by Pearl Cleage
My brain was clicking along a mile a minute. If the man on that meditation tape wants me to think of my mind as a monkey, that’s cool, but now the one I have in residence had invited all her monkey friends over for the evening. I was trying to think about everything at the same time and all I could hear was Frank’s voice talking about death pussy and how scared I was that he was right and that even in the progressive, AIDS-informed haven that was San Francisco, nobody was ever going to want to hold me again. Not ever.
That’s when I saw Eddie. I came around a small path of pine trees that keeps you from being able to see his house until you’re right up in front of it. He was standing on his dock in a pair of black pajama pants and no shirt, moving slowly from one position to another, placing and replacing his arms and legs in positions that should have looked strange with their weird postures and arms-akimbo transitions, but when he did them, they didn’t look strange at all. In fact, it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen another person do up close. I just stood there. It was pretty dark now, so he didn’t even notice me and I relaxed into watching.
Eddie’s body was more muscular than I had thought. He always wore loose clothes and I was surprised at the power in his chest and back. He leaned forward from the waist and his hair fell across his cheeks so I couldn’t see his face. Then he turned his body slightly, leaned back, and turned his face more toward me. His eyes were closed, but he looked so perfectly peaceful that I never wanted him to stop and I never wanted to stop watching.
So I stood there at the edge of the trees until he finished. I don’t know how long it was, but I was crying by the time he got through, although I can’t tell you why. He stood for a minute, then slipped on one of those black dashiki-looking things he always wears and smiled in my direction like he had seen me there all along.
“Ava,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. I jumped and wondered suddenly if I had invaded his privacy in some terrible way.
I wiped my face quickly and tried to explain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . The Sewing Circus is at our house and I was just out walking and . . .”
“Do you want to come in?” he said, walking toward me.
“Yes,” I said, grateful for his outstretched hand. “I’d love to come in.”
• 10
eddie’s house was as soothing as it had been the first time I was there. He put on a record of what sounded like birds and bells and flutes.
“It’s Brazilian,” he said. “If you don’t like it, let me know.”
I was standing by the door watching him move around the room, tossing a couple of pillows down near the low futon couch, lighting large fat candles and a stick of Blue Pearl incense. The full moon rising over the lake was shining in the large windows that Eddie had just replaced, and I realized this wasn’t a house. This was a haven.
“Do you need more light?” he said, turning up a flame under the teakettle. I shook my head.
“Do you have anything stronger than tea?” I said, knowing he probably didn’t. Him and Joyce drink so much tea, they should be Chinese.
He smiled apologetically. “Let me put some shoes on. I’ll go over to the liquor store and get whatever you want. Won’t take me but a minute.”
“That’s okay,” I said, figuring tea would probably be my best bet anyhow. I was still feeling weepy and a drink now would probably push me into crying and confessing more than Eddie wanted or needed to know. “Tea is fine.”
He nodded and set out two cups, opened a cabinet and took out a box with a delicate white flower painted on the front.
“Chamomile,” he said, dropping a bag in each cup. “The soothing effects of this tea are legendary.”
“Do I look like I need to be soothed?”
“Everybody needs to be soothed,” he said. “Have a seat.” And he waited while I decided to settle on the couch. He sat down at the other end and put both cups on a low table in front of us. Almost everything he had done since we walked in the door should have felt like seduction, for which I was definitely not in the mood, but with Eddie, it felt natural. Not like we weren’t a man and a woman, but like that wasn’t all there was to it. I didn’t feel like he was trying to help me relax so he could trick me into bed. I felt like he really wanted me to be comfortable.
We both just sipped our tea for a while. The Brazilian bird band was still cooing and strumming and chiming softly. The monkeys in my head were settling down for the night, at last. I sighed so loudly that Eddie grinned at me.
“Okay,” I said. “So a little soothing doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
He laughed out loud. “That’s what my grandmother used to call a left-handed compliment.”
His laugh lit up his face and crinkled his eyes at the corners. I was glad we weren’t kids anymore. If you’re living an interesting life, your face should get more interesting, too. Eddie’s face was seasoned without being craggy and his eyes were as clear as Imani’s. Of course, he saw me in the dark.
“Was that t’ai chi you were doing?”
He nodded.
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” I said.
“You didn’t bother me at all.”
I wanted to tell him how beautiful he looked out there, but I didn’t want to tip the balance of things, so I settled for “How long have you been doing it?”
“A long time,” he said. “Probably twenty years. I learned it in ‘Nam. Helped me stay sane.”
“Maybe I should take it up.”
“I tried to teach Joyce,” he said. “But she quit before she had a chance to get good at it.”
“She told me. We were thinking of trying it together. Safety in numbers.”
“First fifty lessons free,” he said.
I was surprised. “How many lessons does it take to learn it?”
“About five.”
Now I laughed. “It’s a deal,” I said.
The album finished and the tone arm lifted off with a click and returned to its rest. The sound was comfortingly old-fashioned and I sighed again.
