David took a folded sheet of paper out of his jacket and began to recite in a clear and steady voice:
“Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,
Without one thing, all will be useless,
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.”
“Hey,” Willie said, “that’s Whitman. But why would he be reading that one? It’s—”
“Who is she that would become my follower?
Who would sign herself a candidate for my affections?”
“Holy shit,” Willie whispered and turned to Lester. “He’s changed the words. It should be, Who is he that would become my follower? Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?’ Les, Whitman wrote that poem for a man.”
“The way is suspicious—the result uncertain, perhaps destructive;
You would have to give up all else—I alone would expect to
be your God, sole and exclusive,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity
to the lives around you, would have to be abandon’d;
Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further—
Let go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down and depart on your way.
“Or else, by stealth, in some wood, for trial,
Or back of a rock, in the open air,
(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not—nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead)
But just possibly with you on a high hill—first watching
lest any person, for miles around, approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the
sea, or some quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband’s kiss,
For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade.”
“Will you listen to that?” Lester said. “He’s making a fool of the whole lot of them.”
But Willie knew that the guy reading that poem wasn’t aware of anyone else in that room but the dude behind the bridal table. There was something strange going on between that bandstand and bridal table.
“Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus, merely touching you, is enough—is best,
And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.”
Willie was thoroughly perplexed. Those words spoke of something pretty deep just between two people. But what could have driven that guy to stand up there and broadcast those things before the world? And how could there have been anything like that between them in the first place? It gave him a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach to think that one man could feel about another as he felt about Ruth.
David had put the paper back into his pocket and picked up his glass for the toast. But Willie knew he hadn’t finished reading the entire poem. And he wondered if Winston knew what the rest of it said. Did he know that that guy was standing up there and telling the whole world that he was kissing him off for good?
But these leaves conning, you con at peril,
For these leaves, and me, you will not understand,
They will elude you at first, and still more afterward—I will certainly elude you,
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.
But yes, he had to know, because Willie saw that room dissolve into a molten vat of air that Winston was having trouble breathing. That dude was sitting out there among all those folks and no one could see that he was drowning. And when he finally raised his glass to return the salute of the guy on the bandstand, he was no longer wearing that pasted-up smile. It had been replaced by a mouth that looked like it was shaping itself to drink poison.
Willie shuddered as he saw them finally drink the champagne. If they had meant that much to each other, why in God’s name was he getting married? Willie frowned deeply and turned to Lester. He wanted to say so much about what was out there. To have his friend help him sort out this troubling confusion over the charade he had just witnessed. But all those feelings only came out as “Les, he didn’t finish it. There’s much more to that poem.”
“Well, I’ve heard enough anyway. I told ya I had a feeling about them two—queer.”
Yes, Willie thought, turning back to the oval window, there was definitely something very queer about that cake, that champagne fountain—the diamond key glittering on that woman’s neck.
… Nor will my poems do good only—they will do just as much evil, perhaps more;
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit—that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me, and depart on your way.
But whatever had gone down between those two guys must have been something very special.
The ring of pale women wrapped in lace bridal veils danced around the cot in her dream and gently threw flowers on the stale blanket. They faded quickly as she opened her eyes but their chant still echoed in the space between her sleeping and waking breath: Mourn our son. Mourn our son. She blinked her mucus-caked eyes rapidly in the dim light and looked at the dead weight on her chest, her chilled body actually feeling warm against the coldness and rigidity of the flesh she held. She eased the child from her; its muscles had stiffened around the shape of her body, so that the limbs were permanently spooned toward her. She heard the clock ticking and closed her eyes with relief. It was quiet now. Taking a deep breath, she looked around the room at the cold shadows falling on the child’s pale skin, the concrete walls, their pile of rancid clothing, the metal shelving, the stacked trunks and boxes, the dry sink in the corner. She would leave it all very soon, but there should be somebody to pity this. And there would be no one. Their bodies would be carried away, dumped somewhere, and left unmourned because no one would know. But didn’t she know?
She put her elbows on her knees and sank her hands into her hair. No, she couldn’t pity that shell behind her because it wasn’t her son. She had assisted at enough funerals, stood in the shadows of enough chapels to realize that grief was only attached to memories. Her real son was now in the cradle of her mind and to mourn she would have to remember. That alone would be enough to kill her. The thought sat in her lap and she stared at it. Then slowly she began to smile and her lips started trembling from silent waves of laughter. Why, she was afraid that a few memories would kill her. Her laughter finally broke in hard, dry heaves as her fingers dug into her scalp. She bent farther over her knees and coughed up phlegm and blood but she couldn’t stop, so she laughed and spit. Laughed and spit, her raw throat pulsating. It would be enough to kill her. She threw her head back and screamed with laughter, small tears running down her temples. Her stiff sides ached terribly as she fought for control and managed to silence, but not stop, her heaving chest. Still smiling, she reached up to wipe the tears away. Yes, it would kill her. Her breathing was still deep but evenly spaced as she wiped the mucus from her nose with her sweater sleeve. Always taking the easy way out. Always. You’re a coward even up to the end, aren’t you?
