Those women knew what to do, how to hold a man. Did it in the woods, rubbing against a tree. In a barn next to a horse eating hay. On the hard ground when there was no bed with starched white linen sheets.
Like June.
Minnelsa didn’t know these things and he was sure she never would.
This was not something a husband could teach a wife. It was something that erupted from inside. She didn’t cringe at his touch. On the contrary, she liked it. But she had no passion. None at all.
She was a good wife. She did as she was told, she submitted and seemed to enjoy. She never refused his touch, his suggestions.
No that was wrong. She had lately refused him because of the suggestion of the doctor. Minnelsa was bound to miscarry again because of her age, if nothing else, if she wasn’t careful. And just like the porcelain doll her father had made all his daughters into, she was untouchable again.
He knew he wasn’t missing much, and he hated to admit that. But he knew men who went through the same thing for years: wives that lived for their house, their children. They did not live for their husbands. In fact they became used to not having them around, at home, underfoot.
So he had taken to going back to Miss Emma’s once in a while. There he could find comfort in playing the piano like she was his lover. There he sometimes took comfort in the women.
But that didn’t happen often being the Blacksmith’s son-in-law. And until those days could happen again, he only had Sundays in this field with his daughter.
This was how life went for Piano Man for the next few months. Miraculously Minnelsa held onto the baby, rested in bed day after day with her books and her knitting and sewing.
She never complained about the boredom.
She never complained that they had moved back into her parents’ house. Took the old room she had shared with Fawn. Let Ophelia sleep in June’s room when she wasn’t crawling into the bed with them. All this was done so that her mother could look after her all hours of the day.
Then there was the breakfast thing. He couldn’t believe it when the first Monday morning they were there, and to him it wasn’t morning it was still night, Minnelsa got up and went into the kitchen. He had followed her thinking she was sleep walking and might hurt herself, when he smelled bacon and saw her wake up Ophelia and wash the half asleep child’s face. Bira was busy cooking when she saw him and said: “My biscuits aren’t as good as Jewel’s but they’re eatable. And it’s important to get a good meal to start on the day.”
“Now?” he had muttered with drowsiness. Just then the Blacksmith had whizzed past him, having shaved in the mirror and the bowl in his room, going to wash up for the morning meal. It was then the Piano Man remembered June had told him that life in this house started before dawn.
So he stayed up for breakfast, for the bacon and biscuits and eggs and home preserves, the fancily sat table and the smile on Bira’s face that she was feeding folks again, especially now that all her daughters had left home.
It was Bira who suggested they let Minnelsa stay in bed and have breakfast there, it was Bira who suggested that if he didn’t mind (she knew it wasn’t a man’s job but he was so good with Ophelia) that he be responsible for getting his daughter up at the crack of dawn and washing and dressing her while she cooked.
Because of Minnelsa’s condition he agreed and all went well for about two weeks until she threw up the breakfast one morning and declared it was too early for her stomach to take food.
It was Bira who suggested they not disturb her anymore and just let her sleep. The Piano Man figured he would get to sleep late too, and that he could get Ophelia dressed when his little family got up. But that was not the case. They still expected him and Ophelia to rise with the Blacksmith.
He hated the hard tap on the door six mornings a week, hated the smell of fresh coffee and greasy but fresh meat steaming out of the kitchen.
It wasn’t like they needed him or even referred to his presence.
The Blacksmith monopolized the morning conversation asking Bira what she would do for the day, asking Ophelia silly questions that she giggled the answers to with a babyish: “Oh, Grandpa,” that made the big man laugh. Peter drank his coffee and ate his food. In fact he ate more food then he should have and found that after the Blacksmith left and Ophelia helped her grandmother with the kitchen chores he couldn’t go back to sleep.
What was a grown man supposed to do at dawn when he had four hours before he had to be at work? Peter drank more coffee, ate more biscuits, so by the time he needed to leave for the college he was ready for a nap.
When his pants started getting too snug, he realized that he was not cut out for this life.
Each Sunday was as it had been before - the family all assembled at the Blacksmith’s home. Now that he lived there and was about most of the time, he found no place for a quiet thought. If Ophelia wasn’t saying: “Daddy, play with me,” if Minnelsa wasn’t asking him to rub her back or help her about, if the Blacksmith wasn’t trying to ask him questions about the places he had been and the classes he had taught that week, if Bira wasn’t trying to feed him, soothe him, make him feel at home, then his brothers-in-law were asking him about his music, his travels. When they were alone on the porch and the Blacksmith was taking an afternoon walk with Bira and one or both grandchildren, they would ask him about the women he had known, the things he had done that made him a man when he was growing up in Europe. They would sip the ice tea the women prepared, wishing it was something stronger, since the Blacksmith saved his best stuff for holidays and they didn’t dare pull out their own private stashes of moonshine or home brew in his house.
