The phone rang. Sapphire got out of her chair reluctantly and went into the kitchen to answer it.
I hated Etta Mae right then. I hated her for giving in, for knuckling under to her father. I hated to think what it had been like for Sammy, growing up in that atmosphere.
In a few moments, Sapphire came back. She didn’t sit down. She just stood in the little archway between the dining room and the living room.
“Who was it?” asked Etta Mae, finally.
Sapphire smiled then, a bitter smile. “I was just going to ask you that. Or maybe I should ask Laurie.”
The import of her words hit me, and time congealed around me. The moments felt like molasses in the air. Time felt like something I couldn’t move through. Then all of a sudden, everything sped up. I had been hating Etta Mae for bringing up Sammy in an atmosphere of oppression and shame. This poor woman, who had done her best, and raised the fine, free woman that Sammy had grown into.
And against Sammy’s wishes, I’d brought the threat of physical danger right here, into the home of these two nice old ladies.
“Who was it?” Etta Mae repeated.
“The lousy coward didn’t leave his name,” said Sapphire, with a calm dignity.
I couldn’t wait any more. “What did he say?” I demanded.
“He said...” she began, then walked over to her chair and sat down before she went on. “He said— Now let me try to get this right. I believe he said this, the very best I remember—‘Nigger bitch, you listen up. This is your last chance. One more mistake and you won’t be around to make any more. Same thing with that filthy white whore you got in your house. You send her packing back to that shit-hole of a city where she comes from. You understand me, bitch? Last chance, nigger bitch.’ Then he hung up. That was the gist of it, although I may have gotten a word or two wrong. And, of course, I am incapable of imitating effectively the ignorant, low- down, white trash accent in which he spoke.”
Etta Mae and I started to speak at the same time, then we both stopped. We both motioned for the other to go ahead.
Sapphire ignored us. “This is about Elijah,” she announced. “He’s still doing it. He caused trouble from the first moment he walked into this house. Now he’s been dead all these years and he’s still messing things up.” She looked at me. “Samantha wants to know the truth about her father, but she doesn’t dare ask us herself. She knew we never wanted to talk about it.”
Her voice rose. “Hell, yes, we avoided that subject. The man who ruined our lives.” She stopped, and started again, her voice quieter, under control. “But it wasn’t right of us. If we’d told the child everything she needed to know, she wouldn’t have needed to send Laurie down here, poking around in a mess she’s got no way of understanding. She wouldn’t have stirred up trouble that’s been sleeping for along time. We wouldn’t be getting nasty phone calls. So I’m gonna tell the truth, soon as I get us some glasses of iced tea.”
Sapphire got up and went back in the kitchen, taking the coffee cups with her.
Etta Mae turned to me and spoke in a considered tone. “I do believe I need a cigarette. I’m sure you don’t smoke, Laurie, but would you mind if Sapphire and I indulge ourselves? I do feel the need just now, what with this particular conversation ahead of us.”
I had no objection, of course. Live and let, that’s my motto. But I knew it would have given Sammy fits to see anyone, let alone her loved ones, recklessly risk their health like that. Etta Mae got ashtrays from behind a platter on the highest shelf of the hutch. She went back to her bedroom and came back with a pack of Marlboros.
Sapphire put down glasses of iced tea on coasters in front of us, along with a plate of cookies. Etta Mae passed her the pack of cigarettes, still speaking to me in that polite, but distant way. “We never smoke in company, Laurie. This is an exception.”
Sapphire laughed. “Until Daddy died, we had to sneak out back in the woods to smoke.”
Etta Mae loosened up a bit then. “Lord, yes. Daddy agreed with Preacher Thompson. ‘A woman who’d smoke would do anything,’ that’s what the two of them used to say.”
I laughed too. “Our preacher said the same thing. So Momma would smoke only when Daddy wasn’t home. We’d have to hurry around, opening windows and turning on fans, right before Daddy was due back.”
Etta Mae nodded, smiling. A real connection between us had been established: we knew how it was to be the daughters of a certain kind of man.
Sapphire broke into our sisterhood suddenly. “Did Samantha ever tell you about her sister? About Clara?”
Etta Mae looked stricken.
I answered, “Yes, she did. A little. The fact of her. That she died a few years ago.”
“She didn’t tell you that Clara bled to death on a city street? She was stabbed. By a john, most likely. She was a crack whore. Her own babies both died of AIDS. She would have died that way herself, soon, anyway.”
