* * *
Bertha has already been preparing, eating late and heavy. Drowning her biscuits in butter and then dabbing them in honey. She bakes pies and cakes and consumes them like air. She excuses herself from the conversations that take place around the bus stop in the mornings and evenings, when she’s traveling to and from work. She excuses herself to spit or to move herself beneath the shade of a nearby tree and dab at the imaginary sweat forming on her brow and below her nose.
She calls in sick, falls outside of the church after service is over and the congregation and choir are gathered out front.
She does all this so they can assume before she has to tell them.
Her hips have already spread, and people remember that she carried Rita the same way. “That baby is all in your behind, girl!” they say, just as she had planned.
“When you due?”
The questions and comments come like rain.
“Lawd, you want another one after Rita practically grown!”
“My friend Ann had a baby late too. Change-of-life baby—you probably won’t even get your menstrual after this one come.”
Erasmus didn’t like what Bertha was doing, didn’t like it one little bit. “Bertha, why we gotta hide the fact that Rita done gone and got herself knocked up?”
“’Cause.”
“’Cause what?”
“Just ’cause.” Bertha was done talking about it and went to check on the corn bread, chicken, and dumplings she was cooking.
She’s been preparing, so that when Rita’s labor pains started two days before the Independence Day celebrations—hitting her down between her legs and then exploding in her belly like the firecrackers that went off outside her bedroom window—Bertha was already good and fat and looking every bit like she was ready to drop.
Rita before she was Luscious, not called upon to change a diaper or heat a bottle, was assured that she would never be referred to as Mama or have to attend a PTA meeting. Bertha is Mama, and Rita before she was Luscious is just older sister, eldest sibling, first child of Erasmus and Bertha, mother of none.
“What you think we should call her?” Bertha asks when she holds the child in her arms.
Rita thinks about Millie, about the life she had, and thinks maybe some good can come out of this whole thing and decides maybe she can give Millie a second chance at something better.
“Millie,” she says. “Let’s call her Millie.”
* * *
They notice her breasts before anything else. Their eyes light on them like flies on sugar, and they lick their tobacco-black lips and drag their hands through their woolen hair, and some touch themselves, running their fingers across their chins or pinching the skin of their necks.
The women turn cold eyes on her, and one even spits in her path; another fixes her mouth to sling an insult but catches the cold glint in her eyes—and the sun fastens onto something long, sharp, and silver sticking out from her coat pocket—and the woman thinks better of her comment and bites her tongue and turns her head away instead.
It’s just before dusk, and the sun is looming and orange in the sky, people are huddled in bunches on the corners, and someone is already cussing up a storm in one of the apartments overhead.
Music is streaming out of Lou’s Place, and Jake’s Spot has set the first batch of porgies in the pan to fry.
Friday night in the Black Bottom, Paradise Valley.
Rita reaches the corner and turns left on Hastings Street. Broken glass litters the sidewalk, and there are bloodstains close by, and farther away a chalk outline of where the body fell dead.
That was last night, and not one person is talking about it because someone else was shot dead outside of Sonnie Wilson’s place and another stabbed behind The Flame.
Too many dead people to talk about; living people got other things to worry about, and move up and down the walkways and don’t even seem to notice the silhouette on the ground. They trample across its hands, legs, and face while they talk about fifths, fucking, no-good men, and badass kids.
Rita turns into the O Bar.
The door sits open, and the orange sun can’t even work its way past the threshold; it’s already midnight inside those walls, just the flicker of cigarettes and the dim light coming off the jukebox exist there.
Rita peeks before stepping inside and into the gloom. The two men who are seated at the bar turn their heads to consider her and decide after a moment that the drinks sitting in front of them are more interesting, and they dismiss her and turn back to their bourbon-filled glasses.
