Morning Is a Long Time Coming (11 page)

Doesn’t she know better than that? Why, he can never even hear the mention of the word sex in front of me. Sometimes I think it’s because he wants to keep me from something he knows I’ll hate—or will love so much that I’ll be in danger of becoming an alley cat too. But I don’t want to think about that anymore.

After chasing Mother away, he came back with his sharply honed ax. “If you go off to Paris, I’m going to do exactly what I told Rabbi Goodstein I was going to do. For me, you will be dead, and for the dead I sit
shiva.
You leave, and I swear to God I’ll recite the prayers of the dead over you.”

“I also heard”—here Edna Louise allowed herself a little Jacksonian pause—“that your poor mother cries herself to sleep every night.”

Now that was a bold-faced lie! My mother has never been known to keep her head aloft much beyond ten o’clock. “I hadn’t heard that one either,” I answered, grateful for at least the fact that not one of her questions connected up to Anton. “Well, what else have you heard?” I asked, thinking that France was, after all, a pretty good diversionary tactic.

“Oh ... nothing much ... only ...”

“Only what?” Was the connection now going to be made?

“Only about those Frenchmen.”

“What about them?”

Edna Louise narrowed the sidewalk space between us. “Well, I heard that they engage in unnatural sex.”

My mind was filled with all kinds of questions because probably the closest that I’ve ever come to even natural sex was in the movies. It happened just during that period when Clark Gable kissed Loretta Young so hard out there on the balcony of her New York penthouse that the scene had nowhere to go decently, so in the name of decency it just fuzzed out.

Now, trying to find out the answer to the question that was agitating my brain would mean that I’d have to inform the world (via Edna Louise) just how ignorant I was about sex. Still I knew myself well enough to know that, caught between the fires of this agitating kind of curiosity and a somewhat less than devastating embarrassment, I’d probably opt to quench the curiosity. And so I did, but in a way that was hopefully calculated to convey the impression that I knew practically everything there is to know about the subject, but perhaps, I could accommodate just a bare molecule more.

So I asked, “What specifically do you mean by unnatural sex?”

For one who had gained a reputation for having succulent nipples, Edna Louise began to look surprisingly uncomfortable. Finally her gaze seemed to re-focus as she said, “About the same thing, I reckon, that other people mean when they say”—her head moved toward my ear—ldquo;unnatural sex.”

As I tried to figure out how in this world I am ever going
to learn what it is that everybody else apparently already knows (but won’t tell), she again moved toward my ear. And after a long pause, she explained “I’ve heard that Frenchmen have sex almost at the drop of a hat
and
even if it’s in the daytime!”

“Really,” I answered, never before having realized that the Baptists placed a greater penalty on daytime sex. To some extent, I agree. I mean, who—who in their right mind would want to have sex in the daylight when your body can be looked at like just so much meat?

As interesting as Edna Louise’s thoughts were, they were not nearly so memorable as some of Ruth’s words from long ago. Maybe that’s why now on the very eve of my departure Ruth began resting heavy on my mind. My heart told me to trust its judgment. It was right to see her, but the two blocks down to Nigger Bottoms would be laden with emotional obstacles. Maybe more than I could afford.

The first obstacle was leaving my room. Leaving the relative security of my own room to pass maybe within a few feet of one or both of my parents is not simple. Because to pass them is to automatically provoke them. But because I needed to see Ruth more than I needed to protect myself, I opened the door of my bedroom and walked quickly and quietly through our (thankfully) empty living room and out the front door.

The second obstacle, though, was not to be avoided. Mrs. Cora Jackson, who was sitting out on her front porch, called out as I passed by, “Where you going all alone on such a warm evening, Patty?”

“To the drugstore. I have this cough. Maybe a cold coming on.”

“Drugstore’s been closed for better’n an hour.”

I felt like a caught criminal. “Oh, well,” I laughed a meaningless laugh. “Maybe he’ll be there. Doing something ...”

Then as I resumed my walking, her voice caught up with me. “Patty, you mean to tell me that nobody has talked you out of your trip yet?”

Without slowing my step, I called back. “No, ma’am, nobody has.”

