I put my hand up to the cross Granma’am gave me and hold onto it while I try to point my mind forward. After a few minutes, tears well up in my eyes, and run down into my ears. I get up, and tiptoe round the flat.
Big Jim and David got used to findin me awake, even though they tried to tiptoe round too. They would look at me with two faces: guilt and relief. “Did we wake you up, Neesey?” one of them would say.
Now, how you be a big grown man, and know that there’s two of you up, rushin round, makin coffee, runnin water, pullin sandwiches wrapped in wax paper out the Frigidaire, snappin lunch pails shut on those big hinges they have, fillin thermoses, wearin work boots, countin change and rushin back to where you slept to get your watch—now, how you gone keep from wakin up the stranger in the house, she who sleeps on a cot in the front room?
“Naw,” I answer, “I always wake up early.”
“You makin sandwiches?” the other might say.
“All right,” I might answer. Or on occasion, “I put y’all’s lunch in tinfoil last night. Look in the box on the second rack.”
And then, after they were dressed and gone, there would be a little piece of house for me to move around in. Then I would go on in the kitchen, have myself a cup a coffee, wipe the counters to a shine, look out the alley window, decide what I would straighten up for the day. Granma’am’s rhythm was in me.
Once, when Margarete and Big Jim are both out, I go in to sweep out their closet and get under their bed. Before, I had been too nervous to clean in there, but when I walk by their door sometimes, dust dances in their doorway, lit by the sun through their bedroom windows. They have the best room in the house; it gets the afternoon. I am being so thorough everywhere, but I decide not to spend too much time in there; I will not wander or try to get to know their things. I clean quickly, in stages, so that if they come in, I can move out.
Their closet is divided: Margarete gets the left, Big Jim the right. Big Jim has belts and pants and a few shirts. Most everything is black or blue, except the greenish clothes he wears to work. His work clothes are folded, or rolled, into a stack near the front on the floor on his side. Four greenish trousers and three shirts. His dirty work uniforms must be somewhere else. When I was learnin how to use the wash machine, he told me he has two weeks’ worth of work clothes.
In Margarete’s closet I find a pair of green shoes, with eye-bashin heels and roach-killin toes. The pointed green shoes kick me back to Virginia, to the staccato of Margarete’s fast walk down Granma’am’s hall, and through Granma’am’s front door. Well, all of it drums on my heart and my head. My bucket is stone cold when I put my hand back in it. I lean my head over the bucket, and breathe in ammonia to wake myself up. Granma’am told me never to breathe in ammonia, that the fumes would kill me. I decide not to mop the closet floor.
I reorganize all the clothes, hang them up neat, and I am still home alone. I go back to the kitchen and grab a dustrag from under the sink; I also put clear hot water in the bucket. I go back to their room; I dust off and wipe down all the furniture tops, and the brackets that hold their mattresses. Swipe the night tables, and rub down the lamps, there are three in the room. I wish I could get to that light fixture in the ceiling, but I haven’t seen no ladder.
There is a throw rug between the bed and Margarete’s vanity dresser. It is dark, maroon and blue. My sweepin might be loosenin up the pile from the rug. I wish for a line so I could beat it, but there is no outdoors line for the upstairs flat. I pull Margarete’s and Big Jim’s shoes out the closet, sweep the closet out and put the shoes back—Big Jim’s on one side near the front, and Margarete’s along the walls everywhere else. I tried to do most of my cleanin and handlin of things while Luke edward and Margarete especially are out. I don’t want to get caught with my hands deep in other people’s things.
Somehow I expect the closets to bring me up to date. To substitute for the things nobody said, and that I wouldn’t know unless they told me. Nobody has said much. I don’t know what I expected, to come back and find that they would sit me down: Neesey, this is all that’s happened since you lived with us last. That would have been nice; I could have asked questions. But of course no one does, and I don’t really expect it. Fact, more than makin clear what has happened with the family, the closets just tell me that I’m hungry for a place to put my things. That is so like me, to work feverishly in other people’s interest, and discover from the work a naked ache of my own.
No one had offered me a closet yet. And there wasn’t much room in any of their closets, anyway, even after I had cleaned and straightened and replaced.
