“Does his face have to be painted that way? Do I look like that?”
“Go wash your face,” she tell Banjo Man. “And come back and do it again.”
THE PARTY ENDED an hour ago and the big white man that was at the door is paid and gone. It’s calm and quiet here now except for the clacking of the band packing up. The orange-brown haze of dusk is pouring through Cynthia’s uncovered windows while I stand in the way of one placing a golden platter, silver spoons, knives, and forks inside a cherrywood box, under a velvet cloth. I didn’t ask where she got all these nice things.
It’s just me and Sam left to clean up now. We don’t talk much but we friendly. He gave me his last two days of tips, told me it was for the baby. Albert’s only been up twice today from the room he building downstairs. Told me to stay off my feet and I told him I’d sit as soon as I finished serving the drinks in my hand. That was two hours ago. Now I’m just wiping down the tables. I saved him a plate, though. Barbecue sauce is coming off the side.
“Good job, boys,” Sam say to the band as they leave. The bandleader tips his hat.
When the front door shuts, the side door near the gambling parlor opens. Sam shouts toward it, “Party’s over. We closed.” Then he say to me, “Drunks never know when it’s time to say good night.”
But footsteps from that side door keep coming up the hall. Sam say again, “We closed!”
“Evenin, Sam. . Mimi.”
My breath leaves me.
I grab this table, the only thing keeping me up. I’d know that voice and that word—Mimi—even in deafness.
“How do, Jeremy?” Sam say. “Long time.”
I don’t turn around. Cain’t turn around.
“Let me get you something,” Sam say.
“Water,” Jeremy say.
Jeremy’s hand squeezes my shoulder, squeezing the life out of me. My tears fall sudden — his touch the only push they needed.
Sam sets Jeremy’s glass of water on the bar top. Jeremy don’t take it. He grabs my hand, instead.
He say, “I don’t blame you for not wanting to see me.”
I cain’t move.
He backs away and takes a seat at the bar. His reflection in the window across the room is like blurred vision in front of me. My tears giving me layers of lenses. He hunches over his water glass and slides it to his right side and rubs his thumb on the side of the cup, say, “I was hoping you’d find a way to forgive me. Maybe another gamble of mine that won’t pay off. . unless you think it do.”
But I don’t think nothin.
“I’m sorry, Mimi. I want to do better this time.”
I can see myself in the window’s reflection. See him. Feel this loss inside me swimming up to my throat and to all my surfaces.
In his reflection, his left sleeve is rolled up in a puff of cloth around his elbow. But below his elbow I cain’t see nothing. No flesh. No fingers. Some kind of trick of these tears.
I swing around to him, confused. But it’s true. His arm is gone, half-missing, a stub of what used to touch me, feed me. He stares at my big belly.
I say, “What happened to your arm?”
“You pregnant?” he say.
He rubs his good hand over his head of hair and smiles, “Mimi? We having a baby?”
Albert’s voice comes too soon. “You save me a plate!” Albert say. I can hear the smile in his voice before I see it on ’em when he gets in the room. But it goes when Albert and Jeremy meet eyes.
Sam say, “Tell Cynthia I’ll see her in the morning,” and picks up his satchel from under the counter.
Jeremy say, calm, “But I didn’t pay you, Sam.”
“Water’s on the house,” Sam say.
“No,” Jeremy say. “I said I’d pay you for it. For the good service. I’m a cripple, not a liar.” He tosses a coin on the bar.
Albert say to Sam, “I’ll let Cynthia know you’re gone for the day,” and he turns back up the hall.
Jeremy bursts out laughing.
Laughs longer than he should, slamming the countertop with his fist for funny.
He smiles at me, then at Albert’s back. “Where you going, Papa Bear?” But Albert keeps up the hall.
“Funny thing,” Jeremy say, smiling. “After that rockslide. . when the doctors told me I had to lose the arm. All I could think about was the last thing I touched. Can you believe that shit? See, there I was dying, Mimi, and I thought of you.” He bursts out laughing again, reaches over the counter and grabs a bottle of whiskey, pours it in his glass, sips it, and throws his legs up on the seat next to him. He say to me, “So when did you say you were due?”
“We’re due next month.”
“We? Who, we?”
“Me and you.”
He starts counting his fingers out loud, “One, two. . wait, I left, when? Almost nine months ago. . Whew wee, Mimi. This baby’s overdue.”
“Baby’s supposed to be born after nine full months, not when the ninth month start.”
“You don’t look but half that.”
He makes his voice soft and girly, “‘I’m a virgin. Be gentle. Don’t hurt me. It’s only you. I love you. I want to marry you.’ Bullshit, Mimi.”
“There weren’t nobody else,” I say.
“Yeah. . So who’s the lucky guy?”
“You, fool,” Cynthia say, walking in, her wedding dress swaying above her sandals. “And by the looks of that arm, you sure as hell ain’t lucky.”
“You been lying on me, Mimi?” he say. “Been telling people that I’m the father?” He laughs again, picks up the whiskey bottle, and sips from it directly.
“Oh, hell naw,” Cynthia say. “I know you ain’t drinking straight out my whiskey.” She rips the bottle from his hand and he throws a gold coin at her.
“Oh. All right,” she say. “It’s yours. You was fixin to earn yourself another bloody nub, though.” She pours him a little more in his cup and caps the rest. “But I’ll keep this bottle.”
Jeremy finishes his drink in one gulp, then looks over his shoulder at me standing behind him, say, “If it’s a girl, you gon’ sell her, too?”
I slap him hard in his face. My hand is sore when I finish. He stares me down and Cynthia tells him, “This a private party and you weren’t invited.”
“My pleasure to leave,” he say, putting his hat on, getting up.
“Wait! Just wait,” I say.
He stops.
“Just give me a minute,” I tell Cynthia. “Please. Just. . a minute.”
A look of sorry for me comes over Cynthia. She comes and stands so close to me, arm to arm, and in such a way that Jeremy cain’t see her face. But I do. Her expression’s not of pity, but of a mother. My mother. She say, softly, “Not everybody deserves your honesty, Naomi.”
I nod. “I won’t lie.”
“You could be quiet.”
“Just give me one minute,” I say. “Please.”
“All right,” she whispers, then yells toward Jeremy, “One minute! Then we closed.”
Jeremy brings his heel up on the footrest when she leaves. When I take a step toward him, he turns away from me. I grab his good hand, pull him back toward me, make him touch my belly. “This is our baby.”
“Do you know what I been through? To get back here for you? How could you do it, Mimi? Whoring around?”
“You left me!”
“So you laid with the first man you see, some. . some nigger?”
“You calling me a nigga, too?”
“I didn’t say that. .”
“His name is Albert. And he ain’t a nigga. When you left, he was the only person to take care of me.”
“Is that your story?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Well here’s mine. You’re a whore. Just like the rest of ’em. ’Cause no man would look after somebody else’s baby unless he had a stake in it.”