“I wanted to marry my baby’s father. I wanted him to want to marry me, not get me this way first, but he didn’t want me. I wanted Willie to go to Florida with the art teacher so that I could have gone with him to take care of him. And I never wanted to live without Willie. When he died, I wanted to die. But I’m here, stuck in Alabama big and pregnant and I definitely didn’t want that. So don’t ever say I always get what I want.” The curtain near Minnelsa moved as a hot wind blew through their silence.
The older sister’s words floated on that wind cooling them down. “I’d be a good mother to your child.”
“I never said you wouldn’t be, Minnelsa. But the babies, their ages. When you go back to Atlanta people will. . .”
“I’m never going back to live in Atlanta. Never.” She touched the window as she smiled and watched the Piano Man with the boy.
“But papa expects. . ..”
“I said before, and you said it a lot: papa expects too much.” Again she turned to her sister. “Look, you don’t have to go back either. You can stay here with Fannie and Ella. Or you can go to school at Tuskegee and get on with your life. I’m sure papa will give you the money to finish school. And I’m sure papa will be glad to keep you away. When he finds out I’m pregnant he’ll do anything to keep both of us away.”
June watched her sister trace the figure of the Piano Man in the window. “Have you told him what you want to do? Does Peter know about not going back to Atlanta? I mean papa may make him give up the precious land he gave him.”
“Papa’s not going to do anything of the kind, June. He may have bought me a husband but I know how to keep him.
“I’m going to have a life on my own, June. Me, my husband, our baby.” She touched her belly then her sister’s as she smiled. Then she put her arm around June. “Your baby, if you want. I have a home now. It isn’t like the house we grew up in but there is love there. I can feel it. And you, little sister, can stay with me as long as you like.”
June looked out at the Piano Man, sleeves rolled up and talking to Michael like a father. She looked at Minnelsa whose face glowed in love as she watched him. He made her happy.
June wanted her mother. All she could feel was Bira kissing her good-bye before she got in the car with Fannie and drove off for the train.
It was nice to have Minnelsa and to see her happy. But June wanted her mother.
* * *
They had the room down the hall and June couldn’t sleep thinking of what they were doing in that room. What they had done so far to get Minnelsa with child. What Minnelsa had learned in a few months of marriage to be able to, as she put it, keep her husband. How had June ever loved him? How had she ever thought he would love her and want to be with her?
On the day she realized she was late she had run to Willie’s room to tell him. So soon she forgot the room had been emptied except for the desk and the bed. The easel bore no picture. She sat on the unmade bed and thought of all the nights she had come in to share her hopes and dreams with him. Without Willie to advise her of the outcome of her nights with the Piano Man she was not sure what she was to do. Instead of being sad she sank in memory.
Her favorite one was planning the future the night before they found out their father was not even considering letting Willie go to Florida with the art teacher.
“He says he lives near the ocean.” Willie had been excited as he brushed her hair. “Imagine painting the ocean. I wonder if it’s really as blue as books say.”
June had selfishly not paid attention and asked: “How are you going to convince him to take me? I can’t paint.”
His excitement grew. “Oh that’s easy. You have to come with me to take care of me.”
“To cook and do your clothes, Willie? You know I’m terrible at that.”
“No,” he laughed when he said it. “And this is brilliant. You are my companion and model. All great artists have models and companions. He would have to take you or I’d pull a fit.”
June laughed at him. “You? A temper tantrum?”
Willie blushed but had to smile at the thought. “No, silly. Well yes, but artists have tempers. They have fits of jealousy, passion and rage. That and immense suffering makes them better artists.”
They had both been so happy. He would have been happy about the baby, too. He would have figured out a way to get past papa to make Peter marry her.
Or he would have honestly told her that Peter was not the right man for her and let him have Minnelsa.
That’s what Willie would have told her. To forget Peter.
But how many times before he died had he tried to tell her that?
She had lost the pleasure of thinking about being a mother, having a child of her own, when Peter walked Minnelsa home, kissed her good night as the sisters peeked out the window, and the reality that this would never happen became clear.
That night Ross had called on her to go for a ride in his new automobile. She despised Ross with his flip ways but she needed the escape. So with papa’s permission, for a change, she went off for a short ride.
When she could no longer stand Ross pawing her and trying to prove that he was the best man for her, that he should be her first, she asked him: “What do you do when you get a girl in the family way, Ross? Besides dump her?”
The question unnerved him. “What have you heard?” He lit a cigarette then blew smoke rings in the air as if he didn’t care.
“I’ve heard nothing. But I know someone who has a problem. You know what kind of problem and I figured you were the right person to ask.”
“It’s a woman’s problem,” he said calmly. But she knew more than one girl had been taken to a place outside of town by the young handsome fool. “You go to a woman. A woman that’s got the ways.”
She couldn’t ask which woman for she wasn’t sure yet and she didn’t want him to guess. But she would always remember how casual he was about the child he might have made being destroyed with or without his permission. “It’s a woman’s problem,” remained with her.