I wet the broom tips, so it’s easier to sweep the dust from the rug. I drag the rug to the front room to do this wet sweep, and I’m careful not to spread the dirt. The wet broom and sweepin remind me of Lonts. Lonts was Lantene’s brother, and Lantene Ownes is my best friend from down home. Her brother Lonts died not long after I came down home. Lantene and I was just gettin to be real good pals. Poor Lantene, her heart near broke. One thing to have a brother, out somewhere near the edge. Another thing to have a brother killed dead by it.
SOMETHING POSSESSES ME to change my mind, to go ahead and mop. I have finished everything, still nobody is home. There is still more time. Maybe I think I won’t get a chance to get back in there. I notice that there’s not enough fresh smell behind my hard work. That’s what it was. So I retie my hair, and go for the mop and bucket again. I roll the rug up to the side this time, and in a big hurry, one that makes me laugh, I mop their bedroom floor, take the carefully arranged shoes back out from the closet, mop the closet underneath all the pants and skirts and sweaters that hang at every length. The sense that I should not be in their room ticks in me like a clock motor, so I move around in there like a wound-up toy.
I am near finished, and it is near five. The window I opened has made the room cool, but it has helped so much to air it out and dry the floor. I remove all my tools to the kitchen, and go back to observe my work. I feel accomplished, and the room smells like bleach and outside air.
Margarete is ecstatic. I am not surprised. She has always been fond of bleach—bleach for floors, bleach for clothes, bleach for hair (her own hair, not mine). She comes in, as usual, tired from standin at the straightenin chair. Usually, she plops down in the big chair in the front room, but this day she goes into her room, shrieks, and comes back to the kitchen to pull my plaits and give me sugar. I am makin potatoes to go under the meat loaf gravy, and I am surprised when she spends the whole evenin stretched across her bed, lazin through a magazine or somethin. When Big Jim comes home, she does not come out, and then the boys come home one at a time, and that’s how everybody eats, on entrance. Big Jim takes food in to Margarete and tells me I’m gone make somebody a good wife.
When I finished the dishes, I did not sweep the floor. I went, instead, to sleep on my cot. Not sweepin the floor was hard for me on account of once I start to clean, it’s hard for me to stop. But I had done enough for one day.
LUKE EDWARD DOESN’T see me when he comes in because I am under the table. But I hear him: he goes in to the icebox and pulls out the leftover fish I fried. He shakes salt into the pie pan I put the fish away in; I hear the salt tinkle. He stands beside the icebox lookin like a five-year-old—big ears from behind, cheeks movin up and down. He hears my scrub brush rubbin. He turns around and looks and then bends over, and sees me under the table. “Neesey, what are you doing?” he says.
I back out from under the table, mostly because I am not gone be able to hear Luke edward from underneath there. Also I like to stop and talk to Luke edward, so I come out and leave the pail underneath, that way it won’t get knocked over.
Luke edward has a piece a cold fish in one hand, and I wonder why is he lookin so surprised.
“What are you doing, Neesey?” If I was standin there with roll dough hangin out my ears and nose, Luke edward would not be lookin at me more strange.
“Whassa matter wit you, Luke edward?” I am
alarmed. If I let them, Margarete and Luke edward would have me thinkin I’m nuts. I brush past him to the stove where I check if any coffee is left. None but the bitters. I brush past Luke edward again, because he has not moved. I take the can a coffee out the box, and commence to makin another half-pot. “You want some coffee, Luke edward?”
“What’s the matter with you, Neesey?” he says in answer, as if I haven’t asked him about the coffee in between. “What are you doing?” He insists that I answer him. He can only sound but so stern, because he has fish in his mouth and bones in his hands. Him bein there with the fish I cooked makes me feel one up somehow.
“I’m helpin Margarete with the house,” I say. “I’m just washin down the wallboards before I scrub the floors.”
“Mama ask you to do all that?”
I turn to him. “Naw, Margarete did not ask me. But it needs doin, and I’m doin it. Do you want some coffee, Luke edward?”
“Got any ice tea?” he says. He has returned his concentration to the fish. “What’s that you got on?” he goes on to ask me, his mouth full again.
