A Kind of Freedom

by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

  That Friday night, Evelyn lay down in bed listening to Ruby get ready, plowing through the hallways, turning the bathroom faucet to its highest setting. As big as the house appeared on the outside, it was compact inside. Evelyn and Ruby shared a room, and their baby brother’s bedroom was so adjacent to theirs, they could hear his bedsprings creak when he shifted at night. There was the parlor, but Mother didn’t like them to sit there; it was where she met each week with the Ladies of Equal Justice and the Seventh Ward Educational League. There were guest rooms upstairs next to their parents’ bedroom, but that was where Mother stored her summer drapes, her winter rugs, and, more than that, where she rested when the weight of the world hunched her shoulders.

  So, Evelyn had long since learned she was stuck. Ruby had scared most of her friends off by elementary school, and the ones who lingered were gone by the end of Evelyn’s freshman year at McDonogh 35. She would never forget the time Ruby told Evelyn’s school friend in front of company that Ruby had heard the girl’s mama had run off to pass in Mississippi. That had been the one friend Evelyn still thought of sometimes. She couldn’t remember a single thing the girl said, but she did remember that they’d practice elocution and debating in the Hi Smile print shop; that during breaks they’d walk up and down South Rampart Street, peer through the windows at the shoe and jewelry stores. Sometimes they’d stop at Peter’s Famous Creole Kitchen for an oyster sandwich and watch the neighborhood folk walking by. There was a feeling Evelyn could access then that she hadn’t had since that girl ran off; it was a different kind of comfort than she had with her sister. It wasn’t as deep, but Evelyn felt it more deeply because to her it seemed earned. That girl hadn’t had to love her; she could have been in anyone’s company, but she chose Evelyn’s, and Evelyn missed that.

  Ruby bounced into the room then.

  “Are you just going to sit up here all night with Brother?” she asked, nodding at the only boy, the baby of the family who stood in their doorway.

  “I ain’t staying in this house.” Brother dashed through their room just then for the front door.

  “Am not staying, Brother,” Evelyn corrected, “and where are you going?”

  “Ain’t none of your concern.” Just as he spoke, they heard the neighborhood boys outside screaming for him to hurry before the bakery closed and they missed the brokers, scraps of cookies and cakes the owner distributed after dark. Brother screamed back.

  Their mother’s voice rang out close behind.

  “Don’t you raise your voice like that, Nelson Jr. You better act like you’re from the Seventh Ward.”

  Ruby smirked. “And you better be back before Mama turns that parlor light out,” she added.

  Evelyn started to chime in with another admonition, but Ruby stopped her.

  “And what about you? You’re all worried about Brother. What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll figure something out,” Evelyn said, though they both knew there was nothing to figure out. Sometimes she would join Miss Georgia across the street to help her knit the winter gloves and scarves she sewed year-round. There were other girls at Dillard who went out on the weekends, mostly to movies at the Circle Theater, and she’d hear them on Monday raving about Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman. Those mornings, she’d wonder if maybe there was something wrong with her in the social department. She’d heard people were sometimes born with certain deficiencies, like Brother read backward, and maybe hers was in the area of people, organizing interactions with them, what she would do, what she wouldn’t do fogging over into an unthinkable plot of her mind, and that was why she was stuck at home on a Friday night when even her twelve year-old brother had plans to do something mystical.

  The kicker came when Evelyn’s mother strutted up to Evelyn’s bedroom door in a rabbit fur. Evelyn’s daddy eased up behind his wife. He placed his hand on the bottom of her stomach, and his thin gold wedding band shone from across the room.

  “Where are you going, Daddy?” Evelyn asked.

  “Aw, just to Uncle Franklin’s.”

  In all Evelyn’s folding and unfolding of her memories of Renard, she had forgotten it was February, and every first Friday of February, Uncle Franklin and his wife, Katherine, threw a pre–Mardi Gras soirée.

