Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  “You didn't have to,” Ciel snapped.

  “Why you mad at me, Ciel? It's your life, honey.”

  “Oh, Mattie, you don't understand. He's really straightened up this time. He's got a new job on the docks that pays real good, and he was just so depressed before with the new baby and no work. You'll see. He's even gone out now to buy paint and stuff to fix up the apartment. And, and Serena needs a daddy.”

  “You ain't gotta convince me, Ciel.”

  No, she wasn't talking to Mattie, she was talking to herself. She was convincing herself it was the new job and the paint and Serena that let him back into her life. Yet, the real truth went beyond her scope of understanding. When she laid her head in the hollow of his neck there was a deep musky scent to his body that brought back the ghosts of the Tennessee soil of her childhood. It reached up and lined the inside of her nostrils so that she inhaled his presence almost every minute of her life. The feel of his sooty flesh penetrated the skin of her fingers and coursed through her blood and became one, somewhere, wherever it was, with her actual being. But how do you tell yourself, let alone this practical old woman who loves you, that he was back because of that. So you don't.

  You get up and fix you both another cup of coffee, calm the fretting baby on your lap with her pacifier, and you pray silently—very silently—behind veiled eyes that the man will stay.

  Ciel was trying to remember exactly when it had started to go wrong again. Her mind sought for the slender threads of a clue that she could trace back to—perhaps—something she had said or done. Her brow was set tightly in concentration as she folded towels and smoothed the wrinkles over and over, as if the answer lay concealed in the stubborn creases of the terry cloth.

  The months since Eugene's return began to tick off slowly before her, and she examined each one to pinpoint when the nagging whispers of trouble had begun in her brain. The friction on the towels increased when she came to the month that she had gotten pregnant again, but it couldn't be that. Things were different now. She wasn't sick as she had been with Serena, he was still working—no, it wasn't the baby. It's not the baby, it's not the baby—the rhythm of those words sped up the motion of her hands, and she had almost yanked and folded and pressed them into a reality when, bewildered, she realized that she had run out of towels.

  Ciel jumped when the front door slammed shut. She waited tensely for the metallic bang of his keys on the coffeetable and the blast of the stereo. Lately that was how Eugene announced his presence home. Ciel walked into the living room with the motion of a swimmer entering a cold lake.

  “Eugene, you're home early, huh?”

  “You see anybody else sittin' here?” He spoke without looking at her and rose to turn up the stereo.

  He wants to pick a fight, she thought, confused and hurt. He knows Serena's taking her nap, and now I'm supposed to say, Eugene, the baby's asleep, please cut the music down. Then he's going to say, you mean a man can't even relax in his own home without being picked on? I'm not picking on you, but you're going to wake up the baby. Which is always supposed to lead to “You don't give a damn about me. Everybody's more important than me—that kid, your friends, everybody. I'm just chickenshit around here, huh?”

  All this went through Ciel's head as she watched him leave the stereo and drop defiantly back down on the couch. Without saying a word, she turned and went into the bedroom. She looked down on the peaceful face of her daughter and softly caressed her small cheek. Her heart became full as she realized, this is the only thing I have ever loved without pain. She pulled the sheet gently over the tiny shoulders and firmly closed the door, protecting her from the music. She then went into the kitchen and began washing the rice for their dinner.

  Eugene, seeing that he had been left alone, turned off the stereo and came and stood in the kitchen door.

  “I lost my job today,” he shot at her, as if she had been the cause.

  The water was turning cloudy in the rice pot, and the force of the stream from the faucet caused scummy bubbles in rise to the surface. These broke and sprayed tiny starchy panicles onto the dirty surface. Each bubble that broke seemed to increase the volume of the dogged whispers she had been ignoring for the last few months. She poured the dirty water off the rice to destroy and silence them, then watched with a malicious joy as they disappeared down the drain.

  “So now, how in the hell I'm gonna make it with no money huh? And another brat comin' here, huh?”