I look down at the old dress and apron I got on. “It’s a old housedress I found.”
“Where?” he says, and then before I can answer, “Never mind. What about those shoes?”
“They some old shoes a Margarete’s,” I say. “I only got one pair and I ain’t cleanin in them.”
“Oh,” he says. “And what’s that you got on your head?”
“Come on, Luke edward. It’s a rag I’m usin to tie up my hair. Don’t act like you don’t tie your own hair up at night.”
“It ain’t night, Neesey. Besides, where’d you get that headrag?”
“It’s a piece a old shirt that I found round here. I tore off the sleeve parts, and I’m usin the square part for a head rag.” I heard a proud sound about my industry in my voice.
“Well, you look a sight. You got on more rag than you got hair, don’t you? I think you should quit scrubbing and put on some clothes. When are you going to school, anyway?” He is puttin the water glass to his lips when he ask me that. I sat it in front a him cause ain’t no ice tea. He look like Margarete the way she scoot her eyes and look out over the cup rim. At you, at me, decidin. Well, he don’t have to be so snappy.
I don’t say too much else.
Luke edward leaves the fish bones in the empty pie plate. You can still see the shape of the fish, but all the meat is gone.
I CLEANED LUKE edward and David’s room too. I learned a few things in there. Luke edward buys new cosmetics when his old ones are only half used. On his side of the closet is a nice wood crate that still smells like timber. The crate is now full of half-empty colognes, beat-down hair brushes, and near-empty yellow tins of Murray’s Superior. All these I found misplaced in his room. I wiped each container clean of dust, and stacked them neatly in the crate.
I also find a lamp he made—I remember when—from popsickle sticks. I loved the lamp when he made it, and now I idolize him lookin at it again, here on my knees at his closet door. The lamp was his one pursuit for a time. Aunt Lena, who had a stick lamp of her own, hand-counted the glued-together sticks on her lamp and told him how many he would need. Margarete bought him his ice cream, and he constantly cluttered the sink soakin off the orange stains. Even if me or David ate the ice cream, he handled all his sticks himself. Some he had to rub with bleach, and Margarete helped him with that.
The popsickle-stick lamp was not an easy design. The shade of it has six sides, all arranged. He taunted me then, because he learned the word hexagon. He wouldn’t tell me what it meant. The stem of the lamp is narrower and the bottom widens out again. The making of the lamp was a complicated peace: art, geometry, electricity, engineering, curiosity, concentration, vocabulary, boyhood. It took Luke edward a long time to make that lamp, I remember. Now the cord is frayed, and a teeny-weeny section of wires shows through.
Way back in his closet, David has a strongbox. I discover it behind Luke edward’s broken lamp. I find it at eleven o’clock, after I have made the beds and put dinner in to roast. I try to guess what’s in it until I finish David and Luke edward’s whole room. By three-thirty, when I’m done, and the whole house smells like pot roast, I have decided that David has not locked the strongbox; I haven’t found any keys. He could have the keys on him, but that’s not like David to think his strongbox would need to be locked. I guess: inside must be a picture of Serena—she’s his girlfriend—and some money. Anybody know David know he keeps a stash, cash money for emergencies we hope don’t happen. He is responsible like that.
Serena is a little bit taller than David and is heavyset for a woman. She is darker than David too: she crosses the shades of difference between thick maple and molasses, between plain hard work and hard work plus religion. Serena is religious and a blessing for David. She is all busyness. She has a job minding children and goes to church Sundays plus two times in the week.
Most of the Sundays, David goes out to Serena’s where she stays with her mother and the rest of her family. Sometimes, though, Serena comes by after service to see about David. She stands at the door, dressed in her hat and gloves. I open it. She got one of them faces so honest it’s wide, and hands so used to caring that her fingers are spread; she is ever interested in the new piece of furniture, ever ready for holding some little one’s hand, ever willing to help an elder by the elbow.
HIS STRONGBOX IS neatly packed with five-dollar bills. Nobody’s picture is in there, except Lincoln’s. The box is full. Now I have my first secret since I came back to Detroit. David still hoards money, still hides it.