Again time thickened on me. “Sammy didn’t tell me that. She just told me she’d had a sister, Clara, who died young. I never asked for details.” As I spoke, I was wondering at my own willful blindness. I hadn’t thought to ask why, or when, or how, or to consider what effect her sister’s death might have had on Sammy. I had been a lily of the field, neither spinning nor toiling, just planted there in Sammy’s graces, enjoying myself. And once again I said to myself, “A hell of a detective you are.”
“Clara wasn’t really Samantha’s sister,” said Sapphire.
I just looked at her. Waiting for her to go on. Waiting to hear what else I’d overlooked, refused to see.
“Clara was her cousin. Clara was, is, my child.”
“Oh,” I said, brilliantly.
Etta Mae put her hand on her sister’s arm. “You don’t have to go into all this. We can just tell her about Elijah, and leave it at that.”
“I am telling her about Elijah,” Sapphire snapped.
Etta Mae jerked her hand back as if she had been stung. She began to cry, quietly.
“We have never once spoken about this,” Sapphire continued, in a calmer voice. “Not once. We didn’t need to. Etta Mae ran off with her shining knight in August and seven months later, I gave birth to Clara. Wasn’t anything to say. Nothing to ask. Daddy and Etta Mae knew who it had to be. Elijah, you can bet he knew.”
I looked from one sister to the other, unsure what to say.
“By then, Etta Mae knew exactly what she’d married into, anyway. I’m sure she had figured out why her lover-boy had been in such a hurry to get her away and marry her. Why he couldn’t wait a little while, and have Daddy find out that he’d gotten me in the family way. Daddy would have made him marry me, and Etta Mae was the pretty one.”
I looked at her, wondering if it was possible that one had been considered prettier than the other. To me, they looked alike, two bookends.
Sapphire sighed. “I went away to relatives in Mississippi to have my Clara. Left her there. Came back to take care of Daddy. Folks said, ‘Your poor daddy. What you girls have put him through. You should go do for that man.’ As if I hadn’t been through something myself. I left Clara with my aunt, Daddy’s sister, and I came back home. To do for him. To make it up to him. It wasn’t that long until Etta Mae was back here with little Samantha. We sent for Clara, and called her Etta Mae’s oldest. We made their birthdays almost a year apart when it was more like six months. We never discussed it, mind you, we just started doing it. Of course, there were those who knew the truth. People aren’t blind, you better believe that. But the years go by, and you say a thing enough, and people lose interest in what the truth really was. It made Daddy feel better to talk about his widowed daughter and her two girls, and his other daughter, the maiden aunt.
“We never really meant to lie to Samantha and Clara. It was kind of like Santa Claus, you know. A nice story for when they were little, but when they got old enough, why we thought they’d notice the holes in the story and start asking questions. But, you know, Samantha never did. Finally, we figured she didn’t want to know. Smart as a whip, that girl, but if she still wants to believe in Santa Claus, what could we do? That’s what I thought. But now I know what we should have done.”
Etta Mae had been sitting so quiet through all this that I was startled when she broke in. “What we should have done! I did the best I could! I don’t need you telling me now that I should have done this, or I should have done that! There were a lot of true stories that I never told Samantha. Why should she have been burdened with all this? I wanted her to be strong enough and brave enough to make herself a life. And I was right. Look how far she’s gone, look at what she’s done! If I’d told her the truth about her chances in life, she might have given up before she ever started.”
Sapphire turned and stared at her. “And if we’d told the truth about a black girl’s chances in life, maybe Clara would have been more careful. Maybe she wouldn’t have ended up in the street with her blood running out of her. My God, with strangers just walking around her! And her dying, alone there, with no one who loved her to hold her hand.”
We sat there in that little room. Etta Mae was crying quietly. Sapphire seemed filled with rage and could barely sit still. She kept shifting in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs, glaring first at me, then Etta Mae.
There was a buzzing, or maybe a rumbling kind of noise, distracting me. I thought it was the air conditioning again. I almost said something to Sapphire, but I stopped. Then I almost said something to Etta Mae, but I couldn’t. This was for the two sisters, and for Sammy, to work out. I had no part in it.
I was tired and the sound of the air conditioner was really getting on my nerves. I wondered if Etta Mae and Sapphire would take me to a room where I could shut the door, open the window, climb into bed and then lie there, with no noises, no voices, just the sounds of the peaceful country night.
