At the far end of Main Street there is a boarding house, a two-story brick structure with old time windows framed in lumber, a porch that wraps around the front and sides and supports the various creeping vines which over the years have reached all the way up and neatly entwined the two upstairs windows as though it had been planned that way. Once when this was a central location in town it was a very fashionable tourist home, and in the summers the gray-planked flooring of the porch creaked under rocking chairs, feet gently pushing an old glider, a swing. Now it is at the edge of town, separated from the bottoms only by a broken-up and overgrown railroad track. What little brick is left unexposed by the creeping vines is dark with age, and it seems at a glance that it could all crumble down with the slightest tremor, yet the brick is very strong, its texture intact, only the appearance has changed.
Now a yellow light illuminates the porch where there is an old chipped-up kitchen chair propped against the wall, cigarette butts along the cement steps, an empty Coke bottle propped between the spindles of the railing. Moths hover around the light, beat themselves against the bare bulb without venturing into the dark recesses where the vines fall like curtains. There is a small pair of jeans hung on the ledge of the upstairs window on the left. They belong to M. L. McNair, who is six years old and lives in this room with his grandmother, Fannie McNair. Earlier in the day she had washed out his jeans as she always does and hung them there to dry. Now she has forgotten them. Now she can be seen in the dim light of her window like the pupil of a large tired eye, as she sits in her overstuffed chair, a reading lamp behind her casting a glow that clings to the sweat on her dark forehead where her knotty hair is pulled tightly back and bobby pinned in a straight line. The radio is turned down low, just low enough that she can still hear it but so low that it doesn’t wake M. L., who is curled up on his side of the low double bed in the corner. Fannie McNair spends all of her evenings this way, just sitting and listening to the gospel music that plays after midnight, even though she could fall asleep at any given moment. It is her time to “think and pray,” as she always tells M. L. when he stirs over there in the darkness and calls out her name. This is what she is doing now, thinking of her husband Jake, wondering where he might be, if he’s still alive, if he’s living with some other fool woman, if he’s sprawled out dead as a doornail in the alley of some big city street. It’d serve him right, God knows it would, but no, Jake deserves as much hope as any other body. And it wasn’t always bad, not always.
There was that rainy Thanksgiving when just the two of them were together and he surprised her with a radio that he bought at Sears, the very one that she’s listening to now, and they had stayed in bed near about all day listening to the radio and the rain and hadn’t even eaten their hen and stuffing until nine-thirty that night. There was something special about that day, special because she has always been certain that that was the very day her daughter took root inside of her. It was just like Elizabeth in the Bible, because she was thirty-five years old and had just about given up on having children other than those that she was paid to keep. God, it was a happy time when that second month had passed without a trace of bleeding. Then her stomach got to where it was pushing out and she had to go to work with her skirt unfastened. It was a miracle, truly it was, and she had more energy than she could ever remember having, wasn’t sick a day, and kept right on working and going about her life. She was sitting right there on the front pew of Piney Swamp Baptist Church on a day that was just about as hot as yesterday was, when her water broke. There was so much commotion and jubilation in that building that she just stood up and clapped and yelled with the best of them and made her way out of the church without anybody even noticing what had happened. She caught a ride with a farmhand who went back inside the church to find the doctor, and off they went to hers and Jake’s house which stood just on the other side of the tracks where there is now a warehouse. It wasn’t much of a house, but that day it seemed like it was, especially when she opened her eyes and heard that cry. “His name is John,” she had said, releasing the grip she had held on the edges of the mattress, “and he’s a Baptist.”
“You’ll have to wait for the next one,” the doctor said and held up that wrinkled little baby.
“Elizabeth, then.”
Jake didn’t have much to do with Elizabeth, looked at her, pulled out a bottle of liquor and then disappeared for about three days. All those years he had blamed himself for them not having children, and had spent years worrying about Fannie finding a man who could give her what she wanted. Now that Elizabeth had come, he had somehow come to think that it was all Fannie’s fault, and she though he must have spent a lot of time thinking about all the seeds he could have planted elsewhere. Fannie knows it probably was her with the problem, it probably was some sort of miracle that she should even have had a baby. But Jake had spent all those years believing what most people always have believed, that black women are just like watermelon vines and once one gets ripe, there’s another right behind it. She reckoned Jake was for the first time proud of his manhood, and took it out on her that he had doubted himself all those years. Before Elizabeth was even a year old, Fannie was already having to unfasten the tops of her skirts. It didn’t seem like such a miracle that time, because Jake was gone before she even got to wearing big loose frocks with no waist to them. She named that child Thomas because it was all that doubt and resentment that had brought him to her.
