Nowhere Is a Place

by Bernice L. McFadden

  So Beka and Helen would have to go.

  Sunday dresses, money pinned to the inside of their brassieres, polished shoes, purses dangling from wrists, hands clutching brown paper bags with shiny, greasy bottoms.

  Trees streak by outside of their window, army men laughing loud around them. Women clutching babies, old people nodding off before the first whistle blows.

  Helen and Beka try to hide their excitement, try to look like this is just one of many train rides, but they give themselves away when they point and giggle like schoolgirls at everything and anything.

  They don’t have money for a compartment with beds, and even if they did, colored folk aren’t allowed that luxury, so when their eyes begin to burn from staring too long, they finally sleep; Beka’s head resting on the glass window and Helen’s on Beka’s soft shoulder.

  They arrive in Philadelphia in the middle of a rainstorm, their dresses soaked through, water running down the vinyl seats of the taxi. Wrong way, right street. “What’s the house number again?”

  Beka and Helen standing on the porch, sure every eye that peeks out from behind eyelet drapes knows Beka has a rip in her hand-me-down slip.

  Press and curl done for and grease dripping in globs from their ruined hair, Beka bangs on the white front door while Helen presses her face against the window, trying to spot some movement in the lamplit parlor.

  “You sure this the right house?” Beka screams over the thunder.

  Helen digs down into the front of her dress and pulls out a slip of paper. She eyes it for a while and then says, “Yeah, this it.”

  “Let’s try ’round the back!” Helen yells over the downpour, and they take off down the stairs and round the house toward the rear.

  Helen sees them first, and stops dead in her tracks. Beka, blinded by the torrential rain, runs smack into Helen’s back. “Oh, shoot I’m—” Beka starts, but then sees too and gasps.

  Half-naked children, wallowing in the mud like pigs.

  They stand in amazement and then a slither of amusement snakes through them and Helen yells out, “What y’all think you’re doing?” Her voice is light and laughter pushes out her words.

  Three of them stop. The smallest one keeps wallowing.

  “Who you?” Beanie Moe asks, and takes a step toward them.

  Baby Wella finally stops rolling, and her small hands smack at the mud that’s clinging to her face. She looks at him and then follows his eyes to the women before popping her fat thumb in her mouth.

  “Oh, baby, don’t!” Beka shrieks, and moves past Helen, scooping up Wella and starting up the back porch stairs.

  Helen wipes at the rain on her face and leans in to one leg. He has a right to ask, she thinks as she rests her hands on her hips. They are family, even though she has never laid eyes on him, or any of the others.

  “Get offa my sista!” Beanie Moe screams at Beka, and the skin covering his scrawny build tightens and Helen can see every bone in his body.

  “We your aunties,” Helen barks. And then, “Ya’ll get on in the house.” A wave of her hand toward the back door and serious eyes follow.

  Beanie Moe watches her, chest rising and falling, but no feet start walking. Clementine, who they call Dumpling, throws a cautious look, takes a step, and then stalls. Another look, a blast of thunder, and her feet start up again and she scurries past her siblings, up the stairs, into the house, and waits, dripping and watching from the doorway.

  “C’mon, now,” Helen urges.

  Beanie Moe is still blowing air like a bull and his hands are balled into the most pitiful fists Helen has ever seen.

  She raises her hand quickly to her mouth to hide the smile with a cough. “We all gonna get pneumonia out here. Now, get on in the house.”

  “C’mon, now,” Beka pleads weakly from the doorway.

  Thunder rolls across the sky and a jagged fork of lightning cuts through the darkness.

  Beanie Moe looks up at the sky and then back at Helen.

  “Beanie Moe, now, I ain’t playing with you!” Helen yells. “Don’t make me come over there and drag you into that house!”

  Another shuddering boom of thunder and then the sound of a heavy limb breaking away from an elm across the street.

  It’s the sound of his name and not the thunder or lightning that rattles him. Beanie Moe, the letters rolled and came together on that stranger’s tongue, spinning out and sounding as sweet as it did when his mother called it.