I looked over at Etta Mae. She had a strange expression on her face. Sapphire got up out of her chair. First she flicked off the over-head light. Then she snapped off the lamp on the side table. She walked over and stood beside the window, careful not to stand in front of it. She picked up the edge of the curtain and looked out.
The sounds grew louder, then louder still, and then began to fade. There was a loud squeal of tires, and then the sound of an engine gunning. The buzzing grew louder again.
Someone was driving a loud, noisy vehicle up and down the lonely street outside the house. Sapphire dropped the edge of the curtain. “It’s a pick-up truck. Etta Mae, where’s Daddy’s gun?”
Now, you got to believe me when I tell you that guns make me very nervous. There was this sweet little dyke I met once, cocky and arrogant and boyish, with the most charming little tattoos on her wrists, her ankles, and one on that sweet place in the back of her neck, just visible under the wispy ends of her short silky hair. But the charm evaporated for me when she stood beside my bed, pulled off her black leather vest, and I saw the gun inked into her flesh, just over her heart.
Apparently, though, Sapphire and Etta Mae felt differently about the subject. When they came back down the hall, Sapphire was carrying a rifle.
The truck was still tearing up the road, back and forth in front of the house.
“I should just leave,” I offered.
“No, you’re not,” said Sapphire. “Not now. Not with them out there. Don’t worry, I have a plan. Just stay away from that window in the mean time.”
“Let’s move back to the kitchen table,” said Etta Mae. The tone was more of an order than a request. She softened it by saying, “I thought we could pass the time by playing Monopoly.”
I didn’t move. “Don’t you think we should call the police?” I asked, while Sapphire set up a Monopoly board. The two sisters were seated at the table, smoking fiercely.
Sapphire chuckled. “I already did. I called the sheriff’s wife. Says he’s out fox hunting. Says she’ll try to find him. I don’t want to talk to his deputies.” She took a long, graceful drag on her cigarette, then continued. “They’re all idiots and what I have to say, I have to say to the sheriff. Believe me, when he hears it, he’ll take care of those creeps out there.” She waved her cigarette towards the window. “Don’t get me wrong. We’ve got friends we can call—black and white—and if we called them, they’d be here before you could blink twice and spit. But I think we can settle this by ourselves.” She put down her cigarette and started counting out the money.
“I don’t mind trouble in the end, if that’s what it comes to. But I’m not dying to start any, if it doesn’t have to be that way.”
She gently dabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and stood up. “I do believe we could use a drink, what do you say, ladies?” Without waiting for an answer, she headed back into the kitchen.
She came back with three cans of beer and three glasses. “Now, look here what I found. I keep these around for the man who does our lawn work. You know how a man who’s been working out in the heat appreciates a cold beer.”
Etta Mae said, “No need for tall tales, Sapphire. I have an intuition that Laurie won’t think any less of us if we own up to taking an occasional sip of beer now and then.”
I agreed that I would not think less of the sisters, and started right in on my can. They chose me banker, and the game commenced.
While we played, I talked. I told them everything. Why I had come, everything that had happened so far, every little detail I’d learned. I even told them about Forrest Miller, and how I’d run into him at the Klan rally, and then gotten some Klansmen pissed off, so that now I couldn’t tell who was chasing me or why. We kept playing, moving around our silly little silver-colored pieces, getting in and out of jail. Collecting two hundred dollars every time we passed Go. We were all listening to the truck outside, but we didn’t mention it. I did flinch once. The roaring sound got so loud that I thought the truck was going to bust right through the front wall. Etta Mae saw me, and reached over and patted my hand. “They’re just trying to scare us. That’s all.”
Sapphire looked up from where she was rearranging all the hotels she had on Boardwalk. “Well, they are succeeding in that,” she said drily.
“So what is it?” I finally demanded, unable to wonder any longer. “What is it that you know that they don’t want told? What is the deep dark secret? Do you know what really happened to your husband, Etta Mae?”
I thought I might have gone too far. She was clearly nervous, her eyes darted like hunted birds. She shook her head no, but didn’t say anything.
Instead, Sapphire answered. “I’ll tell you how much I’ve guessed. He got into trouble. He did something foolish and he got himself killed. If it were anyone but Elijah, I’d say it could be anything. Maybe some white man didn’t like the way he tipped his hat. But knowing what I do about Elijah, I always figured it was a woman.”