  The second change of the water was slightly clearer, but the starch-speckled bubbles were still there, and this time there was no way to pretend deafness to their message. She had stood at that sink countless times before, washing rice and she knew the water was never going to be totally clear. She couldn't stand there forever—her fingers were getting cold, and the rest of the dinner had to be fixed, and Serena would be waking up soon and wanting attention. Feverishly she poured the water off and tried again.

  “I'm fuckin' sick of never getting ahead. Babies and bills, that's all you good for.”

  The bubbles were almost transparent now, but when they broke they left light trails of starch on top of the water that curled around her fingers. She knew it would be useless to try again. Defeated, Ciel placed the wet pot on the burner, and the flames leaped up bright red and orange, turning the water droplets clinging on the outside into steam.

  Turning to him, she silently acquiesced. “All right, Eugene, what do you want me to do?”

  He wasn't going to let her off so easily. “Hey, baby, look, I don't care what you do. I just can't have all these hassles on me right now, ya know?”

  “I'll get a job. I don't mind, but I've got no one to keep Serena, and you don't want Mattie watching her.”

  “Mattle—no way. That fat bitch'll turn the kid against me. She hates my ass, and you know it.”

  “No, she doesn't, Eugene.” Ciel remembered throwing that at Mattie once. “You hate him, don't you?” “Naw, honey,” and she had cupped both hands on Ciel's face. “Maybe I just loves you too much.”

  “I don't give a damn what you say—she ain't minding my kid.”

  “Well, look, after the baby comes, they can tie my tubes—I don't care.” She swallowed hard to keep down the lie.

  “And what the hell we gonna feed it when it gets here, huh—air? With two kids and you on my back, I ain't never gonna have nothin'.” He came and grabbed her by the shoulders and was shouting into her face. “Nothin', do you hear me, nothin'!”

  “Nothing to it, Mrs. Turner.” The face over hers was as calm and antiseptic as the room she lay in. “Please, relax. I'm going to give you a local anesthetic and then perform a simple D&C, or what you'd call a scraping to clean out the uterus. Then you'll rest here for about an hour and be on your way. There won't even be much bleeding.” The voice droned on in its practiced monologue, peppered with sterile kindness.

  Ciel was not listening. It was important that she keep herself completely isolated from these surroundings. All the activities of the past week of her life were balled up and jammed on the right side of her brain, as if belonging to some other woman. And when she had endured this one last thing for her, she would push it up there, too, and then one day give it all to her—Ciel wanted no part of it.

  The next few days Ciel found it difficult to connect herself up again with her own world. Everything seemed to have taken on new textures and colors. When she washed the dishes, the plates felt peculiar in her hands, and she was more conscious of their smoothness and the heat of the water. There was a disturbing split second between someone talking to her and the words penetrating sufficiently to elicits response. Her neighbors left her presence with slight frown of puzzlement, and Eugene could be heard mumbling “Moody bitch.”

  She became terribly possessive of Serena. She refused to leave her alone, even with Eugene. The little girl went everywhere with Ciel, toddling along on plump uncertain legs. When someone asked to hold or play with her, Ciel sat nearby, watching every move. She found her
self walking into the bedroom several times when the child napped to see if she was still breathing. Each time she chided herself for this unreasonable foolishness, but within the next few minutes some strange force still drove her back.

  Spring was slowly beginning to announce itself at Brewster Place. The arthritic cold was seeping out of the worn gray bricks, and the tenants with apartment windows facing the street were awakened by six-o'clock sunlight. The music no longer blasted inside of 3C, and Ciel grew strong with the peacefulness of her household. The playful laughter of her daughter, heard more often now, brought a sort of redemption with it.

  “Isn't she marvelous, Mattie? You know she's even trying to make whole sentences. Come on, baby, talk for Auntie Mattie.”

  Serena, totally uninterested in living up to her mother's proud claims, was trying to tear a gold-toned button off the bosom of Mattie's dress.

