The Wilful Daughter (49 page)

Madman didn’t deny it either. Wasn’t something he was proud of, falling in love with a woman and not being able to hold onto her. He followed Piano Man into the small bedroom at the end of the hall.

“
I ain’t going to deny it, Peter. But you,” he looked around at the furnishings in the room. Far more expensive than he was used to. He held the cigarette over his hand looking for a receptacle for the ashes and, finding none, walked to the window and flicked it out. “Why didn’t you keep her here? Why didn’t you marry her instead of . . .”

“
I’m not going to talk about it. It’s not what you think.”

“
Yea, man but you had a chance, you had your ways. Peter, when you first came back from Europe all the ladies fell in your lap. You’re better looking than most men, better educated, got all the right words in all the right places. Got class. Hell, no wonder she didn’t go for me if you two had a thing going.”

The Piano Man threw down the clean white linen sheets and the handmade quilt that he knew Minnelsa would want him to use for a guest. “Damn it, man, there was nothing between us. Nothing. She was just some hot little filly in the way when I was courting her sister. She liked to sing, she liked to dance and have a good time.”

He stopped talking and remembered the first time he saw her in that red dress. He sat down on the bed and looked up at Madman. “She was barely eighteen. I met her before I even met Minnelsa and I wanted her, man, I wanted her bad. If ever a woman was heat, was fire. . .”

He stopped talking and looked out the window. The child out there was proof of all June was. He wanted to tell someone the truth, longed to do it. Yet he would not dare tell Madman the real story.

“
The old man allowed me to court his oldest daughter. He would never even allow June to get married until her oldest sister was. Got these strange rules that he thinks people do in other countries. Probably why June ran away. The old man has some land and some money and the daughters have no freedom.”

Madman looked down on the floor.

“
Why’d you bring her back? You think she really wants to die? To die here?”

Outside Ophelia started to sing a child’s song and the two men turned to the window. The tiny voice was so much like June’s that Madman said without thinking: “So, you raising her child.”

Piano Man wanted to say: I’m raising my child. But he didn’t. He only said “Why did you bring her back here?” again.

And as Ophelia finished the second verse Madman spoke out in some pain: “I brought her home ’cause she didn’t want to be with me. I was with her day and night. I bathed her, clothed her and fed her. I took her home to my mama. But it was obvious she didn’t want to be with me.”

Piano Man looked at his child and thought: “I wonder if she ever really wanted to be with me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY- FOUR

June was home and the life of the Brown family was completely interrupted. The Blacksmith took to riding to work in the Piano Man’s Ford and coming home for lunch in Reverend Chauncey’s car. Each day he left the shop earlier, feigning desire to be with his family and caring for his old horse. He stopped going to the shop on Saturday altogether.

With Mama Bira’s cooking and caring, her herbs and her loving, June recovered almost overnight. Madman and Floyd hung around long enough to see her up and walking again. In fact, Madman took to coming over in the afternoons and sitting on the porch with her.

“
You look so different here,” he told her. She seemed smaller and more delicate. Her hair was growing back the way it had been when she first went on the road with him. Her face was not as pale as in the past. The Georgia sun, he supposed, had put the glow back in her cheeks.

He sipped the glass of lemonade one of her sisters handed him. When the sister was in the house he asked: “It’s not the pregnant one that’s married to Peter, that’s Minnelsa. Which one was that?”

June laughed. “That was Fawn.”

He was just making conversation. “I could get used to this. Get used to beautiful women waiting on me hand and foot and being treated like a king.”

June shook her head. “You’d get used to it all right. But then you’d tire of what it costs.”

“
Cost?” Madman had no idea what she meant.

“
Ask Peter, ask James. Ask any of the men who were ever married to my sisters. Being the Blacksmith’s son-in-law may mean money and property and women who wait on you hand and foot, but it costs your life. It also can cost your dignity.” She leaned back on the swing and closed her eyes.

It was then that Madman started noticing things around him. He understood why the Piano Man never joined them at Emma’s. He understood why the Piano Man drank a lot and showed up at this doorstep every day after teaching.

One day Madman asked her: “Are you sure you want to stay here?”

“
I’m not sure where I want to be.”

It was not the answer a man in love wanted to hear. He tried to put it another way. “I’m going back out on the road. But this time it’s going to be close to my home in Washington. No more problems like Bo. No more guys like Roger. You want to come with me, June?”

She smiled when she said: “Is that a proposal or are you trying to get your girl singer back?”

If she had said anything else, if she had not smiled when she made fun of his love for her, he would not have said: “You want to get married?” She didn’t even look up at him. “You want me to marry you and stay here?”

“
Never said anything of the kind. In fact I told you that. . .”

“
That the men married to your father’s daughters seem to lose all their dignity.” He waited for her to respond, to give him another word. “I got my pride June,” he finally said. “I got dignity.” He bent over and whispered in her ear. “I would have even forced Peter and Minnelsa to give up your baby. Raise it with my other kids.”

It was the only time the delicate features of her face turned to him. And they turned angrily, then reddened.

“
Yea,” he said as he pulled himself to a tall, proud height. “I know and nobody had to tell me. Saw the way Peter looked at that baby.”

She turned away.

He walked down the steps. “You doing real good, June. Much better. Seems being here, being at home agrees with you. Think that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna go home. Leaving tonight. Thank your family for their hospitality, will you?”

“
Goodbye, Mr. Jeffries,” she told his back as he walked away. Madman didn’t stop walking either, just pretended that he hadn’t heard her. “Thanks for bringing me home.” With that she went into the house.