Etta Mae nodded, her eyes down. She was fiddling with her little metal top hat, turning it over and over in her hands.
Sapphire went on. “One thing worried me all these years, though. If he got involved with a white woman, or even if he just said something to a white woman, or even if somebody thought he might have said something, they would have lynched him in a big to-do. The whole purpose would be to make sure all the uppity niggers knew about it. A warning.” She spat out the words like they stung her mouth, then paused, lit another cigarette. “They murdered him all right, but quiet like. Just left his body in a river. Not hanging in a tree, no burning cross. So this is what I always figured. He did something that was so stupid they killed him for it, but whatever it was also reflected so shamefully on the white folks that they kept it quiet.”
In the silence after Sapphire’s question, I strained to hear sounds of a motor outside. Nothing. Maybe whoever it was had gone. Or maybe they had parked the truck and were sneaking around the house right now. Maybe they were going to murder us all.
Etta Mae spoke into the silence. She put down the top hat, and her voice was clear and firm. “It was a woman. A girl, really. A high school child. Not any older than you were, Sapphire, when he started messing with you. White girl. Her family had packed her off to a mental hospital once before, for whoring with the Mexican workers in her father’s orange groves. Just lay right down in the sand between a row of trees and took them all on, one after the other.
“So when her daddy caught wind of her and Elijah, he wanted the situation taken care of. But not advertised, with a burning cross, or Elijah’s body found hanging from a tree. In the end, they dumped his body in the river so the papers would say he drowned. The girl was so easy, you see.” Here she laughed, a hard, sharp humorless bark. “Any other girl or woman in town, they would of called it rape. But even Forrest Miller couldn’t have claimed that anyone, even a nigger boy, raped Billie Miller. Her name was Belinda, but everyone called her Billie. Not a soul would have believed she’d been raped.”
We sat in silence. When she’d said Forrest’s name, I had felt a shock go through me. Forrest had been involved in Elijah’s death. And so had Susan’s sister, Billie. The silver-framed picture of her at the Miller’s flashed into my head. I could hear Susan’s voice, across the years, saying, “That’s my sister. She’s away, where she can get special care. Momma goes to visit her.” And I had thought that it was one of those family embarrassments, that she was retarded or maybe just feeble-minded. So I hadn’t asked anymore. I hadn’t even wondered how Susan felt having a sister put away in a home somewhere. Finally I managed to ask, “What happened to her? What happened to Billie Miller?”
Etta Mae looked me straight in the eye. “Packed her right back to the looney bin. Tassahatchee Mental Institute. She’s probably there still.”
“The slut,” hissed Sapphire.
“Don’t blame her,” snapped Etta. “That poor child must have been out of her mind. I was surprised her father didn’t kill her, too. Old Elijah, though, he was strutting around his last few weeks. He must have thought he was something, slipping it to her like that. I bet he didn’t even see what was coming. More dick than brains. That child surely knew what was going to happen to her in the end. I think that must have been what she wanted. I think she wanted to get away from her father’s house that bad.”
“How did you come to know so much about this girl?” asked Sapphire.
Etta’s face tightened, and she looked away. “I worked in the Miller house.”
Sapphire was shocked. ‘You cleaned house? Sweet Lord of Mercy, it’s a good thing Daddy died never knowing that. ‘I didn’t raise my girls to scrub white folks’ toilets,’ how many times did he say that?”
Quiet tears ran down Etta Mae’s face.
“I’m sorry,” said Sapphire, helpless sadness in her voice. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you feel any worse.”
“I did what I had to,” said Etta Mae, ignoring the tears. “Men came calling for me before Elijah. Daddy didn’t think they were good enough for me. Men who worked with their hands. He’d raised his daughters for something better, that’s what he said. But for what? I had a college degree, but there weren’t any teaching jobs around here. He wouldn’t let me go North. What was I to do?
“And even Daddy was fooled by Elijah’s smooth ways and nice clothes at first. About the time Daddy was starting to see through him, Elijah talked me into running away to marry him. Problem was, Elijah underestimated Daddy. Didn’t dream he’d abandon me completely, refuse to send us a cent. Not even a wedding gift. So when Elijah couldn’t find any work ‘befitting his situation in the community,’ what was I to do? I took what work I could find to feed us both.”