  “It's so cute. She even knows her father's name. She says, ‘my Da da is Gene.' ”

  “Better teach her your name,” Mattie said, while playing with the baby's hand. “She'll be using it more.”

  Ciel's mouth flew open to ask her what she meant by that, but she checked herself. It was useless to argue with Mattie. You could take her words however you wanted. The burden of their truth lay with you, not her.

  Eugene came through the front door and stopped short when he saw Mattie. He avoided being around her as much as possible. She was always polite to him, but he sensed a silent condemnation behind even her most innocent words. He constantly felt the need to prove himself in front of her. These frustrations often took the form of unwarranted rudeness on his part.

  Serena struggled out of Mattie's lap and went toward her father and tugged on his legs to be picked up. Ignoring the child and cutting short the greetings of the two women, he said coldly, “Ciel, I wanna talk to you.”

  Sensing trouble, Mattie rose to go. “Ciel, why don't you let me take Serena downstairs for a while? I got some ice cream for her.”

  “She can stay right here,” Eugene broke in. “If she needs ice cream, I can buy it for her.”

  Hastening to soften his abruptness, Ciel said, “That's okay, Mattie, it's almost time for her nap. I'll bring her later—after dinner.”

  “Alright. Now you all keep good.” Her voice was warm. “You too, Eugene,” she called back from the front door.

  The click of the lock restored his balance to him. “Why in the hell is she always up here?”

  “You just had your chance—why didn't you ask her yourself? If you don't want her here, tell her to stay out,” Ciel snapped back confidently, knowing he never would.

  “Look, I ain't got time to argue with you about that old hag. I got big doings in the making, and I need you to help me pack.” Without waiting for a response, he hurried into the bedroom and pulled his old leather suitcase from under the bed.

  A tight, icy knot formed in the center of Ciel's stomach and began to melt rapidly, watering the blood in her legs so that they almost refused to support her weight. She pulled Serena back from following Eugene and sat her in the middle of the living room floor.

  “Here, honey, play with the blocks for Mommy—she has to talk to Daddy.” She piled a few plastic alphabet blocks in front of the child, and on her way out of the room, he glanced around quickly and removed the glass ashtrays of the coffee table and put them on a shelf over the stereo.

  Then, taking a deep breath to calm her racing heart, she started toward the bedroom.

  Serena loved the light colorful cubes and would some times sit for an entire half-hour, repeatedly stacking them up and kicking them over with her feet. The hollow sound of their falling fascinated her, and she would often bang two of them together to re-create the magical noise. She was sitting, contentedly engaged in this particular activity, when slow dark movement along the baseboard caught her eye.

  A round black roach was making its way from behind the couch toward the kitchen. Serena threw one of her blocks at the insect, and, feeling the vibrations of the wall above it, the roach sped around the door into the kitchen. Finding a totally new game to amuse herself, Serena took off behind the insect with a block in each hand. Seeing her moving toy trying to bury itself under the linoleum by the garbage pail she threw another block, and the frantic roach now raced along the wall and found security in the electric wall socket under the kitchen table.

  Angry at losing her plaything, she banged the block against the socket, attempting to get it to come back out. When that failed, she unsuccessfully tried to poke her chubby finger into the thin horizontal slit. Frustrated, tiring of the game, she sat under the table and realized she had found an entirely new place in the house to play. The shiny chrome of the table and chair legs drew her attention, and she experimented with the sound of the block against their smooth surfaces.

  This would have entertained her until Ciel came, but the roach, thinking itself safe, ventured outside of the socket. Serena gave a cry of delight and attempted to catch her lost playmate, but it was too quick and darted back into the wall. She tried once again to poke her finger into the slit. Then a bright slender object, lying dropped and forgotten, came into her view. Picking up the fork, Serena finally managed to fit the thin flattened prongs into the electric socket.