  He squints at her. There is a resemblance, but she is taller, darker.

  The standoff lasts a few more seconds, and just as Helen makes her mind up to tackle Beanie Moe, he suddenly turns and calmly climbs the stairs and walks into the house.

  * * *

  Now standing there, all of them shivering and soaking wet. Helen eyed the children, while it was all Beka could do to keep her mouth shut.

  The house was a mansion compared to their Georgia saltbox. Fine parquet floors twinkled beneath the gaslights. Rose-colored carpet climbed the staircase. A large, oval, mahogany table graced the spacious dining room, and the parlor held, from what Beka could see, two sofas and at least three sitting chairs.

  “Ain’t there four of y’all?” Helen asked the crowd of young faces that looked back at her.

  The children said nothing.

  Helen sighed. “Where’s your mama at?” She threw the question out into the air and waited. Still no one offered a breath or a word. “Y’all don’t speak?” Helen asked, her hands gripping her hips.

  “Sure they do.” The words floated to them from the top of the staircase. Beka’s and Helen’s heads snapped toward the sound and they found themselves blinking wildly and then thought to laugh, but just smirked.

  “Oh my,” Beka started. “If you don’t look just like your mama.”

  “If you ain’t your mama’s child!” Helen said, and stepped forward to get a closer look.

  Lovey’s face was placid as she started down the stairs. She held the women’s eyes with her own until she reached the landing and then shot her siblings a quick, slicing look.

  Lovey examined the soiled throw rug they stood on for a moment and shook her head pitifully before looking back at her aunts.

  The posture her body fell into was years beyond her age: hip stuck out, arms crossed and floating at her waist, neck straight, head steady—that stance should have been out of her reach, but she had it anyway, gripped tight and perfect.

  “Who are you, and why you in my house?”

  Beka’s and Helen’s heads pulled back a bit before they looked at each other to make sure all that they were hearing and seeing was real.

  “Your house?” Helen laughed and pressed her palm against her chest.

  “I’m your Aunt Beka, and this here is your Aunt Helen. We your mama’s sisters,” Beka said, and offered Lovey the smile she used on the sweet-faced children that attended her Bible-study class.

  “My mama ain’t got no sisters,” Lovey replied matter-of-factly, and then had the nerve to examine her fingernails.

  Helen’s eyes rolled and she felt her head get hot.

  “Where you get that from?” Beka asked, astonished.

  Right then they became air, invisible, because Lovey didn’t say another word to either of them, just raised her right hand and pointed a finger toward the stairs. “Beanie Moe, Dumpling, y’all take the baby and get on upstairs and get yourselves under some water. Now.”

  Eleven years old and more woman than Helen and Beka had ever come across in someone that young. They tried to keep the astonishment off of their faces, but it stuck out—stunned and as plain as day.

  The children filed past Helen and Beka quietly, moving obediently up the stairs.

  They were visible again, because Lovey moved to the front door, swung it open, narrowed her eyes in their direction, and said, “Get out.”

  Outside, the rain beat down on the sisters’ forgotten suitcases and whipped the fragile stems of the white and pink that blossomed in the pl
anters lining the stone steps.

  Beka was more than ready to get going. She hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. Lillie was her sister, but they had never been friends.

  When Lillie had left, the bad talk about her followed—and so did the tension between them. So when Lovey’s lips pressed tight again, Beka started forward but Helen’s hand caught hold of her wrist and jerked her back into place.

  “We ain’t going no goddamn place,” Helen spat.

  Lovey wavered.

  They’d seen it, a quick flutter of lashes, a twitch of the mouth, and the whole top part of her body jerked. For a moment she was eleven again, but just for a moment; if they’d blinked they would have missed it.

  “I’ll call the law,” Lovey said, and pushed the door farther back on its hinges, welcoming the rain in and soaking the floral piece of carpet that sat at the door.

