Because of her reading so many things, Lily knew of dermatologists. She saved any money she could hide from her mother so she could go to one. It took three or four visits, but in time her skin cleared. Her eyes shone with her inner joy. Maddy thought the brightness in her eyes was for him even though she still showed no interest in him. He needed to believe that. She continued saving more of her little money from her mother, saving toward some future she wasn’t certain of.
Beneath all the interests she carried around in her head, Lily Bea’s heart was still steeped in misery. She thought her life was desolate and would always be desolate. But, in some small ways, her life was moving on.
She had always loved dancing, ballet and modern dancing. She would never let anyone see her try to use her body (which her family told her was so strange). But she had passed a new dance studio several times, dreamed about it, and decided to use a few of her dollars and sign up for classes. She loved the lessons she was able to take. The feel of her body moving lightly to the graceful, rich, full sounds of music. In her mind she danced, at last, like the fairies in fairy-tale books she loved. She prayed, “Heavenly God, thank you.” She was in the midst of another lift, a reaching, in her lonely life. Lily may have been poor, but her mind was rich. It was reaching out, branching, into something other than ugliness, anger, and poverty of spirit. She was slowly building her future.
Maddy Nettles was middling poor, but he was very skilled in cloths of many fabrics from having worked in his past on rich, luxurious passenger ships as a tailor or cleaner. He had learned from masters and his specialty was cleaning and caring for fine silks, satins, laces, and such. Over the years his reputation for such work was known and employed by the best cleaning establishments. They gave him their finest things to clean, things they did not want ruined by a novice because their customers were the rich and powerful. They didn’t come down to his shop, he picked orders up. When he had done their work he delivered them, finished and fine.
He had striven long and hard in his life, acquiring an angry, crippled leg along his way. He was very tight-fisted with his money. He wanted a woman, but he loved his money and did not want a woman who would abuse his money by spending too much of it. He wanted a woman, of his own, to sleep with every night. To love.
Maddy knew Lily Bea avoided people her own age. He thought, “A young wife, like Lily, might not be a bad idea. She can’t do no better noway.” He decided to ask Lily to marry him.
One night, after she had gone for the day, the shop was empty and dark, he wondered, “Should I ask her mama, or should I just go on and ask her?” He rubbed his crippled leg with one hand as he thought of the marriage. “She ain’t got no real home or nothin else she gonna hate to leave. Absolutely no real home whatsoever. Her mama ain’t nothin to count on neither.” These thoughts roiled around in his mind a week or two as he watched the young woman, then he decided to speak to her mother. “Because Lily Bea ain’t got sense enough to know the best thing to do about nothing!”
Also, he knew Lily Bea might refuse him. He knew better how to handle her mother, Sorty.
The next time, soon, Sorty came in to borrow a dollar or two, he spoke to her. “You know you got a fine hardworking girl here.”
Mindful of the money, and her own self-deception, she answered, “Well, I sure do my best! She all right. She do the best she can. It’s a good thing she good for somethin,” she laughed.
Maddy tried to laugh with Sorty, but could only smile a tight smile. “Sure is . . .” He paused. “If I could, and she wasn’t so young, I’d marry her, and keep her in good condition all her life. I mean, take her off your hands and take care of her . . . right.”
“Right?”
“Well, Sorty, you a busy woman with more on your mind than a young foolish girl around that you have to worry about. She at that age, she gonna get into somethin! If she was to have a good settled man, a husband, lookin out after her, you be better off.”
They laughed. Together.
Sorty, thinking to herself quickly, “Lily Bea ain’t ever goin to make it to no college, and ain’t nobody goin to be askin her to marry up with em, cause don’t nobody even ever ask her to go nowhere on a date or nothin. She might lay on me all my life, and I’m not gonna stay with that bastard I got much longer then these kids get grown, if I stay that long.”
“Well, Mr. Cleanerman, you might just have you a wife. She a good girl. A sweet girl. You could do a lot worser than Lily Bea! You and me’ll just have to talk a little bit more bout some things tween us. You just be thinkin bout how much you gonna be thankful to me! I’ll be thinkin bout what to tell Lily Bea!”