She sighed and stared off vacantly into the shadows. Her weight on the mattress was gradually pulling the child’s body toward her and a hand touched her back.
—Daddy doesn’t like me.
She leaped up from the cot, but the memory seared through her mind before she could shut it out.
—Don’t be foolish, your father loves you.
—He doesn’t play with me. He doesn’t talk to me.
—Well, he’s a very busy man and he’s tired when he’s home. Hey,
I bet you don’t love Mama.
—Yes, I do.
—Oh yeah, how much?
—Well … more than I love Spiderman.
—Will you love me when I’m an old, old lady?
—Uh huh, even when you’re forty.
She paced by the cot, pressing her temples so tightly the skull bone threatened to give way. But the memory had already splintered into blinding needles of white light that burned so badly she knew if it didn’t stop, she would have to bash her head against the concrete floor. It was just a shell, just a shell. The wetness from the tears that couldn’t fall through her clenched eyes helped to smolder the burning fires in her head. She sat down on the other cot trembling. I’m so sorry but I can’t mourn you. It hurts too much to die that way.
She could hear the clock again ticking loudly in the basement. Before she died, there must be something that she could do to let them know that she cared. She couldn’t mourn her son, but she could bury him. Luther didn’t have to know the truth. When he walked down those steps and found the body dressed for a burial he would think that in spite of what she had allowed him to do, she had at least found the courage to mourn.
She started to wrap the body in the blanket it lay under but it was coarse and cheap, smelling of weeks of sickness and fever. She couldn’t leave him in that. She went to the corner and opened a trunk of old clothes, remembering silk dresses and brocades in her search for extra blankets weeks ago. Her hand touched a gauzy film and she pulled out the end of a long bridal veil trimmed in yellowing lace. It smelled of mildew and dust, but when she pressed a corner to her nose, there was a faint scent of lavender. She could wrap him in this—yards and yards of finely tatted lace and pearls. She kept pulling the material and it seemed to unravel forever so she dug into the trunk and extracted the folded veil. It was wrapped around a leather- and gold-bound Bible. LUWANA PACKERVILLE 1837 was etched in fading gold on the bottom border. She held the book stoically in her hand—There can be no God—and pressed her lips together. Then opening the cover, there in a delicate, curled scroll were those very words. She stared at the page, slowly flipping it over and finding nothing else, turned it back and tilted the Bible toward the light. “There can be no God” remained. Yes, whoever you were, Luwana Packerville, you were right about that. This house couldn’t still be standing if there were a God.
She threw the Bible on the cot and began to wrap the lace veiling around the child’s body. How strange; what must that woman have seen or lived to be moved to leave such a message buried in her wedding veil? Tupelo, Mississippi. She was probably this child’s great-grandmother or one of the many mothers that Luther never talked about. The lace now hung loosely from the child’s feet to its neck, but she hesitated before wrapping the face. Go ahead, nothing can hurt him now—it’s just a shell. But she still bent down and kissed the white forehead before she could bring herself to drape the small face.
—Why don’t I look like Daddy?
She balled the material up in her fist. Don’t remember. But a silver frame came searing into her mind.
—Do you see this picture? Well, that’s your grandmother and you look like her.
—But I’m a boy. She’s a girl.
—So, boys can look like girls. And don’t you think she’s a pretty lady?
She kneeled slowly by the cot with the veil bunched up toward her mouth and pressed her wrenching head on the covered body. But this time the pale scent of lavender somehow helped to lessen the pain. Yes, you looked like your grandmother. And the mother before that. And the mother before that. Oh, my baby, what have I done to you? With horror she saw the answers forming through image after image strung out by white hot links webbing themselves among the crevices in her brain. Her hand clawed around the Bible and she buried her head deeper into the lace-covered body, but it was too late to block them out. Her mourning had begun.
