The Wind Done Gone

by Alice Randall

  He sends a card 'round to my house, and I arrive at the appointed hour for my visit. We make love. He traces the butterfly on my cheek. And he asks if I am going to be all right. I tell him yes—and I tell him that I'm leaving him in the morning. In the morning, I'm leaving him. I've just made up my mind to do it. When I said it, I was letting him know how unhappy I am. Now I'm hearing myself. I'm leaving in the morning.

  "I gave you my name," R. says.

  "I never told you mine," I reply.

  104

  Mammy never rode the train. I've got Lady's emerald earbobs in my purse. I took them from Other's jewelry box. Some folks say emeralds are higher than peridots because there are more peridots in the world. It's what's scarce is high. Some folks say it's because emerald got a prettier color. I say it's because the rich folks found emeralds first and have more of them, so they say the peridot be just a little better than green-colored glass to give higher value to what they have a higher number of. Like white blood. But a man made the green-colored glass and God made the emerald and the peridot, and I can't help knowing the peridot is the pretty color of grass in the fall, the color of living things that survive the thirst of late summer when there's so much gold in the green. I see the peridot and the emerald are the same beautiful thing, and green glass is something altogether different.

  I'm riding on the train up to Washington, alone. I don't send word ahead. No. All I have taken out of his house are her things. I take her things and leave her—him. This is the best I can do with this algebra of our existence. She gets him, and I get her things. Everything he bought me I left behind, every pair of bloomers, every barrette, the peridot earbobs, the wedding ring, everything. I cannot go to my Congressman in R.'s things.

  I went up to her room. I opened the closet: a sea of green, velvet, satin, silk; a gown or two in black; a blue day costume; hats. It was said around Atlanta that she liked green best because it is the color of money. But I who knew her from the first day either of us knew anything, knew that she loved green before she even knew what money was.

  You don't see paper money on a cotton farm. You don't even see paper money on what it was and I have not wished to claim, a great Georgia plantation. On a place like that, in the place we lived together, half-sisters separated by a river of notions: notions of Negroes and notions of chilvary, notions of race and place, notions of custom and rage; in the country we inhabited in our childhood, you measured wealth in red earth and black men. There was nothing green in it.

  Green were the leaves, green was the grass, green the grasshoppers, green all the insignificant pretty things, all the moving tokens of living, and that's why Other loved green, because she was, or saw herself to be, an insignificant pretty living thing. She didn't wear it because of the money or because it matched her eyes. She wasn't, in fact, vain. She knew I was the prettier one. Knew it right off and didn't let it worry her.

  She wasn't pretty, but she had the capacity to distract men from noticing that. And now that my looks are vanishing with the years, I must borrow that from my sister; I must learn to make men not notice that I am not beautiful. Her dresses are a fine beginning. I will go to my Congressman in my sister's clothes.

  I packed in her trunks. I look at my reflection in the window and it's a blurry thing, but I see me as I have never been before. I wear green well. For somehow, too, green is Daddy's Ireland.

  Garlic told me the story. He got it from Mammy, who had got it from Planter. Planter ran out of Ireland with the law on his tail, wanted for a murder he had committed. And thieving he had thieved. He couldn't see other people have everything when his family had nothing. And when things were too hot in that country, he quit it. That was her father and that was mine.

  She was like him in that she killed. Miss Priss told me that story. She, Other, and Mealy Mouth killed the Union soldier, robbed his dead body, and dragged him off in their chemises, all the while making light conversation with the family out the window. I come from a strong people. And I am like him in my willingness to leave my world to find a better one. It is a sister and a family I leave behind, not Other, not some thing.

  Once in Georgia I had a sister who loved my mother dearly; she took care of Mama all her life, better care of her than I took. I hated her and buried her, and now I forgive her. Once in Georgia I had a mother I could not find my way to loving. I'm grateful that Other found a way and kept the path clean and brightly used. She made exquisite use of my mother's love.

