The Summer We Got Free

by McKenzie, Mia

  Mother Haley glared at her and the white feather in her white hat trembled.

  Regina squinted at the apparition. “Don’t look at me like that, old woman.” She was trying to sound unafraid, but really she was terrified. Ghosts in general didn’t scare her. But this one was glowing almost red and Regina could feel a fury rising into the air, the temperature in the kitchen rising with it. “You got something to say, say it.”

  Mother Haley took a quick step towards Regina and just as Regina screamed, the spirit disappeared. Hurried footsteps came from every direction and Sarah, Ava, and Helena all burst into the kitchen.

  “Mama, what’s wrong?” Sarah asked her.

  “That old woman,” Regina said. “She was here.”

  “Who?” Ava asked. “Mama, who are you talking about?”

  “Mother Haley.”

  Helena looked at Ava. “Your grandmother?”

  “She was right there,” Regina said, pointing at the stove. “She came at me.”

  “I saw Kenny,” Sarah said.

  They all turned and looked at her.

  “A few days ago. He was there when I woke up.”

  “I saw Miss Maddy,” Ava told them. She had seen the ghost of Maddy Duggard on the night she had almost wet herself laughing and she had been too embarrassed by that entire incident to want to refer back to it later. Miss Maddy had been standing at the top of the steps when Ava had come out of the bathroom.

  Helena peered at her, frowning, and Ava could tell that she didn’t believe in ghosts.

  Ava picked up the ground beef from the floor and put it back into the refrigerator. They all sat down at the table and, for a little while, nobody spoke. Then Helena asked Ava, “Who was that man with your father?”

  “Chuck Ellis. He used to live down the street.”

  Regina paused in lighting a cigarette. “What about Chuck Ellis?”

  “He was here,” Ava told her.

  “What you mean, here?”

  “I mean here, Mama, in this house.”

  “Deacon Ellis was here?” Sarah asked.

  Regina leaned forward in her chair. “When was this?”

  “A little while ago. Before you got home.”

  “He’s a friend of Mr. Delaney’s?” Helena asked.

  “He was,” Sarah said. “When we were little we called him Uncle Chuck. They was always together. Then he stopped coming around.”

  “Because of Pastor Goode?”

  Sarah shook her head. “It was years before that. Wasn’t it, Mama?”

  “Well, what was he doing here?” Regina asked.

  Ava shrugged. “I have no idea. They came in while we were out back.”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Sarah asked. “I mean, one of them coming into this house, and not even to start no trouble? I know he don’t live on this block no more, but he still go to church there. For him to come in this house at all, that must mean something.”

  “What?” Regina asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe somebody finally figuring out Pastor Goode been wrong all this time.”

  “I doubt that’s why he came in here,” Regina said.

  “Well, why then?”

  Regina didn’t answer. She got up from the table, feeling suddenly crowded, and left the kitchen. Up in her bedroom, she turned on the small black and white television that sat on top of the dresser, then removed her shoes, and sat with her legs stretched out on the bed. She smoked and watched the evening news, and tried not to think.

  *

  After Mother Haley appeared and disappeared again, the house was so hot that no one wanted to cook dinner. Instead, they searched the refrigerator and the cupboards for anything they could make that did not require real cooking, and settled on canned sardines and green beans, and bread. Paul was not working the night shift, so he was there in time for dinner for the first time in days. He spread butter on his bread and then passed the butter dish to Ava.

  “I looked at a house today,” he said.

  Regina looked up from her sardines. “You been looking at houses again?”

  He nodded.

  She looked at Ava. “You changed your mind about moving?”

  Ava shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”

  “You will. Once you see this place and see how good a fit it is for us. It aint even that far away from here.”

  “Where’s it at?” Sarah asked.

  “Over on Pine and Fifty-Third.”

  “That aint but what?” Regina asked. “Nine, ten blocks?”

  “That’s right.” Paul looked at Ava. “You be able to come and see your folks every day if you want to.”

  Ava spread butter on her bread and said nothing.

  “Well, what’s the house like?” Helena asked.

  “It’s nice. Not too big. Just the right size for us, I think. It’s even some extra room, in case, you know, we ever had kids or something.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Regina said. “It sound nice.”

  He looked at Ava again. “The lady who showed it to me said she’d be glad to set up a time for us to go see it together. Maybe Saturday?”

  Ava was aware that they were all looking at her, but she was watching the butter, seeing the way its color changed as it softened on the bread and how the light from the fixture above the table caught in the tiny bubbles of butterfat, making them gleam.

  “Ava, I know you hear me talking to you,” Paul said.

  She looked at him, annoyed. “First you’re looking at houses when you know I aint moving, and now you’re talking about kids you know I can’t have. Yes, I hear you talking, but what you’re saying doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with me.”

  “We are moving,” he said. “Goddamnit. I been in this house four years, Ava, and I don’t want to be in it no more.”

  “Maybe y’all should talk about this in private,” Helena said.

  He glared at his sister. “We talked about it in private a hundred times. It aint nothing else to say. We moving and that’s the end of it.”