She tells herself that there were some blessings to come out of it all, that she has forgiven Jake for leaving the way that he did, forgiven Elizabeth for going to New York and leaving M. L. with her to raise from the time he was a year old. She tells herself that her children deserve better if they can find it, though she’s proud of her life, proud of the fact that she is sixty-five years old and gets up and goes to work every day, cooking and cleaning for the Fosters who live in one of the big houses out in what she still calls Piney Swamp even though it has been given a fancy name that she never can remember. One day M. L. will have himself a fine house with a long table set with matching dishes and silverware. M. L. might just be a doctor and that would be fine, but for Fannie McNair, the most important thing is that M. L. grows up to be decent and proud, hard working and loving, not fighting to prove he’s something that he ain’t like Thomas, who lives somewhere right in this town but hardly ever comes by. M. L. ain’t gonna sit and watch his mailbox for the government to send some kind of check.
She goes over now and leans down close to M. L. where his face is buried down in the stomach of an old stuffed monkey that he calls F. M. after her, and she can feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek. This is a ritual that she performed with her own children and did with M. L. before he was even left there with her, and now, with the reassurance of his measured sleep, she goes back to her chair for a few more minutes of thinking. Her gnarled fingers work in and out while she hems the dress that Mrs. Foster is going to wear to a party tomorrow night that is being given for a couple about to be married. It’s a pretty dress, green and silky, cool to Fannie’s fingers as she slides the material around. The dress smells like Mrs. Foster, clean and a little spicy like those crumpled-up dried flowers that Mrs. Foster has in little bowls in the bathroom. It smells like the Fosters’ house and it makes Fannie feel for a minute that Mrs. Helena Foster is right there in the room with her, though of course she’s not; Mrs. Foster has never been inside of this room or right out front on the street, or if she has Fannie doesn’t know it. Mr. Foster picks her up in the mornings and brings her back home, or if he is out of town, Mrs. Foster gives her taxi money the day before. That’s the way it is, Fannie tells herself, though there have been times when she would have liked for Mrs. Foster to come up here and see her home, see the quilts and afghans that Fannie has made, because Mrs. Foster is real interested in homemade things like quilts, rugs, bread and jelly, though as far as Fannie knows Mrs. Foster has never made a thing in her life, probably not even a bed.
I
t makes Fannie smile just to think of how that whole house would fall apart if she wasn’t there to keep things right. But she likes Mrs. Foster. Sometimes she just likes to look at her because it’s so hard to believe that a woman getting close to forty with two children could look that way, that frosted blonde hair that she pulls up in a loose bun, those long nails always glazed in clear polish, those bright plaid pedal pushers that she wears around the house or to the grocery store. It is something, the way that Mrs. Foster looks like she’s always about to go somewhere even when she isn’t. She wears earrings every day of the week.
Fannie breaks off the thread and carefully hangs the dress back on its hanger and carries it into the bathroom to hang it on the shower rod so that nothing will happen to it. She pulls out the skirt and lets it rock back and forth like a ghost dancing there. She does like to think and wonder about the Fosters, to think of how Mrs. Foster’s voice changes a little when she has company, how she doesn’t spend much time with Fannie when other people are there. Mr. Foster is real quiet most of the time and Fannie never has been able to decide if he’s mad or if he’s just a soured person. He isn’t even smiling in that wedding photograph that Mrs. Foster has on her dresser.
Fannie goes back to her chair and now that that dress is out of the room it’s a little easier to forget about the Fosters. She will be back with them soon enough, back with Billy Foster locked up in his room all day long, asleep till noon and before she can get in there to make his bed, he’s already back on it, just sitting on top of rumpled covers and playing his record player full blast. He reminds Fannie of a scrawny little chick who goes around acting like a bantam rooster till somebody crosses him and he goes crying to his Mama. M. L. ain’t that way. M. L. don’t act a bit bigger than what he is and he isn’t a crybaby, never has been. But that Billy Foster is something. Fannie can’t quite figure it out. How did such a cute little boy grow up like that, except that he’s spoiled rotten. He has all these posters on his walls, of people with their faces all painted up like some kind of freak show. “Kiss,” it says below these awful faces. Fannie McNair wouldn’t touch one with a ten foot pole, let alone kiss one. Fannie supposes that he comes by this sort of taste for pictures naturally, though. Just the other day, Mrs. Foster called Fannie away from her cooking to come into the living room and see the new picture. “It’s a Primitive,” Mrs. Foster said. “We got it at an auction. Isn’t it wonderful?” Fannie nodded like she was agreeing, but she thought that it was more than primitive; she thought it was downright scary with that head too big for that child’s body like some kind of poor dwarf. Mrs. Foster talks about all these things like she knows something about them, but Lord knows, she don’t know too much. She doesn’t know a thing about the history of Marshboro; she didn’t even know that her house is just a hop and a skip from where Piney Swamp Baptist Church used to be, and even though the Fosters are members of a church in town, Fannie has not once heard them discuss a service and has never heard a hymn sung in that house, until she herself began singing while she works.