A woman, satin colored, long and leggy, moves from the shadows and positions herself near the jukebox. Rita sees that the skin around her eyes is puffy and the lipstick she wears is the color of the purple-black grapes she gobbles down during winter. The woman drapes herself around the jukebox and presses the side of her face against the curved metal. Slowly, gently, she places loving kisses onto the glass, leaving plum-colored lips smeared across its clear face.
Rita watches her for a while before moving to the bar and taking a seat.
“Yeah?” the bartender calls from a dark space at the end of the bar.
Rita squints her eyes. “Manny here?” she asks.
“Maybe,” the voice calls back.
The two men turn their attention to Rita once more.
“He here or not?”
“Depending on who’s asking.”
“Tell ’im Rita here.”
“Rita who?”
“Erasmus girl.”
There is the sound of wood scraping against wood, and Rita catches sight of a worn white T-shirt and muscular brown arms as the bartender moves from his chair to a room behind the bar.
The woman is done with loving the jukebox and pulls up a stool next to Rita. The men exchange glances and then drop their eyes back down to their drinks.
“What you want Manny for?” The voice is coarse and brittle, and Rita’s eyes turn on the puffed skin and scraggly gray strands sticking out from the black-blond hair.
“I got something for him,” she says.
“Yeah, what you got that no other woman in here got? We all got something for Manny,” the woman says, and a bitter laugh escapes her. “Gimme a smoke, Lester,” she orders without allowing her eyes to let go of Rita’s.
Lester almost tips his drink over as he hurriedly tosses a cigarette down the bar and then drops a dollar next to his glass and rushes out the door.
The woman reaches into her bosom and pulls out a lighter. Her eyes still holding Rita, she lights the cigarette and inhales deeply. “They ain’t nobody too young for Manny,” she mumbles to herself, and then blows a stream of smoke into Rita’s face. “Shit, I was young once too, ya know,” she spits, and slams her hand down on the counter. “Must be them eyes. You got eyes like a cat. Probably sneaky like ’em too.”
The man who was left sitting at the bar dug deep into his pocket, pulled out a dollar, and dropped it next to his glass. “Later, Lonnie,” he calls out over his shoulder before shooting Rita a cautious look and skip-walking out of the bar.
“Hey, Lonnie, he here or not?” Rita asks.
“He said he don’t know no Rita or Erasmus,” Lonnie says as he lazily flips through the newspaper.
“He don’t know nobody he owe, had, or hates!” the woman laughs. “Ain’t that right, Lonnie!” she screams, and slaps the bar again.
“If you say so, Ursula.”
“So which category you fall under, honey?” Ursula leans in and whispers to Rita’s cheek.
The rancid stench of scotch and cigarettes accosts Rita’s nostrils, and she stands up suddenly, sending the stool toppling down to the floor.
“Oooh! This one’s a little spitfire,” Ursula says. “Yeah, he like ’em like that.”
“That’s enough, Ursula,” Lonnie warns, and finally moves from the dark end of the bar. He’s large, over three hundred pounds, and his stomach jiggles beneath his T-shirt with every step he takes toward Rita. �
�He ain’t here. So either buy a drink or vacate the premises.” He lays his meaty hands down on the bar.
“He ain’t here?” Rita questions sarcastically.
“He always here,” Ursula whispers, and then breaks down with laughter.
Lonnie shoots her another warning look before turning his gaze back to Rita. “That’s what I said.” His tone is angry now.
Rita chews on her bottom lip for a moment. “Okay,” she says, and then, “Where’s the ladies’ room?”
“For customers only!” Ursula screams, and pounds a scrawny fist on the bar.
Lonnie rolls his eyes. “At the back and to the left.” He turns on Ursula. “I’ma throw your ass out of here, ya hear me!”
Rita moves slowly toward the dewy blackness of the back. Cigarette smoke hangs heavy in the air, and the soles of her shoes make sucking sounds against the sticky filth of the floor.
She walks slowly and turns her head slightly to see Manny seated in a large leather chair. He’s leaning back, legs stretched out before him, arms folded across his stomach, onyx stone gleaming.