We sat in the silence, thinking about that for awhile. Then Sapphire, said, gently, “Well, it’s good we are finally talking. Things are in the open now. In all these long years, I’ve never once been able to poke you in the side with my elbow and say, ‘My, wasn’t that Elijah a fine companion in the sack.’ For all his faults, he had that one fine quality. That was the best thing that ever happened to me, and, until now, we’ve never been able to share it.” She sat back in her chair, a smile on her face. Boy, did I like her just then.
“The best thing that ever happened to you! Why, Sapphire! He left you in trouble. He ruined your life.”
“It was worth it,” Sapphire insisted.
“A roll in the hay with Elijah was worth it! Come on, Sapphire, he just wasn’t that good. What he had in confidence, he lacked in technique. He may have been cocky, but that isn’t the same thing as being good with his cock!”
Sapphire’s smile faded. She sat up, grasped the edge of the table with both hands. “How would you know?”
“You don’t think Elijah is the only man I’ve ever had, do you, Sapphire?”
“What do you mean?” Sapphire asked sharply.
“You want me to say it right out loud, Sapphire? Okay, here goes. I’ve had others, and I’ve had better.” She spoke defiantly, proudly. This was something that she’d needed to say for a long time. But the moment she finished speaking, her resolve crumbled some and she collapsed a bit.
Sapphire was obviously flabbergasted. “What? You’ve kept this from me all these years, Etta Mae, acted and pretended and flat out lied that you were a respectable lady?”
I’d been just sitting there, enjoying the show for quite a while by then. I had the feeling that without an audience, without me there, they never would have been telling each other these things.
“Well, I don’t have to tell you, you know. Some things a lady keeps to herself,” said Etta with dignity.
“At least tell me this. Tell me you’re referring to things that happened a long time ago. That I can understand. When I succumbed, I was young and foolish, and I thought I was in love with Elijah. And then you were an awful young widow. I can understand you might have felt the need for a man’s company. Just tell me that you’re not running around with men behind my back at your age!”
Etta Mae’s smile then was a bit self-satisfied. “Let me just tell you that there’s something Wallace Henry appreciates more than a cold beer on a hot day. You don’t really think he does such a careful job pruning the shrubs because of the measly little amount you pay him every week, do you?”
Sapphire was speechless at first, then recovered just long enough to gasp, “You slut,” and collapsed back in her chair.
I felt that it was time for intervention. “Please, I think we have to get back to the subject here. It’s getting late and out there,” I pointed to the window, “are some people who don’t mean us well. We’re in this together and we’ve got to get organized here.”
I turned to Etta Mae. “It’s time to stop fooling around and tell me everything you know about Elijah’s death. Why you think it has something to do with those thugs driving up and down the street out there.”
To my surprise, she told me. “I could tell what was going on, even though Elijah probably thought he was doing a fine job of hiding it. Meanwhile, Billie was doing everything she could to make sure her folks knew. They were meeting in orange groves, down by the beach, out at Deadman’s Creek.
“If I knew what was going on, you can be sure that Forrest knew. He’d been watching Billie like a hawk ever since she got back from Tassahatchee the first time. Billie disappeared one afternoon. Elijah didn’t show up to pick me up from work that evening. Mrs. Miller, she gave me a ride home. Not all the way, mind you. A white lady didn’t drive her car alone down Piney Woods Road. After she dropped me off, I walked the mile or so home. I had gotten accustomed to Elijah’s unexplained absences, so I didn’t really miss him until I woke up the next morning and he was still not there. Well, that had happened before, too. I got a ride into town in the back of a truck full of grove workers. When I got to the Miller house, I knew right away. Knew that this was the day I’d been waiting for, been dreading, but had known was coming. I’d known that being Mrs. Miller’s colored help wasn’t the only misery I was destined for. That was only a kind of a hallway to hell, and I was fixing to be ushered into the main room.
“The exact truth of what had happened dawned on me in little bits, all day long. Mr. Miller was in Billie’s room. She was screaming and crying and carrying on. I was doing the breakfast dishes when Dr. Foster arrived. He went back to her bedroom, and pretty soon she got quiet. I guess he gave her some kind of shot. I remember wishing someone would give me a shot like that. Something to dull the pain. Felt I deserved that, at the very least.
“Groups of men came in and out of the house, off and on, all day. Mostly they just ignored me, of course. Like I was a piece of furniture. Sometimes, though, I caught someone looking at me, and the way they were looking told me I was right to be afraid. A lot of men. All day long. Some would go, some would come, some of them were just there. They spent a lot of time in Mr. Miller’s study. With the door shut.”