Now the couple was down the hall and she couldn’t sleep. They were sleeping in the same bed, their bodies touching with no one to say they were wrong. She had let him have her, touch her, lie on her until she had wanted to scream with delight, but they had never slept together. Never had more than a few moments of passion.
She looked at the ceiling and watched the shadows of the trees as they danced in the moonlight. Do they make sounds, she wondered, sounds of delight and joy? Was Minnelsa quiet about her passion? Did she wear gloves?
June laughed. She laughed and laughed until she noticed that her laughter had turned into crying. She wanted to sleep with someone who loved her. She wanted to sneak down the hall and sit outside their room until she heard them making love, until she could imagine them touching in the same moonlight that made the shadows of the trees dance. She cried until sleep rescued her from the loneliness she had been feeling since the day her mother left her there.
In the dawn everything was all right. They were leaving, going back to Tuskegee. They were going to leave her alone until time for the baby. And then. . .
What was she going to do after the baby?
She made the biscuits for breakfast and both Peter and Minnelsa praised her new culinary skills. Ella packed them a lunch and told them to come back soon. June was nowhere to be found when they drove away.
She was down by the pond wishing she knew how to swim, her feet dangling in the murky cool water and wishing she could just take off everything and go in.
“Millie say you can’t swim.” She heard a voice and turned. Michael stood there. Shirtless in his overalls looking like one of the young bronze gods Willie had painted.
She smiled. “Not many places for me to go to swim in Atlanta. Wish I knew how.”
“I could teach you.” Then he thought to add: “After the baby, I could teach you.” She smiled and said nothing. “I . . . they sent me to fetch you. Your sister and her husband is leaving.”
“I know. I don’t like to say good-byes.” She kicked the water and looked at him carefully. He was perhaps two years younger than her at the most. But next to her he looked older.
She looked at his handsome black face and saw through his youth. Michael could read and saw no need to be further educated. After all he knew his fields, his odd jobs, his place in this neat little society that Fannie and Ella had started years ago.
“What you gonna do after the baby comes?” He had never talked to her this much before.
“What do you mean?” she asked turning from him, trying to remember what it was like to have a young man stare at her. Could he see past her belly to her beauty? She took the pins out of her hair and started to unbraid it. She could hear him breathing hard and steady as if the heat was straining him.
“I mean,” he cleared his throat and sat on the grass behind her watching as the black silk poured over her shoulders and mesmerized him. “Mama says you may not want to go back to Atlanta. Without a husband.”
She stopped playing with her hair but she wondered if he wanted to touch it. “It’s hard to raise babies without a husband. I guess your mama knows.” She regretted it the moment she said it. It wasn’t meant to be spiteful. Cora was one of the kindest souls she had ever met. “That is to say your mother is doing a fine job raising you and Millie by herself. But it’s hard, I know it’s hard.”
He cleared his throat again. “I heard say your sister came here cause she and her husband gonna raise your baby.” June just listened. So the cat is out the bag, she thought. And papa thought all was right with his hirelings. “So I guess what I’s saying is, since you a widow and you might be giving your baby to your sister to raise what you gonna do?”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and let it fall down her back. It was down to her waist now. Had grown along with the baby.
The boy noticed and wanted to touch it but restrained himself. He thought she was the most beautiful creature on earth. And he also knew that she knew how he felt. She took her feet out the water and turned to him. “You know Michael, I hadn’t really thought about it. I’m not sure what I am going to do.”
His face brightened as he suggested: “You can stay here. I mean Miss Ella and Miss Fannie say you’d be good here.”
She laughed. “Good for what. I can barely cook and I mess up so many things that I try.”
“But you learning.” He pleaded with her: “It ain’t like you a spoiled brat no more like they thought you was.”
He dropped his head. He wasn’t supposed to say that and he knew it. With a smile on her full face she reached for him and patted his hand. “I have always been a spoiled brat, Michael. I just learned how much of one I was when I came here.”
“I didn’t mean no harm,” he said, head still hanging. “I think you are nice, real nice.” He pulled away from her touch and got up to move away. “I got to get back to work.”
“Sure,” she said looking at him longingly. She saw a bit of Willie in him. She also knew that in her he saw a woman with long black hair and full lips that he wanted to kiss. Even if she was filled with another man’s child.
So because of Michael, June spent the next few days thinking about what to do after the baby came. It preoccupied her every waking moment. She would be cooking her biscuits, had flour all over the place and herself, and rolling them out before she cut them and suddenly she would stop and think: if I was married like Minnelsa I’d be doing this for my husband. And she would lose herself into who her husband should be and could be.
There were few available men in Fannie and Ella’s little town, most of those who were her age had woman who had attached themselves to their men’s arms like leeches as soon as they had seen her. The others were either old or older. It would take Ella to wake her from her reverie.
“Them biscuits going cut themselves out?” June would grin and get back to cooking.
