Tina Mcelroy Ansa (21 page)

His face was broad but not round. His cheekbones were high and wide and seemed to stretch his sweet dark skin so tightly across his visage that Lena could not imagine him ever aging. It was difficult to think of anything old or aging or dying while looking into his face. As a child, Lena had heard her mother often exclaim, “Lord ham mercy, Lena, every sin that woman ever committed was written on her face this morning.” Looking at Herman made Lena think, Every kindness this man has ever committed is written on his face this morning.

Lena thought, Um, he’s the picture of health.

On his right temple, half-hidden in the thick edges of the thicket of his longish hair, was a faint scar shaped like a half-moon. Lena was shocked at herself, but she had to restrain her hand from reaching up and caressing it.

His eyes were black, as dark as midnight down by the river with no lights on. But they sparkled like something in a fairy tale. His brows and lashes were thick and just as ebony as his eyes. His eyebrows looked as if someone had wet a thumb with spit and smoothed the short hairs down. But his eyelashes were curly and unruly.

He had a good head of hair, coal black, like his eyes. And his eyes and hair seemed to have life in them. He had long bushy nappy hair, like a lion’s mane around his broad face. It was not in dreads, but it was thick enough to be. His short bushy mustache made him look daring, dashing, adventurous.

Lena thought his mouth below his bushy mustache appeared made to sing songs. She did not know why she thought that, but she did. And his lips looked so soft they made her lick her own lips.

His nose was what her Grandmama called a “proud African” nose.

A tall drink of water, Lena thought as she watched him stand there in her bathroom on her fluffy white looped rug, leaning back on the counter behind him while standing back in his legs like a sexy woman, his muscular arms crossed over his barrel chest to let her take in all of him. Or what there was of him. Although he stood a full six feet tall in full color with poetically beautiful tensed shoulders and slightly bowed legs, he was nearly transparent, translucent. Almost a vapor. Lena could just barely see the counter and bottles and towels and his dusty black hat through him. The steam wafting from the shower stall hung in the air around him, almost seemed to be a part of him.

Even as a vapor, he was himself. There. Set. Herman. Himself.

He gave new meaning to the phrase “ghost of a man.”

He was the most solid ghost of a man she had ever seen. He had
the kind of shoulders Lena liked: broad, solid but not thick and overly muscular. His thighs, Lena’s favorite part of a man, were long, lean, sinewy, and strong.

He looked to Lena to be about thirty-five years old or so. But with his flawless bittersweet-chocolate skin, Lena thought, there’s no telling how old he is.

He reminded Lena of pictures in biographies of old-timey black men like farmers and blacksmiths and coopers and cowboys standing in front of their fragile-looking wooden country homes or beside their horses.

He was wearing simple brightly colored clothing: a light green cotton long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled up over his arms to the bulge right above the elbow. And even with his big shirt tucked neatly into his pants, Lena could see he had a nice flat hard stomach. His pants were heavy cotton dark nondescript work pants, but they didn’t look like any work pants Lena had ever seen. They looked like they might have been handmade, but Lena thought, Now, who in the world makes their own work clothes?

He was a man who looked good in his pants. He had narrow hips like many country boys Lena had seen down at The Place—lanky with a little huskiness thrown in to let you know he was used to doing a good day’s work—and a real nice behind she could see from the side that was not too high or too low. Nice.

On his feet, big feet, Lena noted, he wore heavy boots, well-worn, but beautifully made of black leather with square heels and stirrup marks on the instep. They looked to Lena as if they had weathered many a trip.

She tried to picture him in some Gucci loafers and no socks, a loosely constructed linen suit, black Ray-Bans. But even when she squinted, she could not get him out of his original clothes in her mind’s eye. He seemed to
belong
in them.

The dusty black weather-beaten hat on the vanity behind him looked like it belonged to him, too. It was used, serviceable and a little sexy.

She was thinking how sexy he was, when he spoke, startling her.

“Mo’nin’, Lena. How do ya do?” he asked politely, formally, and sort of tipped his head toward her.

He was smiling so broadly, Lena had to admire his strong small white teeth. She smiled back.

He took this as encouragement and began his introductions again.

“I’m Herman. I’m here ’cause you called me up.”

His insistence that she was responsible was really puzzling her.

