At night, I shared a pul -out bed with Wil ie Mae, who dusted herself al over with talcum powder cut with cornstarch. I missed my own room, the noises of the city, and my beautiful mother. “Why didn’t she cal me today?”
Wil ie Mae arranged the sweat-damp sheet around me. “She can’t cal you every day. She loves you. I love you. Raleigh loves you. Everybody loves you. Al you have to do is go to sleep and be patient.”
I didn’t know how to respond to this, so I settled myself down onto the oversoft pil ow.
“She’s coming for you, Dana. You can take that to the bank.”
I learned things those two weeks in Alabama. I learned how to diaper a baby, how to hang clothes on the line so that the linens hide your ladythings. I learned how and when to kneel during a Catholic service and I learned that there are grown men who find little girls to be very pretty.
Wil ie Mae’s uncle, Mr. Sanders, asked me to sit on his lap after church. I refused the gum he offered, but I climbed onto his lap because I didn’t know that I could deny an adult any favor. I sat myself across his knees, but he tugged me toward him until the smal of my back was flush against his abdomen and the top of my head fit in the nook beneath his chin. He was stil wearing his green tie from mass as he bounced me on his thighs, breathing into my ear with breath that smel ed of apple cores.
Wil ie Mae walked into the bedroom wearing only her slip, stained at the waist with sweat.
“Sanders,” she said, “you put that girl down and stay the fuck away from her. Touch her again and I’l cut you, nigger. You know I wil .” She caught me under my arms and pul ed me away.
Her uncle said, “I wasn’t doing her nothing.”
“You are a nasty dog, Sanders,” Wil ie Mae said. “Get out of here.”
The uncle ambled out and Wil ie Mae hugged me hard. “You okay? You al right, Dana? What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You sat up on his lap and that was al ? He didn’t touch you anywhere?”
“No,” I said.
“Lord have mercy.”
“But —”
“But what?”
“But could he touch me and I wouldn’t know it?”
Wil ie Mae hugged me again and gave a relieved little laugh. “Lord,” she said. “Stay close to me til your mama comes for you.”
“I want to go home.”
“I know you do, but you just got a few days more. Gwen has some things to take care of.”
That night, she placed a col ect cal to my mother. The very next day, I was sitting on the front porch with Wil ie Mae hul ing peas when I saw the old Lincoln coming down the road.
Wil ie Mae squinted toward the car and the dust kicked up by its wheels. “Dana, your eyes are young. Tel me who’s driving.”
“It’s the old Lincoln. That’s Uncle Raleigh.”
“Praise Jesus,” said Wil ie Mae. “Praise him.”
I wondered what my mother would say about the way I looked. I had ignored Wil ie Mae’s mother’s warning that I shouldn’t play in the sun; my complexion, already dark, deepened into something richer. With my press and curl al sweated out, I scratched my dirty scalp as Raleigh helped my mother out of the car. She was dressed in a light blue suit and a hat to match. Even her shoes were the same swimming-pool shade.
“Did you do it?” Wil ie Mae asked.
“Not yet,” Raleigh said.
“I didn’t want to do it without Dana,” my mother said.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Wil ie Mae,” my mother said, “is there someplace I can talk to Dana in private?”
Wil ie Mae looked around us at al the kids playing in the yard. She looked toward the interior of her mother’s house, which was certainly packed with women canning vegetables. “Sorry, Gwen. This place is al booked up.”
Raleigh said, “Take my keys. You two can sit in the car. Make sure you turn on the air.”
My mother took my hand and smiled. “You look like a wild animal.”
Behind me, Raleigh took my seat beside Wil ie Mae and started snapping peas. She leaned over and whispered something to him that made him smile.
RALEIGH WANTED TO MARRY my mother. That Wednesday over Tonk he put his cards on the table, in more ways than one. He said, “Gwen, you deserve something better than this. You deserve to be somebody’s only wife.”
She didn’t take him seriously at first. She said, “Pick up your hand, I can see al your cards and that takes the fun out of it.”
“I’m serious.”
She laughed. “Wel , do you have someone in mind? Do you know somebody that wants to take me away from al of this?”
“I’m serious, Gwen,” he said. “I have been thinking about this for a few years now, and I want to make a real commitment to you and to Dana.”
My mother placed her cards on the table facedown, like she thought that they could pick up their game once this awkward conversation was through. “What are you saying, Raleigh? What are you saying to me exactly?”
“I am asking you to marry me. To be my wife. Legal y. Respectful y.”
My mother got up from the table and went to the couch and sat herself on the space where the cushion was split. Raleigh fol owed her. He was so long and lanky that he moved like something engineered to bend with the breeze.
Raleigh kept talking. “We can get our own house and live like ordinary people. I am already Dana’s father on paper, so there is nothing complicated to figure out. And don’t worry about James. He’l come around. He’s got to see that it’s not fair the way that he’s been able to live for the past nine years. He’l have to see that it makes sense for you and me to be together. It wil be better for Dana. James, he’s got more already than any one person can hope for.” He took my mother’s hands and held them to his mouth. “What do you say, Gwen?”
“You haven’t said that you love me,” my mother said. “Why are you doing this? You don’t love me.”
“Yes, I do,” Raleigh said. “I love you something terrible. I love you to my bones. I love you, Gwendolyn Yarboro.”
“No, you don’t,” my mother said.
“Yes. I’ve loved you since that first day I met you hiding in your bed at that rooming house. Please, Gwen. Let’s do this.”
My mother said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?” Raleigh said. “You don’t know if I love you or if you love me?”
“I know for sure that I don’t love you,” my mother said. “Not in that way. But I don’t know if you love me, either.”
Raleigh leaned back on the couch. “You don’t love me? Not at al ?”
“I love you some,” Gwen said. “But you are my husband’s brother. There’s a different way you love your brother-in-law.”
“You are not my brother’s wife,” said Raleigh. “He is not my brother and you are not his wife.”
“I don’t know,” Gwen said.
“You know, Gwen,” Raleigh said. “You know it.” He got up from the couch and put Louis Armstrong on the record player. “Dance with me,” he said, holding his arms out.
“This is not a movie,” my mother said, suddenly angry. “Dancing with you won’t make this right or wrong. You are asking me to give up my whole life for this.”
“I am asking you to marry me.”
“I don’t know, Raleigh,” my mother said.
FIVE DAYS LATER, she was dressed in her blue suit sitting with me in the back of the old Lincoln.
“Dana,” my mother said. “What would you say about Uncle Raleigh becoming your new daddy?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how would you feel if we went to go live with Uncle Raleigh and he would be your daddy and I would stil be your mother — I wil always be your mother, there’s no changing that ever — but it would be me, you, and Raleigh living together.”