Tina Mcelroy Ansa (13 page)

Lena loved to walk around her house naked. Raised in a household with two brothers and no sisters, Lena had not known the freedom of being completely nude whenever she felt like it until she had moved into her own house. At the end of a long day, shucking off her fancy duds, walking barefoot and buck naked from the bathroom to the bedroom to pick up a book, from the bedroom to the kitchen to get a donut or piece of fruit or square of buttered egg bread, then back to the great room with pear juice or butter dripping down her chin. Lena thought it felt like heaven. Walking around naked in her own house made her feel as she did after receiving Holy Communion at St. Martin de Porres. That’s how she felt: natural and at peace.

And her isolated location in the heavily wooded area by the river gave her the privacy to walk around naked and feel safe and at peace. Maybe once or twice, Frank Petersen or his brother, James, after he had taken Frank Petersen’s job, had walked into the house and come upon her nude.

It had never concerned Frank Petersen one way or another.

“Shoot, I practically seen you grow up, Lena-Wena,” he had said with a toss of his nappy grizzled head. “Besides, I done seen some of the prettiest women in the world naked. Seen Josephine Baker, ’La Bakir’—that’s what we fighting boys used to call her over in Paris, France. Yeah, seen La Bakir wearing nothing but her smile. Not even a bunch o’ bananas.

“So, you ain’t got nothing to be hiding or trying to cover up or shield from
my
eyes. I done seen it
all
over there in Paris, France, Lena-Wena.”

But his brother James had not been to Paris, France, and seen it all. Actually, neither had Frank Petersen. He had only told Lena that when she was a little girl believing everything that came out of his mouth. And he had wanted it so much—to go to France, to drink red wine found in the cellar of a chateau, to serve proudly in World War II in the 135th Artillery—he believed it himself. Frank, the elder brother, liked to think of himself as the kind of man who
would
have gone to France if he had gotten the chance. And from what Lena knew to be true, he had been around in this country.

Frank Petersen played delightful ragtime on the piano. He knew how to set a formal table for a dinner party using all the pieces of the silverware her grandmother, mother and she kept in blue velvet-lined boxes. He had loved a big old fat woman named Bessie Mountain who jilted him and used him and left the county with what money he scraped together for her. He was ashamed of what happened between him and Bessie Mountain but not that he had loved her.

James, on the other hand, didn’t move out of the Stamps, Arkansas, house he was born in until he traveled to Mulberry on the Greyhound bus to take over his brother’s position with Lena when Frank died. And James was in his fifties then.

He had promised Frank years before when the older man admitted to himself that he was mortal and would wear out that he would come see about Lena if she needed it.

“James,” Frank Petersen had written in his final letter to his baby brother, “Lena ain’t got nobody.”

Frank, an ailing septuagenarian, had told Lena about the letter he had written his brother so she wouldn’t be surprised when he showed up with his hat and his bags. Frank Petersen had always been a good brother. James would say, “Frank been good as a daddy to me all my life.” So, James didn’t hesitate to promise.

James admired his older brother and in some ways tried to emulate him, but Lena walking around naked in the house like it was the most natural thing in the world to do was beyond his tolerance.

“Good God, Lena, go put on some clothes! Suppose you had some chirren running around here. For God’s sake!”

James would be really offended for a good while. He’d rush from the room, his eyes averted, walking just heavily enough to let Lena know that he wasn’t playing, he was truly annoyed, truly offended by her behavior.

When Lena thought about James, she made herself not think about his brother, Frank.

Frank Petersen—he had admonished the world, “My name is Frank Petersen, and you spell Petersen with an e”—had been such a part of Lena’s life so fully and so comfortingly for so long that she had to work at not seeing James as only a reflection of his brother. The brothers were so like each other in looks and mannerisms that it was hard to believe that they had lived such different lives apart from each other.

While Frank Petersen, an old beat-up brown felt hat set at a jaunty tilt on his regal graying head, had been the quintessential bon vivant, his younger brother, James, who refused to wear a cap of any kind, was the quintessential homebody.

