Lady (36 page)

"You know I limp a little. I'd had a -- fall, and my foot had caught under me somehow, and broken, and Dr. Forbes set it badly. He was the worst doctor! The ankle never healed properly. He said I'd walk with a cane for the rest of my life, but I bet him I wouldn't. And I haven't -- until now.

"After that it was all up with the Harleighs. They washed their hands of me. Daddy Harleigh was ill by that time, his final illness, but it wasn't until after he'd died that I found out that certain papers had been signed, first an agreement with my mother concerning financial arrangements, and another, entailing his entire estate in Edward's name, and stating that neither he nor I might inherit unless we lived in a 'suitably chosen property' in Pequot Landing for the remainder of our lives. That property, of course, was the house on the Green, which the old man had always coveted.

"But after my fall, things had gone badly with me. Something had happened inside my head. I'd get dizzy spells and have blackouts. I couldn't remember things, and I'd imagine I was seeing things that weren't there. I cried a lot -- never could stop crying, for weeks. Then one day I woke up and couldn't speak. Literally. Not a word.

"Miss Berry took over again. She arranged for me to go South, to Memphis. Not Memphis, Tennessee, but Memphis, Virginia. I couldn't talk, but I could think, and I thought my life was over. But it was only the beginning. I met Jesse Griffin."

She pronounced the name with a firm downward inflection at the end, as if drawing her story to a conclusion, and for some moments I thought she wasn't going to continue, but I quickly saw that she was merely coming to the second part of her tale: Jesse, the sequel to Edward. I wanted to go back over what she had already told me. I felt there were so many missing parts, things I didn't understand, but I waited until she spoke again. And now the scene shifted from the small Northern town of Pequot Landing to the smaller Southern one of Memphis, to a place called Broadmoor, which was the only reason for the existence of the town. Broadmoor was an expensive rest home and sanitarium, catering to people with drinking problems, or mental trouble, or those who needed to recuperate from surgery. Upon arriving, Lady found the doctors curiously uninterested, and only conventionally attentive. She had made her mind up that she would never get well, that she was just another patient there, and that the best medical advice to be found had dismissed the case as hopeless. It was generally assumed that she would never speak again. But, unable to speak, and realizing her plight, she grew infuriated. She wanted to speak, wanted someone to give her the key, to help her release the words.

But the doctors had not reckoned with a West Indian black named Jesse Griffin. The son of a poor Barbadian fisherman, his father had recognized his potential, and the family was made to save and contribute to an educational fund for him. Jesse, knowing what a toll this took, wanted to become well educated, to get on in life, and help his family in return. He'd won the King's award for scholarship, and could have gone to England to study, but instead he chose America. But when he received his degree from Howard University, in Washington, he couldn't find the sort of employment he sought; hence he had taken a job as orderly at Broadmoor. And it was as he wheeled Lady's chair around the gardens that, little by little, he gained her confidence and, by patient instruction, got her to begin speaking again; first only sounds, then words, then sentences. It was a long, grueling task which the black man had set for himself, but by the very strength of his personality he gradually elicited the words from her.

Having been raised in the North, Lady was shocked at the treatment of Southern Negroes, that there were segregated bars, segregated stores, segregated parts of trains and buses. She was quick to realize that the man who was spending endless hours encouraging her to speak again was himself muffled, not by any fall, but by his fellow-man. Interest bred sympathy, sympathy bred love, and love bred an affair. They became lovers.

But there was a villain in the piece. He was called -- and the way Lady said the name, it was with more ridicule than contempt, as we used to say Gert
Flag
ler haw haw -- Eotis Thorne, pronouncing the E with a Y-sound -- "Eee-yotis." And indeed she did laugh, though as she said the name and related the next part of the story, there seemed to me little reason for amusement. Eotis Thorne, also a Negro, worked in a different section at Broadmoor and, like Jesse, he too had graduated from Howard University. But, unlike Jesse, Eotis Thorne hated white people. "Hated them -- hated me. He'd follow us wherever we went -- I was out of my wheelchair by then -- and he spied on us. And he used that dreadful word every chance he got."

"Which word . . . ?"

