And could moving to Phila-del-phia stamp out the horror those prodding fingers pressed into them or the sight of the dancing light cast down between their legs so he could see good and clear just where it was he needed to be?
So what they really wanted was to never ever pack up and go back to relive that first night, the middle ones, or the very last.
What they really, truly wanted was to stay.
* * *
But Helen didn’t say any of it. She didn’t have to, Lillie knew it all, had lived it right alongside them, and so Helen just stretched her legs out before her, clasped her hands behind her head, and said, “We just want to know that you and the children are okay.”
___________________
Lovey didn’t want anything from her. Not even the double scoop of ice cream Beka held out to her.
“Suit yourself,” Beka said with a shrug of her shoulders and passed the cone over to Dumpling, who expertly avoided Lovey’s hateful gaze as she wrapped her fat fingers eagerly around it.
Beanie Moe’s feet did some odd shuffle, and his eyes darted between Lovey and the remaining ice-cream cone that Beka held, and just when Beka thought he was going to refuse, he quickly grabbed it from her hand. “Thank you,” he murmured between licks.
“Welcome,” Beka said with a satisfied smile. “You sure you don’t want one?” she said to Lovey, who just rolled her eyes and snorted. “O-kay,” Beka sang. “Two more, please,” she said to the young white girl behind the counter.
“Here you go, Wella. Be careful now, okay?”
Wella nodded her head cautiously as her small hands retrieved the cone. She stared at the melting scoops of ice cream, admired it as if it was an amazing gem.
“You better hurry up and start licking before it all melts away,” Beka warned.
She pushed the door to the ice-cream parlor open and waited while the children filed out ahead of her. Beanie Moe in the lead, Dumpling waddling behind him, Wella at Beka’s hip, and Lovey, scuffling along, bringing up the rear.
The day was hot, no doubt about that. The heat rose up from the pavement, burning through Beka’s thin-soled shoes. But she didn’t mind, and she distracted her mind from her baking soles by focusing on the trees, heavy and green, and the window boxes brimming with colorful flowers. If she concentrated hard enough, she could forget not only the burn of the sidewalk, but the fact that she looked out of place in her worn country dress.
Yet the eyes that passed over her made it difficult for her to pretend that she was dressed in anything else but that brown frock with the rounded white collar. Those eyes asked,
Girl, where you get that dress, Red Cross? And what’s going on with your hair
?
Beka had done the best she could with her hair and no hot comb.
My—my sister don’t got no hot comb
, is what she wanted to tell those questioning eyes.
I used the fancy pomade in the silver container, and it still don’t lay down
.
But her mouth stayed clamped.
She thought the pink ribbon might make a difference.
“That’s my mama’s!” Lovey had screamed when she saw Helen tying it into Beka’s hair. She’d run up on them and snatched it right from Helen’s hands.
“Give it here, girl!” They had struggled with Lovey until Helen raised her hand and threatened to slap the girl into next week. Even then Lovey didn’t just hand it over, but tossed it down to the floor and stomped on it before darting off to some other part of the house.
All that fight and the ribbon didn’t even hold. It just slid right off Beka’s little piece of ponytail as soon as she stepped out and onto the porch.
Beka laughed at the thought of it. And Wella, face sweet and sticky with ice cream, looked up at her and laughed too.
It hadn’t been easy, the last couple of days. Sleeping with one eye open and jumping at sounds that seemed out of place in the night. Shoot, she and Helen had been lulled to sleep by loons and crickets, not the churning sound the wheels of motor cars made as they moved up and down the busy streets.
By the time they’d shown up, there was little food left in the house. Just some corn meal, grits, sausage, and a dried piece of pig tail in the refrigerator.
Dumpling heard Beka say, “This the last of the sausage,” and, “Where you suppose you go and get groceries ’round here?”
“Don’t know,” Helen replied as she stared into the icebox. “I suppose we can just make do until Lillie come back.”
Dumpling panicked and rubbed her tublike stomach with worry. Who knew when Lillie was going to come home?
