Glorious

by Bernice L. McFadden

  “Yes?”

  Fatigue swooped down on Easter and even though her eyes were wide open, she felt herself begin to dream.

  “Are you lost, gal?”

  Easter swayed, then raised the newspaper and declared, “I’m here about the job.”

  The woman considered her. “You got fever,” she ventured, taking a cautious step back and raising a cupped hand over her nose.

  “No, I been walking most of the day. I guess I’m just worn out.”

  The woman eyed her. “You from ’round here?”

  “No ma’am, I’m from Waycross.”

  The woman’s eyes bulged. “You walk all the way from Waycross!”

  Easter laughed, turned, and pointed in the direction she’d come from. “No ma’am, just from …” She trailed off; the image of Rain’s dewy eyes and sweet face swam in her vision and Easter felt her heart break apart again. She swallowed, changed direction, and said, “The job still available?”

  Olivia Comolli was olive-colored and wore her golden tresses piled in a loose bun on top of her head.

  “Easter Bartlett?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Easter replied when the woman called her name for the third time.

  “Unique name. Easter.” The woman seemed to enjoy the name against her tongue.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Olivia led Easter into an immense room filled with granite podiums that held marble busts of significant-looking men. The walls were covered in fabric the color of blood and embossed with golden leaves. Oil paintings propped on brass easels depicted everything from a simple vase filled with weeping flowers to bird dogs and their grim-eyed owners.

  After Olivia interviewed Easter, she leaned back and considered her for a long moment before she said, “You speak different from the other Negro women I employ here. You have education, yes?”

  “Yes ma’am, I do.”

  “Well,” Olivia said, her voice ringing with excitement, “we have just lost our Negro school teacher and I think you would be the perfect replacement.”

  The Negro part of Elberton was called Sweet City and Easter arrived with some high school, learning the knowledge she’d obtained from her beloved books, and a hand-written letter of introduction from one of the most respected women in Elberton.

  “Ask for Mrs. Abigail at this address,” Olivia had said as she scribbled the address down on a piece of linen stationery, “she’ll rent you a room.” Olivia’s hand stopped moving and she looked up at Easter. Her eyes rolled over her as if seeing her for the first time. “You do have money, don’t you?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  A look of relief spread across Olivia’s face. “Good.” She handed Easter the paper. “It’s about an hour down the road.”

  Easter started toward Sweet City beneath a relentless sun. Five minutes into her journey she knew she wouldn’t make it and so stepped off the road and found a cool space beneath a tree. She spread her nightgown over the grass and used the suitcase as a pillow and in no time was fast asleep. When she woke, the loons were crooning.

  The rooming house catered to Negroes but was owned by whites. The tenants were housed Oreo-cookie style—young Negro women on the top floor, the white landlord and his wife in the middle, and elderly Negro men on the first floor. This living arrangement concerned the whites in Elberton and they shared their concerns with the owners. Niggers on the first floor … The first floor is your first line of defense and you done gone and assigned the enemy to guard your front door!

  Easter wondered too, but when she met the men, it was immediately clear that any threat either of them ever presented had been beat out of them, poured, blended, and baked into humble pie decades earlier. The only contest they still possessed was for the affections of the owners and even that they had to share with the family dog.

  Easter’s room was cozy and newly wallpapered, with a bay window. There was a small writing desk, an even smaller closet, and a full-sized bed with squeaky springs. She had her books, her space, and time to breathe, feel, think, and write. Who knew contentment had been hiding in a place called Sweet City?

  The school was a one-room shack that sat a few yards away from the Mission Springs AME Church. The air inside the school was hot, sticky, and heavy with the scent of chalk and old books. The minister instructed her that she would be teaching children ranging in age from six to seventeen.

  As the children filed in Easter carefully picked over their faces, and was quick to pinpoint the troublemakers, the slackers, the enthusiasts, and the meek. She offered a welcoming smile, moved to pull the door shut, and almost collided head-on with a latecomer whose face was as angelic as a cherub.

  “’Scuse me, ma’am,” he said as he scurried around her.

  She watched him move toward a seat in the last row and decided that he was at least eighteen if he was a day. Eighteen seemed right because of his gait and the confidence he wore tight around his waist like a belt belonging to a man twice his age. He settled himself into the chair, leaned back, folded his thin, muscular arms across his chest, and smirked at her.

  He smirked at her and all four walls of that room collapsed. He smirked and the earth yawned and all but the two of them slipped down its grainy throat. Easter felt her mouth go dry and she reached for the water glass and brought it carefully to her lips. As she drank Easter wondered what in the world was wrong with her, because she was sure she’d left that thirst miles behind her, somewhere along the banks of the Savannah River. Regaining her composure, she set the glass back down on the desk and began the morning roll call.

  “John Appleby?”

  “Here.”

  “April Botwin?”

  “Here.”

  Easter moved slowly down the list of names, aware of the cherub’s eyes boring into her. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, and felt her tongue begin to wither behind her teeth. By the time she reached his name, her voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper and it tumbled out in a gale of dust.