They laughed together again.
Sorty was still laughing as she went out of his shop with a few dollars gripped tightly in her hand.
We might as well skip all the lies and chicanery these two people used on each other, unnecessarily; he wanted a woman and she wanted Lily Bea off her empty hands. The deal was struck.
Always slow to speak up for herself, and believing what her mother told her about nobody else ever wanting her, Lily Bea let her mother make her decisions. “It’s for your good!” Mama said.
Lily Bea, with a confused, fearful look on her face, was married, posthaste. With tightened face, she stared down at the floor of the little parlor of a justice of the peace as he spoke the words that changed her whole life. Her mind dazed, turning, rushing, crashing into some space she would now have to hide in, anew. Sorty, her mother, stood by, tightly smiling and holding her purse that held one hundred crisp dollars as Lily became the mistress of a dingy cleaning shop with a grasping, slavering, sex-hungry husband.
“It’s for that poor, ugly child’s good!” Sorty thought. “I done my duty. Her damn daddy, whoever he was, ain’t never done nothin for her! Maddy gonna help her, and gonna help me too! Best thing I can think of for everybody! That’s the truth, Lord!” (She was even gonna try to lie to God!)
Maddy, to help matters along, bought a rabbit-fur coat from the pawnshop. He had it wrapped, special, proud of his gift. “I’m givin her a fur coat just like a rich man do. She gonna see what kind of good man she gettin!”
Lily Bea accepted the gift like the child she was, and smoothing the worn fur with her hands, thanked Maddy. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening. When Maddy hugged her (at last! a chance to really put his hands on her!) she just smiled, and moved away from him as soon as she could without being impolite.
Lily Bea hadn’t realized she could refuse her mother and Mr. Nettles. Her much dreamed and fantasized about wedding night was like a nightmare. Maddy hadn’t had much loving except for an occasional prostitute; he hated to pay out his money, that’s why it was only occasional. Famished for warm flesh on the wedding night he had, in anticipation, slavered over, his claw-hands grasped, pulled, stuck, rubbed, twisted, frantically, the young virgin body. He gave her not one thought, except to think all he put his hands on was his. “I have my own woman’s body here with me every day and all night!”
On her wedding night, and for days after, Lily Bea felt pain in every place on her body where pain can find the soul of the flesh.
About a year later, when she did realize she could refuse him, she did refuse the too ardent grasp and clasp of his greedy hands and arms. Her body was frail, and sickly, and by then, her love dreams had been massacred.
Lily had nowhere to turn. Her mother needed and enjoyed the little money she could “borrow” from Mr. Cleanerman. “Chile, it can’t be all that bad. That’s just married life. It gets better . . . sometime. But, that’s your married home now, under God.” No help could be expected from her.
Lily Bea had no one to depend on but herself.
She prayed often to God, saying, among other things, “Deliver me away from this sorrow, dear God. Stay inside me, with me, so I can live through this. All my life, I’ve hidden myself, saved myself for something special to me. Is this it, God? This is not it, dear God. Deliver me. Please.”
It was a
bout two years into the marriage when she realized the hold her little body had on him. She used that power to refuse him. She made a pallet on the floor for herself to sleep on. Maddy Nettles ranted and raged, but Lily Bea’s answer was silence. She slept on that pallet on every night she could take the rantings of her husband. They were many.
One of her excuse pleas was, “There is so much work I have to do in the shop. I have to keep the book records for our taxes. Now that I have learned to handle the silks and satins, and the laces even, my time is constantly being spread around. You deliver them, but I clean and prepare them. I keep the shop clean. Then I have to come in here and clean these rooms. I have to shop for food and other things, supplies. Then I have to cook, serve, and then, clean up again.” She sighed. “I am truly tired, Maddy.”
