Delicious Foods

by James Hannaham

  No, that wasn’t the right thing to feel, or even think, let alone say—forget about doing it. So nothing. No genuine reactions. Acting all zombified made things easier and harder at the same time. Thank you for coming, Bethella. Oh, I’m hanging in there. Yes, it’s terrible. Eddie doesn’t understand and I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, which parts do I explain, and how much? Yes, justice. Justice won’t bring him back any quicker than sorry, she thought. In Louisiana, a Negro could find a igloo faster than justice.

  At church, with Eddie gripping her gloved hand, all them flower crosses looking blurry behind her veil, Darlene thinking ’bout the morgue, and ’bout that damn piece of driftwood inside that coffin. Eddie looked up and asked how they know his daddy in there, and she laughed a little ’cause she ain’t know neither and couldn’t bring herself to say nothing. If Eddie had seen that charcoal thing with its sickening face in that casket he wouldn’t believe it had nothing to do with his daddy neither. Didn’t no words come to her, she gone back to staring at the picture on the program, and fortunately Leticia Bonds from the beauty shop start singing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” right then. She had the type of voice that made you think she gonna be a star someday.

  Later, when they putting Nat in the ground, Darlene squeeze Eddie’s hand a little tighter and he turnt his eyes down to the casket, and she ain’t feel that Eddie had a grip on her hand no more, but that she had tumbled into a grave herself and be grasping at his forearm, tryna keep herself from getting inside that box next to that black log. She wanted to hold that damn log and stroke it like it still Nat, or like something of him had stayed inside it, even if it crumbled in her arms. As if she could still pull her face right up close to his after he had fell asleep, the way she used to did every night, and kiss him and breathe in his breath.

  With Nat gone, she wasn’t no person no more. She hadn’t lost a part of herself, she lost the whole motherfucking thing. Bad labels came into her mind ’bout herself, and all of em stuck, ’cause she had stole Nat from somebody else, and ’cause of the standing around at the store in them yellow shoes, and ’cause of the migraine, and ’cause of who she was.

  Even when her neighbors pressured the police and they found out ’bout a group of white men that ain’t had no alibis, Miss Darlene couldn’t be thinking ’bout what they done. They was just white boys doing what come natural in the place they from—down south, white boys be hunting Negroes like lions be hunting gazelles out in the goddamn Serengeti. Hell, the damn cops still did it theyself. Darlene focused on the part that she played in the process, how if she hadna stood around in them shoes and gotten that migraine, etc., if Nat hadna insisted on putting his clothes on and going down there, he wouldna been there for them boys to broke his legs and head and toss his ass on the floor like dog meat while they splashing kerosene everyplace like the Devil’s cologne and then lighting they ever-loving matches and gone to sit in they cars. Sitting there like they television done broke and that’s the substitute for Disney’s Motherfucking Magic Kingdom.

  But even in that hot-ass courtroom, Darlene couldn’t conjure up no hatred for nobody but herself while them boys’ steady stream of Yes sirs and No sirs ringing out against the walls, and the brutality be showing under they cool smiles and they polite chitchat with one another, even the women, even the judges. In the heat, them boys dabbing they foreheads with handkerchiefs and adjusting they ties, but you could tell they vicious bloodthirsty motherfuckers inside. They ain’t stir at all when they lawyer used the word coloreds and a couple of black folk up in the balconies grunted a complaint. One of em, a older man, be cleaning his damn fingernails while the lawyer describing the whole of everything Nat had gone through to turn his ass to charcoal. Them good ol’ boys treat they own trial like they was toddlers that had got accused of stepping on a ant by accident.

  If any of it woulda made a difference, Darlene mighta paid more attention. It ain’t surprise her or move her none when the judge threw the case out ’cause the damn prosecution ain’t had enough evidence to convict, ’cause why would they bother to find enough evidence?

  She ain’t feel nothing when the fathers and they boys filed out with they crew-cut heads sticking out them stiff white dress shirts, hugging they wives and mothers like they done saved something precious that the evil Darlene had tried to take from em. Darlene said to herself, Let them go back to their guns and their private clubs. Nothing will bring Nat back, and killing or jailing somebody else’s husband or son would only burn everybody’s wounds deeper.

