Folly (12 page)

Sabrina didn't have time to get back down to her end, but Lenore found herself soothed just by watching her work. She took the orders, wrote them up and shoved the tablet back in her pocket, then flowed, up and down the counter, gathering what she needed for several orders together. Her left wrist and forearm a chain of cups filled with steaming coffee, she immobilized that part of her body while flipping up the cooler cover with her right hand and dipping in for the half and half to fill the empty pitcher. Lenore had watched her mother do this work, also deftly, as if there were no effort involved. She remembered her mother coming home, setting out her ashtray and her cigarettes, her bottle and her glass, saying move over, I need the couch, my feet, my poor aching feet. That floor came right up through my feet today. In the end Evelyn had gotten dropsy. She had scalded her own arm and spilled on the customers. She had said she was sure they had put steel spurs into the concrete under the tile—spurs that had worked on her nerves.

Muriel arrived crisp and clean, her white shoes freshly polished. Sabrina came down to Lenore's end and conferred with Muriel: “Woman, am I glad to see you. Whew. They've had me running. New coffee's made. I'll finish up these few. Then I'll sit up here with Lenore 'til the tips come in.” The last thing Sabrina did behind the counter was to scoop herself up a generous helping of fudge ripple ice cream, which she placed next to Lenore for herself.

“Take a load off your feet,” Lenore said.

“I intend to.” She brought her tip box around with her.

“Busy enough?”

“I'm not complainin'. First day in some time it might be worth counting.” She unlocked the box with a key she had pinned to her pocket. When she finished counting, she stacked most of the coins in piles to be exchanged by Muriel for bills from the cash register as soon as she had the time.

“So nothing's doing, huh?” she said as she moved the piles forward.

“Nothin' except I went out to see my ma.”

“Who's laid off.”

“Right.”

Muriel came and took the piles and gave Sabrina more change from some customers who had just left. She brought back the bills which Sabrina counted, then carefully folded and pushed to the bottom of her pocket.

“Look, I gotta get out of this joint,” Sabrina said suddenly.

“Yeah, me too. I was on my way home.” Lenore's need sprung the next words out of her mouth without premeditation. “Want to stop by my place?” Then she was sure Sabrina would say no, so she didn't look at her, but still she saw her in her peripheral vision, squinching up her face, making a decision.

“Okay,” Sabrina said. “You're on. I'll follow. You know which is my rattletrap?”

The sun was shining in strong from the West, and Lenore closed the venetian blinds over the bed to shade the room, while saying, “Make yourself at home. Have a seat, and I'll put on water for coffee.”

Sabrina perched on one of the stools that stood at the counter which divided the kitchenette from the rest of the room. She tapped her fingers on the counter. Lenore was aware that the blinds were open all across the front of the room and that Mrs. Henry could see in her kitchen window if she cared to. She tried hard to put Mrs. Henry's eyes out of her mind but didn't entirely succeed. Much as she wanted to refuse to give any credence to Mrs. Henry's views, part of her beamed from Mrs. Henry's kitchen to her own like a ray of light, landing on Sabrina. What's it to her, she thought, agitating the spirit of rebellion in herself. But still her own fears stirred in her. She had never really defined them. Mrs. Henry didn't represent the KKK to her, but those marksmen of violence and hate did stand at the far end of her fear. And she knew they still existed, knew that some of the men she worked with at the store probably belonged. Mrs. Henry, if she saw Sabrina there visiting as a friend, would not see her as Sabrina but as a large, dark woman—alien, strange. Though if she saw her working at the counter, she wouldn't think her strange—she'd think her in her place.

Lenore whistled with her nerves as she got down the mugs, placed them on the counter along with the sugar and milk. If Mrs. Henry could know Lenore's mind, she'd find her strange for being so glad Sabrina had agreed to come. She felt light, almost as if she could fly if she stepped off a high point right then, perhaps because although she
still had her fears, she had left off allowing them to control her. Breaking rules that had never been spoken left her feeling the excitement of the tightrope walker. She hoped Sabrina couldn't feel all her tensions, all these eyes beaming on her. She wanted Sabrina to be comfortable here, wanted them to be friends.

