God Help the Child: A novel (11 page)

Bride read three more pages in quick succession.

Trying to understand racist malignancy only feeds it, makes it balloon-fat and lofty floating high overhead fearful of sinking to earth where a blade of grass could puncture it letting its watery feces soil the enthralled audience the way mold ruins piano keys both black and white, sharp and flat to produce a dirge of its decay
.

I refuse to be ashamed of my shame, you know, the one assigned to me which matches the low priority and the degraded morality of those who insist upon this most facile of human feelings of inferiority and flaw simply to disguise their own cowardice by pretending it is identical to a banjo's purity
.

Thank you. You showed me rage and frailty and hostile recklessness and worry worry worry dappled with such uncompromising shards of light and love it seemed a kindness in order to be able to leave you and not fold into a grief so deep it would break not the heart but the mind that knows the oboe's shriek and the way it tears into rags of silence to expose your beauty too dazzling
to contain and which turns its melody into the grace of livable space
.

Puzzled, Bride raised her eyes from the pages and looked at Queen, who said, “Interesting, is it?”

“Very,” answered Bride. “But strange too. I wonder who he was talking to.”

“Himself,” said Queen. “I bet they're all about him. Don't you think so?”

“No,” murmured Bride. “These are about me, our time together.” Then she read the last page.

You should take heartbreak of whatever kind seriously with the courage to let it blaze and burn like the pulsing star it is unable or unwilling to be soothed into pathetic self-blame because its explosive brilliance rings justifiably loud like the din of a tympani
.

Bride put the papers down and covered her eyes.

“Go see him,” said Queen, her voice low. “He's down the road, the last house beside the stream. Come on, get up, wash your face and go.”

“I'm not sure I should, now.” Bride shook her head. She had counted on her looks for so long—how well beauty worked. She had not known its shallowness or her own cowardice—the vital lesson Sweetness taught and nailed to her spine to curve it.

“What's the matter with you?” Queen sounded annoyed. “You come all this way and just turn around and leave?” Then she started singing, imitating the voice of a baby:

Don't know why

There's no sun up in the sky…

Can't go on.

Everything I had is gone,

Stormy weather…

“Damn!” Bride slapped the table. “You're absolutely right! Totally right! This is about me, not him. Me!”

“You? Get out!” Booker rose from his narrow bed and pointed at Bride, who was standing in the door of his trailer.

“Fuck you! I'm not leaving here until you—”

“I said get out! Now!” Booker's eyes were both dead and alive with hatred. His uncast arm pointed toward the door. Bride ran nine quick steps forward and slapped Booker's face as hard as she could. He hit her back with just enough force to knock her down. Scrambling up, she grabbed a Michelob bottle from a counter and broke it over his head. Booker fell back on his bed, motionless. Tightening her fist on the neck of the broken bottle, Bride stared at the blood seeping into his left ear. A few seconds later he regained
consciousness, leaned on his elbow and, with squinty, unfocused eyes, turned to look at her.

“You walked out on me,” she screamed. “Without a word! Nothing! Now I want that word. Whatever it is I want to hear it. Now!”

Booker, wiping blood from the left side of his face with his right hand, snarled, “I don't have to tell you shit.”

“Oh, yes you do.” She raised the broken bottle.

“You get out of my house before something bad happens.”

“Shut up and answer me!”

“Jesus, woman.”

“Why? I have to know, Booker.”

“First tell me why you bought presents for a child molester—in prison for it, for Christ's sake. Tell me why you sucked up to a monster.”

“I lied! I lied! I lied! She was innocent. I helped convict her but she didn't do any of that. I wanted to make amends but she beat the crap out of me and I deserved it.”

The room temperature had not risen, but Bride was sweating, her forehead, upper lip, even her armpits were soaking.

“You lied? What the hell for?”

“So my mother would hold my hand!”

“What?”

“And look at me with proud eyes, for once.”

“So, did she?”