  And now it's my turn to make good use of her mother's love. Lady loved her black man in the bright light of day. If he will have me, I will love Adam, I will love my Congressman that way.

  105

  R. writes me letters it would bore me to return. He is someone else's dream. Whose dream I'm not sure. I suppose Beauty's. Beauty stretched the scope of her imagination to see him, to want him. She didn't like men, but she loved him. That's tribute. Other loved him when she had nothing else to love. It was a scrawny little pathetic love, and he wouldn't have it. And me, I loved him because he was the prize, and I wanted the prize to feel and know, taste and see that I could win it, but it was his power I craved, not him.

  I tell him, I have been sleeping in my sister's bed. I don't want that anymore.

  He tells me, I saw you before I ever saw her, wanted you before her.

  But then you chose her because you could and she reminded you of me. She was your daylight version of me. You betrayed me and I betrayed her on so many succulent occasions, too many succulent occasions. But I no longer have a taste for that meat. It's too rich for me. I want something simple, like a cold joint of ham, a slice of cornbread, and a big glass of buttermilk. I want to love a stranger who knows no one I know. You have been a father to me, and now that you look the part, I don't want you. His eyes well up. I won't give you a divorce. I'll live in sin. Proudly. You taught me that.

  "What is your name," he asks me.

  "Cynara," I say, walking out his door.

  106

  I am traveling unescorted. I feel nauseous. There are rascals of every hue on this train. Whatever remained of my good name will be gone by the time we reach Washington. Why doesn't anyone assume that a woman on her own wants to be?

  The Congressman doesn't know I'm coming. The election is fast upon him; he doesn't need anything more to worry him. He can't imagine I will come.

  R. imagined I would go. He sent a note 'round to my house. I call it my house because he gave it to me, because my name is on the deed, and because, as Beauty says and it's ugly to admit, I earned it.

  R. wrote to say that if I was going to Washington, I could stay at "the house." He doesn't say my house, and he doesn't say ours. His kindness makes me cry. I am touched that he knew, could figure out, what I would do; his kindness makes me cry, but I can't accept it anymore.

  107

  Though I had money, they wouldn't rent a hotel room to an unaccompanied woman. I hired a driver to take me to my Congressman's sister's house. When she opened the door she remembered me.

  108

  There is a ball tonight at the university. All the great Negro leaders of the city will be present. The election has come and gone. My Congressman will be Congressman no more when they swear in the new House. His sister has invited me to go with her party to the ball. I have things to tell him. I hope I can find the words.

  109

  We danced tonight. But before we danced I made preparations.

  I had the slim gap-toothed girl, Corinne, over for tea. I suspected three or four things about her, one or two of them very important to me. Her flat chest and narrow hips reminded me of Mealy Mouth, only more. It was not easy issues I sidled up to, but I sidled up under the guise of sharing the story of a girl cousin who was married but rocked an empty cradle. She never swelled. The girl shrugged.

  Her teeth were pretty, really, little pearls with a tiny little part in the middle of her smile. She was unashamed; things were as God intended them. If she was to live alone, well, she
wasn't alone; she was with her parents. And she had the children in the settlement houses. There was important work to do and she was doing it. She knew how much the Negro population had increased since the end of the war. How many more hungry stomachs and hungry minds. How little helpful political currency remained. "Odd," she said, making a delicate joke to change the subject, "my female trouble is that I have no female trouble."

  She took the bitter with the sweet and swallowed them both whole. "The only man who should marry me is a widower with five children who need someone to raise them. He would be lucky to get me."

  "What about the Congressman?"

  "He wants a family. He kept talking to me about babies, and that's when I pulled away."

  "You love who you love," I say.

  "You're blessed with whatever you're blessed with."

  "Wherever it comes from."

  "We're not in very different boats, are we?"

  "You could not be more wrong," I say. Of a sudden I am frozen. After all these years she could not be more wrong.

  If I find a way to offer my gift, will she find a way to accept?

