“You’re welcome, honey,” She lifted the cake almost reverently. “I’ll take this in for you. You go on and get those children ready.”
The small room where her Sunday school class met could hardly contain the feverish mood of the children. They fidgeted and jabbed each other with elbows in nervous stage fright. Angel managed to get them dressed, and then ran through a quick rehearsal before regular services started.
As the pianist struck up the prelude to services, she herded the children toward the sanctuary. The miniature villagers squirmed in agitation as the pastor announced the special play Angel had written for their study of the Old Testament. She’d chosen the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who defied Nebuchadnezzar, mainly because she loved the names of the principles, although she kept that fact to herself.
The pianist took up the music Angel had found to complement their story as the narrator, a mature girl from town, began to read. Among the nervous children only Shadrach was calm, his dark curls cascading over his ears, dark eyes clear and untroubled. Angel was touched, looking at him, pleased at the dignity he lent his simple role. She would have to remember to tell him he was a natural actor.
After the pageant, the church applauded, the hymns were sung and the pastor delivered his message. As Angel listened, she was puzzled at the anger that edged his words, surprised that he chose “Love thy neighbor” as his subject when the pageant would have given him such a perfect opening for any number of other things.
Still, it wasn’t her place to question his direction from God. A warmth spread through her as she listened. Whatever the end result might be, she was serving her neighbors to the best of her ability. Perhaps time would mellow the rigidity of the townspeople. Hadn’t Georgia come around?
When the congregation stood to sing the Doxology, Angel’s voice rose sweet and clear. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below . . .”
Her neighbor in the pew glanced at her and Angel smiled around her singing mouth.
Because of the weather, the potluck had been transferred to the basement, a damp but serviceable room below the sanctuary where long tables had been set up with folding chairs. Along one wall, tables groaned with the best the women had to offer—a huge, shining barbequed brisket with slices of orange and lemon peel clinging to the meat, a ham slick with brown sugar and studded with pineapple, heaps of fried chicken and potato salad and deviled eggs, a fruit salad swimming with cream, cakes and pies and gallons of sweet tea. Freshly brewed coffee sent up its fragrant steam from a fifty-cup container.
Flanked by her Sunday school class, Angel made her way down the line, filling her plate with a little of everything until it nearly collapsed under the weight.
“Are you gonna eat all that?” asked Harold, the boy who had played Shadrach.
“You betcha,” Angel answered. “I’m hungry enough to eat a hog.”
“Me, too,” piped Margaret, the child on Angel’s other side. “I’m specially gonna have some of them debiled eggs.”
“You’re gonna have some of those deviled eggs,” Angel corrected gently.
“Right. Those.”
Edwin Walker eased up behind Angel. In his suit and tie, his hair combed neatly from his face, it was hard to think of him as a threat. “Which one of them cakes is yours, Angel? I know you had to bring a cake and I want me a piece.”
He leaned a hair too close, until her vision was filled with his neon eyes and full lips. She turned her head. “The chocolate with mint leaves on top.”
“I’ve been waiting all morning for this.” He handed his plate to the matron behind the table. “Miz Hayden, would you be so kind as to cut me a slice of that chocolate cake there?”
“Certainly, Edwin. How’s your mama?”
“Oh, she’s fine. Doc says she’ll have that cast off in a week. I know she’ll be glad to be up and around again.”
“You tell her I said hello, won’t you?”
Edwin smiled, his mesmerizing eyes fixed directly on Mrs. Hayden. “I’ll do that.”
He’d managed not to dump a whole bottle of cologne upon himself this morning, Angel thought with a smile. A wisp of the exotic aftershave he wore drifted toward her, making her think of seaports and sailors.
“You gonna let me sit with you today, Angel?”
“I don’t think there’s room, Edwin. My class already asked and I told them they could.” She pointed to a chess pie. “I’d have a piece of that one, Miz Hayden. And cut a piece of the chocolate for my aunt Georgia. I promised I’d save her a piece.”
In spite of her indication that the children would leave him no room, Edwin followed Angel to one of the long tables, her Sunday school class trailing her like a hive of bees, bees that settled around the table. Edwin squeezed between two of them cheerfully, right across the table from Angel.
She didn’t speak much to him, listening to the children instead, but his gaze, bright and unnerving, was fixed upon her face as he ate. As she finished her meal and the bees began to buzz away, he spoke.
“How’s life down in nigger-town, baby?”
She winced. “You’ve got the manners of a mongrel dog, Edwin Walker.”
“Aw, honey, I didn’t mean no disrespect.”
Angel looked at him.
“You Coreys are just touchy, that’s all. No white person in this county gets upset about niggers ’cept y’all. And your daddy was crazy, Angel. Everybody knew it. Why don’t you just realize your natural place and forget about them poor colored folks?”
She folded her hands on the table. “And do what, exactly?”
“Get outta that store and find yourself a husband, have some babies or something.”
