by Cynthia Bond
He said, “Want me to pick up something on my way back?”
Ruby knew it was his way of telling her he was returning.
When he added, “Ice cream?” it felt like a declaration, an announcement that this was a place where laughter had plenty of water to grow, a bottomland for hope.
Ruby answered, “That would be nice.”
Gubber nudged Ephram. “Come on, man.” There was a general rustling outside.
Ephram then asked, “What flavor?” and something shifted inside of Ruby.
The idea of ice cream was more than she could imagine; choosing a flavor was like eating too much stuffing at Thanksgiving. She felt bloated and slow—suddenly exposed, instantly in danger.
Like a blast of heat burning through her, it was suddenly too much, this constant, unrelenting kindness, the gentle in the center of his eyes that never slipped and fell. His attention had filled the shallow bowl she’d set aside for joy. In that moment it cracked.
She leapt up, went to Ephram and kissed him, full on. Her hand sliding behind his neck, pushing her body against his, tongue down his throat.
Then she said, face inches from his, “Chocolate be nice.”
She did all this before God, her babies and a pack of wolves. Although Ephram was more than a little surprised, Ruby could feel the men in the yard, their hunger rising, as if she were a wounded fawn.
The pack took it in, then, escorting a dazed Ephram, moved away in unison. They pushed him towards the front. It was Chauncy who trailed behind, his eyes burning like a branding iron over her body. They landed upon her face.
Ruby looked right back at him, not saying a word.
Chauncy paused for another beat, long enough for Ephram to turn around. The men, then, walked down the red road, Chauncy uncharacteristically quiet as Ephram dropped flecks of red dust like bread crumbs along the way.
THE BODY of Junie Rankin was already laid out from the wake. The one person oblivious to the doings across town, Junie rested stiffly, a grin curling about his peachy lips, his wool navy duster and wing tips pressed and buffed to a shine. While everyone at the wake the night before had agreed that the Edwin Shephard’s Mortuary/Ambulance Service always did a fine job, they worried about Junie going to his maker in August wearing wool. Chauncy had said that the Lord might take one look at him sweating and heaving and think to send him where he might fit in better. But as it was Junie’s best suit and duster, everyone finally agreed that the Rankins and the funeral home had come to the right decision. Supra had put a small Bible into the casket with him just to keep on the safe side. This Monday the mortuary was represented by the junior, not the elder, Shephard. A slight, algae brown man with a drawn mustache, Edwin Shephard Junior bent low over Junie’s shrunken form, reapplying a dusting of Max Factor’s Fancy Pink blush. The Shephards were proud to be one of only two all-purpose ailment-to-bereavement transportation services for Negroes in the Liberty, Shankleville and Jasper area, answering police dispatches or personal phone calls when a loved one was in need of hospitalization, and then, depending upon the critical nature of the emergency, taking them to whichever destination was required, ER or the mortuary.
Several of the Church Sisters were plucking out the wilted flowers from last night’s arrangements and peeking to see who’d spent what and who’d gone and cheated Junie out of his floral due. Righteous Polk and her sister Salvation had had conference with Celia Jennings at the break of day. They had sat in prayer and then helped her bring her pies, figs and cakes to Supra Rankin’s home for the reception, where they had been added to the double-sided mountain of food that would become an avalanche after the burial. Now the two Polk women worked to add the perfect touches for the upcoming service. Righteous scooped a cup of pastel mints and poured them into the plastic crystal dish in the women’s lavatory. Righteous tried on the face she would use when she fell out at the casket. When she had it just right she thought about what Sister Celia had said that very morning and knew that Celia was correct. It was fine to pray and mission folks in times of weak trouble, but when a wave was about to crash down on a person’s head, that person would be a fool to hold out a flimsy umbrella. Serious action was needed, of that Righteous was sure.
It had been seven years since they’d had a case this bad—her own beloved daughter Honey, who had always had a sweet nature, until she rejected the church after getting pregnant by that Reverend Swanson. Righteous had tried to help Honey understand the nature of man and how it’s a woman’s job to hold herself above that nature, and then if she can’t, to find forgiveness, especially for a man of God. But Honey had left the church anyway and the trouble started. She’d abandoned her own little boy, run off far from home and moved in with a female abomination of God, which had to be due to the drugs she must have been taking to do it. Righteous and her Church Sisters had done their very best by tricking her home with a story that Righteous was in failing health and then had taken Honey into the storm cellar, held her down and prayed over her for fourteen hours straight, not giving her leave to eat or evacuate her body, until she’d cried out for Jesus and spoken in tongues and had been welcomed back into the fold. But just like in Matthew 12:43, the unclean spirit left her, took tea in Hades, then came back with seven of his friends and possessed her again until the poor child drove that female abomination’s car straight into a sixteen-wheeler two days later. No matter that people said the girl couldn’t stop crying and drinking and crying some more, Righteous knew it was her own fault. The whole of the congregation’s fault for not working harder to redeem her soul. Righteous tried her mournful face on again and was surprised to see the wetness of tears shining in her eyes. She quickly wiped them and went to join her sisters.
