Disappearing Acts (45 page)

“Everything.”

“Not another one of these deep conversations. I know it’s about my working, ain’t it? But before you get all into it, let me tell you something. My knee still ain’t right. It ain’t no way I can go out there slinging bricks and shit, or it could go back out on me. Is that what you want to happen?”

“No, but you can do a lot of other things—”

He cut me off.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but, Franklin, I can’t keep this pace up. I’m paying for everything around here, and this month’s rent is already late. After I pay the baby-sitter and rent and food and give you fifty dollars for wood and spending money, you know how much I have left out of my paycheck each month?”

“Naw. How much?”

“Sixty-eight dollars. This isn’t right, Franklin, and you know it.”

“Look, I’m almost finished with this bed, and that’s when I’ma start looking. If you can’t wait a few more weeks, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“You said the same thing in June.”

“I’m saying it now too.”

Something has happened to him, and I don’t know what it is. All I know is this: If he doesn’t have a job by Thanksgiving, he’s getting out of here. I only gave birth to one baby; I’m not taking care of two.

*   *   *

I was starting to feel depressed all the time and didn’t know what to do about it. If it weren’t for Jeremiah, I don’t know how I’d get from one day to the next. He’s got six teeth now, and last night he took his first step—at nine months old! Franklin didn’t seem all that impressed. I put him in the bathtub—Franklin has never given him a bath—and sang to him while I bathed him. He likes it when I sing to him, and even sounds like he’s singing too. After I picked him up and put his sleepers on, I gave him a bottle, and he was out like a light.

Franklin, as usual, had drunk his normal half pint—he’d cut down, he said—and had passed out on the bed with his clothes on. He was really starting to nauseate me.

But even though I was dead tired, I sprang up from the couch and walked to my music room. It seemed like a foreign place. I sat down at the piano and looked at it. The next thing I knew, my fingers were pressing the keys, and a melody surfaced. And it kept coming and coming and coming. I couldn’t believe it. The magic was still there. I hadn’t lost it at all. I cried hard and looked out the window and up toward the sky. “Thank you,” I said, and I know He heard me. When I slid away from the piano and stood up, I felt
different. Unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my life. As if something heavy had been taken out of me and something light put in its place. I opened the lid of the piano seat. It was full of music I’d written over I don’t know how many years. And that’s when something that I’d never even considered before, hit me. Not only can you sing, Zora, but you can
write.
Do you have to stand on a stage to sing? Do you have to make records in order to affect people? I started pulling my bottom lip inside my mouth with my teeth. God, hadn’t I dreamed of what it would feel like standing in front of those people with a microphone in my hand? I sifted through the papers. These songs were good, but I knew that when some of the melodies went through my head, it wasn’t always
my
voice I heard singing the lyrics. Writing these songs was cleansing in and of itself. I always felt different when I finished. As if I’d been through something, gotten over something, had a breakthrough of some kind. Could I settle for this? Without even thinking, I put the papers on the piano seat and walked down to Jeremiah’s room. I just looked at him. What if I did get a record contract and made it big? That would mean I’d be on the road and away from home a lot. Wouldn’t it? Jeremiah shifted in his crib. I’m away from you enough as it is. “Too much,” I said aloud, and walked out of his room.

Since Zora thinks she’s superwoman, I decided I was gon’ let her be just that. She the one who think she got something to prove. All she do is throw shit in my face—how much she can do. Yeah, she’s a good mother. She pays all the bills. She teaches. And now she’s writing songs and shit again. I’ma get a job, but when I feel like it. She pressuring me all the time, and it seem like the more she get on my case, the less I feel like doing.

One thing I can say, though, is that I’m getting a whole lotta satisfaction working with this wood. It’s the only thing I’ve made lately—besides Jeremiah—that I’m proud of. Zora don’t seem to be that impressed by it. I do everything I can to get her to show me that she proud. When she come home, I got seven-foot boards laying right in the middle of the floor. And what do she say? “Franklin, do you have to do that here? Jeremiah can hurt himself.”