(She had called him “Mr. Nettles” until he insisted she call him “Maddy.” “What will people think! My own wife calling me, ‘Mr.’ Can’t you say ‘dear’ or ‘sweetheart’ like other wives do?”)
Maddy wanted his wife in his bed. He would do, almost, anything to get her body back where he wanted it. He thought about the matter of her exhaustion for several days. “She ain’t got no business bein tired! She young!” He did not want to add to his workload because his angry, crippled leg was bothering him more and more. Pain interfered with his lovemaking, when he could get it. “Troubles, troubles, all the time, Lord. No rest for the weary!”
Usually, Maddy made all deliveries to his customers because he did not think Lily Bea was good-looking enough for his customers to see her and know she was his wife. Finally, he decided to hire someone, a trusted young man, Robert, working his way through college who had done odd jobs for him in the past.
Robert Earner was a hard worker, a scuffler, a survivor. And he was a loner; he thought he was too black in color. He didn’t have an inferiority complex, he thought he had a “face reality” situation. His was a good mind. He was in a small college, studying and working to lift himself out of the dire poverty of his own family. He was glad to get the steady job, even at the low wage Maddy paid. He delivered parcels to the larger cleaning establishments for the rich, which sent their fragile materials to the poor specialist, Maddy, of Clean Cleaners.
Robert had known Lily Bea in passing, but had never paid much mind to anything other than his books and learning. Maddy threw in cleaning up the shop a bit, just to get his full dollars’ worth of work, and to make Lily less tired. After all, the point was to get his wife back into his bed and arms; though he told her she had funny strange legs, he wanted himself back between them.
Maddy said many things to Lily Bea, always with a little laughter, that continued to assault her feelings. He wanted her to feel “less” than he was, or even “only” as he was. He thought to hisself, “If she don’t think she too much, at her age, she ain’t gonna run off with the first thing comes her way! She ain’t no better ’en I am! Even her mama say so.”
Books were a waste to Maddy Nettles. “You ain’t got no time for them books you keep bringin from that lib’ary.” Oddly enough, books were what first established a rapport between Lily Bea and Robert Earner. Robert was impressed with someone else who loved books. Of course, they talked about what she was reading and what he was studying. Maddy discouraged these quick talks. “Boy, what you think you doin? Don’t be wastin my wife’s time, and making me pay you for it too!”
They talked less because they were not interested in each other at the time Maddy spoke to Robert. But in one of the quick moments of exchanging thoughts, Robert mentioned his college to Lily. “You know, you are learning good things from Mr. Nettles, but they have classes at the college where you can learn all about fabrics and special knowledge to make your own self mistress of this profession, if this is what you really want to do.”
Lily didn’t want “cleaning clothes” to be her profession, but, as she thought about it, “It would be a good excuse to have some time to myself. Time away from . . . everything. And, if this is the work I have to do, at least I can learn for myself.”
She signed up for a class before she told Maddy. He wanted to get angry, but didn’t know what to get angry at. He also thought, “Maybe she is coming round to knowing I am her husband and she is my helpmate, and this is our work, together. Our business.” So he let her go to the college two times a week.
She studied professional cleaning and fabrics classes about six months. During that time she and Robert met at school; they talked and they liked each other. Robert, on closer look, hearing her voice, seeing the light in her eyes, feeling her touch, was falling in love with Lily. She never seemed to see his color. The beautiful color God gave some people, he thought was unattractive.
Why, she could even talk about his studies in engineering. Many times he thought to himself, “She understands!” Of course, they talked about other things. It was her first experience with a stranger, a man, in which she found enjoyment. And, while he had admired the usual pretty girl, he had never really gotten to know one. He thought Lily Bea was pretty and wondered why he had never noticed it before. “I don’t like that ugly fur coat she wears, though.”
She learned even more than her class taught because she took out extra books on the subject, adding to her knowledge. On her way back to work from college, she sneaked in a few minutes at the dance studio to dance a few steps, twirling alone in the welcoming rooms among welcoming people. Then she would be off, to work and her husband.