For a brief second, Angel wished for the clarity of his clear-cut world. If she had been raised like Edwin, she’d never think about her deepest heart being afraid of standing alone in the presence of Isaiah High and what that meant. She’d be afraid for a simple reason then, because any decent white woman was afraid of being alone with any colored man. Not this complex thing she felt constantly with Isaiah, that pinching in her chest she couldn’t shake. She’d never have to despair over the business in her store falling off. She would go to town and see silly movies instead of working herself half to death.
Then she thought of Paul’s grandmother, dragging the child with her to work until she no longer had a place. And thought of the women who stopped in the store early, because she’d decided to give them a place to have a cup of coffee. She thought of the Walker brothers cheating their colored customers, thought of the rhythms of black laughter and black voices lost to her.
She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s what God has planned for me, Edwin.”
He laughed and tipped back his chair, folding his hands over his tie. “We’ll see about that, honey.”
Angel stood. “Excuse me. I’ve got to take this cake to my aunt.”
“Nice talking with you.”
“The pleasure was all yours.”
His laughter followed her as she walked quickly away.
Georgia was sitting with her friends Margaret and June Green.
“Here’s your cake, Aunt Georgia.”
“Now, isn’t that beautiful?” Georgia patted the place next to her. “Have a seat, sugar.”
Just then, the pastor touched her shoulder. “Morning, y’all,” he said to the older women. “Angel, can I talk to you for a minute, please? In private, if you would.”
“Of course,” Angel said. “Excuse me.”
He led her to an empty corner of the room, past the full tables and animated conversation of the diners. His steps were filled with a stony heaviness rare to him and a clutch of worry rippled through her stomach—had there been some violence or a death she would mourn? When they reached the corner, he turned, a frown creasing the pale flesh between his clear, intelligent eyes. He licked his lips.
“You’re scaring me to death. Whatever it is, just spit it out.”
&nb
sp; “Angel, I have to tell you that you won’t be teaching your Sunday School class anymore.”
“What?”
“The board voted last night to find another teacher for the six to nines. There some feeling that you might be . . . morally delinquent.” His nostrils flared. “I fought it, Angel, but I’m a new preacher and ain’t got a lot of political influence around here.”
Dumbstruck, Angel stared at him. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been teaching Sunday school since I was seventeen years old. And I’m a good teacher! The children like me!”
“I know.” He squeezed her arm. “I’m so sorry, Angel.”
A red fury surged up through her throat, blurring her vision with a bloody cloud. “Lord knows I’ll certainly corrupt those children,” she said bitterly.
Tears of anger pricked her eyes as she whirled away from him. As she marched back up the aisle between the tables with their folding chairs, the murmuring voices quieted. Angel ignored them and headed straight for Georgia.
At the table’s edge, she quivered uncontrollably for a long moment before she could speak, fighting the tears, fighting to hold control of her voice so that it would not quaver.
When she managed her words, they were low and flat and cold. “You knew,” she said. “And you had the gall to come down there and get me this morning like you loved me.”
Georgia tugged her sweater over her bosom, her mouth pinched closed.
Angel leaned over the table. “You knew that class was the most important thing in my life right now and you didn’t even try to stop them, did you?”
Georgia, lips grey around the edges, tried to argue. “Honey, I thought maybe it would bring you to your senses.”
“Don’t even talk to me anymore. And as far as I’m concerned, you’re dead from this moment on.” She spun away, holding her head up as she made her way to the door.
“Suit yourself, girl,” Georgia called behind her. “You gonna die crazy Just like your daddy.”
Angel left the church in the pouring rain. No one followed her and she didn’t look back.
Isaiah had read long into the night, and picked up the book Angel had loaned him in the silence of Sunday morning at home, his mother and sister out to church no matter what the weather. He never went, figuring God knew where he was and how he felt.
Around one, he finished reading and set the book aside, feeling restless, and paced out to the porch to stare at the rain. In the back of his mind was the long, long winter crossing France and into Germany. The cold. The damp. The endless gray skies.
Truth be told, he was bored.
It would be hours before anybody got out of church and he’d been warned to keep his hands off the roast his mama had put in the pot before she left. He wondered how the roof of the Corey store was holding up against the rain and played with the notion of going over to check. He could take back the library book while he was at it, so it wouldn’t be late.
Exhaling, he shook his head. Excuses. Every bit of it.
He’d known it would be hard to put up the walls between them again after the long exchange of letters. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t planned on coming home at all. No point to it.
This morning, he’d awakened with the sense of her folded into the crooks of his elbows and the palms of his hands. For fifteen years, maybe twenty, he’d kept himself in check, building between them a wall of books and plans and women who eased his physical hungers.
At sixteen, now, he’d believed it might be possible to die of love. Every glimpse of her, every word she spoke to him, was a torture, pleasure and agony. His crazed longing gave him vivid dreams, even more vividly detailed daydreams.
He hadn’t died. But his friendship with Solomon deteriorated and fell away, a childhood fruit gone to rot. He avoided the store, kept to himself and lower Gideon where Angel would not venture. And when the Germans invaded Poland, he escaped into the Army.