They hung on the Blacksmith’s every word. The doctor, the lawyer and the minister that had married into this family like him. They were hungry, like him, for the land-dowry their wives brought them. But they wanted to start their only family traditions, far from the Blacksmith. They liked being far apart but close enough to each other so that their children would realize they were cousins. Spending time under the Blacksmith’s roof each Sunday they had no way to be on their own, the old man was so demanding. If they were going to have families the way he had one, if they were going to be able to go about their property like the lord of the land, they needed to get away from him. They needed to get back into the real world.
Oh, they all had compliments. “I have married the finest woman I have ever met. She plays the piano. Her father gave us one for an anniversary present for our first year.”
Another would say: “I have married the finest cook in the south. Look at this belly. Gained a few pounds that even my mother couldn’t put on me. Course my mother never had the fine food and table setting that I have with Fawn.”
But they had complaints, too. And the sons-in-law of the Blacksmith had nowhere to take them but to Peter, the Piano Man, who had been in the family far longer then they.
Complaints like: “It’s too bad I had to come today. There’s a nice little pond on my property near one of the groves of peach trees. Prettiest thing you ever saw.”
Or: “I should be with my church members Sunday. They need my guidance.”
Or: “If a man got a position in a Northern university, he would be happy to take his wife with him. But some wives don’t want to leave home. “Plus if you tell them that if you sell the property you got when you married them they could have a finer northern home, live just like they did here, thinking they might be happy they get more than upset. Some women think it would be an insult to sell that property while their father was still alive. What am I going to do with fifty acres of prime farm land on the outskirts of Atlanta?”
So Peter was not surprised when one early spring Sunday Jewel’s husband, Waddell Jackson, the lawyer, who had had more than a few run-ins with those colored people who believed in keeping them in their place, announced that he had been offered a position with a popular colored organization in New York City.
The other husbands thought it was a wonderful oppo
rtunity to experience life in another city. They thought it was even more wonderful to have a real, legitimate excuse to get away from the Blacksmith. Sundays in New York, not Sundays on his porch.
Peter wondered if Waddell would try to look for June. He heard through traveling musician friends that she was singing in clubs in the north. In fact he waited for Waddell to ask what places to go to, what things to see.
Instead Waddell told them: “Jewel said she won’t come with me.”
“But she’s your wife,” Reverend Howard proclaimed. “And the Lord says. . .”
“Charles, please don’t quote the bible to me right now ’cause the bible ain’t got nothing to do with my problem. The bible doesn’t say anything about that big colored man walking down the street that’s got these daughters of his thinking they can’t be more than five minutes away from him and their mama or the world falls apart.”
“June left,” Peter said boldly. They all looked at him because none of them had ever bought up that old family secret. Outwardly they all admired Peter for taking on the responsibility of a child. Inwardly they were glad it wasn’t them.
Plus there was the obvious jealousy that he got two plots of fifty acres - one for his wife and one for June’s baby. They all thought it was a sweet deal. He could go back to Alabama whenever he wanted and not have to be ruled by the iron hand of their father-in-law. His wife had a baby to care for and one on the way. He was in good with the old man.
“I know that,” Waddell continued, mincing his words before the wives came out or the parents returned. “I think that’s what scares her most of all. Nobody in this family has heard from June. Now I’ve been following an organization for years and it’s something I feel good about. They are working on getting better paying jobs for colored people in the north. Jobs that pay them the same for coloreds as white people. They want me for legal council and she doesn’t want to go.”
“I don’t know about all that.” Charles shook his head and pulled on his collar nervously. “I hear some of them people want to go back to Africa and that they secretly have white folks backing them.”
James Nelson, the doctor and husband to Rosa spoke out. “Charles, you know that isn’t the point. The man here has a chance to make something of himself in another place. What is keeping him here is the unnatural way these women cling to this family. And I don’t use that term ‘unnatural’ loosely.”
Charles tried to defend himself. “A family is not an unnatural thing.”
James looked at him. “Don’t tell me you believe in all this stuff that he puts out. Or are you just a believer so you can get your church more money from his pocket?”
Charles shifted in his seat. He sipped the ice tea. “It’s just that it’s nice, it’s good to see close families. Some men desert their women, don’t even marry them, go off with other women and. . .”
James cut him off in his brisk tongue. “It is nice to have close families, but that’s not what this is all about. William Brown has been trying to be white ever since I’ve known him and I grew up right across the street. I have known him all my life. I have watched him all my life.” Charles shook his head in protest, but James continued.
“I used to try to walk Rosa to school when we were growing up. She was afraid he might see us so we met at the corner down there.” He pointed to a grove of trees that marked the corner of Beckwith and Vine. A corner all of them were familiar with. It was the blind spot of the Blacksmith’s porch view. Behind those bushes, you could fix yourself up or dust yourself off after a long walk to come court one of the girls. Behind those trees you took the first kiss, the first touch of what you hoped would be many similar moments. Most of them figured the Blacksmith knew what went on behind those bushes but he couldn’t cut them down because it wasn’t his property. He had sold it years ago.
“First time I came to call on her, to take her to a dance he stopped me before I got in the door.” He turned to Peter to emphasize his words as if the Piano Man hadn’t heard them. “Before I got in the door.