Fawn came out and stood on the porch. She watched Madman Jeffries wipe his face as he got in the car.

Inside June heard the car drive away.

She heard her old life drive away.

She needed something to take the edge off this day.

She needed a bottle of something. So when her sisters were busy with their lives and her mother was at the hospital with the infirmed children, she slipped into her father’s room and pulled out a bottle of brandy, an old bottle that was hidden under the middle bookcase, a place that brother had told her their father stored his liquor just in case the cops came.

She opened the bottle and took an unladylike sip. The brandy went down smoothly. It was probably quite expensive.

“
Nothing like being in this house,” she said as she sipped again.

Among her possessions she had a small flask, nice silver with her initials carved in it that had been a gift from an admirer. She filled it each day when her father left. After each drink she chewed on mint leaves to mask the odor of spirits on her breath.

Each day she saw the Piano Man with his family: his wife, his daughter. Her daughter. Minnelsa did not protest as much as she used to when Ophelia went to June. June was a new playmate to the child.

“
Aunt June sleeping in my bed.”

“
Aunt June is the lady in the pictures.”

“
Aunt June is so pretty.”

And more and more, day by day, it was because of Ophelia that she needed to take the edge off. She’d look in the bathroom mirror.

“
I thought I gave this up,” she would tell herself as she took a little swig.

“
I should have stayed to be mother to this child.” She’d drink to that. “Peter does not want me near the little girl that we made lying in the grass over five years ago.” She’d take another sip. “Why are they are so happy together?” On that she wouldn’t sip but she would cry.

“
Afraid she’ll catch on?” she whispered to him one night when he came to get the child out of June’s bed and put her on a pallet in the room where he and Minnelsa slept.

He said nothing to her. So she touched him. Just touched his arm to see what would happen. He stopped to look at her. She tried to find love in those eyes. Where were the nights at Emma’s, nights on the grass, days of sneaking and hiding and professing his desire for her? She tried to see him playing the piano the first time in front of her and watching her as she crossed the room.

It was gone, vanished like low-lying fog at dawn. Evaporated with the light of the new day. His new day, his new family.

She didn’t see any love there at all.

She let him go.

“
Here’s to you, Piano Man,” she said into the closet of her room. Outside the family prepared for dinner while the Piano Man played the dull music that soothed his wife and satisfied his father-in-law.

“
What you doing in there, Aunt June?” came the tiny voice from the doorway. Two thick plaits hung to her shoulders, her dress was covered with dirty hand prints from an afternoon of baking mud pies outside when no one was looking.

“
What am I doing? Look at you. What have you been doing? Your mama and daddy are going to be so furious at you for getting all dirty.”

She didn’t hesitate as she took the little girl to the bathroom and undressed her. She filled the tub with warm water and told the child to get in.

Ophelia stood naked in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. “Daddy says I can’t get in by myself. Somebody got to put me.”

“
Oh really?” June said back, and Ophelia nodded her pretty head. June grinned and picked up the child to put her in the warm water.

This was the first time since Ophelia had been born that she had held her this close without her clothes on. Then she had been all toes and fingers. She had more hair now and weighed more but she was still her baby. Hers. She placed the girl in the tub and told her to wash.

“
How nice of you to do that for Minnelsa and Peter.” Bira stood in the doorway smiling. “I was going to do it myself but. . .”

“
I have her, Mama,” June smiled. “I just need some clothes for her.”

Ophelia splashed a little in the tub. Jewel laughed from the kitchen as she heard the happy sounds of her niece, the only happy sounds that had emanated from the house lately.

“
In the chest-of-drawers in Minnelsa’s old room,” Bira told June who answered with a mumbled “of course”. Bira said she would watch her granddaughter as June went to get the child a clean change of clothes.

The music bothered and bored her. Peter should have learned by now that a lively tune should be played for a houseful of lonely women getting dinner ready for one man. What possessed him to be so inconsiderate? His wife was trying to give him a child for the fourth time, two of her sisters had been left without husbands. His music was too dreary. “Can’t he play a waltz or a ditty?”

“
Leave him be,” Bira said. “It’s nice music.”

“
It’s so sad.”

She went into the chest-of-drawers knowing that if Minnelsa kept things as before, the top drawer would hold shirts, the second drawers her blouses and camisoles, the third unmentionables. So the fourth had to be Ophelia’s clothes.

June laughed as she opened the drawer thinking nothing had changed. But the Piano Man had been dressing his daughter and the clothes were not where they were supposed to be.

She found Ophelia’s unmentionables in the unmentionable drawer. She found a little jumper, overalls just like her grandfather’s and what the child should be allowed to wear in the first place, in the drawer with Minnelsa’s clothes. And in the Piano Man’s shirts she found a tiny shirt for her daughter, tucked on the side like an afterthought.

She pulled it out, trying not to ruin the neatness of the drawer’s configuration. But one tiny sleeve was caught on something and in order to preserve the order, she had to remove everything.

She cursed the Piano Man’s neatness under her breath.

She cursed out loud when she saw the envelope the shirt was stuck on.

She checked to see if anyone was looking then opened it and found a contract with one William Robert Thomas of Peachtree Street, (clearly a white man for this address was on the white folks’ side of town) to purchase fifty acres in Alabama from Peter Jenkins. It was signed and done. The amount paid had been paid to the Piano Man more than two weeks ago. Attached to it was another letter showing that Peter had sold him the fifty acres in Atlanta with the house, and though fully paid, had until the end of the year to vacate.

The land and the house? What was wrong with Peter? Where was Minnelsa supposed to stay? What about Ophelia?