“Yes. She even liked me.”

“So you mean to tell me—”

“Shut up and talk! Why did you walk out on me?”

“Oh, God.” Booker wiped more blood from the side of his face. “Look. Well, see. My brother, he was murdered by a freak, a predator like the one I thought you were forgiving and—”

“I don't care! I didn't do it! It wasn't me who killed your brother.”

“All right! All right! I get that, but—”

“But nothing! I was trying to make up to someone I ruined. You just ran around blaming everybody. You bastard. Here, wipe your bloody hand.” Bride threw a dish towel toward him and put down what was left of the bottle. After wiping her palms on her jeans and brushing hair from her damp forehead, she looked steadily at Booker. “You don't have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.” She sat down in a chair by the table and crossed her legs.

In a long silence cut only by the sound of their breathing, they stared not at each other but away—at the floor, their hands, through the window. Minutes passed.

At last Booker felt he had something definitive and vital to say, to explain, but when he opened his mouth his tongue froze—the words were not there. No matter. Bride was asleep in the chair, her chin pointing toward her chest, her long legs splayed.

Queen didn't knock; she simply opened the door to Booker's trailer and stepped in. When she saw Bride sprawled asleep in a chair and the bruise over Booker's eye she said, “Good Lord. What happened?”

“Dustup,” said Booker.

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah. Knocked herself out and fell asleep.”

“Some ‘dustup.' She came all this way to beat you up? For what? Love or misery?”

“Both, probably.”

“Well, let's get her out of that chair and on the bed,” said Queen.

“Right.” Booker stood up. With Queen's help and his one working arm they got her on his narrow, unmade bed. Bride moaned, but did not wake.

Queen sat down at the table. “What you gonna do about her?”

“I don't know,” answered Booker. “It was perfect for a while, the two of us.”

“What caused the split?”

“Lies. Silence. Just not saying what was true or why.”

“About?”

“About us as kids, things that happened, why we did things, thought things, took actions that were really about what went on when we were just children.”

“Adam for you?”

“Adam for me.”

“And for her?”

“A big lie she told when she was a kid that helped put an innocent woman in prison. A long sentence for child rape the woman never did. I walked out after we quarreled about Bride's strange affection for the woman. At least it seemed strange at the time. I didn't want to be anywhere near her after that.”

“What'd she lie for?”

“To get some love—from her mama.”

“Lord! What a mess. And you thought about Adam—again. Always Adam.”

“Yep.”

Queen crossed her wrists and leaned on the table. “How long is he going to run you?”

“I can't help it, Queen.”

“No? She told her truth. What's yours?”

Booker didn't answer. The two of them sat in silence with Bride's light snoring the only sound until Queen said, “You need a noble reason to fail, don't you? Or some really deep reason to feel superior.”

“Aw, no, Queen. I'm not like that! Not at all.”

“Well what? You lash Adam to your shoulders so he can work day and night to fill your brain. Don't you think he's tired? He must be worn out having to die and get no rest because he has to run somebody else's life.”

“Adam's not managing me.”

“No. You managing him. Did you ever feel free of him? Ever?”

“Well.” Booker flashed back to standing in the rain, how his music changed right after he saw Bride stepping into a limousine, how the gloom he had been living in dissipated. He thought about his arms around her waist while they danced and her smile when she turned around. “Well,” he repeated, “for a while it was good, really good being with her.” He couldn't hide the pleasure in his eyes.

“I guess good isn't good enough for you, so you called Adam back and made his murder turn your brain into a cadaver and your heart's blood formaldehyde.”

Booker and Queen stared at each other for a long time until she stood up and, not taking the trouble to hide her disappointment, said, “Fool,” and left him slouched in his chair.