“I’m a spirit, Lena. Been one fo’ most a hundred years. But you called me here and made me real. You did that. And here I am.”

She still stood speechless, but she thought, You certainly
are here.

As if to put a real punctuation mark at the end of that sentence, Herman stretched out his nearly transparent arm to her, and Lena watched in amazement as the limb began to materialize before her. As in an anatomy class, she saw the marrow and the bone form—she could see how his wrists’ sockets fit together, how his elbow worked, how his fingers flexed—the tissue and muscle and cartilage cover that, the blood and tissue around and through and over that. Then, the beautiful dark brown skin, callused and cut and burned and scarred in places, over that. Then, a few curly dark hairs appeared on his knuckles and above his wristbone.

Before the sweet brown skin appeared over his beautifully symmetrical skeleton as his entire body began to materialize, she saw his heart beating in his chest, the blood rushing in one side, pumping out the other. She saw his lungs appear and fill with air. She witnessed his skull forming—he even had what her grandmother had called a “sense knot” on the back of his skull—over his brain.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Lena intoned like a nun as she watched, transfixed and naked, except for a towel.

Watching the creation, the transformation, Lena thought, There ought to be music Creation music And right away, the wind outside began rustling the trees and the heavy metal wind chimes hanging in the enclosed porch leading to the deck outside the French doors of Lena’s bedroom.

She was too charmed by the beauty of the metamorphosis to be frightened by its macabre aspects. She was too charmed by this spirit of a man, this “Herman.”

He became more and more real, more and more solid, more and more firm, more and more precise, more and more tangible right there before her eyes, as if fed by her seeing him.

In a matter of seconds, she could no longer see right through him at all. He was truly there.

He sighed one time, then he spoke, repeating his declaration in an ever stronger, more forceful voice.

“I’m Herman. I’m here ’cause you called me up. I sho’ ’nuff wanted to come. But I wouldn’t be here if you didn’a called me here. Period.”

Then, he reached over and casually took her hand lightly in his new one. Lena could feel the blood coursing through the veins of his elegantly formed wrist, could actually feel his pulse. And she felt a tingle that traveled from her fingers all the way up her shoulder to her chest. There, it made her heart flutter a bit. The feeling was so thrilling, she had to catch her breath. He then escorted her as naturally as anything through the bedroom to the deck as she clutched her towel to her naked body.

She did not hesitate a moment but trailed behind him silently. She hardly noticed where they were headed because she could not take her eyes off the strong concave spot at the small of his back. Even beneath his shirt, it appeared sculptured.

Outside on the wide, deep sycamore deck, more wind chimes played along with the orchestral sounds of the Ocawatchee rushing by. Lena smiled at the beauty of the natural music

Herman led her to the cushions in a teak swing hanging from long ropes connected to a high beam over the deck and they sat. He continued to hold onto her hand. Not against her will yet securely. She thought she could actually feel him become human.

With his unencumbered hand, he pointed to the remnants of Lena and Sister’s man-summoning ceremony.

“This when it happened, Lena. You called me up.”

It took a second for Lena to realize what Herman meant.

“You trying to tell me it worked?!” she shouted, catching her breath. “That the two of us, half-drunk, performed a ceremony that called forth a man!!? The ceremony called you up?!” Lena asked incredulously.

Herman just laughed. Not a foolish or a derisive laugh, just a truly tickled one.

“All this little stuff,” he said, smiling and pointing to the ashes and candles and pictures. “The power ain’t in this. These thangs just to show that you
willin’.
Willin’ to do the ceremony. Willin’ to go to the trouble to get the pink candle. It show you believe.

“But yo’ ’ceremony’ didn’t call me up, Lena.
You
called me up. It was
you
, Lena.
You
invited me in. That’s all it took. An invitation from you.”

Lena turned away to try to hide her smile. This ghost, this Herman, pronounced the word “invitation” as if it were “imitation.” He said it a bit like folks she remembered from her childhood at The Place, like her elderly gardener still pronounced it.

The pronunciations sounded so dear to Lena’s ears. It was not so much that this Herman mispronounced some words as it was that he stamped them with the imprint of his own style of speech. This Herman
claimed
his words!

Lena felt in her bones he was coming to claim her, too.