  110

  I pressed crushed flowers into the hem of my dress and into its creases. Scent rises in waves from my garment as I move. I tell him that he must marry the gap-toothed girl. He laughs. We dance more. He pulls me deeper into the dance; we swirl, and I am drunk on the power that is flowing out of his body back into our country, our America. I look around me at these new Negroes, this talented tenth, this first harvest, the brightest minds, the sustained souls, the ones so beautiful they have received some advantage, and so strong they need not what they did not receive. Folks whose fathers were named Fearless and were freed because their master was afraid to own them. The ones who could intimidate from shackles. These beautiful ones. They are as close to gods as we have seen walk the earth. I dance and I see them dance in the darkening night as clouds roll in, covering the stars that shine upon the ones who survived the culling-out of the middle passage, and the mental shackles of slavery; the group that rose with the first imperfect freedoms to this city, to the Capital, this group of Negroes shining brightly as their—as our—flame burns down as our time passes.

  This short night they call Reconstruction is ending. We dance in our twilight, and I know it. It is a secret greater than the secret I carry. Once in north Alabama rose a brilliant black man who no one gave a chance at all, rose and rode to Washington to take his place in the Capital City, a man who stole a woman from the oldest, richest family in the Confederacy. I saw that man. I saw him in the company of the nation's finest men, and I saw him stand toe to toe, and he was taller. But he is leaving the District of Columbia soon, and I don't know how long I will be around. I get too tired to remember. We swirl, the old fiddle sings us tunes, and when he pulls me closest, I tell him he must marry the girl and why. This is our Götterdämmerung. This is the twilight and we are the gods.

  111

  The Congressman married the doctor's daughter; that's what the town said. The girl who attended New England Female Medical College. In a little African Methodist Episcopal church. I was the only witness.

  I sold Lady's earbobs and bought a little house out by the water in Maryland. Its weather-darkened bricks are from before the birth of our nation; the woods that surround my place are older still. The Frederick Douglasses are talking about buying some nearby property and building a home. When the time comes, I think I will be ready for neighbors. If and when the Douglasses come, they want to encourage others to migrate with them. It's starting to be hard times for Negroes in the city, and it's always been hard times for Negroes in the country. It's easier to live where fewer dreams are buried.

  112

  A son has been born to the Congressman, a legitimate heir. A beautiful, beautiful boy. He came into the world so pale, his mother fretted for days over his little Moses crib, praying for a little dark to come in. There were good signs from the start, a bit of brownness 'round his cuticles and the tips of his ears, but like many light-skinned babies his eyes are a greeny-gray. I am to be the Godmother. They named him Cyrus after me. I took him back to an Episcopal church to be baptized; I couldn't wait for the Baptist immersion. If anything happens to my Godchild, I want him to go straight up to heaven and wait for his father and mother. I want no doubts at all.

  113

  Oh, my goodness. He is here. I call him Moses. I'm keeping Cyrus for his Poppa and Mama today. I tell him the story of Moses. I hold him above my head and I tell him about the mother making the cradle and setting it to float in the bulrushes. I tell him about the woman who put him in the cradle and the woman who found him. Some folks say she was the same woman, some folks say she was not. I know both women loved the baby. I am not so very well now. I think about the old days some now, and for the very first time I understand something about Mealy Mouth. The very best days are the days on which babies come. I'm so tired, I forgive her for what she had done to Miss Priss's brother, beat until he bled to death because something he said about a time he had had with Dreamy Gentleman. And I forgive Miss Priss for what she done to Mealy Mouth. And what that done to Other. And what that done to me. The very best days are the days the baby comes.

  114

  This is for you, my darling, emperor of the Congress of my heart. For you, Adam Conyers. Congressman Adam Conyers of Alabama, self-educated trained to the bar. I had intended to get a job on the new Negro newspaper. I had intended to write about the ladies and the parties they gave and the dresses they wore. I had intended to make you and him proud of me. All my life I saw the tangles that stood between me and love—until you. When I saw you, I refused to see the tangles, and I stubbed my toe, got swoll up and burst, and now it looks as if I'm going to die.