People started trailing into the church a little after noon, in order to get the good seats. Those closest to the casket and the family went first. Second were those next to Righteous Polk, as she always fell out with such grandeur and delivered dramatic screams and carryings-on both to and from the coffin. Celia arrived only fifteen minutes early with the certainty of one who knows her seat will be held for her. An eager group crowded near her, the clear star of the event until the Rankins arrived. Celia had chosen a simple black crepe skirt and jacket with a shiny teal mandarin collar blouse, pill box hat with a black rhinestone flourish. Her eyes kept flashing to the church door anticipating Ephram’s entrance. The men and women surrounding Celia let their eyes fly after hers like gnats over sugar, eager to alight at the very moment of contact.
She did not have long to wait. Ephram Jennings, who had milled outside as long as possible, stepped into the church that Monday afternoon and stood unguarded at the sanctuary doors. Celia shot tacks at him then made a big show of putting her hand over her eyes and turning away. Ephram, a riot of nerves and pitted fear, felt as if he’d been hit with buckshot. The crowd feasted upon this sweet exchange. Ephram absorbed the stares and walked into the church, tracking the powder from Ruby’s, now wedged like glue into the tread of his shoes.
The Rankins, save Chauncy, who’d volunteered to retrieve Ephram, arrived in two baby blue stretch limousines hired all the way from Leesville. They crowded the doorway so Ephram cleared the way and let them pass. Despite the magnificence of their funereal finery, the black plume feathers in Supra’s hat, the pressed straightness of the women’s hair and the men’s good suits, despite the severity of mourning painted on the faces of his kin, the tears already washing down Verde’s slick cheeks, the genuine beauty of the seven Rankin brothers, and the heaving sobs of Junie’s wife, Bessie, when Ephram sat down in the back and not in the seat next to Celia that he’d shared for two decades, the whole of the parlor turned first to Ephram and then to see how Celia took it. They found her with eyes closed in prayer.
Folks said later that the funeral of Junie Rankin was a good testimony to his life. It wasn’t the best they’d seen, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. The Rankins from out of town did find it a bit strange when the Pastor mentioned how glad he was that
Junie had never been vexed by Jezebels or demons or lunacy. Everyone from Liberty had just turned around again and stared at Ephram Jennings for a beat. As the singing commenced, women fell out and had to be helped up. Men clapped and sang “Seraph!” Righteous Polk did not disappoint and fell out so many times, shaking and weeping with such ferocity, that she had to be tended to in the Pastor’s office by the recently widowed Deacon Charles. At the casket the competition had been fierce over who loved Junie the most, his wife, Bessie, or his sister, Petunia. Wail landed upon wail, followed by the thrashing and beating of flesh. Junie’s framed photograph, the easel it was set upon, and two floral arrangements featuring calla lilies were casualties of the fierce rivalry. The service ended with no clear winner.
Ephram felt faint and his stomach flipped as he rose with the rest of the pallbearers, Chauncy, Percy, Gubber, Charlie and Sim Rankin. He took his place on the back left corner as all six men heaved poor Junie up and onto their capable shoulders. Ephram felt Celia boring into him the whole of the journey down the aisle, but some unnamed will would not let him meet her gaze. He left the church and climbed into the hearse with the rest of the men.
Then his bones began to tingle.
Edwin Shephard Junior drove them the four miles to Liberty Township Cemetery, where they unloaded the casket and carried Junie down to his plot. Edwin fiddled with the burial area while the six pallbearers walked into the heart of the graveyard to wait for folks to arrive. Between the family processional out of the church, the refixing of makeup and rearranging of undergarments, the heaving and sitting and gathering of strength and arranging themselves in limousines, the men had at least an hour of waiting ahead of them.
As soon as they had settled themselves on tombstones for a smoke, Ephram slipped his coat on and began walking down the hill, bound for Bell land.