  Eugene was avoiding Ciel's eyes as he packed. “You know, baby, this is really a good deal after me bein' out of work for so long.” He moved around her still figure to open the drawer that held his T-shirts and shorts. “And hell, Maine ain't far. Once I get settled on the docks up there, I'll be able to come home all the time.”

  “Why can't you take us with you?” She followed each of his movements with her eyes and saw herself being buried in the case under the growing pile of clothes.

  “'Cause I gotta check out what's happening before I drag you and the kid up there.”

  “I don't mind. We'll make do. I've learned to live on very little.”

  “No, it just won't work right now. I gotta see my way clear first.”

  “Eugene, please.” She listened with growing horror to herself quietly begging.

  “No, and that's it!” He flung his shoes into the suitcase.

  “Well, how far is it? Where did you say you were going?” She moved toward the suitcase.

  “I told ya—the docks in Newport.”

  “That's not in Maine. You said you were going to Maine.”

  “Well, I made a mistake.”

  “How could you know about a place so far up? Who got you the job?”

  “A friend.”

  “Who?”

  “None of your damned business!” His eyes were flashing with the anger of a caged animal. He slammed down the top of the suitcase and yanked it off the bed.

  “You're lying, aren't you? You don't have a job, do your Do you?”

  “Look, Ciel, believe whatever the fuck you want to. I gotta go.” He tried to push past her.

  She grabbed the handle of the case. “No, you can't go.”

  “Why?”

  Her eyes widened slowly. She realized that to answer that would require that she uncurl that week of her life, pushed safely up into her head, when she had done all those terrible things for that other woman who had wanted an abortion. She and she alone would have to take responsibility for them now. He must understand what those actions had meant to her, but somehow, he had meant even more. She sought desperately for the right words, but it all came out as—

  “Because I love you.”

  “Well, that ain't good enough.”

  Ciel had let the suitcase go before he jerked it away. She looked at Eugene, and the poison of reality began to spread through her body like gangrene. It drew his scent out of her nostrils and scraped the veil from her eyes, and he stood before her just as he really was—a tall, skinny black man with arrogance and selfishness twisting his mouth into a strange shape. And, she thought, I don't feel anything now. But soon, very soon, I will start to hate you. I promise—I will hate you. And I'll never forgive m
yself for not having done it sooner—soon enough to have saved my baby. Oh, dear God, my baby.

  Eugene thought the tears that began to crowd into her eyes were for him. But she was allowing herself this one last luxury of brief mourning for the loss of something denied to her. It troubled her that she wasn't sure exactly what that something was, or which one of them was to blame for taking it away. Ciel began to feel the overpowering need to be near someone who loved her. I'll get Serena and we'll go visit Mattie now, she thought in a daze.

  Then they heard the scream from the kitchen.

  The church was small and dark. The air hung about them like a stale blanket. Ciel looked straight ahead, oblivious to the seats filling up behind her. She didn't feel the damp pressure of Mattie's heavy arm or the doubt that invaded the air over Eugene's absence. The plaintive Merciful Jesuses, lightly sprinkled with sobs, were lost on her ears. Her dry eyes were locked on the tiny pearl-gray casket, flanked with oversized arrangements of red-carnationed bleeding hearts and white-lilied eternal circles. The sagging chords that came loping out of the huge organ and mixed with the droning voice of the black-robed old man behind the coffin were also unable to penetrate her.

  Ciel's whole universe existed in the seven feet of space between herself and her child's narrow coffin. There was not even room for this comforting God whose melodious virtues floated around her sphere, attempting to get in. Obviously, He had deserted or damned her, it didn't matter which. All Ciel knew was that her prayers had gone unheeded—that afternoon she had lifted her daughter's body off the kitchen floor, those blank days in the hospital, and now. So she was left to do what God had chosen not to.

  People had mistaken it for shock when she refused to cry. They thought it some special sort of grief when she stopped eating and even drinking water unless forced to; her hair went uncombed and her body unbathed. But Ciel was not grieving for Serena. She was simply tired of hurting. And she was forced to slowly give up the life that God had refused to take from her.