  “Paul—”

  “Stay out of it, Helena,” he said, his voice rising. “It aint got nothing to do with you.”

  Ava brought the buttered bread to her lips, and the heavy, fatty smell of it filled her up. The moment the butter entered her mouth, the second it melted on her tongue, she knew she had not tasted it before, not really, not in a very long time. The taste was overwhelming, cream-thick and heavy-rich, and devastating. Lush, and heaven, it caused her eyes to close and her head to fall back, and a pleasure like none she could right then remember coursed through her, starting between her legs and moving down into her thighs, and up into her stomach, spreading over every inch of her, building like a slow, hot thing, like a fever. When it reached the tips of her fingers, she dropped her fork, and only vaguely heard it clang against her plate.

  “You alright, baby?” Paul asked her.

  She nodded, but could not speak. The pleasure grew and she felt something deep within herself coming up, and she thought, for a moment, that it was laughter, but when she opened her throat there came a moan, long and wonderful and obscene. Suddenly, she remembered being thirteen, standing in a small, dark room in Blessed Chapel Church, in the bishop’s nook, behind the pulpit, with her mouth pressed against another girl’s mouth. And now the fever, high and hot, suddenly broke, through her skin and out the tips of her toes, from her nipples, which hardened and tingled, and off her tongue, the tip of which pressed against the roof of her mouth. She grabbed the edges of the tablecloth and squeezed her eyelids tight, and grunted, like an animal, like a woman, and the pleasure screamed and crested, and then, in a moment, turned her loose, leaving her trembling.

  When she opened her eyes, her family members were staring at her, her sister looking mortified, her husband embarrassed but also a little excited, and her mother confused. Helena looked like she was trying not to laugh, biting her bottom lip as her green eyes twinkled.

  Paul cleared his
throat, but didn’t say anything.

  Ava took a deep breath and let go of the bunches of tablecloth in her fists. She smiled at Paul. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

  “I…I was just asking you to come see it. The house.”

  “Alright,” Ava said, not because she wanted to see the house, but because she felt better, in that moment, than she had ever felt before and she wanted to say yes to somebody.

  The phone rang and Ava bounced up to answer it. The voice on the other end spoke in a whisper. “The Lord,” it said, “will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head.”

  Ava sighed and hung up. She returned to the table, frowning.

  “Who was it?” Regina asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Stop being mysterious for no reason, Ava. What did they say?”

  “Something about striking us down and cutting off our heads. Or maybe just mine. It wasn’t clear and I didn’t think to ask.”

  “Goddamnit,” Paul said. “Why didn’t you give me the phone?”

  “Somebody threatened you?” Helena asked, her voice full of shock and worry.

  “It’s just words,” Ava said, sitting down again.

  Helena did not look relieved. “Have these people ever done anything? Besides throw bricks through your window? Have they ever been violent?”

  “Not in years,” Regina said. “And you don’t want to know about none of that.”

  Helena looked at Ava. “Tell me.”

  “The worst thing they ever did,” Ava said, “was start a fire.”

  “But it was fifteen years ago,” Regina said, “and they aint done nothing like that since.”

  Helena shook her head, slowly, from side to side, and after a few moments asked, “Was anybody hurt?”

  “Yes,” Regina said, sighing heavily. “Somebody died. My friend. Maddy. My best friend.” And here was another thing Regina had not talked about in years, another old thing brought out into the light again.

  “Please tell me somebody was caught.”

  They answered that question with silence.

  She looked around at all of them. “I can’t believe you stayed here after that.”

  “I had more reason than ever to stay after that,” Regina said. “Maddy was one of the only people on this block who never turned against us. Her and Jane Lucas. Jane moved away, because they didn’t like it that she kept on talking to us and wouldn’t give her no peace.” She sighed. “Maddy stayed. And she died trying to help us, trying to get us out of the house after they started the fire. And we did get out.”

  “But she didn’t? She burned?”

  “She didn’t burn. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”

  Helena got up from the table. She walked over to the stove, then paced back, looking disturbed. “Who are these people?” she asked. “Who exactly is making these threats, and throwing these bricks, and starting these fires? All your neighbors can’t be arsonists.”

  “No, it aint all of them,” Regina said. “Most of them don’t do nothing more than stare and whisper. It’s only a handful of them that holler things, or leave notes in the door, or make phone calls. And it’s just one or two that do more than that, when the pastor tell them to. One of them is Malcolm Hansberry. He live in that green house right across the street and he used to be our good friend. The other is his brother, Vic Jones. He live down at the corner. And I know what you thinking. If I know who they is, why don’t I tell the police? Well, I have told them. But since I aint never seen none of them doing nothing, it aint a thing the police can do. They got the pastor and this whole block ready to say they was doing something else when whatever happened happened.”

  “There must be something you can do,” Helena said, sounding frustrated.

  Regina sighed. “Well, if you think of something, honey, you let us know.”