At night she would sit on the porch with the other women. By now she was considered one of them and understood everything they were talking about. Millie loved to brush June’s hair and do it in many styles and ways until the other women made her stop. So June had decided that perhaps Millie should get a bit of her own medicine. June combed and brushed and braided Millie’s hair every night. Over the months, the little girl had gotten used to the pulling and tugging and began to enjoy the prestige of having the redbone gal from Atlanta take care of her hair. Millie no longer looked like a mop-head, her braids touched her shoulders neatly. This made June wonder what having a long haired little girl would be like and she would slip into that dream too, leaving the other women to talk about her.
“June needs a bed warmer, Fannie,” Cora said one night as she watched the young pregnant woman brush Millie’s hair with that empty expression.
“Naw,” Mattie said. “I don’t think June’s cold, I think she’s lonely. You think a lot more when you lonely. I believe she needs a comforter.”
“A bright colored one,” Fannie decided. “One that keeps you warm and cozy all at the same time.” They would all look at her and then Fannie would say: “But she’s doing better than most of them red boned peaches that got picked and sent here.”
They would agree and June would pretend that she had not been listening.
But she heard it all and wished for someone to keep her bed warm. Whenever the baby kicked she thought she would die not having Peter to share it with, especially since Willie. . . The baby kicked a lot.
She was starting to waddle. Couldn’t be helped since she was so short. Her dresses pulled on her belly and her feet had turned black on the bottom from wearing no shoes. If papa could see her now!
Millie seldom left her side now that she was getting closer to the birth of the baby, and Millie was a joy as well as a nuisance. She wanted to know what she was going to name the baby and where would the baby sleep. June didn’t answer her. She wasn’t ready to tell her yet that once the baby was born she would be leaving.
Most of her afternoons she spent with her feet in the pond wishing she was young and pretty again. She knew she looked all right but she felt swollen if not fat. Most of those afternoons Michael would find some excuse to be near her.
One afternoon he bought an envelope to her. “It’s from my sister in Tuskegee,” she told him and he stood by waiting to see what was going to happen.
Her face dropped and he said: “Something wrong?”
She spoke softly. “Yes. We got to find Fannie. My sister is sick and I need to go to her.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The sadness and the crying drove the Piano Man out of the house night after night. He felt so bad and wanted to do something for her, but there was nothing he could do. “After all,” the doctor had told him, “You’re just a man. These things happen all the time.” The doctor gave him a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “Son, you mustn’t feel that it is your fault that she lost the baby.”
Peter knew his guilt. When he put his arms around Minnelsa he was sure she would break in two from shaking and crying, so he loved her even more. After all she had been through he didn’t want Minnelsa hurt.
Ever.
He had wanted to do everything right. He had wanted to please everyone. He did not want to raise his child growing in her sister’s womb. It would have pleased the Blacksmith to do it, but Peter did not know if he could live with that from day to day. Minnelsa seemed content enough to do it at first.
But when she said she was pregnant! How had he allowed Minnelsa to get pregnant? He had tried to do everything right. He had tried to do everything he was supposed to do. To do what was proper.
Seeing her that night, their wedding night, beautiful in her silk negligee, then touching her skin and feeling its smoothness, and finally taking her aging innocence and truly understanding that she was with a man for the first time. He was not sure he could do all that was expected of him.
He was not sure he could be the Blacksmith’s son-in-law.
He kne
w it was wrong but he did not want June’s baby to live. June was having this baby to torture him. Why hadn’t she just gotten rid of it? “A mistake is a mistake,” his mother once told him. “There are never reasons to make two.”
June had ignored her father in so many other ways, why not ignore him in this one, since she was coming to term, and give the baby to someone in the little town. If not for him, for her sister?
Minnelsa’s baby had died. She couldn’t write to tell her parents. How could she? She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant. So she wrote to the person closest to her geographically. She wrote to June and asked her to come be with her. Peter had said no, telling her it might depress her to have her sister, her pregnant sister, around. In actuality he was afraid to have them both under the same roof. But Minnelsa said she needed her sister, needed someone. She had cried and cried and Peter couldn’t stand it. When he finally agreed it was only after he had resorted to playing his piano almost all night and then going out to think about his situation.
It was then that Peter started buying a “taste” as they called it, from Gordon down the way. A little “taste” led to a big thirst which led to buying something every few days. Gordon once told him: “Man, you must have some big load on your shoulders to be getting all this stuff from me.”
Peter, the Piano Man, the husband of a woman who had just lost her first baby, the father of his sister-in-law’s first child, laughed and told him: “You don’t know, Gordon, old man, you just don’t know.”
It was then that he started talking about not adopting the baby but going back to Europe. Minnelsa didn’t respond at first, she was so wrapped up in sorrow. But Peter told her about his “friends” overseas and the places they could go that would take away the memory of a baby that wasn’t going to be. Besides, it was romantic in Europe and there they would be able to try again.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to try again, he wasn’t sure about anything. So he’d take a little “taste” whenever he wanted to forget and he wasn’t near his piano. After Minnelsa said she was not interested in going to Europe, and that they had to take care of June’s baby, after long days of tears and long nights of “it’s not time yet” he’d take a little “taste” when he was at the piano.
The Wilful Daughter Page 22
