T
he front door opened and then closed.
A voice incredibly similar to Shannon’s rang shrill through the house. “Mother!”
Easter was aproned and seated at the kitchen table skinning cucumbers while she tried to remember just how it was Dodd Everson said he preferred his steak.
“Mother!”
The kitchen door swung violently open.
“MOTHER!”
Easter’s eyes met the angry ones of Alice Everson, the twelve-year-old daughter.
“Oh,” Alice breathed.
“Afternoon, miss.”
Alice considered Easter for a moment before sauntering over to the refrigerator and retrieving a pop. She circled the older woman like a curious cat. Easter didn’t raise her eyes. After a while Alice leaned a scrawny hipbone into the edge of the table and said, “So, you must be the new girl.”
Easter didn’t answer.
Alice cocked her head to one side, licked her young lips. “You deaf or something?”
“No.”
“You got a name?”
Girl
.
“Uh-hmmm.”
Alice waited, but Easter offered nothing more than the quick movement of the knife against the green of the cucumber. Irritated, Alice slammed the bottle on the table and then folded her arms across her chest.
“Well, are you going to tell me your name or not?”
“My name is Easter Bartlett.”
Alice smirked and said, “Strange name for a colored woman.” And then turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving the half-empty bottle of soda.
“Strange name for a strange life,” Easter mumbled to the emptiness.
She met the boy next. He was a dull-eyed, short, stocky ten-year-old thumb-sucker.
“Easter, this is Junior,” Dobbs said in passing, as he lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed.
Junior pulled his thumb from his mouth and used it to quell an itch on his cheek. “Hi.”
“Hello, Junior.”
Easter was hopeful.
Maybe this one has manners
, she thought as she moved to the buffet. Behind her Junior pointed and laughed, “Wow, your behind is as big as a bull cow’s!”
After the life she’d led, few things surprised her. But Junior’s boorishness—so soon after the innocent greeting—took her off guard and the dinner plates rattled in her hands.
“Boy, how many times have I told you there ain’t no such thing as a bull cow? It’s either a bull or a cow!” Dobbs corrected.
Easter waited for chastising about the insult, but it never came.
***
Time is a tireless bird with silver feathers and broad wings
. She had written that line when she was living at 409 Edgecombe Avenue and now it floated to her as she sat on the edge of her bed staring at the peach walls.
She’d put highways, big cities, years, seasons, tears, and once even the great Atlantic Ocean between herself and that place, but no distance, great or small, could erase the memory of it. It always seemed to be lurking about, bearing down on her like a truck with its headlights set on high beam. And it was there again, crammed into that small room, sucking out all of the air.
Uh-uh. No you don’t,
Easter shook her finger at the memories.
Looking for a distraction, she reached over and turned the silver knob of the television. A white dot appeared at the center of the black screen and slowly bloomed into a sheet of gray static. Easter fiddled with the antenna and ghostly figures appeared behind the blizzard, before the screen went black again.
Easter sighed, turned the television off, went into the bathroom, and shut the door. The memories complained loudly and rapped incessantly on the wood, tempting her with the tinkering sounds of piano keys, gay laughter, and the clink of champagne flutes meeting in salute.
They called to her,
Easter, come on out, girl!
Easter hummed a spiritual over the din as she tied her white scarf over her shiny curls. Another knock and then Rain’s voice,
Easter, you okay in there, honey?
She dropped the toilet seat, sat down on the lid, squeezed her eyes shut, and stopped her ears with her fingers.
S
he was pushing a dust rag across the sofa table when Shannon said, “I’m having some of the ladies over today for lunch.”
“Yessum.”
“Could you whip up some of that potato salad you make so well?”
“Yessum.”
“Oh, and those finger sandwiches and maybe a—”
“Cheese plate?”
“Yes. That is exactly what I was going to suggest. It’s almost as if you have tele—tele …”
“Telepathy.”
“That’s it!” Shannon said. “You were always so smart.”
Shannon offered up her warmest smile and then used the tip of a fingernail to tap the rim of the empty martini glass she held. “When you get a moment, Easter.”
The women arrived in twos until they totaled a dozen. Brown, blond, and red-haired, rouged cheeks and short skirts, their three-inch heels clicked musically against the marble floor of the entryway.
They talked PTA, politics, and war. The third round of drinks left them slumped in their seats, as they laughed and waded their way through gutters of gossip.
