You see that? George said. He directed her attention to the television news.
The anchor team reported the latest facts about the recent flood. A billion dollars in business losses. The threat of lawsuits. Another billion dollars in damage. The costs of repair and cleanup. Shifting blame.
Look at that mess, George said. Somebody screwed up.
Yes. They think they know everything. More than the man upstairs.
And no one wants to take the blame. No one wants to take the blame.
Organizers of the antiwar demonstration and Washington police claimed that the demonstration was the largest in history, at least 1,350,000 people. But the reporters estimated only 75,000. Camera angles made the demonstrators and counterdemonstrators look equal in size.
You heard from your brother?
Yes. He’s fine. I haven’t seen him in years. He wants me to visit him out there in California. But I can’t leave Inez.
Why don’t you hire a nurse.
You know how much they want? An arm and a leg.
You have the money.
And I’m not going to put her in a nursing home. At least right here with me I know she’ll be alright.
I could come out and stay with her.
You don’t have to do that.
I could.
Thanks, Sheila. You got your own concerns. Don’t worry about us.
An unidentified man had been gunned down in a drive-by. Many clues but no suspects. Gang-related. Drug-related.
Look at them dummies, George said. Killing up themselves.
It’s sad.
Dummies. Some of them young punks tried to steal our car.
Sheila’s mouth opened in shock. When?
The other day.
From the garage?
Yes.
Did they—
That wasn’t the first time either. So I sold it. I sold the car. Too much trouble to keep it. My eyes ain’t what they used to be. And Inez can’t drive anymore.
Well, I could come out and help you with Inez.
My niece stops by a few times a week.
Sheila said nothing.
This whole thing didn’t surprise me.
What?
Inez. George spoke at the television. I married someone who couldn’t help me. I was home from the war. Excited, I guess. And she didn’t know why she was marrying. Excited about the uniform, I guess. I guess she fell in love with a uniform.
Sheila turned her eyes away from George’s face. In all these years, she had never seen him lose his surface. She had come to expect of him words clean in remembrance.
I didn’t even have a job. The army paid me a dollar and fifty a day since I was a noncommissioned officer. (Privates got a dollar.) I borrowed money from my best buddy to report to the base the next morning.
Sheila felt anger at the angry words. What gave George the right? What had pushed him so far? Why was he expressing such rage against Inez now, now that she was down, now that she wasn’t here, wasn’t able either to respond or to retreat, fight or defend herself?
And look at that Junior. She ain’t his mamma. Ain’t never been. He never called her Mamma. Old lady Simmons was his mamma.
Sheila weighed this against all else.
Her parents never taught her anything. Never made her go to school. She grew up like a weed.
Sheila stiffened with a sudden vibration of loyalty, duty, and courage. She opened her mouth to speak, but there was nothing inside her to measure and meet him.
Junior never was worth a damn. I knew that from the moment I saw him. I always thought that Lucifer had some get-up-and-go about himself. I guess he ain’t worth a damn either.
THE TRAIN SHAKES HER to prove its force. Tracks whine down in stillness. The smells of the stockyards reach her now as they had long ago on her arrival in the city. Many years gone. Many. She remembers. Cows rode trains, passengers, rode them here to the country’s bumping swinging heart, rest stop, where they were slaughtered and butchered, a single cow cleaved into a multitude of choice parts and cheap cuts, then shrouded in cellophane and reloaded on trains that drove them to distant reaches and anxious stomachs. The city didn’t smell like promise.
52
OH, HI, MRS. STERN. How are you? Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to come to work today. Oh yes, I’m fine. Jus a lil tired from the trip. No. That’s okay. Please don’t. I’ll be in tomorrow. Give my regards to Mr. Stern. Thanks. Bye.
She returned the receiver to its cradle, then lay back on the tumbled pillows in the very center of the high white bed. The night had been hell and now the morning was no better. She would never get used to this. Never.
Gracie studied Lula Mae’s photograph on the front of the funeral program. That looks like me, she thought. Death blackened her. That could be me. Black in death. She looks like me. She is me.
She reviewed the obituary facts. Name. Place. Date. Marriage. Survivors. Name and number. She added. She deleted. Corrected.
Sweet chariot had opened up its doors to her, wet in the Memphis heat. Shut its doors and leaped into the white world above. Sheila, Porsha, Hatch, and herself — all sat as strangers, swinging through the clouds. Her Bible (the funeral program buried inside, interred) weighing down her weightless knees to keep her firmly in her seat. Both the pages and her knees wet with Lula Mae’s nonstop voice. Swim out from my body. Search out your own water. Sweet chariot swung her low to this city. The first to come. Called among the birds. Her fluttered pulse.
What did you come out of the wilderness to see?
She flew to her house on Liberty Island with its ancient implications of order, her rage at Sheila, so hot in West Memphis, already cold, drowned by the rushing in her skull. She emptied out Sheila and filled herself with John.
It belongs to both of us, she said. We both made it. Don’t you want to touch it? Her palm moved in circles over her ripe belly.
John stood, the question holding him in place.
Touch it.
John blinked.
Touch it.
Okay, John said. He didn’t move.
Put your hand here. She reached for his hand and he moved it beyond her reach.
Okay, he said. Okay. I’ll touch it.
She eased her aching bones out of the bed, knelt in yellow sunlight, and mouthed silent prayers. Somewhere in the room, her Bible trilled tongues. She raised her head. Opened her eyes. Cookie’s baby bonnet spread on the carpet like a discarded parachute.
She rose to her feet and went heavily down the stairs.
The morning air received her. Lake shape lying and lifting under a cupping sky. She moved in its direction. She felt her way easily. She had often walked here.
John met her on the path with only the crudest of necessities — a clean shirt, fresh socks, a change of underwear, razor and shaving cream, toothbrush, deodorant — in a flight bag. I’ll be back in a day or two.
She refused to look him in the face. Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how then shall he hearken unto me?
Don’t act like that, he said. He stood there, eyes shining like brown diamonds. Don’t act like that. I got to handle my business. It’s only for a few days.
She heard silent prayer in the words. Yes, she said. I’ll be here when you get back, she said, confident that he would return to her. He would often leave his body all over the place but he always returned to her, flight bag in hand. She wasn’t much to look at and had little to say but he had an eye to see and an ear to hear.