"'Nigger.'" I thought her smile the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. There was forgiveness in it, and memory forestalled, and all the compassion a man might seek. It lighted her face, and I felt tears under my lids. "Not to worry, not to fret, darling. Eotis Thome was a character out of Faulkner. Eventually he discovered that I was helping Jesse financially -- I'd arranged through the bank to have some money transferred and it went to his daddy in Barbados. Eotis intercepted one of the bank letters. I was urging Jesse to go on with his education; he'd gotten almost through premedical studies when he graduated, but he felt he couldn't take the time to finish his full medical. He needed to send money to his family.

"I was better -- well enough to go home, really -- but I couldn't bear the thought of being parted from him, nor he from me. His sister had come from the island, and I'd moved into a little bungalow in the town, and Elthea came to keep house for me. She'd lost her husband, he drowned at sea, and we became friends. It was the happiest year of my life. I used to talk to her about Jesse; she knew, of course, that I loved him. I couldn't divorce Edward -- it was unheard of. I was a Catholic, remember. Not only that, Edward was a serviceman, and patriots did not divorce the men overseas. Nor would Daddy Harleigh ever have countenanced such a thing.

"Then I got a letter saying that Edward had been gassed, and as soon as he had recuperated he was being brought home. So it came time for me to go back as well. By then I could walk and talk, and there was no reason to stay on, except for Jesse. He was heartbroken, but he'd never let me know it.

"Just before he came to drive me to the station, I had a visitor. It was Eotis Thorne. He said he knew who I was, and where I came from, and that he wanted money from me, or he would expose me and Jesse. He'd compiled a sort of dossier, a complete record of our times together, right down to the minute. I agreed that when I got home I would send him a thousand dollars. This seemed to satisfy him.

"So I went home again. Edward came back. I didn't want to face him at the station, but there was no help for it. The newspapers would be there, there were to be speeches -- I didn't think my legs would support me when he got down off the train. I couldn't bear to look at him. No sooner were we back at the house than I realized there was no help for anything. He was worse than before, mean and sardonic, full of sly tricks and innuendo; and worse, Daddy Harleigh insisted we go away, a sort of second honeymoon, and he'd arranged a trip to Sea Island, Georgia.

"I could scarcely breathe when we went through Washington; Jesse seemed so near to me. I wrote him from Sea Island, saying I must see him again. On the way home we stopped off in Washington. I told Edward I wanted to see some Turner paintings at the National Gallery and he let me go. I'd arranged to meet Jesse in a drugstore around the corner. I told him how unhappy I was, and how much I needed him. He asked me to run away with him then and there, go back to his island, or somewhere in the Caribbean. I should have. But I couldn't. We had no money, nothing. I started to cry. Jesse leaned across the sugar bowl and took my hands, both my hands in his. There was a notions counter, with baby bottles and things. I saw Edward standing there, watching. He'd followed me."

He took her back to the hotel and got the truth from her. He said filthy things to her, beat her. She asked him to let her go. Enraged, he said he was taking her home and would do with her what such women should have done to them. He had always found her an object for his lust, and he would use her any way he chose. She realized he could never tell anyone; he would never besmirch his father's name. He brought her home and locked her up. This time it was to be for good. She was to be a prisoner in the house. He moved his things to another room, and while she stayed upstairs, he was down, drinking. He hardly went out. Once he told her if she really wanted to leave, she could kill him. He would enjoy that, he said.

She continued: "Daddy Harleigh died, leaving Edward his heir, as long as he remained in the house on the Green. That winter I came down with influenza. There was a terrible epidemic going around, and many people were dying. Miss Berry came to the rescue again. While I was sick, Edward took himself off to New York. I don't remember much of what happened then except I was terribly sick. I had a high fever and bad dreams, I was raging in my sleep. I talked a lot to Jesse, or about him; Miss Berry tried to calm me and brought in Dr. Brainard. She wouldn't have Dr. Forbes again. I went into crisis, and they didn't hold much hope. Then Edward came home again and --" She broke off, easing her eyelids with her fingertips, then went on.

"It was Edward who died. I got well, and he got sick. Dr. Forbes, who was still Edward's doctor, had Miss Berry giving him some sort of balsam treatments which didn't do any good. Edward's lungs were feeble after his gas attack in the Argonne Forest, and he had no resistance.