“You see that new manager at the Piggly Wiggly? If I was just ten years younger!”
“I wouldn’t have married that sorry-ass husband of mine, that’s for sure.”
Shannon wobbled over to the console and peered down into the nearly empty ice bucket. “You know, I was crowned Miss Cornflower,” she slurred.
The women exchanged knowing looks and waited for what always came.
“I could have gone onto the state competition, but Mama got ill and, well …”
The women sat up straight in their chairs and began to examine their watches, powder their noses, and pat strands of stiff hair back into place.
“Papa said the entry fee had to go for Mama’s medicine and I was stuck. Stuck in this dust bowl of a town, playing nursemaid to my mother. Emptying sick pans and …”
Black mascara streaked down her cheeks. The women shifted uncomfortably. They looked to one another, their eyes asking,
Whose turn is it this time?
The tall, lanky one with the Marilyn Monroe mole rose from her chair and walked over to the weeping Shannon.
“Now honey, you did just fine,” she cooed and wrapped her arms around Shannon’s trembling shoulders. “You married a wonderful man. And look at this house! It’s just beautiful, yes it is. You’ve done real good for yourself, honey, real good.”
“I guess,” Shannon sniffed.
“Two wonderful kids, a nice comfortable home, a hard-working husband. What else could you want?”
Out
, Shannon thought.
I want out.
Later, when the sky turned gray and the summer rain patted softly at the windows, Easter helped a drunk Shannon up to her bedroom, where she undressed her and put her to bed. She went to the window and gazed out at the gloomy day and was reminded of a day in Harlem, a day just like this when a dark-skinned boy with slanted eyes and slick black hair showed up at the door, dripping wet. The butler made him wait in the hallway. Rain was asleep, so Meredith called Easter into her room, pressed two folded bills into her hand, and asked her to retrieve the package from the boy.
What did she know?
She handed him the money and the boy handed her the soggy brown paper bag. Easter assumed it was food, but the bag was as light as a feather and when she removed the red paper container and unfolded the flaps, what she found inside was not chop suey or fried rice, but a gold-colored powder Easter had never seen before.
What she began to notice was that each time the slanted-eyed boy showed up, Meredith’s behavior became erratic; her slights against Rain grew more toxic, often escalating to hurtful and humiliating degrees. She called Rain names: “You yellow bitch!” “You swamp nigger!” Sometimes she spat at her. And Rain did nothing in return.
After a few days, Meredith’s nastiness would retreat into the cave from which it came, replaced by the syrupy-sweet Meredith—the sickening, saccharine alter ego who swooned, coddled, fawned, and gifted.
Meredith never turned her ugliness on Easter, even though it was clear she wanted to. Easter could see it in her eyes, sizzling like hot stones. Sometimes she’d look up to find Meredith glaring at her with bared teeth. But when their eyes met, the fierceness in Meredith’s face disintegrated and she would grin sheepishly, like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. And then one Tuesday the apartment was thrust into a perpetual state of darkness when Meredith took the red container to her bedroom, only to reemerge hours later and order the butler to paint all of the windows black.
A
lice hadn’t said more than a few sentences to Easter since the day she arrived. But she’d been watching her, making sure she didn’t carry away the good silverware or the Fabergé egg that Shannon said she would sell when the time came for Alice to go off to college. Alice watched her the way she’d watched all of the other maids they’d had because her father said most coloreds were liars and thieves. They couldn’t help it, it was hereditary, like the color of their skin and the coarseness of their hair. And they were stupid too. Good for fieldwork, housework, shucking and jiving, but little else.
And Alice had believed him, until she heard the colored man named King speaking on the radio about civil rights for Negroes. At the sound of his voice the hairs on Alice’s arms had stood at attention. She had been surprised at her reaction and looked shamefully around to see if her parents had noticed.
There was a doctor on the colored side of town, but he wasn’t on the radio and he hadn’t met with President Kennedy. So what made this Dr. King so special?
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“What kind of doctor is Dr. Martin Luther King?”
Shannon shrugged her shoulders and walked off to another part of the house.
Dobbs cut the radio off and said, “Probably not a doctor at all, just a title he gave himself so’s he could sound important.” And then he marched off muttering, “Niggers gonna turn the whole country to shit.”
“Yeah, to shit!” Junior concurred.