“He asked me if I had any desire to make myself an important man. I was wearing hand me down pants, shoes, everything. I was clean from head to toe but his stare, that look in his eyes like I was trying to steal something from him, made me feel that I needed to go back home and start over again. So I just told him that I was trying to get out of high school so I could become a doctor. He asked me where I was going to study. Before I could answer he wanted to know how was I going to get the money to continue my studies.”
The other men sympathized with him. They had each suffered a similar fate. “It was Bira who escorted Rosa onto the porch and suggested that we leave. I thought, I’m home free, her mother likes me. But when I brought Rosa back from the dance, the old man told me that I could call on her again-when I got my degree from medical school. And when I asked her how she felt about all this she said: ‘He’s my father, he’s got rules.’” He sighed. “I remember when he closed the door in my face I realized that I had never even been inside this house, seen all the treasures that people had told me about. I just remember him closing the door in my face and the smell of pipe tobacco. Expensive pipe tobacco I had been told. What he spent on that pipe tobacco could have fed me and my brothers for a week.”
They were all silent for a minute until Waddell said softly, as if they were all in his confidence: “I got a buyer for the land. I haven’t told Jewel yet. She actual thinks I should ask her father’s permission to take the job and sell my land. Mine! I have earned every bit of it with the things I put up with.” They all, including the Piano Man, mumbled agreement. “I have lots of better things to do with my Sunday than sit around here and watch him lord over all of us.”
“Truth of the matter is,” James added. “He’s probably not as big a man as he thinks. I looked into the clauses that he had added to each of our contracts and it turns out that if we can prove we paid the taxes, and we all know he’s made us pay the taxes, buy the most expensive furnishings, dress like white men in the white house, then he can’t say a word if we sell it. It’s all ours any way. He signed it over to us in front of a lawyer. His lawyer.”
“But Fawn says. . .” Charles went on to say and James cut him off.
“Fawn doesn’t own the land, Charles. Look at the contract. You are the sole owner of the land you got when you married her.” Then he laughed sarcastically. “He wanted to be like a white man with all this property and all this family and dowry stuff. Marrying off the first daughter. Well he got it. The way he has set up each of our contracts we can do just what rich white men do, sell everything from under our wives and we don’t even have to tell them.”
“Of course,” Reverend Charles added after clearing his throat. “We wouldn’t want to do that.”
“Of course not!” they all replied, quickly changing the subject. That evening Piano Man found some excuse to go back to the house-his house, his land he remembered as he got there- and pulled the contracts for the property from under a floorboard in the bedroom.
It seemed to be a lot of legal mumble jumble, but finally it made sence to him. He could sell the property here anytime he wanted without problems. The one in Alabama would be harder to sell because of the clause about Ophelia.
That was until he noticed that the clause said ‘gave her his name.’ Hell he could sell it any time he wanted to, he had done that already.
He dreamed about selling his land all spring. Of moving away, and taking Ophelia and leaving Minnelsa with her family. He thought of it especially on Sundays when he played with his little daughter in their field of flowers.
Minnelsa would have a baby of her own, she would have her family. He would have money from the property and his daughter.
He could even look for June, if he wanted. And Ophelia was so young she would probably never remember when she older the big house on Beckwith Street or all the stone faced family dressed too much like white people’s pictures in books.
He told no one about his
plans or his thoughts. Especially not the other sons-in-law. He kept everything to himself.
By the month of June, with Minnelsa so big she could barely move, and, wondering aloud from time to time why she had gotten herself into this mess, the Piano Man welcomed the summer distractions. The church had more weddings, and that meant more playing, more chances to be away from his home-away-from-home.
And there was his home. The home they had built on the property the Blacksmith had given them. Peter had little input into the plans, even though the Blacksmith insisted that his talented son-in-law have a sitting/piano room. It was the home that Minnelsa wanted more than anything else. She spent more time there than he did before all this. Now he used it as an excuse to get away.
He had to make sure the grounds were taken care of, that the place was clean and nobody was breaking in. He had to go there constantly to get things for Ophelia, toys and clothes that she had left there.
And when he wasn’t doing that he was with Ophelia, being a father, playing with her, loving her. He spent a little time with Minnelsa who was wrapped up in her pregnancy. When he slept with her, he felt the baby move.
His baby, in her. Legally he knew but not lovingly. He still thought about who he could sell the property to without it getting back to the Blacksmith before he had a chance to complete his plans. This became his daily project.
When he returned from teaching one early June afternoon he found Jewel sitting on the porch with her mother and sister weeping. He knew immediately what had happened but he waited for them to say it.
“Waddell has taken a job in New York.” Minnelsa was close to tears. “He actually expects Jewel to go with him.”
Bira stared at him because she knew that men shared secrets. She knew that he and Charles and James all knew about this. “He told her it was her duty as his wife to go with him. He’s leaving in two days and she doesn’t want to go.”
The Wilful Daughter Page 33