  “Oh. Well, have fun,” Evelyn said just above a whisper.

  “What’s that, baby?” Daddy walked over.

  Her mother excused herself. “I’ll be in the parlor when you’re ready, Nelson.”

  “All right, Josephine,” her daddy called back, then he eased over to the edge of Evelyn’s bed, sat down, and combed his fingers through her hair. The two couldn’t look any more different. Evelyn had a sharp, narrow nose, her eyes were light brown, not so brown they looked black like most other Negroes’; her lips were thin and pink, and like her mother and sister, she was the color of a Spanish woman more than a Negro one. Her daddy on the other hand was a black man. Born of freed Senegalese people who never mixed, his color was so notable in the Seventh Ward that it was the first thing people said about him when they wanted to reference him but not give him too much shine. “That big black doctor that think real high of himself,” they’d whisper. His lips were thin, but everything else about him screamed Africa: his broad nose and wide nostrils and his hair, which he slapped pomade in but which reclaimed itself by afternoon, shooting out in rough bunches.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Oh nothing, Daddy.”

  “Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ Daddy can tell when his Evie is paining inside.”

  Evelyn just sighed and brought her arm over her face.

  “Don’t tell me you’re still too scared to stay alone. I can run Ruby’s man off, and she can stay with you.”

  “No, Daddy,” Evelyn said forcefully so she wouldn’t have to repeat it. Ruby would never let her hear the end of it if that happened. “I just wished I had something to do tonight is all.”

  “Play with your brother, then. You’re not too old for that, are you?”

  “Brother’s not even here. He’s out with the twins.”

  “You want me to call him inside?” Evelyn’s daddy leaned toward the window, preparing to shout.

  “No, Daddy. We don’t play together anymore anyway. I’m too old to play any games he’d be interested in.”

  Her daddy sighed and propped on his elbow on the bed beside her. “Baby girl, you want me and your mama to stay in with you tonight?”

  Evelyn wanted to say yes—there was something about the silence of that house tonight that seemed formidable—but she thought of her mother in the kitchen. She could hear her clanging pots and glasses that were already clean, fussing in Creole so the kids couldn’t understand her.

  “Cofaire to pas laisse moin tranquille?”

  Mother thought Daddy was too easy with their oldest daughter; she often said Evelyn’s head was in the sky, and instead of rooting her, Daddy propped it up there as if the clouds were a row of pillows. She thought Evelyn should be seeing boys, on the verge of courtship, but her daddy would raise his voice at any intimation of the sort.

  “She’s got plenty of time for that,” Evelyn had heard him shout.

  “Does she? Seems like the good men are already getting snatched.”

  “Not the ones that have the sense to wait.” He’d pause. “She’s going to be more than somebody’s wife, Jo,” he’d say, and her mother would clam up, fry Evelyn’s eggs too long the next morning.

  “No, Daddy,” Evelyn said. “I’ll be all right.” She paused. “I’ll read some. And then I could always study.”

  He lit up at that. He had hoped for a sharp and disciplined mind from his son, but he’d soon learned that was like expecting corn from a pumpkin seed. He’d be lucky if Brother graduated from Valena C. Jones Elementary on time, he often joked. But Evelyn being a nurse, now that was something even his own grandfather, the first Ne
gro doctor in the state of Louisiana, would be proud of.

  “Go on now, Daddy,” she said. “And don’t get so drunk you get Mother upset.”

  “What are you going to tell me about behaving? Like I’m the one was birthed by you.” He smiled.

  Mother cleared her throat from the other room, and he tipped his hat at Evelyn and clicked the door behind him.

  Evelyn turned over and stared at her ceiling. She returned to imagining Renard again, but as she settled on a memory of his hands, she began to wonder at the point. He was somewhere doing something interesting, and she was at home lying under sheets and blankets that might as well have been chains.