  I have never felt so loved as the day we waited for the baby's color to show or not show. And I knew because you told me, and I believed what you said, that you knew who the Mama was, and that was good enough for you. Anything of mine you loved. And lucky for me he's yours; it's been hard for me to love anything of mine. But just in time, loving what belongs to you means loving my own.

  Tell your son all of this—when he's grown. Tell my Moses. Don't let it form him, and he will grow strong enough to master it. Shield the child from the truth of shackles, and no shackle will hold the man. The bars that cannot be broken are behind the eyes; the whippings you can't survive are the ones you give yourself. Let respectability be his first position; then nothing on this earth can shame him. Tell him his mother bought that respectability with lonely blood, and it is his birthright. Tell him that I was the chosen witness of the twilight, of you, my God. Ask him to pray against his mother's blasphemy. Tell him if we are as a people to rise again, it will be in him. Tell him I only did one great thing: I bore a little black baby and I knew—what every mother should know and has been killed out of too many of my people, including my mother—I bore a little black baby and knew it was the best baby in the world. Tell your wife, tell my gap-toothed Corinne, a lifetime of hating Other has made me fit for an eternity of loving her. Tell them both, I learned to share in peculiar circumstances. Now, the wind done gone, the wind done gone, the wind done gone and blown my bones away.

  ***

  The End

  Postscript

  Cindy, née Cynara, called Cinnamon, died many years later of a disease we now know to be lupus. She left her entire, not inconsiderable, estate to Garlic. She left her diary to Miss Priss, who left it to her eldest daughter, who left it to her only daughter, Prissy Cynara Brown.

  The Congressman's son, Cyrus the first, never made it back to Congress, but his grandson, Cyrus the third, did. Today, Cyrus represents a district near Memphis, in Tennessee. He married a Nashville girl who practices law to support her horseback riding. They named their firstborn son Cyrus, Cyrus the fourth, but added Jeems in honor of one of her ancestors who had helped train the first American grand national champion. Little Jeems, as he is called, has his eyes on the White House.

>   Cotton Farm still stands just outside Atlanta. Jeems's christening, upholding long-standing tradition, occurred in its great hall, overlooked by an oil portrait of Garlic that Debt Chauffeur had painted just before he died. In his will, Debt left Cotton Farm, fallen on bad times and in disrepair, to Garlic, with the wish that he rot with the farm until he died and rot in hell after. Many thought R. just wanted some good company. Garlic used Cynara's money to repair the place.

  When Garlic died, he left his pocket watch to the Congressman's son, along with half of Cotton Farm. The other half he left to Miss Priss, of course!

  The mortgaged farm supplied the funds for Cyrus the third's successful election to Congress.

  Like Mammy, Lady, and Planter, Cynara, Congressman, and Corinne were buried together. For all those we love for whom tomorrow will not be another day, we send the sweet prayer of resting in peace.

  Acknowledgments

  Caroline is my strongest inspiration. I would burn this book unpublished if it would ensure her happy life. She would pull it from the fire; my daughter is a brave and generous soul.

  Mimi has proven herself to be my life's longest sweet companion. David is the redeemer of my faith in romantic love; his history is my future. Jun is our Godfather. Anton is my best book friend. David F. is my longest friend-boy. Jane is Sunday afternoon. Ann is my magnolia blossom. When I had very little else, I had Marc and in a different time Marq. Happy Birthday, Joan B. and Judge Cliffie. Bob G. and Edith and Michael believed in me from the beginning. Roberta was my beginning. The Smiths embody the best of Cotton Farm—home. Gail sparkles. Forrest helped me see, Somers helped me survive. Jed is the brightest person I have ever known, still. Grandma is Grandma, and Sonia is our Aunt. Lea is Godmommy. Kimiko is my sister. And Flo is my shero. Ricky carried the ashes. The Congressman owes much to Reggie. And Jerry is my Garlic. Courtney sang. Quincy brought me to the big show. Brandon I miss. George I think on every day. Their love sustained my creativity.