“How was it, going out to your house?” Sabrina asked.

“Ma was steamin'. Pissed because I didn't come out all during the strike.” Lenore poured the coffee into the mugs.

“I guess you could have predicted that.”

“Woulda been smart to. Sometimes when you're too close to someone, you don't act smart, though.”

Sabrina nodded agreement, but Lenore wasn't sure she really agreed since she didn't say anything more but had a questioning look on her face.

Lenore continued, “She gave up the booze two weeks ago. That's a long time for her.” Sadness came into her voice. “Course now she's threatening to go back on it.”

Sabrina's eyes met Lenore's then and conveyed a strong sense of understanding. “I guess if she decides to, there's not much of anything you can do.”

“I know.” Lenore leaned on her elbows on the counter and sipped at her coffee. Sabrina seemed to understand so much of how she suffered over her family. She realized she knew almost nothing about Sabrina's people and tried to think of a way to ask about them without seeming nosey. She looked quizzically at Sabrina. “Your ma drink?”

Play-acting, Sabrina gave a startled expression. “You kiddin'? NO WAY. My ma's the bride of Jesus, and she drinketh in the words of the Lord.”

“Oh.”

“My aunt, on the other hand, you look at her cross-eyed, she figures she's got cause for a binge.” Sabrina laughed.

Lenore laughed along with her.

“It ain't funny, really, though she can be quite amusing at times. I do love the woman, but I fear for what'll become of her.”

“She live in Victory?”

“Sure 'nough. She lives with us.”

“Oh.”

When the doorbell rang, the adrenalin shot Lenore's heart up like a hard ball. How Mrs. Henry or anyone could have walked right up across the yard without her noticing or hearing a thing, she couldn't believe. Her pupils were dilated so wide the paper boy looked extra small when she opened the door. “Collectin',” he said.

“Hold on,” she said, going for the money and stalling for time to collect herself.

She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I didn't hear him comin',” she said after he left. “Did you?”

“Nope.” Sabrina moved off the stool and Lenore realized she'd been statue-still since the moment the doorbell had rung. “But I didn't jump as bad as you.”

Lenore felt trapped, said nothing.

Sabrina, generously, tried to relax her. “Hey, it's okay. I been Black all my life, you know. Learned a long time ago not to get too laid back inside a white person's house.”

Lenore heard what she was saying. She felt her own face still flushed with shock and embarrassment. She wanted most at that moment to be set off from white people, not connected to them, but knew that was impossible.

“I gotta get going,” Sabrina said.

“I was fixin' to make myself some supper. I've got plenty if you'd like to stay.”

“I'm due home, but thanks anyway. I gotta go take care of my baby.”

“Sure,” Lenore said. She tried to sound very casual. Why hadn't she ever realized Sabrina had a baby? This was ridiculous. She talked to her every other day. “How old's your baby?”

“He'll be two in August.”

“I bet he's cute.”

“He's somethin' else.”

After Sabrina was gone Lenore couldn't think of anything else all evening but WOW, WOW, she's got a baby, she's had a baby ever since she's been working at the counter, must've had him right before she started, must've been pregnant when she quit school. For all she knew, maybe she had a husband, too. Now how could she get around to asking about that?

She sat down and wrote to Betsy, starting, “You wouldn't believe . . .” then telling everything including about the paper boy and Mrs. Henry's eyes. She was relieved to give over all this information to Betsy, even her own shame that she had wished the blinds had been closed before she'd brought Sabrina in. By the time she finished the letter, she was feeling her way to the realization that it wouldn't be such a shock to know Sabrina had a baby, if she weren't needing more of a mama for herself.