“Do you have a preference?” he said, standing up in one long, graceful motion.
“Something soothing,” I said.
“My specialty,” he said, reaching for something around what looked to be the Js. He put on another album, lowered the dust cover, put a little more hot water in our tea, and sat back down next to me. The music was another dreamy blend of flutes and what seemed to be the sound of water bubbling over rocks.
“How can you have music like this and the collected works of George Clinton?” I said.
“Just lucky, I guess.”
“Are you?”
“What? Lucky?” He considered his answer. “Hard to say. I’m alive. That’s a big stroke of luck because I know none of that is promised. I lived through something that took out a lot of brothers smarter than me and had more heart than me, so I guess that’s lucky.” He stopped again, picking his works carefully. “But the stuff that landed me there in the first place wasn’t so lucky, so I guess I’m about even. How about you?”
“Lucky?” Frank’s taunting voice came back strong: death pussy. I took a sip of tea, but I felt my damn eyes fill up all of a sudden like I was going to start crying again. I tried to take a deep breath, but I hadn’t been ready to hear that voice back in my head again. Death pussy. I felt a damn tear slide over the curve of my cheek on the side nearest to Eddie. He was turned toward me, so I know he saw it, but he didn’t say anything. I felt a tear on the other side and then a couple of more. I put the cup down and wiped my face without looking at him. Damn!
Eddie got up and picked up one of the red pillows and dropped it down near my feet.
“Can I sit here?” he said.
I nodded.
“Can I take your shoes off?”
I was a little surprised, but when I nodded again, he slipped off my sandals, picked up my left foot, and rubbed it lightly all over. Then he put it down and did the same thing with my right one. Then he pic
ked up my left again and started massaging it gently. He kneaded the ball of my foot, stroked my arch, and pulled each toe out gently. His hands were large and warm. The palms were hard without being rough and his fingers were long and slender. He had put one foot down and picked up the other before he said anything else, which was okay with me. The more he rubbed my feet, the more I felt my face relax, my neck, my shoulders, the small of my back. I put my head against the soft pillows on the back of the couch and closed my eyes. I wasn’t crying anymore, but I didn’t trust my voice yet. I was not about to risk a quaver.
“I saw the worst things you can see human beings do to each other every day, the whole time I was in ‘Nam,” he said, curling my toes over softly and rubbing them slowly. “And I did my share. By the time I got back to the world, I was a bad man.”
His hands on my feet never changed their pace or their pressure.
“I think maybe one of the reasons I had to go to jail was to make me think about ‘Nam. On the outside, I could drink it away, or smoke it away, or snort it away, or sex it away, but in the joint, it was just me and my memories.”
He was quiet for a minute, twisting each of my toes back and forth gently. I wanted to ask him what he’d been in jail for, but I didn’t have the energy to ask the question.
“The thing about it is, thinking about ‘Nam made me think about everything. It was like doing LSD and looking at something so close that you see everything in it. All the good. All the bad. Everything.”
He took both my feet in his hands and held them very gently. “First I got mad at them for sending me. Then I got mad at me for going. Then I got real mad at being a big enough fool to get myself locked up for ten years.”
Ten years?
“Then I just got mad and stayed there. I got in so many fights, brothers were taking bets on how long it would be before somebody put me out of my misery. Then one day this old guy sat down next to me and said, ‘You know what your problem is? You ain’t slowed down long enough to see the lessons yet, youngblood. Lessons everywhere,’ he said, ‘flying around like birds, but you ain’t even take a minute to check ’em out ’cause you movin’ too fast cutting you a path. That’s why you in here now,’ he said. ‘To slow your ass down.’
“He was starting to get on my nerves, but I was feeling too low to get him out of my face, so he kept talking. ‘That’s why there are so many geniuses in the joint,’ he told me. ‘They finally get time to slow down and look for the lesson. Problem is, then they get out and get goin’ again and forget everything they learned and they end up right back where they started from.’ “
He was holding my ankle, rotating my right foot slowly counterclockwise.
“That’s when I started doing the t’ai chi again. Trying to learn my lessons. When I got out, I figured Idlewild was slow enough so I could hold on to what I’d learned longer here than in the city.” He smiled at me. “And Mitch and Joyce were here.”
He slipped my shoes back on my well-pampered feet and looked at me.
“And did you learn your lesson?” I said, liking the sound of my newly soothed self.
“I’m working on it,” he said. “But the part that makes me lucky is that I know that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Trying to figure it out.”
“Is that really why you came back?” I said.
I was used to the pause between the question and the answer, so I just waited.
“In ‘Nam, the VC had miles of tunnels. They’d been building them for years, since way before we even got over there, and they were all over the place. They weren’t always those little tunnels you had to crawl through, either. Some of them were big enough to walk around in standing straight up. They moved supplies through them. Hid in them. Lived in them when they had to.”
He unfolded himself gracefully from the pillow and sat back down on the couch.
“They beat us for a lot of reasons, but I knew they were going to the first time I saw one of those tunnels. We were only there doing time, but they were in for the long haul. They were home. It made them stronger.”
