d have worn sackcloth to table and piled ashes on her head.
One morning after the prodigal was home a scant few days, Cousin Patricia Ellen phoned just after Laura Anne left for work. She gave Rose a coded message that communication had arrived from Mickey Moe and she’d call back with the lowdown after supper. Never had a meal dragged out so long. Laura Anne’s nerves were in a fix. Every sound was magnified. Whenever someone swallowed, her spine tensed. The smack of tongue over teeth irritated more than a cloud of gnats. She broke.
Lord God in heaven! she said and threw her napkin down over her plate. If you two don’t stop acting like grandmama was buried alive under the floorboards, I won’t run away from here again, I’ll kill myself instead!
With heavy tread, she trooped upstairs to her room muttering like a petulant child of thirteen rather than a twenty-year-old woman of the world. Thankfully, they did not follow. She imagined them sitting drop-jawed before Mama started to weep and ask Lot what she’d done to be punished with the company of a cruel, unmannered brute, and where had her precious good girl gone. Since Laura Anne remained a good girl, through and through, despite her parents outdated morality, an avalanche of guilt crashed down upon her, not guilt for loving Mickey Moe nor even for running off to him, but for losing her temper. She started to cry herself and was bawling away when the phone rang. She jumped on it. It was Patricia Ellen.
Whatsamatta, honey? You sound terrible.
Laura Anne dissembled. I’m gettin’ the most awful cold.
While she waited for news of her lover, her heart leapt around in her chest like a rabbit with its tail on fire. Cousin Patricia Ellen, whose domestic life was by turns dull and harried, enjoyed the drama of her go-between role so much she doled out information in excruciating bits and pieces.
You know I must say that boyfriend of yours has the most lovely voice, she began. It’s got a little rasp to it, but it’s deep, the way a man’s should be. Not like my Ruben’s. His is just a tad thin, don’t you think? It has a tendency to screech when he gets excited, and I mean when he’s joyful excited or angry excited, either one. . . .
Patty-cakes! Laura Anne interrupted, employing the woman’s baby name, which she knew annoyed her, to get her attention. Please!
Alright, alright. You don’t have to shout in my ear.
Laura Anne apologized, groveled a bit even, because she needed her cousin’s cooperation or she would be lost, truly lost, in this wasteland of opprobrium, formerly her most happy home. Ruffled feathers smoothed, Patricia Ellen spilled.
He was not in Memphis yet. That surprised. How long could it take for a drive of a few hundred miles? After he’d finished his premium collections, it seemed he’d stayed on the back roads, following his daddy’s old route as well as he could piece it together, not for any reason that made sense, but because a voice in his head told him to. He’d met with a few mishaps, a flat tire, a washed-out road. In the latter case, a tumble into a ditch caused him to pause a few days in Littlefield, Tennessee, a town so small it was not on the map but near enough to Memphis that soon as repairs could be effected to the car, he could arrive there the same day. He was staying at the home of the garage mechanic. Cousin Patricia Ellen gave her the phone number, saying that Mickey Moe would love it if she could manage to call. His host was a good old boy, who enjoyed talking religion. They spent the night discussing the virtues of Moses versus Jesus. She wasn’t to worry. If she was unable to call or failed to find him, she was to understand that his love had not faded but grew stronger each moment they were apart.
Laura Anne hung up the phone in a fog of love and amazement. Littlefield, Tennessee. Of all the places Mickey Moe should wind up. It was a miracle, something to do with that voice in his head, she was certain. She wished she could tell Mama. How could Mama object to Mickey Moe when the very voice of God was guiding him? Littlefield, Tennessee, was the birthplace of J. Henry, the janitor at Daddy’s store. A sweeter colored man didn’t exist on the face of this earth, she was sure of it, and every weekend he drove his old rattletrap of a Chevrolet coupe up to Littlefield to visit his ailing mama. Why, she could pay him to take her along. Since the next day was a Friday, she could be with her man in two short days, and no one would know, no one could find them, no one could fetch her back this time. Never again would she be bedeviled for the crime of loving Mickey Moe Levy. The two of them could resuscitate their original plan. They could travel in company to Memphis, confront Aurora Mae, and return to Greenville with Mickey’s roots rehabilitated for all time. If that wasn’t enough for Mama and Daddy, she and the man she loved would give up on propriety and get married by a justice of the peace. The thought gave her a twinge of pain—the dreams of young girls die hard—but she bit her lip, bid good-bye to the wedding dress lodged in her mind’s eye, and renewed in her heart the vows of liberation that got her into all this trouble in the first place.
One More River Page 13
