Solemn (20 page)

The radio music was interfered with. Verdant plains around the car gave way to a chalky mist and slight drizzle, to bring gray kelpies face-to-face with the windshield like a drive-in movie screen tumbled down. The front bumper marked straight to a line of vultures and buzzards and cygnets crossing red sand road, who did not fly when the earth trembled with the approach of the Mustang, but they lay down under it in time. Solemn looked back to make sure. The birds arose into a line of naked and bald black girls and women holding hands and waving the car to please come back, as the earth trembled far behind them, but there was no hint to know what would come next. They carried secrets out loud and not silent in their mouths. They called at her to join them, but Solemn was going to stay where she was and knew she belonged. And there was just no room for all of them, so the car moved on down a road with no signs now, only what looked like coffins in a long-standing droke. Shana and Law Anne poked Solemn in back of her head. Akila drove on, laughing, snapping her fingers, so happy on her trip from Bledsoe. A gray unicorn ran alongside the car with its horn spilling its coins and dollars, from the energy of its frantic pace as well as the wind rocking the car now. The unicorn stayed until it flew into four-hundred-foot trees grown in seconds. Akila turned the radio down, to keep on talking to Shana and Law Anne—about their boyfriends and sugar daddies and old men and the bad guys. The unicorn told Solemn to tear the lottery ticket between her teeth to swallow its pieces down. The pastures along the road, once a highway, now turned a red carpet of veins, held the carcasses of cows with leaking udders and draining mouths and vulnerable eyes. Shana and Law Anne talked on and on and on, about the men whose faces they slashed and the women whose breasts they cut off and the town in middle of a desert where it was time for Akila to take them to right now—with no choice.

Shana or Law Anne pulled out a pistol to aim at their driver's head, while Solemn ate chocolate cake and spaghetti they slammed into her face. Then Solemn awoke to an Outkast song on the radio. Akila's abrupt careen off of Natchez Trace Parkway headed into Vicksburg. The greenery along the road was high. Akila seemed focused and urgent. Solemn clenched a sticky pink gumball in her hand and saw a plastic black spider on her pinky finger. Desiree was not there to give the word-for-word and bit-by-bit account to. The sky was fine and dandy, and there was no one in the backseat of the car.

*   *   *

On guard now, and again, Solemn protested leaving the car.

“I need to stay in,” she told Akila. But she didn't know if she would doze off and drift again into visions; they had multiplied since Easter Sunday.

“Nope,” Akilah said. “Too hot. Mr. and Mrs. Redvine ain't gonna have my head if you die of heatstroke. Come on here, girl.”

Solemn stared into the jewelry shop they passed. Beside were a mom-and-pop record store, Dollar General, a tobacco shop, and a tax accounting service, closed until winter. Akila led the way beyond the parking lot and inside the air-conditioned office. Bells jingled as they walked in. No one sat at the desk behind a countered partition in the small office. A few chairs sat in a waiting area with a magazine rack, water cooler, and coffee table decked out with vased azaleas and a shiny tissue-paper holder.

“What we doing here?” Solemn asked. She read
Singer's,
where she lived and what it told her to be.

“Just sit down,” Akila told her. “Get a book.”

Solemn picked up a
Smithsonian
. Akila looked around. Right next to a tusk crucifix was a moose head, its snout right above her and its lifelike eyes directed to the clock behind the desk, keeping time and revenge fantasy at once. Framed certificates of ownership, compliance, and professional membership ran along the wall. So did news clippings:
Singer Real Estate Distinguished Community Service … Singer Real Estate Breaks New Ground in Abandoned Area … Singer Real Estate Donates $100,000 to Establish Local Vicksburg Development Projects … Singer Real Estate Renovates and Opens Trailer Park in Bledsoe.
The family helmed the wall of their office—a larger portrait of a bald man, swan-necked woman, two sons. Twins, it appeared. Then, underneath this twelve-by-twenty-four cherry frame was the less formal narrative of their lives: sweet little boys in Boy Scout uniforms with checkered socks, beach-day faces turned away from the camera and onto an ocean most of their tenants had never seen, school pictures with bright bow ties pressed, commemorations of the boys' race-car and thoroughbred mountings. As Akila was about to look closer at the faces for some recollection of anyone she had seen before, the secretary finally acknowledged her: “Kin I help you?”