Although she hadn’t uttered more than a “yessum” to her aunts since their arrival, the possibility of starving made her light on her toes. She eased out from under Lovey’s ever-watchful eyes and found herself standing alongside Helen and whispering, “Market on Cantor Street,” out of one side of her mouth.
* * *
That was three days ago. Now, walking back home (Lovey had corrected her good and swift when Beka had said “home,” reminding her that it wasn’t
her
home at all), Beka could appreciate the feel of the pavement beneath her feet (hot as it was) and how she wouldn’t have to shake dirt out of her shoes once she arrived at Lillie’s doorstep.
She liked the fearless way Phila-del-phia Negro women handled color. Dresses and hats in turquoise and pale pinks—even the dark-skinned ones donned yellows and baby blues, not seeming to mind at all the attention it called to their skin.
And the men sure did take on a different shine in the slick suits they wore every day of the week. Not like back home, she thought, when a man could only be caught in a suit on a Sunday, unless of course someone got married or there was a funeral to attend.
Rounding the corner they stumbled into a flock of imperial butterflies feeding on a wall of white clematis. The children cried out with joy and leapt at the beautiful flying insects, trying without success to capture them in their small hands.
Even Lovey forgot her grown-up composure and allowed a smile to slide across her face.
At the porch now, then up and through the door, the house quiet, the black patent-leather clutch resting on the table beside the vase of flowers, and Lovey already calling out, “Mama!”
The rest of the children tearing off—up the stairs, into the parlor, and then through the kitchen and out the back door.
Baby Wella struggling to get free of Beka’s hand and then off like a shot behind Beanie Moe.
“Here she is!” Lovey’s voice was flecked with excitement and sounding like the big-band music Helen had taken to playing on the Victrola at night. Beka popped the last bit of cone into her mouth and followed the song out to the back porch.
“Beka.” Lillie blew her name out along with the cigarette smoke she’d just inhaled.
“You smoking now, huh?” Beka said, and walked over to stand beside Helen, who was sitting and sipping something that was as clear as water, but the ruddiness of her cheeks and the droopy way her eyes looked told Beka it was something else.
“I’m grown,” Lillie said, and took a long drag on her cigarette.
Wella was in Lillie’s lap, happily fingering the long red beads that draped from her mother’s neck. Lovey stood behind her, hands resting protectively on Lillie’s shoulders. Beanie Moe and Dumpling settled themselves down on the top step.
“Mama, they come in here and—” Lovey began, but her tongue was working so hard and moving so fast that it tripped over her teeth and she had to keep starting over again. “Mama, they come in here and—”
“Hush now. Later, Love,” Lillie said quietly, and kissed the top of baby Wella’s head before lifting her up and handing her off to Lovey. “Take Wella on up and put her down for her nap.” She flicked the long ash of her cigarette to the ground.
“But it’s almost supper,” Lovey boomed as she balanced Wella on her hip.
Lillie let out a small laugh and then smashed the butt of the cigarette down into the crystal ashtray. “Go on now,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“But Mama—”
It was done so quickly and Lillie was already lighting up another cigarette by the time Beka and Helen saw the large
O
that Lovey’s mouth had taken on and then the angry red blotch of flesh on her arm where Lillie had pinched her. There was no more discussion, just Wella’s cries of disapproval and the sound of the children’s shoes against the white wood porch.
Two bottles of gin. Lillie seemed to have them hidden everywhere.
Short dogs, she called them—half pints that they sipped over ice. Suppertime came and went, but Lovey took care of it, and by the time the second pint was gone, the moon was up and both Beka and Helen had each had their very first cigarette.
The hot day had led to a hot night, and the burn of the liquor in their bellies just added to the boil. Dresses hiked up almost to their waists, leg spread open, hands fanning down between them and up around their necks. Lovey bringing ice cubes wrapped in washcloths, her hips swinging to Louis Armstrong’s “Keepin’ out of Mischief” that streamed from the Victrola. Whatever anger there was between them was pushed aside with every tip of the bottle and every new song that played.
Whatever unspoken, known thing that floated around them was blown away by their raucous laughter.
Was Sandersville really that bad?
Each one looked at the other.
Who had asked the question?
“Well,” Helen moaned, “seems to me that there were some good times.”