  “Call ’em,” Helen said, and folded her arms across her chest. Puddles at their feet now and someone complaining upstairs about the tub being too full. Lovey’s attention snagged on that possibility and the yellow stain sitting on the ceiling above her head from the last time the tub ran over, Lillie cussing and the switch that left lines across her thighs, and now these women claiming to be kin when Lillie had made it perfectly clear that “all them people in Sandersville are dead.” Or was it “dead to me”?

  Lovey couldn’t remember which one it was.

  “I will. I’ll call the law,” she said, and her voice squeaked.

  Call the law, Helen wanted to say again. Shoot, she had things she might be able to tell a Phila-del-phia lawman that she couldn’t tell Sheriff Oakland back home. Even though it had begun and ended so long ago, just living in that house and seeing Vonnie every day made it seem as if it was still going on.

  Nobody had ever said it was wrong, but something about it had never felt right and she didn’t think it had anything to do with it happening at night or without words or right alongside her sleeping sister.

  And it was understood, without words, that what had gone on at night wasn’t something to be discussed at breakfast the next morning or even taken out of the door to the little white schoolhouse the county had put up for coloreds or even into the AME church with its splintered pews and worn Bibles.

  Call them, please! she wanted to holler, because even getting the news about coming to Phila-del-phia had come in the dark of night, like Lillie and Phila-del-phia was a dirty, nasty, forbidden place that could only be discussed after sundown.

  “Got the train tickets today for you and Beka,” Vonnie had whispered to them from the doorway.

  Helen hadn’t even known where to place her eyes, so she just looked at the darkness above her head.

  “Y’all leave day after ’morrow. I already got the time squared away with Mr. Paul.”

  How could his words feel like fingers? How did he do that, say a few words in the dark and shuttle her mind right back to the first time, the times in between, and the very last time too?

  No sense in crying about it anymore. No sense in being angry about it anymore. The anger had desiccated into shame, and everybody knew that shame was soundless, so he was safe.

  And that night, not just his words like fingers, not just the clink of the timepiece dropping into his pocket and against the loose change, not just his back and the wooden door closing softly behind him, but the sound of Suce saying something to him from her room. Where had her words been years ago when he was offending them? Where had her now wide-open eyes been then?

  So Helen moved slowly toward Lovey, her eyes challenging her to do it, but her hand acting on its own and grabbing hold of the door, pulling it from Lovey’s grasp and calling over her shoulder to Beka, “Get the bags.” And then the slamming sound of the door and her mouth taking sides with her hand and saying, “Now, where my sista at?”

  None of them children had the answer, and so Beka and Helen waited and tried not to get too used to the gaslights and inside plumbing.

  * * *

  Five days later Lillie came sauntering through her front door and wasn’t at all surprised to smell peach cobbler bubbling in the stove, but the lilacs, vased and sitting at the center of the dining room table, caught her off guard, and she was fixing her mouth to call out to Lovey when she heard the flip of paper and turned to see the big crossed legs of her sister Helen and the half-drunk glass of sweet tea sitting and sweating on the small wooden table, uncoastered.

  Twelve years had streaked by like twelve days, and besides the occasional letter, new Easter hat she sent for Suce every year, Christmas telegram, and the five-dollar bills she sent home when the mood hit her, Lillie didn’t give Sandersville or her family a second thought.

  Now here they were invading her home and ruining her furniture.

  “You ain’t never had nothing and so don’t know how to treat nothing!” Lillie snatched up the glass. “Look at this shit here,” she continued, shaking a finger at the wet circle already leaving a ghostly ring on the wood. “Country-ass Negroes,” she spat, and stormed off to the kitchen.

  Helen calmly closed the magazine she was reading, placed it down on her lap, and watched Lillie’s sashaying hips move through the rooms and disappear into the kitchen.

  After a while she returned empty-handed, stopping a foot from Helen’s big legs, and stared.