  “Getty Wisdom?”

  “Present.”

  Have you ever heard a sweeter-sounding name?

  Week in and week out she covered penmanship, arithmetic, The Mayflower, Washington’s cherry tree, and honest Abe. She tended to scabbed knees, knotted lose shoelaces, broke up scuffles, read her books, and wrote her stories. When she was alone in her room she thought about Getty and admonished herself in soft whispers. “Shoot girl, you done lost your damn mind.” Standing before the mirror she’d wave her hand at her reflection and ask, “What he see in you? He just a—”

  She would stop herself from saying that he was just a child. She’d convinced herself that if she didn’t say it … if she didn’t even think it, then it couldn’t be true.

  Her mirrored reflection smiled back at her and said, He gotta be eighteen if he’s a day.

  Harvest time came and the class thinned. All hands were needed at home, Getty Wisdom’s included. Just the littlest ones remained and Easter’s mood turned gray.

  Getty Wisdom.

  She would open a book to read and his name jumped out from between the lines of the story.

  Getty Wisdom.

  When she sat down to write, it was his name that spilled from her fountain pen.

  Getty Wisdom.

  When the harvest season came to an end, Easter was giddy with excitement and went out and bought herself a new pair of nylons and made sure that the scented powder she’d dusted her neck with was visible above the collar of her blouse. She was sitting at her desk looking expectantly at the doorway when he finally appeared, and her heart stopped. He was taller than she remembered, his arms were bigger, his neck wider. He smelled of fresh-turned earth and was scrubbed so clean he shined. He took his seat and gave her that same look he had the first time they laid eyes on one another, and just like that their dance resumed. Her heart came to life again and the thumping sound transformed into a throbbing, aching thing that was quickly inching south.

  Easter pressed her knees tightly together and t
ried hard to think about something else, something other than him, but a lot of good it did because all she got for her effort were bruised knees.

  And so it became stunningly clear to Easter that if she didn’t get out of Sweet City—and quick—she would buckle under the weight of her desires, so she claimed fever, dismissed the class, and ran home beneath a fat lazy sun.

  The suitcase lay open on the bed, with her best dress, a blouse, and a skirt neatly folded inside. She had a brassiere in one hand and a hairbrush in the other when the knock came to her bedroom door. Easter yanked it open and there he was, long, lean, and glistening.

  “Ma’am, you left this behind,” Getty’s mouth said, but his eyes whispered something different.

  He held her notebook out to her and when she reached to take it her hand caught hold of his wrist and she pulled him into her and pressed her lips against his. His nectar was intoxicating and Easter knew that she was lost. They stumbled clumsily to the bed and as they worked to free her from her brassiere and him from his trousers, she told herself that she would never again become that dried tuber, that first autumn leaf—that this time she would toss herself in wholly and completely as if Getty meant survival itself and she would drink from his cup until her passion floated. She would drink until she burst.

  He buried himself inside her and Easter became a bud in spring. He lifted her legs and placed them over his shoulders and she blossomed and vainly preened for him, for the horsefly that watched from the wall, and the humming bird fluttering outside the open window.

  Afterwards, they lay very, very still and before Getty drifted off to sleep he was aware of many things—the damp smell of their bodies, the darkness, her chin resting in the indented space beneath his Adam’s apple, and the heaviness of her leg against his hip bone. If he had remained awake just a few seconds longer he would have seen Easter’s eyes moving over him, claiming every young inch of him, and he would have felt her arms become clutching roots and his ears would have buzzed with the sound of her heart beating out one steady song: gettywisdom, gettywisdom, gettywisdom …

  ***

  They carried on like that through autumn, first frost, winter, and straight into the madness of March. The lie she told when he stole from her room that first magical night had to do with books and study. The landlord’s wife, Miss Abigail, scrunched her face up and Easter did not miss the doubt glowing in her blanched cheeks, so she kept her distance from Getty for a week and waited for the talk, but none came her way and people did not turn to salt when they looked at her.

  And so they began to meet in out-of-the-way places.

  When the weather permitted, a favorite spot was along the riverbank beneath a cluster of tree roots that formed a cave. There in the darkness she fed him scuppernongs and licked the sweet juice from his lips while they made love. Another place was a barn, long abandoned by its owner, where the sky seeped between the rotting wooden rafters and the air still held the scent of the young mares that once lived there. When the nights turned frigid, Easter borrowed a truck from one of the old roomers; they drove two towns away, parked off of a rarely traveled road, and she climbed on top of Getty and indulged herself while the engine grumbled angrily beneath the battered red hood of the cab and the steering wheel pressed half moon—shaped welts into the small of her back.

  By April, though, he had milk in his eyes.

  Sara Lee.

  She was beyond high yellow, closer to alabaster in color, with a thick tail of black hair that dangled down her back. Easter imagined its weightiness and visualized how she would coil the braid around Sara Lee’s pretty little neck and choke the light out of her eyes.