“Oh yes,” Akila said. She had something rehearsed to say but forgot it.

“I'm just looking to apply to an apartment,” she said instead.

“Applications at edge of the counter. Clipboards right next to 'em. Pencils in the jar. I make a copy of your ID when you done.” The secretary snapped a button on one of the telephones on her desk, stacked to the top with papers, manila folders, receipts, calculators, carbon copies, and
Enquirers
.

“Hold on, Shelly. I gotta gal here.” The woman snapped another button on her big brown phone. She looked at Solemn: “All kids extra. You can bring they birth certificates back.” Then, “If you on public aid, we need your social worker's direct phone number.”

She snapped a button on the phone again and started to talk.

Akila took a seat and looked over the paperwork. A form for the employer or public aid. A sheet to list where and what of check stubs. Explanation of rules and regulations. Brochure for Singer's Real Estate. She slipped the pamphlet in her pocket and pretended to write, with mighty and tender hopes, a need to act rather than just exist.

“We trying to get an apartment?” Solemn asked Akila. “We moving?!”

“Yeah, we are,” Akila said, and she jammed her elbow into Solemn's skinny ribs.

The woman behind the counter looked up for a second.
Well
, she concluded,
that's for the social worker to handle. Not my job …

“So, Barbara and Phillip got back together yet? Last part I saw, she was stuck on the yacht with the kidnappers. Phillip got in a motorcycle accident on the way…?”

The doors swooshed open to the hot air. A man walked in. He wore tight beige pants and a wrinkled pink shirt and a Stetson. Akila noticed a name tag:
Bruce Singer
. The woman behind the counter catapulted from her seat. “Yes, we will return your call.” She snapped a button on the telephone and slammed it down.

“How you doing today?” the man shouted in Akila's direction.

“Very well, sir,” Akila answered back, her eyes pressed upon what she registered as part of what she sought. Solemn shut the magazine.

“Mr. Singer,” the woman behind the counter said, “Alderman Hansley called. And so did Missus Turner 'bout the plumbing lines over her border on the Maple Street property, and the caterers for the lunch on Friday. Oh, and your ma.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Singer said, his eyes over the slips of pink phone notes. He was oblivious to Akila's stares. If this was any relation, he'd cleaned himself up since the last time he took a picture with some black gal. And he had gotten rounder. But, the face was the same. As was the thick red mound of hair Akila saw sprouting from the nape of his hat. Couldn't tell if there was gray or not. He was rounder than she remembered, but it was the summer now. Something about festivals, picnics, barbecues, and heat made people eat. But the green eyes, cat eyes, looked the same.

Hmmppphh …
Akila thought, as the man went past her to enter the back offices.

“Are you … you Bruce, or Richard, Singer?”

The man stopped. Boy, really. Baby face, despite the business attire.

“I heard about your real estate company. Best in town, huh?” Akila asked.

“That's what we hear. But it's not my company. My father owns it. I'm just a worker as far as he's concerned. Bruce.” He extended his hand.

“Nothing wrong with a little work for your father,” Akila said. She fingered the pocket of her sundress. “Well, I came here to look for an apartment … my friend recommended me. She rented from you-all,” Akila said.

Solemn had never seen any of them have too much conversation with a white man outside the doctor's office, hospital, school, and police station. Never in real life.

“Oh, really? Well, we let to a lot of people…” Mr. Singer started.

“Pearletta Hassle. You seen her around?” Akila asked him.

“Mmmmm … doesn't ring a bell,” the man answered.

“Oh, why would it?” Akila turned and pretended to write. “She had her baby thrown down a well in the trailer park y'all own.”

The man blushed. He rubbed his nose with his thumb stuck out from a crunched fist. “Well, I'm so sorry to hear that.”

He looked at Akila, and Solemn, and then back at Akila.

“If you'll pardon me. Good luck on your application. I hope to see you in the family.”

“Here,” Akila said. “If you wanna know more or see if you remember.”

The man took the crumpled “Have You Seen Pearletta?” flyer, with its bled ink.