Before Ruth saw me, I saw her just sitting out on her front porch trying to capture what puny little breezes there were with the help of a paper fan.

“Hello, Ruth,” I said, walking up the three front steps to sit on an aged ladder-backed chair next to her.

“How you doing, Honey Babe?” she asked while smiling just enough to let me know how glad she was that I was there, but not enough to let me know how unusual she considered my coming.

Honey Babe? Honey Babe. It seemed such a long time since Ruth had called me that. Such a long time since I had been both little and worthy enough to deserve being called that. Hearing those words, sitting there on the porch, I knew exactly what I was there for. Nothing less than for the whole world to stop, back up, and let me be, at least for a little while, five or six again.

Little enough so it would be okay if she put her arms around me and big enough so I could understand what it was she was saying when she said, “No matter what it is that folks say, they ain’t saying the truth when they say bad about you, Honey Babe. ’Cause you ain’t bad. The good Lord knows ... you ain’t bad.”

Lots of times I guess I’ve wanted to hear Ruth say that, but now with all the anguish this trip is causing my parents, I think I need to hear it. Why should I be ashamed of it? I’ve heard that Catholics of all ages stand in line for a little absolution. And aren’t Baptists always dropping to their knees at the sight of salvation?

Maybe I can accept that. Say that I can. There’s still one thing about my being here which isn’t at all acceptable. Ignoring Ruth for all this time and now sneaking (yes, sneaking!) around here because of my selfishness ... because of my need for her.

She gave herself quiet waves from her fully extended accordion-style fan. “Rain could sure do a heap of good for folks and their crops.”

“I know,” I said. “Everybody in town today has been complaining. Got a garden growing this year?”

“Claude planted tomatoes, okra, collards, and sweet corn and I planted the peonies, sweet Williams, and forget-me-nots.”

“How come you’re not growing gardenias? I remember you used to sometimes wear them pinned to your dress ... always said they made the world smell sweet.”

“’Cause gardenias are perennials so they don’t require no annual planting by me.” Then Ruth looked me over closely and smiled. “You done got yourself one of the best memories I ever did see.”

I laughed. “There’s nothing very special about my memory. You just happen to like it ’cause it’s your words that I tend to remember.”

“That’s sure enough right.” Ruth laughed appreciatively as though it hadn’t been her vanity, but somebody else’s
that had just been exposed. After a thoughtful silence, she spoke again. “I hears that you is soon going overseas.”

“Guess everybody has heard that. My train leaves for New York tomorrow morning at a quarter to seven and on Thursday, I sail for France.”

“Lord-dy! I hopes you finds what you has so long been looking for. I hopes the Bible makes good its promises.”

“Its promises?”

“Why, right there in the Psalms where it says: ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy ... joy cometh in the morning.’ ”

I felt a rush of pain for the morning that had been so long in coming. And even more for the sorrows that had been so long in going. “Thank you for wishing me that. And you know, Ruth, that you have given me so much, and I ... I have given you so little. And I wish that weren’t true.”

“Awl ... I have cast my bread upon the waters and I have found it after many a day.”

“What was it you found, Ruth?”

With one snap, the extended fan folded as compactly as a ruler and there on the spine of the fan, I was able to read the print:
Wiggins Funeral Home.

“What I tried to give you,” she said, “you done paid back with a heap more interest than they pay down at the Rice County Bank.”

“Did I?” I asked, while already trying to commit myself to Ruth’s more generous vision of me.

“As long as you live, Patty Babe, something of Ruth will live on too, ’cause, you know, that you is part me.”

I found myself nodding in the twilight.

She went on talking and I was grateful that talk wasn’t
required of me because I strongly suspected that my voice wasn’t up to verbalizing.

“For a spell, even I didn’t know how it was. Miz Bergen, I reckon she was the first to know. I knowed for sure she was the first to bring it to my attention. Once, long before you ever started to school, your ma was all fired up over some something you done did wrong and I tried to help you out. And that’s when she said it to me. Looking straight at me, she said, ‘Please stop thinking that you’re the mother, Ruth, because you ain’t. I’m the mother and you ... you’re only the maid.’