James had only shown up in Mulberry seven years before—a blink of an eye in the time continuum of a small town like Mulberry, even a small town that was part of the region that had attracted international and national factories and headquarters recently.

James favored his older brother in stature and grace, but they really didn’t look like each other. Frank Petersen had had the rich brown lined skin the color of snuff juice. His brother, James, was lighter brown with softer graying hair.

They both stood about six feet tall. And they held their shoulders erect with an innate grace and elegance. But they were so different.

His brother called him “James” like Lena did. But she noticed that
when anyone came through town who knew the family back in Arkansas, they referred to her houseman as “Jame” without the s.

“Lord,” one tall, heavy, loud, gatemouth woman from near his little town kept saying as she walked parts of Lena’s property, “what
Jame
’un fallen into here in
this honeypot
!!!!???”

That kind of talk embarrassed James Petersen. He had almost wanted to apologize for his friend. Mostly, he didn’t want Lena thinking that he was thinking of her as some kind of “honeypot.” He worked for his wages and more. He knew how valuable his labor and presence were in her life. He had viewed it secondhand for years through Frank’s job.

But he was quieter, less assuming, than his brother, Frank Petersen.

So, James said the same thing to his visitor as he did to anyone who commented in any way on his job, his home, his paycheck, his reading material, his stature in Lena’s household … his business, period.

“I’m quite comfortable with my situation.”

That’s all he said: “I’m quite comfortable with my situation.”

James Petersen did seem happy and content living in the gatehouse, which was about a fourth of a mile along the long winding dirt road from Lena’s house. She had built it for Frank Petersen. So there were certain unalterable specifications. The small house, made entirely of local stone and mortar, had to be at least four hundred yards from the main house and buildings because Frank Petersen had insisted on his privacy and own space.

“Every time I look up, I don’t want to be seeing you and your house, Lena-Wena,” he had told her as they sat in the breakfast room of her parents’ home at the long shiny table that now sat in her house poring over the plans.

“I understand that, Frank Petersen,” Lena had shot back defensively, because she was sort of looking forward to having him for a neighbor. “I’m sho’ not moving all the way out there to be up under
somebody all the time. I want my privacy and my quiet, too. I certainly plan to respect yours.”

She stopped and sniffed as she smoothed out the blueprints.

“I’m not going to be all up in your face, you know. Have I ever gotten in your business before?” she asked a bit indignantly.

She had gone too far. Even Nellie, who was cutting out the pattern for a little striped linen shorts set for one of Sister’s twin boys, had to join Frank Petersen when he started laughing.

“Has she ever gotten in my
bizness
befo’????” Frank Petersen had nearly screamed, choking with laughter as he stood up and, taking the papers from the table, went to the bank of windows in the dining room as if for better light.

Nellie was still chuckling to herself as she tried to steady the long sharp tailor’s scissors along the dotted line.

When Frank Petersen caught her eye over his blueprints, Nellie couldn’t hold it in any longer. And she, too, burst out laughing.

“Baby, you do a lot of things,” her mother managed to say through chuckles, “but staying out of people’s business is definitely not one of them.”

Nellie may have laughed at Lena’s comment, but she was deadly serious when she warned her baby girl to ease up on herself. “Lena, baby, you cannot dance on every set,” Nellie would tell her over and over as she saw the toll life in Mulberry was taking on her daughter.

Nellie still gloried in Lena’s new beautiful house, she still joined her husband in bragging about Lena’s business acumen, she still let the women at church go on and on about Lena’s accomplishments and sweet temperament, but she also knew that Lena didn’t sleep well at night. Nellie knew that Lena did want children. And she knew that Lena was as high-strung as she herself had been as a young woman.

So, Nellie had been happy and grateful for every single person who did something for her child.

James Petersen, who kept her household running so smoothly, made it possible for Lena to lead the kind of life that she did. She and Sister had both finally admitted what they had disdained in white
women’s intimate conversations with black women: how close they were now or had been as children with their housekeepers. How they
loved
the black woman who had all but raised them. How they still kept in touch with her. How they paid her insurance premiums. How their mothers didn’t care about them
half
as much as their maids. How she was the most important person in their lives and how they couldn’t have made it without her.