  She dozed off. When she came back to, she didn’t know where she was for a while. She never slept outside the confines of her nightly slumber, and she didn’t understand why Ruby wasn’t in the bed next to hers, why the lights were on, and why the doorbell was ringing. After a few seconds she sat up. It was probably Miss Georgia. She came by sometimes for company. Her only son was away at the war, and her husband had died before he could give her more children. Evelyn could relate to her loneliness though she’d been surrounded by people her whole life. When she’d explained that to her mother once, the woman grabbed her by the wrist and looked her dead in the eye: “If you forget everything I tell you, remember this: You can’t ever be friends with somebody who wants what you have.”

  Evelyn only nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am,” but she’d folded and unfolded the statement around in her mind several times since and still couldn’t find an angle in which it held meaning.

  She walked through her bedroom, through the kitchen, then the parlor, and peeked through the small curtain guarding the window on the side of the front door. Lord Jesus, it was not Miss Georgia, it was the uneven man. She turned to the mirror on the wall nearest the entrance. The right side of her face was red from where she’d fallen asleep on her hand. Her hair was tousled on that same side, and though she licked the palm of her hand and dabbed it down best she could, some still stuck out in every direction. She tucked her blouse back into her skirt, which had ridden up, and cinched each of her breasts out of her bra, then plopped them back in, seated a tad higher this time. The doorbell rang again, and she almost shrieked. She wondered if she could pretend to be out, but he must have seen the curtain on the window move. Her heart was beating enough to sustain ten men, and it was too much for her, thoughts flooding her mind, her hands shaking when they should have been still, her whole body paralyzed by its doubled intentions.

  The doorbell rang one more time. She heard Ruby’s voice in her ear. You didn’t even get him to ask you on a date? How tickled would she be when she came back to see Evelyn had found something to do all right. Evelyn settled her hand on the knob. A note slipped through the door, and she almost bent down to read it, but she stopped herself and inched the door open.

  Renard had started walking down the steps and turned around. “I hope I didn’t bother you, miss,” he said, stammering on the last word only and calling her miss, not ma’am, which Evelyn thought was a good sign.

  “No, no, I was just in the back room sewing a dress.” Evelyn didn’t know where the lie came from; in fact, one of her expressions that Ruby mocked most was that lying didn’t get enough emphasis in the Ten Commandments, but here she was. Maybe next Friday she’d be off at Circle Food stealing glazed meat.

  “You sew? That’s mighty nice.” A pause. “You sewed what you’re wearing right now?”

  Evelyn looked down. Mother had sewn this in fact, but should she say she had to lend her previous lie more credibility? Or was what she was wearing so drab that the new lie would detract from her intent? “Whether you did or you didn’t,” Renard went on, “it’s mighty nice on you. I reckon this is what an angel on earth looks like.” He stammered all over that last sentence, every single word but an, but that was because he was nervous saying what he meant, and their nervousness together was like two negatives multiplied. She felt herself quieting inside. With her head a little clearer, she considered her options: There was absolutely no way she could invite him inside. Her parents wouldn’t be home for three or four hours at least, but Brother could come in any minute, and she’d have to shine his shoes for the rest of the year to get him to forget a man had been in the parlor. If she sat outside though, Miss Georgia would certainly peek out at least once during their visit. She might even walk across the street and embarrass Evelyn. That was a risk Evelyn would have to take. She cleared her throat.

  “My parents aren’t here, or I’d invite you in,” she said.

  “That’s all right, I’d best be going anyhow.”

  He didn’t move though, which gave Evelyn the courage to state her mind. “I can come out and join you if you want to stay a spell.”

  Renard’s face lit up. “I’d love that, miss.”