Sometimes it makes Fannie feel proud that she works in such a fine house with all that silver to polish, like she owned it all or something since she’s the one to care for it. But other times, she feels guilty for thinking that way, for forgetting herself and wishing that M. L. had his own bathroom with a -little towel with his name on it like Parker Foster, who is only twelve years old and has everything that most grown-up women don’t even have. Sometimes it goes on and on until that pride turns a little to doubt and resentment and she can’t help but remember being a young woman and going to the movies, having to sit in the balcony where it said “colored,” using a bathroom that said “colored,” and it makes her feel a fever deep in her body, the same fever, she is certain, that Thomas McNair has felt every day of his life.
There is a soft rapping at the door and Fannie realizes that she’s been thinking about the Fosters again, thinking about all those old sad things that have happened in her life. She tiptoes across the old hardwood floor, her stocking snagging on a small splinter. “Who’s there?” she whispers, though she’s certain it’s Corky Revels from across the hall.
“It’s me, Fannie,” comes the voice so she takes off the chain and opens the door. Corky is standing there in a blue cotton gown that reaches her thin calves; she has one foot curled around the other. “I saw your light beneath the door. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No, honey, you know I sit up late as I can stand it.” Fannie motions for Corky to come in and then closes and locks the door. Corky goes over and sits on the footstool in front of Fannie’s chair. “I just couldn’t get to sleep,” she whispers, her large pale eyes magnified by the dark circles below them, her light hair slipping from the ponytail on top of her head and falling around her face. She waits for Fannie to settle back into her chair. “I guess I just wanted to talk for a minute.”
“You’ve got to get some sleep.” Fannie leans forward so that she can talk without waking M. L. “Don’t you work in the morning?”
“I go in at seven.” She seems to relax a little, stretching her feet out towards Fannie’s chair.
“It’s well after one, now,” Fannie whispers. “Can I fix you something to eat?” She is hoping that Corky will say yes because she’s as thin as a rail, but she just shakes her head and the tears well up in those large sad eyes.
“No thank you,” she whispers and then she just stares out the window. Fannie doesn’t mind Corky coming over in the late hours; she does it often and Fannie never knows exactly what to do except to sit there. Corky told her one time that that’s what she needed, to be with somebody.
“Are you frightened?” Fannie whispers. “Cause you can get right over there and sleep with M. L., you know you can.” Corky blinks those long lashes and the tears roll down her cheeks while she shakes her head. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, really I am,” she says and pulls the neck of her gown up to wipe her cheeks. “I know, Fannie, tell me about the house where you work.”
“Well, what part of it?” Fannie has been over that house with a fine tooth comb with Corky. Corky could probably make her way around the Fosters’ house blindfolded and she has never even set foot there.
“Tell me about that bedroom suit that they have that is as old as George Washington.” Fannie is not sure if that’s right or not. Mrs. Foster had told her that it was just like what George Washington slept on, but she tells about it again, and the bedspread and that dressing table with the skirt on it and the big wooden mirror with brass-covered lamps on either side. She talks on and on until Corky’s eyes start looking heavy and she gets off of the footstool and stretches out on the rag rug.
“Come on, honey, come get into bed with M. L.” Fannie shakes her shoulder and Corky sits up. “Come on, you’re tired.”
“I think I can sleep now,” she whispers. “I’ll go on home.” She gets up from the floor, marks from the rug on her cheek and arm, and tiptoes to the door. “Thanks, Fannie,” she says and kisses her on the cheek, and Fannie watches until she has let herself into her room across the hall. Fannie goes over and cuts off the light, pulls off her thin bathrobe and lays it at the foot of the bed. She believes that things are the way they are for a reason; she believes that one day it will all make sense, why her life is hard sometimes, because the God that she prays to wouldn’t have it any other way. She thinks of Corky and the way that she comes over here to cry late at night, Corky, with hardly no family at all. She prays silently as she eases herself onto the bed and the words flow through her mind like the words to a song. She doesn’t close her eyes or bow her head but stares over at M. L., a dark little bundle beneath the sheet, because he is what she is thankful for, every day and every night, he is the blessing of her life, the reason that she keeps on going and she repeats this to herself over and over, her lips barely moving, her eyes tired and heavy, with no thought of the pair of jeans hanging limply on the window ledge without a trace of breeze to stir them.
But things will get better, she always tells herself, and she has years’ worth of dreams to prove what she wants for herself. She has all of these dreams, and yet no one to tell them to; she has never been in love. And that is part of the dream that she is conjuring now, a faceless stranger that she has fallen in love with and married, moved to that little yellow wooden house over on Maple Avenue which is in a good section, though not like where Fannie McNair works. In her dream, she has lots of children; some of them have pale blonde hair and gray eyes and the others match the faceless father of the dreams. When she’s in that house on Maple Avenue, she furnishes it with all kinds of things that she’s either heard about from Fannie or seen herself, like the big braided rug that Granner Weeks has in her house with the heathered blues and grays, or like the big brass coat rack that Rose Tyner, Granner’s granddaughter, has by her front door. In the dream she wears a pink silky dress and in the background there is slow dancing music, candles burning, a blue satin bedspread turned down just right.
July 7th Page 2