“More than some,” Beka said. “Christmastime was always good.”
“S’pose you right. Mama in the kitchen rolling pie crust.”
“Papa up behind her, messing with her while she was trying to do it.”
“She say,
Go on now, nigga, git on away from me
!”
“An’ pop him with her dish rag.”
“Ambrosia!”
“Oooh, that was my favorite.”
“Can’t nobody make it like Mama.”
“Nobody.”
“Corn pone the night before.”
“Dipped in sweet milk. Lawd!”
“Fire in the hearth just a-blazing and—”
“All we kids ’round it, singing!”
Was Sandersville really all that bad?
“Only at night,” Lillie said.
And the truth took on more weight than the heat.
They would have cried, but they weren’t crying drunks no matter how heavy the hurt. So they laughed it all away because they were in Phila-del-phia and there was nothing lurking through that darkness with flint, flame, and a silver timepiece.
* * *
“Just another week,” Helen whispered in Beka’s ear when she hugged her tight on the platform.
Beka knew that was a lie. And her lip trembled beneath the tears that filled her eyes. “Stop it now,” Helen said, giving her a pat on the shoulder and then turning away.
“You could stay, you know,” Lillie said between puffs on her cigarette.
No, she couldn’t. “Mama needs me,” Beka reminded her for the umpteenth time.
“You sure it’s Mama you concerned with?” Lillie said, and threw her a sidelong glance.
Beka stiffened. What was she suggesting? Was she suggesting that she liked it? Beka dropped her eyes.
“All aboard!” the conductor called out, and the train’s whistle let off a long piercing shriek.
Beka grabbed hold of the railing and hoisted herself up onto the step. Lillie caught her by the elbow. “We could bring Mama here,” she whispered, her eyes pleading.
“Mama ain’t never gonna leave Sandersville,” Beka mumbled in resignation.
The train’s wheels began to slowly churn and Helen trailed alongside the car. “That’s her fate, not yours!” she yelled as the train picked up speed.
Yes, it was, Beka thought sadly while she watched Helen fade to a speck.
* * *
When she arrived in Augusta, Vonnie took the suitcase and started off ahead of her.
Only four people had gotten off in Augusta, and from what she could see, six got on. It would be at least a two-hour ride to Sandersville and with none of the excitement she and Helen had bubbled with a week earlier.
Vonnie dropped the suitcase into the back of the pickup and then opened his door and climbed into the cab. Beka just stood there, staring at the dirt and thinking of how much she missed the feel of the Phila-del-phia pavement beneath her feet and how much trouble it would be to shake the red Georgia earth from her shoes again.
“You comin’?”
His hat low over his eyes, a piece of straw dangling from the corner of his mouth, one hand gripping the black knob of the gear shift, the other resting slightly on the curve of the steering wheel, jaw flexing, and in all that heat not a drop of sweat on his brow.
Beka opened the door and climbed in.
Two hours and Vonnie doesn’t say a word. His eyes never waver from the road, not even when they’re close to home and Bark Patterson waves hello from the shadow of his porch. Vonnie acknowledges the old man with a flick of his wrist just before taking a hard right.
* * *
“Where she at?” Suce asked, looking down at Beka’s suitcase and then behind her, like Helen was small enough to remain hidden from her view.
“She decided to stay,” Beka responded, and moved past Suce and toward her bedroom.
“Stay?” Suce said the word like it was new in her mouth, like Helen was the first of her children to walk out of Sandersville on the pretense of visiting or marrying.
“For what?” Suce inquired as she followed Beka.
“Uhm”—the lie churned in Beka’s throat—“Lillie wasn’t feeling too well.” She hoisted the suitcase up onto her bed and flicked the locks open.
“Not feeling well?” Suce rounded the bed and planted herself directly across from Beka. “What’s wrong with her?”
Vonnie remained in the hallway outside of the bedroom and casually leaned his shoulder against the wall as he watched and listened.
“Headaches.”
Suce considered this. “She always had a problem with that,” she said thoughtfully and then placed her hands on her wide hips. “How the chirren?” she asked, as she studied the things Helen removed from the suitcase.