  She reached into the hall closet for her trench coat and cinched the belt around her waist. They sat on the swing her daddy had built when she turned five, pushing themselves back and forth with their knees bending and straightening at the same rhythm. Evelyn thought about the house from Renard’s perspective, its wood frame with sky-blue trim, the baskets of fresh watered ferns adorning its porch, the pansies and petunias on either side of the long, winding driveway. A large palm tree guarded the corner of their property, and in the summer she and Ruby would sneak under it with books and frozen cups, sugar water iced until it was solid. Evelyn thought to share that memory but realized how extravagant it all might seem. The night air had cooled, and when Renard saw her shiver, he inched over. Even through their coats, she felt grown with his arm so close to hers. She wanted to reach for his hand, but there was Miss Georgia to consider.

  They didn’t say anything for a while, and finally Evelyn thought to ask, “How’d you remember where I lived?”

  “I made myself memorize it when you said it,” he said. “I went over it in my head the whole walk home so I wouldn’t forget.”

  “So you knew all this time you were coming by to see me?”

  “I didn’t know but I suspected.” He grinned. “I wasn’t sure I had the courage, but I knew I wanted to.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “How’d what happen?”

  “How’d you get the courage?”

  “I don’t know. I work for Todd’s Restaurant, over in the Quarter, and I spent the afternoon there, packing and loading boxes, thinking about you. At first I tried to make up excuses. I told myself you probably wouldn’t even be in, and your sister would answer and make me feel like a fool, but when I got home, something surged in my body, and I stood up from my seat and dressed. I don’t know where it came from. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before.”

  “Me neither,” Evelyn said, but she understood it because it was happening now. Her body was being cooled down when just the thought of the two of them sitting anywhere together with an open night laid out in front of them and no schedule on how it should go would have made her frantic just minutes earlier.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said.

  “Me too.” Renard looked back toward the house. “Where’s the rest of your family?” he asked.

  “My mother and daddy are at a Mardi Gras party by my uncle’s. My brother’s out playing. You can hear him if you listen closely.”

  “And your mean old sister?”

  Evelyn laughed though she was normally protective of Ruby. “She’s out with your friend. He didn’t tell you?”

  Renard laughed. “No, he didn’t tell me, but I should have known.” He paused. “We don’t talk about stuff like that.”

  “He’s your friend though?” Evelyn proceeded carefully, not knowing much about friends herself.

  “Yeah, we grew up together.”

  “I haven’t seen you around much.”

  “No, I suppose not. My mother used to work for his family and they took me in when
she died. I eat supper over his place every night, and they paid for me to go to school, but we never really traveled in the same circles outside. Now that we’re both studying medicine, it’s just easier to walk together.”

  He delivered so much sadness with such a casual tongue, Evelyn wanted to tell him she was sorry, but she wasn’t sure what she was sorry for, or if he would mistake her care for pity.

  All of a sudden he straightened his back and said, “But don’t worry, miss. That’s why I’m going to be a doctor. I always wanted to be one, and I’m so close now nothing can stop me. And then I’m never going to have to ask for anything that doesn’t rightfully belong to me. Me, nor my family.”

  “That’s mighty inspiring,” Evelyn said. “You’ll make a mighty fine doctor.” She wrapped her fingers around his hand. Miss Georgia could tell the world for all she cared. When her skin met his, he looked over at her with the gratitude of a man who had never felt a woman’s touch. They stared in each other’s eyes in silence, breaking out into grins from time to time when the heat of the connection felt as if it would snuff them out if they didn’t do something to drain it.

  Evelyn wanted to get closer, but she remembered herself and asked for the time.

  “It’s a quarter after ten. Maybe I best be going,” he said. “I have to get up early tomorrow for work.” He stood.

  “At the store?”

  “No, tomorrow’s my day killing chickens. The market sells them live but people pay good money for them already plucked. It’s awful work, but . . .” He trailed off as if he wasn’t sure if he was going to say the next thing. “The government’s hiring plenty for all the ships and tanks and guns they need.” He shook his head, and his face darkened for the first time. “Those jobs aren’t for us though, so I’m killing chickens.”

  Evelyn stood, her heart burning with compassion. She didn’t know how to respond. “Well, it was so nice of you to stop by,” she said finally. “Maybe you’ll do it another time.”