While I finish my work and the roast and rice bake cool, I think about a pie. There in my metal cooking bowl is an inch deep of flour, spread out in the bottom, half a cup. Into that loose white powder add one dollop of binding grease, take a fork and press and press. Add ice water, mix only enough to moisten. Form into a glutiny ball. Texture is correct when your fingerprints are visible. Leave sealed in wax paper until ready to fill. Roll out to one-fourth-inch thick and press again into pie pan. Bake until brown unless filling is hot in which case just pour in filling—the heat of the mixture will harden the shell. Bake pie in high oven. Let set. Enjoy.
IT IS THURSDAY, after I have been there a week. I have gotten all the surfaces clean, and so now I search for deeper occupations. By the time Margarete gets up, I have finished the front room wallboards. I have dumped the water into the commode, and I have come into the kitchen to see about ingredients for the stuffed peppers while I decide what I’ll do next. Margarete comes in to the room with me, and my pail is in the middle of the floor. I watch Margarete walk around it.
“Mornin, Neesey, how you?” Margarete’s voice is husky from her sleep. She has slept without tyin her head.
“Fine, how you?” I answer her back.
“What are you up doin so early this mornin?”
“Oh, I’m just washin up the wallboards.”
She holds a cup to her mouth and is lookin over at me; I see her eyes smile, and her lips turn up a little. I decide she is pleased.
“Big Jim say y’all goin somewhere this evenin, so I’ma make David and Luke edward stuffed peppers for dinner.”
“You ain’t gone eat none?” she ask me.
“Yeah, I’ma eat some,” I answer back, slowly.
After a few minutes, she says, “Well, that’ll be fine.” Then she goes on, “Neesey, you don’t have to wash the wallboards, you know.”
“Wait till you see in the front,” I say, excited, “all the brown dust is gone.”
“Well, I do heavy cleanin round here in spring and again before Christmas. You can help me do it at Christmastime.” I guess I look disappointed cause she says, “You already doin it now so go ahead, but you have to go to school next week. Don’t think you gone stay round this house and wash wallboards all winter.”
She is gone back to her room with her coffee, to get dressed. I go back out front to look at the wallboards dry. They are cl
eaner. They look much better. I need to push the furniture back against the wall.
MARGARETE SAID THINGS would change for me once I got up nerve to go to school, but I had had enough change already. I did not want any more. What did I want? I had to think. Somethin I knew or recognized, I guess. Maybe that’s why the stuffed peppers, the pies. Or maybe I wanted somethin to know or recognize me. Luke edward and Margarete looked at me funny, even David and Big Jim sometimes too. And these were my people.
Shucks, I was gone hafta go on out next week. I sighed and wiped the tiles.
MARGARETE HAD NICE floors. Neat wood slats, placed carefully in a design where the start and finish of the boards were alternated, and every one was angled at a slant. Somebody had thought about those floors, laid down and hammered each slat that way. I loved them; I coaxed dust from every corner. I collected mounds of sweep dust and used a big piece of cardboard for a dustpan. I wanted all the floors to look the same: caressed and neat and pretty, so carefully hammered in.
In the bathroom and kitchen, and on the back sleeping porch, linoleum was on the floors. I swept and mopped those too. First, with the canned Bab-O detergent Margarete kept underneath the kitchen sink. Then I went down to the store one day—Peckway’s it was called—because Big Jim had taken to leavin a dollar or two on the kitchen table for me to get whatever I planned to cook, he said. “Since you making the meals and all,” he said.
I bought two half-gallon bottles of ammonia. I ran buckets a water to put it in and always the water was too hot for my hands. I don’t know how many times I scalded myself. I don’t know how many times I winced, yelped, jerked my hand back from the steam. I had had to boil water down home, so this boilin hot water comin out of a spigot took me some time to get used to again.
I look around the bathroom while I wait for some a the heat to escape my second bucket. Steam rises from the pail. There is tile everywhere, back behind the big bathtub and halfway up all the walls. I plan to clean it all. I sit on the commode and wait, and I have pulled Margarete’s old housedress up under me so that it doesn’t droop down into the toilet water. Big Jim and David have both gone to work.
Good Negress Page 3