Percy Rankin spit out, “I wouldn’t go nowheres if I was you until you get that meeting with Celia done and finished. Don’t want nothing to happen to that gal.” Ephram turned around, a weak terror gripping him, and rejoined the group.
Chauncy Rankin took off his jacket, looked at Ephram and busted out laughing. He laughed so hard he all but fell out on the ground then kept right on laughing. Side-splitting, tears-streaming-down-his-cheeks, ripping belly laughs. Percy and Sim turned away smiling as Chauncy quieted for a second, climbed his way up a tombstone, glanced back at Ephram and fell back to the ground howling.
Caught between shame and fear, battling the tingling in his joints and the flipping of his stomach, Ephram did not ask the question Chauncy’s actions begged him to ask: What you laughin’ at?
Finally Chauncy caught his breath and between gasps said, “Ooooooh, man! Ooooooooo, man, I ain’t laugh that hard since Gubber passed out and wet hisself at Bloom’s last month.”
Gubber spat out, “Only after y’all fool niggas stuck my hand in warm water whiles I’m asleep.”
“I ain’t saying who stuck what where, but damn, that was almost as funny as this here. What in God’s name Ephram Roosevelt Jennings be thanking playing house with that, that—” Then he was off again, spitting out between guffaws, “Oh Lord!” and “Help me, Jesus!” until it became contagious and Percy and Sim let loose as well, followed by Charlie and finally, at long last, Gubber, the men giving one another fraternal handshakes and soldierly pats on the back. The cackling built like a storm brewing. When Chauncy had the pack of them howling and snapping, he grew quiet and glared at Ephram Jennings.
“Man, you should be ’shamed.”
Ephram kicked his feet into the ground and to his great shame said nothing. His stomach still turning. A little roll of thunder played in the distance.
“You a pitiful thing” was the worst Chauncy could think to say, but his eyes betrayed far more. Chauncy looked at Ephram with the utter disbelief that such a man could exist in their midst.
Then, leave it to Gubber: “Aw he ain’t no different from us; we all looking for a woman just like our mama.”
The crowd paused for a moment, deciding whether or not to draw blood.
Sim looked at Chauncy, then put the edge of a knife in his words, “My mama got straight teeth so I can’t abide a gal with a crooked mouth, likewise Ephram wouldn’t know what to do with no sane gal who keep her clothes on come Easter.”
At that Chauncy sank into a wizened laughter. “Y’all know that’s wrong.” Then with a flick of his cigarette ash, Ephram was dismissed. Ephram tried to lasso the right words but they hurdled beyond his grasp. Then the moment was gone as Chauncy slipped on his jacket and turned to the other men, “Now which one of you men’s fool ’nuff to think Cassius Clay got the stuff to win that there Thrilla in Manila?”
“The man’s name is Ali,” Percy corrected.
Charlie countered, “Hell, calling himself Mohammad like spitting in his mama’s face.”
Percy eased out, “Don’t matter, he already whooped Frazier once.”
“Fight was rigged,” Sim countered. “ ’Sides Joe knock him cold that first fight.”
“Truth is,” Charlie shot out, “yella man born weaker than brown. Joe gonna peel that nigga like a gorilla do a banana.”
“Yo’ own daddy’s a yella nigga,” Percy threw out.
Chauncy cut in, “Then I guess he know what he’s talking ’bout.”
Sim tried out, “Maybe we should ask Ephram ’bout yella niggas.”
Ephram leaned against a tombstone, great waves of self-disgust lapping against his heart. His insides twisted left and then right. He’d been called out three times in the last two minutes, he knew he couldn’t live in the town if he didn’t act now. He tried to muster his will, but something had cut into the trunk of his courage and he found his mouth flooded with saliva. Before he could stop himself, he’d heaved and vomited all over Weller Redding’s grave. The men glared at Ephram.
“Damn, that’s nasty,” Percy observed. In response, Ephram’s stomach pitched again and he heaved all over his shoes. The splatter deflected onto the cuffs of Chauncy’s pants.
“Damn!” Chauncy shot out. “Watch yo’ fool self!” and before anyone knew what had happened he’d shoved Ephram back over the tombstone. Legs akimbo, he looked too foolish to inspire laughter.
No one had seen the clouds overhead, but regardless of anyone’s notice they had knotted in a soft, gray tangle and now began to rain. They sprinkled for a second and then, as if a faucet had been turned, they let loose a nice steady pour. Ephram felt the water splash off his upturned shoes, wet his ankles, his hands and eventually his face and hair. And without Ephram ever knowing it was there, the last of the red powder washed clean. Chauncy was cursing Ephram and the rain all at once, looming over him, fists tight. A new power and strength shot through Ephram, as if from the soil itself. He leapt to his feet and pushed Chauncy back. Chauncy staggered, disbelief splashing across his face.