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at and he must have seen the confusion on my face.
“If you have to take a stand, home’s the best place to do it,” he said, and his voice was as soothing as the music.
“Thanks for the tea.” It was getting late and the Sewing Circus was probably winding down by now.
He looked right at me. “Are you okay?”
“Better now,” I said, and meant it.
He offered me a ride, but I wanted to walk. The night was clear as a bell and the air around us was soft and sweet when we stepped outside. I could see the candles flickering through the window when I turned to say good night.
“Before you go,” he said, “are you ready for your free, introductory t’ai chi lesson, so simple anybody can do it?”
“Even me?” I said.
“Especially you,” he said. “Relax your arms.” He turned me around, stood close without pressing against my behind, thank God, raised my arms up and opened them wide like kids always do when you first set them down in front of the ocean. Then he brought my hands around in front, and with his arms guiding mine, slowly softened my elbows and turned my palms to face me.
We stood there like that for just a moment and then he guided my arms back down to my sides and released them. This was not a moment for secrets and I felt mine burning between us. Death pussy.
“I have to tell you something,” I said, and dammit, I quavered.
“Do you want to?”
“Yes,” I said, but I felt myself tearing up again, scared that if I told him, he’d pull away. Scared of how much I didn’t want that to happen.
“Do you want to tell me now?”
“I thought I did, but . . .” I stopped that one prequaver, but barely. What the hell was the problem? We were only going to be friends, right?
“Maybe you’ve had enough excitement for one day. Tell me another time. I’m not going anywhere.” And he smiled that smile. “I’m home, remember?”
I nodded. “I better go.”
“I’m glad you came,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger. My grandmother used to say that, too.”
“Too late for me to be a stranger,” I said, trying to keep it light as I headed back to Joyce’s. “You saw me in my pigtails.”
“But that was another life,” he said. “All this stuff here is brand-new.”
• 11
the last of the Sewing Circus finally straggled home around midnight, arms full of sleeping toddlers and hearts full of revolution. Joyce was ecstatic. She got no drop-off in membership moving the group to the house, and being under siege brought out the best in them. Aretha, whose sociology class was studying the sixties, suggested picketing Sunday morning service, which Joyce thought was too confrontational. Tomika offered to kick the Reverend Mrs.’ ample ass, which Joyce confessed did appeal to her, but which she rejected as inappropriate behavior between black women.
Finally Joyce suggested that each Sewing Circus member express her feelings individually to the Good Reverend after church on Sunday. When they met next week, everybody could report on what they had said and what he had said before determining their next step. They thought that was a great idea, even though they probably didn’t suspect that it was Joyce’s way of getting them used to the idea of articulating their outrage to the people they allowed to control so much of their lives.
“If they can get in the Rev’s face,” Joyce said, “pretty soon they’ll be able to talk back at the food stamp office and be indignant at the Welfare Department, and from there? Sky’s the limit!”
Joyce flopped down on the couch, exhilarated and exhausted, and looked at me to share the excitement, but the truth was, I had hardly heard a word she said. I wanted to know why Eddie had been in jail. I asked Joyce if she knew.
“Of course,” she said.
“Why?”
“Ask him.”
Typical Joyce. “It isn’t a
nything really terrible, is it?”
“The worst,” she said.
“I’m serious.”
“Me, too.” She looked at me. “He won’t mind if you ask him. He probably thinks I’ve already told you anyway.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Joyce took a minute before she answered me. “Sometimes I meet people who already know what happened to Mitch because somebody told them about it. They’ve already had a chance to hear it, and picture it, and have whatever reaction they’re going to have to it. So when we get introduced, they think they know something about me, when all they know is a bunch of details.” She shrugged. “It’s not the same.”
I knew she would warn me if he was really dangerous or anything, so I wasn’t scared, but she had said the worst. I figured he must have killed somebody, which isn’t necessarily a problem for me. I think I’m capable of it. I knew a lawyer in Atlanta who said everybody can be a murderer under the right circumstances. More likely, under the wrong circumstances. Eddie was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There were a lot of reasons why you might have to kill somebody. Maybe self-defense. I just hoped it wasn’t a kid or a woman. I never really understood the reasons men kill each other, but the reasons they kill women and children are almost always about wanting to control things that don’t belong to them or some weird sex stuff. Either way, that didn’t sound like Eddie. At least, I hoped it didn’t.
I’m not going to ask him about it yet, though. I think he’ll tell me when he’s ready to tell me. Like the Jamaicans always say when you start screaming because your flight home from Montego Bay is twenty-four hours late: Patience, girl, patience. Soon come.
• 12
the nice thing about Eddie living so close was that we saw him almost every day. The bad thing was, I never knew when he’d appear with a bag of collard greens or a loaf of fresh bread or some news for Joyce and smile for me that would set my mind racing along to its own conclusions. I can’t deny that sometimes it was sort of exciting but sometimes it was just exhausting.