Lonnie is still fussing at Ursula, his sausage-length index finger swaying ominously in her face.
Rita moves right and slips behind the bar and into the room. She stands there for some time, staring at his gleaming bald head, thick neck, and the hands that held her down. Her eyes roll over the legs that forced hers apart and shoes that left black polish streaks across her bedspread.
He sneezes, and his eyelids fly open; his brown eyes hold the green of hers, the young face soft, plump, and glowing of motherhood. He smiles a sleepy smile, and his eyes drop to her firm, full breasts and the small circles of wetness seeping through the pale pink blouse she wears.
Rita steps closer to him, and he smells the talcum powder she’s dusted her stomach with, the sour milk the baby spewed across her skirt that Bertha dragged a wet cloth across before Rita walked out the door.
“What you doing here?” he finally asks when his eyes grow tired of holding her and the wet spots begin to make him uncomfortable.
Rita was still seeing the shoe polish marks on the bedspread and feeling the gold band of his ring pressed between her fingers, and she could hear her insides screaming, screaming and pulling apart and him breathing heavy in her neck, her hair, his skin slapping against hers and the tearing part complete and the silence that swelled inside of her and him so deep within her she feels as if her body will swallow him whole.
“What you want?” he asks, his voice filling with annoyance, his eyes looking behind her for Lonnie.
Rita wonders why she’s so calm, so cool, and she looks down at her hands that aren’t even shaking and thinks about her heart that barely beats enough for her to breathe right anymore and looks at Manny and relives every horrible minute of that night and Millie’s death and the Watermelon Man and her daughter’s birth, and there’s nothing but pain, suffering, and sorrow attached to all those memories, and Manny is the source of it all, and so she reaches into her pocket and pulls out the knife that Bertha uses to gut fish, and before Manny can understand what’s happening, before he can move his big hands to stop her, she brings the knife down and into his heart.
A screaming Ursula backs away from the doorway, her purple lips a large circle, her chicken-thin hands cradling her cheeks as Rita, bloody hands and blouse soaked through with mother’s milk, moves past her.
Somewhere on Belle Isle Bridge, black and white boys pound away at each other, and days later when the police knock on Bertha’s door to come and take Rita away, the O Bar is burned down to the ground when white rioters toss firebombs through the glass panes of businesses along Hastings, Saint Antoine, and Brush.
By the time Rita is assigned her number and asked to turn front and then sideways for the camera, Manny Evans’s chalky silhouette has burned away to nothing, and Rita is on her way to becoming Luscious #132541289.
* * *
Luscious lays a heavy hand on Campbell’s shoulders; she wants to tell the girl that she is her granddaughter-niece and that Millie is her daughter-sister, but that secret has been with her for so long that she hardly knows what’s true and what’s not, so she swallows hard on that reality and looks deep into Campbell’s eyes, and Luscious says, “Someone hurt me once, and I hurt them back—and for that, I was sent away.”
“Jail?” Campbell whispers as her eyes go wide.
“Yes,” Luscious breathes. Her mouth goes bitter with the memory of it, and she sucks off the last piece of cherry ice from the popsicle stick. Campbell looks at Luscious’s red, wet lips, and she thinks about blood and shudders.
“See you next week, then?” Luscious says as she reaches for the freezer door again.
Campbell nods her head and eases quietly out the door.
* * *
Millie said that she would make her marriage work even if it killed her. Well Fred’s bastard had almost done just that.
The thought of her, those eyes so much like Fred’s, her color exactly the same, looking everything like Campbell did when she was that age—it was poison.
But yet Fred remained. Walking, sleeping, and eating in that house as if he’d done nothing wrong. Nothing at all.
Luscious called Millie a fool. “Put his ass out!” she’d screamed.
Finally, she did. Packed Fred’s stuff up, set it out on the stoop, and had the locks changed.
Campbell was waiting at the window when Fred walked down the block, five hours after he had gotten off work.