At seven, Isaiah had told his father he intended to marry Angel Corey. Jordan had stopped dead in the middle of the bridge and knelt down to stare in his son’s eyes. He gripped Isaiah’s arms so hard there had been bruises the next day. “No, you ain’t, boy. Don’t you ever say it again. Ever. Hear?”
Terrified, Isaiah had nodded. For two weeks, he was forbidden to go to the store. But he’d never gained a lick of sense where Angel was concerned. Didn’t have any now. Fact was, he couldn’t let her drown in that store all by herself the way she had last time.
He found an umbrella and stuck her library book under his shirt, then gave himself over to the simple pleasure of walking in the rain on the deserted road. Down the road to the bridge, over the rushing water, back up toward Gideon proper.
As he came up the road toward the store, he saw Angel. Never had she looked more pitiful. He paused, marshaling himself. She stood in front of the store, muddy to her knees. Her Sunday dress was stuck to her legs and her shoes were in her hand, saved from the mud but ruined from the rain all the same. Rain dripped in rivulets from the ends of her hair and ran down her nose.
Something terrible had happened, he thought. “Angel,” he said gently, holding the umbrella over her. “What are you doing, girl?”
She swiveled her face around to him and the stillness he had thought to be some kind of pitiable defeat showed instead to be a clear and burning fury. With an expression of great disdain, she lifted her chin at the porch.
Isaiah looked. In red paint on the floor of the porch, someone had scrawled “Nigger lover” in letters two feet high. A chill touched him.
With an animal cry of rage, Angel threw her ruined shoes down the road toward town. In stocking feet she climbed the steps and carefully leapt over the letters to go inside.
In a moment, she reappeared with a bucket and a scrub brush, then fell to her knees to scrub the N away.
Isaiah climbed up beside her. Taking a second rag, he began at the opposite end to wash the letters away. The paint had not dried except in spots, but in the weathered floorboards it left behind a ghost image, pale but discernible.
Angel didn’t speak until she had washed the first three letters off as well as she could. By then, her hands and arms were stained with the red paint, but her fury seemed to have vented itself somewhat in the scrubbing. When she spoke, her tone was almost conversational.
“They took my Sunday School class away from me this morning.”
He rocked back up on his heels. Waited.
She dipped her brush and started on the second G. “I’ve had that class for six years. Before that, I taught the fours and fives.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” She bent her head over the next letter. “But I’ll be damned if they’ll beat me. They’ve underestimated me all of my life. They won’t anymore.”
Underestimated. Isaiah thought about that as she put her weight behind the cloth in her hand, rubbing with her soap-reddened hands. It stung a little, that word. He remembered the letters he’d written and never sent.
“Damn them! I’m good with those children. They deserve to have me!” She stood and kicked the bucket hard with the side of her foot, sending water spewing out into the grayness beyond the porch.
She slammed inside. Isaiah glanced at the spilled bucket. He dropped his cloth and followed her. “You swore,” he said. “Twice. I’ve never heard you swear in my life.”
Slumping forward on the counter, she said, “I never had so much call to swear before this.”
There was sound of weeping in her voice and he crossed the room to stand beside the counter. Her wet hair fell over her hands and face, and her shoulder blades stuck up in sharp relief on her back. “Don’t cry,” he said, helplessly.
“I’m not crying.” She straightened and faced him, pushing tendrils of wet hair from her face. “I’m just tired. Disappointed in everybody. They’re treating me like a harlot.”
Her face was washed clean by the rain, and age showed a little at the corners of her eyes. A lock of wet hair stuck up over her for
ehead, and he wanted to push it down, but instead he said, “They just wish you were a harlot, Angel. Make it easier for their consciences. If you’re a good woman, they’d have to think about what that means.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “Thank you.” She shivered suddenly. “I’m going to put on some dry clothes and then make some coffee. You want a dry shirt?”
“No, uh, I . . . just came to check on the roof and bring you back your book.” He put it on the counter and backed away. “I guess I better be getting back.”
“No sense going in the pouring rain.” She bustled out from behind the counter as if it didn’t matter, but he knew she was lonely. Lonelier than he was by far. “Might as well stay and have a cup of coffee since you’re here. Store is closed today, and nobody is going to be out in this rain, anyhow.”
He frowned briefly, glanced over his shoulder as if someone was looking. Gave a nod. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”
“Fine. Won’t take me but a minute.”
— 17 —
Happy Howllllaween! 1943
Dear Isaiah,
We’re right in the midst of the big rush of Christmas mailings, but hopefully you’ll get this in time for Christmas. My daddy says a soldier always needs more socks, but I say you might need fudge more. I knitted most of these things myself and hope they fit both of you—and don’t you dare laugh at my knitting Isaiah High, until you take a look. I’ve made a lot of progress the last few years.
I had a letter from Mrs. Wentworth. What a nice lady! I’ve sent along some more pecans for her. All the magazines are for you, of course. They’re out of date, but we’d just be throwing them away, so you might as well have them.
As for the book, I’m sure you can get plenty now, all the same, I can’t think of a better present for a man who likes to read as much as you do.
The Sleeping Night Page 10