Lena and Sister finally had to admit that they, too, loved their housekeepers. “Oh, but it’s different from the white girls who declare and swear that their housekeepers are their best friends,” Sister insisted. “It’s not like we’re saying that or anything.”

Lena thought for a bit, rolling her brown eyes slowly as she pondered what her friend had just said.

“Well, actually, Sister, it is just like that. How do you usually start your mornings? Who do you have a second leisurely, friendly cup of coffee with?”

“Oh, but we don’t …”

“Yes, we do.”

“Yeah, but we don’t …”

“Sister, you just said yourself that you look forward to talking with Mrs. Allen more than your mama.”

“Shit, you right. We do sound like them, don’t we?”

“Well, for God’s sake, girl, don’t make it sound so bad.”

“Make it sound bad??!!”
Sister nearly sputtered. “We’re talking whitegirlstalking’bouttheirmaidshere.”

“No, we not,” Lena corrected her. “We talking ’bout blackgirls-talking’bouttheirmaidshere.”

And they both had to laugh at themselves, their lives and their sister girls.

“Well, I don’t care really how it sounds. I loved Frank Petersen all the years he was with us. And now I love James Petersen. I mean, Sister, he makes my life wonderful. He makes sure I have clean drawers and nightgowns and jeans without thinking about it. I come home from work for a break in the evening and go out to cut some fresh
flowers for the dining room table and sit down and eat a homemade meal with fresh vegetables from some old lady’s garden and herbs from mine.

“And James Petersen makes that all possible. Shoot, Sister, you said the same thing when you had some help right after the twins were born. How you didn’t know how you were going to part with Mrs. Thompson. Was that her name?”

Sister smiled wistfully just thinking of the efficient woman who made her able to be a mother to her two youngest—twin boys—when she was too tired to lift either of them to her breast.

“Yeah, Mrs. Thompson did save my life,” Sister said with fondness. Then, as if answering Lena’s question, she added, “I don’t know
where
that old woman is now. Things just got busy after I didn’t need her anymore, and she drifted away. Or I guess we did.”

They were both quiet for a while. Lena tried not to make her silence chiding. But her silence, like everything about Lena, was too strong. Sister heard just what she was thinking and was hurt.

“Well, dammit, Lena,” Sister said, trying to hide her defensive-ness, “everybody ain’t like you.”

It was true. Lena kept up with everybody. “Well, you never know how long you gonna have somebody,” she would say as she urged a patron to go on and call his great-aunt in Alabama, his only living relative, before she passed away or got too old to know who he was.

She never had to press too hard with anyone to take her advice; too many had seen their friends stretched across the bar at The Place mourning without relief after ignoring one of Lena’s warnings that “You know, time is short.”

She had sat by Frank Petersen’s bed, too, when he died. She had wanted to move him up to her house so he wouldn’t be alone. He had dismissed so many people from the Round the Clock Health Services, Lena had to apologize and move on to another service.

No one could do anything to suit him, but Frank Petersen wasn’t interested in relocating.

“So, now you gonna try to move me out of my own house?” he asked weakly from his big easy chair set up by the window overlooking the river and a field where the horses romped. Lena was immediately sorry she had suggested it.

“I’m not trying to move you out, Frank Petersen,” Lena said as she tried to put another blanket around his legs, resting her hands briefly but firmly on his bony knees. She touched him as often as she could without him starting to notice. Each time her hand made contact with his skin, his hair, his nails, his frame, she tried as hard as she could to put the magic on him and cure his illness. It wasn’t easy. Frank Petersen didn’t encourage much touching. Never had. It was a habit he had fostered when he first started working at the McPherson house on Forest Avenue when Lena was seven.

He didn’t want any misunderstandings with the family and especially with Lena about touching. No matter how much Lena loved Frank Petersen and how much he doted on her, he didn’t want any misunderstandings.