All she think about is Jeremiah. He just done took over. It seem like he’s her man, ’cause he get all the attention around here. I’m the stepchild. What she don’t realize is how this shit makes me feel. And I’m tired of doing shit to get her attention, really tired. And even if I got a job right now, it wouldn’t make no difference. Besides, I’ve had it with construction,
really fuckin’ had it. What she don’t realize is how it feels to work and work and work at something and when you don’t get no-goddamn-where you just lose all desire to do it again. That’s exactly where I am, but it’s kinda hard to get your woman to understand that you feel lost. Like I don’t know what move to make next, and that’s why I just concentrate on my wood. It’s something I know I’m good at. It’s something I can see the end results. I can look at it and say, “I made that.” But Zora don’t understand. All she think about is the bills. How lopsided this shit is right now, have been. But if she really loves me, she’s just gon’ have to stick by me while I get through this. Until I can think of something else to do.

Right now I can’t think of nothing.

“Who you calling now?” he asked me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Whenever you come home these days, all you do is cook and then get on the phone. What about me?”

“What do you mean, what about you?”

“You could pay me a little attention sometimes.”

“Like I don’t?”

“Naw, you don’t.”

“Franklin, please.”

“Franklin, please, my ass. It’s that kid you love, not me. Now put the phone down.”

“I’ve got to make a phone call.”

“I said put the phone down and talk to me.”

He snatched it from my hand, then yanked it completely out of the wall. “Now who you gon’ call? Look at me, Zora!”

He was scaring me. Jeremiah was in his playpen, and in an instant my mind raced back to last summer up in Saratoga. But he wouldn’t. He promised. “Franklin, take it easy, would you.”

“Oh, so now you gon’ tell me how to act, is that it?”

“What’s bugging you all of a sudden?”

“Everything. You. This fuckin’ kid. Me. Everything.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“That’s all you think about, ain’t it, is how much I been drinking. Yeah, I been drinking.” He opened the cabinet and pulled out a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. It was almost full. Then he twisted off the top and took a long swallow. “You want some? That’s probably what you need to loosen your stiff ass up. Here, take some.”

He started coming toward me.

“Franklin, please. Stop it.” I turned my head away, and he grabbed my face and looked me dead in the eye.

“Fuck it,” he said, and threw the bottle against the wall. Liquor and glass splattered everywhere. “Just fuck it! Fuck you. Fuck this kid. Fuck everything!”

“Franklin, come here.”

“Just leave me alone, would you? Make your goddamn telephone call. I’m outta here.”

I just stood there for a minute and heard the door slam. What the hell was wrong with him now?

“Dada,” Jeremiah was saying. I walked around the corner and saw him sitting in the middle of his playpen. “Dada,” he said again, and I just started crying and touched his tiny hand. “Dada’s gone,” I said. “And good riddance.”

I took Jeremiah upstairs so I could use the bedroom phone. I had written Reginald a note a while back and told him why I wasn’t coming back for lessons, and he had left a message on my machine telling me that he was sorry, wishing me the best of luck, and saying that if I needed any connections or advice, to let him know. I just wanted to know how he was feeling these days. But he wasn’t home. Judging by his voice on his machine, he was okay.

*   *   *

I was in bed when Franklin came in. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep because I kept wondering if he was coming back or not. Part of me wished he would just go away. Jeremiah and I would get along fine without
him. He wasn’t serving any purpose anymore. He seemed useless and hopeless and was draining me dry. Sometimes I’d walk through the house and think of when we first met, how beautiful it was. When I’d hear a certain record, I’d remember how much we used to laugh. But all that’s changed. We haven’t gotten anywhere together. He hasn’t kept his promises. He’s not doing anything with his life, at least anything I can see that would help me believe that one day we could actually be a happy family. And I’m tired. Tired of this boring-ass lifestyle. We never go anywhere. We never have any money to do anything except eat and go to work. This wasn’t part of my dream, and I’m not settling for this bullshit. Jeremiah and I deserve better.

Franklin stumbled into the bedroom.

“Wake up,” he said. “I know you ain’t asleep.”

“How did you know I wasn’t asleep? It’s after eleven o’clock, Franklin. You know what time I go to bed.”

“Yeah, you a deadbeat, all right. I need some pussy, baby.”

“Franklin, please.”