  She let other folks talk to the reporters—people who felt more outraged than she did ’cause they ain’t done nothing to cause the events. They ain’t know and they never would know how it felt.

  Eddie ain’t need a mother who had did that to a father, a bitch who murdered husbands with her headaches. She let Bethella take him to Houston sometime, for the days right after they killed Nat, and later when she start tryna find work. Oftentimes, she couldn’t bring herself to go get him, so she didn’t, and he stayed with Bethella longer. Eddie needed Bethella’s strictness and her discipline, Darlene said—she thought it gonna influence him positively. Whenever Darlene took care of Eddie after what happened, she let him jump on the furniture, bought him ice cream and cake, drove him wherever he wanted to go, let him stay home from school—once she even stole a wind-up toy boat for the bath ’cause at the time she couldn’t pay, but she felt bad and stereotypical behind that immoral action too, even though she done it for a good reason. She wasn’t ’bout to deny that Eddie deserved every last thing he wanted; it hurt him when he couldn’t get things, and she couldn’t watch him suffer for one blessed minute. It woulda hurt more to explain the why-nots. He the innocent one.

  Nat been gone ’bout a year and a half before Darlene finally got herself a job, a job aside from the unpaid work she tried to avoid, which was dealing—or not dealing—with the charred remnants of Mount Hope Grocery. She heard ’bout the gig through this white boy named Spar said he met Nat once. The insurance money for Nat and for the store be running out, and even though it had helped a whole lot, using it still reminded Darlene’s ass of all she done blamed herself for. Her new job was at a different store, a nationwide chain with fluorescent lights and linoleum instead of wood beams and peat-moss smells, so it ain’t set off no unpleasant memories for her. But unpleasant memories you know to avoid; its the goddamn pleasant ones be causing all the pain on account a they sneak up on your ass.

  On one them evening shifts, with Harriet from down the road looking after Eddie, Darlene start thinking ’bout going back to all the places she and Nat once shared, and when she get home late that night, she start going through a whole bunch of Nat’s coats, his bomber jacket that still be smelling like his Old Spice, and his pictures of the Centenary Gents, and the songs he used to whistle start clogging up her mind. Darlene knowed she gotta drown out them memories and get the fuck outta Louisiana. That’s right when she started thinking ’bout moving to Houston. Bethella could guard her son. Eddie like being with Bethella probably more than being with her, Darlene told herself. Eddie ain’t need to soak up all the weird, negative messages she be giving off all the time. Plus, she hoping that she could find better work in Houston.

  Of course, moving to Houston don’t never solve nobody problems, and Miss D sure couldn’t solve the big issue that be obvious to any fool who seen the family together in the happy days, which was that Eddie took after his pop so goddamn much—not just physically, with them whiskey-brown eyes and them eyelashes and that big-ass mouth, but he had somehow picked up a truckload of his daddy’s ways. It got tough for Darlene to stay in the room with him and drain out all the unhappiness that start swelling inside her feet, ’cause her son be a living reminder of her dead husband. That gon be the same whether she in Ovis or Houston or the east side of Hades.

  Around that same time, a few month after she start her job at that Hartman’s Pharmacy, me and Darlene got together and had our first li’l tête-à-
tête. So it could be I’m partly to blame for why it done took another year and a half for her to get her and Eddie ass to Houston for real. Meanwhile, in them May evenings after work, she feeling that restlessness coming on right before she gone home, like a checkpoint had sprung up between work and home where the happiness cops gonna pull her over and test her to make sure she got a positive mood. She be standing around outside the store after her shifts, watching customers stroll in and out, counting how many trucks gone past, letting the sun bake her face while it’s dropping off behind the trees in the neighborhood cross the street. Sometime she sat on a crate, smoking alone ’cause the store discount done got her started on tobacco again, or she with her other so-called associates on break, everybody parking theyself at a wobbly old picnic table with all kinda graffiti gouged into the wood.