  Lillie had gained some weight, Helen thought to herself as they eyed each other. Glamorous, though—full-fledged and way past the practice part that had started back in Sandersville. False eyelashes, powdered face, blue-shadowed eyes. Red lipstick on her lips and red polish on her nails. Helen wondered if her toes were done too.

  “Well howdy-do to you too!” Helen finally said, and offered Lillie a genuine smile.

  Lillie just huffed and smirked at her. “I know you ain’t come here alone,” she said as she sauntered over to the chair across from Helen and sat down. “I can smell lavender all through the house.” She threw her head back and crossed her legs. “That Beka probably done used up half of my bubbling salts.”

  Helen smiled, but said nothing. They had both used quite a bit of the bubbling salts, luxuriating in the bathtub morning and night since they’d arrived.

  “I suppose you all have had a good time rifling through my shit,” Lillie breathed, her eyes on the ceiling, one leg bouncing to some tune that went through her head.

  They had.

  Been all through her bureau drawers and the hatboxes that lined the shelves of her closets.

  “Been sleeping in my bed too?” Lillie frowned.

  Every night, and it had been like sleeping on a cloud.

  “Where else you ’spect us to sleep?” Helen laughed.

  “So what y’all want?” Lillie was looking at her now. The tune was gone and her leg was still.

  Helen rubbed at the back of her neck and fingered the knot of the scarf she had tied around her kinky hair. “Ain’t you got a hot comb ’round here?”

  Lillie huffed with exasperation. “What I want with a hot comb?” she said and pointed to her silky mane. “Do it look like I need one?”

  “You may not need one, but them two younger girls of yours certainly do.”

  Lillie smiled. “They got they daddy’s hair,” she said, and her leg began to bounce again.

  They said nothing for a while and then Lillie softened, her whole body going to butter, melting into the chair, and her lips spreading into a sweet smile that was as close to a waving white flag as she was going to get. “Mama sent y’all up here to check on me, right?”

  “And the children,” Helen said, and folded her leg across her knee.

  “Where they at?”

  “Who?”

  “My children.”

  “That should have been your first question,” Helen said, and picked up the magazine again. “They gone down to the ice-cream parlor with Beka.”

  Lillie’s face twisted. “Lovey too?”

  Helen nodded. “She ain’t have no choice,” she said as she closed the ma
gazine, took a long look at the model on the cover, and then finally tossed it onto the small table. “She a woman if there ever was one,” Helen continued, folding her hands behind her head and giving her body a good stretch.

  “She grown, that’s for sure,” Lillie responded with nothing but pride in her voice, and then she suddenly stood up. “Hot, ain’t it?” Lillie pressed her palm against her forehead and then under her chin.

  Helen smirked; they had the same ways about them, Lillie and Lovey—could dismiss and move on in a tick’s heartbeat. But Helen pulled Lillie back in. “She what, ten now?”

  Lillie pulled at the waist of her dress and then at the rounded collar. “Shoot, must be ninety degrees,” she said as she hiked her dress up around her waist.

  Laced garters. Helen tried to swallow her jealousy, but it was out and stomping all across her face. Lillie moved to the wall and rested her hand against it for balance as she slid first one garter off and then the other. The stockings followed; those she rolled into a ball and tossed onto the chair. She started off toward the kitchen. “That pie ’bout done?”

  Helen rose and followed. “Should be.”

  “You say she how old?” Helen pushed when they met up again at the stove.

  “I didn’t say,” Lillie spoke into the refrigerator as she pulled a pitcher of lemonade from its depths.

  Helen pulled at the oven door handle and peeked inside.

  “Can’t you count?” Lillie said, and placed the pitcher of lemonade down onto the table.

  “Sure I can, just ain’t sure.” Helen wrapped the dishcloth around the pie pan and gently lifted it from the rack.

  Both sisters peered down at the pie and a look of satisfaction spread across their faces before Lillie moved to the upper cabinets and retrieved two glasses.

  “Eleven.”

  “Going on forty,” Helen laughed.

  “Enough about Lovey,” Lillie said as she filled one glass with lemonade and then the next. “What y’all want?”