Easter sat in the rocking chair on the porch, her black felt hat with the crooked purple flower propped awkwardly on her head. She clutched in her lap a worn straw purse with a cane handle. She was tapping her foot and smoking a cigarette. It was Sunday, her one full day off.
Alice spied on her from the den window and held her nose against the stench of the tobacco, waving away the ribbons of smoke that snaked through the screen and hung like a net around her face.
Every Sunday it was the same. Easter sitting in that rocking chair, wearing that ridiculous hat, smoking and tapping her foot like there was a band playing right there on the front lawn. And not that it mattered, Alice told herself, but she did wonder why her father never offered Easter a ride to her church. There was plenty of room in the Cadillac, even though Junior was as fat as a hog. But she hardly took up any space at all, so there was plenty of room for Easter.
Alice swept her hair from her face, straightened her back, and walked toward the front door. When she stepped out onto the porch she pretended to be startled by Easter’s presence. “Oh my goodness, you frightened me,” Alice said in her best Grace Kelly voice.
Easter nodded her head but said nothing. If the girl was going to sneak around spying on her, Easter mused to herself, she’d better stop wearing that Topaz talcum powder she loved so much.
“Off to church?” Alice casually asked.
Easter stopped rocking, looked dramatically to her right and then to her left, where Alice stood staring, and replied, “I’m sorry, are you speaking to me?”
Alice pursed her lips, pressed her fists into her hips, and said, “Ain’t nobody else out here but us, who you think I’m talking to, myself?”
Easter chuckled, “My mistake.”
Alice glared at her. “Well, are you going to church or not?”
Easter mashed the cigarette into the ashtray and looked up at the sky. “Hmmm, tell the truth, I haven’t decided what I’m going to do on this beautiful Sunday.”
Most Sundays she went to the sanctified church, not to pray—she could do that anywhere and at any time—but to be enveloped in the language, to revel in the music, to be swept up in the rapture. Sunday service was sustenance and Easter often found her mouth agape, tongue lapping.
The church of her childhood had grown in the decades she’d been away. New wings had been added and it now sat precariously on the border of a red-light district that didn’t exist when Easter was a child.
The minister welcomed everyone, sinners and Christians alike, and often proclaimed, “We are God’s children—each and every one of us!”
No one in that congregation was as pure as the driven snow, but some were more soiled than others—the flesh peddlers, gamblers, parolees, drug dealers, and drug users sat up in the balcony in the Nigger Heaven section of the church, where the ceiling was so low you had to stoop to keep from hitting your head on the rafters. Easter sat up there too, she liked to think that being up high like that made it convenient for God to reach down and press his lovely index finger against her woolen head.
But on that day she didn’t go to church; she walked right past it and down the road to the cemetery where she pardoned and excused herself to the dead as she sidestepped her way along the narrow dirt aisles that separated the graves. Her mother’s plot was marked with a small heart-shaped headstone. Easter traced her fingers gently over the etched letters and numbers.
Zelda Marie Bartlett
1875–1910
It wasn’t easy, but she managed to ease herself down onto her knees. Getting up would take some time, but time was all she had. The cemetery was on a lovely plot of land that white folks muttered would be made better use of if the bodies were relocated and it was turned into a park.
It was the only piece of land in Waycross blanketed in beautiful Kentucky bluegrass. That grass shimmered like an ocean beneath the light of the full moon and the trees that dotted that land were the oldest and largest in the area.
“So, Mama, how you been? Good? … Oh, that’s nice to hear … What was that? … Oh, the Eversons are fine, just fine. You know, typical white folks stuff. What you gonna do? You gotta laugh to keep from crying, right? You the one that taught me that.”
Easter patted the dirt affectionately.
“Pardon?” She turned her head, eyed the fields across the road. “No, I haven’t,” she whispered, then picked up a pebble and tossed it aside. “You know I don’t write stories anymore,” she said dryly.
Alice thought herself sly—she claimed a stomachache, and to authenticate the claim she made sure her mother heard her retching in the bathroom. Shannon made her some tea, placed a few saltines on a napkin, and set it on the nightstand by Alice’s bed.
As soon as the Cadillac pulled out of the driveway, Alice was up and out the back door, running like the wind toward the colored side of town.
Alice thought herself invisible, but still kept a safe distance, following Easter like a shadow and then hiding behind the tree as Easter conversed with the dead.
She may have been able to fool her parents, but Easter was wise to her, because she had caught the scent of Topaz talcum powder in the air.