When she didn’t say anything, Herman continued. “I been watchin’ you fo’ decades, Lena.”

Lena pulled her hand away from the ghost’s at the disquieting thought of being secretly watched. Even if it was by a ghost. She could see by his face that the gesture hurt his heart, but she felt exposed and vulnerable at this news.

He seemed to twitch a bit and added quickly, “Nothin’ improper. Nothin’ I don’t think you would think improper, anyway.” Herman put his newly formed elbows on his newly formed knees and leaned forward with a serious look on his face. And she pulled her towel a bit tighter around her.

“Lena, it wan’t like that,” he said softly. “Shoot, spirits been watchin’ you since ya been born.

“I wasn’t
at
yo’ birth, Lena. But I sho’ did hear ’bout it,” Herman said.

“What do you mean, you
heard
about it?” Lena wanted to know. She could not believe that the Mulberry gossip mill extended even into the beyond.

“Oh, we spirits communicate wid each other more than we talk to ya’ll,” Herman replied matter-of-factly. “And yo’ birth gave us a lot to talk about. It was almost like it shook the whole afterlife world.

“I was on my way back hereabouts to Mulberry to see what the to-do was all about when yo’ mama poured out that caul tea in that green vase a’ flowers and yo’ protection from mean spirits along wid it. There was noise and disturbance in my world like I had never heard when that happen. Lena, it was like all heaven and hell had been let loose. Oh, the howls and screams and shrieks and yells and lamentations that went up that day. Oh, Lena, even I was a little disquieted by it all.

“Word got ’round ’bout yo’ mama throwin’ out that precious caul tea about as quick as word of yo’ birth. Shoot, Lena, from what I hear, yo’ birth, now,
that
was som’um,” he said as if he had been conversing with her all his life. Then, he chuckled.
“Almost
as impressive as yo’
ritual
the other night.”

Lena could not seem to help herself. No matter how many times she silently warned herself to keep alert while sitting nearly naked with this strange man on her deserted deck, she kept getting more and more comfortable with him.

“You were around when I was born
and
last week when Sister was here?” she asked.

In reply, he closed his dark eyes and began to imitate the sounds perfectly that she and her friend had made as Sister had invoked the spirits to arise with a love for Lena.

Maybe, he
was
there, she thought.

“Lena, I
was there,”
he said. “There was a wanin’ moon that night and when ya’ll lit the white candles, a big old cloud passed over it.”

Lena felt a little chill on her bare shoulders and realized the sun overhead had gone behind a cloud.

“I heard ya’ll both. From the first word you uttered, Lena, I knew it was me you was callin’ up. I didn’t even have to fight nobody else off to get t’ ya this time.”

Lena would have been embarrassed for anyone to know it, but she felt a little swell of pride at the idea of this good-looking, kindhearted spirit fighting to get to her.

“Shoot, Lena,” he said, seeming to read her mind again, “I’d fight the very devil fo’
you.”

Lena had to bite her bottom lip to combat the hot rush that flooded her entire naked body. Herman kept on talking.

“And when Sister was finished chantin’ what she had learned from Madame Delphie, you, Lena, you was sayin’, ’Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’”

Lena looked at him with her mouth hanging open.

“See,” he said triumphantly, “I told ya I was there.

“But that’s all mumbo jumbo if you don’t truly open yo’ heart to belief and, Lena, whether you know it or not, you did indeed open yo’ heart to me ’cause we sittin’ here talkin’ to each other.”

She recalled her prayer from the night before. But all she said was, “Um.”

“Mostly, Lena, I wanted you to see me in the full light a’ day. So you could see clearly.

“You had a night to think on it. And I had a eternity to toss and turn thinkin’ I done misread yo’ invitation.”

He paused.

“Lena, I don’t care how good it feel now that we laughin’ and talkin’ and all. Now’s the time I want to get this straight. I been wantin’ you a long time, Lena. But I don’t want you gettin’ the wrong idea. I want us both to understand right now that I wouldn’t never
come up inside a’ you like I did last night in yo’ pool ifn you hadn’a asked me in. I wouldn’a done that. I don’t do that. I ain’t that kinda man. I wa’n’t alive, and I ain’t that kinda man dead. You hear me, Lena?”