14.

Waking, Lenore remembered her dream of Betsy lost on some vast tundra, with only horizon in any direction she looked. There was a tunnel stretching out endlessly, which Betsy followed—tired, tense, but moving steadily. The dream was Lenore's wish to funnel Betsy back to Victory, fall asleep beside her and wake to her warmth and smell for one morning. She often felt so alone and separate from the rest of the world; that was why she didn't eat breakfast in her room. She gave herself fifteen minutes between waking and leaving her place in the morning, which left her enough time to stop at the diner for coffee and a donut before work.

“Mornin',” muttered several of the men at the counter as she entered.

“Mornin',” Sabrina said, placing a cup of coffee in front of her, then lifting the cover off the donut case and indicating the selection to Lenore.

“Sugar,” Lenore said.

Sabrina brought her the sugar donut. “How's that baby?” Lenore asked.

“Just fine.”

“What's his name?”

“Elijah.”

With Sabrina every answer brought another question, but since she was busy at the other end, Lenore was left to ponder alone. She realized she knew most of the white people in Victory simply because they lived there and the town was small enough that word passed, within a class, at least. What she knew of the classy folks was another thing—it was speculation injected with spite. What she knew of the Blacks was next to nothing. She'd grown up side by side with them in school but
been guided not to look at them as real. She was meant to have no business with them one to one, the way she was getting to know Sabrina. That message went deep, so deep she didn't know what vehicle had been used to carry it into her. She felt a huge sadness which went to the same depth and which had before only been touched by her mother. And she felt the tension she had always experienced as a child when anyone got it for being out of bounds. You're out of line, Suzy. Step back in. Look what you're doing to the line . . . . Foul ball . . . out of bounds. Even when it hadn't been her, and it usually hadn't, she'd always felt better, felt released from some unspoken confinement, when someone was breaking the rules. It wasn't that she hadn't felt fear, but with it a satisfaction, an opening out that promised fruition.

Why was she not supposed to care for Black people? What would it matter to any other white if she did? It would mess up the line. She was supposed to stay in hiding behind her own skin and fit in the place that had been made for her. In which she didn't fit, anyway. She wondered with some further trepidation if Sabrina had guessed that she was a lesbian. Not that she had ever called herself one. But since Betsy had placed the word in her head, she'd found it periodically standing up in her mind, as if it were printed on a placard. She thought of the women who had walked the picket line all those weeks out at the mill, their signs announcing what they believed in. She envied the way they had stood together.

If she were to wear a sign that said LESBIAN and parade up and down Victory with it, she would surely be parading alone.

Lenore had given
Sappho Was A Right On Woman
to Martha the day before the election and hadn't seen her since. She'd built up the nerve to do this over a couple of talks they had when Martha'd called her to do some work for the strike. She had driven several times, bringing women without transportation to the meetings, and the day before the vote, she'd babysat for one of the women who had gone out politicking. When she'd stopped by Martha's place for directions first, Martha had sat her down and offered her a cup of coffee.

“You're probably in a hurry,” Lenore had said.

“Actually, I could use a chance to sit a minute.”

They had sipped coffee, neither saying more for a while. Lenore had glanced back and forth from the window to the insides of Martha's trailer. It reminded her of pictures she'd seen of the insides of ships. The walls were paneled with fake wood. The couch had a yellow chenille
spread neatly tucked in its crack, and the blond coffee table in front of it was cleared except for an ashtray and a paperback book. It was one of those coffee tables with a low rail around it, which would have served a purpose on a ship. The linoleum on the kitchen floor had ovals where it had worn down beneath its pattern in front of the sink and the stove. The linoleum was green but the ovals had turned to black spots. These kept catching Lenore's eye when she glanced in from the sun, these and Daisy's cane, which was propped against the wall of the hallway that must go to the bathroom and bedrooms. She didn't know whether or not to ask about Daisy. She knew from Mary Lou that she was still in bad shape in the hospital, and she worried that it would upset Martha if she asked about her.