December 21st
Xavier Donnell was falling in love with a black woman. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of his life. He was trying to remember when he had ever been this afraid. Why, it was worse than that summer at boy scout camp when he’d gotten his fly caught in the motor of the garbage compactor. And far worse than the report last year from the auto clinic that two of his transmission valves might be irreplaceable. At least he had been able to scream his way or buy his way out of those situations because he could pinpoint exactly where the danger lay. He had seen the iron gears chewing up the front of his shorts, smelled the oily teeth as they pulled him into the back of the machine. But when he looked at Roxanne Tilson, all he saw was a woman, no better or worse than the dozens of others who had flowed into and out of his life—soft where she should be, curved where he’d expect it, sweet behind the ears, mellow between the breasts, and pungent in that mystifying zone where the thighs joined the center of her body. She had flowed in that way but something was terribly wrong: she wasn’t flowing out. Somehow she had frozen around his liver, on the walls of his stomach, and in the cavities of his intestines; and she was dripping out much too slowly. When he found that it had become cold enough inside to affect his heart and cause a chill that made it shiver when he touched her, he tried to build up a series of heated arguments to melt her away: she’s too fat, too loud, too slow, and he always hated being kept waiting for anyone, especially a woman. But those fiery complaints didn’t help when he kneaded the full flesh on her thighs and stomach, or when the waiting became anticipation of the first, piercing note of her “sorry” that would engulf him in a symphony for the rest of the evening. Those damn shivers would return, leap on him unexpectedly over a plate of fettuccine or in a darkened theater, to remind him that something was happening inside that was beyond his control. Something that kept drawing him much too quickly into a center that held his first memory of love and fear: the dark, mellow texture of her female being. White chocolate, he’d think, burying his nose into her soft neck and nibbling upward toward the dimpled chin, seeking the hidden essence of cocoa that was embedded in the deep-yellow cream of her skin, that he could taste on his tongue, smell on his hands and arms. The colors and tints from the thighs that brought him into the world, the breasts that kept him alive and warm. The mindless plunge and search for the eternal circle that would let him die over and over in the cavity that gave him life.
But Xavier had come a long way from the womb. At thirty-one, he knew he’d come a long way, period. Graduating from the University of Nowhere, through a mixture of patience, hard work, and premeditated luck he had managed to move up in a place like General Motors, where it was so easy to get lost among the myriad Ivy League and ivory-skinned credentials of men who were just as sharp and hardworking as he was. While his rise had been meteoric and his cashmere suits managed to withstand the change of altitude, that tenth-floor office with its shag carpet and oak panels housed a fragile god. Because Xavier was forced to see his exploits as much more than those of some superman, he had to join the rest of General Motors and worship the rise of a Super Nigger. So he found himself as only a high priest perched in a temple and burdened with the care of this image. And like all fragile gods, it demanded constant attention and surveillance for any telltale cracks in the clay feet, a softening around the knees, a dulling of the luster.
He was holding down two full-time jobs, and he had to carry one home with him all the time. He took it on vacations and to the gym and to visits with his grandmother. It went to bars and ball games and to bed with him. There wasn’t a moment of his life that Xavier could afford to forget his duties as high priest, because if the image ever crumbled, his own fate wasn’t too far behind. He didn’t dare question the validity of this worship, or even the power of this hollow god, because one reality was clear: that was all they had given him to serve; and somehow in serving, he had become. So he feared this rapid descent into the essence of Roxanne while knowing no other way to be complete. Could his god survive in the arms and between the thighs of the first flesh that knew his true mortality? Or would it crack
under the echoes of those eyes that put ice packs on his bruised genitals when he was sent home early from boy scout camp?
Xavier needed time to think this present situation out—lots of time—but he didn’t trust himself. His insides were out of control and he knew that if he didn’t take some sort of drastic action, he would ask Roxanne Tilson to marry him. And the only thing that frightened him more than that was the thought that she would say yes. He had tried everything to discourage her so she’d take the matter out of his hands. He didn’t call when promised, he broke dates, confused himself and her with excessive warmth and then excessive coldness. He’d even committed the unforgivable sin in a black woman’s canon by openly dating white women and seeming to enjoy it. Surely, that was enough to have her discount him as a piece of garbage, a lost soul. But after taking that empty-headed receptionist to Winston’s wedding and making a complete fool of himself, hoping Roxanne would hear about it and jump to all sorts of conclusions, the phone remained silent all morning. That really pissed him off. Here he was all day yesterday thinking about her, and in a few weak moments even wishing that she was the one beside him; and now today she was on his mind, wearing him out well beyond the true importance she held in his life—and no call. It was impossible that she hadn’t heard; half the neighborhood had been at that reception. No, she was just waiting him out like she always did. The woman was definitely manipulative, never complaining or asking where he’d been from week to week. Pushy and conniving is all it was. Pushing herself into his head so he’d have to start caring about why she didn’t care.
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