  That evening Paul sat with Helena on the back porch, smoking, and noticed that she was quiet, pensive and distracted, her eyes burdened behind her thick glasses. Instead of asking her what was wrong, he watched her a while, trying to figure out what might be on her mind. When they were children, he had been good at doing that, at looking at her and seeing what was wrong. Back then, he knew everything about her, or mostly everything, and he could usually identify the source of any pain or upset she felt. Whether she was crying because somebody had called her tar baby at school, or was knocking things over, clumsily, because she always slept badly at night and spent the daytime in a fog. He could always tell, because he knew her. Back then. Now, sitting out on the back porch, stealing glimpses of her as she smoked and looked up at the few stars that could be seen in the city sky, he could only assume what the cause of her quiet was.

  “That story about the fire was pretty terrible,” he said.

  She looked at him, nodded.

  “That’s what you thinking about?” he asked.

  “No.” She took a drag off her cigarette and looked thoughtful. “I was thinking about Ava’s drawing. Have you seen it? The one I told you about?”

  “Oh,” he said, surprised. “No. I forgot to ask her.”

  She looked at him a long moment, then asked, “What was it about Ava that made you go to the museum cafeteria three or four times a day just to smile at her?”

  He laughed. “She told you that?”

  “Yes. Is it true?”

  “Yeah, it’s true. It’s like I told you—she just seemed less complicated than the other women I was around. She wasn’t always gossiping or worrying about how she looked all the time. She never tried to get nobody’s attention, least of all mine, and I liked that. Then, when I talked to her, she was easy to get along with. She wasn’t always trying to pick a fight or get her way.”

  “Easy. That’s what you said before.”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “Nothing. Once you got to know her, though, you saw that she was more than that, didn’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Like what?”

  “She’s hardworking,” he said. “A good cook.”

  Helena frowned. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Well, what do you mean?”

  “I want to know if you think Ava is different than she seemed to you at first. Less easy. Less uncomplicated. More funny, more creative. More intense.”

  “Not really. I mean, that don’t sound like Ava. She aint really none of those things.”

  Helena seemed agitated now. “But she is. She is all of those things. Maybe you’re not paying enough attention to see it.”

  “You saying I don’t know my own wife?”

  “No. I’m not saying that.”

  It seemed to him that was exactly what she was saying and he wondered where she got off, thinking she knew Ava better than he did. “I been married to Ava for four years. I knew her for nearly two before that. You just met her a few days ago. And she aint even been acting like herself lately.”

  “How not?”

  How not? he thought. She sure had learned to speak uppity in the years they had been apart.

  “Ava aint usually so…emotional,” he said. “Maybe that’s where you getting ‘intense’ from, but I’m telling you, that aint her, that aint what she’s really like.”

  Still frowning, Helena crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Why we even talking about Ava?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” She sighed, and pushed her glasses up on her face. “You off tomorrow?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go up to French Creek and spend the day together,” she said. “You been there lately?”

  He shook his head. “I aint been there since we was kids, with daddy. What you want to go up there for?”

  “I loved it there. So did you. Remember how we used to roast marshmallows and fish and chase after deer?”

  He grinned.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “It’ll be nice to get out of the city f
or a day.”

  “I’m supposed to look at another house.”

  “You can do that anytime,” she said.

  “Well. Maybe I could borrow Milky’s car. Guy I work with. We could pack some food.”

  She nodded, eager.

  “Alright,” he said. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  ***

  Regina sat in a chair by the window, beside the only lamp in the room, its shade tilted slightly so that her face was illuminated and her nose and chin cast light shadows. Helena sat on the bed with her legs folded and her drawing tablet in her lap, staring at her for many minutes. She had asked Regina if she would be willing to sit, so that she could make a drawing of her, and Regina had agreed.

  “You gone draw me,” Regina asked now, “or just look at me?”

  Helena smiled. “I’m just studying the structure of your face.”

  “Can I talk while you do that?”

  “Of course. I wish you would. It helps me catch the nuances, the lines.”

  “I don’t know about nuances,” Regina said, “but it’s a lot of lines to catch.”

  “Oh no. For someone your age, you have very smooth skin.”

  “Well, dark skin always hold up better over time,” Regina said.

  Helena smiled. “Well, then, I guess I’ll look thirty forever.”

  “Child, you don’t even look thirty now. You look twenty, if that.”

  Helena got up and went to the lamp, adjusting the shade again.

  “You know,” Regina said, “Ava used to do this all the time.”

  “Did you sit for Ava a lot?” Helena asked, returning to her seat on the bed.

  “I never ‘sat’ for her. She would just watch me doing whatever I was doing at the time. Cooking. Folding laundry. Watching television. Working in my garden. I used to tell her to quit drawing and help me prune the roses. But she wasn’t interested.”

  Helena laughed. “Drawing while other people work. Sounds like an artist to me.” She had a little pencil in her hand and she began to sketch.

  Regina watched, her eyes moving over Helena’s face. Whenever she looked at the younger woman, the first thing she saw was the blackness of her skin. Taking that in seemed to leave little room in her mind’s eye for anything else. Looking at her now, though, really looking at her, Regina saw the way her skin glowed, the way her eyebrows and eyelashes, which were slightly lighter-colored than her skin, complimented her eyes, which were the greenest green Regina had ever seen on a dark-skinned person.