It was Martha who broke the silence. “How you like living over there alone?”

“It's okay.”

“Sometimes lonely?” she asked, her voice almost gruff and yet reassuring to Lenore.

“Sometimes.”

“I know it's strange to me, here, with my mother in the hospital. I go around listenin' to my own noises.”

“Yeah, sometimes you feel like the rest of the world can hear you shuffling around.”

“When's Betsy coming back?” Martha asked.

She took Lenore completely off guard asking like that out of the clear blue and as if she so firmly knew that Betsy's absence was a large part of Lenore's loneliness. Lenore felt as if she were about to cry but shrugged instead and stared at the ovals on the floor. Finally, she said. “When she's ready, I reckon, or else when the job's through.”

“I had a girlfriend, once, before I went down to Florida, who decided to go up North. She wanted to be an actress.”

“Did she get to be one?”

“Not that I know of. She went right to New York City, though, and went around trying out for things. She ended up being a waitress at Howard Johnson's. Said that was what all the people who came to New York to be actresses did first . . . a Howard Johnson's right near the theatres. She wrote and told me about all them famous people comin' in for lunch to her tables.”

Lenore had hardly been able to concentrate on anything Martha had said after the word
girlfriend.
Did that mean girlfriend the way Betsy was her girlfriend, or did that mean friend? She had to digest the idea
that Martha might be telling her she was a lesbian, before she could even entertain the threat involved in the possibility that Martha's girlfriend hadn't ever come back home. She had stopped looking out the window and was keeping her eyes on Martha for any signal. “Did she ever come back home?” she finally asked outright.

Martha met her eyes. “Only once to visit, while I was still here. She wanted me to come up and see New York City, but I never did. My luck, I'd get lost in the crowd. Every once in a while I turn on T.V. and think, wouldn't it be something else if I started watching a movie and on came Lucinda—presuming I'd recognize her, of course.”

Lenore was almost one hundred percent positive Martha was saying Lucinda had been her
girlfriend.
Still, she shook inside to control her cool on the outside, as she told her she had this book she'd like her to look at. “If you don't feel like reading it, that's fine with me,” she said. “The only reason I have it is Betsy sent it to me and someone told her to tell each person to pass it on to someone else.”

“What kind of a book?” Martha asked.

“I'll show you. I got it in the car. I better get going, too.”

She got the directions for where she was supposed to babysit from Martha. She folded the paper and pushed it in the back pocket of her jeans. “I'll get the book,” she said. She practically ran out to the car. How could she explain what she was doing with that book under the front seat of her car? She had taken it out of her bookcase because when folks came to her room, she felt as if they were drawn to it like a magnet. Mary Lou had seen it, she was sure, and had turned away from her somewhat after that. She fished under the driver's seat with her hand and came up with it right away, dusted it on her pants as she ran back up to Martha's door.

“Here you go,” she said. “Remember, now. If it's not something you want to read, never mind. I got some good mysteries, too.”

Martha was reading the title and nodding her head up and down slowly. “I hear you,” she said. Lenore practically had the keys in the ignition before Martha got the words out. She felt as if she had lit a fuse and regardless of whether or not there'd be an explosion, she needed some distance.

Now plenty of time had passed; Lenore had enough distance, had fantasized every possible variation of Martha's response, didn't know why she had taken Betsy's dare anyway and let herself be taunted by it.

She followed Sabrina's graceful hands as they slipped the eggs from the grill to the plates, scraped the grease into the gutter with one wide
sweep of the spatula. She liked her, and she didn't care what anyone thought. She hoped they could grow into friends. The excitement in her gut was from feeling she might be able to understand someone different from herself and that person might be able to understand her. This was true not only of Sabrina but also of Martha.

