I drew another vertical line, and on one side I wrote, “Je t’aime. Je t’aime. Je t’aime.” And on the other side I wrote, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Vivian came back into the room and saw what I had done.
“You naughty boy,” she said. “Suppose Daisy sees that?”
“Doesn’t she already know?”
“I ought to make you stand in the corner on one foot.”
“If you stood there with me, I wouldn’t mind.”
“Naughty, naughty boy,” she said. “Erase that.”
“Only if you kiss me first.”
She had picked up the briefcase, and I took it from her and laid it on the desk and I pulled her into my arms.
“Let’s go somewhere, just the two of us,” I said, after kissing her. “Let’s go somewhere and spend the night. Baton Rouge, New Orleans—anywhere.”
“My babies,” she said.
“Dora will look after them. Come on, let’s go somewhere.”
“We’re having a drink with Peggy, remember?”
“Let’s forget Peggy and everybody else. Let’s go somewhere.”
I could see that for a moment she was thinking about it. Then she shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I can’t take that chance.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“More than anything.”
“Then let’s take the chance.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t give him an excuse to take my babies.”
“You think he would?”
“I don’t know. I can’t take that risk.”
“I hate going to Robert and Helen’s, then leaving in the middle of the night.”
“I hate it too,” she said. “But staying overnight somewhere—I can’t take that chance.”
“Where is he now?”
“Last I heard, in Houston.”
“When’s he coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Until he makes up his mind, we just do nothing.”
“I thought we did a lot.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Come on, let’s go find Peggy and them and have a drink.”
“Not until I get another kiss.”
“What is the matter?” she said, after we had kissed.
Maybe it was the way I had held her. Maybe it was the look in my face.
I told her what had happened at the jail, how Jefferson had gotten down on his knees to eat the food out of the paper bag. I saw her frown, and she brought her hand up to her mouth.
“I have to go back to that old woman. But I couldn’t go back then. I couldn’t face her then. I needed some time to think of a lie to tell her.”
With her hand still over her mouth, Vivian was looking at me.
“I wish I could just run away from this place.”
Vivian shook her head. “You know you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“For the same reason you haven’t done it yet.”
“I’ve wanted to.”
“But you haven’t.”
“Why?”
“You know the answer yourself, Grant. You love them more than you hate this place.”
“Is it love or cowardice? Afraid to take a chance out there.”
“You have your folks in California. You can always go to them.”
“I have thought about it many times.”
“Sure,” she said. “You even did it once, but you came back. This is all we have, Grant.”
“I want more.”
I turned away from her and erased the blackboard.
“Well, let’s go have that drink,” I said.
“Wait,” Vivian said. She went up to the board and wrote in large letters: “Je t’aimerais toujours, Je t’aimerais toujours, Je t’aimerais toujours.”
“And suppose old Daisy comes in here before you get back on Monday?”
“She already knows about it,” Vivian said. “So do all the rest—teachers and students.”
13
NOT LONG AFTER the second bell rang at the church, I heard Miss Eloise Bouie out in the road, calling my aunt. I went onto the porch and told her that my aunt was in the back. Miss Eloise, tall and thin, stood in the road, leaning on her bamboo walking stick. She wore a long black overcoat and a black hat with a white band. She was looking up the quarter. She said she thought there was a new chill in the air, and I agreed with her. While she waited for my aunt, she continued to look up the quarter, toward the church. I didn’t feel like standing out on the porch, but I thought it would be rude to go inside and leave her in the road with no one to talk to.
I heard my aunt come into the house from the backyard. She was in her room only a moment before she walked out on the porch. She wore the black coat over a black dress, white stockings, and low-heeled black shoes.
“Hey, there, Elou,” she called.
“Hey,” Miss Eloise called back. She really stretched it out. “Haaaaaaaay.”
“Ain’t been waiting too long, I hope,” my aunt said.
“Just getting here,” Miss Eloise said.
“Be sure you shut them doors if you leave from here,” my aunt said to me.
She was already halfway down the steps when she said it. She had not looked at me. Years ago, she had quit looking at me when she was on her way to church. When I came back from the university, I told her that I didn’t believe anymore and I didn’t want her to try forcing it on me. If she did, I told her, then I would have to look for some other place to live. She didn’t want me to leave, so she let me alone. Only occasionally, when she had some other church member at the house, would she bring it up. Even then she wouldn’t press it too far.
She and Miss Eloise started up the quarter, one tall and slim, the other short and much heavier. They stopped in front of Miss Emma’s house, and I heard my aunt calling her. “Em-ma? Hey, there, Em-ma?” Miss Emma came out of the house, and the three of them continued on up to the church together.