Taking her time Queen walked slowly back to her house. Amusement and sadness competed for her attention. She was amused because she hadn't seen lovers fight in decades—not since she lived in the projects in Cleveland where young couples acted out their violent emotions as theatrical performances, aware of a visible or invisible audience. She had experienced it all with multiple husbands, all of whom were now blended into no one. Except her first,
John Loveday, whom she'd divorced—or had she? Hard to remember since she hadn't divorced the next one either. Queen smiled at the selective memory old age blessed her with. But sadness cut through the smile. The anger, the violence on display between Bride and Booker, were unmistakable and typical of the young. Yet, after they hauled the sleeping girl to the bed and laid her down, Queen saw Booker smooth the havoc of Bride's hair away from her forehead. Glancing quickly at his face she was struck by the tenderness in his eyes.

They will blow it, she thought. Each will cling to a sad little story of hurt and sorrow—some long-ago trouble and pain life dumped on their pure and innocent selves. And each one will rewrite that story forever, knowing the plot, guessing the theme, inventing its meaning and dismissing its origin. What waste. She knew from personal experience how hard loving was, how selfish and how easily sundered. Withholding sex or relying on it, ignoring children or devouring them, rerouting true feelings or locking them out. Youth being the excuse for that fortune-cookie love—until it wasn't, until it became pure adult stupidity.

I was pretty once, she thought, real pretty, and I believed it was enough. Well, actually it was until it wasn't, until I had to be a real person, meaning a thinking one. Smart enough to know heavyweight was a condition not a disease; smart enough now to read the minds of selfish people right away. But the smarts came too late for her children.

Each of her “husbands” snatched a child or two from her, claimed them or absconded with them. Some spirited them away to their home countries; another had his mistress capture two; all but one of her husbands—the sweet Johnny Loveday—had good reasons to pretend love: American citizenship, U.S. passport, financial help, nursing care or a temporary home. She had no opportunity to raise a single child beyond the age of twelve. It took some time to figure out the motives for faking love—hers and theirs. Survival, she supposed, literal and emotional. Queen had been through it all, and now she lived alone in the wilderness, knitting and tatting away, grateful that, at last, Sweet Jesus had given her a forgetfulness blanket along with a little pillow of wisdom to comfort her in old age.

Restless and deeply displeased with the turn of events, especially Queen's open disgust with him, Booker went outside and sat on his doorstep. Soon it would be twilight and this haphazard village minus streetlights would disappear in darkness. Music from a few radios would be as distant as the lights flickering from TV sets: old Zeniths and Pioneers. He watched a couple of local trucks rumble by and a few motorcyclists that followed soon after. The truckers wore caps; the motorcyclists wore scarves tied around their foreheads. Booker liked the mild anarchy of the place, its indifference to its residents modified by the presence of his
aunt, the single person he trusted. He'd found some on-and-off work with loggers, which was enough until he fell out of a rig and wrecked his shoulder. At every turn, cutting into his aimless thoughts was the picture of the spellbinding black woman lying in his bed, exhausted after screaming and trying her best to kill him or at minimum beat him up. He really didn't know what made her drive all this way except vengeance or outrage—or was it love?

Queen's right, he thought. Except for Adam I don't know anything about love. Adam had no faults, was innocent, pure, easy to love. Had he lived, grown up to have flaws, human failings like deception, foolishness and ignorance, would he be so easy to adore or be even worthy of adoration? What kind of love is it that requires an angel and only an angel for its commitment?

Following that line of thought, Booker continued to chastise himself.

Bride probably knows more about love than I do. At least she's willing to figure it out, do something, risk something and take its measure. I risk nothing. I sit on a throne and identify signs of imperfection in others. I've been charmed by my own intelligence and the moral positions I've taken, along with the insolence that accompanies them. But where is the brilliant research, the enlightening books, the masterpieces I used to dream of producing? Nowhere. Instead I write notes about the shortcomings of others. Easy. So easy.
What about my own? I liked how she looked, fucked, and made no demands. The first major disagreement we had, and I was gone. My only judge being Adam who, as Queen said, is probably weary of being my burden and my cross.