The lump in her gut which had formed around her sugar donut stayed with her most of the day while she worked. She was whistling a high note over it when Martha came by in the late afternoon and silenced everything in her but the small voice saying, “Oh, God, what if?” She did manage to smile and say Hi.

“How y'all doing?” Martha asked.

“Pretty good . . . not complaining.” Lenore straightened the packages of pork chops meticulously as she stood there in order to avoid Martha's eyes. She felt as if there was only one thing Martha knew about her and that was that she was a lesbian. She felt as naked as she had been the day one of her mother's hairy boyfriends had burst through the bathroom door and caught her sitting on the toilet, pants down, red-faced with straining.

“Thanks for doing the babysitting,” Martha said.

She'd practically forgotten she'd done it. “Oh, sure . . . . How is it, being back on the job?”

“Not much different, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for when we have the contract.”

“Yeah,” Lenore said. Martha seemed to feel warmly toward her. Maybe it would be okay. She let herself look up.

“You got any sausage?”

“Sure. There's some out right down here.”

They walked down toward one end with the meat counter between them. “If there's nothing here to suit you, let me know,” Lenore said. “I can make you up what you want.”

“This'll do fine,” Martha said, taking a package for her basket. “Will you be around Sunday?”

“Sure, I reckon I will.”

“I thought I might stop by with your book.”

“Sure enough . . . okay,” Lenore said, still registering Martha's words. “See you then.”

As Martha moved down the dairy case with her shopping cart, Lenore saw Mary Lou go up behind her and surprise her, stamping her shoulder 59¢. Lenore kept forgetting they were neighbors. She realized she hadn't told Martha where she lived, but she must know or she
would've asked. She hummed through the rest of the day, feeling inordinately happy, considering she didn't even know what Martha thought of the book. What mattered was that someone knew. She realized how little anyone else could know her if they didn't know that. And yet, it was something you couldn't just go around telling everybody.

When she got home, she closed down all the blinds. She took a shower to cool off and get the feeling of the store off her skin. She laid down before she put on clothes and let her thoughts go to Betsy. She stroked her own body the way Betsy would have, and let herself feel the way her senses wanted to come alive. She built her excitement slowly. She knew exactly where to touch, how hard, how fast. Martha
knew
about her. She felt whole and glorious. She stroked and stroked. Then the rhythm of her body took over and moved her until her insides hummed.

By the time Martha came up the walk on Sunday, Lenore had spent so much time imagining her that she felt as if she knew her real well. She had pictured her with her girlfriend, Lucinda, and she had pictured her alone, yearning for her girlfriend after she had gone off to New York. As soon as she saw the real Martha coming, she knew that back in reality they hardly knew each other at all.

Martha took the book out of her purse and placed it face up on the counter while Lenore poured the coffee.

“You read it?” Lenore asked with as casual a tone as she was capable of faking.

Martha with the gentle, gruff voice, “Yup, read it all, every last page and I thank you.”

“You can keep it if you want.”

“Nope. Wouldn't know where to put it around my place.”

Lenore didn't tell Martha that was why she'd had it in her car to begin with.

Hesitations, long silences, and the startling interruptions of speech on tenderly self-conscious eardrums filled the next hour after Martha asked Lenore, “How did you know about yourself?”

Lenore started to say Betsy but halted. She was suddenly flooded with the many moments all across her life when she had wondered about herself—each small uprising that had erupted through and charged her with panic. With Betsy, her feelings, her desires, swollen in proportion to her fears, had muffled the panic. But she couldn't say there was any one moment when she had known unless it was now. Maybe this moment of talking to Martha, of letting those uprisings surface in her memory was the beginning of her really knowing.

“I remember when I was a kid, I wanted to be a boy. I used to sit around and pretend that I was. When kids my age started dating, I'd sit around and think about if I was a boy, which girl I'd ask out. Betsy was one and the other one was Sassy, this wild girl from out in the sticks, and I never got up the nerve to speak to her, ever.”