“ ‘Reckon I don’t never need no remind of that, Miz Bergen,’ I told her, but truth is, I knowed that I did. After that, I tried doing for you only what I was paid to do. You ate good nourishing meals every day at the same hour. Your clothes were washed and ironed to a fare-thee-well, while I all the time told myself that this was the way it oughta be. Miz Bergen—she was right ’cause it ain’t one bit natural to love somebody else’s child as much as I loved you.

“Well, it wasn’t much more’n a week, maybe two, later that something done come along to change all that. You came to the breakfast table looking for the world like you was going to continue your sleeping right there.

“Your pa looked up from his newspaper to say something to you—to this day I don’t know what it was—but I heard your answer clear enough. It was, ‘Uh uh ... uh uh,’ and with my own eyes, I seen him light out of his chair like his tail was afire to give you a whack across your face that was never meant for no child. No, sir! It was never meant for no child.”

Her great mulatto head dropped against the back of her
wicker rocking chair and her eyes closed, more than closed. They seemed tightened as though resisting something as unrelenting as the direct rays of the sun. That’s the way it seemed, only at this time there was no sun, only twilight.

For the first time, I noticed how much noise the squeaks and creaks of the floorboards made under the weight of her rocking chair, and the next thing I noticed was how very quiet everything really became as soon as Ruth gave up talking.

I began to wonder about her. At her age, this kind of talk coming at the end of a working day would wear an old lady out. Maybe that’s why she stopped talking, so that I would whisper goodbye and then quickly and silently leave her be.

With her eyes closed, I allowed myself another more leisurely look at her face. The day’s remaining light highlighted those rounded cheekbones and I thought now, as I have so often thought in the past, how very beautiful she is.

I stood up, reached down, and for a few moments touched the back of her hand. “Goodbye, Ruth,” I said, thinking how that didn’t even begin to express it. With all the reading I’ve done—the great poets, novelists, and three progressively difficult dictionaries—shouldn’t I have something better than words so inadequate that they’re barely worth the saying? Goodbye, Ruth. Pass the salt. How do you do. The grass is green. Inadequate!

She opened her eyes. I watched them register first surprise and then disappointment. “Sit for a spell longer, if you can spare the time.”

I felt enormously pleased that she still wanted me and relieved that for at least a little while longer I didn’t have
to go back home, but could stay here in Nigger Bottoms with her. That’s what I felt, but that wasn’t anywhere near what I heard myself answer: “Well, I guess I could spare a little more time,” I told her.

Once again I thought about the inadequacy of my words, and then it came to me that maybe my words were taking a bum rap. There’s nothing wrong with my instrument—I use the language as well, probably better than most everybody else from around these parts. So the poets, the novelists, and maybe not even Noah Webster failed me.

I may have failed myself, though. I know there’s a real inadequacy, but I don’t think it’s because I lack words, but because I lack courage. Enough courage to tell this old Negro woman that I love her.

Ruth had continued talking. Some of it I may have missed, but it had to do with that slap my father gave me and how, once he and my mother had left for the store, she found me missing.

“I looked for you high and I looked for you low. The house, the garage, the field. And every single place I could think to call, I’d call, asking if you’d done wandered down there and I had to listen to everybody tell me the same thing: We ain’t seen no hide nor hair of Patty.

“Well, noontime came and noontime went and I had plum run out of places to look so I set myself down on the back steps and told myself that I ain’t got no choice in this world, but to call your daddy. Looked like nothing less than a search party organized by the sheriff of the county was going to find you. Then it came into my head! The good Lord must have put it into my head that there was one last place needed looking.

“So fat old Ruth went around to the side of the house, bent down at that little wood door opening to the crawl space between the house and the bare ground and just a-called out, ‘Honey Babe ... oh, Honey Babe, is you is or is you ain’t in there?’

“Well, sir, it was too dark for seeing and there was no-nothing for hearing, but just the same it was still growing in my head, growing stronger than ever that you was there. Just a-lying there on the hard dirt ground. So I sat down at the opening and began singing to the darkness, ‘I looked over Jordan ... And what did I see-e ... A-coming for to car-ry me home ...’