  One afternoon she sitting there watching one them freaky sunsets where every type of cloud done mixed with airplane exhaust and space dust or some shit and the sky be turning all blue and orange and it look the way a brass band sound while it’s tuning up. This sky had so much drama going on up there that a few customers was gathered on the walkway in front of the store gaping at it like they waiting for the space shuttle to launch. Off to one side, a gigantic storm cloud be blending the darkness with the coming night, but on the other side, the sun had burnt a hole in a bunch of puffy globs of meringue and its beams was shooting through. Above that, some the meringue done gone bright purple.

  Spar, her manager, walked out onto the sidewalk and stared, then he turnt his head to Darlene.

  It’s a stunner, huh?

  What is? Darlene said. She seen the whole spectacle, plus the onlookers, without noticing nothing at all; everything she experienced feeling humdrum, like it’s a washed-out photograph in a motherfucking View-Master.

  You, honey. He grinned.

  Spar flirted with every woman who crossed the threshold at that damn store, but with Darlene he ain’t never stop, and that made her nervous that he meant it for real. It disturbed her ’cause he said he met Nat once—you don’t be hitting on the new widow of no acquaintance before the tag’s off his damn toe. Spar a skinny white guy, shorter and younger than Darlene, who slick his hair back and can’t grow enough face hair for a goatee but try anyhow. Not nobody she felt she could take seriously, almost not even as a boss. How seriously you could take a guy named after Spartacus, that dumbass gladiator from them old movies? She had wanted to work there ’cause that branch was way far away from Ovis—other side of Monroe, almost to Ruston—and she ain’t always feeling the eyes of motherfuckers who knew ’bout the murder and the trial and Mount Hope. Only Spar knew about her connection to all them tragic events, and she ain’t think he had said nothing to the others; also, most of em ain’t read the papers too careful, ’cause they sure ain’t sell too much of em at the store. Darlene liked that she ain’t had no identity or no history at her job; being anonymous meant she could relax for a while and hide in the stream of shoppers that was high on buying shit.

  Spar pointed his chin up at the sky. The sunset, Darlene, darlin’. It’s almost as pretty as yourself.

  Darlene waved one hand at him and took a drag from her cigarette with the other. Yeah, I see it, it’s nice, she said, exhaling a couple gray plumes.

  Spar seem like he egged on by the fact that she responded at all, but he ain’t noticed, or had chose to ignore, the rejection in her voice. He took a few clumsy-ass steps over to her. Could I get a smoke, please?

  Darlene flipped open her hard-pack and a final cigarette rolled to one side.

  Are you sure you want to give me your last one?

  She stretch out her arm farther toward him and push the cigarette up out the box with two fingers. Take it, she said, like she a robot. If I want more, there’s others inside. On discount too.

  He took it and used his own lighter to get it started and sat down on a concrete thing looked like a broken wall jutting up from the walkway. They looked up at the craziness in the sky again, and the thrill in Spar li’l face be rising up slowly.

  Like the end of the world, he said to hisself, and then turnt to Darlene, thinking some new thought, or maybe one he just mustered the gumption to blurt out. You been off work the last hour and ten, ha’nt you? Why you ain’t go home? You like it here that much? You waitin’ on somebody? Your boyfriend?

  Didn’t he remember? Did she need to remind him? Darlene screamed in her head but decided she ain’t gonna answer, and Spar, who making a show of listening, had took off his dark company shirt and folded it over his thigh, showing off a sleeveless tank top. On his left shoulder, down to his wrist, he had the ugliest tattoo Darlene ever seen, a orange-and-green cartoon of a vine that be strangling a evil octopus that had fangs and a human face.

  She couldn’t keep from staring at the terrible picture and screwing up her nose, and when he seen her looking, he went, It’s new. Then he goes, I got another, and smirked and pulled up his shirt to show her the Tasmanian devil on his pec, all alone, like Taz had runned over there ’cause he scared of the octopus. Spar held the ugly image on his shoulder close to her face until she felt like she had to say she liked it to make him move it out her personal space. Then he told a long story ’bout where the idea had came from that ain’t make no kinda sense whatsoever.