  In class, Sara Lee sat beside Getty and it was all he could do to keep from staring at her. During recess he showed himself up, strutting like a cock and grinning like a minstrel-show buffoon. Easter watched the display and tiny explosions went off in her chest.

  Getty began walking Sara Lee home from school, carrying her books in the crook of his arm—where Easter’s head used to lay.

  Two, three, and then five weeks went by and Getty avoided Easter’s advances and pretended not to see the little notes she left between the pages of his copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

  Easter’s anger festered and her jealousy turned into a mite beneath her skin that kept her up at night pacing the floors and clawing at her flesh.

  Well it looks like my handwriting, she thought, but it definitely isn’t. I don’t write my e that way, or my s or my a.

  The letter was an accumulation of her unraveling that had started on the school day when Easter looked down to find that she was wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe. And there was that Wednesday when she was snatched out of her sleep by a loud banging at her door. When she opened it, she was met with the fretful face of Miss Abigail.

  “The minister sent word to check on you. Are you sick?”

  “No,” Easter responded, dragging a hand through her unkempt hair.

  “Then why,” the old woman asked as she peered over Easter’s shoulder into the shuttered room, “are you not at school today?”

  Easter yawned, “Because it’s Saturday.” Her voice dripped with annoyance.

  The woman bristled and snapped, “No, it’s Wednesday.”

  Easter peered down at the letter again.

  Getty,

  What of the love you whispered in my ear when you were buried deep inside of me? Was that a lie? Or has that bright bitch cast a spell on you? I beg you, meet me at our place by the river so that we can talk.

  I love you.

  Minister Tuck scratched the bald spot at the center of his head with one hand and used the other to fish his handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his jacket. He dabbed the cloth against his nose.

  “You have been an exemplary teacher, Miss Bartlett, but as of late …” His words dropped away as he attended to his nose.

  Easter waited.

  “You seem to be distracted. But this …” Again his words faded, his face flushed scarlet, and he seemed to look to Easter to finish his thought. When she offered no help, he started again, dropping his voice an octave. “This is a Christian school, Miss Bartlett, and this,” he said, tapping his finger angrily against the letter, “is inappropriate. I would have to report it to the authorities. He is a child, you know, just fifteen years old.”

  No, Easter did not know, and her head snapped up in surprise and disbelief. The reaction was telling. Minister Tuck fell back into his chair as if he’d been shot in the heart.

  “Of … of course you would have to report it if I’d written it, but I didn’t,” Easter stammered. “I’m insulted that you would think me capable of such a thing.” Easter stood up. “It’s a joke. A childish prank,” she continued, her hands gripping the edge of the desk.

  Minister Tuck was a man of God, a man of the cloth, but he was still a man, an imperfect being, and he’d had his waywardness, oh yes, his flesh had been weak. But he was a man, and certain behaviors were expected of men. But a woman?

  Minister Tuck picked up the letter and shook it at Easter. “People have seen you two together.”

  Who? she wanted to ask. They’d been careful. Very careful.

  “Yes,” Easter barked and straightened her back. “I have tutored him on occasion.”

  “Watch your tone, Miss Bartlett. You need to tread lightly.”

  “You tread lightly, sir!” Easter bellowed back at him.

  Tuck was stunned and reeled back in his chair. Easter’s face contorted with rage. She looked like a trapped animal and he had no doubt that she would pounce on him if he made any sudden moves. So they glared at one another, each waiting for the other to fold, and then finally Easter did and the anger whistled out of her.

  Tuck slowly raised his hand and wrapped his fingers around the small silver cross that hung around his neck. Easter cleared her throat, smoothed the pleats of her dress, and calmly eased herself down into the chair.

  Then she asked, “Where di
d you get this letter?”

  She knew it had to be the girl. Sara Lee had probably fished it from his pocket during some childish act of foreplay.

  Tuck squeezed the cross until the prongs cut into his palm and said, “The boy gave it to me.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Praise the Lord if it ain’t Easter Bartlett!”

  Their reintroduction took place in the colored car of the Atlantic Coast Line headed to Virginia. Easter had given the chestnut-brown woman a blank look. The eyes had seemed familiar, but the sophisticated hairstyle and dapper attire had thrown her.

  “C’mon now,” the woman said as she wiggled her behind into the seat beside Easter. “It’s me, Madeline! Don’t be that way. We go too far back for you not to remember me.”

  Easter looked harder.

  The woman grinned, proudly patted her bobbed hair, and licked her painted lips before she curled her palm around her mouth, leaned close to Easter’s ear, and whispered, “Mattie Mae Dawkins, from down home Waycross, girl!”

  Easter’s neck snapped. “For real?”

  Mattie Mae Dawkins was calling herself Madeline now, and Easter supposed it was the right thing to do because she didn’t look much like the tenant farmer’s daughter Easter had known her to be.

  Mattie Mae’s grin spread and she bubbled, “Sure nuff.”