What stunned her most wasn’t the three minutes he stood outside the gate, staring at the boxes and the glint of new metal on the door. What stunned her most was the smile that covered his face. She’d never seen her father smile that broadly.
She half expected him to jump up and click his heels together when he jumped in front of the gypsy cab that was barreling down the street.
The boxes, just four of them, were loaded into the trunk and wide backseat, and Fred didn’t even give his house one last look before he climbed into the front beside the driver and sped happily away.
Later that night, after Millie takes two of her special aspirins and downs three cans of beer, Campbell turns to her journal and writes.
Men leave. Even daddies.
Millie notices that January has come and gone and the box of sanitary napkins she’s bought for Campbell still lies waiting at the bottom of her closet.
She misses the five days out of the month Campbell usually hand-washes her panties and hangs them to dry over the shower rod. The Tylenol she asks for on the first day when the cramps are unbearable.
These things would have escaped her a few months ago, when Fred was still there. But Campbell is all she has now, and she concentrates on her daughter to keep from thinking about the absence of her husband.
Those things, along with the dreams she has about fish and Fred and babies hanging from trees, falling from the sky like rainwater and popping up in pumpkin patches, make her look at Campbell one day, really look at her, and when she does she sees clearly the extra seven pounds and the glow in her daughter’s cheeks.
But she isn’t angry. Not at Campbell. She is angry with herself and the years she’s spent running behind a man she’d trapped into marrying her to begin with. Wouldn’t have been so bad, though, wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d loved him to begin with. She’d needed him first; the love came later.
What type of mother was she?
Unfit and wrong, she supposed. Stupid and foolish and lacking the motherly sense it took to keep proper watch over her one and only child.
Her feet take the last step, and her hands grip the banister.
Who was she to think that her life could unfold like some goddamn television show? A thirty-minute Leave It to Beaver episode that always ends on a high note and never with illegitimate children, court appearances, and pregnant teenagers.
She steadies herself in front of Campbell’s bedroom door.
Millie would take the blame for this one,
and wouldn’t even go word for word with Fred about the whole thing, and when Luscious pointed the finger of blame, Millie would take her place right in front of it.
Months later, Campbell would find herself standing in front of Trevor Barzey’s door again, belly straining against the waistband of her jeans, breasts heavy and uncomfortable in one of Millie’s bras, Fred on her left and Millie to her right, Luscious fuming somewhere in the background, strangers looking out at them from the open doorway, and Campbell not able to meet their eyes when she whispers Trevor’s name.
“Oh, the people who lived here before?” the strangers say in broken French. “They moved, long time ago.”
HIM
1971–1985
AGE SEVEN
Donovan is the elder of two; a girl just four years old and still in diapers walks so closely behind him he can smell the sour scent of her diaper.
He is seven, tall, and already cynical about the world.
“Stop following me,” he whispers over his shoulder at his sibling, whose feet stop moving just as the words tumble from his mouth. He cocks his head and listens to the voices that slip from behind the half-open door to his parents’ bedroom. He can’t quite hear everything that is being said, so he creeps closer and so does baby Elaine.
Donovan shakes his head in dismay and shoves his hand behind him, catching his sister off guard and sending her tumbling backward and down to the floor.
There’s a sick squishy sound as the diaper explodes and liquid squirts across the hardwood floors. Elaine opens her already big eyes wider in surprise and then giggles before pulling herself upright again and tottering toward him.
Donovan shakes his head in disgust and takes three steps closer to the door. His parents, Solomon and Daisy, are arguing again. Solomon is getting on Daisy about her Saturday nights at the bingo hall, the bright pink lipstick she wears that reminds Donovan of the cotton candy he begs for on Sundays when they behave like a family and drive out to Coney Island.
Solomon is yelling about the denim shorts that stop right above her knees. He’s pointing at the large hoop earrings; he says they make her look like Foxy Brown. “I thought you liked Foxy Brown!” Daisy screams back at him.
Loving Donovan Page 6