  Hey, Spar said, once the dusk getting started. As you probably know, I live walking distance from here? And I’m finna go on home and have me a couple beers, and uh, continue to smoke things, and you’re welcome to join me if you like. Don’t make me drink alone, honey.

  Darlene peered at him like she didn’t trust him.

  I promise to be a total gentleman. He stood up.

  Darlene be shifting in her seat.

  You can bring me up on sexual harassment if I’m not. He raised his right hand. God’s my witness, he said, and then, suddenly distracted, he pointed at her ring. Hold the phone, you got a husband. Then there was a pause and Darlene shook her head and glared into his eyeballs, then Spar suddenly lowered gaze to his shoes. Right! he exclaimed. I forgot. Damn it to hell, I’m such a idiot! He punched hisself in the head, maybe a li’l violently. How could I forget a thing like that? I’m real sorry, Darlene. He put his palms up like he wanna touch her, but she knew he couldn’t.

  Darlene finish her cigarette and flick the butt to the ground and it bounced underneath a car grille. The temperature had fell real quick and she ain’t thought to bring no sweater. She stood up, folding her arms and rubbing her biceps with her hands to keep warm, looking away from Spar. She impressed that Spar forgot, even for a instant, the thing that had seared itself into her mind to the exclusion of damn near everything else. She thinking maybe he could teach her how to forget everything too.

  No wonder you’re always looking sad, Spar said. They started walking down the sparkly asphalt. Did them guys ever—? he asked, and then waggled his head, thinking better of it. Oh, I ain’t gonna pry, Miss Darlene. You could say whatever you feel comfortable with. Then he gone off on another monologue ’bout how nosiness had done in his grandfather during the Great Depression; he ain’t stop till they walked into his house, one them shabby joints with peeling paint everywheres, fat columns framing the door out on the verandah, sitting behind a couple magnolia trees.

  Darlene knew who I was—she seen people smoking, they even offered to introduce her to me several times before, but she think she too good for me then. In the back of her mind, she thought I was dangerous, but she also recognized that sometimes you could do dangerous shit without no consequences. I was good friends with Spar, for example, and he the manager of a convenience store. When Spar brought her to the garden in his backyard and casually lit that pipe, almost elegant, like a English dude from the past would do with a pinch of tobacco, they had already had a beer or three and he had loaned her a sweatshirt, one still a li’l bit warm from the dryer and that had a clean, flowery scent to it. Her resistance gone way the fuck down; she wanted to get free from the shit reality she living in, plus, wi
th how nice her manager acting, it seem rude to turn down the trademark thick velvety smoke created by Yours Truly. Hello, Darlene, I said, and my smoke entered her lungs for the first time, gentle like a handshake at the start, then my lovely fingers of smoke got in her breath and grabbed it right where Nat’s breath had once spent all that time. I am so glad we met.

  After a couple hits, I had gave her the first confidence she felt in years, not to mention contentment. She talked more and played checkers and drank whiskey with Spar—in a couple hours, she was certain this social outing gonna lead directly to a promotion at work. It dawned on her that she felt like recently everything in life had twisted her ass out of shape, but right then she seen that her distorted outline was a piece of a puzzle, the last one hanging above what had been a real tough board. I floated her ass above the board on a cloud of smoke. The smoke lowered her down and pushed her in place and something inside her went snap and we finished the puzzle together. It felt so good we ripped all them motherfucking puzzle pieces apart and did that shit again. And the ripping and the doing-again felt just as good the second time. And the fifty-second. And…

  14.

  Lost Years

  Because of all the expectations Eddie had stockpiled about being back with his mother, the reality couldn’t have held up even if things had been perfect. But he listed the ways in which things had improved. His mother didn’t go out on the street in Houston anymore—she stayed in one place and worked steadily, got regular meals, and had friends. She and Eddie could spend time together in the morning and for a while at night. Sometimes the drugs didn’t get in the way of her personality and he could see, behind the glazed looks and volatile reactions, the mother he remembered. His mother reminded him of the proverbial stopped watch that tells the right time twice a day. Every day he would wait for those two times.