I went back inside. I had started correcting papers a couple of hours earlier, but I hadn’t done very much. On Sunday, my aunt began getting ready for church as soon as she woke up, which was around six o’clock. Until eleven o’clock, there was nothing I could do but listen to her singing her ’Termination song.
Determination Sunday was the third Sunday of each month, when members of the church would stand and sing their favorite hymns and tell the congregation where they were determined to spend eternity. My aunt started warming up at six in the morning, whether it was ’Termination Sunday or not, and didn’t quit until eleven, when she walked out of the house. So I would be forced to put away the work until after she had gone, or I would go for a walk through the quarter and back into the field.
I sat at my table trying to correct papers, but my mind kept drifting back to Friday. It had been dark when I returned to the quarter from Bayonne. It was colder too; I could see sparks of fire rising out of chimneys. When I stopped in front of Miss Emma’s house, Farrell Jarreau, who lived across the road, told me she had gone to my aunt’s house. I said good night to him and went down the quarter. I recognized Reverend Ambrose’s car, parked before the door. Now I felt a little guilty for getting back so late.
The three of them were in the kitchen drinking coffee, Reverend Ambrose, Miss Emma, and my aunt. They were quiet, sitting in semidarkness. The only light in the kitchen came from the open door of the stove. No one looked around when I came in, and Reverend Ambrose and Miss Emma barely answered when I spoke their names. My aunt was completely silent.
I went to the icebox and took out the pitcher of water, and while I poured a glassful, I looked at the three of them at the table. They were quiet, not even drinking their coffee now.
“I’ll be in my room,” I said to my aunt.
“That’s all you got to say?” she snapped at me.
“I spoke, Tante Lou.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“He was all right,�
� I said.
“That’s all?” my aunt said. “Or did you forget to go?”
“I went, and he was all right,” I said.
“You got more than that to say, Mr. Man,” my aunt said. “Folks been setting here hours, waiting for you.”
“I see you recovered from your cold, Miss Emma. I’m glad it wasn’t too—”
“Sit down,” my aunt said.
I went around the table and pulled out the fourth chair.
“He was all right,” I said.
My aunt looked at me. Reverend Ambrose and Miss Emma stared out into the yard.
“That’s not what she want to hear,” my aunt said. “How he was when you got there, how he was when you left?”
“He was all right both times,” I said.
“You know what I’m talking about,” my aunt said.
She looked at me the way an inquisitor must have glared at his poor victims. The only reason she didn’t put me on the rack was that she didn’t have one.
“We both ate some of the food, and we talked,” I said.
All this time Miss Emma had been gazing into the yard. Now she looked at me—no, toward me. Her thoughts were far distant.
“He et?”
“Some,” I said.
“Y’all talked?” Her mind was still far away.
“A little,” I said.
Now her focus became closer, much closer. She was looking at me now.
“What y’all talked about?”
“Different things. I told him you didn’t come to see him because you had a bad cold.”
She looked at me, waiting to hear his answer. But I couldn’t think of another lie, so I shifted to something else.
“Then I asked him how he was getting along. He said he was all right. The deputy had already told me he was okay. Guidry was in the office today. He said that Jefferson was getting along fine—didn’t cause any trouble. He is using that comb and brush I bought for him. And he was wearing one of my shirts, the khaki one. I think he’s doing okay.”
Miss Emma and my aunt both studied me. Miss Emma wanted to believe what I was saying, but I could see she had doubts. My aunt still wanted to put me on the rack. And Reverend Ambrose continued to look out into the darkness.
“What else y’all talked about?” my aunt said. “You left from here ’fore one-thirty.”
“I can’t remember everything we talked about,” I said. “We just talked.”
“More than five hours, and you can’t remember nothing else?”
“I was with him about an hour, then I went back of town. I have a girl back of town. I like to see her sometime.”
“And maybe that’s where you spent all your time?”
“If you don’t think I went to the jail, you can always go up there and ask them.”
“I didn’t ask for none of your uppity, mister.”
“I don’t mean to be uppity,” I told her. “I’m just telling you the truth. I spent an hour with him. I had a drumstick and a biscuit, and he had something—I can’t remember exactly what it was. Then we talked. Then I left and went back of town. Exactly what I did.”
“Deep in you, what you think?” Reverend Ambrose suddenly turned from looking out into the darkness. “Deep in you?”
“About what, Reverend?”
“Him? What’s he thinking? What he’s thinking deep in him? Deep in you, what you think?”
“Who knows what somebody else is thinking? They say one thing, they may be thinking about something else—who can tell?”
“You the teacher,” my aunt said, not so kindly.
“Deep in you?” Reverend Ambrose said. “Deep in you, you think he know, he done grasped the significance of what it’s all about? Deep in you?”
“The significance?”
“The gravity.”
“The gravity?”