“Please, my ass. I want some pussy, and you gon’ give me some tonight whether you want to or not.”

“Oh, so you’re going to rape me, is that it?”

“I guess so.”

And he was telling the truth. He quietly walked over to the bed, pulled up my nightgown, and told me not to move. And I didn’t. I couldn’t believe this. This couldn’t be the man I had fallen in love with. This couldn’t be Franklin Swift doing this to me. But it was. He managed to get his clothes off, and to my surprise he was erect, which meant he’d had this whole thing planned. I wasn’t about to try to fight him, because there was no telling what he might do. So I gave in.

He put all 238 pounds of his body weight on me,
and even though I could hardly move, I didn’t say a word. I just lay there, numb as a rag doll.

He jabbed it in me as deep as he could.

“Franklin, take it easy. That hurts.”

“I want it to hurt,” he said. “Now move, goddammit.”

So I moved.

In less than five minutes he was through.

“That’s all I wanted,” he said, and pushed me to my side of the bed.

I got up to go clean myself. “Get back here,” he said.

“I’m just going to wash this stuff off.”

“I want you to sleep in it, so you’ll know you slept with a real man all night. Now lay down.”

I got back in bed, and that’s when I heard Jeremiah crying. I didn’t know what to do, I was so scared.

“That’s the baby, Franklin,” I said.

“So?”

“So I can’t just let him cry.”

“So go get him. Ain’t nobody stopping you. But do me a favor. Don’t bring the little bastard in here. I don’t feel like hearing it.”

I walked into Jeremiah’s room and picked him up. He was the only thing that felt real to me.

We slept on the couch.

*   *   *

In the morning, Franklin woke me up.

“I wanna talk to you,” he said.

“Good, because you owe me an apology, Franklin.”

“I don’t owe you nothing.”

I just looked at him. I swear, I wanted to spit in his face.

“I been thinking. Since you been doing everything around here anyway and shit, and since I don’t feel needed or necessary, and since you probably had it planned on being a single mother all along, I’ma give you the opportunity to do just that.”

“Just what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I want out. I need a break from you. From this kid. From everything. My head is all fucked up. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I need to be by myself for a while.”

“Oh, so you’re leaving us?”

“Call it what you wanna call it. But by Thanksgiving, I’ll be gone.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“I figured you’d say that,” he said, and was out the front door.

I lay there for a few minutes and didn’t feel anything. Did he say he was leaving us? Jeremiah was still asleep, and just the thought of starting the day caused me to lose every drop of energy I thought I had. I wasn’t going anywhere today. Leaving us? Then I suddenly felt this incredible feeling of relief. Leaving? Good. Go, I thought. We can make it a helluva lot easier without you. Go. Go. Go. I picked up my slipper and threw it at the door. “Go!”

Though I didn’t go to work, I took Jeremiah over to Mary’s house anyway. I needed to be by myself. To think. I didn’t feel as drained as I had earlier, and something told me to pick up the phone and call that woman I’d met at my baby shower whose husband was a record producer. Before I knew it, I had dialed her number. Her husband answered the phone. I hadn’t planned on talking to him, hadn’t rehearsed my speech and had no idea what to even say to him, so I just told him what I’d been doing and where I’d been trained and all that, in one breath.

To my surprise, he knew Reginald, who had trained some of the people he’d produced. “Look,” he said, “I’m always looking for new material. Do you have a tape you can send me?”

“I sure do.”

“You’ve got it all copyrighted?”

“Yes, I do. Reginald made sure I did that. And
look, I appreciate this, really, and don’t feel obligated to get right back to me, because I understand how busy you are. Really I do. And if you don’t like my music, my feelings won’t be hurt.” Then I realized I was lying. “Yes, they will.”

He started laughing and told me he’d get back to me as soon as he came home from a road tour, which wouldn’t be until the first of the year.

I didn’t have anything but time.

I didn’t have nowhere to go.

I was really calling her bluff, trying to see if she wanted me to go. Or better than that, I wanted to beat her to the punch. I knew my days was numbered and that she probably been plotting how she was gon’ get me outta here. But my name was on this lease, just like hers was, so the only way I was gon’ leave was by making the decision myself.