“Oh-oh-,” he stammered. “Well, thank you. Appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Akila told him.

“Did you remember you have a two o'clock with your pa to go over what to do about all the delinquencies?” the woman behind the counter shouted to Bruce Singer's back. Then, he broke eyes with Akila. In his eyes, she looked ashen and pitiful and hopeless and exactly what his family told him needed their consideration and mercy. The ones they were to help. He started to the back door of the small office. Akila watched him slam the door shut. She heard it click. A fever crescendoed onto her forehead. She threw the clipboard and papers at the counter. The woman called out, “Hey, I'm gonna need your ID or I can't process this…” Akila ignored the woman and grabbed Solemn, so they could finally talk about the thing they both, in fact, wanted to talk about: “Now we can go look for a dress.”

 

SEVENTEEN

Guests would forget the preacher's sermon quicker than the bride's slightly dingy dress, or her purple-and-peach morning glory bouquet that made up for it, or the groom's gleaming Stacy Adams, or the baby ring bearer's screeching hesitation and flop-out, or Alice Taylor's overdone solo, or three modest lemon-and-butter-cream sheet cakes Bev was relieved the half oven could manipulate.

Orchestration of the day included Redvine's ten car trips to transport metal folding chairs and tables from basements of a church alliance in Kosciusko back to Singer's, at the foot of the steep, near the pond. There were pleas to Bev's great-aunt for a patch of her garden, blackmail to card-party friends and bar mates for donated dishes and silverware. BYOB was emphasized, unheard. But there was no way Akila's mother bought into the potluck twist Bev suggested. Instead, she contributed to the otherwise: three days of cooking and freezing and uncanning and tinfoiling until both mothers nearly nodded off in the pews soon as they sat down.

For Landon and Akila's one o'clock wedding, Solemn unfastened her cornrows the morning of to display a tough, crinkly crown throughout the day. She arose earlier than her parents, to be ready before she was rushed. She pinched a bit of her daddy's Old Spice deodorant, aware of herself now and taking no chances. She wanted to wear a baby-doll dress she bought at Dillard's with Desiree. Now it had already grown pilly, tight around her upper arms and frivolous to her behind. She was left with a hand in her mama's closet for permission to wear a yellow dress imprinted with raised vines and cherry blossoms. She had no shoes to match. She stuffed three crunched sheets of toilet paper into the toes of her mama's cork wedges and also borrowed a golden cross. She matched.

Solemn had an unusual lack of possessiveness to her brother, fed by the fact he was already gone anyway. She had a companion lack of fascination with his new bride. Akila would stay on in Bledsoe as she had been, until Landon completed another year. Then, lest he go off into the smoky places a half-arm's length away on the maps, he'd make up his mind if he would like to be stationed near home. The transition was none at all. Only a statement. It spoke to Solemn in confliction—of what Akila sighed she should not do and what Bev was occasionally driven to scream she wished she never had done. The effect of the day on Solemn was uneventful. Her interests were not peaked toward the direction of boys and men. Nor was it peaked toward a longing for her own day when she might be so carefully spoken to and of. Solemn most resented the absence of attention a part in the party would have given her: a solo, to share she wanted to sing, a distinguishable maid-of-honor or bridesmaid dress, so she was not a thief in the morning, and a verse in the Bible to read, so she was not sweating into anger from the front pew while Akila's cousin read his part from Numbers, to mispronounce the word that was her name.

Battle of the Cross Baptist Church left it to three ceiling fans and a straight-back piano to clutch its worshipers' attentions. A scarce wedding was somewhat different. It wasn't obligatory, or damning if skipped. People would not mind waiting. There had been no RSVPs sent back or spoken. Waste of paper and tongue. Bev made the date. Akila spread the word. The show went on. Bev filled her twelve pews with the congregation, her few living aunts, some of her high school friends, close cousins, a few Magnolia Bible College classmates, a remaining grandmother. Landon's friends—dressed in black—stood up in the back. Akila's side was only half-filled. They claimed they had not known in time. What her family lacked in concern and care the abandoned and hungry made up for in cheer. Strangers waited as well, wondering of the food after …