"He died. And I was free at last. I should have left Pequot then, there was nothing to keep me. When Mrs. Harleigh died, the family were all gone, but there was the money. Daddy Harleigh's will was valid, and as long as I stayed in the house I inherited everything. And that was that."

More or less. There had been the awful winter when she was in the house alone, when Mrs. Sparrow had gone to her and she had been polite but had adamantly refused any help. By March she knew what she was going to do. In April she announced she was looking for new help. Jesse and Elthea arrived at the end of the month, having replied to Lady's "advertisement," bringing "references from their former employer."

"I had no idea that Elthea would come, too, but she insisted. Said she'd gotten used to me, and it wouldn't do for her to look for another place, and besides Jesse was her brother. Out there, in the world, there would be race problems all the time. Here at home I was safe, we were all safe, from the world. Or so I thought.

"So I began a new life where I had ended the old one. Mama was dead by then, and I didn't have to worry about her finding out anything. It all seemed so simple. I had known I'd never be able to give up the money, the house -- all the good things. Since the money depended on my staying there, it seemed simpler just to live where I was. It was Jesse's idea, really. I thought we would go to the island, but there had been a drought, with no crops for three years; there was no flour, the cattle died, his family was starving. Their sails wore out, there was no way to buy new canvas or to fix the boats. His brother's children had no clothes, the roof leaked during the rainy season, there were colds and illnesses. Jesse's father got worse, and needed medical attention. I was able to help them all, you see, with the Harleigh money.

"So Jesse and Elthea felt that they had come into my debt, and staying with me was their way of paying it off. I didn't want them to -- just loving Jesse was enough. But we all stayed. And it worked, most of the time. I said Elthea must have a downstairs room, but no, she wanted to sleep up in the attic, she said she was used to attics." (I recalled the bed with the sag in the middle; where Elthea had slept, alone.) "It became a kind of game, Jesse in his livery, driving me out in the Minerva. We'd talk back and forth through the tube, laughing and joking, and nobody suspecting a thing.

"Then there was the shrine, as Ruthie Sparrow always called it. You must know, it made Jesse very angry for me to put those things out on the table. I told him it was for show -- for when people would come in, and I would appear the grieving widow. But what he didn't know then was that Edward had come back. At least I thought he had. I imagined I'd see him, watching us, laughing at us, waiting -- all the time waiting. At first I tried not to let anybody know -- I'd just go upstairs to our room and pull the shades, thinking I could get away from him that way, but he was there. He was everywhere. After a time it seemed as if I'd never come down again. I wanted to, but I couldn't make myself. Jesse never tried to persuade me, he seemed to understand about that part of it, and he'd just wait until I'd come out of it, but then there'd be whole patches I couldn't remember. It was like a form of amnesia. By that time I knew people were talking about me, so I just let them, thinking it might keep them from talking about something worse. And then, after a time, everything would be all right again, and when I felt safe, I would come down. And there Edward would be on the gate-leg table, and I kept him there to remind myself. It was foolish, I know, but I had it in my head and couldn't get it out. I hated myself for doing it -- but it was a form of expiation, I suppose. Jesse kept telling me it was wrong, and to put the things away -- but I couldn't They stayed on the table until the party -- my birthday party. Jesse just wouldn't stand for it any longer, he said I absolutely had to put the photographs away." (And finally I realized that I had been wrong in assuming that it was Colonel Blatchley who had insisted that the things be removed.) "So I did. Then we had that dreadful fight. I'd given in, finally, but somehow it all seemed too late. And so many years had gone by. I -- I don't know what I thought, or why we even had a fight. I know I said terrible things to him.

"I was always afraid, you see. Afraid that -- wanting Jesse, and having him, was too much to ask, that we'd paid too high a price. Sometimes I thought about what would happen if people found out the truth, and sometimes I didn't care at all -- it just didn't seem important. There was a place at the seashore -- remember the Manor House Inn? -- and the man who owned the hotel came into Jesse's room, thinking no one was there. I'd been going over some accounts, and was lying on the bed resting. Jesse had his shirt off. You can imagine what Mr. Stevenson thought. It was easy enough to leave, but when I got home I was frightened again.