“I was playing but now you done made me mad niggah!” He charged, but a rivulet of water from Ephram’s direction stole under his size 13 Oxfords and Chauncy, the most surefooted of men, slipped and fell, chest flat upon Ephram’s vomit. The men exploded in rolling blasts of laughter.
Even Chauncy got the mean knocked out of him and surrendered to disgust. “Shit, man!” he said upon rising. “Shit! I got to walk home and change.” To Percy he called out, “Tell Mama I’ll be back directly.” He headed down the small hill, to the road, and once out of sight, veered left, in the distinct direction of Bell land.
The rest of the men ran and sought refuge under the leaves of a barclay tree. Ephram stood his ground, getting soaked through to the bone, heaving and strong, all tingling washed away, a steady calm surging through his body.
Chapter 17
Otha Jennings’s grave rested five headstones to the right and four up from where Ephram stood. A simple cement curved block with praying hands etched into the gray. Ephram tended it most Sundays after church, keeping the grass trim and flowers watered. The roots of buttercups and verbena wound atop the casket where O
tha Jennings had been laid to rest. The coffin itself contained nothing of the woman, no bones, no teeth, not even a brush with a few strands of hair. Instead it contained her most dog-eared books, the Complete Works of Emily Dickinson and Call of the Wild by Jack London, a pair of her favorite gloves and her best lacing tat.
Ephram had been sixteen, Celia twenty-two when they had gotten the letter from Kindred Mental Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, telling them of Otha’s death in the hospital fire in July of 1945. The Colored wing had burned down to its pilings, leaving nothing but white ash. After Ephram had sent a total of twelve letters requesting her records, some kind clerk had finally sent them. Full of words like “psychotic break/schizophrenia” and “delusional episodes.” A list of medications that neither Ephram nor Celia had ever heard of. When they showed it to Dr. Tully, the visiting Colored doctor from Beaumont, he’d never heard of half of them either. He’d closed Otha’s file, shaken his head and said a little curse and the words “lab rats” under his breath. When Celia had asked him what he meant, he’d just pressed his lips tight and said to be grateful she’d gone to her glory.
Otha Jennings had been born in Baltimore, in May of 1900, to an educated father and seamstress mother. She came from a long history of freedom. No great-grand nor grandmother, aunt nor uncle, had ever lived under the trace and toil of slavery. There was at the time, a very small yet substantial legacy of landed Negroes in America, Negroes who had achieved the unthinkable and had become doctors, lawyers, politicians, scientists, college presidents, businessmen. No one in Otha’s family had belonged to this group either. They were simple, striving people. Her father taught third grade at Washington Elementary, but before he died of consumption when Otha was fourteen, he’d already set aside enough money for her to continue her education at Fisk University in Tennessee. Otha was the only child of two only children. At seventeen she worked part-time with her mother after school and excelled in all things related to sewing, especially lace-making. Otha loved it so that she often dreamed in lace, delicate patterns covering her nighttime landscape. She was only a bit tall with skin as deep and rich as a plum. Her straight black “Indian” hair was from her mother’s side. It fell to her waist until she cut it, the summer before college, like Claudette Colbert. The hair on the floor had made the beautician cry. The next day she met the Reverend Jennings, a man twelve years her senior, on her way to church. She had just made a navy low-waisted shift dress for school and was feeling very grown up when he told her she looked like a new penny. She was shy until he told her he was a reverend visiting from Texas and that he was guest preaching at the Jesus First Name Holiness Church on Tinkle Street. He invited her to that evening’s revival. Since she was already on her way to a church choir meeting, Otha didn’t see the harm and walked with him to Tinkle Street. Otha, who had always attended a calm, quiet Episcopal church, had never heard a first class Holiness preacher when he got riled. He slung words around her like comets soaring. She was in awe and waited for him after service as he had requested, so he could walk the star struck teenager home. He asked her questions about her life, her mama, her deceased daddy, her neighborhood, her friends. He asked her about the university when she told him she was to be the first Colored woman she had ever known of to get a college education. She told him of her plans to be a nurse in a Colored hospital. He listened with great earnestness, eyes deep and wide, nodding in tune to her yielding voice. He took her home and mentioned that he would be in town three more days until Friday, so she’d invited him to dinner the next night without asking her mother.