Robert and Lily Bea were very friendly at school, but back at the cleaners they were self-conscious about their friendship in front of Maddy Nettles. They felt dirty, because his thoughts were. But that seemed to push their feelings more together. Each began to feel the other’s presence stronger. Sex would seem to be rearing its head a bit. But sex did not get to tremble over them; it was not what either wanted. Then.
Sex was the last thing Lily Bea wanted anything to do with, and Robert had not thought of Lily in that way before. But, now, their bodies were like a magnet. They began to avoid closeness in the little shop because, somehow, their closeness changed there. In the shop, when close, their breathing, so near each other, gave them the intensity of suffocating. Lily found it hard to breathe. If they happened to look at each other at these times, it was like a caress, a climax of a sort. It embarrassed them, even as they enjoyed the innocent goodness of the feelings.
They grew to love each other, a little. But it was not a love they chose to do anything about, except to enjoy the closeness, the feelings and sharing of thoughts. These things were new to the both of them. Lily had other plans even though she didn’t know what they were. Robert wanted his life to be free, to lift himself up, and beyond his past.
Maddy Nettles noticed; their feelings became so intense, he began to feel it. Not thinking of the help Robert was to him, Maddy took Lily out of school and fired Robert, immediately. “Boy, you get on way from here. You makin your way to breakin up my home. Naw, you get on way from round here. And don’t come back neither.” He took up his own chores again. His angry leg was angrier than ever, as angry as he himself was. At life. “You gimme this leg, God, now see what you done done! It ain’t fair!”
Robert Earner left confused and bewildered with Maddy’s words. He understood, but he didn’t understand, “We have done nothing.” He left off “yet.” Because somewhere in his mind, he knew. Of their guilt they were innocent; yet, even in their innocence they knew their guilt. He returned his full mind to his education; he had been steadily saving, planning. With a scholarship and his savings he was on his way to an African-American college, his dream. He did love Lily Bea, but he nodded his head “good-bye” to her, and disappeared from her life.
Not too long after the firing, Maddy became ill and could not work for a month or two. He had always washed all the dry-cleaning possible in the washing machine in the back of the shop. Then he would steam press them hisself. In time, as his health got better, he would still do the washing: just put the clothes in and press the right
buttons. He could not do the pressing, though. It was too hard on his leg and back to stand there, pulling down and pushing up the heavy lid of the press.
He showed Lily how to do the pressing. Pressing was hard on her because you had to lift that heavy press and bring it down, then lift it again. All day. She sweated and ached over that press. He lay in his bed, sick, resting, and miserable, wondering, “Lord, a man don’t deserve this kind’a bad treatment from no wife! I been a good man! I don’t do no sinnin no more!”
Two more years passed in that way. Maddy was still “sick,” Lily Bea wasn’t singing as she worked anymore. Hadn’t for a long time. She never danced, all of a sudden, anymore either. She didn’t go to school for any classes anymore. Didn’t even think of it.
She was a drudge, and looked it. Her hair stayed wet from the steam so she just kept it wrapped in a rag. The steam didn’t hurt or help her skin, but she kept her usual good care of it. We were still friends so we still talked. I told her to always use cold water on her face, to keep her pores from gettin ruined. Her nails were chipped and broken. Who cared? She didn’t. She was tired, tired, tired, all the time. She was such a run-down drudging slave, she had given up on life.
One day Sorty came by, smiling, to pick up a “little change.” In semiprivate, Maddy told Sorty, “You got to find you a new place to get you some money! We can’t trade on this lazy-ass daughter of yours no more.” He had taken to swearing at her. “Maybe she helps me a little in the shop, but she don’t do nothin in the bed! I got to take care of her, and you ain’t helpin me none by comin by here to ‘borrow’ no money that you don’t never tend to pay me back no way!”
Sorty got close to Lily before she left the shop that day. Told her, “What’s wrong with you, girl? Don’t you see what you got here?! You betta grow up, and get some sense! If you don’t, somebody gonna take all this right out from under your nose!”
Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns Page 4