Reverend Mose Ambrose was a short, very dark man whose face and bald head were always shining. He was the plantation church’s pastor. He was not educated, hadn’t gone to any theological school; he had heard the voice and started preaching. He was a simple, devoted believer. He christened babies, baptized youths, visited those who were ill, counseled those who had trouble, preached, and buried the dead. All these things could be simply accomplished. But when it came to a discussion with a teacher, though he had known that teacher since his birth, then suddenly things were not so simple.
“His soul,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about the soul, Reverend Ambrose.”
“I baptized him,” Reverend Ambrose said. “He was ’leven or twelve then. But like so many others, he didn’t keep the faith, either. Like yourself.”
He stared at me as though I was one of the worst of sinners. Maybe I was. Backsliders were usually worse than those who had never been converted. At least that is what people like him tried to make you believe.
“Y’all talked about God?” he asked me.
“No, sir. We didn’t get around to that.”
“Didn’t get around to God?”
“No, sir.”
He looked at me and nodded his head. If we didn’t talk about God, then what else on earth was important enough to talk about to someone who was about to meet God?
“I figured that’s where you came in, Reverend. There’s enough room for both of us, I can tell you that.”
“Me, Sister Emma, Sister Lou, going up there Monday,” he said. “Anything I ought to take him?”
“Food, I suppose. Maybe some clean clothes. I can’t think of anything else.”
“I was thinking more about the Bible,” Reverend Ambrose said.
“That would be nice too,” I said.
Reverend Ambrose did not have any more to say. He and my aunt continued to stare at me until I excused myself and left the table.
Now, on Sunday, as I sat at the table, trying to do my work, I could hear them singing in the church. It seemed that I had listened to this singing, and their praying, every Sunday of my life. No, I had done more than just listened; I participated until my last year at the university. There was no one thing that changed my faith. I suppose it was a combination of many things, but mostly it was just plain studying. I did not have time for anything else. Many times I would not come home on weekends, and when I did, I found that I cared less and less about the church. Of course, it pained my aunt to see this change in me, and it saddened me to see the pain I was causing her. I thought many times about leaving, as Professor Antoine had advised me to do. My mother and father also told me that if I was not happy in Louisiana, I should come to California. After visiting them the summer following my junior year at the university, I came back, which pleased my aunt. But I had been running in place ever since, unable to accept what used to be my life, unable to leave it.
I pushed away the papers and listened to the singing. Miss Eloise was singing her ’Termination song, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” You could hear that high, shrill voice all over the plantation. I had been hearing it all my life, all my life. After her there would be someone else, then someone else. It would go on for three or four hours. And it was impossible to do anything but listen to it or leave.
I thought I heard a car stop before the door, but I didn’t leave the table. Then I thought I heard someone come onto the porch, and when I looked up I saw her standing in the doorway. But I did not believe it was she, because she had never come here before. She wore a blue blazer and a maroon pleated skirt. A black patent-leather purse hung from her right shoulder.
“I hope you don’t mind.”
“Only if I’m dreaming.”
She smiled and came into the room.
14
“I FINISHED all my work. I wanted to see you,” Vivian said.
I had already stood up. I moved around the table and kissed her.
“I couldn’t have wished for anything more. But why today?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just missed you. I wanted to see you.”
&nb
sp; “Where are the children?”
“Dora,” she said. “I hope I’m not keeping you from anything.”
“Only from a boring afternoon.”
Vivian smiled and looked around the room.
“Not much to look at,” I said, apologizing for the place.
This had been my parents’ room before they went to California during the war. There was a bed, a chifforobe, a washstand, a table, and a couple of chairs. All the furniture was old. On the mantelpiece were three pictures, in five-by-seven wood frames: one of Vivian and me, one of my mother, and one of my father.
A photocollage of Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Booker T. Washington hung over the mantel. Several pictures from calendars over the past few years were tacked to the wall. The wallpaper had brown, red, and green squares, and in places it was torn from age.
Vivian picked up the picture of my mother.
“Mom?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Pretty.”
“About your complexion, very fair.”
She replaced the picture and took up my father’s.
“Dark and handsome,” she said.
“I suppose you can say that.”
“I don’t know those other two,” she said, looking at our picture. She looked around the room. “I love it. Rustic.”
“It’s rustic, all right. Probably the most rustic place you will ever visit.”
“Pastoral,” she said.
“That too,” I said. “With the singing and praying up at the church, really pastoral.”
“I like it,” she said.
“Try staying here about a year.”
She had gone to the window, and she was looking across the vegetable garden toward the church up the quarter. I moved behind her and put my arms around her waist, and I could smell her perfume. She turned to me, and I brought my hands up to her face and held it a moment, while we looked at each other. Then I kissed her, kissed her very tenderly, and when I looked at her again, I could see in her face that she loved me as much as I loved her.
Lesson Before Dying Page 9
